David J.
Engelsma
[Source: The Standard Bearer, vol. 65, no. 13
(1 April, 1989), pp. 293-295,
and no. 14 (15 April, 1989),
pp. 317-320]
In
the February 15, 1989 issue of this magazine appeared a letter out of
strife-torn Northern Ireland referring to the views on the Christian’s calling
towards the civil government of the Scottish Presbyterian, Samuel Rutherford.
This letter asked whether the teaching of Rutherford is in harmony with the
teaching of John Calvin, or whether it is “a departure from the Reformed Faith
and Scripture itself and therefore to be exposed and repudiated as error?” In
response to our request, our correspondent has written a summary of
Rutherford’s beliefs on this matter, which we publish in this issue under the
heading, “Rutherford and Resistance” [see Appendix B of this book—Edit.]. The article sets forth in brief the contents
of the book in which Rutherford propounded his political theory, the
famed Lex, Rex: The
Law and the Prince.
Because
Rutherford’s position on the calling of the Christian towards the state is, by
this time, the prevailing position, not only of Presbyterian and Reformed
people, but also of evangelicals of every stripe, and because this position is
spiritually perilous to believers in times peculiarly suited to make
Rutherford’s position appealing to believers, an examination of this position,
as our correspondent has requested, will be profitable for us all. We will be
assuming, and not restating, the doctrine of the state that was developed by
many writers in the special issue of December 1, 1988 that occasioned the
request [chapters 1-9 of this book—Edit.], and that was enlarged upon in two
subsequent editorials on “Another Look at Non-Resistance” [Appendix A of this
book—Edit.]. We remain convinced that
this doctrine of the state is, in the main, the Reformed teaching, based
squarely on the inspired Scriptures.
Rutherford’s position,
which is that also of many Presbyterians, Reformed, and evangelicals, is that
the Christian has the perfect right to revolt against the rulers of the nation
under certain circumstances. It is not merely Rutherford’s position that the
believer is required at times to refuse to obey the rulers (which no one
denies); but it is his teaching that the Christian may take up arms against the
existing government in order to overthrow it and set up a new government. The
calling to submit is conditional. The condition is that the rulers faithfully
carry out their duty. When the magistrates become unfaithful to their duty,
ruling unjustly and tyrannically, the Christian is released from his obligation
to submit and may freely resist the officials of the state.
Presbyterian men and
women put this doctrine into practice. Rutherford issued Lex, Rex (in
which this teaching was set forth) in the heat of the conflict between Scottish
Presbyterianism and the tyrannical Stuart kings. Encouraged by the license
given them in this book, Presbyterians declared themselves free from the
authority of the kings and parliaments of their country, fought against the
king’s officers and armies with the decidedly carnal weapons of bullet and
steel, and refused to pay taxes. When the Presbyterian preacher, James Renwick,
was on trial for his life in 1688, he was asked if he acknowledged King James
II to be his lawful sovereign. He answered, “No! I own all authority that has
its prescriptions and limitations from the Word of God …” To the question
whether he had taught that it was unlawful to pay taxes to the king and his
government, Renwick replied that “it was unlawful so to do” (that is, pay taxes
to such a king and such a government) (see Jock Purves, Fair Sunshine,
pp. 111, 112). Presbyterians resisted
the higher powers. Not all did, as
Purves reminds us in his delightful little study of the Scottish “Covenanters,”
as the Presbyterians of that day were called, for many bore their persecution
at the hands of the wicked, tyrannical, and anti-Christian Stuart kings
patiently. But some revolted. And they
did so because they believed that submission to government was conditional. For
this belief, Samuel Rutherford was largely responsible.
Rutherford’s position
in Lex, Rex is erroneous.
It
has already been shown in a previous editorial [Appendix B of this book—Edit.] that
this position is violently in conflict with the teaching of John Calvin.
Rutherford, like his fellow countryman, John Knox, rejected Calvin’s teaching
as to the unconditional nature of the believer’s calling to submit to the
state.
This
departure from Calvin is serious because Calvin faithfully gave the teaching of
the Word of God.
The
error is, first, that Rutherford supposes the source of the state, and its
authority, to be the people. There is very little difference between his view
and the modern view that holds that government is the result of a compact
between the ruler and the ruled, so that whenever the ruler fails to keep his
end of the bargain, the ruled have every right to withhold their submission,
and rebel. Scripture, however, teaches that the source of government is God.
Not only government in general, but every existing government—whatever
government there may be—has been set up in authority by God. “For there is no
power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1). Even
when it is the case that God uses election by the people to put rulers in
office, as is the case in our own country, the source of these rulers’
authority is not the people, but God. Besides, the notion that government
is due to a “social compact” is a pure fiction, historically. God established
government in the headship of Adam, quite independently of any agreement of
wife Eve or of the posterity of Adam. Government through democratic process has
been very rare in history, and is relatively recent. Were the Roman Caesars of
the apostles’ time chosen by popular vote? Did the Christians addressed by the
first epistle of Peter suppose that the royal power of the kings whom they were
called to honor in reality lay in them? Did our Lord teach that Pilate’s
authority came to him from below (the people) or from above (God), in John 19:11?
