An Excerpt From, "The Social Teaching Of The Christian Churches" By Ernst Troeltsch

Ernst Peter Wilhelm Troeltsch (17 February 1865 – 1 February 1923) was a German liberal Protestant theologian, a writer on the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history, and a classical liberal politician. He was a member of the history of religions school. His work was a synthesis of a number of strands, drawing on Albrecht Ritschl, Max Weber’s conception of sociology, and the Baden school of neo-Kantianism.

. . .His study, The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches (1912), is about the history of Christian social precepts — as they pertain to culture, economics, and institutions — in the history of Western Civilization. Troeltsch’s distinction between churches and sects as social types, for instance, set the course for further theological study.

Troeltsch sought to explain the decline of religion in the modern era by studying the historical evolution of religion in society. He described European civilization as having three periods: ancient, medieval, and modern. Instead of claiming that modernity starts with the rise of Protestantism, Troeltsch argued that early Protestantism should be understood as a continuation of the medieval period. Therefore, the modern period starts later in his account: in the seventeenth century. The Renaissance in Italy and the scientific revolution planted the seeds for the arrival of the modern period. Protestantism delayed, rather than heralded, modernity. The reform movement around Luther, Troeltsch argued, was “in the first place, simply a modification of Catholicism, in which the Catholic formulation of the problems was retained, while a different answer was given to them.”

An excerpt from, “The Social Teaching Of The Christian Churches” By Ernst Troeltsch, Translated by Olive Wyon, The Macmillan Company, 1931, Pg. 201 – 203; and 205 – 207:

In the Ancient World the sociological connection of Christian thought was worked out in the sacerdotal and sacramental organization of the Church — an organization which was endowed with grace and with miraculous power. It thus united in one social organism both the absolute individualism and the universalism of the Gospel. Within this social organism each individual, by submission to the institution which imparted grace, could obtain a share in eternal salvation. The spirit of individualism was, however, considerably restricted, both by the action of the authorities who guaranteed salvation, and by hierarchical organizations within the body of the Church, as well as by the patriarchal teaching on submission and adaptation to the existing institutions within the world.

It is impossible to ascertain in detail to what extent, from this point, men evolved a fundamental sociological theory, and an ideal which could be applied to all the conditions of human life.

In any case, the Church did not attempt to regulate the conditions and institutions in the world outside her own borders from the point of view of an ideal of this kind. On the whole, she accepted the conditions of the world, and adjusted herself to them by means of the theory of relative Natural Law. To those who could not accept this compromise monasticism offered a safety-valve, which, however, for that very reason had no clear and logical relation with the Church ; indeed, only too often it simply disturbed the conscience of the Church. Thus the attitude of the Church towards the State and towards Society was peculiar. It contained a variety of elements : the recognition of Natural Law, theocratic subjugation and exploitation, the support of the State, whose powers were not equal to its task, by the Church, and the rejection of the State and of Society in general, which worked itself out in the theory of the sinfulness of all the institutions of relative Natural Law and in the practice of renunciation of the world. Neither in theory nor in practice was there any inwardly uniform Christian civilization; the whole idea was foreign to the Ancient World.

The vital difference between the Middle Ages and the period of the Primitive Church was this: The Church of the mediaeval period did know this ideal, both in practice, and, still more, in theory, and, as an ideal, with some adjustments to modern requirements, its theory is still operative today in all the social teaching of contemporary Catholicism . 

This ideal of a Christian unity of civilization, however, was also carried forward into early Protestantism, which to a large extent maintained it by the same methods w r ith which the mediaeval period had learned to establish it and to carry it into practice. Even in modern Protestantism, which is so entirely different, this ideal is still retained as a natural fundamental theory which only needs to be placed upon a new basis.

The problem can be stated quite simply. It Is this : How was this ideal evolved during the Middle Ages, out of the tradition of the Primitive Church, out of the new situation, and out of the new intellectual movements? And what form did it now assume?

The significance of this question is underestimated by all those who already ascribe to the Primitive Church, or to Christianity in general, this striving after a unity of Christian civilization. The whole of our inquiry up to this point, however, proves that this assumption is unwarranted.

Rather, it is clear that in Stoicism and in Platonism, and still more in Christianity, a theory of social life and of civilization, founded upon the values of free personality in union with God, and of universal human fellowship, was only established with the greatest difficulty. Christianity in particular had created, it is true, a powerful, purely religious organization which was also hostile towards the world ; within herself she was able to arrange conditions of life fairly well in accordance with Christian principles, but so far as the world outside was concerned she was unable to find any connection or point of contact.

After all, it is not so simple to build up a civilization and a society upon the supernatural values of the love of God and of the brethren. The self-denial and renunciation of the world which are connected with the former, and the renunciation of the claim on justice and force which are connected with the latter, are not principles of civilization, but radical and universal religious and ethical ideas, which are only absorbed with difficulty into the aims of the secular structure, and into the protective measures which the struggle for existence has produced.

