The Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church in the Ecclesiology of Charles Hodge

Alan D. Strange

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781629952864
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

Hodge defended a view of the spirituality of the church that permitted it to maintain a witness to its culture while not being overwhelmed by the politics of the day.

1

The Shape of the Doctrine of the Spirituality of the Church

As noted in the preface, Charles Hodge developed his doctrine of the spirituality of the church in a subtle and nuanced fashion that permitted him to distinguish the church from the state and its political concerns while allowing the church to retain a prophetic voice to society.¹ Since mention of “the spirituality of the church” is absent until Hodge’s time, one might think that the doctrine is an invention of nineteenth-century American Presbyterianism. After all, the specific term first appears shortly before the U.S. Civil War (1861–65).² The idea has to do, particularly as developed in this thesis and used by Charles Hodge, with what might be called the “province of the church”—the nature and limits of its power—especially its role as an institution over against that of the state. There are broader uses of spirituality, as have been noted in the preface to this work.³ This thesis intends to show that for Hodge these broader uses link up with his particular usage of the spirituality of the church: Hodge saw the church as a spiritual institution, a kingdom “not of this world,” gathered and perfected by the Holy Spirit.⁴ Hence, the spirituality of the church for Hodge came particularly to be a reflection of this reality: the church is a body gathered by the Holy Spirit over against other societal institutions that are biological (the family) or civil (the state).

Spirituality in the Nineteenth Century, Briefly Defined

Recent scholars have been skeptical about when the doctrine of the spirituality of the church developed. Historian Jack P. Maddex, for instance, noted that “all writers have agreed . . . that Southern Presbyterians embraced ‘the spirituality of the church’ before 1861.”⁵ Maddex insisted on a different timeline:

It is time to challenge that generally-accepted premise. Antebellum Southern Presbyterians did not teach absolute separation of religion from politics, or even church from state. Most of them were proslavery social activists who worked through the church to defend slavery and reform its practice. Their Confederate militance did not violate any antebellum tradition of pietism. Only during Reconstruction, in drastically altered circumstances, did they take up the cause of a non-secular church—borrowing it from conservative Presbyterians in the border states.⁶

It is the contention of this thesis that Maddex is both right and wrong. He is right that Presbyterians in the South (and in the North, for that matter) before the U.S. Civil War did not teach an absolute separation of religion from politics⁷ and that Reconstruction Southerners were particularly influenced by certain Border State Presbyterians (like Stuart Robinson in Kentucky).⁸ He is wrong, however, to assert that the doctrine of the spirituality of the church is not only terminologically but conceptually a novel idea invented by Southerners in Reconstruction. The notion of the spirituality of the church in some sense extends back through the entire history of the church, even to biblical times. It is the contention of this thesis that not only did the concept of the spirituality of the church precede the nineteenth century but also that a usage other than that of supporting slavery was made of it, as we see in the case of Charles Hodge.⁹

While some who adduced the spirituality of the church did intend thereby to silence the church from criticizing slavery, this was not Hodge’s approach. Hodge’s more careful and modest use of the doctrine restricted the church from purely political involvement while permitting some civil engagement. He asserted that the church has a proper interest in addressing issues that may have civil implications, like Sabbath observance, the place of religion in public education, and slavery.¹⁰ In fine, Hodge maintained that though the church ought not to concern itself with the purely political, at the same time it ought not to restrict itself in addressing matters treated by the Bible simply because such issues may have certain civil or political ramifications. Where to draw the lines—between spiritual and civil, between church and state—is, Hodge acknowledged “an exceedingly complicated and difficult subject.”¹¹

The Doctrine of Church and State in Biblical Times¹²

It is typically asserted that in the Bible, at least in the Old Testament, church and state are seen as one, an inseparable unity: Israel was constituted by God to serve him in every sphere of its national life. Yahweh commanded the full allegiance of Israel as she expressed her life in state, church, and family. Scholars often refer to Israel after Sinai as a theocracy, meaning that it claimed to be under the rule of God in the sum of its national life. But Israel was not a theocracy in the classic use of that term, as were some of its neighbors that had either priestly rule or rule by “divine” monarch.¹³ Israel’s priesthood did not rule the nation (judges, prophets, or kings did), and her kings did not act as priests.¹⁴ The king was also limited by the law (not a law unto himself) and clearly was not regarded as divine.¹⁵ In this sense, then, Israel, though under Yahweh in all spheres, distinguished the civil ruler from the priest and both of them from the deity.

