Our political stance towards others, be they fellow countrymen, or our country’s geopolitical neighbors, should be one of charity. But our stance should also be marked by realism about the limits for progress and goodness in human affairs. Sin has a significant impact. Governments can do good, but we all know that governments often do not work to this end. Further, there are substantial limits to the good that can be done in politics. We can learn from Reformed realism that politics might simply amount to keeping good order in society, rather than pursuing virtuous political outcomes.

Three Voices from the Past

Christian political thinking is marked by a struggle between two seemingly opposing principles. On the one hand, the rulers of the kingdoms of this world are required to submit to the authority of Jesus Christ, to “serve the Lord with fear and trembling,” and to “kiss the Son” (Ps. 2:10–12). On the other hand, Jesus said to Pilate that his “kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36).

There is a challenge here for Christians, an ethical tension built into Christian political theology. The world, including the politics of this world, is a space where Jesus Christ rules. But the question is: what is the nature of that rule? How can Christ be both the King of Kings and simultaneously not have a rule that is political? How should Christians live in the world here and now in light of the reign of Jesus Christ?

This article will explore three important politico-theological ideas that flow from the Reformed tradition: two kingdoms theology, sphere sovereignty, and political realism. Each of these ideas offers us ways of answering those big ethical questions that flow from the reality of Christ’s reign and his otherworldly kingdom. So, too, these ideas inform how civil magistrates should govern and how we might evaluate our political leaders.

Two Kingdoms Theology

In 1520, the German reformer Martin Luther first outlined the doctrine of the two kingdoms. The basic idea, articulated in his 1520 tracts The Freedom of the Christian and the Letter to the German Nobility, as well as later works like Temporal Authority, was that the Christian lives in two kingdoms. One is the “spiritual kingdom,” the kingdom of the soul, which is ruled by God alone. This is the realm of the person’s spiritual standing before God. According to Luther, nothing can come between God and the individual soul, who stands naked before the Lord either justified or unjustified. The other, “temporal kingdom,” is the realm of external relations, and encapsulates all of life in the world.

Luther argued that, because of the Christian’s simultaneous placement in these two distinct realms, Christians were both entirely free from all earthly obligations and servants of all. Christians, he argued, are free from obligation to the law, both divine and civil, and yet are motivated by their justification to be all the more obedient to earthly authorities.

John Calvin (1509–1564), the great reformer of Geneva, picked up this motif of Luther’s and developed it as he considered the relationship between the conscience, political obligation, and a Reformed understanding of political institutions. Towards the end of Book III of his 1559 Institutes of the Christian Religion, Calvin addresses the distinction between the spiritual and temporal kingdoms and the way this distinction impacts Christian freedom. He says that the doctrine of Christian freedom is “a matter of primary necessity, one without the knowledge of which the conscience can scarcely attempt any thing without hesitation.” Calvin argued that the Christian life in the world cannot be attempted with any certainty unless we understand the meaning of the freedom Christians have in Christ.

This question ultimately pertains to the conscience, according to Calvin. Humans are liable to be bound to the dictates of man, dictates which they have no spiritual obligation to attend to, dictates that have no bearing on one’s standing with God. He says, “as works have respect to men, so conscience bears reference to God.” Outward works, the works of the temporal kingdom, are directed toward our fellow humans in an external sense. Our conscience is different, though, as it pertains to our standing before God. Calvin’s framing helps us understand what the Apostle Paul says in Romans 13:5, that we ought to obey the magistrate “for conscience’s sake.” According to Calvin, we obey because God requires it, for the sake of our conscience, not because the magistrate requires it, that is for the sake of pleasing people with our works.

At the end of Book IV of the Institutes, Calvin finally deals with politics. At the beginning of Chapter 20, the final chapter of the Institutes, he returns to the concept of Christian freedom and the doctrine of the two kingdoms. Calvin’s two kingdoms are not, as some have argued, the church and the state. They are the internal forum of the conscience, and the external forum of the world, of works, and of outward behavior. Does this mean that politics does not matter for the Christian? Does doing good in the external sphere of politics make any difference? If the person’s standing before God is completely separate from their external political life, why should the kings of the earth “kiss the Son”? Perhaps merely to gain salvation and go to heaven? Or does David’s second Psalm also assume that their political rule is to be submitted politically to the true kingship of the Son?

Our answer to these questions depends in part upon how we understand the nature of the institutional church and other external, political institutions. For Calvin, the institutional church and political institutions are all part of the temporal kingdom. The temporal kingdom is the realm where Christians work out their Christian freedom. At the same time, it is also a realm where the moral requirements of God’s law are to be enacted. And part of that law entails, for Calvin, the protection of true religion. Governments have a duty to protect the church and the purity of worship and doctrine. Civil magistrates are not preachers, nor ministers of the gospel. However, as Paul makes clear in Romans 13, they are “ministers” (διάκονός, or diakonos) of God. Further, Calvin says that the office of the civil magistrate is “in the sight of God, not only sacred and lawful, but the most sacred, and by far the most honourable, of all stations in mortal life.”

Does this mean those in political authority are required to submit their rule to Christ? Yes. The temporal kingdom is not a realm free from ethical obligation. On the contrary, it is because of our spiritual freedom and our conscience that all Christians have a duty to honor and obey the magistrate. Those who do not follow Christ are bound by their duties before God’s moral law, manifest in their consciences, to do the same. So, too, those in political authority are required to offer themselves to His service. The civil magistrate rules in the temporal kingdom with the ultimate goal of ordering the lives of their subjects to the highest good, which is worshipping and pleasing God. This means that political rule aims, among other things, at the spiritual liberty of the conscience.

Sphere Sovereignty

The form that this political rule takes, and the shape of the ensuing society, is generally an open question to any Reformed thinker. There have been Reformed social and political theorists, though, and one of the most brilliant was Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). The Dutch polymath was the definition of the active life. He was a historian, pastor, theology professor, churchman, journalist, activist, politician, and prime minister. He lived out the kind of Christianity that he preached – one that was engaged with the world and in the issues of the world. Many of his ideas were original and insightful, and he offered a distinctively Reformed approach to politics and political thinking.

Kuyper’s most famous idea is also his least interesting from a political perspective – that all of life, every single part of reality, is under the lordship of Jesus Christ. Over all of this, Christ cries “Mine!”. The context for this utterance is a speech on education and the importance of distinctively Christian education institutions. Kuyper believed people of different confessions, including the different forms of Christianity, should be free to establish institutions that reflect their own convictions. In this way, Kuyper was a man of his and our times.

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