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Tag Archives: Political Theory

Lex Rex 4 (A King’s Right to Rule Comes from the People)

17 Thursday Oct 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Samuel Rutherford, Sovereignty

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

compatibilism, John Feinberg, Lex Rex, No One Like Him, Political Theory, politics, Samuel Rutherford, soft determinism

The prior entry may be found here: https://memoirandremains.wordpress.com/2013/07/24/lex-rex-3-do-we-need-a-king/

To understand this question, we must first understand Rutherford’s doctrine of divine action, which would currently go by the title “compatibilism” or as Feinberg has it “soft determinism”. [1] In one sense all actions the result of God’s determination. However, in acting through human beings, God does not make a human being do something they do not desire to do. Rather, the determination of God and decision of the human being are compatible (please see the entire discussion by Feinberg to understand the nuances).

The concept is important to Rutherford’s argument, because he is considering whether a man becomes king because God has made him King or because the people have chosen the king.  Romans 13:1 states that all authorities exist because God has appointed them. Thus, some would argue that I am king because God made me king: Therefore, everything I do is right (because God has willed it).

Rutherford nuances the argument by noting that with very possible exceptions (such as David being anointed as king by Samuel), no King was chosen by immediate act of God (there is no prophetic announcement that Mr. X will be king, in most instances). He gives the example of a biblical prophet.  Jeremiah is a prophet because God made him a prophet. The fact that no one wants him to be a prophet does not change anything. Yet even David at some point must reckon with the willingness of the people that he be King:

The prophets were immediately called of God to be prophets, whether the people consented that they should be prophets or not; therefore God immediately and only sent the prophets, not the people; but though God extraordinarily designed some men to be kings, and anointed them by his prophets, yet were they never actually installed kings till the people made them kings.

God has decided that David will be king. God gives a prophetic word that David will be king. God also works through the people of Israel to make David king. But unless we are going to reduce Providence to fate and human beings to robots, we must take seriously the human interaction.

If they mean by the people’s choosing nothing but the people’s approbative consent, posterior to God’s act of creating a king, let them show us an act of God making Kings, and establishing royal power in this family lather than m that family, which is prior to the people’s consent,—distinct from the people’s consent I believe there is none at all.

Why then kings at all? Rutherford explains that to defend ourselves from violence (the common defense), it may make sense to have a ruler who can wield an army.  Thus, the people are choosing someone to protect them. Moreover, people choose the local magistrates who rule over them; how much different is it than choosing a king?

And how then a king?

If all men be born, as concerning civil power, alike,—for no man cometh out of the womb with a diadem on his head or a sceptre in his hand, and yet men united in a society may give crown and sceptre to this man and not to that man,—then this power was in this united society, but it was not in them formally, for they should then all have been one king, and so both above and superior, and below and inferior to themselves, which we cannot say; therefore this power must have been virtually in them, because neither man nor community of men can give that which they neither have formally nor virtually in them.

And so he concludes that is the choice of the people that results in the king (even though such choice accords with God’s decision):

I think royalists cannot deny but a people ruled by aristocratic magistrates may elect a king, and a king so elected is formally made a lawful king by the people’s election; for of six willing and gifted to reign, what maketh one a king and not the other five? Certainly by God’s disposing the people to choose this man, and not another man. It cannot be said but God giveth the kingly power immediately; and by him kings reign, that is true. The office is immediately from God, but the question now is, What is that which formally applieth the office and royal power to this person rather than to the other five as meet? Nothing can here be dreamed of but God’s inclining the hearts of the states to choose this man and not that man.

This argument then opens the further consideration (not here addressed by Rutherford): If the consent of the governed is what makes a king (and such consent comes from God); then the retraction of consent must also derive from God.

Rutherford then also turns God’s will in appointment of a king against a king. Since the office is a gift of God (in the ultimate sense), the king must acknowledge his rule as not originating in his own goodness and fitness but rather in God’s gift:

But there is no title on earth now to tie crowns to families, to persons, but only the suffrages of the people: for, 1st, Conquest without the consent of the people is but royal robbery, as we shall see. 2d, There is no prophetical and immediate calling to kingdoms now. 3d, The Lord’s giving of regal parts is somewhat; but I hope royalists will not deny but a child, young in years and judgment, may be a lawful king. 4th, Mr Maxwell’s appointing of the kingly office doth no more make one man a lawful king than another; for this were a wide consequence. God hath appointed that kings should be; therefore John à Stiles is a king; yea, therefore David is a king. It followeth not. Therefore it remaineth only that the suffrages of the people of God is that just title and divine calling that kings have now to their crowns. I presuppose they have gifts to govern from God.


[1] “Soft determinists agree that everything happens is causally determined, but they also believe that some actions are free….Compatibilists contend that there are free actions and those actions, though casually determined, are free because they are done in accord with the agent’s wishes” (Feinberg, No One Like Him, 635 & 637).

