A strange movement has developed of late whereby leading pastors of
the reformed faith teach a doctrine that amounts to the divine right of
kings. Advocating an oversimplified obedience to passages such as
Romans 13, some of these teachers such as Dr. John McArthur go so far as
to posit that the American Revolution was an act of un-biblical
rebellion and that the American nation was founded in sin.
This
teaching is seductive because it relieves both pastor and pew from
involvement in public affairs and the troubling decisions that arise in
the imperfect and often stormy relationship between the truly practicing
Christian and government. This doctrine sits well with oh so holy but culturally
disengaged church leaders since it offers theological justification for
withdrawal from the culture war being fought around them. This
compromise also sits well with the anti-Christian culture and offers them a great advantage. The confessing church can believe what it will so long as they do
nothing about it and keep their beliefs to themselves in their ever shrinking congregations but out of the
public square.
The net result of this teaching to the casual hearer is a form of sanctified isolation and pacifism that is repugnant
to both the scriptures and history. The early
reformers would be appalled if they heard such a teaching in their name.
John Calvin addressed the complexities of the Romans 13 dilemma well
and in so doing set forth the founding principles of a legal theory
known as the doctrine of the lesser magistrates:
"Although
the Lord takes vengeance on unbridled domination, let us not therefore
suppose that that vengeance is committed to us, to whom no command has
been given but 2675 to obey and suffer. I speak only of private men.
For when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of
kings (as the Ephori, who were opposed to kings among the Spartans, or
Tribunes of the people to consuls among the Romans, or Demarchs to the
senate among the Athenians; and perhaps there is something similar to
this in the power exercised in each kingdom by the three orders, when
they hold their primary diets). So far am I from forbidding these
officially to check the undue license of kings, that if they connive at
kings when they tyrannise and insult over the humbler of the people, I
affirm that their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy,
because they fraudulently betray the liberty of the people, while
knowing that, by the ordinance of God, they are its appointed
guardians.” John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Chapter 20, Para. 31.
Calvin went further in another passage "
For
earthly princes lay aside their power when they rise up against God,
and are unworthy to be reckoned among the number of mankind. We ought,
rather, to spit upon their heads than to obey them."
John Calvin Commentary on Daniel, Lecture XXX Daniel 6:22)
John
Knox was a contemporary of Calvin and the founder of what we now know as
the Presbyterian Church. His dialogue with Queen Mary on this issue is
most instructive:
Queen Mary: "Think ye that subjects, having the power, may resist their princes?" John Knox: "If their princes exceed their bounds, Madam, no doubt they may be resisted, even by power. For
there is neither greater honor, nor greater obedience, to be given to
kings or princes, than God hath commanded to be given unto father and
mother. But the father may be stricken with a frenzy, in which he would
slay his children. If the children arise, join themselves together,
apprehend the father, take the sword from him, bind his hands, and keep
him in prison till his frenzy be overpast: think ye, Madam, that the
children do any wrong? It is even so, Madam, with princes that would
murder the children of God that are subjects unto them. Their blind zeal
is nothing but a very mad frenzy, and therefore, to take the sword from
them, to bind their hands, and to cast them into prison, till they be
brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but
just obedience, because it agreeth with the will of God." At these
words, the Queen stood as it were amazed, more than the quarter of an
hour. Her countenance altered, so that Lord James began to entreat her
and to demand, "What hath offended you, Madam?" At length she said:
"Well then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey you, and not me. They
shall do what they list, and not what I command; and so must I be
subject to them, and not they to me." John Knox: "God forbid that ever I
take upon me to command any to obey me, or yet to set subjects at
liberty to do what pleaseth them! My travail is that both princes and
subjects obey God. Think not, Madam, that wrong is done you, when ye are
willed to be subject to God. It is He that subjects peoples under
princes, and causes obedience to be given unto them. Yea, God craves of
Kings that they be foster-fathers to His Church, and commands Queens to
be nurses to His people. This subjection, Madam, unto God, and unto His
troubled Church, is the greatest dignity that flesh can get upon the
face of the earth; for it shall carry them to everlasting glory." John Knox being interrogated by Mary Queen of Scots http://www.reformation.org/john-knox-interview.html
Previously, in his famous
Appellation to the Nobility and Estates of Scotland (1558) Knox had stated:
“For now the common song of all men is, ‘We must obey our kings, be they good or be they bad; for God has so commanded.....True it is, God has commanded kings to be obeyed; but likewise true it is, that in things which they commit against His glory, He has commanded no obedience, but rather, He has approved, yea, and greatly rewarded, such as have opposed themselves to their ungodly commandments and blind rage."
