Exegesis and Theology

The Blog of Brian Collins

Government and the Fall

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The Fall has affected government in a myriad of ways. Tyranny and corruption are two common ways that sin has corrupted governments. David Koyzis points out that the Fall has affected our approach to governing in ways that we may not think about at first: political ideologies.

According to Koyzis (Political Visions and Illusions):

Every ideology is based on taking something out of creation’s totality, raising it above that creation, and making the latter revolve around and serve it. It is further based on the assumption that this idol has the capacity to save us from some real or perceived evil in the world (kindle loc 156).

For instance, liberal ideologies make liberty the ultimate good, socialist ideologies do the same with equality, democratic ideologies make the voice of the people the ultimate good.

When ideologies do this they become idolatrous:

If ideologies deify something within God’s creation, they inevitably view this humanly made god as a source of salvation. Thus each of the ideologies is based on a specific soteriology, that is, on a worked-out theory promising deliverance to human beings from some fundamental evil that is viewed as the source of a broad range of human ills (kindle loc 338).

Koyzis does not deny that every ideology has grasped a part of the truth. They have each grasped something good in the creational structure. The problem is in elevating that good part of the creation out of its rightful place.

Ideologies also make the equal and opposite error: “ideologies tend to locate the source of this fundamental evil somewhere within the creation” (kinde loc 347).

The Christian worldview, by contrast identifies sin, not some aspect of the creational order, as the fundamental problem in the world, and it looks to Christ for salvation, recognizing that salvation cannot be achieved through the political process.

Traditional conservative Russell Kirk makes much the same point in his critique of ideologies:

Ideology, in short, is a political formula that promises mankind an earthly paradise; but in cruel fact what ideology has created is a series of terrestrial hells. I set down below some of the vices of ideology. 1) Ideology is inverted religion, denying the Christian doctrine of salvation through grace in death, and substituting collective salvation here on earth. . . .

Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence, 5.

Kirk’s point was that there is a certain kind of prudential approach to politics that has the more limited goal of seeking to retain what is good in a society and seeking to reform what is evil as we are able. Some of these reforms have a life-and-death importance to them (literally, in the case of abortion), and deserve a great deal of political effort. But achieving such reforms must be seen as a means of glorifying the heavenly Father though good works (Matt. 5:16) and not as a step on the way toward saving the nation.

Mansfield and Winthrop on Philosophy of Translation

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Because I’m interested in philosophies of Bible translation, I pay close attention to translator’s notes for other books. Harvey Mansfield and Delba Winthrop have produced a highly recommended translation of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. I think their comments on translation contain wisdom for translators of Scripture.

Our intent has been to make our translation of Tocqueville’s text as literal and consistent as we can, while still readable. By ‘readable’ we mean what can easily be read now, not what we might normally say. Of the two extremes in translating, staying as close as possible to the original and bringing it as close as possible to us, we are closer to the former. A book as great as Tocqueville’s should inspire a certain reverence in translators, not only because it is so intelligent or because its style is so perfect but also because the intelligence and the style go together and need as much as possible to be conveyed together in English. Precisely to bring Tocqueville to us requires an effort, both in translating and in reading, to get close to him, and to become familiar with his terms, his rhetorical flights, his favorite expressions.

Recognizing that translation is always imperfect, we have sought all the more to be modest, cautious, and faithful. Every translator must make many choices, but in making ours we have been guided by the principle, admittedly an ideal, that our business is to convey Tocqueville’s thought as he held it rather than to restate it in comparable terms of today. By refraining as much as possible from interpretation, we try to make it possible for readers to do their own thinking and figure out for themselves what Tocqueville means. As translators we respect the diversity of interpretation best when we do not offer one ourselves. Tocqueville wrote the following reproach to Henry Reeve, his friend and author of the first English translation of Democracy in America: ‘Without wishing to do so and by following the instinct of your opinions, you have quite vividly colored what was contrary to Democracy and almost erased what could do harm to Aristocracy.’ We are not likely to receive such an authoritative message, but we hope very much that we do not deserve one. . . . We do provide notes meant to be helpful, identifying events and allusions no longer familiar in our day. We also specify Tocqueville’s references to other places in his own text. . . . We have kept Tocqueville’s long sentences and short paragraphs.

Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop, “A Note on Translation,” in Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. and ed. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: Univeristy of Chicago Press, 2000), xci-xciii.

Review of Bratt’s Biography of Kuyper

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Bratt, James D. Abraham Kuyper: Modern Calvinist, Christian Democrat. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013.

