The question of church and state is not a matter of institutional rivalry but of conscience and truth. Wherever church and state have aligned, history records the same result: conscience collapses, minorities are silenced, and coercion masquerades as fidelity. What begins as a promise of order or unity ends as persecution.
This essay argues that the danger of alignment lies deeper than political theory. At stake is God’s own prerogative. Scripture teaches that only God possesses the authority to define kinds (auctoritas essendi) and to instantiate them (auctoritas instantiandi). When either church or state arrogates this prerogative, it effigiates itself into a counterfeit order. The state claims sovereignty as if divine; the church installs hierarchy in place of Christ. In both cases, liberty of conscience — the safeguard of authentic faith — collapses into simulation.
The pages that follow present a Bible-based ontological analysis of separation. The aim is not to rehearse modern slogans of “neutrality” or “toleration,” but to expose their myth, show why true separation is an ontological necessity, and demonstrate through history how alignment corrupts both church and state. At the center stands conscience, for “every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12, KJV). To preserve that sacred accountability requires that the church witness without coercion and that the state restrain without sacralization.
Separation, then, is not merely pragmatic. It is fidelity: fidelity to God’s order, to the liberty of conscience He has ordained, and to the integrity of both church and state. This essay seeks to show why alignment cannot endure without collapse, and why only separation safeguards the conscience of all.
Note on Context. This essay stands alongside Appendix E5 (Authority, Rights, and the Kingdom ), which develops the broader ontological framework for government and law. That appendix critiques the myth of procedural neutrality. The present essay applies those principles specifically to the question of church and state, showing how alignment always collapses conscience by arrogating God’s prerogative. Readers seeking the structural foundations of these arguments will find them in Appendix E5; here the focus is their biblical and historical application.
In modern political thought, the separation of church and state is usually treated as an institutional or procedural matter. Locke and Madison speak of rival jurisdictions, Jefferson of a “wall of separation.” These formulations cast the issue as a balance of power between two human authorities: one religious, the other political. The question becomes where to draw the boundary line, or how to prevent encroachment of one upon the other.
The submetaphysics perspective begins elsewhere. Submetaphysics holds that truth is ontological and relational, not merely institutional or procedural. God alone defines and instantiates kinds — a prerogative no human institution may arrogate. From this vantage point, “church” and “state” cannot be understood primarily as institutional competitors. They must be measured by their ontological fidelity: are they operating within the limits God has given, or are they simulating divine authority by claiming what is not theirs?
When church and state are reduced to institutions, their categories collapse into simulation. The church becomes a hierarchy that displaces Christ as its head. The state becomes a monopoly of force that sacralizes its own coercion. In both cases, institutional survival masquerades as divine mandate.
This essay therefore advances a simple thesis: the problem of church–state separation is not a matter of institutional rivalry but of ontology versus simulation. Both church and state remain legitimate only insofar as they respect their ontological boundaries. Both become fraudulent when they arrogate divine prerogative.
Before any meaningful treatment of separation can be undertaken, it is necessary to be precise about what we mean by “church” and “state.” If these terms are left at the level of institutional convention, the discussion will already be skewed toward simulation. Only by grounding them ontologically can we speak with clarity about their boundaries and their failure modes.
The Church. Biblically, the church is not an institution but the body of believers who, by regeneration, are joined to Christ in filial participation. Its foundation is not human decree but divine revelation. At Caesarea Philippi, Peter confessed, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16, KJV). To this confession Christ replied, “upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it” (Matt. 16:18, KJV). The “rock” is the revealed confession of Christ’s identity, not an institutional succession. The church is thus constituted by truth confessed and lived, with Christ alone as its head. Its members are a royal priesthood (1 Pet. 2:9), equal in standing before God.
The New Testament does recognize functional leadership for the sake of order — elders and overseers called to shepherd by service rather than domination (Matt. 20:25–28; 1 Pet. 5:1–3). Yet such leadership is diaconal, not hierarchical: persuasive and pastoral, never coercive or rank-conferring. Any attempt to establish hierarchy as an ontological feature of the church displaces Christ’s headship and effigiates the body into an institution. To the extent that the church arrogates coercive power or entrenches hierarchy, it effigiates its witness and forfeits legitimacy. The church remains itself only insofar as it lives by exempliatio fidelis — the faithful exemplification of divine kinds in worship, testimony, and communal life.
