REFORMED WITNESS
Volume XV, February 2009, Number 2
Church and State in Article 36 of the Belgic Confession
By Prof. Herman C. Hanko
From the December 1 and 15, 1998, issues of the Standard Bearer
Prof. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary.
Article 36 of our Belgic Confession has been a source of considerable controversy in the church, especially in the last century or so. This article deals with the subject of magistrates and discusses among other things the office of magistrates, the duties or which are defined as being:
...not only to have regard unto, and watch for the welfare of the civil state; but also that they protect the sacred ministry; and thus may remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship; that the kingdom of anti-Christ may be thus destroyed and the kingdom of Christ promoted. They must therefore countenance the preaching of the Word of the gospel everywhere, that God may be honored and worshiped by every one, as he commands in his Word.
It is very clear from this statement that the Belgic Confession supports the idea that the magistrate is called, not only to enforce the second table of the law (punish those who commit, murder, adultery, theft, slander, and their related sins), but the magistrate must also enforce observance of the first table of the law (punish those guilty of idolatry, false worship, Sabbath desecration, and public blasphemy).
That the Reformers held to this position is clear enough from history. John Calvin supported this position in Geneva; John Knox did the same in Scotland; the Anglican Church in England was established on the same principle; the Reformed Church in Netherlands was founded on the basis of this same view. In fact, it was not until 1834 (the year of the Secession under De Cock) that a Reformed Church was established in the Netherlands which was completely free from state control; this freedom from state control came about only after a period of struggle, strife, and persecution of the Seceders. In the early history of our own country, although the First Amendment forbad the intrusion of the government into religious matters, the various states passed laws against taking God's name in vain, and a man could be imprisoned for opening his store on the Lord's Day.
In more recent years the First Amendment has been applied more broadly with the result that all laws which give to either state or local governments any kind of right to enforce the observance of the first table of the law of God have been struck down by Supreme Court rulings. One may now publicly blaspheme without penalty of the law; he may desecrate the Sabbath either by opening his store or going to the beach and not worry about offending the police officer. He may, as a matter of fact, spout in any public place any heresy he wishes and be guaranteed freedom of speech. The government is "neutral" in all matters of religion - so "neutral" that no religion (except the religion of evolutionism) may be taught in the public schools; no prayers may be offered in the classrooms; and no public building may contain any reference to any religion at all - not even a copy of the ten commandments hanging on the wall.
This same principle has even been extended now to the second table of the law. To oppose the murder of unborn babies is a matter of religion or privacy and not, therefore, a matter of the state - so it is said. To oppose adultery, homosexuality, pornography, etc. is to be religious, and to insist that the state enforce laws against these sins is said to be the intrusion of religion into affairs of state, and therefore, a violation of the Constitution. So our country is fast going in the direction of holding that the magistrate must not enforce either the first or the second table of the law of God.
So (at least in this country - and in most countries in the world) Article 36 of The Belgic Confession is said to be hopelessly out of date.
Another problem with Article 36 is that the state is almost always in the hands of unbelievers. If, therefore, the state would take it upon itself to enforce and promote what in its judgment was the true religion, the true church of Christ would be persecuted. To understand this we need only ask ourselves the question: How often has it happened in the history of the world that a government anywhere was genuinely Christian and favored that church which held to the truth of Gods Word? Or we could ask the question: What would happen to all those who are Reformed and Calvinistic in our own land if our present government would decide to defend, promote and enforce only one religion which it considered to be the true religion? We would have to go to prison, see our churches shut down, and attempt to escape to some other country. So you see, Article 36 seems so abstract, so far removed from the practical realities of life, so filled with incipient dangers, that it is reason to be grateful to God that no one believes this article anymore.
At any rate, the position that the magistrate must enforce the first table of the law as well as the second led to the idea that it was the duty of the magistrate to establish a state-church, "one denomination of Christians within the land which would enjoy governmental approval and support" (P.Y. DeJong, "The Church's Witness to the World," p. 407). In fact, in some instances the idea of a state-church went beyond this to include the notion that all people within a given land, by virtue of birth alone, belonged to that one state-church, to be baptized and confirmed in it, married by its ministers, and buried under its auspices. Or, if this idea of all within a country actually belonging to a church was too stringent, at least the church was in some way responsible for every single person living within its boundaries - the boundaries of the church being the same as the boundaries of the state.
