E. L. WILLIAMS, graduated from the College of the Bible in 1938, then proceeded to the Melbourne University, graduating with Master of Arts Degree. Ministries with Churches in Victoria and Auckland, N.Z. followed. Mr. Williams commenced lecturing at the College of the Bible in 1939 and was appointed Principal in 1945.

      We are reminded by both Jesus and Paul that we are citizens of two worlds. Our Lord said: "My kingdom is not of this world;" and Paul wrote: "Our citizenship is in heaven." There is no need for anyone to tell us that we belong to a kingdom of this world.

      Life involves a tension. It has to be lived in relation to both God and Caesar. M. A. C. Warren has entitled a small book: "Caesar--The Beloved Enemy." Here is the clear suggestion that the State is at once the beloved and the enemy.

      Communist theory regards the State as a product of class conflict. It is a necessary evil, a coercive instrument to handle the conflict of classes. Its function is particularly to serve as an instrument by which the ruling class keeps other classes in subjection. When the class conflict ceases with the abolition of private property the State will simply wither away. Engels said: "The State is not abolished; it withers away."

      How do Christians regard the State?

I. THE DIVINE SANCTION OF THE STATE.

      A Jewish view is suggested in "The Wisdom of Solomon" (vi:3): "Hear, therefore, O ye kings, and understand; learn, ye that be judges of the ends of the earth. Give ear, ye that rule the people and glory in the multitude of nations. For power is given you of the Lord, and sovereignty from the Highest, who shall try your works and search out your counsels."

      Our Lord's recognition of the rightful place of the State is indicated in his injunction:

      "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Mk. 12:17).

      Peter linked the fear of God and the honour of the king. Cf. 1 Peter 2:17. In the same context he wrote: "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well."

      Paul boasted of his Roman citizenship and appealed to Caesar, and in Romans 13 enjoined subjection to the higher powers and declared that they are ordained of God. "He that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God."

      It is on such grounds, to which may be added experience, that we accept the divine sanction of the State. We recognise the value of law. With reserve it may be said that any law is better than none. Better live in a land where nothing is lawful than in one where everything is lawful.

II. THE NATURE AND FUNCTION OF CHURCH AND STATE.

1. The Church.

      The Church is a divine society. Christ is its Foundation and Head. It is His peculiar possession. He said: "I will build my Church. Christ loved the Church and gave Himself for it, purchasing it with His precious blood. It is significantly described as the body of Christ. The very name (ecclesia) suggests a called out body, an elect community.

      All this suggests that the Church has a sacred character which the State has not. It is an order in

which there is no compulsion save love or the constraint of Christ. Its life is determined by the voluntary principle. We may describe it as a free fellowship. The nature and function of the Church are summed up in the description of it as a believing, worshipping, witnessing community, and a community of new life. While we are born into the State we cannot be born into the Church. Only the re-born enter the Church.

      Under its particular commission the Church is the custodian of the gospel and in general its function is to serve as an instrument of the Kingdom of God--a kingdom not of this world.

2. The State.

      We may generally define the State as an organisation of power for the enforcement of law. Law, in turn, expresses the need for order, for maintaining a body of rules of co-operation. It prevents the pursuit of private ends by individuals from degenerating into a dog fight. In the last resort, the State must impose order upon the competing purposes of its citizens by force.

      A specifically Christian definition of the State is found in the following words: "A community of free individuals united by an active sense of belonging together. The essence of the State consists in its embodiment of a common purpose, this purpose being not the execution of its arbitrary will, but the preservation of law and justice as between free individuals."

      When the State is described as the custodian of law and order, Christianity emphasises just order. As Church tradition has put it, the State is "directly appointed by Him to serve the ends of earthly and temporal justice and righteousness" (COPEC). The State "has the God-given aim of upholding law and order, of ministering to the life of the people united within it or of the peoples or groups who are so united, and also of making its contribution to the common life of all peoples" (Oxford).

      The Christian philosophy of the State rests upon the doctrine of God as sovereign and the doctrine of man as an end. For Christianity, the true State is at once theocratic (God-ruled) and democratic. It is not an arbitrary, supramoral power whose end is always self-protection and self-aggrandisement at the expense of a supposed external enemy. It is not an entity separate from and superior to the individual citizens of which it consists. As Ed. Vernon says: "No philosophy of the State can be accounted adequate or Christian which does not find its criterion in the ordinary man. For Christianity, John Smith, his wife, and his child are not to be valued as mere assets of the State, as sources upon which the State may draw for its life They are the very ends which the State exists to serve. If John Smith cares to lay down his substance, or his life, for patriotic purposes, he does so, not in order to conserve or promote the existence of the corporate State, but to preserve and promote the lives of other John Smiths, their wives and children. In taking means for conserving and promoting the rights and lives of its humblest citizens, in securing conditions of life wherein free personalities may function, lies the divine function and mission of secular power."