The State. In its ontological sense, government is the authority to restrain coercion, fraud, and violence, and to uphold restitutional justice within a defined geographic domain. This is the role described by Paul in Romans 13: a minister of justice, bearing the sword not to legislate kinds but to preserve order through restraint and restitution. Yet in secular theory the state is often defined in maximal terms. Max Weber famously described it as “the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Carl Schmitt deepened this claim, treating sovereignty as the power to decide the exception — to impose force even apart from law. These definitions reveal the effigiated state: an institution that sacralizes its coercive power as sovereignty and arrogates to itself a divine prerogative. In this form, government abandons jurisdictional humility and becomes a pseudo-type of divine authority, masking violence as legitimacy.
The Implication. With these definitions in view, separation of church and state can no longer be framed as a contest between rival institutions. It must be seen as a mutual recognition of ontological boundaries. The church testifies without coercion, gathered around Peter’s confession and Christ’s headship. The state restrains harm and enforces restitution without legislating kinds. Conflict arises only when these boundaries are transgressed: when the church institutionalizes hierarchy or seizes coercive authority, or when the state arrogates the right to define and instantiate kinds.
The moment a decision is made, an ontology has already been confessed. To legislate is not to act neutrally but to declare what kinds are acknowledged and which telos is served. Even silence or procedural deferral is not neutral; it is itself an allegiance, revealing what order is preferred and what truth is suppressed.
Yet this does not mean that worldviews are chosen from a position of neutrality. Ontology is not a menu from which one selects; it is a confrontation. God discloses Himself and His order, and every human being is summoned to respond. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Josh. 24:15, KJV) is not an invitation to construct truth but a demand to submit to what God has already revealed. To refuse is not neutrality but rebellion; to accept is not invention but fidelity.
Neutrality collapses the instant speech is uttered, for every law and judgment is already worship — either submission to God’s revealed kinds or their simulation. Worldviews are not chosen but unmasked. God confronts; man either submits in fidelity or resists in suppression.
At the heart of the submetaphysical framework lies the recognition of God’s Double Prerogative: He alone possesses the auctoritas essendi — the authority to define kinds, and the auctoritas instantiandi — the authority to instantiate them. These prerogatives are non-transferable. To concede them to any human institution is to blur the line between Creator and creature, collapsing ontology into simulation. By effigiation we mean the simulation of divine order by institutional form; by pseudo-instantiation, the arrogation of God’s right to define kinds; and by typophoric distortion, a rhetorical gesture that smuggles in a counterfeit “type” under the guise of neutrality.
Biblical grounding. Scripture repeatedly affirms this divine prerogative. God alone speaks the world into being and defines its kinds: “And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so” (Gen. 1:24, KJV). Christ Himself embodies this prerogative, for in Him all things consist (Col. 1:17), and He is both the foundation and head of the church (Eph. 1:22). Human beings may witness and participate in this order, but they may not redefine it. The church therefore lives by confession and testimony, while the state lives by restraint and restitution. Neither is given authority to create or alter kinds.
Secular contrast. By contrast, secular political theory often presumes that sovereignty includes the right to define and instantiate kinds. Hobbes imagined a Leviathan in which all rights are surrendered to a mortal sovereign who defines justice by command. Rousseau spoke of the “general will” as the source of legitimacy, effectively transferring divine prerogative to the collective. Schmitt defined the sovereign as “he who decides on the exception,” granting government the power not only to enforce laws but to suspend them — and thus to redefine the terms of political existence itself. In each case, what is being claimed is not merely administrative authority, but a counterfeit of God’s prerogative.
Ontological implication. When the church claims coercive hierarchy, it simulates divine authority by instituting kinds of its own making. When the state claims sovereignty over kinds, it effigiates itself into a false god, sacralizing its monopoly of force. Both church and state remain legitimate only insofar as they stay within the bounds of ontological humility: the church as witness by exempliatio fidelis, the state as restrainer of harm and minister of restitution. To the extent that either arrogates God’s prerogative, separation collapses into simulation.
