by Andrew Kuiper

Editor’s Note: This is the first post in a series on religious freedom. See Kuiper’s previous post at TRF on a related topic here.

Robert Louis Wilken’s most recent work Liberty in the Things of God sketches an outline of the origin and development of religious freedom in Christian thought. Though Wilken is a gifted historian whose previous works are now classics, here he does not attempt to put forth a comprehensive genealogy of his topic. The structure of the book and the span of centuries that it includes is a function of Wilken’s interest in certain passages of Lactantius and Tertullian and how they are received in later authors. The effect is eclectic but not erratic as Wilken brings forth a diverse array of religious and political landscapes. Yet, Liberty in the Things of God is meant as more than a topical index of religious freedom; Wilken constructs an argument that what we now acknowledge and enjoy as the natural right to profess and exercise our religious beliefs according to conscience is due in no small part to Christianity. And it is clear that Wilken conceived of this book as having some relevance to contemporary political and religious questions.

In an interview, Wilken mentions a Washington Post opinion piece by Robert Kagan which asserts that “[o]nly with the advent of Enlightenment liberalism did people begin to believe that the individual conscience, as well as the individual’s body, should be inviolate and protected from the intrusions of state and church.” The same historical thesis about religious freedom, or a variation on it, is ubiquitous even (or perhaps especially) among academics and journalists. And the more one interrogates this framing of the emergence of religious freedom and pluralism over sectarian violence as a pure overcoming of a blinkered religious psychology, the more untenable such a narrative becomes. 

Equally relevant is Wilken’s excavation of premodern Christian invocations of non-coercion in religious matters. Recently, political theology has reemerged as a fundamental area of reflection which has significance far beyond the internal circuits of academia. Substantial realignments in a relatively short amount of time have made the typical post-war fusions and alliances of faith, economics, and politics seem precarious and ideologically incoherent. Is this a moment for Christians to defend broadly liberal conceptions of state and society while grounding them in a deeper theological metaphysics of personhood? Or is it time to give a full throated exposition of a counter-revolutionary politics which enumerates in granular detail how liberalism degrades all authority, and ultimately the authority of Christ and His Church? Or do we suspect, like Matthew Arnold in “Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse”, that we are in a time of painful transition “wandering between two worlds, one dead/ The other powerless to be born” where the vision we need in this crisis has not yet been given to us? 

While Wilken’s book argues that religious freedom has Christian roots, he is not attempting to bleach the historical record or conflate the arguments of ancient, medieval, and early modern figures with our common contemporary understanding. Nor does he elide the fact that religious freedom was almost exclusively discussed with reference to the rights of believing communities and almost never as a right pertaining to individuals. Even so, some of the patristic passages are startling (especially when contrasted with Augustine’s view of religious coercion after the Donatist controversy). For instance, Wilken notes that Tertullian is the first author in history to use the phrase libertas religionis: “See that you do not end up fostering irreligion and forbid free choice with respect to divine matters, so that I am not allowed to worship what I wish, but am forced to worship what I do not wish. Not even a human being would want to be honored unwillingly” (Apology 24). And though humanum ius and naturalis potestas should not be freighted with modern politico-legal significance, the use of these phrases in Tertullian’s rejoinder to Scapula, the Roman proconsul of Africa, is nothing short of astounding: “It is only just and a privilege inherent in human nature that every person should be able to worship according to his own convictions; the religious practice of one person neither harms nor helps another. It is not part of religion to coerce religious practice, for it is by choice not coercion that we should be led to religion” (Ad Scapulam 3).  

One hundred years later, Lactantius, the Christian writer and adviser to Constantine, would reaffirm these positions by writing that the suppression of public worship by violence is contrary to the “law of humanity and to divine justice” for “religion cannot be imposed by force [religio cogi non potest]” and the will can only be moved “by words, not blows” (Divine Institutes 5.19-20). It is also worth noting that it is these same chapters of Lactantius which are the first citations of an ancient author in the document on religious freedom in Vatican II, Dignitatis Humanae. Lactantius’ ideas were also the inspiration for the joint letter of Constantine and Licinius disseminated among the provincial governors of the Eastern Roman Empire (confusingly called the Edict of Milan even though it was neither an edict nor sent from Milan). The letter is significant for the history of religious freedom both in itself and in comparison with the previous position of Galerius. Where Galerius granted indulgentia for Christians to pray and worship, the official position of Constantine and Licinius was libertas. And this freedom was not for Christianity alone but “for all men to follow whatever religion each one wishes.”

Of course, these positions did not last long as official policy in the Roman Empire and theologians for the next millenium did not often argue the case made by Tertullian or Lactantius. Instead, as Wilken notes, Augustine’s exegetical handling of Luke 14:23 “offered a theological rationale for repressive measure by the state against a schismatic group. As late as the eighteenth century, Augustine’s interpretation of ‘compel them to come in’ would be used to justify coercion in dealing with religious dissidents” (32). But the contribution of Tertullian and Lactantius emerged from a place of weighty theological reflection which could not be sidelined forever. Wilken recounts over and over again the citation and use of their arguments over the course of several centuries and practically the whole of Europe all the way up to an underlined copy of Tertullian from Thomas Jefferson’s library.

If there is anything worthy of criticism in the book, it would have to be Wilken’s extreme aversion to making any criticism. The thrust of his argument is that there are clear scriptural, theological, and philosophical grounds for religious freedom and that some of those grounds had been articulated from the very beginning of Christianity. If he is right, why did the official theological line persist in defending the exact opposite? Why did Catholics, Lutherans, and Presbyterians for the most part agree on these aspects of political theology? Beyond a few vague statements about Christianity making “wrong turns,” Wilken leaves us without a theory of error or a historical genealogy that could explain this fall. The absence of this, while frustrating when trying to discern the relevance of this work for contemporary discussions, does not diminish the impact of any of the remarkable historical figures and their arguments which compose this remarkably erudite volume.