This is a well-written academic biography of Abraham Kuyper. It does a fine job in setting the context of Kuyper’s life and documenting the intellectual currents which influenced Kuyper. It also is valuable in providing the context for Kuyper’s thought (a particular political situation, for instance). This may affect the evaluation of certain aspects of Kuyper’s thought. Bratt provides a warts and all kind of biography, which is useful when evaluating the thought of an influential figure. The major weakness of this work, to my mind, is Bratt’s own left-of-center viewpoint. There were several occasions in which Bratt declared Kuyper’s thought to be contradictory (and the part deemed the outlier was the conservative part). I often wondered at these points if a right-of-center biographer would have seen Kuyper as contradictory at these points or whether he would have found Kuyper’s thought more cohesive.

Evaluating purposes of Government

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McClymond and McDermott list Edwards’s first four purposes of government as “secure property, protect citizens’ rights, . . . maintain order[, and] . . . ensure justice.”

In reality the first three are all aspects of ensuring justice. This really does rate at the top of the list for biblical purposes of government, as the following passages make clear.

Deuteronomy 1:10–18—10 The Lord your God has multiplied you, and behold, you are today as numerous as the stars of heaven. 11 May the Lord, the God of your fathers, make you a thousand times as many as you are and bless you, as he has promised you! 12 How can I bear by myself the weight and burden of you and your strife? 13 Choose for your tribes wise, understanding, and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads.’ 14 And you answered me, ‘The thing that you have spoken is good for us to do.’ 15 So I took the heads of your tribes, wise and experienced men, and set them as heads over you, commanders of thousands, commanders of hundreds, commanders of fifties, commanders of tens, and officers, throughout your tribes. 16 And I charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him. 17 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. And the case that is too hard for you, you shall bring to me, and I will hear it.’ 18 And I commanded you at that time all the things that you should do. (ESV)

1 Kings 10:9—9 Blessed be the Lord your God, who has delighted in you and set you on the throne of Israel! Because the Lord loved Israel forever, he has made you king, that you may execute justice and righteousness.” (ESV)

Psalm 72:1–7—1 Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the royal son! 2 May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice! 3 Let the mountains bear prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness! 4 May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the children of the needy, and crush the oppressor! 5 May they fear you while the sun endures, and as long as the moon, throughout all generations! 6 May he be like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth! 7 In his days may the righteous flourish, and peace abound, till the moon be no more! (ESV)

Psalm 72:11–14—11 May all kings fall down before him, all nations serve him! 12 For he delivers the needy when he calls, the poor and him who has no helper. 13 He has pity on the weak and the needy, and saves the lives of the needy. 14 From oppression and violence he redeems their life, and precious is their blood in his sight. (ESV)

Psalm 82:1–8— A Psalm of Asaph. 1 God takes His stand in His own congregation; He judges in the midst of the rulers. 2 How long will you judge unjustly And show partiality to the wicked? Selah. 3 Vindicate the weak and fatherless; Do justice to the afflicted and destitute. 4 Rescue the weak and needy; Deliver them out of the hand of the wicked. 5 They do not know nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are shaken. 6 I said, “You are gods, And all of you are sons of the Most High. 7 “Nevertheless you will die like men And fall like any one of the princes.” 8 Arise, O God, judge the earth! For it is You who possesses all the nations. (NASB)

Proverbs 29:4—4 By justice a king builds up the land, but he who exacts gifts tears it down. (ESV)

Proverbs 29:14—14 If a king faithfully judges the poor, his throne will be established forever. (ESV)

Jeremiah 22:2–5—2 and say, ‘Hear the word of the Lord, O king of Judah, who sits on the throne of David, you, and your servants, and your people who enter these gates. 3 Thus says the Lord: Do justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor him who has been robbed. And do no wrong or violence to the resident alien, the fatherless, and the widow, nor shed innocent blood in this place. 4 For if you will indeed obey this word, then there shall enter the gates of this house kings who sit on the throne of David, riding in chariots and on horses, they and their servants and their people. 5 But if you will not obey these words, I swear by myself, declares the Lord, that this house shall become a desolation. (ESV)

Jeremiah 22:15—15 Do you think you are a king because you compete in cedar? Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. (ESV)

Conservative and Liberal Purposes for Government

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Readers should keep in mind Terry Nardin’s insight that the significant divide in modern political thought is not between left and right; it is between those who see the state as an instrument for promoting particular purposes, a conservative view, and those who see it as a framework within which people can pursue their own self-chosen purposes, a liberal view.

