Philosophy of Civil Government

[C. Matthew McMahon]

This will be different for theonomists vs non-theonomists. But briefly, in either camp, how would you develop a biblical philosophy of civil government?

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

I would say that since God is the supreme Lord and King of all the world, and has ordained civil gvernment. Civil government is established under Him, over the people, and for His own glory. It tends towards the public good. For the public good, He has armed Civil government with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evildoers. (My Paraphrase of WCF 23:1) (Rom. 13:1-4; I Peter 2:13-14)

 

[RamistThomist]

Because God is sovereign and man is not, man's governance finds meaning and legitimacy only and fully in terms of God's government.

The government exists to maintain peace in the land, maintain the rule of law, and protect the citizenry. When it fails to do this it becomes, to quote Augustine, a robber on the grander scale.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

I would emphasize that God has ordained both civil and ecclesiastical government for 1) his own glory; 2) the well-being of his church; and 3) the good of mankind. Both institutions are to acknowledge the Kingship of his Son and rule accordingly by his Word, though they are separate and distinct, allied for the same purpose, God's glory, though charged with different (primarily temporal and primarily spiritual, respectively), though related, jurisdictions. And I would agree with Calvin that the promotion of piety is the chief duty of magistrates.

It is all well said by our historic Reformed Creeds and Confessions on the Civil Magistrate and by Brother Calvin in the Institutes, Book IV, Chap. 20.

[Edited on 8-3-2005 by VirginiaHuguenot]

 

[Peter]

All power and authority belongs to God. He has delegated all power and authority to the Mediator, the God-man Christ. All power and authority in his creatures is delegated to them from God. They are to use this power to His glory, regulated by his law.

 

[RamistThomist]

Originally posted by Peter
All power and authority belongs to God. He has delegated all power and authority to the Mediator, the God-man Christ. All power and authority in his creatures is delegated to them from God. They are to use this power to His glory, regulated by his law.

Ditto, who is the civil magistrate accountable to (temporally speaking)?

 

[Peter]

Temporally, magistrate is accountable to the people he rules. though magistracy is an ordinance of God, it flows from man. Men set up kings, and they set up the bounds of his power and the condition of his kingship.

 

[C. Matthew McMahon]

Those who reject the divine institution of the Civil Magistrate wind up in some sort of totalitarian dictatorship. But the Christian should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar´s. Christ knew that Caesar had an army, nor did he refuse to pay taxes to Rome. In Romans 13:4 the power of the sword is explicitly given to the Government to execute justice. All the Civil Magistrate has authority to protect the life, liberty, and possessions of their subjects.

The state has been given the sword (Romans 13:4) and exercises it for the citizens of the state in protecting life, liberty and possessions. An acceptance of the Bible confirms a limited government. This is an acceptable justification of government, but it does not guarantee a government will act biblically. Tyranny throughout history demonstrates this.

 

[RamistThomist]

Originally posted by webmaster
Those who reject the divine institution of the Civil Magistrate wind up in some sort of totalitarian dictatorship. But the Christian should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar´s. Christ knew that Caesar had an army, nor did he refuse to pay taxes to Rome. In Romans 13:4 the power of the sword is explicitly given to the Government to execute justice. All the Civil Magistrate has authority to protect the life, liberty, and possessions of their subjects.

The state has been given the sword (Romans 13:4) and exercises it for the citizens of the state in protecting life, liberty and possessions. An acceptance of the Bible confirms a limited government. This is an acceptable justification of government, but it does not guarantee a government will act biblically. Tyranny throughout history demonstrates this.

Right, and I don't think Samuel Rutherford would disagree. The best modern book on this is Doug Kelly's The Emergence of Liberty in the Modern World: Calvin's Role in Five Countries.

 

[Peter]

Ditto with one qualification: The government loses its privledge to bear the sword if it does not act biblically. Tyrants are not the ordinance of God.

 

[RamistThomist]

Originally posted by Peter
Ditto with one qualification: The government loses its privledge to bear the sword if it does not act biblically. Tyrants are not the ordinance of God.

We must stress and attack the unbiblical assumption that Paul was writing descriptively, rather than prescriptively. For, if he really did call Nero "good" then Paul has undermined his own system of ethics.

 

[Peter]

He was writting descriptively however he was not describing Nero. Romans 13 was written about a civil govt which a christian could conscientiously submitt to (that did not yet exist) to those who anabaptisticly rejected the ordinance of magistracy in toto .

[Edited on 8-3-2005 by Peter]

 

[Contra_Mundum]

Biblical Government begins with the Sovereignty of God. The higher (and more realistic and biblicallly conformable) this conception, the more sure the foundation.

And I would say that the next step is... Self Government. Without this step, man begins an inevitable slide into top-down tyranny. Where self-government rises, tyranny is on its way out (like it or not, and it never does).

