Can you please explain the similarities and differences between a Christian’s duty to Hitler and a Christian’s duty to Nero?
What would give you to assume that I don’t understand the Reformation’s impact on the political theories that led to the English Civil War and the American Revolution?
There were quite a few differences between the time of Nero and Hitler. The early church was a small percentage of the total population and did not have any political or civil clout. They were also already under the Roman Empire when it was written. During the time of Hitler Christians made up a very large portion of the population. They had some sway over the culture and political realm. And they were there before Hitler came to power.
Furthermore I don’t know that any of you have adequately dealt with the prescriptive view of Romans 13 rather than just accepting the descriptive view.
I don’t have time now but one can start in Genesis and go through the New Testament and see all kinds of accounts were God’s people stood up to tyranny. The Apostle Paul himself mocked the high priest when he was slapped. In another account they also refused to leave the jail until they were escorted out by the wicked leaders who put them in it. Shouldn’t they just have submitted and left when they were told?
Our Lord Jesus took part in the Festival of Lights. This of course celebrated the Maccabean war to free Jerusalem from the Greek empire.
Thinking about the Vichy French, David fled from Saul and took refuge under the authority of a Philistine King. Yet David kept going on raids against the enemies of Israel while he was supposedly submitting to the authority of the Philistine. I think that text would shed some light on what the French people were able to do during WW2.
I should probably apologise. I’d just finished watching Jason Bourne and was in a bad mood (I miss my action films seeming ridiculously futuristic and far-fetched). Not usually the most charitable time to respond to something that one finds irritating.
So, I should not assume. Full stop.
That said, I’m not sure a charitable reading of say, Rutherford’s Lex Rex (for just one example) would lead one to describe the arguments that both the Parliamentarians and the Founding Fathers took up as ‘rank rebellion and excuse making.’ That’s not to say it’s necessarily correct from a biblical perspective (though I’m not persuaded it was incorrect). But I think there is a lot more that they were wrestling with, and doing so without much in the way of a past paradigm to help them along the way, that means we should at least interact with their arguments charitably. And the fact that these developments came from a distinctly reformed wing of the protestant reformation means something to me. Maybe that shouldn’t weigh as heavily.
It seems to me that a lot of the Christian responses today to the American Revolution involve a simplistic use of Romans 13 as the end all be all of the discussion, and I’m not convinced that’s the case. That may not be what you were doing. I would have been better served by engaging in a less caustic way.
I think a key part of answering this question seem to be in acknowledging the inescapable nature of the individual mandate of Romans 13. Unless the law calls us to sin, we’re to submit to it. Even if it’s unjust. Even if it’s a pain. Maybe part of the problem with this is how inconsistently the church has taught this in the past, and how inconsistently the church today regards past issues that involve Romans 13 (I’ve heard almost no one invoke Romans 13 regarding Jim Crow and civil rights issues). That can lead some Christians to feel that submission to government is a matter of political expediency for pastors. But your point about the Christians in the book of Hebrews is well taken. Far better for us to be defrauded than for us to defraud others. That’s a bitter pill to swallow: it is better for me to be defrauded by the government and have a clear conscience before God than for me to defraud government of the obedience I owe it and feel justified by my situations.
Unless we’re in a position of civil authority and the doctrine of the lesser magistrate applies to us, we have to submit.
Reading Firth’s bio of Cromwell just now and it’s quite instructive for our present arguments. Telling point is the division between Royalists/Episcopacy, Erastian Presbyterians, non-Erastian Presbyterians, Independents, and radicals/anarchists/anabaptists. Cromwell is an independent—not any sort of Presbyterian—and this in his politics and his ecclesiology as well as his theology (although a firm Calvinist in the major areas of theology).
Today, Toby/Doug are independents—not at all Presbyterians, although they would think and claim to be, at least doctrinally. But even doctrinally, they remind me much more of Edwards and Lloyd-Jones and other new lights than Presbyterians. Their ecclesiology is a cross between Independency and Prelatism (Episcopacy), but they undercut the foundational role of the presbytery intrinsic to Presbyterianism.
Their politics, though, are nothing resembling Prelatism/Episcopacy/Royalism. Maybe Independents except that was Cromwell and they have none of his respect and submission to authority. If this statement surprises a reader knowing of Cromwell’s support for the trial and execution of King Charles I, read the bio. Yes, Cromwell believed in the ending of oppression of the people by House of Lords and their King, but he was so opposed to disrespect and rebellion against authority that he was a moving target in what he presently affirmed in the present moment of civil war and plans for resolution and peace.
