Secularism

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Rabbit-Hole 01

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Bridging the Divide: A Brief History of Sacred Versus Secular
...Aquinas distinguished between two realms: the higher realm of grace which dealt with spiritual matters; and natural theology which dealt with matters of the created physical world. Francis Schaffer described Aquinas’ separation of theology from philosophy as opening the door to a “secular” interpretation of scholarship, philosophy, politics, economics and other worldly matters. ...
The Reformation represented a break from Roman ecclesiastical and political dominance. The unfortunate result was the Thirty Years’ War, which devastated Europe and left many disillusioned altogether with the credibility of religion. These tragic events set the stage for the French Revolution and the European Enlightenment. McGrath describes: “People had had enough. A yearning for peace led to a new emphasis on toleration and growing impatience with religious disputes. The scene was set for the Enlightenment insistence that religion was to be a matter of private belief, rather than state policy.” The formal departure from Christendom and birth of a secular Europe was set in motion.

Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms
The Two Realms and the "Separation of Church and State" in American Society — Ernest B. Koenker | Concordia Seminary, St. Louis

Christianity’s Dangerous Idea: The Protestant Revolution—A History from the Sixteenth Century to the Twenty-First | Google Books
Revolutions in Worldview: Understanding the Flow of Western Thought | Amazon

The Inseparability of Church and State
A Tale of Two Cities

Post-Constantine Age

TRIUMPHALISM of post-Constantinian age

The End of Ancient Christianity — Robert Markus
Christianity and the Secular — Robert Markus
Saint Augustine's Secularization of Rome — Robert Markus
restoration of a lost continuity with the age of persecutions
three developments:
  a huge extension of the cult of martyrs, 
  a new interest in the Church’s past, and, especially, 
  the growing appeal of asceticism
principal means which helped the Christian community to convince itself that it was still identical with the Church of the martyrs.
chief devices for reconciling the Church to living in and with a world which it had assimilated and which it was coming to influence and to dominate. 
sought to reassure themselves that triumph did not have to mean betrayal. 
still were the Church of the martyrs, heirs of their heroic past, distinct in the world around them if not quite foreign to it.
general acceptance of the new imperial order - give rise to a variety of anxieties, especially in times of tension and conflict with the imperial “establishment” 
Christians’ wholesale assimilation of pagan Roman culture and lifestyles brought unease and opposition in some quarters
Except in dissenting groups on the edges of Catholic orthodoxy, the general dispensation of a Church favored by the powers, recognized by legislation, and sharing Roman lifestyles and culture went unquestioned - only for a few, short years
jubilant endorsement of the tempora christiana was short-lived
In the years just before and after AD 400 Augustine’s voice had come to be merged in the “world’s roar” (Ennar. in Ps 6.33) acclaiming Christ’s victory (that he had spoken of in the sermon I quoted at the beginning). In these few years he is often celebrating the fulfilment of the prophecies now, very speedily (valde velociter), in our time, in these “Christian times,” when God is calling the kings of the earth to his service; the idols have been, or are being, uprooted and the nations gathered from the ends of the earth to the worship of Christ. “The whole world has become a chorus praising Christ” (De cons. ev. 1.32.50-34.52). But within a few years of preaching to the people of the little town of Boseth, Augustine’s enthusiasm abated.
cooling of his enthusiasm about the “establishment” of Christianity under the regime of Theodosius and his successors  -
bishops often had little clout and influence they could wield on the conduct of affairs was severely limited
dominance of Christianity in Roman society had in practice not been fully achieved by any mean
bishops could not always count on getting their way; they had to reckon with a deeply entrenched tradition of resistance, often by officials who were still pagan in their allegiance
413 - began writing the City of God
pagan narrative of failure; Christian narrative of triumph, firmly settled, molded by a variety of traditions
the New Testament’s time scheme - 
with the coming of Christ the world entered a new age; prophets and biblical writers singled out one strand in world’s history, narrative of Israel, culminating in story of Jesus.
As in the De doctrina Christiana, here again Augustine wanted to establish a sphere in which pagan and Christian both had a stake
the saeculum—not a third City between the earthly and the heavenly, but their mixed, “inextricably intertwined” state in this temporal life
From the beginning, Augustine’s objective was to define a civil community in a way which would enable Christians to give full weight to its claims on them, no less than on its pagan citizens and functionaries, while at the same time deflating the more grandiose, quasi-divine, claims made for it, either by pagans or by Christians.
Much of Western theology as well as of political thought has in fact been, at least in part, such a long-drawn-out conversation. [with Augustine]
