Biblical Foundations of Civil Government

There is an old cheesy “ice breaker” of sorts that politicians have used on the campaign trail. It is a bit of intentionally bad etymology aimed at their own species. “The word politics comes from two Greek words,” they begin — “poly, meaning many, and ticks, meaning bloodsuckers.” Then, we imagine in the voice of Jeb Bush, they insist, “Why aren’t you laughing?” Of course this is false. It is meant only to communicate how winsome the candidate is, and how different he will be from all the other bloodsuckers, one supposes.

The word politics actually comes from the Greek word for “city” (πόλις), although that can be misleading from a historical perspective. Greece had “city-states” which were quite independent from each other. So they were not cities in the same way that we might envision them. However they were a geographically designated collection of human beings in some complex set of social bonds. Greek and Roman history have traditionally given us more specifics to work with, but the classic “build your own island” thought experiment is not far off, if it begins in the family and then to the larger clan, which clans then cooperate in trade with others, having already formed a division of labor themselves, and the rest is, well, history.

The Bible is not silent on this process. It is not a textbook on civics, but neither is its history somehow above tracing out a similar procession of man’s relation to man. What it provides, that the secular textbooks do not (and cannot), is a fundamental design to the story. If politics has no telos, no sufficient cause to its ethical motion and supposed virtues, then it can never rise beyond the mere descriptions of blind, stinking power. Many are perfectly content with that. Not the Christian. When God’s people are thinking biblically, they are committed to right action in the civil sphere for the same essential reason as they are committed to doing right in the home or at the workplace. Righteousness and wickedness are to be loved and hated, respectively, no matter what the occasion.

What I will argue is that the Scriptures give us the divinely revealed framework for what I call the “design-and-distortion” model of the civil sphere. That choice of words and the importance of making these notions primary will become clearer as we proceed.

The Design of the Civil Sphere

Let us begin in the simplest and least controversial. God made all things good (Gen. 1:31) and all for his own glory (Ps. 19:1). These form two fundamental truths about reality from the perspective of the biblical worldview. The design of all things must always be considered good; and all natures are designed toward the end of expressing the perfections of God: i. e. “glorifying” him. I say that this is uncontroversial, but in fact we often betray our disbelief even in the basics. I say it is simple, but in fact it is profound in its implications. When considering what is wrong with bad things, we have no other ultimate point of comparison aside from (1) God’s own character in himself, and (2) his design of things outside of himself.

Now “all things” naturally include human beings. So man and woman were designed to reflect God’s glory as well (Gen. 1:26-27; Isa. 43:7). This includes their specific natures, including their distinct natures as male and female (1 Cor. 11:7-9), as well as their motives and actions (1 Cor. 10:31). To “image” is not merely an object, but also a verb: to be “glory reflectors,” so that in whatever we do, we are to communicate great things about God. All of this will fly in the face of all forms of Gnosticism, whether ancient or modern. There is nothing we can point to in all creation—nothing in human relations—and say, “That is dirty.” “That is unnatural.” “That is broken,” without assuming up front that there is a clean, a natural, a whole.

What follows is this fundamental maxim to Christian ethics:

We do what we do because of what it says about God, not because of what it says about any lesser thing.

This demands a radical overhaul on much of what passes for our usual justifications for behavior, and even our grounds for conviction. “Any lesser thing” here would include: (1) our ability to know the outcome of x action; (2) our power to accomplish x action; or (3) perceived amount of our contribution to x’s ideal outcome; and many other reasons typically given to not be or do what God requires.

Now the instant that Adam is joined to Eve, there is not merely an individual image of God, but also the first social unit. We know that as marriage. Given the task to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28), this also implies the institution of the family. This is not merely first, chronologically, but logically and, we may say, metaphysically as well. The home is the microcosm of what we so uncritically go around calling “society,” and yet mean mostly things that we think can do well enough without the family. But let us keep moving to fill out our opening picture.

Expressly included in this same social image of God, is the task to subdue the earth that they fill. This is called “dominion” (Gen. 1:28). Theologians have spoken of the “cultural mandate” being implicit in this dominion. In other words what Augustine called the “orders of creation” are the home, labor, education, culture as a whole, and eventually civil government. Yet civil government does not come until after the fall. There is something different about it in this respect. There is at first an entirely positive dominion. Anywhere that man is called by God to glorify him in these areas, it is in a society of other image bearers. Cultivating right relationships and responsibly using the resources of the world all come together in this dominion (cf. Ps. 8:5-8). It is creative and voluntary. It is not force or fraud.