Seems clear Cromwell would have led a civil war over abortion. Also seems clear he would have looked incredulously at those claiming face masks are idolatrous and that they present us with the kairos. This would likely have been one of the things promoted by the radicals comprising a large part of his armies which he disciplined knowing it wasn’t principle, but only disrespect and rebellion. Cromwell was constantly reigning in the rebellion of both the radicalists and independents comprising his armies.
Counterintuitive as it is, what caused Cromwell to turn from opposing the trial and execution of King Charles I was his observation of the growing rebelliousness among the people and his desire to cultivate respect and submission to authority.
Honestly, it would seem impossible to discuss today how things were back then in any other than using very-specific and hard-edged particularities, keeping a close eye on where everyone on the different sides was on those particularities at that moment of time. So it has appeared to me discussions today aren’t helpful unless exceedingly specific and hard-edged. This is the reason I keep saying masks are not idolatry and they don’t deface the image of God and elders are not wrong for allowing or requesting them in worship and those who seek to be arrested for not using them are just rabble-rousing belligerators and the civil authorities are responsible to protect public health with the use of their police powers.
If someone were willing to argue very specifically against those declarations we’ve made over and over quite publically, making a case that Romans 13 does not apply to those specific things and actually giving reasons tied to those specific claims they’ve been making, I’d be surprised and pleased. But we’ve seen nothing of the sort.
Instead, the mask-schismatics just act as if our Evangel Presbytery or Trinity’s session or any of us teaching online concerning this subject have said nothing.
The only helpful discussion today will start with Scripture and particularities. For instance, “Romans doesn’t apply to masks because Scripture teaches masks are idolatry,” followed by chapter and verse.
Instead, we get “Romans doesn’t apply to masks because Joe Biden’s married to a blonde and Donald Trump has orange hair and David tore cloth from the hem of King Saul’s cloak while he was in the cave. Plus masks efface the image of God and they’re a sacrament and making me smell my own breath inside a piece of cloth is the very definition of tyranny.”
As I’ve repeatedly said, not one of these men belligerating over masks would tolerate for one moment their wives or children belligerating against their authority at home.
Or maybe they would, and do? Maybe these belligerators are only doing and saying publicly what their wives have told them privately they had better say, or else.
Love,
Thank you, Pastor Prelock. I accept your apology. These issues are not well-served by me jotting off mini-bromides from my iPhone. I have thought about and read about these issues quite a lot over the last 10 years or so, and I have much to say. Perhaps I will say something when I’m in front of a real keyboard.
Suffice it to say that I’m not convinced by the arguments of the men who did away with the monarchy, and I see many of the ills we suffer today as tracing their roots to the arguments they made at the time. These discussions may move from academic to practical pretty quickly here, so we’d all do well to sharpen up our thinking on the topic.
Another example to consider is the Glorious Revolution of 1689, which saw the Roman Catholic James II forced off the throne in favour of William of Orange. More here:
So then when would you agree would be the right time to do what the founders did? Is there ever such a time to resist tyrants?
absolutely, but it would take some Putney debates to decide when and where and how
10 years worth of reading? Friend, you should write more on this. Educate us. I still count myself as undecided on the war between the colonies and Britain, but relative to where I was, I’m sliding in your direction.
I have a keyboard now.
I agree with you 100% that the Old and New Testament leave questions unanswered, and I agree 100% that part of that reason is that the context of the New Testament is one in which there was an undisputed civil authority.
But even this last piece gives us a clue, doesn’t it? The Roman Emperor had no “consent of the governed” in any meaningful Enlightenment sense, nor did he need it for the New Testament authors to treat him as the undisputed civil authority established by God Himself! And this of a man who was not merely an idol-worshiper, but himself the center of a blasphemous cult! These very facts should stop us in our tracks.
Now, there are lots of places where there isn’t an undisputed civil authority: The English/Scottish border in, say, 1500; Afghanistan today; Vichy France. But I don’t think that lets us off the hook, or our Revolutionary forefathers.
And I think the question itself really comes down to: What is authority? What is its nature? How do we know it when we see it? And I think the answer, unpleasant as it is to Enlightenment Westerners, is that authority is who is in charge. Who holds the actual reins of power? That person or persons is in authority, and that came from God, no matter how deplorable they or their rule are.
