The Philosophy of Christian Involvement[1]
Overview and Prerequisites
In the previous chapters, we have explored the history and development of dominion theology, establishing its pedigree and its orthodoxy. The aim of this chapter is to build a case for a revival of the position that champions the active political and wider cultural involvement by those who hold to dominion theology, attempting to prove not just the divine prerogative of our involvement but what the governing principles of our involvement should be. Thus, we examine what is the locus of the practical problem for Christians: the role and interpretation of Rom 13. We have already learned that arguments as epistemologically self-conscious[2] Christians must be done on a scriptural basis at every step:
[Christian philosophy] must always be based on an accurate interpretation of the teaching of the Scriptures. For some . . . there is a danger they may derive their knowledge more from [secular, unbelieving] philosophy than from a careful study of the Scriptures. They tend to extract just a certain number of great principles from the Bible and from there on they more or less forget the Bible and work the application out for themselves . . . True theology should always be based upon a careful and accurate exegesis and exposition and understanding of the Scriptures . . . we do not derive any theological principle from one scriptural statement only.[3]
Thereunto, we are in complete agreement with the sense of what Lloyd-Jones asserts; disputes of praxis need to be resolved by exegeting the objective text of Scripture rather than just preferring one version of subjectivity over another and then tagging on a few Scriptures we used to validate our argument, otherwise constructed from outside of Scripture.[4]
This is the governing principle for the simple reason that these matters at hand are needing to be settled. They are serious and are recognized as not just matters of preference, where we would accept individual Christian freedom and liberty and would admit a range of positions.[5] Rather, we are assuming that the questions before us are of the type that can, to a large degree, be settled. The issues are foundational, where we should be able to arrive at what is the scriptural position that is arguably binding in its essentials on all believers. They are not trivial issues of individual conscience (though we will recognize the important place of conscience) but admit of both philosophical and theological reflection and study.
The Imperative for a Political Ethic
Is Political Involvement Legitimate?
A question that could be in some minds and that concerned me greatly a few years ago, as I became frustrated with what I considered insipid evangelical theology regarding our political and cultural positions (and indeed, what provoked me into an in-depth study of dominion theology) is whether it is right for Christians to be involved at all in the wider cultural or political processes. Are we not rather to be engaged in loading up the [Noah’s] Ark of the church before we are removed either by the Rapture or the Second Coming? A famous radio preacher during the 1940s put it this way: “you do not polish brass on a sinking ship,”[6] and he has largely spoken for the subsequent generations of fundamentalists and evangelicals.
Thankfully, I believe we have already established the answer to that question in the previous chapters, but if you have come to this chapter directly, it is straightforward to answer this question with the text of the Bible itself (though I do strongly recommend a reading of our study). The apostle Paul had to write very early on in the life of the church to prevent people leaving their employment to wait for the coming of the Lord, despite that the second coming was considered imminent even by himself.[7] For even while having this eschatological conviction, he, at times, insisted both that believers should work and on his political and civil rights as a Roman citizen.[8] He had no problem addressing Agrippa in a political context and eventually appealing to Caesar to prevent his undoubted martyrdom at the hands of the Jews.[9] That is, we do not cease to have rights, a political relationship with, and a responsibility to and for our nation because we have joined the kingdom of God. Lloyd-Jones summarized it this way: “our citizenship is in heaven does not mean we do not stop being citizens [on earth] in contrast to various movements within the church. Thus, we should [remain] involved in politics.”[10]
What we mean is this: the biggest problems in some “Christian” countries during the twentieth century, which have had almost continual revival for fifty to sixty years, is the prevalence of economic, social, and moral corruption in their societies. In some countries of Central and South Africa, which now have over 90 percent Christian populations, they are known for their mass poverty, corruption, and a lack of basic infrastructure, despite being some of the richest countries in terms of their natural resources.[11] However, far more dramatically, and with much more polemical force for our purposes here, Cope vividly describes how the most “Christianized” city in the US (the most “Christianized” nation in the world) failed to show any difference in many of the basic social indices that would make it a “good” place to live, in direct contradiction to the regenerating narrative of conversion preached by the evangelical churches.[12]
That is, this demonstrated a total failure of twentieth-century “revivalism” to reform societies because the believers failed to reform the political and social dimensions of their culture, dealing only with the saving of souls.[13] Our political philosophy is a “fake” gospel if it does not change the social and political character of the nations in which it is applied. Without such a political philosophy, we are just surrendering cultural real estate to secularism, humanism, and, most recently in the West, political Islam, failing in our primary objective of “discipling all nations.”[14] Thus, what is argued in this chapter is a rejection, in principle, of any withdrawal from the marketplace, as advocated in some Christian convocations in lieu of reflections on the Trump era, and the building of the case for an informed, increased involvement, and commitment to see reform in the political realm.[15]
One Further Possibility—Political Neutrality
Before we can proceed though, it must be recognized that there has been a flurry of thought, scholarly and otherwise, in Christian circles on this issue triggered by the “Trump problem.”[16] In one relatively recent convocation on political theology in which I was an invited participant, the discussion proper began by presenting an argument based on cultural relativism, the thrust of which was that our reading of Scripture is never neutral but colored by our cultural glasses. Fine, so far, I would broadly agree with that.
The application of this was then that politically, we had been unable to see that we had fallen in love with democracy and our way of doing things to the degree we had entered an inappropriate “syncretism” of our understanding of Scripture with the understanding of the political arena.[17] Consequently, we had incorrectly formed alliances or loyalties with particular politicians or parties.[18] Our closeness to particular ideologies had meant we were no longer capable of understanding God’s perspective and articulating a Christian political philosophy.[19] The rest of the discussion was to present a “corrected” political theology that would restore to us this function. In brief, the principal feature of the position being advocated was a type of political agnosticism and detachment from the workings of the political world.[20] That is, God is indifferent to our political systems, and we should be, too, other than to trust he puts in the leaders he wants to fulfill his kingdom purposes.[21]
Now, that is problematic and seriously so. Despite its initial plausibility and spiritual sophistication as an argument, we must always remember that, philosophically, any argument based on asserting relativism and insurmountable cultural prejudice must exempt itself from its own analysis to have anything coherent to say. Otherwise, it, too, becomes just another culturally conditioned narrative, nothing more than a possibility in the sea of competing possibilities; as the meme goes, the argument “all judgments are relative” is rightly footnoted “except this one.”
The very fact I assert we are suffering from cultural prejudice and zero objectivity in reading Scripture is asserting that I can stand outside of that prejudice and culture to make that assertion. If that is the case, then I have just refuted my own argument, which was predicated on the fact that the other person was unable to do what I have just done. This is my point about relativism above, the presenter proceeding to give us a political theology on their own analysis will be just as full of inescapable presuppositions and cultural prejudice; granted, they might be different ones but present, nevertheless. Thus, I believe such an argument is an illegitimate and retrograde step; the church has never improved any society by withdrawing from it but only when it was fully engaged in it.[22]
The Lack of a Shared Cultural Reference
The principal requirement for a Christian self-consciousness results now because of the collapse of a previously shared value base of Judeo-Christian origin in our wider culture, even if it was grudgingly maintained.[23] Indeed, at the present time, the very negation of those previously held, common standards is considered praiseworthy and righteous.[24] Similarly, recent history has witnessed some watersheds in Christian culture that mandate a reexamination of Christian political philosophy. First, the polarizing influence of the Trump presidency demonstrated the antithetical and incoherent positions that were held by Christians regarding his first term as president. Second, the political tyranny of the COVID-era policies and the almost universal capitulation of the churches to what we will argue was the illegitimate use of authority by the national and international governments.