Samuel
Rutherford, another father of the modern reformed movement, was a
Scottish Presbyterian minister and professor at St. Andrews college. In
his monumental work
Lex Rex he states:
“I lay down this maxim of divinity: Tyranny being a work of Satan,
is not from God, because sin, either habitual or actual, is not from
God: the power that is, must be from God; the magistrate, as magistrate,
is good in nature of office, and the intrinsic end of his office, (Rom.
xiii. 4) for he is the minister of God for thy good; and, therefore, a
power ethical, politic, or moral, to oppress, is not from God, and is
not a power, but a licentious deviation of a power; and is no more from
God, but from sinful nature and the old serpent, than a license to sin.”
Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex, Question IX
Rutherford's statement echoes previous teachings by Augustine,"It seems
to me that an unjust law is no law at all ..." and Aquinas, "Human law
is law only by virtue of its accordance with right reason;
and thus it is manifest that it flows from the eternal law. And in so
far as it deviates from right reason it is called an unjust law; in
such case it is no law at all, but rather a species of violence."
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, Ia-Ilae, q. xciii, art. 3, ad 2m
Great
Britain's most famous jurist, Sir William Blackstone, was often called
the legal father of the American Revolution. Drawing from classical
sources including Cicero and ecclesiastical sources such as Augustine
and Aquinas, Blackstone codified the natural law of philosophy and made
it literally the law of the land on both sides of the Atlantic for
almost 200 years. According to Blackstone:
"This
law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God
Himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding
over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws
are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid
derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or
immediately, from this original ... The doctrines thus delivered we call
the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy
Scriptures. ... Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation,
depend all human laws; that is to say, no human laws should be suffered
to contradict these. ... And herein it is that human laws have their greatest force and efficacy:
for, with regard to such points as are not indifferent, human laws are
only declaratory of, and act in subordination to the former. To instance
in the case of murder: this is expressly forbidden by the divine, and
demonstrably by the natural law; and from these prohibitions arises the
true unlawfulness of this crime. Those human laws that annex a
punishment to it do not at all increase its moral guilt, or add any
fresh obligation in foro conscientiae (in the court of conscience) to
abstain from its perpetration. Nay, if any human law should allow or
enjoin us to commit it, we, are bound to transgress that human law, or
else we must offend both the natural and the divine. Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Part the Second, On the Nature of Laws.
Blackstone's
work cast a long shadow across the Atlantic. It was literally
revolutionary. Some members of parliament accused Blackstone of
fomenting the American Revolution. At that time, there were more copies
of his "Commentaries" in circulation in the colonies where they
controlled their own printing presses than in the whole of Great
Britain. Historian David Barton explained the effect this way:
"...
most Christian denominations during the Founding Era held that while
they were forbidden to overthrow the institution of government and live
in anarchy, they were ‘not’ required blindly to submit to every law and
policy. Those in the Founding Era understood that the general
institution of government was unequivocally ordained by God and was not
to be overthrown, but that did not mean that God approved every specific
government; God had ordained government in lieu of anarchy – He
opposed anarchy, rebellion, lawlessness, and wickedness and wanted
civil government in society. Therefore, a crucial determination in the
colonists’ Biblical exegesis was whether opposition to authority was
simply to resist the general institution of government (an institution
ordained by God Himself), or whether it was instead to resist tyrannical
leaders who had themselves rebelled against God. (The Scriptural model
for this position was repeatedly validated when God Himself raised up
leaders such as Gideon, Ehud, Jepthah, Samson, and Deborah to throw off
tyrannical governments – leaders subsequently praised in Hebrews 11:32
for those acts of faith.)"
In another treatise Barton explained:
“The
Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon (also a signer of the Declaration) also
affirmed: On the part of America, there was not the most distant thought
of subverting the government or of hurting the interest of the people
of Great Britain, but of defending their own privileges from unjust
encroachment; there was not the least desire of withdrawing their
allegiance from the common sovereign [King George III] till it became
absolutely necessary – and indeed, it was his own choice. 27
"Significantly,
as Dr. Witherspoon had correctly noted, it was Great Britain who had
terminated the entreaties; in fact, during the last two years of
America’s appeals, her peaceful pleas were directly met by armed
military force. King George III dispatched 25,000 British troops to
invade his own Colonies, enter the homes of his own citizens to take
their private possessions and goods, and imprison them without trials –
all in violation of his own British Common Law, English Bill of Rights,
and Magna Carta (centuries old documents that formed the basis of the
covenant between British rulers and citizens). Only when those
governmental covenants had been broken by their rulers and America had
been directly attacked did the Americans respond in self-defense.