We see lots of examples in history, and some in the Old Testament itself, of authorities disputing amongst themselves for who will hold the reins of power. But the winner of those battles is, in general, determined to be the authority chosen by God.
We do see regicide in the Old Testament, but in every case where we see it, the winner establishes himself as the new civil authority to whom respect and submission are due. What is new in the English Civil War, the Glorious Revolution and the American Revolution is an argument that monarchy itself is not due respect and submission. (The Glorious Revolution, of course, left the UK with a monarchy, but after the Glorious Revolution and the Bill of Rights of 1689, Parliament established itself as the actual ruler of the monarch.)
Guys, I just spent like an hour typing lots of stuff but I foolishly hit the reload button in my browser or something and now it’s all gone. I’m not sure I’ve got the heart to type it again. Candidly, it wasn’t my best work. This topic really deserves a book by someone more learned and more godly than I, and what I had written was kind of rambly anyway.
God is in charge because he’s in charge. Men, likewise, are in charge because they are in charge. A sovereign God makes them so. I think that’s the nut of authority. Figuring out who’s in charge is not always easy, but let’s not sacrifice the normal on the altar of the abnormal. (H/t Pastor Tim for that concept, even if I’m using it out of context.)
Probably. But I am struck by the fact that, like husbandly authority, open, unrestricted commands to obey greatly outnumber the lists of exceptions to the command to obey. As stiff-necked, rebellious people, we want to preach long lists of 10,000 exceptions to God’s precious, simple commands to obey our authorities. Why didn’t Paul or Peter teach us those exceptions right there when they gave the commands? We should feel the weight of the Holy Spirit’s relative silence in these matters.
And it’s critical if men do rebel against authority, that they do so in a way that establishes authority itself. Our Founders did the opposite of that, and now we sell baby parts and inject 12 year olds with puberty blockers. The one led to the other.
Heh. Don’t let me mislead you, brother. There’s been more thinking than reading in those 10 years. It’s not like I’ve earned the equivalent of a PhD here.
Pastor Dionne recommended this book to me a few months back, and I found it very, very interesting:
The first part of the book deals with the Biblical argument against the Revolution, from men who pastored in America at the time, and was quite enlightening. As the book gets deeper, it gets more focused on worldly arguments in which the pastors in view get less perspicacious. But I highly commend the book if you are interested in these topics. The Loyalist case against the Revolution is woefully under-taught in America. (It’s almost like someone’s hiding something.) If you haven’t read Thomas Hutchinson’s response to the Declaration of Independence, it’s quite enlightening. Taking Jefferson’s and the Continental Congress’s claims at face value is not a good idea if you are concerned about truth. 1776: Hutchinson, Strictures upon the Declaration of Independence | Online Library of Liberty
I didn’t say that the old and new leave the question unanswered nor do I agree that the answer is simply who is in charge. I too have been reading and thinking on this issue for years. The English civil war was not the beginning of the idea of the consent of the governed or of the idea that resistance to tyrants is Godly. Read the French Huguenots or the Magdeburg Confession. Go back and read men like John Chrysostom against tyranny. Look at how the early church apologists wrote to the civil magistrates defending their loyalty to authority while also exposing abuses of power.
Or go to scripture. Actually John Locke gets grief but his two treatise on civil government is something everyone should read. The first one goes through scripture and show’s throughout it that rulers are appointed by God yes but the means included the consent of the governed.
Go read of the establishment of Saul or of David in Israel. There is a reason it took David years to unite the kingdom. Look at how Solomon’s son split the kingdom. He lost the consent of the governed.
Now I’m not saying consent is all there is to it. We are required to submit to those in authority and to bear long under hardship. But scripture doesn’t leave us helpless in answering the question in the original post. Romans 13 doesn’t leave us without clues. Look at Romans 13
“For rulers are not a cause of fear for good behavior, but for evil. Do you want to have no fear of authority? Do what is good and you will have praise from the same; for it is a minister of God to you for good. But if you do what is evil, be afraid; for it does not bear the sword for nothing; for it is a minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”
This passage describes not illegitimate authority but what civil authority looks like. If you back up and look at the passage in context, the Apostle Paul had just told believers to be at peace with one another and to not return evil for evil but to let God take care of their enemies. This is similar to when Jesus said turn the other cheek. It’s not a prohibition against self defense or a call to be a pacifist but rather a call to avoid individual retribution. It is a call against revenge. Paul repeats that it Romans 12 saying leave vengeance to God and then the very next thing is this passage on civil government in which it is described as an avenger against evil. Civil government is one reason we can leave retribution to God. He has an agent already established for it.