Because of these objections to the article, Reformed churches have done things about the article and to it that tried to avoid these problems.
In 1896 in the Netherlands certain objections were brought to the Synod of the Reformed Church against these statements of Article 36. The Synod, after careful study, deleted from the Confession the entire section of Article 36 which we quoted above. In 1910 the Christian Reformed Church (C.R.C.) in this country considered the same problem. It seems, however, that, rather than delete the section of Article 36 which seemed so offensive and out of date, the Christian Reformed Church simply adopted a footnote to the article. The footnote is worth reading here.
This phrase, touching the office of the magistracy in its relation to the Church, proceeds on the principle of the Established Church, which was first applied by Constantine and afterwards also in many Protestant countries. History, however, does not support the principle of State domination over the Church, but rather the separation of Church and State. Moreover, it is contrary to the New Dispensation that authority be vested in the State to arbitrarily reform the Church, and to deny the Church the right of independently conducting its own affairs as a distinct territory alongside the State. The New Testament does not subject the Christian Church to the authority of the State that it should be governed and extended by political measures, but to our Lord and King only as an independent territory alongside and altogether independent of the State, that it may be governed and edified by its office-bearers and with spiritual weapons only. Practically all Reformed churches have repudiated the idea of the Established Church, and are advocating the autonomy of the churches and personal liberty of conscience in matters pertaining to the service of God.
The Christian Reformed Church in America, being in full accord with this view, feels constrained to declare that it does not conceive of the office of the magistracy in this sense, that it be in duty bound to also exercise political authority in the sphere of religion, by establishing and maintaining a State Church, advancing and supporting the same as the only true Church, and to oppose, to persecute and to destroy by means of the sword all the other churches as being false religions; and to also declare that it does positively hold that, within its own secular sphere, the magistracy has a divine duty towards the first table of the Law as well as towards the second; and furthermore that both State and Church as institutions of God and Christ have mutual rights and duties appointed them from on high, and therefore have a very sacred reciprocal obligation to meet through the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from Father and Son, They may not, however, encroach upon each other's territory. The Church has rights of sovereignty in its own sphere as well as the State.
The Christian Reformed Church was, however, not satisfied with this statement either. When objections were raised against this "footnote" to the article, the Synod of the Christian Reformed Church in 1958 adopted a revision which deleted the controversial part (which we quoted at the beginning of this article) and inserted instead:
...And being called in this manner to contribute to the advancement of a society that is pleasing to God, while completely refraining from every tendency towards exercising absolute authority, and while functioning in the sphere entrusted to them and with the means belonging to them to remove every obstacle to the preaching of the gospel and to every aspect of divine worship, in order that the Word of God may have free course, the kingdom of Jesus Christ may make progress, and every anti-Christian power may be resisted. (All this historical material is found primarily in P. Y. De Jong's "The Church's Witness to the World.")
A couple of general remarks about all this. In the first place, the revision adopted by the C.R.C. in 1958 really leaves the matter somewhat in doubt. What is left for the state to do is "contribute to the advancement of a society that is pleasing to God" and "remove every obstacle to the preaching of the gospel and to every aspect of divine worship." It can be argued that for the state to do this would require that the state enforce the first table of the law. But if this was the intended meaning, then the original footnote was sufficient and there was no need to tamper with the article itself. The Synod apparently had something less than enforcement of the first table of the law in mind when it defined the duty of magistrates.
In the second place, as far as our own Protestant Reformed Churches are concerned, we are not bound by the decisions of the Reformed Churches in the Netherlands in 1896, nor the decisions of the Christian Reformed Church in 1958. But the decisions of 1910 are our decisions. This is evident from the fact that the Synod of our Churches in 1946 published "The Church Order of the Protestant Reformed Churches." This "Church Order" was, according to the "Preface," the same (with a couple of changes which are enumerated in the Preface) as the "Church Order" adopted by the Combined Consistories at the very beginning of the history of the Protestant Reformed Churches, and the "Church Order" adopted by the Combined Consistories was the edition of "Keegstra and Van Dellen of 1915, adopted by the Christian Reformed Church in 1914" (Preface to the 1946 edition of the Church Order). With the references in the Church Order to the creeds (see Article 53 as well as the "Formula of Subscription" adopted at the same time), the obvious implication is that the footnote to Article 36 of the Belgic Confession was also adopted. (It is a point worth making because repeatedly questions have come up concerning this matter, i.e., whether the "footnote" to Article 36 is indeed binding upon our Protestant Reformed Churches. It is my conviction that it is.)