two types of social thought have claimed the authority of the Augustinian tradition and have claimed to interpret it in modern terms. One is that of the secular liberalism which would seek to sever any direct relation between religion and the public realm. The other is the opposite of this: the tradition which would see the public sphere as founded on or tied in one way or another to Christianity.
At the heart of this way of thinking is the radical equation of the secular with sin. John Milbank writes in Theology and Social Theory:
This civitas [the civitas terrena] as Augustine finds it in the present, is the vestigial remains of an entirely pagan mode of practice, stretching back to Babylon. There is no set of positive objectives that are its own peculiar business, and the City of God makes use of exactly the same range of finite goods, although for different ends, with “a different faith, a different hope, a different love” [Civ. Dei 18.54]. For the ends sought by the civitas terrena are not merely limited, finite goods, they are those finite goods regarded without “referral” to the infinite good, and, in consequence, they are unconditionally bad ends. The realm of the merely practical, cut off from the ecclesial, is quite simply a realm of sin (406).
a great deal in Augustine’s thought points in this direction
sense in which Augustine was committed to the view that only in the Church, and indeed only in the Church as it will be in its final, eschatologically purified state, can justice properly speaking be realized
give some support to the view of the Church as the exemplary community espoused by theologians who like to describe themselves as “radically orthodox.” Paul Lakeland says that according to theologians of this persuasion, “The fullness of the gospel demands . . . something like a premodern understanding of the integrity of the Christian community” (Postmodernity, 43)—what in common usage would be meant by “Christendom.” In such a view no sound political theory can be constructed except within the framework of a Christian “ontology” or worldview.
Augustine not only accepts the conclusion but insists on the impossibility of true justice being attained, even by just and pious believers, except by humility, with the help of God’s grace.
This holds for true or perfect virtue, virtue which avails a person for salvation. But Augustine’s polemic against the virtues of pagans should not induce us to believe that all acts of virtue, to be virtuous, need to be perfectly virtuous, that justice can be real only when perfect. Even though, as he has just told us, true or perfect justice, like the true or perfect virtue which procures salvation, can be possessed only by those who have true pietas, he nevertheless leaves no doubt that an imperfect but useful virtue can be found among citizens of the earthly City (see: Civ. Dei 5.19).
Conceding Augustine’s principle that all that is not of grace is sin, does it necessarily follow, as has been alleged in Hollerich’s reading of Milbank’s understanding of Augustine, that there is no “neutral public sphere in which people can act politically without reference to ultimate ends”? 
First, it is evident that for Augustine individual persons will necessarily have their own ultimate ends, to which all their actions, in whatever sphere, are referred, and on which their salvation or damnation depends.
When we ask whether there is a “neutral public sphere in which people can act politically without reference to ultimate ends?,” the answer, ...must be no, because people cannot act intentionally in any sphere without reference to ultimate ends.
important to note that the implication of this is not that there is no “neutral public sphere” but that there is no morally indifferent action within it.
In this respect there is a close parallel between the way Augustine treats the constituents of secular culture in the De doctrina Christiana and the way he thinks of acting within the framework of existing social and political institutions.
As with the curriculum of the established educational system, and, generally, with established practices, customs, and institutions, members of the two Cities make use of the same finite goods, although for different ends, with “a different faith, a different hope, a different love” (Civ. Dei 18.45). This is the principle which allowed Augustine to deny any sharp break separating the ancient structures and culture of the classical city from the Christianized Roman society of his day.
the direct link between polis and virtue was now severed. The polis could no longer serve as its members’ educator in justice and the instrument of perfecting human life; that role was now abrogated, taken over by the Church. But the Church, expressing its social character in its sacramental life, continued to exist within the boundaries of the (ancient) civic community, within the conditions provided by it for its ecclesial life. That secular framework demanded acknowledgement of its function and value, while at the same time it needed to be critically distanced and assessed within a Christian perspective.
any reading of Augustine that denies the legitimacy or value of secular political or social structures and of the established practices of a secular culture in a Christian perspective is a misreading. This conclusion, however, should not be taken to justify the opposite type of claim to Augustinian support, that of a secular liberalism that severs any relation between religion and public authority and upholds an open, pluralistic, and religiously neutral civic community.