The modern state often presents itself as a neutral arbiter between competing visions of truth. It claims to protect freedom of conscience by refusing to privilege any particular creed, thereby maintaining a supposedly impartial public square. Yet as already noted, every decision is an ontological confession. The moment law defines harm, dignity, or safety, it declares what kinds are acknowledged and which telos is served. Neutrality therefore is not a suspension of ontology but a substitution. Neutrality itself becomes a creed — a pseudo-type masquerading as impartiality, while smuggling in its own definitions of harm, dignity, or safety.
Biblical grounding. Scripture allows no such middle ground. Christ declared, “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad” (Matt. 12:30, KJV). Neutrality, in this sense, is a myth: every posture is either fidelity to God’s revealed order or suppression of it. Likewise, Joshua challenged Israel, “choose you this day whom ye will serve” (Josh. 24:15, KJV). The biblical witness insists that truth is relational and covenantal, never procedural or suspended.
Secular contrast. Liberal theorists framed neutrality as the state’s highest virtue. John Locke argued in his Letter Concerning Toleration (1689) that civil government should limit itself to civil interests — life, liberty, and property — leaving salvation to individual choice. John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty (1859) made neutrality procedural, with freedom defined as the absence of interference, provided no harm was caused. John Rawls went further, defining justice as “fairness” and insisting the state should not privilege any “comprehensive doctrine,” religious or secular. Yet in each case, the state retained the prerogative to define the boundaries of harm, liberty, or fairness. In doing so, it assumed what it claimed to renounce: the authority to legislate kinds.
Ontological implication. Neutrality thus functions as a typophoric distortion: it projects the illusion of impartiality while covertly legislating categories in God’s place. By expanding terms like “harm” or “dignity” to encompass matters of worship, speech, or moral dissent, the state compels assent to its own pseudo-types. Neutrality becomes civil blasphemy: the demand that all citizens confess the state’s definitions while claiming that no creed is enforced. In reality, one creed has merely displaced another.
Conclusion. True separation, therefore, cannot be founded on neutrality. It must be founded on ontological humility. The state restrains violence and fraud but does not legislate kinds. The church testifies to revealed truth without coercion. The proper substitute for neutrality is procedural modesty oriented to restitution: laws justified only in terms of protecting persons against coercion, fraud, and violence, and restoring what has been taken. Anything beyond this collapses into simulation under the mask of neutrality.
No question is more closely bound to the separation of church and state than liberty of conscience. In secular thought, liberty of conscience is usually framed as a right granted by the state, a concession that individuals may think or worship as they please so long as they do not disturb public order. Yet biblically, liberty of conscience is not a state invention but a divine safeguard, woven into the structure of human accountability before God.
Biblical grounding. Conscience is presented in Scripture as an inward witness, testifying to divine law. Paul affirms that even Gentiles “shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness” (Rom. 2:15, KJV). Yet this conscience is not autonomous: it is accountable to God, who will “judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ”(Rom. 2:16, KJV). Liberty of conscience, then, is not license to invent truth, but space granted for authentic response to divine revelation. It is liberty for fidelity, not liberty from fidelity.
Earthly form. On earth, liberty of conscience operates within the constraints of human fallenness. Because rebellion exists, civil law must restrain coercion, fraud, and violence. My liberty is bounded by the God-given rights of my neighbor. Conscience does not abolish law but exists alongside it, preserving the possibility of genuine choice. In this sense, liberty of conscience is probationary: it allows fidelity or rebellion to be manifest in time. Civil submission is therefore real but limited: “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake” (1 Pet. 2:13, KJV), yet always under the higher command, “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29, KJV).
Heavenly fulfillment. In heaven, liberty of conscience is not abolished but fulfilled. Because axiology is perfectly aligned with God, the deontic and modal layers of moral decision-making become phenomenologically redundant. Praxis flows directly from value: “Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10, KJV). Conscience no longer stands as a contested arena but as a seamless delight in truth. Liberty is thus completed, not curtailed: no coercion is needed where no rebellion remains.
Secular contrast. Locke argued that liberty of conscience is protected so long as it does not threaten civil interests. Mill extended liberty to all opinions, provided they cause no harm. Modern rights discourse frames liberty as non-interference, grounded in autonomy rather than accountability. Each of these reduces conscience to a neutral faculty, severed from God. By doing so, they convert liberty of conscience into a state concession, granted and withdrawn at will.