This
error about the source of the state’s authority is basic. If the “royal power
is three ways in the people,” as Rutherford, and many today, teach, submission
by the citizens is indeed conditional. I would go further and say that, in this
case, submission depends upon the whims of the people. For the ruler is nothing
but a creature of the people. But if the source of the state is God, submission
depends, not upon the will of the people, but upon the will of God.
It
is a second error of Rutherford that he misinterprets the crucial passage of
Scripture on this question: Romans
13:1-7. At bottom, the issue is one of the authority of the Word of
God; but then the Word must be rightly divided. Rutherford explains Romans 13 as teaching that the
Christian citizen must submit to the government only if the government on its
part is carrying out its duty, namely, punishing evildoers and praising
well-doers. The submission enjoined in Romans
13 is a conditional submission. This fits his theory as
to the origin of government in a contract between the people of a nation and
its rulers. They have made a bargain. As soon as the rulers fail to keep their
part of the bargain, the people are freed from their obligations. Verses 3 and
4, then, are the condition for the calling of the Christian in verses 1, 2, and
5.
This
has become a popular interpretation of the passage among Reformed and
evangelical theologians. It is the interpretation of Francis A. Schaeffer in
his A Christian Manifesto, in which (with express appeal to
Rutherford’s Lex, Rex) this influential evangelical thinker
legitimizes the use of civil disobedience and the resort to force by Christians
against the government. This is also the interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 of so
conservative a Bible expositor as William Hendriksen. Hendriksen does not think
that Romans 13:1-7 explicitly
answers the question, “Does the moment ever arrive when, because of continued
governmental oppression and corruption, the citizens have the right, and
perhaps the duty, to overthrow such a government and to establish another in
its place?” In fact, he supposes that the passage implies that the answer to
this question is yes—for Paul is thinking only of the ruler who does his duty,
i.e., rules justly. Hendriksen goes so far as to mistranslate verse 6: “… for
when the authorities faithfully devote themselves to this end, they are God’s
ministers.” The text, of course, does not contain the word, “when,” reading
simply, “for they are God’s ministers …”
This
classic passage on the Christian’s calling towards the state does indeed
lay down the state’s duty towards the people, as well as the Christian citizen’s
duty towards the state; but the duty of the Christian is not conditioned by the
faithfulness of the state. Paul does not write, “Let every soul be subject to
the higher authorities, if they show themselves just and good.” The
gospel-precept of submission is unconditional. It is based solely on the
government’s being ordained of God. Peter expressly says that submission
must be given to the “froward” authority, as well as to the good and gentle
authority (I Pet. 2:18). The
Roman government of Paul’s day was certainly not a good, just, Christian state.
It was corrupt. It was the fulfillment of the prophecy of the fourth beast
of Daniel 7, which blasphemes the Most
High, opposes the Kingdom of God, and oppresses the saints. Every Christian to whom Paul wrote knew this
well; for this state had condemned and crucified Jesus. But it was still the “higher
power.” The Christian had still to submit to it. Indeed, most governments and
most officials of governments are ungodly, unjust, and unfaithful to their
calling as servants of God. Rutherford was correct in his response from his
deathbed to the officials of Charles II who served him with a summons to appear
for trial, that the heaven to which he hoped shortly to go was a place “where
few kings and great folks come.” If Christians must submit only to Christian
governments or to rulers who are righteous, they will submit to no government
at all and to precious few government officials.
In
explaining I Peter 2:13 (“Submit
yourselves … to the king”) and Titus
3:1 (“Put them in mind to be subject to principalities and
powers, to obey magistrates …”), Rutherford tries to evade the force of the
apostolic admonition by distinguishing between the office and the man
occupying the office, as though one might reverence “kingship” while
revolting against the current “king”:
Also, it is true, subjection to Nero (the
New Testament requires submission to the moral monster, Nero!—DJE) … is
commanded here, but to Nero as such a one as he is obliged, de jure (by
right—DJE) to be … but that Paul commandeth subjection to Nero, and that
principally and solely, as he was such a man, de facto (in actual
fact—DJE), I shall then believe, when antichristian prelates turn Paul’s
bishops … (Lex, Rex, Question XXXIII).
This
evasion is not unfamiliar even among us. It is used by the wife who professes
to honor the “headship” of the husband as a general principle, but who rebels
against her own particular “husband.” It is the tactic of the very pious church
member who is loud in his protestations that he has the greatest respect for
the office of “pastor” and the office of “elder,” but who treats his own
particular pastor and his own particular elders shamefully. It is the clever distinction that teenagers
know how to make: “Oh, yes, I believe that the parental office is
authoritative; but I rebel against my own particular parents because they are
unworthy of my respect.” But the distinction is unbiblical. Scripture calls us
to submit to the flesh-and-blood men and women in their offices on account
of the office they occupy. Specifically,
Romans 13:1-7 and I Peter 2:13-14 call us to
submit to President Bush, Prime Minister Thatcher, my own parents, and the
policeman who patrols the highway.