The Importance of Our History
A shocking discovery for many is that this is not the first time in Christian history that this subject has taken on an elevated importance:
One of the most foolish aspects of modern life is the tendency to assume that all that has happened in the past is quite irrelevant and unimportant and that nobody knew anything until this present generation came.[25]
Thus, this means a good look at Christian history to understand the different views of the Christian understanding of and involvement in the political process. We would all benefit from a good history lesson and learning from our past, and we should see that the material of the previous chapters also serves this purpose well. We are not called to make an idol of the past or to canonize tradition, and we are called to “forget those things [the excrement of religion] behind us,”[26] but that is something very different from ignoring the lessons of our history.
Basic Principles
Are We Called to Defend Truth?
Another strong statement made during the convocation was that as a matter of principle, “we are not called to defend truth but relationships.” This takes some unpacking to counter its undoubted intuitive appeal and surface profundity; it has the distinctively anti-dogmatic, nonjudgmental, and postmodern flavor—we are to value the subjective relations and operations rather than being concerned about grasping that elusive nettle of “truth” and “being right.”[27] Certainly, we can all accept that truth might be progressive for us and, as we support a pluralistic form of life, we do not need total agreement amongst ourselves to value each other’s views and perspectives. In that respect, we can defend our relationships from unnecessary angst, particularly from those outside our immediate community. However, in the name of Christian epistemological self-consciousness, I am constrained to immediately question the proposition that we are not called primarily to defend truth in preference to relationships, even more so when the leader of our religion claimed the title of “the Truth.”[28]
In addition, as with many things postmodern, it is difficult to locate precisely what is meant by “relationships” here, but our early fathers of the faith really had to work hard in sorting out our basic theology amid both internal schism and external philosophy. Perhaps more compelling from a pure exegetical perspective, our New Testament pattern demonstrates a radical stand for truth in the ministries of Jesus and Paul, and explosive confrontations to wit. Thus, despite being a painful and sometimes explosive process, the results of, say, the Council of Chalcedon or the Council of Nicaea are still with us.
This is even more the case in the political arena, with the forensic logic of Wycliffe, Huss, Luther, and Calvin, in challenging papal dogma with scriptural precedent that began and took forward the freeing doctrinal truths of the Reformation. The strength that came from taking a position and then defending it was of benefit to not just the church but the entire social and economic order. So, the Reformation did not only straighten out the logic of salvation but its determinism regarding the regularities of nature and God’s covenantal operation in the world also broke the hold of the dogmas of Aristotelian metaphysics and made possible the scientific revolution.[29] Thus, it is in this sense of the power of free and critical thinking, that Christian political self-consciousness and a commitment to dominion theology must be robustly defended and argued.
The need for strong debate and the resolution of positions and issues is a recovery of what has been lost in the rush to postmodernity, rather than some radically novel innovation. In my Foundations, I have argued that Christianity is objectively defendable and presentable in such a way the unbeliever understands the challenge intellectually that is given to them. Only the spirit of God saves people, but Peter addresses us that we should be ready to give an apologia. An apologia is not simply a testimony but a reasoned defense of our faith—a defense by which we defend the truth by making a positive statement of our positions.[30]
In summary, then, although there are matters of subjective preference over which we need not divide, there is solid, objective ground on which most evangelical Christians should stand if they are thinking clearly. The testimony of Scripture for us is normative: we are called to be intelligently “dogmatic” in the face of challenge. If we are not defending truth, then apologetics is redundant, and our faith is arbitrary. Thus, this must also include a defense of a set of political principles.
On Earth as It Is in Heaven
Hence, as issues of philosophy, theology, and methodology, we should be promoting the truth, and part of that truth is the political involvement of believers at every level of the political state to restrain the evil direction in which our political states are going.[31] We might formally agree that under certain sets of circumstances, partnership with politics is a form of idolatry, for it is God that raises up those he chooses and casts down others; and who are we to question God?[32] However, that does not mean that partnership with politics is always idolatry or that we should always accept powerlessness rather than influence, if we are not to make immediate nonsense of “mak[ing] disciples of all nations” and the kingdom coming “on earth as it is in heaven.”[33] Again, this would seem self-evident that the kingdom does not come independent of the political realm; you cannot have kingdom standards in social and political matters without those who can understand and implement them in positions of power and influence.
Yet, some mystical iterations of Christian belief do dare to assert the contrary. This is normally rooted in a controlling, catastrophic pessimism regarding the human condition. In certain Gnostic heresies, this might also be the case; imported into this view was the Platonic conception of the inferiority, even the evil character, of anything physical. Thus, all human constructions and institutions would be considered temporal and a hindrance to perceiving the true reality, which is the spiritual. To this point, there are certain passages in the New Testament where the apostles urge upon us the importance of being heaven-minded and heaven-focused, e.g., Matt 6:33, John 3:31, Col 3: 1–2, which might appear in mystical apologetics.
However, in context, these tend to be made either as assertions of spiritual truths or as matters of Christian ethics to encourage faithfulness to the faith. Put another way, if you live your life in the shadow of the judgment of God before you enter eternity, you are likely to live a different life on Earth. Similarly, lest we become too mystical, we should also consider Paul’s signature for many of his letters: he made a point of mentioning spirit, soul, and body; he frequently addressed issues of immorality and misuse of the body. Certain forms of Epicurean and Gnostic philosophy advocated that because the body was doomed to destruction, you could wantonly sin. This could well have been the background to the problem at Corinth that Paul had to deal with at great length and in great detail, and the condemnation of both the Nicolaitans and Jezebel in Revelation. In other words, the argument needs to be had not only about the legitimacy of certain principles but also in the details of working them out. This is what we will now proceed to undertake.
The Domains of Study
We require a strong, positive statement of scriptural principles. We are all members of the body of Christ, what Luther called the priesthood of all believers.[34] However, this is conceptually and practically distinct from those who work full time in the church as a ministerial calling. We tend to be very loose and vague in our common use of the term “church.”[35] Thus, it should be immediately evident that there is a lot of theological and philosophical complexity to clarify such an important subject, so it requires us to cover a lot of philosophical ground by considering at a most basic level what the Bible tells us
- about the relationship of ourselves as individual members of the body of Christ (the “church” as the fellowship of all believers) to the political state, and
- of the relationship of the institution of the church (with its ministers, buildings, and governance) to the institution of the political state.
When we get those basics right, we can establish the necessary principles to both answer the questions and evaluate to what degree that which was presented to us is scriptural, complete, and defensible. The evaluation is only ever against Scripture and Scripture alone.[36]
Our Civic Responsibility
As our previous chapters demonstrated, for those of us who are children of the Reformers, the sacred-secular distinction should be an untenable dichotomy that we should not accept, because it is certainly not a biblical one—there is no secular for the believer. If we do not argue on such a basis, we have already surrendered the conceptual ground to the secular-humanist opponents of Christianity. Our position should be rather at its foundation a distinctively Christian one, captured perfectly by Abraham Kuyper in an 1880 speech as he opened the university that he had founded:
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is sovereign over all, does not cry: “Mine!”[37]
For Kuyper, there was no sacred or secular; all was sacred:
Whatever man may stand, whatever he may do, to whatever he may apply his hand—in agriculture, in commerce, and in industry, or his mind, in the world of art, and science—he is, in whatsoever it may be, constantly standing before the face of God. He is employed in the service of his God. He has strictly to obey his God. And above all, he has to aim at the glory of his God.[38]
This emphasis is also found in J. Gresham Machen, who, like Kuyper, was concerned with the whole of culture and the transformational power of the gospel.[39] He was a passionate believer in the reformation of all culture by ensuring there could be Christian education at all levels rather than a centralized, state-controlled education.[40] This was his firsthand response to the noted anti-intellectualism, obscurantism, and narrow evangelistic focus of the emerging fundamentalist movement of the time. Unlike the fundamentalists, Machen had not just defended Scripture but the entire Christian worldview against liberalism and was concerned with the regeneration of all of culture. This was first seen in his “Christianity and Culture” address, which was delivered on September 20, 1912, at the opening of the 101st session of Princeton Theological Seminary.[41]
His most famous work, his Christianity and Liberalism, had an introductory section that is invaluable reading as a restatement of a Christian conception of culture and immediately engages with the necessity of warfare in the cultural realm, specifically with socialistic political philosophies. It must be remembered Machen had witnessed the Russian revolution a mere five years prior to publishing this work and was contemporary to the greatest intellectuals of America, like John Dewey, who were laying the foundations of the “progressive” movement, which was to incubate American socialism.[42] This at once shows how basic in his thinking was his concern to engage and transform all of culture and how this eventually motivated him to break with Princeton and to found both WTS and the OPC. That is, despite this nominal thematic agreement with the emerging fundamentalist movement regarding the status of Scripture, Machen was not a fundamentalist under any interpretation of the term at the origination of its use.[43]
We can see this even more clearly chronologically when we consider that when Machen founded WTS, his first professor of apologetics (who was to remain over forty years in that post) was Van Til.[44] The earliest summary of Van Til, By What Standard?, was written by Rushdoony, so we can see the strong relationship between the thought of Machen and Rushdoony; he was undeniably concerned with the entire reformation of culture, the intellectual precursor of the modern dominion theology movement. His was a theological position that has no reticence in taking political positions based on his understanding of the implications of Scripture. Machen was aggressive in his statement of the need to battle in the realm of intellectual ideas, believing correctly it was ideas that would come to dominate the political direction of a nation:
We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion.[45]
We have seen through our study that through some noted professors of WTS, such as Van Til, and a second generation of students, such as Bahnsen, this cultural philosophy of full civic responsibility and engagement became foundational for the dominion theology movement that emerged into public view in the early 1970s with Rushdoony’s Institutes. Within five years, by the time Rushdoony sponsored the publication of Bahnsen’s Theonomy, it had begun to assert itself by equating civic responsibility with deference to the law of God found in the Hebrew Scriptures and had generated an enormous amount of controversy because of it.