Priesthood of All Believers

Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther
Human Law and Divine
Luther went on to explain that once freed from the law by grace through faith, Christians voluntarily subjected themselves to the law for the sake of the neighbor and undertook service to others, not for any reward that such service might be thought to merit, but out of spontaneous love in obedience to God. At the same time that Luther taught the voluntary submission to the law, he also concluded that a wide range of clerically imposed "human" laws were not just unnecessary and fraudulent, fabricated in order to enrich the clergy, but positively sinful since they motivated people to trust in their own efforts rather than to accept God's free gift of forgiveness.
Chapter Seven — Catholics on Luther's Responsibility for the German Peasant's War
Emser's Answer to Luther's "Abomination"
Emser offered under five headings or "proofs," multiple excerpts from Luther's writings that demonstrated to Emser's satisfaction that Luther had incited the Peasants' War.
To summarize, Emser began with the two estates, spiritual and secular. In proof one he rejected Luther's notion of the priesthood of all believers since it involved mixing the divinely established two estates. In proof two he took issue with Luther's notion of the freedom of the Christian since it asserted that all Christians were equal and thereby overturned the proper hierarchy in society and since it further advocated freedom from human laws and thereby encouraged disobedience to proper authority. In proof three he gathered many of Luther's attacks on the papacy and the bishops. In proof four he collected Luther's attacks on and ridicule of secular rulers who overstepped their bounds and attempted to rule in the spiritual realm. In proof five he concluded with what he saw as explicit incitements (and a few could easily be read that way) to rebellion.
Emser's treatise reproduced most of the elements of the Catholic understanding of Luther's responsibility for the Peasants' War.
For the most part, Catholic controversialists that I have studied remained wedded to the mind-set or Erwartungshorizont (horizon of expectation)[43] of late medieval Christendom, which included belief in divinely established and necessary hierarchy, a distinction between clergy and laity, and the necessity of works in the process of justification. In other words, while Luther and his followers now operated with an Erwartungshorizont different from that of late medieval Christendom, the Catholic controversialists continued to work from within the old Erwartungshorizont . So their central beliefs and expectations led them to read and understand Luther's text differently than Luther and his partisans did. Of course, the effect of a mind-set or Erwartungshorizont is a natural and unavoidable fact of intellectual life. No one approaches a text without presuppositions and commitments, without Vorverständnisse ; and these presuppositions and commitments necessarily shape one's perception.
Given the Catholic controversialists' commitments, it is hardly surprising that they generally failed to accept or perhaps in some cases even to understand, on the one hand, Luther's distinction between the two realms (regimente ), spiritual and temporal, and, on the other, Luther's rejection of the distinction between the two estates, spiritual and temporal. So when they read Luther's comments about freedom in the spiritual realm, they did not read or understand them within the context and with the limitations intended by Luther. As a result, they read Luther's insistence on Christian freedom from law and good works in the spiritual realm as freedom from law and good works in general . This view of things was reinforced by Luther's insistence that justification came through faith apart from works and that works done with an eye toward earning salvation were actually sinful. Catholic controversialists read Luther on this score as encouraging people to think that they could be saved by "mere, naked faith" and discouraging them from performing good works. As the controversialists saw it, statements of this sort were counsels for sin and disobedience. Further, having rejected Luther's distinction between the spiritual and secular realms, they read Luther's comment about equality among Christians in the spiritual realm as advocating an end to hierarchy within society generally. This was another encouragement to disobedience.
They were reinforced in this reading of Luther by Luther's many attacks on the governing authorities of the two estates. Since they did not accept or did not understand Luther's distinction between the spiritual and the secular realm, they read Luther's attacks on spiritual and secular authorities who attempted to establish and enforce laws in the spiritual realm as unqualified attacks on authority, both spiritual and secular. This reading was powerfully reinforced by the rhetoric of Luther's attacks, which could easily overpower his theological qualifications. I shall let Duke Georg of Saxony speak for a number of Catholic polemicists (and rulers—Duke Georg was both) who read Luther's rhetoric as an incitement to violence. For who does not realize that "all his abuse, slander, cursing, scolding, and incitement to disobedience" that was found in Luther's writings, the Duke wrote, was "done with the sole intention that, if the pious princes and lords, which he had attracted to himself, did not wish themselves to instigate war or rebellion, he should nevertheless cause the emperor and other lords [to do so], so that in any case the plans of his lord, the devil, would be successful?" In other words, the force of the rhetoric itself would provoke violence. Were Luther, however, that which he claimed to be, the Duke continued, namely, a true preacher of the gospel, he would undoubtedly do nothing of the sort. Instead, he would chastise the shortcomings and misdeeds of his adversaries "with complete patience and gentleness." He would seek their improvement not destruction. "But since he on the contrary does nothing but scold, curse, rave, and rage, it is to be feared that he will lead to eternal and irreparable destruction not only his adversaries but also his closest adherents."[44] In sum, the disobedience the controversialists expected from Luther's insistence on "mere faith" and "Christian freedom" was confirmed by Luther's attacks and his often inflammatory rhetoric.
We could of course argue, and rightly so, that in their depiction of Luther's notion of Christian freedom both peasants and Catholics misunderstood Luther's position. But the misunderstanding is readily explicable. The historian Peter Blickle has shown that the Reformation changed how the peasants legitimated their long-standing desire to change their relations with their lords. Before 1525 peasants had claimed that their revolts were only to remove innovations that violated traditional law. By 1525, however, appeal to traditional law could not legitimate changes necessary to relieve the tensions that had developed in the last century. Appeal to divine law could, and did. Moreover, appeal to divine law—which could cover any demand that could be deduced from Scripture—allowed the uprising to take on a supraterritorial character.[51] Specifically in the matter of freedom from serfdom, the Reformation allowed the peasants to transcend the traditional law of serfdom and insist that all should be free on principle. If God was lord, the peasants concluded, there could be no seigneurs. "No one but God our creator, father, and lord should have serfs," concluded the villages of Schaffhausen, and in this they were followed by many other peasant articles. The Reformation also allowed the peasants to attack serfdom on the basis of justice and divine law.[52] It proved quite easy, given the peasants' situation and aspirations, to translate into the temporal realm Luther's insistence on the Christian freedom to test all laws against Scripture.
Of course, once the peasants justified their uprising in these terms, it is hardly surprising that Catholics believed their reading of the rebellious potential of Luther's writings had been confirmed by events. So when they charged Luther with responsibility for the Peasants' War, they were only reflecting their honest understanding of his writings.