. . . . . . . . . .

“The terms conservative and liberal have their traditional political theory meanings here and not their meanings in contemporary U. S. political dialogue. The conservative view rests on the assumption that any authority is based on shared beliefs. In other words, a common set of beliefs is constitutive of authority in a social order (de Tocqueville [1835] 1956; Durkheim [1915] 1965: 236-245). The influence of authority is a function of the existence of shared beliefs, values, and practices within a given social setting (Durkheim [1915] 1965: 207; Parsons 1960). The liberal view is that the lack of shared beliefs is what makes authority crucial in social relations. In this view, authority solves the inherent problem of chaos in situations with no substantive agreement between the actors. Having a person in authority solves the predicament of disagreement over what is to be done; in other words, when actors cannot agree on a course of action, they select an actor to make the decision for them (Friedman 1973: 140). This view of authority, often associated with Thomas Hobbes, is based on procedural and not substantive agreement. Any social action is part of what Terry Nardin calls a practical association, which assists not in generating shared goals but in tolerance between people (Nardin 1983: 10-14).”

Robert B. Shelledy, in Church, State, and Citizen: Christian Approaches to Political Engagement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 17, 29-30, n. 5.

Review of Jim Hamilton’s With the Clouds of Heaven

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Hamilton, James M., Jr. With the Clouds of Heaven: The Book of Daniel in Biblical Theology. New Studies in Biblical Theology. Edited by D. A. Carson. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2014.

I found much to appreciate in Hamilton’s biblical theology of Daniel. Hamilton forthrightly holds to the early date for the book and defends the necessity of this understanding for right interpretation of the book. Hamilton also has his eye on both the theology of Daniel and how that theology connects to the rest of the canon. Finally, I found the book full of exegetical insights. For instance, I thought his treatment of the parallels between various visions well-done.

I have three criticisms, however. First, I do not find Hamilton’s chiastic structure for the book compelling. I rarely find chiastic structures for books compelling. Too often the sections are unbalanced and the parallels created by the author’s wording rather than by the text. This is the case with Hamilton’s structure of Daniel. For instance, Hamilton labels chapter 1 “Exile to the unclean realm of the dead.” Yet chapter 1 does not clearly identify Babylon as the realm of the dead. The parallel closing section, 10-12, Hamilton labels “Return from exile and resurrection from the dead.” This label works for chapter 12, but it doesn’t really work for chapters 10-11.

Second, I find Hamilton’s approach typology to be somewhat over-imaginative. For instance, I see the parallels that Hamilton draws between Joseph and Daniel, but whether that makes Joseph a type of Daniel is unclear to me. What is more I think it is a stretch to use these parallels to connect Daniel to the New Exodus theme.

Third, I find Hamilton’s interpretation of Daniel’s 70 sevens unconvincing. One of my motivations for reading Hamilton was to examine alternatives to the dispensational approach to this passage in which the first 69 sevens stretch from a decree of a Persian monarch related to the rebuilding of Jerusalem to the first coming of Christ and in which the 70th seven awaits a future fulfillment. Hamilton takes the first seven weeks to refer to the “time between the revelation of these things to Daniel and the conclusion of Malachi’s prophetic ministry.” The troubled sixty-two weeks are the intertestamental period. The seventieth week extends from the establishment of the church to the return of Christ, the last half of the week being the time of Antichrist (131-32; 215-16).

Hamilton begins by discounting the literal nature of Jeremiah’s 70 year prophecy. Hamilton says, “If Daniel counted from the time of his own exile to Babylon in 605 BC, the first year of Darius in 539/538 BC would be roughly seventy years.” He concludes from this “Daniel seems to take the seventy years as a round number that broadly corresponds to an individual’s  lifespan” (123). This leads to another conclusion, in turn. Since the 70 years of Jeremiah were not literal years, “I do not think Daniel intended the seventy weeks to be understood literally either” (124). But there are several weak links in this chain of reasoning. First, even if one does not adopt one of the interpretations that finds Jeremiah’s prophecy fulfilled precisely (Hamilton calls these interpretations “strained” but fails to engage with them), the years may still be literal rather than figurative. As Hamilton notes, the time span was “roughly seventy years.” A “round number,” as Hamilton designates Jeremiah’s seventy years, is not necessarily a figurative number. In fact, if the number is a round number it would seem that it is not merely a symbolic number. Furthermore, if the number is a round number that is fulfilled in roughly seventy years rather than in exactly seventy years, why would Daniel conclude that the number is symbolic of a lifespan? Hamilton appeals to Isaiah 23:15 and Psalm 90:10 as evidence that the Bible uses 70 symbolically for a lifespan. But even if Isaiah 23:15 is referring to an idealized period of time with regard to Tyre, this does not mean that Jeremiah is doing so with regard to Israel. Second Chronicles 36:20 says that the exile was for seventy years so that the land would enjoy its Sabbaths. This would be an inspired indication that the 70 years for Israel should be taken more literally than that for Tyre. Furthermore, understanding the seventy years for Tyre literally is not beyond the realm of possibility. Erlandsson notes that “between the years 700 and 630 . . . Assyria did not permit Tyre to engage in any business activity.” S. Erlandsson, The Burden of Babylon: A Study of Isaiah 13:2-14:23 (Lund: Gleerup, 1970), 102 as cited in Geoffrey Gorgan, “Isaiah,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1986), 6:147.