Family government. Gen. 2:24; Ex. 20:12. Natural hierarchy. The seed of corporate government.

Church government. Gen. 4:26. See Calvin on this text.

Civil government. Communal relations. Rules of its order. The worse off people are exercising self-government, the more freedom will be sacrificed to this agency (in the name of protecting what's left). Gen. 10:9-10.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Originally posted by Peter
All power and authority belongs to God. He has delegated all power and authority to the Mediator, the God-man Christ. All power and authority in his creatures is delegated to them from God. They are to use this power to His glory, regulated by his law.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Originally posted by Contra_Mundum
Biblical Government begins with the Sovereignty of God. The higher (and more realistic and biblicallly conformable) this conception, the more sure the foundation.

And I would say that the next step is... Self Government. Without this step, man begins an inevitable slide into top-down tyranny. Where self-government rises, tyranny is on its way out (like it or not, and it never does).

Family government. Gen. 2:24; Ex. 20:12. Natural hierarchy. The seed of corporate government.

Church government. Gen. 4:26. See Calvin on this text.

Civil government. Communal relations. Rules of its order. The worse off people are exercising self-government, the more freedom will be sacrificed to this agency (in the name of protecting what's left). Gen. 10:9-10.

I would also point out, by way of contrast, Judges 21.25: In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

 

[VirginiaHuguenot]

Samuel Rutherford:

That power of government in general must be from God, I make good, 1st, Because (Rom. xiii. 1) "œthere is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God."2nd, God commandeth obedience, and so subjection of conscience to powers; Rom. xiii. 5, "œWherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, (or civil punishment) but also for conscience sake;" 1 Pet. ii. 13, "œSubmit yourselves to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king as supreme," &c. Now God only by a divine law can lay a band of subjection on the conscience, tying men to guilt and punishment if they transgress.

Conclus. All civil power is immediately from God in its root; in that, 1st, God hath made man a social creature, and one who inclineth to be governed by man, then certainly he must have put this power in man's nature; so are we, by good reason, taught by Aristotle.[1] 2nd, God and nature intendeth the policy and peace of mankind, then must God and nature have given to mankind a power to compass this end; and this must be a power of government.

Abraham Kuyper:

Every competent historian will without exception confirm the words of Bancroft: "œThe fanatic for Calvinism was a fanatic for liberty, for in the moral warfare for freedom, his creed was a part of his army, and his most faithful ally in the battle."1 And Groen van Prinsterer has thus expressed it: "œIn Calvinism lies the origin and guarantee of our constitutional liberties." That Calvinism has led public law into new paths, first in Western Europe, then in two Continents, and today more and more among all civilized nations, is admitted by all scientific students, if not yet fully by public opinion.

But for the purpose I have in view, the mere statement of this important fact is insufficient.

In order that the influence of Calvinism on our political development may be felt, it must be shown for what fundamental political conceptions Calvinism has opened the door, and how these political conceptions sprang from its root principle.

This dominating principle was not, soteriologically, justification by faith, but, in the widest sense cosmologically, the Sovereignty of the Triune God over the whole Cosmos, in all its spheres and kingdoms, visible and invisible. A primordial Sovereignty which eradiates in mankind in a threefold deduced supremacy, viz., 1. The Sovereignty in the State; 2. The Sovereignty in Society; and 3. The Sovereignty in the Church.

Allow me to argue this matter in detail by pointing out to you how this threefold deduced Sovereignty was understood by Calvinism.

First then a deduced Sovereignty in that political sphere, which is defined as the State. And then we admit that the impulse to form states arises from man's social nature, which was expressed already by Aristotle, when he called man a zoon politikon. God might have created men as disconnected individuals, standing side by side and without genealogical coherence. Just as Adam was separately created, the second and third and every further man might have been individually called into existence; but this was not the case.

Man is created from man, and by virtue of his birth he is organically united with the whole race. Together we form one humanity, not only with those who are living now, but also with all the generations behind us and with all those who shall come after us pulverized into millions though we may be. All the human race is from one blood. The conception of States, however, which subdivide the earth into continents, and each continent into morsels, does not harmonize with this idea. Then only would the organic unity of our race be realized politically, if one State could embrace all the world, and if the whole of humanity were associated in one world empire. Had sin not intervened, no doubt this would actually have been so. If sin, as a disintegrating force, had not divided humanity into different sections, nothing would have marred or broken the organic unity of our race. And the mistake of the Alexanders, and of the Augusti, and of the Napoleons, was not that they were charmed with the thought of the One World Empire, but it was this"“that they endeavored to realize this idea notwithstanding that the force of sin had dissolved our unity.

