Two traditions, of the ‘necessary evil’ and of the ‘noble city’, contend in the Christian attitude towards the State.

Augustinist and Aristotelean alike profess the duty of obedience to the secular power, yet while to the former this is virtue there encountering its occasion to the latter this is virtue there findiug its proper object. Both agree that all power descends from God; the difference arises from how we conceive a causal order of subordinate agents and purposes. Here, as we shall see presently, a scholastic distinction, between instruments and means on one hand and principal, if secondary causes and intermediate ends on the other, is relevant to the contemporary debate about treating sins as crimes. For if the State is no more than a useful convenience then its rule, though providentially ordained to prevent anarchy, is devoid of moral value within itself. If, on the other hand, the State is endowed with a moral authority of its own then virtue and vice as such can be its concern.

You would not expect men of the Augustinist tradition to bow before the powers that be, nor men of the Aristotelean to warn off the government for not minding its own business. History however does not always follow a thin logic of ideas; those who have believed that true religion is other-worldly and not committed to politics have been left most defenceless before the encroachments of temporal power, while a strong thread runs from St Thomas to the sturdy radicalism, and perhaps some of the pressure-groups, of later centuries.