Hamilton also argues that the 70 sevens of Daniel 9 are not to be taken as actual years because Ezekiel speaks of differing period: a 430 year period of judgment (430 years being symbolic of the sojourn in Egypt) (124-25). The comparison between Ezekiel 4 and Daniel 9 is far from apt. Ezekiel is obviously working with symbols throughout Ezekiel 4, so for his numbers to symbolically represent exile in Egypt/Mesopotamia is understandable. However, the prophecy of the seventy sevens follows on a prophecy of seventy years that was fulfilled in “roughly seventy years.” We would expect then the seventy sevens to follow to be actual years rather than merely symbolic years unless there is some compelling reason to the contrary.

The only other reason that Hamilton gives for taking the 70 sevens as symbolic is that 490 amounts to a tenfold jubilee. This is interesting in light of the fact that Jeremiah’s 70 year prophecy dealt with giving the land its Sabbath rest. I’m not entirely convinced in light of the in fact that 9:24 provides readers with the purposes for the seventy sevens prophecy and does not raise mention the jubilee. In any event, granting the symbolism does not eliminate the possibility of literal years. Hamilton would likely grant two literal trees stood in the Garden of Eden from one of which Adam and Eve literally ate fruit. Yet at the same time these trees bore a profound symbolic significance.

I found Hamilton’s reasons for rejecting a literal 490 years view similarly dissatisfying. He writes: “Questions multiply for those who would take the 490 years literally, involving both the date from which to count (from 538, 458, or 445 BC?) and the event that marks completion (until the birth of Jesus, until his triumphal entry, until the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, or until his return?) And do we factor in a ‘parenthesis’ that is the church age, leaving a literal seventieth week, or do we switch from a literal understanding of the first sixty-nine weeks to a symbolic understanding of the seventieth? In addition to these would seem to be an additional question: How are Daniel’s 490 years to be harmonized with Ezekiel’s 430?” (126, n. 13) This is one of the few places where I thought Hamilton was actually unfair. Of course, historical questions multiply if a text is understood historically rather than merely symbolically. But this is true throughout the whole book. Questions multiply for those who believe Daniel to be a historical figure who wrote in the reigns of the kings mentioned in the book that don’t arise if he were merely a symbolical character created by an author in Maccabean times. Nonetheless, Hamilton rightly mounts a strong defense of the historicity of Daniel. The questions of terminus ad quo and terminus ad quem should not prejudice interpreters against a historical understanding of the 490 years. Similarly, if one understands the exodus as a historical event, “questions multiply”: several dates are possible and several attempts at harmonizing biblical and Egyptian chronology have been proposed. The fact that these multiple proposals exist doesn’t invalidate the historicity of the event.

There are several ways by which 69 sevens can be seen to extend from a decree of a Persian monarch related to rebuilding the city to the life of the Messiah prior to his crucifixion. The fact that these calculations can be made in a number of different ways (that is, from different starting points, using solar years or 360 day years, etc.) should not obscure the amazing fact these years at the very least roughly span the period of time from decrees to rebuild to the time of Christ. In fact the timing is so close that I find it odd, then, to dismiss a literal interpretation of these years. What is more, one does not have to be a dispensationalist to understand these years literally. Hamilton’s colleague Peter Gentry does so in Kingdom through Covenant. Gentry, contrary to a dispensational view, locates the seventieth week within the ministry of Christ. Hamilton, however, makes cogent arguments against Gentry that the seventieth is eschatological. Of course if the years are literal, and if the sixty-ninth year terminates sometime in Jesus’s ministry, and if the seventieth week is still future, the means that there is a lengthy gap between the sixty-ninth and seventieth years. Personally, I don’t find that troublesome as there are numerous Old Testament prophecies that are fulfilled partially in the first come and partially in the second.

