The Forever War

Well, it's not really forever. That's a title I swiped from a science-fiction author, Joe Haldeman, I think, who wrote a book by that title. Never read the book, but the title sure sticks with you.

No, it's not a "forever" war, but it sure feels like it. I certainly expect it to last until Jesus comes back, and God knows it's been going on all my life, and as far as I can tell, from earliest history.

To what do I refer, you ask?

I refer to the continual conflict between Leviathan and Lex, Rex, to the conflict between those who think--or at least act--as though the state is some sort of god, that it has, by right, all power to anything and everything that it wills, that the only way for men to live in peace is to give up all power to the state, and those who think that man has certain rights (this idea is best founded upon the idea that those rights are God-given) that the state is not only bound to respect, but to defend, the defense of man's rights being its purpose for existence. In this world, there are countless people who don't quite understand the conflict that rages 'round them, who can't quite grasp that there have always been, will always be (until the aforementioned return) people who will connive, steal, lie, cheat, extort, threaten, and murder to control the machinery of the state so as to benefit themselves or to imagine themselves godlike; and people who make it their business to resist that arrogant usurpation of power, who insist that the state is not entitled to the sort of fealty that should be reserved for deity, that it has a limited role. The mass of men don't understand that though both those groups of people claim to be speaking and acting on behalf of "the people," the first group are nothing but predators, lying through their teeth with every word they utter, simply trying to fool enough people to allow them to retain the power they abuse. Because the mass of men do not understand, because they want to believe the high-sounding words by which they are enslaved, or at least that those who utter them really mean them, they are perpetually shocked at the abuses of natural law that are perpetrated against them.

Right now, with the Senate vote for cloture on a "health care" bill--a "health care" bill that is nothing of the kind, a "health care" bill that, given the precedents we have in Medicare and Medicaid, will cost far more than projected and accomplish far less, a "health care" bill the constitutionality of which is highly questionable to say the least, a "health care" bill that is being jammed through in the name of "the American people" despite polling that consistently shows that a substantial and growing majority of Americans do not want it, a "health care" bill that is, in fine, nothing more than a blatant attempt to grab and to consolidate raw power--it seems that those who worship at the altar of Leviathan are in the ascendancy. Maybe they are. But one thing I know: those of us who prefer liberty and justice to plunder and dependency are not going away, and wherever we can, by whatever means we can, we are going to hinder the statists' agenda. We are going to do our best to ensure that more and more men understand that the statists do not give a flying fig about their "general welfare," that they care only about controlling the people in whose name they claim to act. And eventually, I think and I hope, the pendulum of history will swing back our way.

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And no, for the inevitable leftist blogger who sees things in statements that simply are not there, "by whatever means we can" is not advocating armed revolution.

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To Answer Mr. Buchanan's Question

Well, actually, I'm pretty sure that he knows the answer, but here's the question:

There is no American Melting Pot anymore. It was discarded by our elites as an instrument of cultural genocide. Now we celebrate America as the most multiracial, multiethnic, multicultural country on earth, the Universal Nation of Ben Wattenberg's warblings.

And, yet, we are surprised by ethnic espionage in our midst, the cursing of America from mosques in our cities, the news that Somali immigrants are going home to fight our Somali allies, and that illegal aliens march under Mexican flags to demand American citizenship.

Eisenhower's America was a nation of 160 million with a Euro-Christian core and a culture all its own. We were a people then. And when we have become, in 2050, a stew of 435 millions, of every creed, culture, color and country of Earth, what holds us together then?

The answer is, of course, an idea. I, at least, think of it as the idea fundamental to America, though it was not born in America. You can quite easily trace elements of it back--at least in terms of formal political statements--to Rutherford's Lex, Rex. It is the idea that men are created in the image of God, that they have, as part of their nature and as gifts of God, certain rights that, having not been given by men or their institutions, cannot be legitimately denied by men or their institutions, and that the role of government is to protect those rights. The idea is that law is king, not that the king (government) is law.

Government's role is not to serve as an instrument of plunder, but to protect its citizens from being plundered. Government may not legitimately do whatsoever those who hold the reigns of power wish it to do. It is kept within bounds by its obligation to protect man's God-given rights.

