INTRODUCTION The problem of the relation between church and state was ever-present through The Middle Ages as a constant battle between emperors, regents, and the Catholic Church. The never-ending debate was concerned with the entitlement to exercise the power in temporal and spiritual matters, both of which powers the church attempted to claim. After the collapse of the Roman Empire, the rebuilding of society began, and as Southern writes “The dominating ideal in the rebuilding was that the unitary authority of the Empire should be replaced by the unitary authority of the papacy.”1 The Roman church thus held a great deal of power, and in Rome the executive power in spiritual and temporal matters was singular.2 The complex of problems about …show more content…
Although this is true in some parts of Luther’s writings, this paper will regard the doctrine of the two kingdoms as Luther’s Zwei-Regimente-Lehre rather than his Zwei-Reiche-Lehre.4 These two quite different ideas are the source of great debate in Lutheran scholarship as it can often be difficult to distin- guish between the idea of two separate kingdoms and the idea of the two governments. To be able to distinguish between the two connotations, it is important to try to define the meaning of some principal terms. Luther uses the term Reich, which can mean either kingdom or an office of authority, but it is when he speaks about das geistliche Reich or das weltliche Reich that it has the sense of government, which then is closely connoted to Regiment. This term basically has the meaning of rule or government and is a term used similarly to the second use of Reich stated above, and it is thus used to explain the way in which God rules the world. The terms, however, are often used interchangeably, and it is a source of great debate how to interpret this part of Luther’s theology.5 A line of demarcation is therefore necessary to avoid confusion of the terms; the term governments is used in this paper, and it is treated synonymously with the term kingdoms whenever it is clear that Luther talks about the ways in which God executes his will in the world through the spiritual and temporal spheres, and along these lines the paper will not consider the German term used in every instance unless the usage of terms is ambiguous. This distinction should make it possible to maintain the focus of this paper on the understanding of the two governments and the political thought of Martin Luther as he engages with the problem of the division of power in the spiritual and temporal realm on