However, we can now understand, because of our previous study, that it is only controversial to those who have forgotten that theonomy was central to the Reformed position and was the dominant influence in the Puritan confessions.[46] The Westminster Confession, with its exposition of civic responsibility and engagement, was not considered an innovation by the divines who wrote it but rather the renewal of patristic faith. The intellectual climate of Christian thought had become so dominated by the import of the autonomous mindset of non-Christian philosophy that it ceased to be authentically Christian. Our work, too, is, in many ways, a similar restatement and a set of corrective principles in our modern context. We might call this corrective “the theonomic imperative,” and we consider this next.
The Theonomic Imperative
As we have previously discussed, in vanilla Reformed social theory, “theonomy” (the law of God) is contrasted with “autonomy” (being the law to myself). Bahnsen’s Theonomy was challenged as an aberration of the true meaning on the term as he applied it as a general social theory, but it is not difficult to demonstrate that a scholar from an entirely different background seeking a coherent political and social philosophy and practical program came to virtually identical conclusions. Cope was embarrassed by the lack of civic responsibility demonstrated by the evangelical church during the 1970s and was drawn to the same conclusions regarding what must be fundamental to building our political philosophy:
The law given to Moses [is] to disciple the newly free nation of Israel. God begins to speak for himself and gives clear, concise, and very specific instruction for how to achieve justice in a community.[47]
In other words, we will all stand before the judgment seats of both the Father and the Son to give account, judged by the moral and social principles of this same law. Though we may have cultural idiosyncrasies, and we may need to probe beneath the application in ancient Israel to find the principle for our contemporary context, God’s word is not rendered null and void by our culture. Again, Cope clarifies this for us whilst fully admitting our responsibility for establishing the application of the law in our culture:
Remember that the truths of the Bible are told primarily in story form. We study the history and the context, but we will never be in the same circumstances as Moses and Israel, so their application will not necessarily work for us. The principles, however, are God’s truth and are applicable in new and dynamic ways in any age, any set of circumstances in any nation.[48]
Importantly, with the postmodern apologist in mind, those “new and dynamic ways” do not extend to contradicting the explicit outworking of those principles in the nation of Israel that are given, as the apostle Paul tells us, “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training.”[49] The main philosophical point here is that you cannot be “corrected or reproved” in just any type of fashion for it to be non-arbitrary and to be in accordance with proper standards of justice; there must be objective standards of correction or reproof. It can only be just if it applies equally to all in morally equivalent circumstances.[50] It is God who defines the “morally significant” components of human reasoning through his Law—polygamy becomes no more morally acceptable, even if it is culturally normal among us. To argue otherwise is simply the Christian form of cultural relativism and needs to be dismissed as such.
To take a much more politically significant specific example, we can consider the social gospel movement, even the more “evangelical” version of it associated with evangelicals such as Ron Sider. It is often stated by apologists for that movement that God “told us not to steal” but “did not define ‘stealing’ for us.” This is an outright fallacy; we have chapter upon chapter within Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and the restatement in Deuteronomy that establishes the principle of private property, your right to it, and that stealing is the illegitimate violation of those property rights. It further gives a penal code and authorizes the punishment of thieves; but equally, not all theft is treated as criminal; there are extenuating circumstances, but all theft is defined as sin and retribution is always made.[51]
As Cope argues, they are “dynamic” in the sense we do not talk about boundary markers and oxen when we talk about property rights, but the principles will apply to our cars and tax systems. This is not to deny that there are not places of ambiguity or of great challenge as to how we are to understand and apply God’s word, but it becomes very clear whether our cultural practices measure up to his law or not, in many cases because of the fruit that they bear. Thus, we can see how theonomy is not just a theoretical or linguistic construct but provides a powerful tool for the mechanics—the practical ethics of communal relations. However, what does theonomy say about the structures and broader frameworks of those relations, about government? Should we prefer republicanism over democracy, or democracy over monarchy? Should we dispense with human government completely as a construct of fallen humanity and advocate for Christian anarchism? We will consider these issues in the subsequent sections.
Theocracy or Representative Government
Some vocal critics of dominion theology argued it was urging the creation of a theocracy, where society is subject to the direct rule of the Creator.[52] However, such a view is a puerile distortion of the position, and Scripture itself mandates a theocracy only for the nation of Israel.[53] It is of note that even for the ancient Israelites, within such a theocratic society, the Lord instructed them to choose the wise amongst them to “govern themselves,” with the law giving clear instructions for representative government and what we would call “checks and balances”:
You shall select out of all the people able men who fear God, men of truth, those who hate dishonest gain; and you shall place these over them as leaders of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties and of tens. Let them judge the people at all times; and let it be that every major dispute they will bring to you, but every minor dispute they themselves will judge.[54]
This, of course, is the precise reason why the American founders adopted the model of representative government they did.[55] This stratification of government recognizes that in practical terms, this side of omniscience, there are limits to what statecraft can accomplish. Politics is not messianic, or Jesus would have perhaps started a political party or conquered the Roman Empire.[56]
Now, the second great principle that we must establish is that there is a clear distinction between what an individual Christian as a member of the state can do and what the church as an institution can do. The individual Christian can be a politician, and the church should be clear in its statement of principles over a political matter:
The church keeps to the realm of principles and not detailed programs. She does not, as it were, enter into the arena either through preaching politics, or by sitting in the House of Lords . . . the business of the individual members of the church to work out these principles, in detail, for every aspect of life. Christians must not confine their Christianity to their own personal lives and piety and their own acts of worship. Christianity takes up the whole person. If men and women really believe the gospel, it must govern the whole of their outlook and thinking.[57]
Though we will later need to qualify Lloyd-Jones prohibition on the church with respect to the prohibition of “preaching politics,” we can still agree substantively with the principles of involvement emerging here, again, not for theocracy but for participation and representative government:
- The church is not to be involved in the details of a political program but is to teach principles and inform its congregants.