The result is that the official position of our churches contains Article 36 as it originally read and the footnote adopted by the CRC in 1910. For this I am thankful, for I agree not only with the original article of the Belgic Confession, but I agree also with the footnote. And I agree with the footnote, not as a revision of Article 36-which it is not; but as the correct explanation of Article 36.
We ought now to take a closer look at Article 36 and attempt to understand what it is saying and why it is still important.
In order to understand why this article was included in the Belgic Confession to begin with, one has to know a bit about the situation which existed in the Lowlands at the time the Belgic Confession was written by Guido de Bres (1561).
The Reformation had come into the Lowlands (what is now the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg) and a Reformed church had been established there. But the Reformed believers were being sorely persecuted by the Spanish magistracy, which was the arm of Roman Catholicism in the Lowlands and which ruled in that part of Europe called the Lowlands. The Reformed churches were charged among other things with being Anabaptistic, a charge which was extraordinarily serious, for it implied the charge of treason. The Belgic Confession was written in part to show the authorities that the Reformed churches were not Anabaptistic and were not guilty of the crime of treason.
To understand this charge of treason, one must understand just a bit of what Anabaptism was all about. (For more detailed information on the Anabaptists and on this question of the relation between church and state, the interested reader can consult such books as: W.R. Estep, "The Anabaptist Story" and W. Balke, "Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals.") The Anabaptists, particularly troublesome in their early history in Zurich and Berne of Switzerland, were the "left-wing" of the Reformation. They went along with the Reformation in its earlier history, but were more radical than the Reformers and eventually parted ways with the Reformers over some important questions. We cannot go into all these questions here, but one of the issues was the issue of the role of the secular magistrate and his relation to the church.
Generally speaking, the Anabaptists (called such because they rejected infant baptism and insisted on the "rebaptism" of all who joined their movement) believed that the state existed only to curb the wickedness of unbelievers and had little or nothing to do with believers. Believers belonged to the kingdom of heaven, after all. They formed a holy community in this world which could and should put into practice, even while in this world, the principles of the kingdom of heaven. Believers, therefore, had really nothing to do with the earthly magistrate, and it was preferable that the community of believers live entirely separate from the surrounding people and from the secular state.
It is true (as L. Verduin points out in these books, "The Anatomy of a Hybrid" and "The Reformers and Their Stepchildren") that the Anabaptists did not all advocate the overthrow of existing governments, and that not all Anabaptists scorned the secular magistrate and refused obedience to them; but the fact is that the logic of their position freed them from obedience to the secular magistrate and brought at least some of them to the excesses of Munster - where an attempt was really made to set up an earthly kingdom which lived independently from the secular authorities.
The Reformers saw this position of the Anabaptists as an extremely serious error (cf. especially Balke's book to learn how serious Calvin considered this error to be). To the Reformers such a position meant a denial of the Biblical principles of Romans 13:1-7 and I Peter 2:13-17, etc. It meant a denial that the civil magistrate is a servant of Christ Himself. On the contrary, the Reformers believed that the believer, though a citizen of the kingdom of heaven, exactly reveals his heavenly citizenship by submission to the magistrate; that any refusal to submit to the magistrate on the seemingly pious grounds of heavenly citizenship was a grievous perversion of the believer's calling; that any position which could lead to refusal to submit, to resistance of the magistrate, or to the overthrow of the magistrate, was a position entirely out of keeping with God's Word and would bring God's fierce anger upon such who committed that sin; that any kind of scornful or contemptuous attitude towards the magistrate was to be condemned; that, in fact, the magistrate was not appointed by God simply to curb the excesses of a world of unbelievers, but was in the world by God's appointment for the church. These positions were important to the Reformers and were crucial in a time when the Reformation itself was threatened by a "left-wing", which wanted to lead the whole movement into unBiblica1 excesses and into radical positions contrary to the Word of God.