Civil government is to punish evil and protect the good. We submit to it. But what happens when someone claiming civil authority reverses this? Do they still legitimately hold sway? Do they ever forfeit their authority? The northern kingdom thought so of Solomon’s son and GOD said their rebellion was of him.
Bringing this to the question in the OP, if there were two competing claims to authority then as Christians I would suggest we support the one opposed to abortion.
Finally, has anyone dealt with the fact that the American revolution was not a revolution but a war between civil magistrates. Part of the argument is that Parliament had no rightful claim to authority over the colonies because their charters were not with it. It would be a lot like if California legislators starting laying claim over Indiana.No way would I submit to that.
That’s what comes through again and again with Cromwell. Even those actions he assented to we might call rebellion were motivated, in his breast, by his respect for, and desire to establish, authority; and to put down rebellion and anarchy. Maybe put it this way: he made concessions to rebellion in order to establish authority that would survive the people’s rebellion.
I’ve asked myself this question a thousand times over my lifetime as I’ve considered these questions and I always come up with what I think is clear, that the Apostle Paul wrote this in a day and under authorities who were self-evidently not just punishing evil, but also good; and not just rewarding good, but also evil. I mean think of Pilate and Herod. Then think Romans is written to the capital of the Empire when it was under Nero! We must keep the reality of the world the Apostle Paul was writing in and the authorities presiding over him and the brothers in Christ he addressed as we claim any slightest lessening of the command because, as is often claimed, we are under tyranny in any way he and they were not.
Consent is another matter, but let’s keep in mind that what is going on in our country today that is worst has the full consent of the governed and has since even before 1973. In other words, consent is a double-edged sword today when preaching is flaccid and the people are like their priests. Which, as I said to you last night in our conversation, is why I believe our present situation cannot change until the Church is reformed; which means until our pastors and elders are reformed. The pulpit leads the world, and thus the pastor preaching sanctifies the world into a condition where evil no longer has the consent of the governed. Love,
It’s pretty clear to me that this thread is a proxy conversation for a much bigger and much more personally-thorny issue (but not entirely dissimilar to one I have had to engage in with the elders where I serve).
As ecclesiology trumps political theory, I think my best course of action would be to politely bow out so as not to further muddy the waters.
This is such an important point when exegeting Romans 13.
Can you recommend the bio you are reading? I could stand to up my knowledge of the English Civil War, and I’d be very interested to learn how Cromwell got from “fear God; honor the king” to “establish authority by lopping the king’s head off.”
Can you recommend something specific on the topic?
It is a very far stretch from the “is” that it’s impossible to rule without some consent from the governed to the “ought” that men are only permitted to rule with the consent of the governed.
The foundation of the American Revolution was rebellion and undermining of authority. It’s right there in Jefferson’s first two paragraphs. And when the Confederate states threw Jefferson’s logic back in the faces of their Northern brothers (South Carolina quoted the DoI in their Declaration of Causes of Secession), the Union responded with the ultima ratio regum, sheer brute force. The Union was in charge because the Union had the ability to enforce its authority upon the secessionist states.
The Declaration allows for no authority that can’t be undermined in its own turn.
This is debatable, to say the least, and it was debated at the time. That Parliament was a part of the English constitution at the time of the colonial charters was known to all and sundry. And certainly King George himself recognized the authority of Parliament and, as far as I’m aware, made no effort to strike a separate peace with the 13 colonies. He could have negotiated for some sort of separate country with himself as the sovereign. Different countries sharing a sovereign was a well-known routine at the time, and is in fact how George III’s ancestors ruled both Scotland and England before the Act of Union in 1707. George III himself would later in life become King of Hanover. As far as I’m aware, he made no efforts to that end with the 13 Colonies, nor did the 13 newly-independent states consider proclaiming him their rightful sovereign after the war. The English colonies in North America were always known to be colonies of England (later the United Kingdom) and subject to her constitution.
