# Formal and virtual power?



## Thinkingaloud (May 1, 2016)

I am hoping someone can help me here on this forum. I've been carefully reading Rutherford's Lex,Rex and in chapter 4 he writes that all men are equal from birth and therefore men are free to choose one over another to be king (so far so good). Rutherford then writes:

"this [civil] power was in the united society , but it was not in them formally, for they then should then have been all one king, and so both above and superior, and below and inferior to themselves, which we cannot say; therefore this power must have been virtually in them, because neither man or community of men can give that which they neither have formally or virtually in them"

I have to admit I struggle to understand what Rutherford means by formal and virtual power. Does anyone know what these terms mean?


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