The Inquisition: Religious History
Freedom of Religion in Early Christianity 
In the early 200s Christians were faced with state-mandated
worship of gods they did not believe in. Thomas Jefferson,
one of America's founding fathers, could have spoken Tertullian's
stirring words about the rights of man in response to this
persecution:
However, it is a fundamental human right, a privilege
of nature, that every man should worship according to his
own convictions: one man's religion neither harms nor helps
another man. It is assuredly no part of religion to compel
religion - to which free-will and not force should lead
us - the sacrificial victims even being required of a willing
mind. You will render no real service to your gods by compelling
us to sacrifice. [1]
Indeed, the Catholic Encyclopedia notes in its article
about the Inquisition that religious liberty was orthodox
Christian teaching for its first three centuries;
the time closest to the pattern and example of the apostolic
church:
The Christian teachers of the first three centuries insisted,
as was natural for them, on complete religious liberty;
furthermore, they ... urged the principle that religion could
not be forced on others... [2]
Oh, that such had been the teaching of the Church for
the following seventeen centuries! How much peace the world
would have known instead of bloodshed, religious war, and
strife. Most of all, the Inquisition would not
have darkened the name of Christ and would not still inspire
shock and shame in both non-Christians and Christians to
this day.
Coercion: the Pollution of Religion
More than a few historians have noted that the persecuted,
when the tables are turned, often become the persecutors.
It is objective evidence of the fallen human desire for
revenge that burns within them while suffering persecution.
The greatest and most unfortunate example of this, in terms
of the suffering that came to others, is early Christianity.
From the gracious soul liberty she spoke of while powerless,
once in power she turned into a greater oppressor than
Rome had ever been. Another example is the Puritans fleeing
England, seeking liberty in New England. Once established
there, they harshly imposed their own views of church and
state on all within their reach.
Some of the most eloquent defenses of liberty then, have
come from those not yet ascended to earthly power and its
corrupting influence. Christianity had such a moment in
the year AD 308. The Emperor's persecutions of Christians
had ended only three years before, when Lactantius, an
apologist for the Christian faith, wrote this impassioned
appeal for religious liberty:
For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death,
but by dying; not by cruelty, but by patient endurance;
not by guilt, but by good faith... it is necessary for that
which is good to have place in religion, and not that which
is evil. For if you wish to defend religion by bloodshed,
and by tortures, and by guilt, it will no longer be defended,
but will be polluted and profaned. For nothing is so much
a matter of free-will as religion; in which, if the mind
of the worshipper is disinclined to it, religion is at
once taken away, and ceases to exist. [3]
If only the popes and inquisitors had learned this lesson
by heart! But as it was, both the Church Fathers and Scripture
itself were set aside in the urgent hunt for heresy that
would dominate Europe for centuries, polluting and profaning
everything it touched. For Lactantius echoed the famous
words of the rabbi Gamaliel that were recorded in the New
Testament, in Acts 5, when he admonished his fellow Jewish
leaders to leave the disciples alone. For, he reasoned,
if they were mere men, their movement would fail, and if
they were of God, nothing could stop them. [4] Time
would tell; violence and persecution were unnecessary.
Nightfall
Even with the prospect of imperial support in the fourth
century, many Christian leaders continued to oppose punishment
for heresy. They argued that the mild and gentle laws of
Christ annulled the severe degrees of the Old Testament.
His penalty for heresy was exclusion from the social life
of the faith: "treat them as a tax-collector." [5] But
the fact that the church was now joined with the state,
which was led by men like Constantine who viewed themselves
as spiritual leaders, meant that the bishops would now
take their lead not from Scripture, nor from the early
church fathers, but from the Emperor himself.
This irrevocably changed the church. It would make possible
the embrace by the Church of many other powerful leaders
down through history. It was the cost the earthly power
demanded for its protection of the spiritual power of the
Church. When the Bishop of Seville in Spain was executed
in AD 385 for heresy, Ambrose, one of the greatest of the
Church Fathers, called it a crime. But this could not stem
the tide. Soon, the torture and execution of heretics were
being justified by appeals to the Old Testament, as though
the Empire had become the Israel of God. [6] It
was as though, practically speaking, the New Testament
had evaporated.
The first believers had taken the types of the Old Testament
spiritually - as spiritual lessons - seeing, for instance,
their warfare now as spiritual, and no longer against flesh
and blood. [7] The New
Testament was profoundly ill-suited to be the religion
of state or empire. Its moral demands were too many, its
contempt for the motivating factors of wealth and power
too great, its determination to obey God too high for mean,
small-minded men to build their kingdoms with. It had to
go.
When No Man Can Work
His disciples asked Him, saying, "Rabbi, who sinned, this
man or his parents, that he was born blind?"
Jesus answered, "Neither this man nor his parents sinned,
but that the works of God should be revealed in him. I
must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day;
the night is coming when no one can work . As long as I
am in the world, I am the light of the world." (John 9:2-5)
Night fell - the Dark Ages came - and all those who sought
to actually live by the words of the New Testament could
not do so. They were forcibly stopped, driven from society,
and killed. They were denied "the common air in which to
breathe" [8] by bishop,
emperor, and inquisitor. And even when the Protestant Church
broke away from the Roman Church, it was not the dawning
of a new day. On the contrary, it continued with ill-will
and violence to fulfill this prophecy, thinking all the
while they, like their counterparts, the Catholics, were
doing God a favor. [9]
[1] Tertullian, To
Scapula , Ch. 2, Anti-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3
[2] Article "Inquisition," Catholic
Encyclopedia (newadvent.org)
[3] Lactantius, Divine
Institutes , V:20
[4] Acts 5:33-39
[5] Matthew 18:17
[6] "But, say you, the
State cannot punish in the name of God. Yet was it not
in the name of God that Moses and Phineas consigned to
death the worshippers of the Golden calf and those who
despised the true religion?" - Optatus of Mileve (De Schismate
Donntistarum, III, cc. 6-7)
[7] Ephesians 6:12
[8] So spoke Roger Williams
when driven from Massachusetts into the New England winter
by the Puritans of Boston.
[9] John 16:1-3
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