Part 2. The Struggle of Roman Catholicism for Freedom to Exist and the Significance of the Results It Gained for Its Further Development (Cont.) (7)

Such is the ideal of the relationship of church and state. By virtue of it there equally appears abnormal and is condemned both the absorption of the state by the church and the absorption of the church by the state; each must remain distinct from the other, each with its own organization, with its own members, capacities, rights and sphere of activity. Equally condemned by it is both the clericalism of the papal system, striving to seize functions not proper to the church from the state, and secularism, by which the state strives to seize dominion over the church, as it was in all the states of the pagan world and was expressed in the persecution of Christians by pagan emperors. But the church, in its guiding position, does not itself enact laws; it only proclaims, declares and applies them, and is itself also bound by them as is the state. The very law is prescribed to the government of all peoples and nations by God as the Supreme Lawgiver or as the goal and final cause of creation, and is obligatory equally for persons and for peoples, for sovereigns and subjects, for church and state. Such should be the relationship of these two orders, spiritual and material, church and state; but in reality it has never attained full and perfect realization, and history on the contrary presents facts of constant deviation in this field from the ideal state. The chronic condition of these two orders in society, instead of unity and cooperation or mutual relationship, was a condition of mutual distrust or even open hostility. In the course of the first three centuries of Christianity the relationship between them was one of open antagonism and the state persecuted the church. The pagan Roman Emperor of the Roman Empire laid claim to the union of both these orders in himself and was at once imperator, pontifex maximus and divus or god. For its part, the church, having received one-sided development on the ruins of this very civilization, adopted in Roman Catholicism the tendency to intrude into the sphere not proper to it of purely civil life, to subject the state entirely to its power, to seize functions belonging exclusively to it. The Roman Catholic pontifex maximus, having appropriated the title of vicar of Christ, strove to be as imperator. The Middle Ages present a sharp and factual realization of this tendency, and signs of it manifest themselves in the relation of Roman Catholicism to the states of Europe to the present time. Protestantism, on the other hand, having degenerated from the influence of the principles of Greco-Roman pagan civilization on the intellectual makeup of European society, brought with it in the relationship of church and state a pagan view, appeared as a reaction against the strengthened clericalism and in turn gave undue predominance to the state over the church, which was expressed especially sharply in England, where the church became a simple instrument of the state.

In what relationship to the ideal theory of the correlation of church and state does the American system stand? Its essence is determined by those historical data on whose soil it grew, and by those philosophical principles which were legally expressed both in the “Declaration of Independence” and in the Federal Constitution. The first settlers of the American colonies were people predominantly deeply religious, and in organizing society on the new land had in view not simply to avoid the oppression of conscience of which they were victims in their former home, but to found a truly Christian republic according to their understanding. And they did indeed found such a republic with such perfection as was possible with their imperfect Christian views. The colonies of New England were undoubtedly inclined toward the founding of a theocracy, a modified but even more intense form of clericalism, whose representative in Europe was Roman Catholicism, and thus had the tendency to absorb the state by the church. In the southern colonies, on the other hand, like in England, there was the tendency to establish the predominance of the civil order and thus to make the church a function of the state. These two opposite tendencies in the formation of American society met one another and, balancing one another, produced the result by which the unity and distinction of two orders were established under the leadership of the Christian idea. In principle each order in American society exists and stands in its normal relationship to the other, and moreover in its entirety, with its own distinctive nature, its own laws and functions; and thereby the material order in proper subordination to the spiritual.

The developed theory of the American system of the relationship of church and state does not accord with the common view of it as a system by which the state is supposedly completely independent of religion, separated from it in the full sense of the word. But it constitutes a strictly logical conclusion from the philosophical principles placed at the foundation of American civil life. In view of the prevalence of this erroneous view, especially in Russia, we deem it necessary to dwell in more detail on the exposition of these principles.[1]

