The Coin Belongs to Caesar, But Caesar Belongs to God

0:00 Peace be with you, friends, for this 29th Sunday of the year. We have this famous story about Caesar and God and rendering to Caesar and to God, which has been the source, as you know, of lots and lots of commentary and controversy over the centuries. And I'm going to try to just shed some light on this famous old dilemma. I'm always kind of amused by how this story opens. So again, the Lord is in dialogue with Pharisees. He's not crazy about them. and we hear that they're plotting how to entrap him in his speech. That's an old game, isn't it? Let's try to set this guy up so whatever he says, it'll go against him. I know a little bit about that, by the way. Anyone that works on the Internet knows about this old trick. And listen to how this guy approaches him. You can just see him practically. Teacher, we know you're a truthful man. You teach the way of God in accordance with the truth.

0:57 You're not concerned with other people's opinions. You don't regard a person's status. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You might say, I know what I'm being buttered up here. I know what I'm being set up for something. So that's what's happening. So then here comes the trap. Here comes the trap. So tell us then, what's your opinion? Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Well, it's pretty good. It's a pretty good trap there, they've said. It's a kind of damned if you do, damned if you don't situation, right? So do I pay Caesar's temple or census tax? If I say yes, well, then I got all the people who are upset at Roman oppression. I got all the revolutionaries, all the zealots angry at me. If I say, no, it's not lawful. We shouldn't pay that tax. Now I got the Romans and I've got their collaborators coming down on me. no matter what I say and the fact that he sets it up, yes or no, I want a yes or no answer.

1:56 Well, either way, heads I win, tails you lose. This is just going to be a disaster. And then Jesus, it's one of the most famous one-liners in history, show me the coin. Whose image is that? Well, it's Caesar's. All right. Give to Caesar what's Caesar's, to God what's God. So clever, one-liner, of course. There's much more going on there, though, I think. Did he automatically, just with that one-liner, solve the problem? Well, no, because in a way, this bequeaths to the whole tradition, this long, long conversation about, if you want, church and state, about the sacred, about the secular, about government versus religion, all of it. coming up out of this exchange, we see this long tradition. You know, in a way, and this question, there's like two great extremes.

2:53 The one we'll call theocratic, theocracy extreme, which is that religion just dominates government. Religion just basically takes over. Think, you know, the present situation in Iran, a country that's run by the mullahs. It's run according to religious Sharia law. its religion has really just taken over the secular or governmental responsibility. Have there been theocracies up and down the centuries? Sure, across the cultures. The other extreme, much more prevalent today in the West, would be a kind of aggressive secularism. They would say, no, no, I mean, government, all that, that belongs to the secular leadership. And religion? Well, that's fine if you like that sort of thing. We'll tolerate it as a kind of private hobby. but it's got nothing to do with the public order. So the one is religion dominates government.

3:47 The other one is, no, government is completely independent. Religion is a sort of, you know, sidelight. It's a footnote, right? Well, if those are the two extremes, have there been attempts over the centuries to find some sort of mediation between those two extremes? Yeah, you point to a number of things. Think even in the Middle Ages, when the divine right of kings held sway. There was still a sense, though, of the two orders, the ecclesial order and the governmental, the kingly order. They even sometimes made reference to the two swords. Remember in the story of the Last Supper when Jesus said, how many swords do you have? We have two. That's enough. So the sword of the state, the sword of the church, etc. Different altar-throne relationships, sometimes tending more toward the altar, more toward the throne. So were there conflicts between these two views?

4:41 I mean, of course. Go back to Henry II in England against Thomas Becket. Watch the movie Becket sometime with Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. It tells that story. But it was between a churchman's prerogatives and the king's prerogatives, and the two of them butted heads. Hey, go a few centuries after that, another Henry and another Thomas, this time Henry VIII and Thomas More. Same kind of battle between the primacy of the church or the primacy of the state, who holds sway. Another Henry, not of England, but Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor. Maybe the famous, he was excommunicated by the Pope Gregory VII, and then Henry has to go to the Pope's winter palace and there beg, you know, in this penitential spirit. So altar throne, king, pope, church, state battles, yeah, they raged throughout the Middle Ages, throughout the history of the church.

5:42 You know, a very interesting place to look here is our own country. Now, I know this sermon goes out beyond America, so my own country in the United States. I think in a kind of stroke of genius, James Madison, who formulated the Bill of Rights in the First Amendment to the Constitution, says Congress shall make no law pertaining to the establishment of religion. He didn't want there to be an official state religion. At the same time, Madison says, there should be no law of Congress restricting the free exercise of religion. As I say, a kind of stroke of genius in this pluralistic religious society where there wasn't a clear consensus about matters of church and faith. no established religion, but no restriction on the free exercise of religion, trying to find that right balance.