Things move from clans to nations. We must understand what this means and does not mean. The word “nation” is an English word that communicates the Hebrew goyim, the Greek ethnoi, and the Latin gentium. It simply means “people group” or “kind,” or “tribe,” or “clan.” If there is any real difference here it is only one of scale. But there is no force involved, no involuntary herding of people like swine into fenced areas. Two lines proceeded from Cain and Seth (Gen. 4-5), down through Babel and Abraham (Gen. 10-12). Patriarchs were singular prophets, priests, and kings of their homes and clans. We see in the earliest Greek and Roman histories, the patria evolving into chieftains and then their kings.

Here we must pause to make some early distinctions between this classical Christian view—as I will argue that it is—and the contemporary “Two Kingdoms” thinking of David VanDrunen. It is exactly at this portion of Genesis where he plants his flag.

For VanDrunen, the “Noahic covenant makes sense of what the rest of Scripture says about political community and civil government,” as through it “civil governments in this world [are] in covenant with God.”1 Such communities must be common (secular), not holy (sacred). The Abrahamic established one that is holy in Genesis 12 and onward.

But what is practically meant by this distinction? As a matter of covenant theology, of course it is true that there are common grace elements in the Noahic. The original creation order is being reaffirmed. It is not a covenant that saves its members. No disagreements there. Even once they were big enough to be a nation, he acknowledges that Israel would be political, and yet they were holy and political.2 Thus Israel was not intended to be a “paradigm” for the nations.3

The next question one might ask is this: Has the coming of Christ changed anything in the legitimacy of common political arrangements? The answer he gives is No. The New Covenant established a community in the same way as the Abrahamic and Mosaic, so in other words, not common; but this new community called the church is also more like the Abrahamic than the Mosaic, and so not national either.4

This is all something to be aware of because this particular Two Kingdom view has become a dominant mode of political theology in the Reformed world over the past few decades, and it has given an academic respectability to what used to be the standard pietistic interpretation of Romans 13:1-7 and other usual restrictions of Christian involvement in civic matters. What is more, VanDrunen does not speak like that. He insists that part of being good citizens means that Christians ought to be involved, so long as one does not seek the eschatological kingdom in that common sphere. Amen to that.

Yet his framework is utilized by “progressives” and “moderates” among the Reformed today in order to drive a wedge between (a) the church’s access to natural law judgments over the state and (b) that involvement with the state. This will result in “the church’s” (which becomes an equivocal term) “lack of competency” in political matters, and corresponding impropriety of “politics in the pulpit.” It is for such reasons that this view must be deconstructed, a task to which we shall return.

Returning to the classical view of the Abrahamic, the covenant at Sinai was both an extension of the Abrahamic covenant (grace) but as an administration, it constituted a people with three offices (Deut. 17-18) and three forms of law. The classical view makes a clearer movement from the law of nature to the Mosaic law. All mankind had God’s requirements from the moral law written on the heart, that is, in natural law (Rom. 2:14-15).

Political matters are moral matters. To say that the civil law of theocratic Israel was phased out or realized in Christ, or however one wants to parse that out, is really nothing to the matter of whether there are permanent moral truths in those laws, offices, relations, examples, and so forth.

VanDrunen’s sophisticated body of work is an impressive exercise in evading that question.

In the Mosaic, the “moral law” is simply the law of nature in clearer summary. As Junius wrote, while the civil law pertains to the human, yet “the law of Moses is divine not only in origin and principle, but also in its substance.”5 Now what is that substance? For one this implies that the moral law is what it is because of what it says about God through that image of God. It cannot change because God’s character in it does not change. Moreover, in the Second Table of the law, we see what man owes in relation to man (Ex. 20:12-17).

The object of this law is the image of God: (5th) his authority, (6th) his life, (7th) his marriage, (8th) his property, (9th) his speech and reputation, and (10th) his whole lot.

Why is this so crucial to understand? Very often today we will hear from what appear to be well-meaning Reformed folks that we do not “have rights.” We will be told that this was an Enlightenment notion, a product of radical individualism, a very selfish thing to insist upon. But we must remember that those commandments in the Decalogue are prohibitions from doing the very sort of things against which the classical liberal theorists have always meant by “individual rights.” Now it is entirely possible that the majority of people who are saying such things today mean to uphold the sovereignty of God and the corresponding underserving status of man in relation to our divine sovereign. But this is to confuse two distinct matters. As we will see from Genesis 9:5-6, it is God and not any Enlightenment character, who demands of us that we uphold the life of his image in man.