"On
the basis of these two theological understandings (that God Himself had
ordained the institution of civil government, and that God had
explicitly authorized civil self-defense) the Founding Fathers and the
majority of American Christians in that day believed that they were
conducting themselves in a manner that was not in rebellion to God or
the Scriptures." http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=24548
Blackstone's radical theories of natural law based upon the word of God also had a profound effect in Great Britain:
"The fervor of abolitionism came from the New Testament, a body of
literature providing the universal principles of natural law to attack
slavery. Faith crossed borders and oceans, with Christians in both
Britain and America invoking natural law first to end the slave trade
(1807) and then to abolish it entirely within the British Empire (1833).
"The story really begins in Britain, where an unlikely Member of
Parliament, William Wilberforce, courageously took up the cause of human
emancipation, despite virtually universal opposition .....
he had a conversion experience leading him to devote his life to freeing
those in bondage. In 1791, his bill to abolish the slave trade failed
by a wide margin but he persisted. In 1807, Wilberforce released A Letter on the Abolition of the Slave Trade
on the eve of Parliament’s overwhelming vote to end the trade in human
beings—a remarkable change in fifteen years. In 1823, “God’s politician”
began a ten-year campaign to end slavery entirely, releasing his Appeal
to the Religion, Justice and Humanity of the Inhabitants of the British
Empire in Behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies, in which he claimed that total and unqualified emancipation was a moral and ethical “duty before God.” Wilberforce
died in 1833 just as Parliament abolished slavery. His friend John
Newton, once one of the cruelest of slave traders, later in life went
through a similar “born again” experience and wrote the famous song
“Amazing Grace”—hence the title of the movie about Wilberforce’s
awe-inspiring campaign against slavery."
Throughout
history, this conflict between blind obedience to civil authorities and
rebellion against unjust authority has split the church. In the 1930's
the German church split into two groups, the "Reich Church" which was
faithful to Adolph Hitler and the "Confessing Church" which openly
opposed him as long as possible and then went underground. The leader
of the Confessing Church was Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer who eventually
became an agent of the German intelligence services who were plotting to
assassinate Hitler. He was executed for his part in the
plot:
“After years spent
openly opposing Adolf Hitler and encouraging Germans to turn against his
regime, Dietrich Bonhoeffer — a Christian minister, theologian,
pacifist and German citizen — made a deliberate turn from civil
disobedience to secret participation in a cabal whose aim was to
assassinate the Fuhrer. Bonhoeffer laid aside his Christian pacifism
when he woke up to the fact that Hitler was engaging in genocide. This
outraged Bonhoeffer, who held the deep religious conviction that the
Jews were a people precious to God and deserving of protection, whatever
the personal cost. As a pacifist, Bonhoeffer had quietly refused to
join the military. With his newfound commitment to Hitler's murder he
changed direction and joined the German Abwehr, the wartime intelligence
agency headed by Admiral Wilheim Canaris. Canaris was secretly opposed
to Hitler and was using Abwehr to launch a variety of plots against the
Reich, including assassination attempts. Bonhoeffer never participated
directly in such plots — they had to be carried out by the military,
because officers were the only ones who could get close enough to the
Fuhrer to kill him. Nevertheless, Bonhoeffer aided and encouraged these
plots from his post inside the Abwehr. Pretending to be a loyal servant
of Hitler's Reich, Bonhoeffer was in fact a double agent working towards
Hitler's forcible overthrow. http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2009/06/tiller-long-bonhoeffer
This
historical theme presented itself again in the 1950's in the United
States during the black Civil Rights Movement. Dr. Martin Luther King
stated:
“You express a great
deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a
legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the
Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public
schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us
consciously to break laws. One may well ask: "How can you advocate
breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that
there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to
advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral
responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral
responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine
that "an unjust law is no law at all." Now, what is the difference
between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust?
A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the
law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the
moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law
is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Letter From A Birmingham Jail
Later in the same letter, Dr. King observed:
"We
can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and
everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal."
