政教关系与世俗化 Church-State Relations and Secularization
One perspective, represented by the Psalms, which were hymns sung in the Temple in Jerusalem, exalts the king to an almost divine position, sitting at the right hand of God (Ps 110:1) and receiving the nations of the earth for an inheritance (Ps 2:8). Coronation hymns celebrate the king’s special relationship to God. This perspective dominates the self-understanding of the kings of Judah, the southern part of ancient Israel.
In sharp contrast, the prophet Samuel denounces kings as crooks and oppressors who are allowed by God only as a concession to human sinfulness. Samuel warns the tribes of Israel that if they choose to have a king, the king will draft their young men into his army and put the young women to work in his service. In this trajectory, prophets, armed only with the conviction that they have been called by God to proclaim the Word of God, repeatedly stand up to the kings of ancient Israel and denounce their sinfulness. Thus Samuel condemns Saul, Nathan condemns David, and later prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah condemn the kings of their times.
Meanwhile, in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the Roman governor Pontius Pilate that his kingdom does not belong to this world (Jn 18:36). This suggests a separation of responsibilities between civil governance and religious leadership. Repeatedly in the gospels, when people want to make Jesus a king, he slips through their midst and escapes. His mission is to proclaim the reign of God, not to establish a worldly kingdom.
There are also various covenants that set forth the relationship of God and God’s people (Gen 9:8-17; 15:18-21; Ex 20; Deut 5); a covenant in the ancient Middle East was a solemn agreement that bound both parties to observe certain obligations. The covenant with Noah was made by God with all of creation. The covenant with Abraham initiated a relationship with Abraham and his descendants forever. The covenant made with Moses at Mt. Sinai became the central framework for the relationship of the people of Israel to God. The Book of Deuteronomy renews and reflects upon this covenant a generation later, as Moses is at the end of his life.
These four options would shape, respectively, later Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Calvinist views of the proper relation between church and state. The political theologies of the later Christian tradition consist in large measure of a series of conflicting appropriations of these perspectives. One can read the major political options taken by later Christian communions as developing one or more of the biblical trajectories. The Byzantine Orthodox tradition and some aspects of the Roman Catholic tradition continue the tradition of sacred kingship. Later strands of the Roman Catholic tradition view earthly rulers as prone to corruption and in need of repeated rebuke by religious leaders, such as popes. The Lutheran tradition focuses on Jesus’s statement to Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world and concludes that there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of God, which is ruled by the gospel, and the kingdom of this world, which is ruled by civil governments. The Calvinist tradition focused on covenant in a way that none of the earlier traditions had done, placing covenant at the center of relationships both with God and with other human beings. In this lecture, I will not discuss the original biblical texts themselves, but I would like to explore the way in biblical perspectives have guided l