It is, of course, an idea that follows inexorably from the pages of the Bible. It is a Christian, or at the very least, a Judeo-Christian idea. It is a very powerful idea, so powerful that I am quite sure (partly on the basis of personal experience) that it can unify a country made up of people from diverse backgrounds.

Of course, we don't teach it anymore. The worldview on which it is based is widely disparaged and ridiculed, and we attempt, now, to talk about having "rights" without having any sort of basis for them other than the authority of the majority--that is, we now act on the idea that man has the rights that society says he has, which is, ultimately, a recipe for either dictatorship or mob rule.

I can't tell you the number of times I've heard perfectly well-meaning people say, in effect, "Hey, this is America! Majority rules, right?"

Wrong. The whole point of being a republic instead of a democracy is to avoid being at the mercy of the majority, to avoid having one's inalienable rights being subject to the will of the mob. When we lose this concept, the question rapidly becomes: just how long, under those circumstances, will it take America to balkanize?

Peggy Noonan's Diagnosis and the Big American Idea

She saith, emphasis mine and in bold where present:

While Americans feel increasingly disheartened, their leaders evince a mindless . . . one almost calls it optimism, but it is not that.

It is a curious thing that those who feel most mistily affectionate toward America, and most protective toward it, are the most aware of its vulnerabilities, the most aware that it can be harmed. They don't see it as all-powerful, impregnable, unharmable. The loving have a sense of its limits.

When I see those in government, both locally and in Washington, spend and tax and come up each day with new ways to spend and tax—health care, cap and trade, etc.—I think: Why aren't they worried about the impact of what they're doing? Why do they think America is so strong it can take endless abuse?

I think I know part of the answer. It is that they've never seen things go dark. They came of age during the great abundance, circa 1980-2008 (or 1950-2008, take your pick), and they don't have the habit of worry. They talk about their "concerns"—they're big on that word. But they're not really concerned. They think America is the goose that lays the golden egg. Why not? She laid it in their laps. She laid it in grandpa's lap.

They don't feel anxious, because they never had anything to be anxious about. They grew up in an America surrounded by phrases—"strongest nation in the world," "indispensable nation," "unipolar power," "highest standard of living"—and are not bright enough, or serious enough, to imagine that they can damage that, hurt it, even fatally.

We are governed at all levels by America's luckiest children, sons and daughters of the abundance, and they call themselves optimists but they're not optimists—they're unimaginative. They don't have faith, they've just never been foreclosed on. They are stupid and they are callous, and they don't mind it when people become disheartened. They don't even notice.

A few thoughts, just as they occur to me:

"Mindless?" I am pretty close to agreeing. Too many people--I will admit to this being true of both sides of the political aisle, though I think it is worst on the Far Left side--no longer think. They do not evaluate the facts of the current situation in light of man's nature and the historical record. Instead, they rearrange and regurgitate sound bites, trying to define the terms of the debate so as to make themselves look better. Whether they are right or wrong matters less to them than whether they can lob a zinger at you.

Yes, I definitely am aware that this thing we call America is fragile in some ways. It is very fragile indeed. Sometimes, I wonder if people really understand what America, the real America is, or was, and what it is now turning into.

I'm not unaware of the realities of cultural and racial backgrounds when it comes to nationhood. Indeed, when it talks about "the nations," the Bible isn't really talking about the modern political state at all. It's talking about what the missionaries call "people groups" today. A nation is bound together by language, by shared experiences and cultural values, by shared history and ritual--but in America's case, at least, that is not all, or was not all, it is bound together by. America, more than any other nation in the history of the world, is, or was, bound together by an idea: the idea, drawn from Biblical thinking, distilled over six hundred years or so of Scots/Anglo/American political thinking and experience, that men are created equal by and before an almighty God, that they have intrinsic rights granted by that God which cannot be legitimately denied by any institution of man, since they were not granted by and do not proceed from any institution of man. I am always somewhat pained to have to point out to modern audiences that I am not at all making this up. Our history is shot through with it. You can start with Lex, Rex and follow the trail all the way up to our Declaration of Independence, which states the idea in terms as flat and stark as those I have just used, even though penned by the most deistic of our Founding Fathers. If there is a genuinely American Idea, this is it. It is an idea big enough to allow people from widely disparate backgrounds and with terrifically different cultures to come together as a nation. No doubt having a common language, having the same heroes, telling the same stories, etc., is important, but for America, the American Idea is the most important element in national unity.