The Distortion of the Civil Sphere

What I want to argue, in simple terms, is that the fall of man issues forth into two related tendencies in the civil sphere. In the fall, we see a deifying tendency in the statesman and a totalizing tendency of the state. As such, neither one of those objects remain themselves. The statesman is no longer worthy of the name; the magistrate descends to a tyrant. And the state in which he began as a rightful officer has devolved into a mob of beasts and devils. The state becomes a state of war. Its whole reason for being is turned inside out, as it preys upon its own citizens.

In the biblical narrative of this downward spiral, we discern what I would call “sins of vision,” “sins of form,” sins of the first table of the law, and sins of the second table of the law. The archetypal narrative of what I mean by sins of vision may be found in Genesis 11:1-9. I refer to the building of the Tower of Babel and God’s judgment upon it. “What was so wrong with it?” we might ask. Note their own stated purposes: 1. To reach the heavens (v. 4a), i.e., alternative religion; 2. To make a name for themselves (v. 4b), though they were created for God's name’s sake; 3. To collect together (v. 4c), when, in fact, they were under orders to fill the earth and subdue it. And “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (v. 6) This suggests a deluded sense of reversing the curse by their own means instead of God's gospel promise. In short, Babel is a type and shadow of the antichrist utopianism in that spiritual (or essential, or archetypal) Babylon that pervaded the Scriptures, serving as a euphemism for Rome (cf. 1 Pet. 5:13) and making the final opposition to Christ in Revelation 18.

God (i) judged this utopian spirit (ii) through the common grace of cultural barriers. VanDrunen is correct to see the civil sphere as common grace. He is quick, though, to downplay the common responsibility to observe the divine restraints placed within that same administration. He assures us that the leaders of these secular communities are accountable to God in the end. We agree with that much. However, both the magistrate and the citizens are accountable to God in the present, and that precisely to observe his clear judgment against any utopian spirit as the spirit of antichrist.

Let us turn to what I mean by “sins of form.” It is commonly said that the Bible has nothing to say about proper form of government. There is a sense in which that is true. Everyone from pagans like Cicero down to reformers like Rutherford would tell you that natural law maps out natural rights, but it leaves open to positive law the particular governmental form to the peculiarities of a historic people. All true. However, that is not all there is to form. A fundamental shift between God’s instructions through Moses and God’s judgment through Samuel may be noted. Starting at the more obvious features of the narrative when Israel asked for a king, let us make note of their motive in 1 Samuel 8: Give us a king to judge us (v. 6) like all the nations (v. 5).

The reversal of truth-source in the reversal of form: “Obey the voice of the people” (v. 7a). So democracy in politics begets a democracy of truth, as civil “right” is reduced to whims of the majority. There is also a rejection of God in the rejection of form: “they have rejected me from being king” (v. 7b). So moving from a republic to a democracy reduced the origin and object of law. Under the representation of judges, the law was king. This immaterial object of justice was the “public” (publica) “thing” (res), from which we derive the word “republic.” In this shift downward, to any number of mere men as the source of law, we trade in the rule of law for the rule of man.

Many will find this objectionable. Perhaps the most understandable pushback comes from the perfectly accurate redemptive-historical observation that God was working out his typology for the coming King, namely, Jesus Christ. That is true. And yet this does not preclude the truth that sinful human power is always best situated under law rather than law under a man: whether one, or a few, or the many. The “ways of the king” (vv. 11-18) is not restricted to Saul but describes an objective way. This is what we call “the rule of man” as opposed to the “rule of law.” This “manner of the king,” משפט המלך, in the way of the tyrant, as opposed to the lawful way set forth in Deuteronomy 17, is really the historical interpretation.6

What about the sins of the first table of the law? Of course this refers to Commandments 1 through 4. Regardless of what one believes about the role of the magistrate in overseeing the religious life of a nation in any sense, surely all Christians can at least agree that the nation that transgresses here will be under God’s curse, from the magistrate on down to the local gas station attendant: “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD” (Prov. 33:12). Even God’s own nation of old thumbed their nose at this relationship. Most notoriously, Jeroboam I set up alternative altars at Bethel and Dan simply so that Judah would not have the center of religious-political power (1 Kings 12:25-33). Uzziah grew proud and usurped the ecclesiastical office and prerogatives (2 Chronicles 26:16-21). But the pagan king is also often used as a picture to bring unity to the moral law principle: Nebuchadnezzar attempted to de-and-re-program the Hebrew youth (Dan. 1:3-6), set up an image to be worshiped (3:1-7), and boasted of his glory (4:29). Just so the kings of the earth are called “gods” in Psalm 82 and summoned to God’s court precisely for falling short of a law that they were under. This is really an important principle that transcends the particulars of the state’s relation to the first table. What these Old Testament narratives show us is that neither the theocratic nor the pagan civic forms, or office holders, seem to share the “common ground” approach to the civil sphere. In other words, they never seem to be neutral to religion. They always have a nasty habit of commanding total allegiance precisely to their demonic religion. The saints of God are never quite in the neutral space of being able to simply coexist.