Martin Luther and Monasticism in the Later Middle Ages — Eric Leland Saak
Martin Luther entered the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine in July of 1505

The Priesthood of All Believers — Timothy George
While the priesthood of all believers was used by the reformers to buttress an evangelical understanding of the church over against the clericalism and sacerdotalism of medieval Catholicism, the ecclesial context of this Reformation principle has often been eclipsed within major sectors of the Protestant tradition. 
common in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to speak of the “priesthood of the believer.” The reformers, however, spoke instead of the “priesthood of all believers” (plural). For them it was never a matter of a lonely, isolated seeker of truth, but rather of a band of faithful believers united in a common confession as a local, visible congregatio sanctorum.
Luther never understands the priesthood of all believers merely in the sense of the Christian’s freedom to stand in a direct relationship to God without a human mediator. Rather, he constantly emphasizes the Christian’s evangelical authority to come before God on behalf of the brethren and also of the world. The universal priesthood expresses not religious individualism but its exact opposite, the reality of the congregation as a community.
for Luther, the priesthood of all believers did not mean, “I am my own priest.” It meant rather: In the community of saints, God has so tempered the body that we are all priests to each other.
“The common error that the phrase ‘priesthood of believers’ is synonymous with ‘private judgment’ is most unfortunate and is certainly a misrepresentation. … Of course, the reformers emphasized ‘private judgment,’ but it was always ‘informed’ judgment, and it was always controlled, checked, and corroborated by the testimony of the congregation. Indeed, Calvin himself fully realized that uncontrolled private judgment means subjectivism, eccentricity, anarchy, and chaos.”
It was a great perversion of the Gospel that inserted a bastard individualism here and then taught us that the believers’ priesthood meant that “every tub must sit on its own bottom.”

