Tag Archives: Heresy

God’s Authority and the Modern State

American Founding, Church and State, Protestantism, , , , , , , ,

Pope St. Pius X once said that all errors in the practical and social realm were founded upon theological errors.  The Saintly Pontiff’s maxim seems almost common-sensical, so much so that, we can easily overlook it.  Ideas have consequences and bad ideas, especially bad ideas about Who God is and who man is, have bad consequences.  As a corollary then we might say that it is impossible to fix the bad consequences without rectifying the bad thinking.  One such bad idea, namely that all authority in the political realm comes from the people, has had the devastating consequence of erecting a “wall of separation between Church and State” leading to the loss of many souls.

The Source of Secular Authority

The properly Christian understanding about the source of secular authority is that it comes from God Himself.  This is made clear by Our Lord during His trial in which He tells Pilate that “You would have no power over me if it had not been given to you from above” (John 19:11).   In his usually blunt manner, St. Paul echoes the same principle when he reminds the Christians in Rome to “Let every person be subordinate to the higher authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been established by God” (Romans 13:1).  God as Creator and Sustainer of all Creation is also its supreme authority.  All authority is exercised in His name and flows from Him.  Kings, emperors and presidents all derive their power to rule from Him and it is only for that reason that they also have the power to bind consciences for just laws. 

Summarizing the Church’s understanding of secular authority, Pope Leo XIII instructs the faithful that “all public power must proceed from God. For God alone is the true and supreme Lord of the world. Everything, without exception, must be subject to Him, and must serve him, so that whosoever holds the right to govern holds it from one sole and single source, namely, God, the sovereign Ruler of all. ‘There is no power but from God’” (Leo XIII, Immortale Dei, 3).

This view of authority flies in the face of countries such as the United States.  Rather than authority from above, it is based on authority from below.  Known as popular sovereignty, this founding principle is first articulated in the Declaration of Independence where Jefferson told the King that legitimate governments are those ‘‘deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.’’ 

Luther’s Error and Its Modern Consequences

So ingrained in the modern mind, we might not even realize that it is opposed to the correct understanding of the source of secular authority.  It would be easy to blame this on the Enlightenment, but the error pre-dates even the Enlightenment and Social Contract Theory.  Instead the error is rooted in Luther’s revolution in which he rejected the authority of the Church.  Leo XIII points this out in his encyclical Diuturnum  by drawing a line from the so-called Reformation to Communism and nihilism: “…sudden uprisings and the boldest rebellions immediately followed in Germany the so-called Reformation, the authors and leaders of which, by their new doctrines, attacked at the very foundation religious and civil authority; and this with so fearful an outburst of civil war and with such slaughter that there was scarcely any place free from tumult and bloodshed. From this heresy there arose in the last century a false philosophy – a new right as it is called, and a popular authority, together with an unbridled license which many regard as the only true liberty. Hence we have reached the limit of horrors, to wit, communism, socialism, nihilism, hideous deformities of the civil society of men and almost its ruin” (Leo XIII, Diuturnum, 23).

If we follow the logic we will see why this is a necessary consequence.  Animated by a Protestant mentality, each person treats directly with God without any intermediary.  Each person becomes an authority in himself and therefore any authority that is to found in a social body is by his consent.  In essence then it eliminates the Kingship of Christ in the temporal realm and completely privatizes religion. 

This helps to explain why most Protestants see no problem in the current belief in a “Wall of Separation” between Church and State. It was Luther himself that was the intellectual predecessor: “[B]etween the Christian and the ruler, a profound separation must be made. Assuredly, a prince can be a Christian, but it is not as a Christian that he ought to govern. As a ruler, he is not called a Christian but a prince. The man is a Christian, but his function does not concern his religion. Though they are found in the same man, the two states or functions are perfectly marked off one from the other, and really opposed.”  Both the Christian Prince and the Christian citizen were to live their lives in two separate realms and, ironically enough, not submitting to God in either since they also rejected His Kingship in the Catholic Church.  Once the divorce is complete, all types of political errors begin to take hold.  Luther’s insistence on individual and private judgement leads directly to Locke, Rousseau, and Marx.  One theological error leads to many political errors. 

The Church then will always find conflict with the modern state until this error is corrected.  The modern State hates the Catholic Church because it is an existential threat because it seeks, or at least ought to seek, to acknowledge God’s authority in the temporal realm.  It is also the reason that Catholics ought to make the best citizens.  They see no conflict between Church and State because both have their authority rooted in God Himself and to obey either is to obey God.

The Natural-Supernatural Distinction

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In his latest Apostolic Exhortation, Pope Francis cautions the faithful to avoid what he sees as two re-emerging Christian heresies, Gnosticism and Pelagianism.  I will speak on the former another time, but today I would like to address the latter—Pelagianism.  Thanks to the hammer of over-correction, this whack-a-mole heresy is perpetually popping up within the history of the Church.  Now that Pope Francis fixed the crosshairs upon this heresy, we need to also guard against its over-correcting counterpart, Quietism.  In order to do this we must find the spiritual middle ground.