The lengthy critique of Hamilton’s position on Daniel 9 should not detract however from my recommendation of this book. Disagreements aside, I filled my notes on Daniel with many helpful observations from this book.

Kuyper on the Purpose of Government

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A state is not an end in itself. On the contrary, the life of a state, too, is only a means to prepare for a communal life of a still higher order, a life that is already germinating and someday will be gloriously revealed in the kingdom of God.

In that kingdom there will be perfect harmony. Tensions between maximum freedom for the individual and optimal development of communal life will there be replaced by the worship and adoration of God.

To prepare for that, and to contribute to the coming of that kingdom, the state has the calling to provide already now that higher form of community life that can do what family life is not able to do: namely, to ensure a social life where human persons can deploy their latent strengths in the most untrammeled fashion possible.

Abraham Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, Melvin Flikkema, and Harry Van Dyke, trans. Harry Van Dyke, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, 2015), 44.

Any form of government, however tyrannical and despotic, is still preferable to complete anarchy. And anarchy, we all know, can be created not only by a revolution with incendiary bombs and pavement stones in the palace courtyard, but just as well by a revolution with slogans and ideas aired in cabinet or parliament!

Government is quite different from administration. The deteriorated constitutional situation into which we are gradually entering increasingly encourages putting administration in the foreground and leaving genuine governance in the background, as though it represents an abuse of power or a luxury we can do without.

Abraham Kuyper, Our Program: A Christian Political Manifesto, ed. Jordan J. Ballor, Melvin Flikkema, and Harry Van Dyke, trans. Harry Van Dyke, Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press; Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, 2015), 46.

Jonathan Edwards on the Purpose of Government

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It’s helpful when answering big questions like these to look at the answers of people in other times and other places. Their answers may or may not be right, but they likely share different biases that people of our own time. It’s therefore instructive to look at these answers, to ask if they are biblical, and to ask if they reveal any blind spots we might have as creatures of our own time and place.

Over the next couple days I’ll post quotations from various persons on the question of the purpose of government.

Edwards “preached that magistrates were to ‘act as the fathers of the commonwealth with that care and concern for the public good that the father of a family has for the family, watchful against public dangers, [and] forward to improve their power to promote the public benefit’ [WJE 8:261-62]. Their first three functions of government were to secure property, protect citizens’ rights, and—toward that end—maintain order. . . . Related to these first two functions—protecting property and keeping order—government was also to ensure justice. For Edwards justice was recompense of moral deserts. The evildoer would have evil returned in proportion to his or her evil deeds. Similarly, justice would prevail when the person who loved other received the proper return of his or her love” [WJE 25:321; WJE 8:569].

. . . . . . . . . . .

A fourth responsibility of government for Edwards was national defense. Military force was justified when the ‘rights and privileges’ of a people were threatened or when the ‘preservation of the community or public society requires it.’ If ‘injurious and bloody enemies’ molest and endanger a society it is the duty of government to defend that society by the use of force [WJE 25:133; sermon on Neh. 4:14, WJEO 64].

The next two functions of government referred not to preventable evils but to positive goods—promoting a common morality and a minimum level of material prosperity. The fifth function was to ‘make good laws against immorality,’ for a people that fail in morality would eventually fail in every other way. Rulers therefore were not to ‘countenance vice and wickedness’ by failing to enact legislation against it or enforcing what had been legislated. Sixth, governments were to help the poor. Edwards believed that the state—in his case, a town committee in Northampton—had a responsibility to assist those who were destitute for reasons other than their own laziness or prodigality. The state was also obliged to help the children of the lazy and prodigal. Governmental involvement was necessary because private charity (here Edwards had in mind the charity of churches) was unreliable: ‘In this corrupt world [private charity] is an uncertain thing; and therefore the wisdom of legislators did not think fit to leave those that are so reduced upon such a precarious foundation for subsistence.’ Because of the natural selfishness of all human beings, including the regenerate, it is therefore incumbent upon the Christian to support the state’s efforts to help the destitute [Sermon on Prov. 14:34, WJEO 44; WJE 17:403.]