6:37 Did Madison solve the problem definitively? Well, clearly not, because up and down the American centuries, we've been debating that problem. Like, well, to what degree are we doing too much establishment, too much restriction? The Supreme Court's gone back and forth on that issue. The last year of my life, I was on this Religious Liberty Commission, and we looked at that issue a lot. Okay, my point here is, you've got these two extreme positions, like theocracy and a sort of radical secularism. Then you've got, over the centuries, a lot of mediating positions of how to bring church and state into some kind of equilibrium. Okay, okay. Now let's go back to Jesus. Let's go back to Jesus and this famous scene. is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? All right, show me the coin. Now watch this, everybody. Whose image is on the coin is what Jesus asked. It's very important. Keep that in mind. Whose imago, whose image is on the coin? Caesar. Okay. To solve this thing, I've got to commit an act of metaphysics. So I'll put my philosopher's hat back on for a minute.

7:50 But it's very important to get this right, because I think the various faulty ways of thinking about this, from one extreme to the other and throughout the middle, depend upon a false understanding of how God relates to the world. So, in a standard view, God would be the supreme being. So, lots of beings from this podium to me to the planet Jupiter, everything in between. and then God would be the biggest thing around. He'd be the greatest of all beings. Now watch what happens if we understand God in that way.

8:29 Let's say the planet Jupiter, which is the biggest of the planets, if the planet Jupiter fell out of orbit and now is falling toward the sun, it's on a collision course with Earth, what's going to happen? Earth will just be obliterated. It'll just be destroyed. Jupiter will overwhelm it. Because watch, in the world of things, there's a competitiveness. And the bigger the thing, the more powerful it is. There's a mutual exclusivity in the world of things. Now, flip this around. Let's say Jupiter stays where it is. It's not coming crashing toward the earth. It's very, very easy for me to forget about it. In fact, I rarely think about the planet Jupiter. It has zero impact on my life.

9:21 I live my life without any reference to the planet Jupiter. Now, can you see my point here? These two extremes of religion just obliterates the state. It just dominates government. It just takes over theocratic. Or secularism. I'm indifferent to God. I'm just completely doing fine without God. But both of those extremes are predicated upon the assumption that God is a big being among many. The correct metaphysics, everybody, and you want the details, read St. Thomas Aquinas. The correct metaphysics is not that God is the supreme being, one among many. Rather, God, Aquinas says, is ipsum esse subsistence. He's the sheer act of to be itself, which is to say the creative ground from which all finite reality comes.

10:23 Not a being in the world like the ancient mythological gods and goddesses, but the creative source of all that is. Now watch what that means. Watch what that means. Is the world therefore other than God? Yeah, yeah. The world has its own integrity, its own independence. God is not one of the denizens of the world. God is not in a threatening, conflictual relationship with anything in the world. Okay, but at the same time, is God present to everything in the world? Yeah, because he's the creator of all things. He is the creative ground of all reality. He sustains all reality and then draws it to himself. Where is God?

11:14 Asked the catechism. Answer, everywhere. Yeah, not as a big being in the world, but as the source of the world's existence. You see how this now, everybody, is moving us toward a solution of this problem. When we conceive of God as a big being, we're left with these dilemmas of too much religion, not enough religion. and religion overbearing the state having too much—a plague on both your houses. Rather, what? God can let the world be, the church can let government be and do its thing, even as it acknowledges that God impinges upon, sustains, and draws to itself the work of government. Go back to that image idea again. whose image, Jesus asks, is on the coin?

12:10 Caesar, all right? It's Caesar's coin, stamped with his image. Caesar's the Roman emperor. He's rightly constituted. He runs the show here. All right, render to Caesar what's Caesar's. But see, here's the implied truth. What image is on Caesar? God's image. because all human beings we hear are made in the image and likeness of God. that coin belongs to Caesar. Fair enough.

12:47 Caesar belongs to God. Caesar has his own legitimate role to play and work to do. Uh-huh. And Caesar's work belongs to God and the purposes of God. Go now to one of Caesar's local representatives, the governor of Judea at the time of Jesus called Pontius Pilatus. when he says to Jesus, Don't you know I have the power to crucify you or let you go? And Jesus says to him, You would have no power unless it had been given to you from above. Notice, please, the beautiful balance there. You have power, Caesar, or Pilate. You do. I acknowledge that. But you wouldn't have that power unless it came from God and was ordered by God.

13:43 Yep, the coin belongs to Caesar. Fair enough. Caesar's got his own role to play. But Caesar belongs to God. Once we get that, I think we move toward solving this dilemma as Jesus wanted us to.