- The individual Christian is at liberty to be involved to whatever depth is necessary to ensure that the “powers that be” are “influenced in the right direction. It is their duty to do this, and they must not abdicate from their responsibility.”[58]
So, in summary, we can accept with Lloyd-Jones and with Cope that a “perfect” society is not possible on Earth but that does not mean we cannot have the expectation of a better one more in line with the principles of the kingdom this side of any return of the Lord; we can accept that a complete reformation is only possible with the personal presence of Jesus, yet it is possible for us to be his government now because that is what he tells us in the Great Commission:
Then Jesus came up and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore [you] go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.[59]
Grammatically, in the Greek (the original language of the New Testament), the major imperative verb here is the making disciples rather than the teaching or the baptizing.[60] We should now be able to deduce that making disciples is precisely what the theonomical imperative enables us to do; dominion theology takes this commission seriously and explicates it as present in Scripture as a continuing inter-covenantal operation. That is, it is the discipling or Christianizing of our society, the reformation, salting, or whatever word we want to use, which is commanded and expected.
For the Christian though, there are important additions to the nation-building principles established in the Hebrew Scriptures. Though, as Cope correctly asserted, the focus of the Christian Scriptures is personal salvation; the specific political and cultural context of the early believers as living under an often oppressive and hostile Roman rule meant apostolic input and precedent was required. This, of course, was the purpose of Paul’s great exposition within Romans of the Christian life and specifically dealt with the imperial and state authorities as part of his argument. It is to the locus of this exposition, Rom 13, that we now turn.
Understanding Romans 13
Overview
Few passages of Scripture have created as much controversy as Rom 13, owing to the chronic lack of understanding of it in the modern Christian consciousness, despite there being substantive studies available in the history of the church over the last two centuries as the modern state evolved. So, for example, during the COVID lockdowns of 2020-21, an uncritical use of the passage was made to justify the unconditional surrender of religious freedom and civil liberty by most Christian leaders. Unfortunately, this demonstrates complete ignorance of the passage and demonizes all those over the centuries who found within the Scriptures a mandate for social reform, civil disobedience, and political revolution. It would indeed be perverse to rebuke a Luther, the abolitionist movement on both sides of the Atlantic, the American independence movement, or the apartheid activists within the South African church for a refusal to submit to the governing authorities.[61]
However, Rom 13 does require interpretation and contextualization to counter what some have argued is the plain sense of the text. That said, it is not my intention to do a verse-by-verse exegesis, as this has been authoritatively and competently completed by Lloyd-Jones, taking him 162 pages, which we cannot afford here.[62] That said, I incorporate most of his arguments in the following section and modify them as necessary with my own revisions as we draw conclusions from our present context. We will see that such revisions became necessary owing to the deterioration of the status of Christianity in our culture, and consequently, some of his assumptions and inferences were no longer valid for us. As noted, the early Christians needed the apostolic input of Rom 13, 1 Tim 2, and 1 Peter 2 because the believers needed to know how to respond to pagan rulers who were often extremely hostile to the point of persecution and execution.[63] However, it is only necessary to consider Rom 13 extensively in this section, other than some relevant brief introductory remarks here.
Firstly, 1 Pet 2 is very much a recapitulation of the Pauline teaching of Rom 13; the testimony of Scripture itself shows Peter clearly took theological direction from Paul here and considered his works scriptural (2 Pet 3:15). Secondly, 1 Tim 2 has a significantly different focus; it has the primary subject of intercession for those in authority that the social and political conditions of effective evangelism and the discipleship of the nations might be possible. This is clearly still relevant to any comprehensive account of Christian political philosophy but not necessarily within the scope of understanding our relation to the state, which is our interest here. Hence, it will not be considered further here other than to emphasize such intercession was expected and mandated by Paul to create the conditions that would allow the execution of the political program in Rom 13. In practical terms, the enormous significance of 1 Tim 2 is that we are not to hide in our Christian ghettoes watching the reign of the Antichrist and waiting for the rapture. Thus, the principles of intercession and prayer for our governments form one of the central precepts of dominion theology.
The Context of Romans 13
It must be remembered that this section does not exist in isolation from the sections around it. This is important because some commentators seem to think it is an intrusion or clumsy insertion of thought. Yet, this is a new subsection in the section that began with chapter 12—the application of the doctrine laid down in the first eight chapters.[64] The great emphasis of chapter 12 is that of living peaceably with other people. Chapter 13 is, thus, perfectly in position, “[Government enables us] to live peaceably with one another, to maintain order, to avoid disorder.”[65] The “vengeance of God” mentioned in 12 would then, arguably, be part of the function of the stateand its laws. So, the first great conclusion we can draw from Rom 13 is the legitimacy of the state in principle as against those who reject all the institutions of men as fallen and illegitimate.[66] God has instituted it that the conditions of social peace might exist for the benefit of all:
I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. This is good, and pleases God our Savior.[67]
However, (and I believe this is where many contemporary formulations regarding our rights, relationships with, and responsibilities to the state are at their weakest) based on this foundational principle, it then becomes much too easy to give the state much too much authority over the church and the individual believer, to the degree that all the believer is entitled to is a weak, passive resistance or martyrdom. In contrast, we will find as we work through the chapter that there is a justification for a Christian taking part in a revolution to overthrow a corrupt government.
Obedience and Submission are Different Concepts
So, let us consider the first verse of Rom 13:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those that exist are appointed by God. Therefore whoever resists the authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement.[68]
Thus, it is straightforward to understand why many teach unconditional obedience to the state. This is reinforced by some commentators who note that the term translated “be subject” was originally a military term meaning “to rank under,” but this is one of those occasions where we need to understand the semantics of the word have moved far beyond its original meaning, as witnessed in the Greek literature of that era, of which the Bible is an integral part. By overstressing the etymology, extremely severe interpretations of this passage that would admit no conditions for civil disobedience have arisen.[69] In contrast, as Lloyd-Jones explains, there are three other Greek words in common use during that period that would convey far more strongly the concept of “obedience,” if that was what Paul had wanted to communicate. We must understand that “be subject to” does not simply mean “be obedient to,” though the Greek verb in the middle voice had historically been used with this meaning, but that usage would have been already considered archaic and would be highly improbable at the time of Paul’s writing.[70]
Thus, continuing our analysis, subjection rather implies a reasoned choice. For example, Eph 5:21 states, “submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God,” and it should be clear that in this case, there is a logical difference between subjection and obedience. Both parties cannot simultaneously obey one another if a difference arises, but they can respectfully resolve their differences by having a mental posture or attitude of submission. To not recognize this is to make this, and other examples of the usage of the word, logically contradictory.[71] Thus, Lloyd-Jones argues the context demands “making room for” or “preferring out of respect” as appropriate renderings.[72]
The Boundaries of Christian Resistance
Now, we must argue that a minister of the state demands unconditional respect and subjection only with regards to an appropriate execution of their office, and the ruler must behave in an honorable and just manner before the people, because those are the terms of their ordination before God: “He means the powers that are governing [well] and maintaining law and order.”[73] In other words, they are following the prescription laid out in the following verses of Rom 13, punishing the evil doer, maintaining justice, defending the nation, and being fiscally responsible. If those conditions are not met, you are not bound.
However, this is not left just as conceptually defined in Scripture. The book of Acts provides the narratives for us of the conflict between the early church and the “authorities” that we might know there is no unconditional ethical mandate to obey our governing authorities.[74]
Additionally, both Kings and Chronicles also provide certain occasions where treaties and political cooperation with other nations, even between Israel and Judah, were condemned by the prophets on behalf of the Lord. This reinforces the presumption that the exercise of authority must be in accordance with the terms of its ordination before God—just because a government does something, that does not make it right or legitimate before God or the citizen. In fact, the pattern within Scripture was often that God empowered a rival power or individual to overthrow a ruler upon which judgment had been executed; this was his prerogative as “King of kings and Lord of lords.” Most are familiar with this phrase from the book of Revelation (Rev 17:14, 19:16), but it also occurs in the much more interesting context of 1 Tim 6:15. We see at once in vv. 1–2 the call of “submission” of indentured servants to their masters, which must be matched with Col 4:1, which calls for masters to “submit” (in the sense of providing justice and fairness) to their servants.[75]
Thus, it is pointedly not proven that every occupant of the office “has been ordained by God,” and thus, we are not morally obligated to immediately obey them if they are not governing well. It is the office and not the person that is ordained by God. Particularly, we need to ask what we are to do with rulers who gratuitously abuse their position or are tyrannical. We need only think of Nero burning Christians coated in tar to light his feasts or of a Hitler orchestrating the Holocaust.