The social ideals of Platonism and of Stoicism remained pure Utopias, and, in spite of all their afljnities with Christian ideas, they were really much closer to the popular and civic life of the Ancient World; their idealistic theories only had the effect of making clear the difference of their outlook from the ordinary course of the life of the world.

When Christianity was in a condition to establish its ideal State, the Church, upon a purely religious basis, it was still only with difficulty that it was able to reconcile that which was possible upon this basis with the rest of the life of Society.

The Middle Ages, however, witnessed the expansion of the Church to a comprehensive, unifying, and reconciling social whole, which included both the sociological circle of religion itself and the politico-social organizations. In its own way, there-fore, it realized in practice the ideal of the Republic of Plato, conceived as an individual State that is, the rule of wise and God-fearing men over a unified Society, built up organically in ranks, and also the ideal of the Stoics, whose universal common-wealth was to embrace the whole of mankind, without distinction, in one universal ethical kingdom.

The programme which the declining Ancient World had up-held in Platonism, Stoicism, and Christianity as a new ideal of humanity, and which, in the combination of these three ten-dencies, it had only been able to realize in a very limited manner, now overcame the obstacles which confronted it, and, to some extent at least, it achieved a relative realization. Thus the problem presented by the Middle Ages is one of great historical significance; it is also of importance for all modern historical social doctrines, which, in general, have a closer connection with mediaeval ideas than with those of the Primitive Church.

. . .From the outset, however, one point must be kept in mind. We are dealing, it is true, with the history of the social philosophy of the Church, with a doctrine, with an idea. But history of this kind does not, on that account, need to be treated purely as a process of dialectic. However largely original ideas may have their own dialectic consequence and development, whose evolution has been caused partly by the inner impulse to formulate the content of their thought’, partly by the necessity of answering new and urgent problems which arise in practical life, still the fundamental ideas in the great fruitful systems of life are not simple and uniform; rather, to a great extent, they themselves are already the result of a complex. On the other hand, in the unending and involved interplay of various forces, as Eduard Meyer so aptly puts it, everywhere we have to take into account the element of accident and surprise, i.e. the clash of independent causal sequences, which have no inner connection with each other. Both these elements are strongly marked in the history which we are studying in this book. Already it has been clearly shown that Christian thought, with its inclusion of supernatural and natural, with its rich conception of God which combines the ideas of the Creation and world-optimism with Redemption and world-pessimism, is itself a complex structure, containing many elements of tension ; this fact will emerge anew, with fresh significance, in our study of the development of mediaeval thought. Likewise the interpenetration of the sacred and the secular, which was possible in the Middle Ages, cannot be explained as the result of intellectual dialectic impulses of development, but out of the actual pressure of events ; for no dialectic exists, which, from the standpoint of Christian thought, would itself have been in a position to lay down a programme of this kind; here we have to do with the effect of the possibilities and necessities, which the actual course of affairs in the development of social life outside the Church brought into the ecclesiastical organization.

This ideal must have grown up out of universal changes, which, perfected in silence, were looked upon as quite natural and obvious ; and that is the reason why that which was impossible in the Early Church now became possible, and that which did not even exist as an ideal in the mind of the Primitive Church now became a goal of aspiration and desire. Finally, in spite of the development of a unity of civilization under conditions yet to be described which were peculiarly favourable to it, the question still remains: To what extent, in this situation, was Christian thought only able to utilize favourable circumstances for its realization? Or how far was the unity achieved because Christian thought, for its part, was adapting itself to the newer influences?

Above all, we must be on our guard against a tendency of the theologians— upon whose otherwise excellent and sometimes brilliant researches, together with the researches of jurists, secular historians, and political economists, the following study has for the most part been based— the tendency to discover everywhere either deformations of ordeviations from the Gospel, or to discern everywhere foreshadowings of and preparations for the Reformation solution of the problem. Ranke’s deep and suggestive saying, that “every historical epoch has its own direct significance in the sight of God”, might aptly be applied to this question; it might, indeed, be extended in this direction, in order to include the idea that each epoch is in the direct Presence of God, both in its greatness and its truth, and in its unfaithfulness to its better self. Mediaeval religion and its social doctrines are neither a perversion of the “essence of Christianity”, nor a phase of development serving other ends of Christian thought, but an expression of the religious consciousness corresponding to the general social structure, with its own advantages and truths, and its own faulty and terrible side. Mediaeval religion, and its corresponding form of social philosophy, should be understood first of all as they are In themselves; we ought only to consider their connection with tradition in so far as they drew from it, for their own need, the necessary historical nourishment and stimulus.

The religious life, even that of Christianity, in each of its great forms is something new and different, and must first of all be understood as an independent phenomenon. The further problem of connecting this phenomenon with a united and universal ideal is one which lies beyond the borders of pure history.