The origins of the institutions of church and state in the Old Testament are also debated. Confessional churchmen would argue that the church began in Eden before the fall (Genesis 2–3), making its appearance at the same time as the family.¹⁶ One might argue that though there was some sort of civil order from the beginning, the state did not make an appearance more explicitly until after the flood and disembarkment, with God instructing Noah in the establishment of rudimentary government (Gen. 9).¹⁷ While in Israel a much closer tie between church and state exists after the covenantal development at Sinai (Ex. 20) than in the patriarchs’ time, a distinction remains: there is a ruling class, particularly with the development of the Davidic kingship (2 Sam. 2), as noted above, which is separate from the priestly class, the Levites. Again, this means that the priestly class was not the ruling, or kingly, class, though the Levites did have some functions that might be said to be civil. In short, though there was a distinction of sorts between church and state, all of life for Israel was directly under and closely regulated by Yahweh.

“The spirituality of the church” was not absent during this theocracy: there was always at the heart of all old covenant worship a true spirituality that highlighted a worship of and devotion to Yahweh that regarded not only outward circumcision but the circumcision of the heart.¹⁸ In other words, even in the Old Testament, Moses and the prophets privileged the inward over the outward and saw acceptable outward service as flowing from a truly spiritual inner life.

Whatever distinctions obtained between church and state in the life of Old Testament Israel, such were considerably magnified in the New Testament context. The New Testament has in view not an ethnically distinct people in a geographically defined land, as was true of Israel. Rather, the followers of Jesus Christ believe that not only is he the Messiah sent to redeem Israel but the one sent to redeem the world (John 3:16). Since, in the Christian context, the faith would no longer be limited to a discrete people group but would be made up of disciples from all nations, the relation between church and state, whatever it was for Old Testament Israel, would of necessity be different for the New Testament church.

The Doctrine of Church and State in the Ancient Church

Hodge himself, in his article on church and state, begins his analysis of the question with Christians in the Roman Empire before the conversion of Constantine (312). He writes, “Before the conversion of Constantine, the church was of course so far independent of the state, that she determined her own faith, regulated her worship, chose her officers, and exercised her discipline without any interference of the civil authorities.”¹⁹ The church, in spite of suffering ten waves of persecution during the three centuries before the conversion of Constantine, was left to develop its own institutional life.²⁰ Hodge writes, “Her members were regarded as citizens of the state, whose religious opinions and practices were, except in times of persecution, regarded as matters of indifference.” Hodge supposes that the Romans granted the church, more or less, the same privileges as the Jews in conducting their own religious affairs.²¹ While this is not quite accurate, at least de jure, between the waves of persecution, the church was often ignored de facto and flourished increasingly as time went by.²²

When Constantine converted, he assumed that as the Christian of imperial rank, he was entitled to significant say in the affairs of the Christian church. Hodge notes, “When Constantine declared himself a Christian, he expressed the relation which was henceforth to subsist between the church and state, by saying to certain bishops, ‘God has made you the bishops of the internal affairs of the church, and me the bishop of its external affairs.’”²³ Hodge notes that this meant that the church was left to determine her doctrine and to manage her church order. It was left to the state, in this schema, “to provide for the support of the clergy, to determine the sources and amounts of their income, to fix the limits of parishes and dioceses, to provide places of public worship, to call together the clergy, to preside in their meetings, to give the force of laws to their decisions, and to see that external obedience at least was rendered to the decrees and acts of discipline.”²⁴

Constantine’s legacy has been hotly disputed.²⁵ Some have seen him as personally lacking and “hardly deserv[ing] the title of Great . . . either by his character or his abilities.”²⁶ Others are tired of his being “a whipping boy” and are ready to defend him as a Christian and a zealous church leader.²⁷ Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle. At any rate, one may safely assert that things were never the same in the church after his conversion.²⁸ The emperor’s claim to be the external bishop, Hodge argued, was not as nice and neat as it sounded. This internal/external distinction, Hodge noted, was “too indefinite to keep two mighty bodies [church and state] from coming into collision.”²⁹ And collide they did: “if the magistrate provided the support of the bishops and sustained them in their places of influence, he felt entitled to have a voice in saying who should receive his funds, and use that influence.” Similarly, if he was to enforce conciliar decisions and see that discipline was carried out, even to the point of banishment (or later death), he felt some obligation to ascertain the justice of such proceedings. On the other hand, Hodge wrote, “if the church was recognised as a divine institution, with divinely constituted government and powers, she would constantly struggle to preserve her prerogatives from the encroachments of the state, and to draw to herself all the power requisite to enforce her decisions in the sphere of the state into which she was adopted, which she of right possessed in her own sphere as a spiritual, and, in one sense, voluntary, society.”³⁰

Here is Hodge’s objection to the Constantinian model: the church is a spiritual institution and ought to be spiritually constituted and governed, not brought together and ruled by an agent of civil society but by the Holy Spirit and those church officers who minister, rule, and serve in the power of the Holy Spirit.³¹ This is for Hodge the true nature of the church and thus that w...