Dispelling the Myth of Martin Luther’s Priesthood of all Believers
Baptist leaders including John Smyth and Thomas Helwys quit the Church of England and started their own nascent Baptist Church because they agreed with Luther’s teaching of priesthood of all believers. Both Smyth and Helwys taught that all Christians were priests with direct access to God.
Luther disliked the often-lofty privileges donned by some Roman Catholic clergy and how the common man was perceived by the powerful and the privileged elites of the priestly class. The immense authority the clergy exercised over the lay Christians did not please Luther who was himself a Roman Catholic priest before he revolted and was excommunicated. Luther objected to the clergy-laity distinction that pope, bishop, priests, and monks are called the spiritual estate while princes, lord, artisans, and farmers are called the temporal estate (Luther, 2013).
Luther’s claim on priest hood for all believers challenged how the Roman Catholic leadership understood this doctrine back then and whether it was a new concept that he had discovered or if it was common knowledge in the Church at the time (Latourette, 1953).
The concept of the priesthood of all believers according to Luther’s claim could possibly endanger the age-old Catholic Church practice of confessing sins to priests. Its scriptural basis was questionable. ...According to Luther, the priesthood of all believers’ doctrine could be the beginning of an ecclesiastical anarchy.
Luther’s 1520 tract to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (Lang, 2015) -
Luther vehemently opposes the then prevailing view that Christians were divided into two distinct camps: spiritual and secular. 
put forth his revolutionary doctrine that all baptized disciples of Christ were indeed priests and also spiritual according to the Scripture. 
seen by the Roman Catholic Church as a dodgy view because Luther was in a confrontation with the leadership of the Church and some of its age-old doctrines.
related to Luther’s disillusionment with the many ecclesiastical cases he perceived as abuse in the Roman Catholic Church like the sale of indulgences and the exaggeration of their benefits. 
also said the papacy had distorted the sacraments with its own traditions and policies, transforming them into a system of control and coercion.
infamous pronouncement traditionally attributed to the Dominican friar, Johann Tetzel that as soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul springs from purgatory
One of Luther’s famous 95 theses states that Christians should be taught that those who give to the poor, or lend to the needy, do better than buying indulgence (Wengert, 2002). This deduction forms another example of how disappointed Luther was with an ecclesiastical system he considered compromised.
Luther came to believe that every Christian could have an audience with God with no intermediaries like priests; Christians confessing their sins only to priests and enumerating all the sins they may have committed seemed to Luther a religious innovation harmful to the community of faith. In response to the elevated significance of the priest, Wengert (2002) noted that a priest in Christendom is nothing else but an officeholder. One difference is that should the priest either resign his responsibilities or perform poorly, he can be removed and join the lay congregation again, since there is no indelible mark as priest and that his call comes from the congregation.
Apparently, what Luther rejected is misuse of indulgences and he was fine with a godly confessor absolving and forgiving the sins of the Christian penitent.
Though the Roman Catholic Church has its own form of priesthood of all believers called universal priesthood, it was unprepared to slim down the system to implement this doctrine in a tangible manner. Luther was also unable to give the priesthood of all believers creed a long lasting practical meaning. Thus, while this doctrine sounds good, it had no concrete effect on the post-reformation Church. To this day, though this concept is flaunted around like a magic mantra, the protestant Church is essentially puzzled about it. One thing the protestant Church got it right, by learning from the early reformers, is that the line between the clergy and laity is a thin one unlike the Roman Catholic Church that has a more pronounced dichotomy between the two.