Ontological implication. Liberty of conscience cannot be defined by the state, for the state has no prerogative over kinds. It may restrain overt coercion or fraud, but it may not command conscience without arrogating divine authority. To compel conscience is to simulate God’s prerogative of judgment; to deny conscience is to effigiate the human person into a subject of the state. True liberty of conscience rests on God’s prerogative alone and is safeguarded when both church and state remain within their ontological limits.
Every act of legislation is already a confession. Law does not emerge from a vacuum of procedure but from a prior judgment about what is good, what is owed, and what may or may not be done. To define harm, to establish rights, to enforce duties — each is an axiological act, a declaration about the kinds God has ordained or, in rebellion, a pseudo-kind erected in their place.
This means legislative morality is not a chicken-and-egg puzzle, where one might debate which came first: ontology or law. The moment law is spoken, ontology has already been invoked. To legislate is to confess; to govern is to worship. Every rule reflects an allegiance — either to God’s revealed order or to its suppression. Neutrality, therefore, is impossible, because even the attempt to legislate “neutral” categories (safety, fairness, dignity) already presumes a definition of those terms, and thus of the kinds they instantiate.
Scripture itself makes this plain. When Israel received the Decalogue, the law began not with a procedure but with a proclamation: “I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage”(Ex. 20:2, KJV). Before any command is given, God asserts His identity and authority as the One who defines reality. By contrast, when human rulers pretend to legislate kinds, they simulate this divine prerogative. As Nebuchadnezzar decreed worship of the golden image on pain of death (Dan. 3:4–6), law became not prudential restraint but ontological arrogation.
The implication is decisive: governments cannot avoid legislating morality, for every statute reveals a telos. The only question is whether that telos is aligned with God’s revealed kinds or constructed in defiance of them. To legislate restitution is fidelity; to legislate ontology is effigiation. Thus the very existence of law is an ontological confession, and the task of civil authority is not to escape this reality but to exercise jurisdictional humility within it.
A critical confusion in the history of church–state relations lies in the assumption that civil law may define moral kinds. This assumption collapses the distinction between God’s prerogative and human administration. But as already observed, every law is itself an ontological confession. The question is not whether morality is legislated — it always is — but whether prudential restraint acknowledges God’s kinds or arrogates them. Properly understood, law in the human domain is prudential, not ontological: it restrains harm, secures restitution, and orders common life, but it does not create or redefine the kinds by which reality is structured.
Biblical grounding.
Scripture consistently distinguishes divine prerogative from human rule. When Moses delivered the law, it was prefaced with divine declaration: “I am the LORD thy God” (Ex. 20:2, KJV). The Decalogue begins with divine authority, not human reasoning. Human judges, by contrast, are commanded to apply justice impartially, protecting the vulnerable and restoring what is taken: “ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great” (Deut. 1:17, KJV). They are also to guard honest exchange with just weights and measures (Lev. 19:35–36), so that power does not silently devour the weak. Human authority administers justice; it does not define truth.
Ontological grounding (ADM). This distinction can be traced through the axiological–deontic–modal structure. See Deontic-Modal Unit
for further discussion..
Axiology: God alone defines what is good, holy, and just.
Deontology: human beings stand under relational duty to God and neighbor.
Modality: prudential laws arise as derivative guardrails, suited to time and circumstance, to protect persons and to enforce restitution.
Praxis: civil administration then executes these prudential laws through courts and procedures. When civil law respects this hierarchy, it exhibits jurisdictional humility. When it collapses prudential law into ontological decree, it simulates God’s prerogative and sacralizes its own commands.
Social provision and the poor.
One further confusion arises in the question of social provision. Many argue that government bears responsibility to care for the poor. Yet Scripture never assigns this role to civil power. The commands to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the afflicted are given to individuals and communities: “If there be among you a poor man… thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother” (Deut. 15:7, KJV); “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (Jas. 1:27, KJV). These are covenantal duties of persons, families, and the believing community, not prerogatives of the magistrate. When the state assumes this role, it redefines moral responsibility as institutional rather than personal and risks effigiating charity into coercion. The magistrate’s task remains restitutional—restraining injustice and restoring what is taken—while care for the poor rests on the direct obligations of neighbor-love.
Gleaning, Sabbatical release, and Jubilee (anti-oppression and return).
