- Introduction
- The church and its history
- The essence and identity of Christianity
- The history of Christianity
- The primitive church
- The internal development of the early Christian Church
- Relations between Christianity and the Roman government and the Hellenistic culture
- The early liturgy, the calendar, and the arts
- The alliance between church and empire
- Theological controversies of the 4th and 5th centuries
- Liturgy and the arts after Constantine
- Political relations between East and West
- Literature and art of the “Dark Ages”
- Missions and monasticism
- The Photian schism and the great East–West schism
- From the schism to the Reformation
- Christianity from the 16th to the 20th century
- Contemporary Christianity
- Christian doctrine
- The nature and functions of doctrine
- Scripture and tradition: the apostolic witness
- Evangelism: the first teaching about the God of Jesus Christ
- Catechesis: instructing candidates for baptism
- Liturgy: the school and feast of faith
- Ethics: obeying the truth
- Aversion of heresy: the establishment of orthodoxy
- Apologetics: defending the faith
- Restatement: respecting language and knowledge
- Inculturation: respecting places and peoples
- Dogma: the most authoritative teaching
- Consensus: patterns of agreement
- Theology: loving God with the mind
- Symbolics: creeds and confessions
- Development: the maturation of understanding
- Schism: division over substantial matters
- Controversy: fighting over the faith
- Ecumenism: speaking the truth in love
- God the Father
- God the Son
- God the Holy Spirit
- The Holy Trinity
- Anthropology
- What it is to be human
- The human as a creature
- The human as the image of God
- Human redemption
- The problem of suffering
- The resurrection of the body
- Progressive human perfection
- The “new man”: The human being in the light of Christ
- The “reborn human”
- Human liberation
- Joy in human existence
- The charismatic believer
- Christian perfection
- Fellow humans as the present Christ
- The church
- Church tradition
- Eschatology
- Expectations of the Kingdom of God in early Christianity
- Expectations of the Kingdom of God in the medieval and Reformation periods
- Expectations of the Kingdom of God in the post-Reformation period
- The role of imminent expectation in missions and emigrations
- Eschatological expectations and secularization
- Concepts of life after death
- Aspects of the Christian religion
- Christian philosophy
- Christian mysticism
- Christian myth and legend
- The Christian community and the world
- The relationships of Christianity
- Christian missions
- Ecumenism
- Christianity and world religions
Separation of church and state
The separation of church and state was one of the legacies of the American and French revolutions at the end of the 18th century. It was achieved as a result of ideas arising from opposition to the English episcopal system and the English throne as well as from the ideals of the Enlightenment. It was implemented in France because of the social-revolutionary criticism of the wealthy ecclesiastical hierarchy but also because of the desire to guarantee the freedom of the church. The French state took over education and other functions of a civic nature that had been traditionally exercised by the church.
Beginning in the late 18th century, two fundamental attitudes developed in matters related to the separation of church and state. The first, as implied in the Constitution of the United States, was supported by a tendency to leave to the church, set free from state supervision, a maximum freedom in the realization of its spiritual, moral, and educational tasks. In the United States, for example, a comprehensive church school and educational system has been created by the churches on the basis of this freedom, and numerous colleges and universities have been founded by churches. The separation of church and state by the French Revolution and later in the Soviet Union and the countries under the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence was based upon an opposite tendency. The attempt was not only to restrict the public role of the church but also to work toward its gradual disappearance. The church was to be replaced with a secular ideology.
In contrast to this, the attitude of National Socialism in Germany under Hitler was contradictory. On the one hand, Nazi ideology allowed no public role for the church and its teaching. On the other hand, Hitler was concerned not to trigger an outright confrontation with the church. The concordat concluded in 1933 between Germany and the Roman Catholic Church illustrates this policy of official neutrality.
In Germany state-church traditions had been largely eliminated in 1918 with the establishment of the Weimar Republic; the abolition of the monarchical system of government also deprived the territorial churches of their supreme Protestant episcopal heads. The Weimar Constitution sanctioned the separation of church and state. State-church traditions were maintained in various forms in Germany, not only during the Weimar Republic but also during the Hitler regime and afterward in the Federal Republic of Germany. Thus, through state agreements, definite special rights, primarily in the areas of taxes and education, were granted to both the Roman Catholic Church and the Evangelical (Lutheran-Reformed) churches of the individual states.
Even in the United States, however, the old state-church system, overcome during the American Revolution, still produces aftereffects in the form of tax privileges of the church (exemption from most taxation), the exemption of the clergy from military service, and the financial furtherance of confessional school and educational systems through the state. These privileges have been questioned and even attacked by certain segments of the American public.
Church and state in Eastern and Western theology
The two main forms of the relationship between church and state that have been predominant and decisive through the centuries and in which the structural difference between the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy becomes most evident can best be explained by comparing the views of two great theologians: Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine.
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