An answer can be suggested by an analogy. If our nation was attacked or was in imminent danger of being attacked, most of us would consider it perfectly just to sign up to fight if we were asked to, in addition to whatever diplomatic response there might be. We might even end up fighting for our nation and killing people of an aggressor nation to preserve our liberty and freedom. We would consider this “self-defense,” and it seems a concept well-documented in the Hebrew Scriptures. For example, even though there was no scriptural mandate for a standing army in Israel, there were certainly borders, there were arrangements made for tribes to join with one another for national defense, and for the settling of disputes militarily if diplomacy failed.[76] The nation was instructed to live peaceably with its neighbors and to respect their territory, but they were to be equally vigorous in defending their own property, culture, and territory.[77] Thus, we should at least be able to ask the question, if those that attack us just happen to be members of our own nation and those in authority over us, should we not, too, have a right to self-defense?
The logic of the Second Amendment of the American Constitution was based on just that type of reasoning. The colonists and settlers had come from nations all over the Old World, where the monarchs and priests systematically oppressed the people and, in some eras, the people were systematically tortured and killed in the most brutal and public fashion, often at the behest of the papal hegemony that employed the surrogate army of the “Holy Roman Emperor.”[78] They came to the New World in search of religious freedom and political liberty. This is why Lloyd-Jones, who was something of an expert on the Puritanism of the early colonists, was able to write,
Surely, as Christians, we are entitled to argue that if a state, a king, an emperor, a governor, a dictator or anybody else becomes tyrannical, then this state is violating the law of its own being and constitution as laid down in Romans 13:2.[79]
That is, the state was instituted, as 1 Tim 2:2 states, to ensure “we may lead a peaceful [tranquil] and quiet life in all godliness and dignity” (NET), the State exists to serve the people, not the people to serve the State. Thus, he continues:
The moment . . . the State turns itself into a master and into a tyrant, it is disobeying the Law of God that brought it into being and it must itself be punished; and the form the punishment takes is that the government is thrown out and replaced by one that is prepared to abide by the teaching of Romans 13:1-7.[80]
This statement begs the question, what does “thrown out” mean? Are we permitted to fight with arms (as the American founders felt it necessary to mandate) to evict a tyrannical government? We have already seen the inadequacy of the unconditional submission position, and we can see that our options are much greater than simply passive resistance, but just what are the limits of our resistance?
Christians Can Be Revolutionaries
Within Christian war theory, the “just war” is defined as an extension of the duty of a magistrate to “restrain evil,” and it is exactly this moral imperative to “restrain evil” that allows “[a Christian] to take part in a rebellion to change your government.”[81] Whether that evil is internal or external to a nation, it is not an option for us to ignore it.
However, such revolutionary action is the “last resort,” as is going to war (the Lord spoke of multiple cycles of judgment against a nation before it was destroyed);[82] but as it was necessary to go to war against a Hitler, a Mussolini, or a Stalin for the purposes of restraining their evil, so it is necessary to resist the evil of our own leaders.
Indeed, this is not unusual in the history of the Protestant church and was a feature of the movement around Puritan Oliver Cromwell (the English Civil War) that spawned egalitarian groups, such as the Levelers and the Diggers, who prefigured many of the egalitarian policies that became associated with the later labor and trade union movements.[83] Christians were very active in these reform movements and the WEA, a Christian wing of the WMC movement (that was founded to promote literacy amongst working people), still exists in the UK today in accord with its original mission, whilst the WMCs are rather tatty, low-end social clubs.
So, it is also important to recognize that there are degrees of resistance between non-resistance and a full-blown rebellion that we can exercise. We start with dialogue and engagement with our elected representatives, but we cannot allow ourselves to be neutered when our representatives cease to represent us. We can protest, we can boycott, and we can take collective action, both as individuals and as congregations, to try and ensure social or political change. Importantly though, with congregational action, there are those specific issues that we considered earlier if we are not to confuse the individual and church institutional positions in relation to government.
However, in cases where oppressive government tyranny is directed at entire congregations, e.g., in the banning of public worship (as happened during COVID), the congregation should be able to respond collectively, and the church enunciates a political position as representative for its congregations. Where at all possible, we endeavor to keep our protest peaceful and respectful of the agents of the state; but where demonstrators are attacked or the conditions for demonstrating are made so restrictive, we are able to make our stand against that evil. It may be there are consequences for that stand, just as there were consequences for Paul before Festus in appealing to Caesar, or for the Jewish converts of the book of Hebrews in the confiscation of their property.[84] Yet, done under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that can bring great victory to the church in the public square.[85]
Now, I hope it is understood that I am not asserting we are immediately revolutionaries; it is just that we need to understand we can be in the extreme. We can agree, as Lloyd-Jones puts it, “Christians should always be the best citizens in the country” and “good and peaceable” in their basic attitudes.[86] We have an ethical obligation to be the best citizens we can be and to be the most cooperative with the authorities over us as we can morally be. Even Stalin began to lessen the persecution of Christians because of the reputation for them being the best workers.[87]
Christians, by default, are on the side of law and order because they understand that sin has produced lawlessness among men and that lawlessness needs the sword of the state to restrain it; this is also why Paul makes the statement that it is an “issue of conscience” (v. 5) that we submit and even pay taxes to ensure the smooth operation of the state. However, Lloyd-Jones strongly and immediately qualifies this general orientation to the state after establishing it as a basic principle with this statement:
There is a limit beyond which it [the submission to the State and its enactments] is not true. It is quite clear in the scriptures that if the State should ever come between me and my relationship to God, then I must not obey it.[88]
During the COVID-19 pandemic, this limit was undeniably violated throughout Europe as congregations were prohibited from congregational worship and our almost universal failure to resist has cost us enormous space in the public sphere. Where there was or is substantive resistance, as was the case with the River Church in Tampa, Florida, and in some of the other US states where governors rejected federal mandates, the contrast could not be greater—they had full liberty to meet for worship, citizens traded freely with one another, they did not lose their businesses, and did not become reliant on federal welfare.[89]
Summary and Concluding Remarks
In this chapter, we have sketched how we apply the basic principles of dominion theology to our political philosophy, specifically, we established the principle of involvement and that it should be an involvement that is not passive or neutral. As a matter of principle, we are to defend truth rather than cede to postmodern subjectivity or cultural relativism, noting that the Reformation and Councils of the Church established prerequisites for culture in their catechisms. A strong view of truth also ushered in the scientific revolution. We asserted that it was an anomalous distinctive of twentieth-century evangelicalism to separate from wider political and cultural involvement. The Reformed church has had a history of political involvement since the days of Luther and Calvin through to modern figures, such as Machen, and the wider evangelical movement had the father of the modern revivalists Charles Finney as an example of intense political and cultural involvement.
We noted that for as long as there has been a Christian church, there has been political opposition to it as witnessed in the biblical narratives of Acts, in which there are recorded accounts of conflict. We also rejected that the correct Christian position was one of agnosticism to the political environment: 1 Tim 2 implies prayer for a social environment conducive to the preaching of the gospel and the discipling (Christianizing) of nations, which is correlative to a pluralistic political context and cultural transformation. We then dealt specifically with the contemporary, difficult issue of Rom 13, noting that because the biblical narratives record conflicts with the authorities for us, a simple surface reading of Rom 13 that demands unconditional obedience to the governing authorities is insufficient. In this regard, we considered in some detail the account of Rom 13 provided by the finest evangelical expositor of the twentieth century, Dr. Martyn Lloyd Jones. He drew the distinction between “honor,” “submission,” and “obedience” in considering the original Greek syntax and semantics of the passage.
