In BJU Press’s Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption we gave some attention to the political virtues of prudence and boldness (p. 280).

Prudence means understanding your situation, seeing what good can be accomplished in it, knowing what options are both morally legitimate and likely successful—and then pursuing the wisest goal in the wisest way. Prudence is a key virtue for Christians involved in politics (Prov. 8:12–16). The Bible does not provide specific revelation about how to frame laws, manage campaigns, or even who to vote for in a presidential election. But the Bible was written to help Christians live wisely in every aspect of their lives. Prudence is knowing the best way to get from here to wherever you ought to be. For example, Christians and radical feminists fundamentally disagree about the structure of the family and the roles of men and women in society. But they both see pornography as degrading, and both oppose domestic abuse of women. A politically prudent Christian can reach across the aisle and cooperate with someone who wants the same biblical things even if their motivations are ultimately different.

Of course, some fundamental disagreements will always remain. Cooperation is sometimes impossible. On these matters the Christian should state the Christian position boldly, but not brashly.

Another example of political prudence can be seen in the abortion debate. Ideally, the Christian would see a constitutional ammendment passed that would see the life of the unborn protected in the nation without exceptions. But such an ammendment is a political impossibility. The prudent Christian, however, sees that abortion can be constrained and limited though more limited laws that Congress and state legislatures pass. If a pro-life politician agrees to a law that will prevent or hinder him from reaching the goal of ending abortion in the United States, that would be compromise. But he he is pressing for laws that move toward the goal even if they don’t reach it, that is political prudence.

This kind of prudence is not a weak-kneed approach to politics, even if it avoids making Quoxitic stands. It typically requires a great deal of foresight and boldness if it is going to be successful.

This last year I had the privlege of contributing a section on the Christian’s involement in politics in BJU Press’s new textbook, Biblical Worldview: Creation, Fall, Redemption. We looked at the Christian’s political responsibility under these headings:

Praying for All People

Pressing for God’s Will to Be Done

Preserve the Good, Reform the Evil

Develop Christian Political Virtues: Prudence, Boldness, Humility, and Respect

In the first draft of this chapter I wrote what follows about prayer (the published text was cut due to space constraints and improved by fellow authors and editors; I present the initial draft here because it is fuller and blogs don’t have space constraints):

When God sent the Israelites into exile, they were a conquered, politically powerless people. They were scattered form their homeland for the purpose of breaking their political power. And yet they are told to pray for the city to which they would be sent. (Jer. 29:7). Prayer was still possible. Likewise, the Christians in first century Rome did not have any political power. Many Christians were slaves. But Paul makes prayer for those in authority a duty for all Christians (1 Tim. 2:1-4).

The content of these two prayers is significant. In Jeremiah the people are to pray for the welfare of the foreign city to which they were exiled. Israel may have been tempted to view the Babylonians simply as the enemy. They may have been tempted pray curses down on these enemies. But God says his people’s welfare will be found in the welfare of the people they live among. Though Christians are not exiles under God’s judgment, they are still exiles and sojourners in this present evil age awaiting the return of their King (1 Peter 1:1). They may face persecution, if only the credulous mocking that comes when Christians resist the debauchery around them (1 Peter 2:11-12; 4:4). Nonetheless, Christians should view the unbelievers around them not as enemies, but as neighbors. They should pray for their welfare.

Paul urges that Christians pray for all people, but he calls out kings and other authorities for special attention. In particular, Paul says that Christians should pray that rulers would rule in such a way that Christians can lead “peaceful and quiet” lives. This may be a way of praying that governments would live up to their obligations as laid out in Romans 13:1-7 and 1 Peter 2:13-17. Rulers who are a terror to bad conduct but a blessing to good conduct will lead to peaceful and quiet lives for all, including Christians. But this prayer goes beyond praying just that government would fulfill its responsibilities. Paul is praying that the government will permit Christian’s to fulfill theirs. He prays that Christians might live lives of eusebia, which means a life lived in the fear of God, a life that seeks to please God in every aspect of life. He also prays that Christians would be able to live “dignified” lives. A dignified person is not flippant about life; he knows that every moment is lived before God. Life may be enjoyed but it should be enjoyed with due recognition of the duty to live always before God and a watching world. Finally, Paul indicates that Christians pray for everyone because God desires everyone to be saved. This means that Christians should pray for the salvation of those in government.

Paul’s example here of praying the government would fulfill its God-given duties reveals that Christians can pray that their leaders would be enabled by God to promote justice in all that they do. Christians should pray that governments will defend those who are deprived of justice from their oppressors (Ps. 72). Christians should also pray that their leaders would be just, righteous, morally self-controlled, and aware that they will give an account before God for their actions (Acts 24:25).

Jesus’s model prayer instructs us to pray that the Father’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven.” This would include God’s will about the matters of state (Matt. 6:10).

Finally, Christians should pray for the soon return of Jesus from heaven to establish his righteous rule on earth forevermore (Matt. 6:10).

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.

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“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.

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.

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.

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).