A
third error of the Rutherford-position is that it confuses the theocracy of
the Old Testament with the nation to which those who maintain this
position belong. Rutherford viewed Presbyterian Scotland as the kingdom of
God. It ought, therefore, to resist the heathen king and his Arminian, Roman
Catholic-leaning bishops with force, just as Israel warred against her godless
foes in ancient times. And the Presbyterians ought in this way to restore the
kingdom of God in Scotland. This explains his use of the Old Testament to
justify resistance. But Scotland never was the kingdom of God! Nor is Northern
Ireland God’s kingdom, or South Africa, or the United States of America. The
kingdom of God is the true church in these nations. It is entirely and
radically different and distinct from the state. It is not, and may not be,
identified and entangled with the government of the nation. It is spiritual,
not earthly. Its power is spiritual, not physical. Its weapon is the Word of
God, never gun and sword. The confusion of church and state that began with
Constantine in the fourth century has been disastrous. Luther and Calvin began
to straighten things out again, so that the church would be the church and the
state would be the state—each with its own sphere of authority, each
with its own kind of authority, each with its own calling. For
Presbyterians to engage in political resistance against ungodly rulers in the
name of establishing, or restoring, a Christian nation in the United States, or
God’s kingdom in Ulster, is ignorance of the fundamental reality of the
kingdom of God.
A
fourth error in Rutherford is the sad misunderstanding of the calling of the
Presbyterian Christian and of the Presbyterian church under a government that
oppresses the saints because of their confession of the truth. This calling is
not that the saints defend themselves and the purity of their worship with
force—much less that they take the offensive to overthrow the persecuting
government. But our calling is to suffer for Christ’s sake. Suffering
for Christ’s sake is not the ultimate evil, to be avoided at all costs, but a
privilege and a blessing: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for
righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 5:10). That was the true
glory of the Covenanters in the “killing time.” It was not the marching of some
of them to do battle with the king’s dragons, though they were singing Psalm 68 as they came on. But
it was their patient endurance of cruel suffering for the sake of the “crown
rights of King Jesus.” Even when the state becomes the persecuting beast, the
believer may not resist.
The
submission that has such an important place in the Christian life is unconditional.
Unconditionally, we submit to God. Unconditionally, we submit to those whom God
puts over us (which does not, I repeat, imply unconditional obedience).
Conditionality is the bane of the Christian life and the ruin of the vital
institutions in which this life is to be lived (as it is the spoiling of the
gospel of grace). Wives now submit to their husbands, conditionally—if their
husbands please them. Children submit to their parents, conditionally—if they
approve their parents’ rule. Church members submit to their elders,
conditionally—if they like the particular elders and if the elders’ decisions
suit them. This is supposed to be Protestant Christianity. It is not. It is
revolution and anarchy. It does not come from the Spirit of Him Who submitted
to unjust authority. It arises from the king that sits in the breast of each of
us. The result is divorce, strife in the home, schism in the church, and shame
heaped on the name of Jesus Christ.
Rutherford
himself recognized that the practical consequence of his position was the chaos
of the mob. To the question, who finally determines whether the rulers are
tyrants, his answer was, “There is a court of necessity no less than a court of
justice and the fundamental laws must then speak; and it is with the people in
this extremity as if they had no ruler.” This is to dissolve all order in the
nation, and to baptize the disorder as Presbyterian. The dreadful evils to
which Rutherford’s position leads were starkly illustrated in the cold-blooded
murder of Archbishop James Sharp by a band of Presbyterians in the course of
their resistance to the higher powers in the seventeenth century. The deed was
dreadful, not only because it was murder, but because it was murder done in the
name of Jesus Christ as confessed by the Reformed religion. Of it, even
Alexander Smellie, sympathetic though he was to the “men of the covenant,” had
to say, “The deeds were foully done.” But the deed was born from the notion
that submission to the state is conditional. Whenever Christians take up
the sword to defend Jesus Christ, or to promote His gospel, against a hostile
state, similar atrocities will stain His banner. Indeed, the very act of taking
up the sword is a blot on His glorious standard.
This
is no mere academic study of a slice of history.
The
question, conditional or unconditional submission to the higher powers, is a
living issue for every Reformed Christian in every nation. Without exception,
Christians are living under governments that are not Christian and under
governmental officials who are unjust. Increasingly, the state exalts itself as
the ultimate reality in human life, taking on the features of the Antichrist.
Pressure will be exerted upon the confessing church. Her calling will be what
it has always been, namely, faithfulness to her Lord Jesus Christ—faithfulness
in pure worship; faithfulness in orthodox confession and preaching;
faithfulness in a biblical liturgy and right church government; faithfulness in
the godly rearing of the covenant children. There may be no compromise! Jesus
Christ is Lord—not the state. We are ready to seal this confession with our
blood.
But
exactly this faithfulness to King Jesus forbids resistance, unconditionally.
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