His central position was that a State invalidates itself when it behaves in a tyrannical manner and when it intrudes into matters over which it has no jurisdiction, particularly in matters of religious practice and liberty. We established the principle from his work that only when the State is the minister of God, to bring order and punish moral evil, is obedience to the State required. We found that revolutionary activity by believers was permissible as an act of ejecting an immoral or tyrannical State that had delegitimized itself. We established further that the individual Christian is perfectly at liberty to be involved to any degree in political activity, but the domain of the institution of the church was separate to the political institutions. Its role was to be the moral guardian that would speak into these institutions rather than to be directly involved in the institutions of government. We broadly agree with his position but note that he was writing during a time when the Judeo-Christian position was broadly accepted in all major political parties. Our qualification now is that this is no longer the case, and the church needs to recognize and expose the morally degenerate nature of “secular” politics and to sometimes publicly support those parties that support ethical positions more in line with the gospel. So, whilst we maintain with Lloyd-George that the church as an institution is not to argue for a theocracy, which was reserved for ancient Israel alone, we do now assert that it is to argue for a theonomical political position, seeing the scriptural principles of jurisprudence and government as immutable principles. God, in his law, not only provides us with commandments as top-level principles but works out the application in detail in the succeeding narratives. So, for example, a party that aggressively campaigned on abortion, euthanasia, and sexual license would need to be challenged and proscribed on that basis.[90] This implies a greater level of involvement of the institution of the church in analysis of the political programs and its explicit support of parties or policies. However, the moral character of the individual politician should also be examined; some churches now do provide “voter guides” where they have tracked not just the party allegiance of a candidate but also their voting record. We conclude by reiterating that we cannot have kingdom standards in social and political matters without those who can understand and implement them in positions of power and influence.
[1] This is a modified version of material found in both my “Politics” and Foundations.
[2] What is meant by this term is worked out in my Foundations. In brief, the term implies we have a coherent Christian worldview where our metaphysics (our conception of the real), theory of knowledge (epistemology), and ethics (how we should then live) are logically consistent with each other.
[3] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 16–17.
[4] Whilst Lloyd-Jones maintains a strong distinction between philosophy and theology, which I have argued against in my Foundations, he does so in a way we can clearly understand with a clear rhetorical sense. As Calvin tells us, our aim is a philosophy constructed from Scripture, whilst most describe his works as works of theology. In the Institutes, Calvin frequently uses the Latin and French equivalent words for “philosophy” in both positive and negative senses, drawing a similar distinction as Lloyd-Jones does in rhetorical passages, often prefixing it with “profane.” The Latin root of “profane” explicitly carried the sense of heretical and godless thought: “outside or before [pro-] the temple [-phane].” He clearly talks about “constructing a Christian philosophy” (Institutes, loc. 550) close to the head of the work. This is the sense in which my Foundations argued that philosophy should be conceived. Thus, I have no problem with the contextual interchange of the words “theology” or “philosophy,” and it is a practice I shall follow occasionally in this chapter.
[5] This is discussed in magisterial fashion in Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Chapter 14. See also 1 Cor 1:12; Rom 14:1–23. His multi-volume commentary on Romans was one of the most notable achievements of twentieth-century Christian scholarship. A website that preserves his legacy is found at https://www.mljtrust.org/.
[6] Quoted in Rushdoony, God’s Plan for Victory, loc. 175.
[7] 1 and 2 Thessalonians—the injunction “if one does not work, one does not eat” was made in the eschatological context within these letters; 1 Cor 7, 26–35.
[8] Acts 22:25, 16:37.
[9] Paul was certainly prepared to die for the gospel (and he did) but seems to have had a much bigger problem with suffering rank injustice at the hands of those that considered themselves just and civilized (Acts 25:16). Additionally, like Jesus, he took the greatest exception to hypocrisy, particularly the religious hypocrisy (Acts 23:3) of “the Jews.” Like the Johannine use of the term, “the Jews” here refers to the Jewish authorities, which were an unhealthy political-religious hybrid, and it is not used as an ethnic slur. The authorities were the chief adversaries of both Jesus and Paul in their ministries.
[10] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Chapter 13, 17.
[11] Nyagamago, “Top 10 Countries in Africa.”
[12] Cope, Old Testament Template, 21–27.
[13] “Revivalism,” in the modern sense, is a term most associated with the ministry of Charles Finney (1792–1875). However, he was extremely active in the political, educational, and wider cultural spheres; see my Foundations for a discussion of Finney and other pivotal figures within post-Reformation Christianity who were socially and politically active. They did not limit themselves to “spiritual matters,” as was to become the habit of some of their imitators in the evangelical and fundamentalist movements of the nineteenth/twentieth century, most of whom believed any such engagement was a “distraction” from the real task of saving souls. See also, “Eschatological Criticism,” 95–96.
[14] Matt 28:19–20 (NAS).
[15] Brown, Evangelicals at the Crossroads. Brown distills the issues down exceptionally well here; he has an earned doctorate (and it shows), as well as a substantial standing in the evangelical world.
[16] For my extended use of this term, see Macneil, “Politics,” appendix A.
[17] In Macneil, “Politics,” I discuss how the argument was made that democracy or Republicanism is no more God-ordained than, say, despotism or some other form of totalitarianism. Even the Nazis could be commended for “keeping order” if the alternative was violent anarchy. We might be prepared to countenance the last proposition, but we should remember the Nazis were voted in, and then they made very sure they could not get voted out.
[18] In this case, Trump.
[19] In this case, the ideologies were Republicanism and/or political conservatism.
[20] The fullest statement of this argument is found in Stark, Prophets, Politics and Nations.
[21] This “kingdom” language might seem a strange idiom to those outside of modern charismatic and Pentecostal Christianity. In brief, Jesus = King, dom = his domain, which includes the church but also his providential rule as “King of kings, Lord of lords” (Dan 2:37; Rev 19:16 NAS), which is explicitly dealing with the civil and political authorities.
[22] Macneil, “Politics,” §2.
[23] I would say it arguably existed through to the mid-1980s, perhaps to the end of the Thatcher era in the UK (which itself finally petered out after a long, slow decline in 1990). The “sexual revolution” that began in the second half of the 1980s on the Left (when I was a member of various far-left groups and witnessed it firsthand) legitimized (culturally, at least) cultural ideologies with violently anti-Christian premises, which were a wedge to evict the ghost of Christianity from the public square. However, even during the subsequent Blair era in the UK (both Labor leaders John Smith and Tony Blair were active members of the Christian socialist movement), certain moral matters were “banned” (unofficially) from journalists’ questions, despite being newly “fashionable” for the radical (or liberal) left. A journalist who referred directly to the homosexuality of certain Cabinet members would no longer be “invited” to briefings (Marsden, “Sun’s Anti-Gay Attacks”; see also Wilson, “BBC Eases Privacy Edict”).
The US situation is more complex in regard of “shared values,” but it should be noted that Barack Obama publicly defended that marriage was for heterosexuals as late as 2008 to get the black evangelical vote. Since Trump took office, it is fair to say there has been increased tribalism and sectarianism, with some in the mainstream now openly speaking of democratic socialism as an alternative to the republicanism of the US, and seeking a complete remaking of the US without its constitution. It is rare, in public at least, to see those prepared to “cross the aisle” to work for what would be the common good in the US.
[24] See for example, my blog, “Censorship—The New Normal”; Francis, “Cancelling Christians.”
[25] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 135.
[26] Paul refers to “dung” in his famous “forgetting the past and pressing to the future” passage of Phil 3, which contextually dealt with his previous life in Judaism. The word he specifically uses in 3:8 was what we would call a “swear word”; it was only used in vulgar conversation.
[27] One of the philosopher Rorty’s famous quips was “take care of freedom and truth will take care of itself” (Rorty, Take Care of Freedom).