It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am
sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided
and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived
in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the
Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate
disobeying
these anti-religious laws." Ibid
Similar
statements are now being heard from Christian leaders such as Mat
Staver, Chief Counsel of Liberty Counsel and former Dean of Liberty
University Law School:
“….this
decision or opinion of five lawyers is not the rule of law, we have
established or spoken about that, it is an illegitimate opinion just as
many of the opinions of the Supreme Court have been absolutely
illegitimate, wrong. They’ve been harmful and we have subsequently
recognized them as such. There is a concept that we have discussed in
our marriage pledge about higher law and earthly law. This is a direct
conflict with the higher law, so this is an opinion of five lawyers
that’s illegitimate. They can have their opinion, we shouldn’t accept it
as a legitimate rule of law — it’s not.”
Even institutions that many Evangelicals consider only nominally Christian institutions such as Catholic Hospitals are now under the gun:
“A systematic, more and more obvious persecution of Christians has been going on for some time. Its briefest statement is that no one can be a citizen of this country and a practicing Christian at the same time. Persecution is now so obvious that it needs little emphasis. Yet, most of our citizens refuse to acknowledge it or do anything about those elected and unelected officials, from the president on down, who carry it out in increasingly ominous ways. This country itself was designed to prevent precisely this sort of public persecution. We suddenly realize that the constitutional mechanism to prevent this persecution is not working but is being used to foster, indeed justify, the persecution.” Rev. James v. Schall, SJ http://www.crisismagazine.com/2015/will-catholic-hospitals-be-the-next-target
Just as in the first American Revolution, the time has come for a
biblical response to an American system of civil government that has
proven itself to be illegitimate in the eyes of God. Such a response is
grounded in both solid theology and history. American Christians are now faced with fewer and fewer choices in addressing a civil government bent upon, at minimum, driving them from the
public square if not destroying them outright as a cultural influence.
They can do nothing and by so doing side with the powers of darkness. Martin Luther spoke to this:
"If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest exposition
every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point
which the world and the devil are at the moment attacking, I am not
confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the
battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved to be steady…
[It] is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point [of
attack]."
Quoted by Francis A. Schaeffer in The Great Evangelical Disaster, Crossway, 1984, p. 50-51
Or, they can join their forefathers on the path of the confessing Christian citizen. Direct legal, political and military action by which the authority of a sitting sovereign is declared illegitimate should be the last resort to be engaged in defensively only after all other avenues of recourse and means of appeal have either been exhausted or conclusively proven futile ... and legitimate lesser magistrates are in agreement. Again, this should be the last resort but it should not be condemned as unscriptural. This was the model of the first American Revolution.
The path of the Christian citizen does not promise that its followers will enjoy the temporary advantages that come from obsequious servitude to an illegitimate sovereign. As a matter of fact, it almost certainly assures that you will lose position, privilege, property, friends and even family. But, it also promises a clear conscience before God and an eternal legacy on the right side of history.
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A Postscript:
A
few Sundays ago, I attended a church where the pastor made a statement
that made me want to stand up and cheer. I have said it myself
thousands of time. But, this pastor, a stranger to me, repeated my
thoughts almost verbatim. He looked up from his Bible in the middle of
his sermon, looked out across the congregation and said solemnly, "If
you are able to live in this culture in the state it is in right now and
you are not suffering persecution, then you need to examine your
position in Christ."
The good pastor's brutally honest statement assumes two facts not really in evidence in modern Christianity. The first is that the pulpits of America are plainly and simply identifying the confessing Church's duty to oppose evil in society. This is too often simply not the case. Too many otherwise doctrinally sound churches operate in almost complete isolation from the culture around them. It is possible to attend extremely orthodox churches for years and never once hear the pulpit say plainly and simply, "abortion is murder and it is your duty as a Christian to never do anything to even accommodate it much less participate in it," or "homosexuality is an abomination before God and man and it is your duty to never, ever treat it as normal much less accommodate it."
The second fact not in evidence is the notion that Christians actually practice what is taught in the pulpit. After a couple of decades of practicing law in the Christian community, I can tell you firsthand that serious Christianity is very much a Sunday "suit of clothes" for a lot of people occupying the pews. If taken seriously, in this culture, the teaching mentioned in the last paragraph would cause many successful Christian professionals such as doctors and lawyers to lose their privileges and many more Christians in the workforce to lose their jobs. But, this of course begs the original question, if you as a Christian are still functioning successfully in this evil environment how have you avoided the consequences of standing for your faith? Perhaps, that is the ultimate question.
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