Lex Rex.1

23 Tuesday Jul 2013

Posted by memoirandremains in Samuel Rutherford

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

law, Lex Rex, Political Theory, politics, Ramist, Samuel Rutherford

Lex Rex

Lex Rex is a work of Samuel Rutherford, the Scotch Presbyterian (1600-1661) who lived through the political and religious turmoil of 17 Century Britain.

In 1643, Rutherford was appointed as a delegate to the Westminster Assembly. At this time, Rutherford wrote the instant rejoinder to the work of a man named Maxwell:

About this time, he wrote his celebrated work entitled Lex Rex, in answer to a treatise by John Maxwell, the excommunicated Bishop of Ross, entitled “Sacro-Sancta Regum Majestas, or the sacred and royal prerogative of Christian kings, wherein soveraigntie is, by Holy Scripture, reverend antiquitie, and sound reason asserted,” 4to., Oxford, 1644. This work endeavours to prove, that the royal prerogative of kingly authority is derived alone from God; and it demands an absolute and passive obedience of the subject to the will of the sovereign. The arguments in Lex Rex completely refute all the wild and absurd notions which Maxwell’s work contains, although some of the sentiments would be thought rather democratical in modern times.

Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (Edinburgh: R. Ogle, 1843), xviii–xix.

Not surprisingly, after the restoration of the monarchy, Rutherford’s work was seen as seditious. He was ordered to appear to answer for the charge of high treason:

His work, Lex, Rex, was considered by the government as “inveighing against monarchie and laying ground for rebellion;” and ordered to be burned by the hand of the common hangman at Edinburgh. It met with similar treatment at St Andrews, and also at London; and a proclamation was issued, that every person in possession of a copy, who did not deliver it up to the king’s solicitor, should be treated as an enemy to the government. Rutherford himself was deprived of his offices both in the University and the Church, and his stipend confiscated; he was ordered to confine himself within his own house, and was summoned to appear before the Parliament at Edinburgh, to answer a charge of high treason. It may be easily imagined what his fate would have been had he lived to obey the mandate; but ere the time arrived he was summoned to a far higher than an earthly tribunal. Not having a strong constitution, and being possessed of an active mind, he had evidently overworked himself in the share he took in the struggles and controversies of the time. Although not an old man, his health had been gradually declining for several years. His approaching dissolution he viewed with Christian calmness and fortitude. A few weeks before his death, he gave ample evidence of his faith and hope in the Gospel, by the Testimony which he left behind him.* On his death-bed he was cheered by the consolations of several Christian friends, and on the 20th of March 1661, in the sixty-first year of his age, he breathed his last, in the full assurance and hope of eternal life. His last words were, “Glory, glory, dwelleth in Emmanuel’s land.”

Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (Edinburgh: R. Ogle, 1843), xix.

The work itself is long, complex, contains numerous (now) obscure allusions, filled with Latin and Greek (at times both in the same clause, “a κατὰ τιad illud quod est dictumἀπλῶς”); and written it is in 17th century English by a man from Scotland. In short, the book does not make for an easy read. Therefore, I will endeavor to summarize the conclusions of his argument to make the matter plain for myself and perhaps be of use to others.

The work is structured as a catechism, question and answer – which was a form of teaching common at the time. Rutherford asks a question and then divides the proposition into smaller parts and examines those elements (and so on)?[1]

Question 1: Whether Government be Warranted by a Divine Law

Answer: Yes. Rutherford gives two reasons.

First, Scripture states that government (although not a specific form of government) is stated to derive from God (Rom. 13:1). Rutherford also bases this upon the inference drawn from the proposition that Christians are commanded to be in subjection to government (Romans 13:5; 1 Peter 2:13).

Second, since peace is an obvious appropriate end of human life (he derives this without reference from God and from “nature”), the ability to achieve that end must be also appropriate.

Question 2: Whether Government be Warranted by the Law of Nature

Nothing in nature gives one man the right of rule over another:

The law saith there is no law of nature agreeing to all living creatures for superiority; for by no reason in nature hath a boar dominion over a boar, a lion over a lion, a dragon over a dragon, a bull over a bull: and if all men be born equally free, as I hope to prove, there is no reason in nature why one man should be king and lord over another;

Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (Edinburgh: R. Ogle, 1843), 2. In so writing, Rutherford strikes at the argument that X has the right of rule over Y due to some inherent superiority of X over Y.

However, that does not mean that government is necessary at odds with that freedom.  Thus, while nature does not give the power of one human to rule another, yet government may rightly exist as something which has its warrant in God’s grant:

Therefore I see not but Govarruvias, Soto, and Suarez, have rightly said, that power of government is immediately from God, and this or that definite power is mediately from God, proceeding from God by the mediation of the consent of a community, which resigneth their power to one or more rulers;

Samuel Rutherford, Lex, Rex, or the Law and the Prince (Edinburgh: R. Ogle, 1843), 3.  (Incidentally, one can see from the references in the above-quotation, that Rutherford considered and argued with a great many political thinkers.

 


[1] The logical world was of Rutherford’s age was largely Ramist: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ramus/#LogMet

http://journal.oraltradition.org/files/articles/2i/13_rechtien.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramism

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