In rejecting the "left-wing" radicalism of the Anabaptists and committing themselves and the cause of the Reformation to the principle of the great importance of the civil magistrate, they also were careful to define, not only what the church's obligation towards the magistrate is, but also what the magistrate's obligation before God is. And in dealing with the latter question, they were convinced that the magistrate was required by God to enforce obedience to the first table of the law as well as the second table. Included in the first table, especially the second commandment, was the obligation to worship God as He commands in His Word. For the magistrate to enforce the second commandment; therefore, required of him that he "protect the sacred ministry; and thus remove and prevent all idolatry and false worship." Where, through the influence of the Reformation, a Christian state was set up (Calvin's Geneva, The Netherlands, Scotland, and England), the Christian magistracy enforced the first table of the law of God as well as the second.
This all was according to Scripture. It ought to be clear that when Scripture speaks of the obligation and task of magistrates, Scripture makes no distinction between the first and second tables of the law - as if the magistrate had to enforce observance of the second table only and not of the first. In Romans 13:1-7, where the office of the magistrate is discussed in detail, the magistrate is described as "the power of God." The magistrate is a "minister of God"; he is a "revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil." In I Peter 2:14 the duty of magistrates is said to be "the punishment of evildoers" and "the praise of them that do well." The Holy Spirit does not say that the magistrate is for the punishment of those evildoers who break the second table of the law. All evildoers are to be punished and all well-doers are to be praised by the magistrate.
That no distinction is made between the two tables of the law in the duty of magistrates is clear also from the fact that the two tables of the law are really bound together. The Jews asked Jesus what was the one great commandment of the law; to which Jesus responded: Love God and love your neighbor. To love God and to love the neighbor is one commandment because one cannot love his neighbor without loving God. One cannot keep the second table of the law without keeping the first table. One cannot require obedience to the second table, therefore, without requiring obedience to the first table. This is true of a parent, a school teacher, an elder in the church, or a magistrate in the state.
It is objected that from a practical point of view this will never work. The simple fact of the matter is, so it is said, that throughout most of the world's history the civil power in any nation, country, state, or kingdom is in the hands of wicked men. Only rarely has it happened that a true Christian state ruled in a land. The civil government is almost always anti-Christian. The result is that if we would really insist on this practice, the state would enforce a false religion and the church would find it impossible to survive. This is of course exactly what is going to happen in the days of Antichrist.
We grant the objection. I would even go a step farther. I am thankful to God that we live in a land where we have freedom of religion. I am thankful that the government of the United States does not attempt to enforce one religion, which is in its judgment the true religion. That would be the end of the church in this land.
But the principle is not changed for all that. The principle remains true.
We ought at this point to insist, however, that to take the position that the state is obligated before God to enforce the first table of the law as well as the second does not imply an "established church." That brings us back to Article 36 of The Belgic Confession. The footnote adopted in 1910 says that the article "proceeds from the principle of the Established Church." This is wrong.
An established church is a church such as the Anglican Church in England, the Hervormde Kerk in Netherlands and The Presbyterian Church in Scotland. The state officially recognizes and supports one denomination as the approved church. It not only gives its approval to that one denomination but it also does much to make that denomination the official church of the realm. In earlier centuries, the state even required in some instances that everyone belong to that denomination.
I do not believe that the obligation of the state to support the true religion "proceeds from the principle of the Established Church." In that respect the footnote is wrong. Whatever may have been the opinion of the Reformers (and there is reason to doubt they wanted an established church), Article 36 of The Belgic Confession does not say this and such a conclusion cannot be drawn from the article. I cannot find anything in Scripture to support the notion of an established church.
The footnote is right when it says that we ought to feel "constrained to declare that (we) do not conceive of the office of the magistracy in this sense, that it be in duty bound to also exercise political authority in the sphere of religion, by establishing and maintaining a State Church..." We ought also to insist, as Article 36 does and as the footnote binds upon us, that "within its own secular sphere, the magistracy has a divine duty towards the first table of the Law as well as towards the second..." In other words, the government ought to enforce the first table of the law as well as the second, but both tablets must be enforced by the government only in the civil or secular sphere. Never may the state encroach upon the church - or for that matter the home or school. It has no authority there at all.