The seventh and final item in Edwards’s job description for the magistrate was religious. The good ruler was expected to give friendly but distanced support to true religion. During a revival, the magistrate should call a day of prayer or thanksgiving. But he should not try to do much more than that. . . . . In his private notebooks, Edwards reminded himself that the civil authorities were to have ‘nothing to do with matters ecclesiastical, with those things that relate to conscience and eternal salvation or with any matters religious as religious.’ In other words, he would not allow any magistrate to tell his parishioners what church to attend or tell him what to preach .

McClymond & McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 515-17.

The Creation Blessing and the Origin of Governments

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If the Creation Blessing of Genesis 1:26-28 is the foundational text for a biblical theology of government, as argued earlier, then how does one move from the dominion that all mankind is blessed with to a government in which some men rule over others?

Interestingly, this is a matter that engaged political theorists such as Robert Filmer and John Locke. Filmer argued that all governmental authority is patriarchal. Adam was the first ruler because he was the the first father. He sees further evidence that patriarchs were rulers in the fact that Abraham and Esau oversaw armies, that Abraham entered into treaties with kings, and that Judah had the power to sentence Tamar to death. When God established a king in Israel, he did so on a dynastic principle (All of these arguments are found in the first chapter of Filmer’s Patriarcha). The upshot of Filmer’s argument was support for monarchy and opposition to increasing republican and democratic elements.

Locke rejected Filmer’s argument in his First Treatise of Government. Greg Forster summarizes Locke’s counter-proposal:

Locke argues that in God’s design of human nature, the relevant point for this question is that the capacity to have dominion over—to use and destroy—other things, meaning especially the capacities of intellect and will, are present in the entire human species. The need to exercise dominion—the need for food, clothing, etc.—is also diffused throughout the species. Every human being is therefore constructed by God to be an Exerciser of dominion. This implies that no human being is made to be an object of dominion. By nature, then, the human race is in a state of freedom and equality.

Greg Forster, Starting with Locke, loc. 1440.

And the rule of everybody over everybody is not government. Forster again summarizes Locke’s way of thinking:

So someone must have authority to enforce the natural law, since it is God’s law and cannot be void. Yet no particular person has a specific mandate to such authority, either from nature or revelation.

Locke takes these premises and makes a bold deduction. If someone must have authority to enforce the natural law, yet no particular person has a specific mandate for it, it must follow that—at least by nature—everyone has that authority equally.

Greg Forster, Starting With Locke, loc. 1448.

From this starting point Locke reaches government by consent of the governed. Since all have equal authority, government must have that authority by the consent of all over whom it rules.

Both of these theories have significant problems. For instance, how would Filmer account for the authority of kings who could not trace their geneology back to the line of kings that flowed from Adam or Noah?

Forster points out one of the large problems for Locke:

This theory of consent is subject to a number of problems; the most important of these is the problem of establishing that people do in fact consent. Consent theory implies—and Locke explicitly affirms—that people are not born as members of the community. Because people are by nature free and equal, they are free and equal when they are born. Only when they give their consent do they become members of the community, and thus obligated to obey its authority (see T II. 119, 176). …

Locke, like most consent theorists, argues that any adult who chooses to remain in a country and live there rather than leave it has consented—implicitly or ‘tacitly,’ even if not explicitly—to be ruled by its laws. . . . Only explicit consent can make a person a member of society, but this implicit or tacit consent is all that is needed to legitimately enforce the law. ….

The theory of tacit consent is subject to a number of objections. Is it reasonable to expect people to undertake the burden of leaving the country as the price of not giving their consent? And where will they go without having to face the same problem elsewhere?

Locke considers these questions, but only briefly and without much attention to the objections.

Greg Forster, Starting with Locke, loc 1533-1556.

It seems to me that there is little problem in affirming an authority structure in a world in which all humans are given the blessing of dominion over the earth. We see this with Adam and Eve in the first family. Yet how the first governmental structure of authority emerged is not specified by Scripture.

I think the silence of Scripture on this point is intentional. If Scripture told us how the first government formed, we would want to test the legitimacy of all subsequent governments on whether or not they were formed in the same way. But that is not what God would have us to do. God wants his people to submit to the existing authorities because “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1).

Review of Beeke, Family Worship

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Beeke, Joel R. Family Worship. Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage, 2009.

In this book Joel Beeke makes the case that family worship is a concept rooted in the Bible and which should therefore be practiced by Christians. I found the book stimulate my desire to worship God with my family. Beeke also provides practical suggestions for what to do in family worship. It’s a small book, but it is packed with helpful material.