Worship determines ethics. Low views of God beget low views of man, who is made in his image. This stands to reason. Thus the sins of the first table issue forth into the sins of the second table. And this is really the crucial point in correcting both the ethical dualism of the contemporary Two Kingdom view, as well as the “progressive,” or what is essentially Marxist ideology—the former being only a stage and step to the latter in the course of a church era. The way in which the second table is crucial is in the civil use of the law. What after all is being guarded in Commandments 5 through 10? Someone may reply, “It is still God—Commandments 1 through 4 are Godward directly; yet Commandments 5 through 10 are also Godward, only indirectly.” Indeed. A very good reply. But if we examine that very point, the criticisms against so-called “Enlightenment,” and “petty individualism,” are exposed as just one more set of pretentious low views of God.

If it is precisely God who makes these demands, and God’s own image that would be trampled upon by the violation of such “rights,” then whatever one calls them (call them “duties” or “responsibilities” if that is less distracting), the insistence that a group of men not undermine parental authority, nor rip apart an infant, nor tear apart a marriage, nor plunder another’s goods, nor trash his good name—will we tell God to his face on Judgment Day that these are such petty complaints!

No one would put it like that. So what do the critics do instead? Naturally they change the language just enough to change the subject. By focusing on “one’s own rights,” they place in the citizen’s mouth the whining of a teenager who faces a number of “first world problems,” as we call them. As a matter of fact, what is “one’s own” is ultimately God’s property, and the clever devils’ attempts to bludgeon and pillage it under the cover of piety is, as an older, more pious generation would have put it, straight from the pit of hell.

Such wickedness is not so foreign to the biblical narrative. Pharaoh enslaved and further oppressed Israel (Ex. 1:11-14), and attempted to murder their male offspring (vv. 16, 22). Ahab coveted the vineyard of Naboth (1 Kings 21:1-7); Jezebel had the man falsely charged and stoned to death (vv. 8-14). When Herod realized that Christ’s rule was over his, he responded in violence (Mat. 2:16-18; cf. Ps. 2:1-3). Such actions are called sins, and in such a way as the simplest Christian can understand.

We also see the rise and the rule of the barbarian. Skeptics will complain that the Bible does not “address” this or that evil. Why does God not do this or that with respect to the subjection of women, or to slavery, or to war? Now who are the whining adolescents! The whole complaint is from the fat of the land that the modernist has neither tilled nor sown. Before Christianity there was the law of the jungle, and only Christian influence has chased its advance. Where Christianity now recedes, all of those evils reemerge with seven evil spirits much worse than when they left (Mat. 12:45). But from Lamech to Sennacherib to Nero, we see barbarism as the rule. Misogyny was the pagan rule. Racism was the pagan rule. Slavery was the pagan rule. Child abuse was the pagan rule. That narrative in the Bible that the our impertinent neighbor is looking into with lenses provided for him by the very morality of that book is, in short, Christ’s triumphant march out of barbarism. The notion that Christian morality is dispensable to the design and proper function of the state would have been foreign to Christian thinkers of the past. That it is a common grace sphere is true, but it does not follow that the source and form and end of that grace is any less objective and discernible within a Christian framework.7

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1. David VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 80.

2. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 88-89.

3. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 90.

4. VanDrunen, Politics after Christendom, 101-102.

5. Franciscus Junius, The Mosaic Polity (CLP Academic, 2015), 68.

6. Rutherford compiles an impressive list of the medieval and early Reformed commentators that understood משפט המלך as not signifying “the rule of the king” in the ordinary sense of משפט, but in a manner of speaking: Lex Rex, Q.18.

7. cf. Brian Mattson’s Cultural Amnesia (Billings, MT: Swinging Bridge Press, 2018) for a helpful, succinct critique of the contemporary Two Kingdom model precisely at this point. Mattson points to how we take for granted the metaphysical and moral stock of Christianity that undergirds all that we call “civil,” and takes VanDrunen to task on whether a distinctly Christian morality is something that is neither here nor there, or else a mere one of several legitimate “contributions” to the common civil sphere without any other result than barbarism.