You may object once again and insist that it still remains true that this is of no significance whatsoever. Even the limitation that the government must enforce God's law only in the secular or civil sphere implies a Christian government. Again, I agree, and again I will even go so far as to say that I am thankful that we have freedom of religion in our land and that the government does not attempt to enforce the first table of the law even in its own limited sphere.
But this is not the point. Nor is the question abstract. It is extremely important that we maintain the principle even though it may not have any immediate practical consequences and even though we personally prefer to see a religiously "neutral" government - if indeed there is such a thing.
There are reasons for maintaining the principle. There are good reasons for holding to Article 36 of the Belgic Confession. What are they?
The first good reason is to remind us that, whether or not magistrates truly enforce the first table of the law, Christ, the King of all, requires of them that they do. Really, the office of magistrate arises out of the creation ordinance. It belongs to the work of God in creation itself. It is an institution of society which has developed organically out of the family - as have all the institutions of society. God requires of magistrates that within their own God-given sphere they enforce God's law and live in obedience to God. The fact that magistrates as a general rule do not do this does not alter the obligation which rests upon them. Just as God still requires of the totally depraved sinner that he serve God, so God requires of the magistrate that he represent God in the sphere of the state. He shall have to give account for his failure to do this. "Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little" (Psalm 2:10-12). This is important. God must be justified also when all the evil magistrates of all time failed to represent the righteousness of God, but went about setting up their own kingdom.
The second good reason for maintaining this principle is to remind us that God also saves magistrates, and because God is pleased to save magistrates, we are duty-bound to pray for them. "I exhort therefore, that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men: for kings, and for all that are in authority: that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour; who will have all men to be saved, and to come to the knowledge of the truth" (I Timothy 2:1-4). The point is that we must not become so wrongly Anabaptistic that we simply turn our backs on the magistrate, plead our heavenly citizenship as a reason to ignore the civil government, and consign the whole of the magistracy to the everlasting oblivion of hell. I Peter is quite clear on the matter: We express our loyalty to the kingdom of heaven and conduct ourselves properly as pilgrims and strangers in the earth, when we honor and show respect for the magistrates that God is pleased to put over us. We do so (and even pray for them) because God is pleased to save His people also from their number.
The opposite is always a great danger. If we become Anabaptistic in our attitude towards civil magistrates, the end will be that we no longer submit to them, honor them, obey them (when to obey is not in conflict with God's Word), but that instead we scorn the magistracy, mock it in our words and deeds, and eventually end in refusing to submit to its rule.
The third good reason to maintain this principle is the fact that by it we are reminded that the magistrates serve the good of the church.
There is more than one truth implied in this.
In the first place, if magistrates are truly Christian, they will seek the welfare of the church. We ought to remember that, even if a given government is basically un-Christian, Christian men in government can nevertheless so exert their influence that the cause of the church and of the gospel is advanced through government policy and legislation. One example is surely the matter of labor unions. Although the government may be un-Christian, Christian men in government may so influence legislation and government policy that the power of labor unions is curbed and various right-to-work laws are passed which enable God's people to earn their daily bread. In given instances, Christian lawmakers can influence legislation so that pornographic houses are closed, abortion clinics are shut down, stores are prevented from opening on the Lord's Day - all of which is conducive to the welfare of the church.
In I Timothy 2 Paul speaks also of this. When urging upon us the necessity and importance of praying for our magistrates, Paul gives as a reason, "that we may live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty" (vs. 2).
In the second place, however, the principle is always true - and we ought to remember it: Christ always rules sovereignly through the magistracy. If, therefore, the magistracy becomes the enemy of the church (becomes Anti-Christ), turns in a fury of persecution against the saints, still it serves the good of the church. Christ uses the blood of the martyrs also as the seed of the church.
Even this does not negate the principle that Christ is often pleased to rule in such a way through the magistrate, that, even though he may be wicked, peace and well-being is the lot of the church. Christ is pleased to do this so that the church may be about her business of preaching the gospel, bringing the gospel to the mission fields of the earth, working in the great tasks of the kingdom - work which she would be unable to do if she were being persecuted. To this end the church holds to Article 36, prays for the magistrates, and is thankful when the Lord is pleased to rule through the magistrates that we may live quiet and peaceable lives.
Article 36 is important for the confession of the church, especially in these days when many temptations press in upon us to take an un-Biblical view of the magistracy. We need this article and we ought consciously to make it an important part of our confession.
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