The northern tribes’ rebellion against Rehoboam was not just a judgment on Rehoboam, it was a judgment on the northern tribes. It was an instance of God using a progressive rebellion as the means to judge an entire people. “Consent of the governed” worked out poorly for them.
Dear Tim, hope you don’t mind a bit of push-back. As applied to Doug, I’ve found this charge lacking traction from when you first made it. I’ve never been able to figure out how what you label as belligerence in Doug is any different than the forceful opposition you have expressed against various civil and ecclesiastical authorities over the years, except his rhetoric is generally milder. He’s cautioned against being a scofflaw more than once. I think the charge sticks to some Americans 
, but not him.
I read just recently that the courts ruled in their favor and against the city of Moscow, on the psalm-sing arrests. So they were the ones being lawful. You might not have noticed but a man I know you respect - John Frame - publicly supported them at the time, and it seems his judgement has been proven right. Their peaceful protests have helped push back against government overreach.
*Clarification: my use of the slightly smiling face is intended to convey my impression that on questions of authority Americans tend to lean more towards being rebels and the British more toward being cowards. Finding that happy medium is difficult.
I think this position only works for those of the mind that adequate evidence of voter fraud has not been provided. But in this case many millions believe massive evidence has been provided, such that the burden has long been resting with Biden & team to answer it. That the courts keep dodging evidential hearings and ruling on technicalities, that investigation into many of these irregularities has been willfully obstructed, and those that pursue it censored, makes it all stink to high heaven even more.
I appreciate that whether or not you are of this mind very much depends on what streams of information you have/have not consumed, but if the true state of things is that the evidence demanded has been solidly met, then Biden is in no position to ‘legitimately claim the consent of the governed’, though that is a separate question to whether people should still submit to his rule.
Dear Henry,
Don’t mind the pushback at all.
To the issue: I haven’t accused Doug of being a rabble rousing belligerator. He’s not, but then you may ask who Moscow is if it’s not Doug? As for the charge, we wouldn’t be writing and writing and writing against this if these belligerators around our country weren’t seriously contributing to church splits and schisms across our nation these past six months. Remember, if you will, that Doug himself publicly told a woman not to go to her church services b/c they were requiring masks, and to ask her elders if she and her children could celebrate the Lord’s Supper at home.
People don’t like us criticizing the Moscow guys and I get it. It’s hard to see friends disagree, but either masks are idolatry or not. Either the state has police authority to protect the public health or not. But no one wants to talk about those foundational claims the schismatics have built their belligerating and schism on. As I just said above.
Turning aside to the matter of the local courts/politics in Moscow, we’ve never said anything about them. We never said they wouldn’t win. We said they were wrong for doing it, and so we say still.
Dear brother, really, you must answer the question whether masks are idolatrous and whether elders who request or require them are encouraging idolatry and whether the government has police authority to protect the public health and whether our form of government is voluntarism and, most importantly, whether it’s godly to split churches with the rhetoric above concerning masks?
So now, John Frame supported Doug and Doug supported John and Iain supports John too and? But hey, are masks idolatry and are elders who ask people to wear them engaging in idolatry and… But there I go again, talking into a vacuum, Moscow supporters just are happy these guys are pushing back against “governmental overreach.” Nevermind the details.
As always, with love,
In fact, Andrew’s views aren’t a result of the news sources he reads. Concerning the election, here in the US, we have a long history of much talk and no small amount of evidence of stolen elections, but we also have a long history of submitting to the courts’ resolutions of these matters. Take Al Gore, for instance; precisely what’s being said by the right half of our nation right now is what was said by the left side of our nation then. Thing is, the volume has been amped up considerably since then. Look back at Chicago’s Mayor Daley who promised to deliver the presidency to Kennedy in our 1960 presidential election.
What Christians are going to have to decide is whether they are ready to take up arms against their government? Those working themselves into a fever over masks, and now the election, are headed somewhere even though they are cute with their rhetoric assuring themselves plausible deniability if things go even badder. The trajectory is clear: masks are idolatry, don’t go to churches that submit to the civil authority in requiring them, engage in civil disobedience over them, dismiss court rulings that seem corrupt, call it all “tyranny,” deny the next administration has the consent of the governed just as the Fourth Estate and chattering class denied it last election cycle… And on it goes.
But the funny thing is, on two of the issues that are at the very top of any wise Christian’s list of things worth belligerating over, abortion and sodomitic marriage, the left does, in fact, have the consent of the governed. Clearly. Love,