To begin, a few definitions are in order.  Pelagianism has a number of principal tenets but its essence consists in a denial of the supernatural order and the necessity of grace for salvation.  Despite condemnations from numerous Popes and Councils, it still persists to this day.  Likewise with the heresy of Quietism which puts forth the position that to become perfect one must be totally passive in the spiritual life waiting for God to act.  Quietism rejects not only prayers with any specific content (like acts of love, petition or adoration) but also sees mortification and the sacraments as useless.  Despite coming from a different starting point, notice how this heresy comes to the same practical conclusions of Pelagianism.  Left unchecked, these heresies leave us dangling on a pendulum mostly due to a failure to make a crucial distinction.  It is a failure to make what we might call the “Natural-Supernatural Distinction” that lay at the heart of the re-emergence of Pelagianism along with the seemingly endless “Faith vs Works” debate that has plagued Catholic and Protestant discussion for centuries.

The Important Distinction

This distinction comes into focus once we examine the following proposition—“Free will, without the help of God’s grace, acts only in order to sin.”  How should we respond to this?  In order to condemn Pelagianism, we want to accept the proposition.  The problem however is that the Church condemns this one as well.  Pope St. Pius V in his 1567 Papal Bull Ex Omnibus Afflictionibus anathematized this proposition as contrary to the Faith.  How can both Pelagianism and this proposition be false?  It hinges on what we mean by good when we ask the question, “can we be good without God’s grace?”.

A morally good act is one that is in accord with right reason and fulfills our nature.  Thus a man, without being under the influence of grace can act prudently by doing what is just, temperate, and courageous in specific situations. He may even do so habitually so that he grows in virtue and becomes a “good” man.  History is replete with examples of good pagans and other non-Christians so it seems undeniable to think one cannot be good without grace.  But no matter how many good things he does, a man cannot do a single thing that will merit him everlasting life.  In the face of that end, he is like a cow reading Shakespeare, utterly incapable.  But unlike the cow, man can have a super-nature grafted onto him that enables him to perform God-like actions.  Once he receives this nature, that is, once he becomes a “partaker of the divine nature” (c.f. 2 Peter 1:4) and is given sanctifying grace can he now do things that will fulfill his gifted supernatural end.

The Holy Spirit comes to dwell within us and brings with Him a new set of human powers.  First He brings infused virtues that enable the man to direct his actions to God.  No longer does he act for some particular good, His actions can be habitually directed towards the ultimate Good, God Himself.  And he is rewarded accordingly.  He is given the power to be moved directly by that same Spirit with His seven-fold gifts.  And he is rewarded accordingly.  He is, day by day, made not just good but holy.  No longer are his actions merely good in the natural sense but now they are supernaturally good.  St. Thomas sums it up well when he says “without grace man cannot merit everlasting life; yet he can perform works conducing to a good which is natural to man” (ST I-II q.109 a.5).

Becoming More Human

As the Supernature becomes more and more operative in the man, he becomes more human and not less.  “Christ came to fully reveal man to himself and make his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes, 22).  Grace most certainly perfects nature, but only to the extent that we cooperate with it.  How do we nurture this super-nature?  By becoming naturally good.  Cooperation really means that remove the obstacles that we place in the way.  Growth in the infused virtue of prudence, for example, is directly related to growth in the acquired virtue of prudence.  This is not because the infused virtues are somehow grafted on top of the natural virtues, but because the natural virtues facilitates the removal of any obstacles to the infused virtue being completely operative.  This is why we must never forget the truth that we are capable on our own of growing in natural virtue.

This is important because we often remain rather passive in our attempts to grow in holiness.  Avoiding any traces of Pelagianism, we have a tendency to be rather passive in our attempts to grow in holiness and move towards an equally spiritually impotent habit of Quietism.  We wait for God to provide the growth but forget that we have the power to till and fertilize the soil in the meantime.  We should be at all times working diligently to grow in the natural virtues so that when the grace of growth comes, there is nothing stopping it.  And this is why the “Natural-Supernatural Distinction” is so important for us to grasp.  Naturally we cannot achieve any merit, but we can (naturally) remove the impediments by actively cultivating the acquired virtues.    We must constantly be at work fertilizing our soil.  No saint ever reached the heights of holiness without going through a stage of active purgation.  We are still fallen creatures so that our efforts at natural perfection will always fall short.  This is why each of the saints also went through a stage of passive purgation in which God, through the workings of Providence and actual graces, completes the growth in perfection.

The problem with most heresies is not so much that they are false, but that they tend to overemphasize one aspect of the truth at the expense of other aspects.  In this regard, Pelagianism is no different with its over-emphasis on human effort.  But the response is not then to become a Quietist, passively waiting on God to act.  Instead, we must live the “both/and” doctrine of the Faith in which we follow the rule of St. Ignatius, “pray as if everything depended upon God and work as if everything depended on you.”