The Origin of Religious Freedom

First Things: Rethinking the History of Religious Freedom by Robert Louis Wilken

Any account of the rise of religious freedom must give a large place to the intellectual contributions of Christian thinkers.

A Reason for Evangelization?

Liberals, statists, and non-believers will not care about the Christian genealogy of rights and rights talk, just as they don't really care about Roman Law or the Common Law, except insofar as it supports their ideology.

RCP: Recovering the Christian Foundations of Human Rights by Peter Berkowitz

Robert Louis Wilken on the Origin of Religious Freedom

Law and Liberty: Fear God. Honor the Emperor. A Conversation with Robert Louis Wilken

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Dr. Robert Louis Wilken on Religious Liberty

"The Religious Roots of Religious Liberty": player.fm and soundcloud

Thoguhts from Dr. Robert Louis Wilken

Living in hard times — lessons from the early Christians…

Robert Louis Wilken on The Journey Home Program

2014:

2013 Interview with Robert Louis Wilken

NEH: Impertinent Questions with Robert Louis Wilken by Meredith Hindley

Can Someone Make the Actual Text Available?

Post by Dominican Vocations (Eastern Province).

Robert Louis Wilken at the Pontifical Faculty of Theology of the Immaculate Conception

Post by Pontifical Faculty of Theology of the Immaculate Conception.

Growth of the Papal Office

Robert Louis Wilken, The First Thousand Years: "The Council of Sardica ended in schism, with each side excommunicating the other, but its significance in the history of the papacy far outstrips the ecclesiastical wars of the fourth century. For the bishops gathered there adopted a set of canons affirming that the bishop of Rome would have the privilege of serving as a court of appeal. That is, Rome acquired what has been called "appellate jurisdiction": the right to adjudicate disputes among other bishops. The term 'appellate' is significant; Rome was called upon to act as judge, not as teacher. Only in the fifth century did Rome begin to see itself charged with responsibility to instruct the church at large." (166-7)

Though he became Catholic, Wilken gives a short (too short, in my opinion) summary of the changes in how the bishops of Rome conceived of their role with respect to the Church Universal during the first millenium. He should write a history and development of the papacy as well. The implications of such a history for the ongoing dialogue between Catholic and Orthodox cannot be overstated, since this was what the next step requires.

The Role of the Bishop of Rome in the Communion of the Church in the First Millennium
Joint Coordinating Committee for the Theological Dialogue between the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church
Aghios Nikolaos, Crete, Greece, September 27 - October 4, 2008

"The Pope Is the First Among the Patriarchs." Just How Remains to Be Seen

The teaching role of the bishop of Rome, apart from an ecumenical council, with respect to the Church Universal has consequences on how we are to understand papal infallibility.

Video: Robert Louis Wilken on The First Thousand Years

Robert Louis Wilken Discusses 'The First Thousand Years' at 2013 VaBook


Impertinent Questions with Robert Louis Wilken by Meredith Hindley

A Manufactured Crisis?

From The Impossible "Road Map" of Peace with the Lefebvrists (via Pertinacious Papist and Rorate Caeli):

Fr. Barsotti wrote:

"I am perplexed with regard to the Council: the plethora of documents, their length, often their language, these frightened me. They are documents that bear witness to a purely human assurance more than two a simple firmness of faith. But above all I am outraged by the behavior of the theologians.”

"The Council is the supreme exercise of the magisterium, and is justified only by a supreme necessity. Could not the fearful gravity of the present situation of the Church stem precisely from the foolishness of having wanted to provoke and tempt the Lord? Was there the desire, perhaps, to constrain God to speak when there was not this supreme necessity? Is that the way it is? In order to justify a Council that presumed to renew all things, it had to be affirmed that everything was going poorly, something that is done constantly, if not by the episcopate then by the theologians.”

"Nothing seems to me more grave, contrary to the holiness of God, than the presumption of clerics who believe, with a pride that is purely diabolical, that they can manipulate the truth, who presume to renew the Church and to save the world without renewing themselves. In all the history of the Church nothing is comparable to the latest Council, at which the Catholic episcopate believed that it could renew all things by obeying nothing other than its own pride, without the effort of holiness, in such open opposition to the law of the gospel that it requires us to believe how the humanity of Christ was the instrument of the omnipotence of the love that saves, in his death.”

I think Fr. Barsotti may have just been musing, but if he was dead set in his judgment, he may have been wrong. The pre-conciliar Church may have been in bad shape after all, a decline that first began with the rise of the modern nation-state and nationalism. In the struggle between the Church and the state [at first nominally Christian but progressively secular], the Church has been losing? What is the nature of the defeat, and how did it happen? I will leave that speculation for a future post. What if the theses of the Constantinian Church/Constantinianism/Constaninian shift are not wholly wrong? The overlap between civil society and the Church was bound to lead to problems as the different authorities, temporal and ecclesial, came into conflict. The questions of the nature of each authority and their limits must be constantly revisited and rethought, and there is no guarantee that the answers of the virtuous and wise will prevail.

But Fr. Barsotti may be right to think that some thought they could renew the Church without first renewing themselves and focusing on their duties. Or they thought they could accomplish it by merely being academics and advocates, rather than as saints and true sons of the Church.

Related:
Robert Louis Wilken, In Defense of Constantine

“The Catholic Roots of Religious Freedom,” by Robert Wilken

Lumen Christi Institute

Robert Louis Wilken's New Book

Yale University Press: The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity

Robert Louis Wilken's New Book

Yale University Press: The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity

Robert Louis Wilken, Tutoring the Affections: Liturgy and Christian Formation in the Early Church

Reditus: An Evening with Robert Louis Wilken