In like manner the international cosmopolitan endeavors of the Social-democracy present, in their conception of union, an ideal, which on this very account charms us, even when we are aware that they try to reach the unattainable, in endeavoring to realize this high and holy ideal, now and in a sinful world. Nay, even Anarchy, conceived as the attempt to undo all mechanical connections among men, together with the undoing of all human authority, and to encourage, in their stead, the growth of a new organic tie, arising from nature itself "“ I say, all this is nothing but a looking backward after a lost paradise.

For, indeed, without sin there would have been neither magistrate nor state-order; but political life, in its entirety, would have evolved itself, after a patriarchal fashion, from the life of the family. Neither bar of justice nor police, nor army, nor navy, is conceivable in a world without sin; and thus every rule and ordinance and law would drop away, even as all control and assertion of the power of the magistrate would disappear, were life to develop itself, normally and without hindrance, from its own organic impulse. Who binds up, where nothing is broken? Who uses crutches, where the limbs are sound?

Every State-formation, every assertion of the power of the magistrate, every mechanical means of compelling order and of guaranteeing a safe course of life is therefore always something unnatural; something against which the deeper aspirations of our nature rebel; and which, on this very account, may become the source both of a dreadful abuse of power, on the part of those who exercise it, and of a continuous revolt on the part of the multitude. Thus originated the battle of the ages between Authority and Liberty, and in this battle it was the very innate thirst for liberty which proved itself the God-ordained means to bridle the authority wheresoever it degenerated into despotism. And thus all true conception of the nature of the State and of the assumption of authority by the magistrate, and on the other hand all true conception of the right and duty of the people to defend liberty, depends on what Calvinism has here placed in the foreground, as the primordial truth "“that God has instituted the magistrates, by reason of sin.

In this one thought are hidden both the light-side and the shady side of the life of the State. The shady-side for this multitude of states ought not to exist; there should be only one world-empire. These magistrates rule mechanically and do not harmonize with our nature. And this authority of government is exercised by sinful men, and is therefore subject to all manner of despotic ambitions. But the light-side also, for a sinful humanity, without division of states, without law and government, and without ruling authority, would be a veritable hell on earth; or at least a repetition of that which existed on earth when God drowned the first degenerate race in the deluge. Calvinism has, therefore, by its deep conception of sin laid bare the true root of state-life, and has taught us two things: first "“that we have gratefully to receive, from the hand of God, the institution of the State with its magistrates, as a means of preservation, now indeed indispensable. And on the other hand also that, by virtue of our natural impulse, we must ever watch against the danger which lurks, for our personal liberty, in the power of the State.

But Calvinism has done more. In Politics also it taught us that the human element "“here the people "“may not be considered as the principal thing, so that God is only dragged in to help this people in the hour of its need; but on the contrary that God, in His Majesty, must flame before the eyes of every nation, and that all nations together are to be reckoned before Him as a drop in a bucket and as the small dust of the balances. From the ends of the earth God cites all nations and peoples before His high judgment seat. For God created the nations. They exist for Him. They are His own. And therefore all these nations, and in them humanity, must exist for His glory and consequently after his ordinances, in order that in their well-being, when they walk after His ordinances, His divine wisdom may shine forth.

When therefore humanity falls apart through sin, in a multiplicity of separate peoples; when sin, in the bosom of these nations, separates men and tears them apart, and when sin reveals itself in all manner of shame and unrighteousness "“the glory of God demands that these horrors be bridled, that order return to this chaos, and that a compulsory force, from without, assert itself to make human society a possibility.

This right is possessed by God, and by Him alone.

No man has the right to rule over another man, otherwise such a right necessarily, and immediately becomes the right of the strongest. As the tiger in the jungle rules over the defenceless antelope, so on the banks of the Nile a Pharaoh ruled over the progenitors of the fellaheen of Egypt.

Nor can a group of men, by contract, from their own right, compel you to obey a fellow-man. What binding force is there for me in the allegation that ages ago one of my progenitors made a "œContrat Social," with other men of that time? As man I stand free and bold, over against the most powerful of my fellow-men.

I do not speak of the family, for here organic, natural ties rule; but in the sphere of the State I do not yield or bow down to anyone, who is man, as I am.

Authority over men cannot arise from men. Just as little from a majority over against a minority, for history shows, almost on every page, that very often the minority was right. And thus to the first Calvinistic thesis that sin alone has necessitated the institution of governments, this second and no less momentous thesis is added that: all authority of governments on earth originates from the Sovereignty of God alone. When God says to me, "œobey," then I humbly bow my head, without compromising in the least my personal dignity, as a man. For, in like proportion as you degrade yourself, by bowing low to a child of man, whose breath is in his nostrils; so, on the other hand do you raise yourself, if you submit to the authority of the Lord of heaven and earth.