The Civil Magistrate

Among that class of words that are “not in the Bible” belongs the title of the civil magistrate. This expression was commonplace among the Reformed orthodox and is preferable in many cases because of its general application. The word magister in Latin speaks of a master of sorts, and it usually refers to a master of a craft such as teaching. It is also the root of the civil magistrate.1

Theologians have simply assumed this title to refer to the political head in various forms of government. The comparable words that the Bible does use are the words for king (βασιλεύς), judge (κριτής), ruler (ἄρχων), governor (ἡγεμών), and even thrones (θρόνος) or dominion (κυριότης). Context must decide how these are being used in the text. Historical context must then decide on questions of practical application.

We will examine the source, the design, and the character of the magistrate.

The Source of the Magistrate

We begin in Genesis 9, even though the Bible itself begins in Genesis 1—and I mean that specifically about the rationale given by God to Noah and his three sons. However, for the sake of brevity we begin with this covenant that God made with all mankind after the waters of the flood had subsided. The relevant text reads,

From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Gen. 9:5-6).

We will talk about the design or task given to such men shortly, but we must first observe that the audience of God’s requirements are, immediately, Noah and his three sons; then, virtually, all of their descendants.

When the people of Abraham grew from small households to larger tribes, during the patriarchal era, then, once they had left Egypt, those tribes and clans had recognized heads. Those heads were political actors. They represented those in the clans in matters of justice. We see this in the counsel of Jethro to Moses, when there were too many people for him to govern.

Moreover, look for able men from all the people, men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe, and place such men over the people as chiefs of thousands, of hundreds, of fifties, and of tens (Ex. 18:21).

This is an early clue in the Bible that both God and man were “king-makers.” God is the ultimate source: “For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Rom. 13:1). Yet God works through secondary causes here as well as in other spheres, through man’s moral agency here as on other moral stages. In his work Lex, Rex, Samuel Rutherford labored to show through the historical books of the Old Testament the ways in which God had the prophet anoint the king, coupled with the people recognizing the divinely revealed qualities of leadership. The fact that they so often turned to superficial qualities does not negate that point.

Those early texts like Exodus 18 also show us that the origins of the magistrate in Israel were made of two components: domestic and aristocratic. In other words, they were materially derived from the institution of the family, and they were formally derived from recognized civic virtue. The word “aristocracy” is from the rule of the excellent ones (aristoi). This becomes less foreign to our modern sensibilities when we study the broader sweep of ancient history. There we would find that the first kings among the Greeks and Romans arose in the same way.

For this reason, the majority Christian tradition—and especially the Reformed—used to see in the fifth commandment, a logic that flowed from the fathers of homes to those fathers of the civil sphere.

Bullinger further expounded,

Wherefore he, that first called our country by the name of patria, did not unadvisedly give it that name, but called it so in respect of the thing which it was indeed; for patria, ‘our country,’ is derived of pater, ‘a father,’ and hath his ending or termination in the feminine gender, thereby declaring, that it taketh the name of both the parents.2

One final note should be made about the source of the magistrate. This will overlap with their design, but it comes from a passage that the Reformed tradition used to frequently comment upon, yet flies in the face of the modern doctrine of political pluralism. In the prophet Isaiah, one of the promises of God to His people is that in the age to come—that is, after the Messiah brings salvation to Israel in a way that expands outward to the Gentiles—the civil magistrates of the nations will bear a certain relationship to His church.

Thus says the Lord GOD: “Behold, I will lift up my hand to the nations, and raise my signal to the peoples; and they shall bring your sons in their arms, and your daughters shall be carried on their shoulders. Kings shall be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. With their faces to the ground they shall bow down to you, and lick the dust of your feet. Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame” (Isa. 49:22-23).