      We may express the balanced whole of truth by saying that the State exists by and for its citizens, and they exist by and for it. This does justice to the concept of a responsible society and responsible citizenship. A liberal Roman Catholic theologian, Maritain, put it this way: "Man finds himself by subordinating himself to the group; the group attains its goal only by

serving man and realising that man has secrets which escape the group and a vocation which the group does not compass."

III. THE DANGERS OF THE STATE.

1. Overlordship.

      Our Lord drew attention to the danger of overlordship in the State--the "ruthless exercise of raw power and the notion that by the exercise of such power men become great." "In His exhortation to true greatness He reflects His thought that the power of Rome was arbitrary and oppressive--lording it over the people." Cf. Mark 10:42-44,

      Here is the evil of irresponsible power--a human absolutism, responsible to none. In fighting such absolutism it is all too easy to fall into the error ourselves. The good is trampled underfoot in the fight against evil. Alert and discerning minds saw this danger in the Crimes Bill as it was first presented in 1960.

      Overlordship finds expression in the danger of an

2. Immoral use of force.

      Some claim that the temptation narrative makes it clear that Jesus regarded the kingdoms of this world as Satan's gift (Matt. 4:8-91). We prefer to see here a temptation to imperialism--to secure the kingdoms of this world by an illegitimate method, that is, by falling down and worshipping Satan, by going the way of forceful assertion rather than the way of the Cross.

      This is the temptation to which the State easily succumbs because the State means a vast accumulation and concentration of power, and man, individually or collectively, cannot escape the ugly fact that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

      We see this danger realised in the early imperialism of Rome, the seventeenth century imperialism of Europe, and the modern imperialism of Communism with its hypocritical criticism of colonialism.

IV. DANGERS OF THE CHURCH.

1. Using the State as an instrument of compulsion.

      In the fourth century, Christian orthodoxy was incorporated in the law of the State. Heresy was a crime. So the arm of the law was used to maintain correct faith. This provided a pattern in the succeeding life of Church and State. Notable demonstrations of using the State as an instrument of compulsion in religion are seen in the Inquisition, Calvin's reformation in Geneva, and, today, in Spain. This danger grows out of the prior danger of

2. Entering into an unholy alliance with the State.

      There may be much with which we would wish to be identified in the activity of the State, but our identification cannot be unqualified. There must be breaking points. While a State Church is particularly open to this danger, any Church, however independent in constitution, can easily fall into line and keep step with the drums of State.

3. Seeking to impose the will of a minority.

      The Church is ever a minority and must not play at being a majority. We are fulfilling our mission when we seek to win the support of a majority for laws and institutions which are in harmony with and express Christian principles. But for a Christian minority to seek in any way to impose its will upon a community unprepared for it would be an act of false leadership and a violation of basic democratic principles.

      In many things Alexander Campbell was far ahead of his times. When, in his day, certain Moral Societies sought, by civil law, to

compel non-Christians to observe Christian institutions such as the Lord's Day, Campbell made his protest. He argued that this attempted legal imposition was anti-evangelical or contrary to the gospel.

V. THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD IN RELATION TO THE STATE.

      Two basic doctrines in determining the Christian philosophy of the State are the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and the doctrine of man. Each man is a person of infinite worth, an end in himself, one for whom Christ died. This is reflected in the democratic idea of the State. But more ultimate is the doctrine of the sovereignty of God.

      Christianity emphasises

1. Stewardship under sovereignty.

      Towards the close of the fifth century Bishop Gelasius of Rome wrote in a letter: "There are two by whom principally this world is ruled: the sacred authority of the pontiffs and the royal power. Of these the importance of the priests is so much the greater, as even for kings of men they will have to give an account in the divine judgment." Gradually the idea hardened that a ruler must be crowned by the "earthly head" of the Church in order to become Emperor. The right to give and withhold kingdoms was vested in the bishop of Rome. So the theory of Ultramontanism took shape--rule from beyond the mountains, particularly the supremacy of the Roman Church over the State.

      The motive was not all bad. It was honestly felt that, seeing the world had to be under the rule of one power or another, it was better that it should be under a vice-regent of God. The problem was that no man was big enough to sit on an earthly throne of God, and the Church became entangled in the hopeless position of trying at one time to renounce the world, witness to the world, make gain out of the world, and rule the world.

      In the sixteenth century, a German physician, Thomas Erastus, put forward an opposite theory which took from him the name of Erastianism. He advocated the supremacy of the State over the Church. To many this was jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.

      Within different Church traditions varying emphases have tended in the direction of either one of these extremes.