Big ideas can unify people. I have seen this over and over again. But when I say, "big," I am talking about "big," not what some idiot politician thinks of as "big," but really, genuinely and truly big. When a politician talks about big ideas, he may be thinking of universally guaranteed health care, or a particular scheme of taxation. That is not really big. Nations do not coalesce around tax ideas or health care plans. Those are not national raisons d'etre. But the idea that you--yes, you--stand in the same status before God as any wealthy man, any ruler of nations, that has ever lived? That you have the same intrinsic rights, by the nature of your being, as any other man, that those rights cannot be taken away, not legitimately, by anyone? That all men bear the imago Dei, the image of God, and can all relate to one another on that basis?

Those are big ideas. Those can provide a basis for national unity amongst people from diverse backgrounds. But we are losing those big ideas. They are not taught in our government schools. Fewer and fewer people teach them at home. Publicly mentioning them will only get you ridiculed. And as these ideas fade into the background, as fewer and fewer people appreciate them for what they are and what they do, the nation--our nation, the American nation, a nation unique in the world's history--splinters. As a nation, we no longer have a vision of man that allows us to resist the pressures of disparate backgrounds.

Yes, America is strong--strong as long as it holds firmly to the idea that undergirds it. But when that idea is abandoned, when it is no longer taught, no longer understood by the mass of people born in this country, it will be very fragile indeed.

As to the rest of Ms. Noonan's remarks, I have to agree: much of what is going on now reflects a very shallow view of history. These people seem not to have realized that there has never, not once in human history, been a nation so strong, so stable, so utterly invincible as not to be capable of self-immolation and self-destruction. They don't seem to realize that they have the power to destroy the country, or that the practices they are now advocating have greatly damaged other countries, if not destroyed them outright. They are guilty of hubris of a very high order, and they worry me.

The Foundation of Biblical Government

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I did not write this post. It is another old post written by a young man I know, probably back when he was sixteen, maybe seventeen. His prose has gotten a bit more polished since then, but still, this isn't bad.

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The Bible is not just a book of religion, it is not just an emotional experience. It has something to say on the entirety of man's existence, his everyday living for example. As Christians, it is important to know what the Bible says on these issues so that we can live a life pleasing to God. The purpose of this post is to examine the foundation on which biblical government rests. What is its purpose? Is the government chosen by God alone, or do the people play a role? Can a government lose its validity by abusing its powers? The answers, according to the Bible, are that the power of government comes from God through the people; that people give their power to the government on condition; and that if that power is abused, the people may take back their power. A big claim, right? But a true one, as I hope to show. Before I do that I want you to be aware that whenever I use the word 'king' in quotations, I am referring to government in general. When I just say king, I am referring to a real king(usually the king of Israel).

The Bible tells us that the office of the 'king' is from God. But does this mean that the specific person in that office by God immediately, that is by God solely and directly? Does the Bible exclude the people from the process of choosing a 'king?' No, it does not. Yes, the Bible teaches that the office of government is ordained by God, but whether this man or that man becomes 'king' is in the hands of the people. There are numerous Biblical examples to support this claim: the Israelites made Omri king and not Zimri (1 Kings 16); the people made Abimelech king (Judg 9:6); the people made Azariah king (2 Chron 23:3); the people made Uzziah king rather than his father Amaziah (2 Chron 26:1); though God promised David the throne, he did not receive it until the people made him king (2 Sam 5:3); the same with Saul (1 Sam 11:15); the people made Jeroboam king (1 Kings 12:20); and the people made Joash king (2 Kings 11:12); Solomon became the king with the consent of the people and David (1 Kings 1:39-40). The only reason that there was a king of Israel was because the people requested it (1 Sam 8:5).