Tertullian recognized early on the veracity of the doctrine of priesthood of all believers. He was not the only early church father to come to that conclusion.  However as Lohse (1999) notes, he was the first to use some of the key themes and phraseology on spiritual priesthood as the ability for laypeople to perform baptisms in the absence of a priest, and that ordination and succession from the apostles was not regarded as the authority of a true priest. Clement of Rome and Clement of Alexandria, reached the same conclusion after studying the NT. In conclusion, their conviction was that all Christians belonged to the priesthood (Lindsey, 1903).
It seems that the Roman Catholic Church harbored rancor towards Luther and anything he said about the Faith was seen as a suspect. Is there any difference between the protestant term, “priesthood of all believers” and the Roman Catholic Church term, “universal priesthood? Could this be simply hair-splitting or is there a meaning behind the wording?
The Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox, the high Church Angelical Christians believe that all Christians are meant to be disciples. However, in all these churches, only the ordained or commissioned clergy is authorized to handle the liturgy and the sacraments (Cross and Livingstone, 2005).  This is the same position that Luther propagated. 
However, while cherishing the doctrine of universal priesthood, the Roman Catholic Church teaches a special office of priesthood that minister to the community of faith. This office is identical to Luther’s ministry office as seen in his sermon on the Magnificat (Luther, 2013). In this Roman Catholic Church understanding, there are a universal priesthood and a non-universal priesthood.
Since all protestant churches have elders or other recognized leaders to serve congregations, there is a begging question as to why it is this different from the Roman Catholic Church which has priests. The word for elder in Greek is presbutero. This very word is presbyter and priest in English. Hence, the Roman Catholic Church has elders but they call them priests. Luther wrote that this word priest should become as common as the word Christian since all Christians are priests (Luther, 2016).
First, Jesus gave his disciples the power to forgive sins and the power not to forgive sins. This power does not come from the disciples but from their Lord, Jesus Christ. Some protestants may exclaim, Heresy, only God has the power to forgive sins and no one else. Ironically enough, the Pharisees and the scribes were offended when they saw Jesus forgiving a sinner. The instructions of Jesus are authoritative. He did not say, confirm to those who are forgiven by God that that their sins are indeed forgiven. He gave the disciples the power to forgive sins. This seems too much authority in the hands of mere human beings but it is not that much compared to the power the Lord gave to his disciples to heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy and to drive out demons as chronicled in the New Testament. Christians are therefore vehicles God uses to deliver His forgiveness.
Luther’s interpretation of John 20: 21-23 is different from that of the Roman Catholic Church. For Luther and other first-generation Reformers, there is no distinction between the people of God and laity (Moltman, 1977). However, after few generations, the Lutherans’ understanding evolved from the efficacy of God’s work to the fervent devotion or the effort of the penitent (Stoeffler, 1971). 
The Roman Catholic Church having many priests is not a case against them. Many protestant denominations have many priests as well. What we can learn from this compelling passage is that Christ’s priesthood is superior to that of the Old Covenant. The Roman Catholic priesthood is not condemned here. Further, we learn that setting aside some Christians as ordained priests is not a threat to the office of Jesus Christ as our High Priest. The New Covenant priests serve under the authority of Jesus Christ, the only eternal High Priest.
Martin Luther got it right the doctrine he is best known for, the priesthood of all believers. Luther rebelled against what he considered clerical excesses in the echelons of the Roman Catholic Church. The Roman Catholic Church underestimated the impact of the dissatisfaction that was brewing in the clergy and the laity, the commoners and the nobility. The Roman Catholic Church, which resembled a sleeping giant, woke up from its slumber to silence the dissenters, a tactic that worked for it before; but things were different this time. When the Roman Catholic Church realized the enormity of the challenges it was facing, it embraced an internal reformation to put its house in order. The Roman Catholic Church reformation fixed some of the ills but there was still much work to be done.