Can the Church consider itself a kind of state?

From its beginnings, the Church lived in the world, persecuted and cast out. Yet she never established a state for her members, but considered them to be a holy leaven [in the world] whose hearts are attached to their heavenly homeland. As the apostle Paul says, “Therefore, let us go forth to Him, outside the camp, bearing His reproach. For here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come” (Heb. 13:13–14). Truly the Church is the new Israel, a new people with a heavenly mission in the very midst of the world.

899 Tatian, Address to Greeks 4 (ANF 2:66).

900 Tertullian, Apology 44 (ANF 3:50).

901 Tertullian, Apology 37 (ANF 3:45).

902 Tertullian, Apology 34 (ANF 3:43).

903 Tertullian, To Scapula 2 (ANF 3:105).

The Lord Christ speaks of the believer or the Church as leaven that leavens the whole lump. Many of the early Church Fathers also talked about the community of the Church as an ideal community, the holy city of God, a new life, or the Kingdom of God on earth. Given all these titles that arose through the lived experience of the Church, she never felt the need to become a state within a state, for she is the holy leaven that must closely interact with the dough around it in order to sanctify the whole lump.

St. Clement of Alexandria says, “The universal Father is one, and one the universal Word; and the Holy Spirit is one and the same everywhere, and one is the only virgin mother. I love to call her the Church … But she is once virgin and mother — pure as a virgin, loving as a mother.”⁹⁰⁴ Christians are a new people, but they are not another race. They are identified by their fellowship, but they are not a race different to other races.

Origen says, “Christians are not a single nation but are one people from all nations. And for this reason Moses named them ‘not a nation’ (Deut. 32:21) as a supreme honor since they were not one nation, but can be called a nation of all nations.”⁹⁰⁵ The Apostolic Fathers and those who came after them saw the Church as being composed of a new kind of people who form a spiritual army in which every believer knows his station. It has a hierarchical structure whose head is the Lord Christ, the King of kings and the Savior of all, to whom everyone in heaven and on earth submits. Christians fight spiritually under His banner, and whoever deserts Him perishes.

St. Ignatius of Antioch says, “Let your baptism endure as your arms; your faith as your helmet; your love as your spear; your patience as a complete panoply. Let your works be the charge assigned to you, that you may obtain for them a most worthy recompense.”⁹⁰⁶ The precise structure of Christian churches worried the rulers of the Roman state, who saw them as institutions with their own laws and regulations that might conflict with those of the Roman state and its laws.

St. Clement of Rome says, “Let us then, men and brethren, with all energy act the part of soldiers, in accordance with His holy commandments. Let us consider those who serve under our generals, with what order, obedience, and submissiveness they perform the things which are commanded them. All are not prefects, nor commanders of a thousand, nor of a hundred, nor of fifty, nor the like, but each one in his own rank performs the things commanded by the king and the generals. The great cannot subsist without the small, nor the small without the great. There is a kind of mixture in all things, and thence arises mutual advantage.”⁹⁰⁷

904 St. Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor (Paedagogus) 1.6 (ANF 2:220).

905 Origen of Alexandria, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, Books 6–10 8.6.6 (FOTC 104:152).

906 St. Ignatius of Antioch, Epistle to Polycarp 6 (ANF 1:95).

907 St. Clement of Rome, First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians 37 (ANF 1:15).