Now some might say that the people merely approved of God's choices of the 'king.' Some point to the case of Solomon and Adonijah. Adonijah was the elder son of David, but God and David chose Solomon to be king. The people, they say, only gave their approval, by crying "Long live King Solomon" (1 Kings 1:39-40), to the king that God chose. However, this does not take away from the fact that Solomon did not become king until the people approved him.

"God is the first agent in all acts of the creature. Where a people maketh choice of a man to be their king, the states do no other thing... but create this man rather than another; and we cannot here find two actions, one of God, another of the people; but in one and the same action, God, by the people's free suffrages and voices, createth such a man king...."

(Rev. Rutherford, Lex Rex, Question IV) The man made king passes from a private man to a king when the people make him so. Again, some mention verses that say that the power of the 'king' comes from God. So does this mean the people have nothing to do with the matter? God makes the grain to grow (Ps. 65:8-9), so, therefore, sun, earth, rain, and the farmer have nothing to do with the matter. That conclusion does not follow, but it is the same one being reached by the person who excludes the people in choosing a 'king.'

I further present Deut. 17:14-15 as evidence for my position:

"When you come to the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and you possess it and dwell in it and then say, 'I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,' you may indeed set a king over you whom the LORD your God will choose. One from among your brothers you shall set as king over you. You may not put a foreigner over you, who is not your brother."

If the people did not have the power to choose the king, why did God mock the people so by giving them rules by which to choose one? If the person(or body) acting as the government comes immediately from God without the people's consent, then this is a useless passage of Scripture.

If God, when he ordained the office of government, immediately chooses the 'king' without the people's consent, then why does this not apply to the other offices God has created? The office of the pastor comes from God, but the people choose who this pastor will be. And this pastor is accountable to the people, he is not independent. He cannot say heretical and blasphemous things; or commit immoral deeds yet be independent of the people who put him into that office. What of the people in government who occupy a lower position, like judges? In Deu. 1:15-17, God sets up judges for Israel telling them

"You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God's."

The judgment is God's and the office to carry it out is from God, but the people (indirectly or directly) choose who will carry out God's judgment. If the 'king' is immediately from God and to resist a specific, evil man is to resist the ordinance of God, then the same would be true of resisting specific, evil pastors and judges. I, however, as I will delve into later, say that specific men are not immediately from God. A man who abuses the power of his office, for example corrupting God's judgment, loses that office and is accountable to the people.

Not only do the people make a specific man 'king,' they also make covenants with that man. In other words, they give him the office of king on certain conditions. The people of Israel made a covenant with David at Hebron (2 Sam 5:3); and a covenant with Joash (2 Kings 11:17); they made a covenant with Jehoida (2 Chron 23:3); and Zedekiah made a covenant with the people (Jer 34:8). In 1 Sam 10:25, Samuel wrote a book on the rights and duties of the kingship. What were these duties? We know that the 'king' could not keep his throne if he refused to obey God's Word(examples are too numerous to mention, but Ps 132:12 is one); and we also know that the entire reason a king was established in Israel was for justice and protection from enemies(1 Sam 8:5, 20). We know that there were covenants that tied him, when he received the crown, to do these things. Even the first hint of government, the punishment of murderers (Gen 9:5-6), was for the protection of the people from those murderers. Summing it up, we know that, at the least, the 'king' was established for the just protection of the community and the punishment of the offenders, that he was only given power for the good of the community, not for evil.

So, after looking at Scripture, we come to the understanding that (A) the 'king' is chosen by the people; and (B) that the 'king' is given this power conditionally, these conditions being in the oath taken by the 'king;' and (C) that the conditions are that he rule for the good of the community, not the for evil. So what if the 'king' abuses this power? What if he takes the power to punish murderers and uses it on the innocent to their destruction? Then the people have the right, and the duty to their families, to take back that power, by violence if necessary. The 'king,' in accepting the covenant with the people, has limited himself to rule according to the law and with equity; and so, when he rules by violence, he is no longer fully the 'king.' When the 'king' does not rule according to his office, he loses the office of 'king' because he limited himself for the defense of the community. And the 'king' is limited, as can be seen from God limiting the 'king' in Deu. 17. In the same way the people limit the 'king's' power for their defense. The power of doing evil has no part in the divine institution of government; it is wholly opposed to the end of it. And so it is not a sin when the people take the power of doing good from a tyrant. They do not rob the 'king' of the power that was given to him by God or the people; they merely defend themselves from a bloody tyrant.