The foundation of the American state rests on what is called natural and inalienable human rights. These rights, which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,[2] constitute the highest, supreme law for civil society, which the state is obligated to recognize and obey. They reject absolutism of the state, define its sphere, limit its power, and prescribe its duty. But from where do these rights come, and how can they bind the state and prescribe its duty? According to one view, these rights flow from the very essence of humanity as persons and constitute an essential part of it. But the rights of one person must then bind the rights of another person, and yet both are equal, as all persons are equal. How then can one person bind or morally obligate another? When things are equal, one cannot have superiority over another. According to another view, these rights are contained in our human nature, given to us by nature, and therefore they constitute the natural and inalienable rights of humanity. Nature is understood in two ways: as the physical order or physical laws that enter into the physical world, and as the moral law to which the Creator has subjected all beings endowed with reason and free will, and which is known by natural reason or common sense of all people. In the first sense, these rights are not contained in our human nature and cannot be, since they are not physical. Physical rights are an internal contradiction. They can be contained in human nature only in the second sense, and can exist only in our moral nature, and consequently must be contained under that law which grounds and sustains moral nature, or the moral order as distinct from the physical order. But the moral law that grounds and sustains the moral order, the order of right and justice, is not a law grounded or prescribed by nature, but the law of moral governance of nature, to which the Creator of nature as Supreme Legislator has subjected all moral beings. Thus the moral law of nature is the law of God, and all rights which it grounds or which flow from it are the rights of God, and they are ours only because they are His. My rights in relation to you constitute your duty, that which God prescribes as law or rule for your behavior or relation to me; and your rights in relation to me constitute my duty, or that which God prescribes as rule for my behavior in relation to you. And that which God prescribes, He has the right to prescribe, and therefore He can equally command me not to respect those rights in you, and you not to respect those rights in me, which are not His rights; and civil society, being His society, is bound by these rights and cannot alienate or deny them without violating His law and depriving Him of His rights. Hence, he who wrongs another commits injustice not only against him, but commits injustice against his Creator, his Sovereign, and his Judge. From the rights enumerated above, let us take the right to life. This right all people and civil society itself are obligated to deem sacred and inviolable. But all people are created equal and under the law of nature have equal rights. How then can equals bind one another? By mutual contract, according to Rousseau’s theory. But from where does the binding force of a contract derive? Why am I obligated to keep my word? Certainly not by the word itself, but because I would deprive him to whom I gave the word of a right belonging to him. But I gave my word to help commit murder. Am I obligated to keep it? Not at all. Why not? Because I pledged myself to commit a crime, to do injustice or an unjust act. It is evident, therefore, that contracts or pledges do not create or produce justice; they presuppose it. Contracts themselves are binding only by virtue of a higher law of justice, and no contracts that contradict this law can bind anyone. Why am I obligated to respect your life? You cannot bind me to do so, because you and I are equal, and no one by his own authority can bind another. To take your life would be to commit an unjust act, that is, to deprive justice of its right to your life. The right to life is in this case a right of justice. But justice is not merely an abstraction; it is not a mental idea alone, but reality, and therefore it is God. Hence my or your right to life is the right of Him who created us and to whom we entirely belong. Furthermore, the right to life is inalienable even for myself; I myself cannot even take it from myself, and therefore suicide is a crime, and not only a crime against society, but a sin before God, because all right to life belongs to God. Therefore He has the right to command all people to deem the right to life in each person sacred and inalienable, and it can never be taken away by other people or even by civil society, but only by His command. The same applies to all other human rights.[3]

These principles found legal and clear expression in the Declaration of Independence, that document by which the independence of the American people as a separate state was proclaimed and by which both the foundations of this independence and the principles of the subsequent development of the new state were determined. In the first article of the Declaration of Independence, Congress affirms that the people of the United States “judged it necessary to assume among the powers of the earth a separate and equal station, to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them.” Proceeding then to set forth the grounds of the act itself, the representatives of the people say: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” The document further states that those governments which deviate from this purpose and pursue a different one, by encroaching upon and violating these rights, thereby lose their power. Applying this principle to the particular relation of the American people to England, Congress makes it a casus belli and considers it sufficient grounds for the proclamation of independence.[4]

Thus, at the most critical moment, amid the very pangs of the birth of a new state, the people of the United States solemnly declared that the origin of every right, every law, every political organization, every government, and especially that which makes the United States a separate state-people, must be sought in the eternal law, in the law of God. If human rights proceed from God and are His rights over humans as His creatures, as they indisputably are, then they lie in the realm of the spiritual order, not the material; they are spiritual, not material. The American state, in recognizing the independence, supremacy, and inviolability of human rights, thereby recognizes in principle the independence, supremacy, and inviolability of the spiritual order, its own subordination to it, and its obligation to conform to it. It thereby recognizes the church as a divine institution, furnished by God with the authority to represent God’s law and apply it to the government of the people as a state, no less than to the people as individual persons. This is a necessary consequence. If God made a supernatural revelation, we are bound by natural law to believe in it; and if He founded the church to represent the spiritual order, or embodied the spiritual order in a visible organism, with the authority to proclaim His word to all people and nations, to declare and apply this law in the governance of human affairs, then we are obligated to accept it and obey it. This shows that the true church, if such exists, is sacred and inviolable, and what it declares to be God’s law is His law, binding on every conscience. Whoever refuses to obey it refuses to obey God, and whoever deprives it of any of its rights deprives God. Inevitable and terrible punishment necessarily follows from deviation from this obedience, and in relation to states and societies it appears in the form of moral weakness, corruption, dissolution, and death.