The covenant’s structural provisions confirm this order without creating a redistributive bureaucracy. Gleaning required landowners to leave field-edges and fallen sheaves for the poor and the stranger (Lev. 19:9–10; Deut. 24:19–22)—a constraint on oppressive hoarding that preserved dignified access to sustenance. Sabbatical release forgave debts among brethren at set intervals (Deut. 15:1–2), checking the conversion of misfortune into permanent bondage. Jubilee proclaimed liberty and return—“ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family” (Lev. 25:10, KJV)—restoring ancestral allotments and preventing the entrenchment of structural coercion. These measures are best understood as anti-oppression and restorative return oriented to a restitutional telos: they reopen gates to lawful participation and recover what ought not be permanently alienated. They do not instantiate a centralized welfare apparatus; rather, they bind persons and households to merciful practice while calling judges at the gates (Deut. 16:18–20) to keep processes fair. Thus, even Israel’s most far-reaching economic provisions are restorative and liberty-preserving, not ontology-legislating.
Secular contrast.
Modern theories of law frequently erase this distinction. Hobbes reduced justice to sovereign command: whatever the Leviathan decrees becomes just by definition. Rousseau’s “general will” claimed authority not only to administer but to define legitimacy itself. Contemporary rights discourse continues this trajectory, treating law as a tool for creating new categories of dignity, identity, and obligation. In each case, prudential administration is converted into ontological legislation.
Ontological implication.
The state remains within its legitimacy to the extent that it recognizes its limits: to restrain coercion, fraud, and violence, and to uphold restitution. It forfeits legitimacy to the extent that it arrogates the right to define kinds—declaring what marriage is, what personhood is, or what constitutes worship. The moment civil law pretends to legislate ontology, it collapses into effigiation—an institutional simulation of divine prerogative.
If separation of church and state is fundamentally a question of ontology rather than of institutions, then the task is not merely to describe boundaries but to discern when those boundaries have been crossed. Here the framework of Onto-Discursive Analysis (ODA) provides diagnostic clarity. By exposing how language, authority, and power interact, ODA reveals the moment at which prudential restraint becomes ontological arrogation. Four markers in particular signal the collapse of fidelity into simulation.
Typophoric Inflation. The first sign is the inflation of moral language beyond its rightful scope. Terms such as “harm,” “dignity,” or “safety” begin with legitimate reference to neighbor-love and protection against coercion. Yet in the hands of the state, these terms often expand to encompass matters of belief, worship, or speech, effectively legislating assent to contested ontological claims. When disagreement is rebranded as “harm,” liberty of conscience has already been subverted.
Pseudo-Instantiation. A second signal is the state’s declaration of new ontological kinds. When government defines what constitutes a marriage, a person, or a family — not in prudential terms of contracts and obligations, but in ontological terms of essence and identity — it arrogates the prerogative of auctoritas essendi. These definitions carry penalties for non-assent, making coercion the guarantor of simulated truth.
Narrative Displacement. A third sign is the replacement of restitutional justice with prestige offenses. In biblical law, justice is relational and restorative: the thief restores fourfold, the wrongdoer makes his neighbor whole (Ex. 22:1; Lev. 6:5). Yet in many societies, justice is displaced into crimes against the state’s dignity — lèse-majesté, blasphemy against national symbols, or failure to celebrate the civic creed. This narrative displacement shifts justice from relational fidelity to institutional honor, masking power under the guise of sacred order.
Coercion Creep. Finally, entanglement is exposed by the gradual progression from tolerance to affirmation to compulsion. What begins as a claim to equal access soon becomes a demand for endorsement, then for celebration, and finally for enforced conformity. Each step simulates moral duty by expanding civil restraint into ontological command. The state’s voice assumes the tone of divine authority, even while disclaiming any creed.
The Implication. These diagnostics make clear that church–state entanglement is not always announced in dramatic decrees. It often occurs subtly, through inflation of language, redefinition of kinds, displacement of justice, or creeping coercion. Yet in each case the same boundary is crossed: the state ceases to restrain and begins to legislate kinds, while the church ceases to witness and begins to coerce. Separation collapses whenever simulation displaces fidelity.
The ontological framework for separation of church and state is not an abstraction. Its significance becomes clearest when tested against contested cases where conscience, law, and coercion intersect. Each of the following domains illustrates how simulation emerges when prudential restraint is replaced by ontological arrogation.