Suppose you gave a man your rifle, or whichever weapon you prefer, to defend you, your family, and the rest of the surrounding community. If this man uses this weapon to murder your wife and children, is it then wrong to take back this weapon and office from him, even by force? This man is using a power that was never given to him. The power given to him was for the defense of the community, not for the wholesale slaughter of it. In the same way, the 'king' was never given the power to murder. Even if the people, unlikely as it may be, swore an oath that they granted the 'king' this power and that they would willfully die at his command, they would not be held to fulfill that promise. This would be against the sixth commandment, which forbids murder, in the same way that suicide is against it. It would be intrinsically sinful to swear and fulfill the promise to be murdered, for again it would be suicide. Or what if a father commands his sons to sin? Is it wrong to resist that man? Though children are to obey and honor their father, they should not commit evil acts at their father's word. In the same way, the 'king' was never given the power to command evil; and so when he does this, he is not acting as 'king,' the command to do evil does not have the office of the 'king' to oblige the conscience to fulfill that command.

Some might say that the idea that the 'king' loses his office when he commands or commits evil is false. If the 'king' does not lose his office when he commands or commits evil, then that means he has been given this power by God and the people. As I said earlier, the people cannot give away the power to murder, this being against the sixth commandment. And how can God give the power to sin to the 'king'? If this power is from God; the power to rape, murder, steal, etc. is included in this power grant to the 'king.' If this is so David lied when he confessed his sin to God in the 51 Psalm. It was not sin to murder Uriah or to sleep with Bathsheba. This power was given to David by God and the people. It was not sin for Hitler or Stalin to murder their people, for this power would have been given to them by God and the people. If the power to sin is given by God to the 'king,' then there is no end to the atrocities he can commit. But then why does God promise to punish Ahab so severely for murdering Naboth (1 Kings 21:19, 21-22); why does God tell David it was evil to murder Uriah and sleep with Bathsheba (2 Sam 12:9); and why does the Bible say of so many Israelite and Judean kings that they did evil in the sight of the Lord?

So far a good theory, but are there Scriptural examples of people using force against 'kings' when they turn tyrant? The people of Israel swarmed to David's side in 1 Chron. 12:22-34. Now it looks like this is out of order, that Saul died before the people swarmed to him in this passage. However, in the beginning of this chapter it says,"Now these are the men who came to David at Ziklag, while he could not move about freely because of Saul the son of Kish." The Bible also says,"Some of the men of Manasseh deserted to David when he came with the Philistines for the battle against Saul(1 Chron. 12:19). This battle did not take place because the Philistines removed David from their ranks, but people were still coming to David to help him against Saul. It also say in 1 Chron. 12:23 that the people were coming with the intent of turning the kingdom of Saul over to David. And God gave approval to this by speaking through Amasai,

"Then the Spirit clothed Amasai, chief of the thirty, and he said, 'We are yours, O David, and with you, O son of Jesse! Peace, peace to you, and peace to your helpers! For your God helps you.'"

(v. 18) In 1 Sam 23:13, David had a fighting force of 600 men to defend himself if Saul caught up to him. 1 Sam 21:8-10 tells us that David took the sword of Goliath in a time when he was being hunted by Saul. The Bible says many times in these passages that these men were heavily armed. Why did David and his followers arm themselves so if not to use them in self-defense?