[28] John 14:6 (NET): Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
[29] The lack of progress in science (progress in medicine was perhaps the exception) was a notable feature of the medieval period until the Reformation, despite major advances in other areas of culture. This issue is examined comprehensively in Butler, Philosophy of Science.
[30] BDAG defines ἀπολογία: (apologia) defense; as a legal technical term, a speech in defense of oneself; reply, verbal defense (2 Tim 4:16). BDAG emphasizes this is a speech in defense: it is a reasoned rather than inspirational or preached.
[31] This position, I believe, represents an orthodox Christian perspective. Granted, some might see our moral condition as the most enlightened or advanced that it has ever been and that our governments served with distinction in keeping us safe during COVID whilst simultaneously respecting law, life, and liberty.
[32] Dan 4:17 (NET); Rom 9:17 (NAS). See also Rom 9. In my view, chapters 9, 10, and 11 of Romans contain some of the most complex and challenging logic of the Christian Scriptures.
[33] Matt 28:18–20; Matt 6:10 (NAS).
[34] Luther, Selected Psalms II, 332.
[35] See Cope, Old Testament Template, 103–12.
[36] Care should be taken here not to misinterpret this as to say any source of theology outside Scripture is illegitimate, otherwise all the philosopher or theologian could do was to copy out Scripture. It is rather that the rooting and grounding of our philosophy is in Scripture and hermeneutically in Scripture as a whole.
[37] Kuyper, “Sphere Sovereignty,” 488 (emphasis original).
[38] Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism, 45.
[39] Machen was the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 after the split with Princeton caused by the removal of the commitment to orthodox Christian theology as a requirement for ministers to graduate from the seminary.
[40] Machen, Education. This was a collection of his speeches and essays, as well as an account of the founding principles of Westminster.
[41] Originally entitled “The Scientific Preparation of the Minister”; Machen, Education, 45–59.
[42] Machen, Christianity and Liberalism, 1–13. It is arguable that the baby has just been born; it is only in the Trump era that American politicians in the mainstream Democratic Party and in the mainstream media were happy to campaign under the banner of “socialism,” despite Marxism, in the guise of “critical theory,” having been well established in the academies of the West since the 1960s.
[43] As we have noted, Barr, in his Fundamentalism, commits this category error. Prominent fundamentalists at the time challenged Machen’s “orthodoxy” as he never adopted dispensational premillennialism, which was considered the test of orthodoxy by the movement.
[44] Van Til had taken Machen’s chair at Princeton but resigned a year later with Machen and his colleagues. In the interim, he had been appointed to a prestigious pastorate within the Dutch Reformed church. Machen personally visited Van Til on two different occasions, eventually persuading him to leave his new appointment and join him in establishing the new seminary; Bahnsen, Van Til’s Apologetic, 11.
[45] Machen, Christianity, Culture, and Liberalism, 6.
[46] It was rather the position, arguably, of Augustine and given its systematic expression by Calvin. It was developed by his successor Beza, by Bullinger, our own John Knox, and then the Puritan movement of the 1640s, to which modern Reformed theology owes most.
[47] Cope, God and Political Justice, loc. 231. Emphasis added.
[48] Cope, Old Testament Template, 62. Emphasis added.
[49] 2 Tim 3:16 (NAS).
[50] Even Sartre, the great existentialist philosopher famous for exhorting one should never act in “bad faith” by submitting to the will of others rather than deciding for yourself, accepted this piece of moral reasoning. He framed it in terms of a man having to choose between fighting in the Spanish civil war and taking care of his sick mother. Whatever he chose, he would choose for all men. The emphasis is on the “all” here; it is a misnomer to think existentialism necessarily equates with a lack of binding or universal ethics. One of Plantinga’s earliest papers “Existentialist’s Ethics” discusses this.
[51] That is, there is a civic sanction associated with it. One example in Scripture is associated with the stealing of a small amount of fruit; restitution is made but there is no further punishment. In other cases, there is a fine, compensation, and restitution. It is an oft neglected feature of the law code in the Hebrew Scriptures that it encourages intelligent discrimination of the nature of a misdemeanor or a crime.
[52] PRO-S.O.C.S., “Righteous Revolution.”
[53] On a practical note, we would do well to seek such a society, but it would be introduced based on consensus, not imposition. It is of note that George Washington, the first American president, dedicated the new nation to God in prayer after the presidential oath of office, representing the consensus of the Congress (Justice, “Anniversary of the First Inauguration,” para. 1).
[54] Exod 18:21–22 (NAU).
[55] This story is vividly told in Barton and Barton, American Story, which is notable for its use and enumeration of primary sources. The scholarly standard for early American religious thought is Noll, America’s God.
[56] One stream of Jewish messianic thought had precisely this expectation, one that was evident even in his disciples (Acts 1:6). There was great disillusionment with Jesus for his political “weakness”; after welcoming him into Jerusalem, they were happy to shout “Crucify him!” a week later.
[57] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 159. Emphasis added. The “House of Lords” is the upper chamber of the British Parliament. It has an important role in scrutinizing proposed legislation and can, in the extreme, delay legislative passage for up to one year. The Parliament Acts of 1911 and 1949 removed the lords’ ability to veto a bill. Unlike the lower chamber, only 92 out of around 800 members are elected, with a mixture of inherited rights to sit in it (landed aristocracy), “honorary” peerages where the prime minister nominates someone as a “peer” that allows them to sit in the chamber, and 26 senior bishops of the official state church, the Church of England. Lloyd-Jones was objecting to this latter group that favored the state church, but to which he was also objecting in principle. Politicking can occur as prime ministers can appoint their political allies to alter the balance of power to increase the speed of the passage of legislation through the chamber, which is one of the reasons it has become so large; the elected lower chamber is 650 members.
[58] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Roman 13, 159.
[59] Matt 28:18-20, NET. Emphasis added.
[60] The NET Bible exegetical note is informative here: “‘Go . . . baptize . . . teach’ are participles modifying the imperative verb ‘make disciples.’ According to ExSyn* 645 the first participle (πορευθέντες, poreuthentes, ‘Go’) fits the typical structural pattern for the attendant circumstance participle (aorist participle preceding aorist main verb, with the mood of the main verb usually imperative or indicative) and thus picks up the mood (imperative in this case) from the main verb (μαθητεύσατε, matheteusate, ‘make disciples’)” (NET online: https://www.netbible.org/bible/Matthew+28). *Here, it is referring to Wallace, Exegetical Syntax of the New Testament.
[61] In the dying days of apartheid, it was common for government ministers to quote Rom 13 to the dissident church centered around Archbishop Tutu.
[62] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Chapter 13, 1–162.
[63] I deal with this passage more fully in Macneil, “Should I Obey My Government.”
[64] Chapters 9, 10, and 11 form a self-contained pericope on the problem of the Jews and their relationship to the gospel. There are still important principles in these passages, but the chapters are strongly focused on the Jews.
[65] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 2.
[66] This was one of Calvin’s strongest criticisms of the Anabaptist post-Reformation movement (sometimes called the “Radical Reformation”), which became, progressively, to reject all forms of human (feudal) authority, and their agitation was making it easy for papist forces to justify attacking Reformed communities. A broad, revolutionary movement had coalesced in the time of Luther around Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525), who, if not formally an Anabaptist, became allies with them and provided theological and logistical expertise to their radical reform program. The seeds of messianic Nazism and Communism are plausibly argued to have originated in their theology (Engels wrote extensively in praise of Müntzer), which had also justified violence against all nonbelievers (where the nonbeliever was widely conceived). He was later celebrated by the communists of the DDR (Müntzer was featured on a 5 Mark banknote) in the twentieth century. Müntzer was executed in 1525 after heading the Peasants Rebellion, and the movement itself was brutally suppressed after the attempt to create a commune failed in Munster in 1534.