Speech and Conscience. The most direct test is speech. Scripture affirms that conscience must answer to God alone: “So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God” (Rom. 14:12, KJV). When civil law restrains defamation, fraud, or incitement to violence, it functions with jurisdictional humility. But when it extends into compelled affirmation — mandating assent to contested ontological claims, whether in pronoun usage or ideological pledges — it transgresses its boundary. Speech becomes a matter of civil blasphemy, where failure to confess the state’s creed is treated as treason against public order.
Marriage and Family. Biblically, marriage is grounded in creation and defined by Christ Himself: “Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female” (Matt. 19:4, KJV). Civil law may prudentially regulate contracts, inheritance, and custody, but it cannot redefine the ontological kind of marriage without arrogating divine prerogative. When government treats its redefinition as binding truth, it not only effigiates marriage but also penalizes dissenting witness, collapsing prudential law into pseudo-theology.
Education. Scripture assigns parents the primary duty of formation: “And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4, KJV). When the state provides education in reading, arithmetic, or civic procedure, it acts prudentially. But when it prescribes moral content that demands assent to contested kinds, it exceeds its role. Compulsory catechism into the civic creed constitutes pseudo-instantiation: the state assumes the role of theologian while claiming neutrality.
Healthcare Mandates. Conscience objections in medicine reveal the same conflict. Scripture warns against violating conscience: “whatsoever is not of faith is sin” (Rom. 14:23, KJV). When the state regulates standards of safety or competence, it functions within prudence. But when it compels practitioners to perform acts they judge to be immoral — abortion, euthanasia, or procedures contradicting their faith — it arrogates divine prerogative over conscience. The healer is conscripted into effigiation, treating human law as higher than divine fidelity.
Tax and Charity Regimes. Civil taxation is legitimate as a prudential means of administration: “Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s” (Matt. 22:21, KJV). Yet when tax or charitable recognition is conditioned on doctrinal conformity — requiring churches to renounce certain teachings in exchange for public benefit — the state intrudes into kinds. This constitutes narrative displacement: redefining justice not as restitution but as conformity to civic prestige.
Digital Platforms. In the modern era, digital platforms function as quasi-public squares. When they moderate fraud, violence, or direct incitement, they act prudentially. As private associations, they retain editorial discretion. Yet when moderation becomes doctrinal enforcement — suppressing dissent on contested ontological claims — they begin to function as agents of civil theology. The distinction is sharpened when the state jawbones platforms, deputizes them, or threatens penalties to enforce conformity: private curation is thereby converted into state action. At that point, the line between carriage and creed is erased, and digital sovereignty emerges as a new form of pseudo-instantiation.
The Implication. In each case, the line is not between church and state as institutions, but between prudential restraint and ontological arrogation. Liberty of conscience is preserved only when government remains humble in scope and the church remains faithful in witness. Both become fraudulent when they cross into simulation, whether by coercion or by usurpation of divine prerogative.
Throughout history, the most consistent danger of church–state alignment has not been the state oppressing the church, but the church using the sword of the state to enforce its own authority. When the church effigiates itself into hierarchy and co-opts civil coercion, persecution inevitably follows. What is lost is both the purity of the church’s witness and the liberty of conscience among minority voices.
Imperial Rome to Constantine. The earliest Christians lived under a hostile empire, refusing to burn incense to Caesar because “Jesus is Lord” could not be shared with another. Yet when Constantine legalized Christianity in the fourth century, and Theodosius later made it the state religion, the church shifted from persecuted minority to persecuting majority. Heresy was criminalized; coercion entered the heart of worship. What began as protection soon became compulsion.
Medieval Christendom. The fusion of papal and imperial authority entrenched hierarchy over conscience. From the Inquisition to the suppression of dissenters like the Waldensians and Hussites, the state’s sword was wielded to enforce doctrinal conformity. Minority rights were obliterated, and truth became identified with institutional power rather than fidelity to Christ.
Reformation Europe. The sixteenth century saw Protestants reject Rome’s claims, but too often repeat its errors. In Lutheran territories, dissenters faced exile. Calvin’s Geneva codified theology into civic law. England’s Act of Uniformity imposed worship by decree, driving out Puritans and dissenting communities. In each case, the state became arbiter of kinds, and conscience was coerced under the banner of religious uniformity.