In 2 Kings 6:32, Elisha told the 'elders' to shut the door and forcibly hold it fast against the messenger of the king. The Hebrew word used for 'fast' is: lachats A primitive root; properly to press, that is, (figuratively) to distress: - afflict, crush, force, hold fast, oppress (-or), thrust self. (Strong's Hebrew and Greek Dictionaries) This is not just passive resistence to the king's messenger, this is violent, forcible resistence. If it is wrong to forcibly resist the 'king' under all circumstances, then why does Elisha command it? In 2 Chron 26:17-20, Azariah and 80 priests stop Uzziah from offering incense to the Lord. It was only for the priests to do this and so Uzziah would be sinning in the act. They confronted him with 80 men, and we when we had become leprous, hastened him out of the temple. What were they going to do with 80 men if Uzziah refused to listen and God had not intervened? They were preparing to use force to uphold God's law. If it is right to take the censer out of the king's hand because it is against God's law; then it is right to take weapons, forts, and other objects from a murdering tyrant when he uses it for the people's destruction. The subjects of the king were able to judge him on this matter. They are also able to protect themselves. In 2 Sam 20, the Bible tells us a traitor went and hid himself in a city called Abel. When Joab came to destroy the whole city for that one man, the people of that city resisted even though Joab was under the orders of David. During the fight, a woman negotiated with Joab for the city's life in return for the traitor's head. Joab, learning that the people were only defending themselves, did not later condemn them for resisting him. The people of Israel, when Saul said that Jonathan should die, rescued Jonathan from that unjustified act and, in so doing, resisted the king (1 Sam 14:44-45). These verses show that the people may defend themselves from tyrannous acts, by force if necessary.

Now some Christians will object that Romans 13 tells us to subject to the 'higher powers.' First, what are the 'higher powers?' After all, judges, governors, and sheriffs are 'higher powers' to the everyday citizen. Are we to obey all these without regard to the content of their commands? If it is answered no, that there are 'higher powers' over these (the president, Congress, etc...), then I would reply that there is a Higher Power over even these: God, the King of kings and Lord of lords. And how do we know what God's opinion is on the issue? Through His written Word: the Bible. If the 'higher powers' command something contrary to the Higher Power, then their command is null and void. Second, as I said earlier, when the 'king' commands or commits an evil act, he does not do so as 'king,' for the 'king' was never granted the power to do evil. In that act, the 'king' ceases to be a 'higher power' and becomes a 'lower power' to be resisted. Paul here talks of the 'king' in abstract; and he also is talking about a power that is punishing evil. This passage should not be used to compel the conscience to obey a tyrant. Taxes, revenue, and subjection are not owed to a murderer who has lost his office by forsaking the covenant between him and God, through the people, to punish evil and protect the innocent.

And so we come to the conclusion. The foundation for Biblical government is the ordaining of government by God for the defense of the innocent and the punishment of the wicked; that the specific forms and people put into office are there put by the people's consent; that there is a conditional covenant between the 'king,' God, and the people; and that if these conditions are not met, and the 'king' turns tyrant, the people have the right to set up a 'king' that fulfills God's justice.

Christianity and the Social Contract Theory

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I did not write this post. It was written a couple of years ago by a young man I know, back when he was about seventeen, I guess. I thought some might find it interesting.--MOTW

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Many people have been given the strong impression that the social contract theory was originated by John Locke. If one is lucky, a person may have heard that this theory was introduced by Thomas Hobbes in his book Leviathan (1651). Yet, on the whole, the routine history class casually mentions that Enlightenment thinkers developed the political system of contract theory and that this idea shaped the way our country (the United States) designed its government. However, the basic idea of the social contract theory was not originated by Enlightenment thinkers, nor even by Hobbes, but by Post-Reformation Christians. Often being placed in a government with a state religion, Catholic and Protestant minorities developed a Biblically and philosophically based system of government that included the social contract theory so that they could be justified in resisting the state if necessary. Though later philosophers (like Hobbes and Locke) added to and secularized these political theories, the fundamental ideas of contractual government were achieved by Christians long before the Enlightenment; notable examples of this include the “Stephanus Brutus,” Johanne Althusius, and Samuel Rutherford.

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the term, the social contract theory is the idea that government is an institution created by the people for the people’s own good. Without government, mankind would be in a state of disorder that is not beneficial to its desires of peace, property, and happiness. In order to avoid such a state, people lay down certain rights in order to form a government and appoint officials to enforce those laws. When this happens, a contract is formed. The people swear loyalty to the officials and the officials swear to rule for the people’s good. When the people empower the government to rule over them, they do not give away that power to cause pain for pain’s sake, but only in so far as to accomplish an orderly society that is in their interest. As such, if the government ever became tyrannical and were to abuse its powers, the people would have every right to resist and change that government in order for it to accomplish its purpose. This is the basic idea of the social contract theory.