      John Wycliffe, the fourteenth century "Morning Star of the Reformation," seems to us to have given a true lead in pointing to stewardship under sovereignty. Daring to live dangerously in his day and situation he said that dominion in the highest sense is in God alone; it is God, who as the suzerain of the universe, deals out His rule in fief to rulers in their various stations on tenure of their obedience to Himself. The king is as truly God's vicar as the Pope and the royal power is as sacred as the ecclesiastical.

      Significant in Wycliffe's teaching is the time-honoured Christian view of the dominion of God. There are no earthly absolutes. Neither Church nor State is an absolute. No power is a law unto itself, but is subject to the law of God.

      A true society is a responsible community acting as a steward under the sovereignty of an Absolute. Here is the bulwark of democracy. The acceptance of an Absolute beyond this world is the safeguard against any form of absolutism in this world. Christian faith provides the sure roots for the healthy fruits of democracy. Any form of materialism, capitalistic or communistic, however hard it pleads the cause of democracy

and however enthusiastically it praises the fruits of democracy, cuts away the roots of the tree.

      In discussing stewardship under sovereignty we have pointed to

2. The sovereignty of God's law.

      Luther said there are two kingdoms: the kingdom of wrath and severity and the kingdom of grace and mercy. He emphasised the necessity of not confusing these two. The kingdom of grace and mercy is under the principle of love, but the kingdom of wrath and severity is not. In one's personal relationships within the kingdom of grace and mercy one is subject to the sermon on the mount, but as a citizen of the State, which is an instrument of the kingdom of wrath and severity, one is lifted, with the State, into an order not subject to the sermon on the mount. Here we see a dualism into which all Christians can easily fall.

      Luther did say that if a prince is obviously wrong we should not obey him, but if it is uncertain whether a ruler is wrong we should follow without question. There should be no rebellion against the State. We must bear with an evil government as we bear with an incurable disease. It is ordained of God and should await His good pleasure. He at least tended to make the State an absolute in its field and in this mood fell back on Romans 13:1-7 as a ground for acquiescence. The acceptance of such a doctrine cuts right across the prophetic role of the Church and the responsible protest of Christianity.

      In Romans 13 Paul was pleading the principle of government rather than approving unqualified allegiance to any and every particular government. He was probably concerned to correct any misunderstanding on the part of Christians and Romans who confused Christianity with Jewish, Messianic insurrection. His admonition could have also served as a corrective to political irresponsibility due to an undue otherworldliness.

      If there be any ambiguity in Romans 13 it is clarified by Acts 4:19 and 5:29 where it is made plain that if there be any conflict Christians must obey God rather than man.

      One reason why early Christians were persecuted was because they resisted the order to worship Caesar as Lord. They confessed Jesus as Lord rather than Caesar. May be this provided part of the context of Romans 10:9. As Wycliffe claimed, the throne of God is the final tribunal of the individual conscience. There is a region in which the king's writ does not run.

      By reference to a coin stamped with Caesar's image and an injunction to "render to Caesar what is Caesar's," our Lord implied an obligation to pay for the service of the State. His additional injunction to "pay back to God what is God's" implied that. God and the State are not identical. The coin with Caesar's image on it belongs to Caesar. The soul of man, made in the divine image, belongs to God. As Tertullian put it: "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's--his image on the coin; give to God what is God's--His image in man--yourself."

VI. THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH IN RELATION TO THE STATE.

      Discerning patriotism is a Christian virtue. The Church is committed to a ministry in relation to the State.

1. A priestly ministry.

      The prayers of the Church must reach out beyond the horizons of its own life. "I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all men.

for kings and all who are in high positions, that we might lead a quiet and peaceable life, godly and respectful in every way.

2. A prophetic ministry.

      Like any prophet the Church must be the conscience of the community. By faithfully reflecting a light not its own, it should be the light of the world. It is committed to live dangerously. Never should it be true of the Church that it is but a part of the world roofed over, for it should live out its life in this world under the light of a kingdom not of this world. By the positive presentation of that Light and the courageous condemnation of manifest evils the Church will seek to create a climate in which evil cannot survive. The prophetic ministry of the Church calls for a rebellion of a pioneer.

3. A practical ministry.

      A large proportion of the Church's ministry in relation to the State will be fulfilled by producing that goodness in men and women that will make them responsible and creative citizens in whatever station they happen to fill.

      But leading the way in community service projects the Church sets a pattern for the State. It is in this way that something is woven into the texture of our civilisation.

      Co-operation with the State in any worthy programme, calling forth the goodwill and support of the community for something which falls within the Christian ideal is a responsible ministry of the Church which realises it is not in this world for its own sake but for the world's sake.