Colonial America. Many early settlers fled this cycle of coercion, seeking liberty of conscience. Yet even here, Massachusetts Bay enforced Puritan orthodoxy, banishing Roger Williams and persecuting Quakers. It was only later, through the influence of Williams, Madison, and others, that separation was reframed as a safeguard of conscience and minority rights — not a privilege granted by the state but a recognition of God’s prerogative.
The Lesson. The lesson is plain: whenever church and state align, conscience collapses. What begins as a claim to neutrality or to the common good already carries an allegiance, for every decision is confession. By disguising coercion as fidelity, church and state together arrogated God’s prerogative, with persecution as the inevitable result. Separation is thus not mere prudence but ontological necessity: only by honoring God’s prerogative can conscience remain safeguarded.
For individuals, faithful surrender may retroactively disclose ontology. For nations, misaligned foundations calcify into institutions of coercion. Retrofitting is rarely possible; collapse and judgment tend to precede renewal.
History and Scripture alike testify that majority assent is no safeguard of fidelity. In Noah’s day, the world perished in unbelief while only a family was spared (Gen. 6–7). In the wilderness, Israel sided with the majority of spies against Caleb and Joshua and suffered judgment (Num. 13–14). Again and again, the prophets stood almost alone against the consensus of false prophets (Jer. 6:13–14). Christ Himself declared, “Broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat … strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matt. 7:13–14, KJV).
There are moments when the majority turns to repentance — Nineveh under Jonah, the thousands at Pentecost, or Josiah’s reforms — but these are fragile and short-lived. Once the immediacy of confrontation passes, nations revert swiftly to effigiation.
The implication is clear: majority consensus cannot anchor truth, nor can it justify coercion of conscience. When church and state align, majorities often endorse suppression of the minority. True liberty rests not in numbers but in fidelity to God’s order.
Any account of church and state that challenges prevailing paradigms must answer the strongest objections of its critics. Three objections in particular recur: the claim that neutrality is necessary in plural societies, the claim that magistrates must enforce both tables of the law, and the claim that the state must order the common good. Each carries weight within its own system, but each collapses once tested against ontological fidelity.
1. The Liberal Neutrality Objection.The liberal tradition insists that the state must remain neutral between comprehensive doctrines. Locke argued that magistrates have no competence in matters of salvation and must limit themselves to civil peace. Rawls advanced this further, requiring that political justification exclude all appeals to comprehensive truth. Neutrality, they claim, is the safeguard of liberty.
Yet neutrality is a myth. Every regime encodes ontology. By defining harm, dignity, or fairness, the state legislates kinds, even as it denies doing so. The result is not neutrality but concealed creed. The submetaphysical framework does not abolish pluralism but clarifies its basis: liberty of conscience is secured not by feigned neutrality but by jurisdictional humility. The state restrains coercion and fraud without legislating kinds, thereby protecting dissent rather than absorbing it.
2. The Theonomic Objection.Some argue, by appeal to the Reformed tradition, that magistrates must enforce both tables of the law — that true fidelity requires civil enforcement of the first commandment as well as the sixth. If God is sovereign, they reason, no part of His law may be exempt from civil sanction.
Yet this collapses the distinction between New and Old Covenant. Under the New Covenant, the church’s witness is non-coercive, for Christ declared, “My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight” (John 18:36, KJV). To coerce worship is to effigiate faith, reducing confession to compulsion. The magistrate’s sword is given only for the horizontal plane — restraining violence and enforcing restitution — while the vertical plane of worship remains under Christ’s headship. Theonomy mistakes zeal for fidelity, but in so doing displaces the order Christ Himself established.
3. The Civic Republican Objection.From antiquity to modernity, many have argued that the state must order the common good. Aristotle held that the polis exists for the sake of the good life. Modern civic republicans echo this, treating the state as custodian of shared virtue and dignity. Without such direction, they warn, society fragments into selfish interests.
There is indeed a limited sense in which a “common good” belongs to civil authority. Properly understood, it consists in peace, order, and restitution — the prudential conditions that protect neighbor-love and secure space for faithful witness. But beyond this, the “common good” in civic-republican terms becomes a pseudo-type. Absent divine revelation, it is whatever the ruling order declares it to be. Appeals to this kind of common good have repeatedly justified censorship, suppression of dissent, and enforced conformity. What appears noble is often coercion under another name. True good is defined by God alone, and human government may only preserve the space for its pursuit through restitutional justice. Once the state claims to legislate the good directly, it sacralizes itself and collapses into effigiation.