Importantly though, the experience of the brutal suppression at Munster moderated their politics into its more moderate iteration, and the movement, though suppressed, did survive, such that the Amish, Mennonites, even Quakers and Baptists all lay claim to some kind of heritage from the Anabaptists. The English Civil War under Cromwell also had groups, such as the Levelers and the Diggers, which had clearly incorporated elements of egalitarian thinking from the Anabaptists, as had Cromwell himself. The Anabaptists were the first to assert that church and state should be governmentally separate, and this concept did find its way into mainstream Christian thinking and was given firm expression in the early US “wall of separation” between church and state.
In an important sense, all the Anabaptist groups remained social radicals but became committed to a demonstration rather than an imposition of Christianity. See Verduin, Reformers, for a historical review from within the Reformed community but with sufficient chronological distance to present a well-balanced view; see Broomfield, “Thomas Müntzer’s Misunderstood Revolution,” which provides additional biographical context, and Farrell, “Thomas Müntzer,” which is a partisan pro-Müntzer account that helps strengthen the thesis that he was indeed inspirational to revolutionary movements of the left and right.
[67] 1 Tim 2:1 (NAS).
[68] Rom 13:1–2 (this is my translation but it follows closely the NET).
[69] Lloyd-Jones cites some of the most influential commentators of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as having that view.
[70] The Greek verb here is ὑποτάσσω (hupotasso) which is correctly rendered either subject or submit, rather than obey. BDAG, the academic “standard” reference work for the Greek language of this period, does not offer the meaning “obey,” listing only the passive and active voice. Vine’s Expository Dictionary (another standard work) lists “obey” as a possible but minor inflection in the passive or middle voice, noting the military origin of the word. The Strong’s number is 5293 and Strong lists “obey” as a possibility for the middle voice. Pertinently, the “middle” voice (often reflexive in nuance) was dying out during this period of the Greek language, adding to the improbability this was the sense intended.
[71] Col 3:18; 1 Pet 3:1, 5.
[72] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 20–22.
[73] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 23.
[74] Some might object that it was the religious authorities they came into conflict with, but Roman history does tell us that the Romans were shrewd enough to allow a degree of autonomy to their colonies in the sense they could keep their own civil and religious law if they recognized the supreme jurisdiction of Rome. In the Donatist controversy in the early church of North Africa, this was as simple as throwing some incense on the fire once a year; some believers compromised for the sake of political peace, but the Donatists would not and were severely persecuted by both the Roman authorities and the church in Rome. We can glean this from the gospels and Acts, where the governors would rather that the Jews “judge according to their law” (Acts 18:15, 24:6) than get involved in such civil disputes. It was why Pilate was just plain reluctant to get involved in the trial of Jesus, and when he was forced to be involved, he refused to judge as justice demanded but rather in accord with what he perceived as public opinion.
[75] It is worth noting that it was “indentured slavery” (voluntary service) and not “chattel slavery” (where the slave was the possession of the master) that was the normal sense of the word “slave,” either within a Christian or a Jewish cultural context by the time of the New Testament, even though the Greek word δούλοις (doulois) did not distinguish between the two senses (this is why some translations use the word “slave” rather than “servant” in Paul’s stylistic greetings). Paul might well have been playing idiomatically on this common sense of the word to emphasise how he viewed his service to God, as a matter of legal and moral obligation (I was redeemed and am now owned by Master and at his disposal). However, Paul also mentions elsewhere the privilege of being sons and daughters; John preferred to describe us as “children” of God or a “royal priesthood,” and so, for either apostle, we can see something well beyond chattel slavery being expressed as descriptive of our intended relation to and with God.
More specifically, indenture was where a person would commit to serve a master in return for food, accommodation, return of appropriated property, debt release, and such like; this was also common in the days of the migration to the New World, where in return for passage, someone would commit to serve the landowner for a fixed period. Indentured slavery within Scripture was tightly regulated as a part of debt recovery and management—the Jubilee (seven and forty-nine years) was to be the release of those who had indentured themselves, historic debt cancellation, and the redistribution of property that had been sold back to its ancestral owners: “There shall be no poor among you” (Deut 15:4). Chattel slavery being not regulated stood morally condemned as lawless and the single, explicit mention of it in the Christian Scriptures was in Rev 18:13, where it refers to the excesses of the harlot Babylon. It is thus of no surprise that the abolitionist movement began in a Christian context.
[76] Deut 20:10–20; Josh 4:12; Num 32:6–25.
[77] We leave aside the issue of the initial conquest of Canaan, which was a judicial decision by the Lord himself owing to the violence, corruption, immorality, and witchcraft that characterized the Canaanite tribes.
[78] The “Holy Roman Emperor” was a title bequeathed by the Pope on one of the monarchs of Europe once the papacy had established its domination (c. AD 600). By the medieval period, this meant making that monarch’s military resources available to the pope for dealing with “heresy” in any nation rebelling against his authority. The monarchs were normally feuding with one another as well as trying to weaken the authority of the Pope over their nations. This was why some of the monarchs were sympathetic to the proto-Reformers, such as Knox, Wycliffe, and Huss, who vigorously asserted the political autonomy of nations and the superiority of the civil authorities over the church within the national boundaries.
[79] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 46; Lloyd-Jones, Puritans.
[80] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 46. Emphasis added.
[81] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 69.
[82] Lev 24:14–46.
[83] See appendix C for a discussion of the English Civil War and the link with the founding of the United States.
[84] Acts 25:12; Heb 10:34.
[85] The River Church in Tampa Bay refused to obey the state COVID closure mandate to the degree the pastor was arrested. However, the enormous publicity that surrounded the event meant the mandate was overturned by the governor and the church was able to reopen at full capacity. There was a delay reopening because of attempted shootings and death threats, but within six weeks, the church reopened and has never shut since. It grew enormously through the pandemic as other churches shut permanently or went online, never to reopen physically. The pastor has since had his record expunged, the state attorney who charged him was dismissed by the governor because of political bias, and he has also met and prayed with the president on two separate occasions.
[86] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 51. Emphasis added.
[87] This is a well-known paradox, even in today’s Russia, where specific Christian ministries have access to and favor with the highest levels of the Russian government (I personally know of two) because of their reputation for honor and ethical conduct. Similarly, in some Islamic countries, Christians have access to TV stations because they are honorable and pay their bills on time.
[88] Lloyd-Jones, Exposition of Romans 13, 52. Emphasis added.
[89] In the years since, there has been a move of millions of people from the repressive states into the states that did not lock down. The lockdowns were demonstrated to have been completely ineffective; there was no difference in outcomes from the strictest lockdowns in cities like New York to the least locked down cities in Florida (Zinberg, “Numbers Prove Cuomo’s Lockdowns Hurt”). The utter hypocrisy during the pandemic of public officials who had locked down their cities was seen as they were caught at the same time holidaying in Florida, that was the first to remove any restrictions (Telegraph, “Under Fire for ‘Fleeing’ to Florida”; Bernstein, “‘Not Surprised’ Democrats Flee”). This is the perfect example of “authorities” that needed to be ejected from office at the first opportunity for failing in their duties under Rom 13.
[90] The issue of “tactical voting” is a difficult one. The logic of the tactical vote is to cast a vote for the least evil of the candidates likely to win, even at the cost of a candidate in line with your principles. Or, as some communities of color in the US have decided to vote for Democrats who support anti-Christian positions because they believe on balance that the candidate can deal with other issues in their community more effectively that the alternative. Some Christians explicitly condemn not voting in line with your principles, i.e., if a Christian candidate was standing, you would be obligated to vote for them, even if they were in a constituency where they would have no chance of winning.
The relative merits of either of these options is also dependent on your voting system—for us in the UK we have a very limited democracy which does not employ a transferable voting system where you could indicate your choice of candidates as a rank. Consequently, the tactical vote is probably more appealing. The ethical dilemma is a bit like that associated with IVF; if the outcome is more children in the world, does it become a good thing even though fertilized embryos are often discarded during the process? Such ethical dilemmas would need to be considered in future work but are obviously not as simple as they may first seem; this is why Christians in their disciplines need to think through these issues.