In 1579, the Vindiciae contra Tyrannos, published under the pseudonym of “Stephanus Brutus” on behalf of the French Huguenots, argued that government is founded on two contracts which, if broken, would justify the resistance of the people towards the government. As Ernest Barker described it in Church, State, and Study, the first contract was a covenant between God on the one side and the king and people on the other. In this covenant, the king and people promise to serve God in return for salvation and grace. The maintenance of the covenant depends on the faithfulness of the people and the king. The second contract, which is of more interest, lays down a thought out version of the social contract theory. In this contract, “The people are the stipulator, and the king the promisor. The people … asked whether the king would rule justly and according to the law. He then promised to do so. And the people … replied that they would faithfully obey, as long as his commands were just” (Brutus, History, 931). It is a contract in which the people swear obedience in return for the king’s protection. Since both of these contracts were formed with conditions on the parties involved, the breaking of these conditions, even if it be by the king, breaks the contract. “‘It is, then, not only lawful for Israel to resist a king who overturns the Law and Church of God, but if they do not do so, they are guilty of the same crime and are subject to the same penalty’….” (Brutus, European, 491). This means that if the king rules tyrannically, the whole people (as opposed to a single individual) are obligated restrain or remove him. With these two contracts, “Brutus” laid down the basic framework of the social contract theory.

In Politica methodice Digesta, which obtained its complete form in 1610, a Protestant German jurist named Johanne Althusius presented a political theory with layered contracts that placed the ultimate power of government in the people. William Dunning, when commenting on Althusius in his A History of Political Theories, notes that Althusius starts off with the assertion that mankind is riddled with associations formed by their members for certain means. These associations vary in size, from community organizations, to cities, to the nation-state. In the smaller organizations, individuals themselves agree to certain conditions in order to maintain certain ends. When doing so, these individuals retain their natural right to obtain the desired ends and to withdraw from the organization if it works contrary to the agreement made. This kind of contract then happens again as local organizations make contracts with each other in order to obtain certain ends for their constituents. This process repeats itself until it culminates in the nation-state which is headed by the king. The people as a whole are represented in the ephors, officials beside the king, who pledge their loyalty to the king. He, in turn, promises to rule justly for the ephors’ constituents. Next, as in most contract theories, Althusius argues that, if the king breaks the contract, the ephors and/or the whole people have the right to take back their power and oaths of loyalty. This follows simply from the fact that the contract is nullified if the king breaks its conditions. With his strong analysis of the subject, Althusius presented a fuller version of the social contract theory long before the Enlightenment.

In Lex, Rex (1644), Samuel Rutherford, a Scottish clergyman, argued that, though government is a general command of God, the foundation of government rests on a covenant amongst the people. According to Rutherford, “All civil power is immediately from God in its root; in that… God hath made man a social creature… who inclineth to be governed by man…” (Rutherford, 1). However, besides this and the general commands in the Bible for government, the power of creating specific governments and officials is a power reserved to the people. When the people appoint a king, “They give to the king a politic power for their own safety, and they keep a natural power to themselves which they must conserve, but cannot give away...” (Rutherford, 84). “[Since] … they give it out, conditionate, upon this and that condition, … they may take again to themselves what they gave out upon condition if the condition be violated” (Rutherford, 6). In other words, since the foundation of a government comes from its duty to protect the people, the people have the right and obligation to overthrow a tyrannical government because such a government is doing something which it was never meant to do. Using these and several other arguments, Rutherford added to a Christian understanding of contractual government.

While it is very true that Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Rousseau developed a well-thought version of the social contract theory, this idea obviously preceded them. Discovered in a time of need, the social contract theory resulted from an oppressive time in which governments persecuted religious dissidents. As we saw in the Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos, the Politica methodice Digesta, and from Lex, Rex, the idea that government is created by and for the people is an idea that sprang from a Christian perspective. Through this theory, Christianity has made an important gift to Western politics for centuries past and, most probably, for centuries to come.