Conclusion.Each objection rests on an implicit arrogation of divine prerogative. Liberal neutrality masks ontology, theonomy collapses covenants, and civic republicanism inflates the state into an idol. Against all three, the submetaphysical framework asserts a simple boundary: church and state are legitimate only when they remain within their ontological limits — witness without coercion, restraint without sacralization.
Divine Prerogative. God alone possesses the prerogative to define kinds (auctoritas essendi) and to instantiate them (auctoritas instantiandi).
Church. The church is the body of believers confessing Christ as the Son of the living God (Matt. 16:16–18, KJV), under His headship alone. It testifies by exempliatio fidelis and forfeits legitimacy to the extent it arrogates coercive hierarchy or replaces Christ as head.
State. Government is legitimate only as minister of justice, restraining coercion, fraud, and violence, and upholding restitution within a defined domain (Rom. 13:4, KJV). It forfeits legitimacy to the extent it arrogates divine prerogative or sacralizes coercion.
Neutrality. State neutrality is a myth. Every regime encodes ontology. Neutrality functions as a typophoric distortion, projecting impartiality while covertly legislating kinds.
Liberty of Conscience. Liberty of conscience is a divine safeguard, not a state concession. On earth it is probationary, bounded by neighbor’s rights and divine law; in heaven it is fulfilled, with axiology perfectly aligned and coercion obsolete.
Prudential vs. Ontological Law. Civil law may prudentially restrain and restore, but it may not legislate kinds. To legislate ontology is to effigiate divine prerogative.
Sphere Ordering. Moral responsibility begins with persons, then extends to families, local communities, and the church. The state intervenes only where coercion, fraud, or violence overwhelm these lower spheres.
Diagnostics. Simulation is exposed by typophoric inflation, pseudo-instantiation, narrative displacement, and coercion creep. Where these occur, separation has already collapsed.
Speech and Conscience. Compelled affirmation of contested kinds constitutes civil blasphemy, demanding confession to the state’s creed.
Common Good. Appeals to the “common good” without divine revelation constitute pseudo-types, legitimizing coercion in the guise of virtue. The true common good is limited to peace, order, and restitution.
True Separation. True separation is not institutional rivalry but ontological fidelity: the church witnesses without coercion; the state restrains without sacralization. Both remain legitimate only within these boundaries.
The phrase “separation of church and state” has too often been reduced to a pragmatic negotiation between institutions. Once measured through the lens of ontology, however, it is revealed to be far more: a boundary of fidelity set by God Himself. The church is not an institution but the body of believers confessing Christ as the Son of the living God. Its head is Christ alone, and its authority is testimonial, not coercive. The state, in turn, is not a sacred sovereign but a minister of justice, authorized to restrain coercion, fraud, and violence, and to uphold restitution.
When these boundaries are broadly respected, liberty of conscience is preserved. The church bears witness without sword. The state restrains evil without sacralization. Both honor God’s prerogative to the extent they remain within their ontological limits. Yet when these boundaries are transgressed, simulation emerges. The church effigiates its witness into hierarchy, displacing Christ as head. The state effigiates itself into pseudo-sovereignty, legislating kinds under the mask of neutrality or common good. In both cases, divine prerogative is arrogated, and liberty of conscience is weakened or destroyed.
The true separation of church and state, then, is not institutional rivalry but ontological clarity. It is the recognition that God alone defines and instantiates kinds, while church and state exist only as derivative witnesses to His order. This recognition dismantles the myth of neutrality and replaces it with procedural modesty oriented to restitution: civil law justified only by the protection of persons against coercion, fraud, and violence, and the restoration of what has been taken. Such modesty resists both the coercions of theocracy and the sacral pretenses of civic religion. Liberty, in this frame, is not a concession of the state but a covenantal safeguard of God.
The calling of believers in every generation is to resist simulation, to discern effigiation, and to remain faithful in witness. The calling of magistrates is to restrain injustice without arrogating sovereignty. Both church and state stand under the same double prerogative, and both are judged by the same Lord, who alone is Head of the church and King of kings.