In his remarks on this passage, Bullinger asks, “Shall we not say, that all this is fully performed in some christian princes?”3 As to that expression regarding their faces to the ground, one might think of Theodosius on his knees before the bishop Ambrose of Milan, so that, in order to be admitted to the Lord’s Table again, he would have to repent for his unlawful slaughter. Likewise Calvin commented,

After having spoken of the obedience of the Gentiles, he shews that this relates not to the common people only, but to “kings” also. He compares “kings” to hired men who bring up the children of others, and “queens” to “nurses,” who give out their labor for hire. Why so? Because “kings” and “queens” shall supply everything that is necessary for nourishing the offspring of the Church. Having formerly driven out Christ from their dominions, they shall henceforth acknowledge him to be the supreme King: and shall render to him all honor, obedience, and worship. This took place when the Lord revealed himself to the whole world by the Gospel; for mighty kings and princes not only submitted to the yoke of Christ, but likewise contributed their riches to raise up and maintain the Church of Christ, so as to be her guardians and defenders.4

Such a view would certainly explain why Calvin wrote with such boldness to the French monarch, Francis I, in his prefatory letter attached to the 1536 edition of his Institutes. But this was the common Reformed understanding of that prophecy.

The Design of the Magistrate

In speaking of the design of the magistrate, we must always recall that these are ultimately God’s ends that are woven into the fabric of the civil sphere. It is easy for us to get lost in the details of political theory as if there comes a point when we are no longer talking about a divine design. Of course there is a transition from principles to conclusions, from ideal to application, but these are to be distinguished rather than divorced.

In the Noahic covenant, what is that man (or group of men) instructed to do? We might say, in Peter’s language, that his mission is twofold, namely, “to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good” (1 Pet. 2:14). But these words are generalized for the Apostle’s aim to teach the Christian’s honorable conduct in society. The more foundational reason given must be sought in the command at the head of the common covenant: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.” Most obvious, then, is the imperative itself. It is elsewhere called “Life for life” (Ex. 21:23; cf. Lev. 24:18; Deut. 19:21), and is enshrined as a principle called the lex talionis, or “law of retaliation.” Contrary to modern critics who call this barbaric, this is always preserving of life. Indeed it is restorative because, to the degree that one can, the guilty party now owes elements of the injured party’s humanity back to him. The state is merely the referee in that transaction of equity. But it is in the nature of that injured humanity where we must begin.

After the imperative of Genesis 9:5-6, there is a statement of the end of this action, or, in other words, its reason, its design or aim. It says, “for God made man in his own image” (v. 6). Classical liberal political theory understands this concept, though it was increasingly stripped of its explicit biblical moorings. Nevertheless, it is often put very succinctly by statesmen who at least gave it a theistic grounding. This is an advance compared to the very un-Christian pietistic thinking of today’s professing Christian. That is the dreadful situation we are in, that Enlightenment figures such as John Locke, and even deists like Thomas Jefferson, were at least more “biblical” on these matters than our Christian contemporaries.

For instance the nineteenth century theorist Frederic Bastiat wrote,

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place … If every person has the right to defend—even by force—his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right—its reason for existing, its lawfulness—is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute.5

To say that life, liberty, and property are the substance of man is not meant to be an exhaustive statement about the image of God. However, when it comes to the essence of civil law and justice, it is a necessary condition to proper understanding of the role of government. Moreover, Bastiat speaks of a “collective right,” yet libertarians who rightly think after this strand often fail to reckon with a “collective will,” necessary to put that right to work in the real world. The magistrate is the embodiment of that collective will. That the magistrate represents the people can mean nothing other than that he acts on their behalf. If the action required is matched by God with the tool of “the sword” (Rom. 13:4), that is, if he does not bare it in vain, as Paul said, then there is a just counterforce that must be on constant watch against the unjust use of force. So in an extended explanation of this Bullinger said,

For laws undoubtedly are the strongest sinews of the commonweal, and life of the magistrates: so that neither the magistrates can without the laws conveniently live and rule the weal public, nor the laws without the magistrates shew forth their strength and lively force. The magistrate therefore is the living law, and the law is the dumb magistrate. By executing and applying the law, the law is made to live and speak … The prince, indeed, is the living law, if his mind obey the written laws, and square not from the law of nature. Power and authority, therefore, is subject unto laws; for unless the prince in his heart agree with the law, he is not worthy to be called a good man, much less a prince. Again, a good prince and magistrate hath power over the law, and is master of the laws, not that they may turn, put out, undo, make and unmake, them as they list at their pleasure; but because he may put them in practice among the people, apply them to the necessity of the state, and attemper their interpretation to the meaning of the maker.6

This is not the same as to say that this leader is an embodiment of “the State,” in a modern Hegelian sense—that is, of the State being the march of Spirit through history, nor in a Hobbesian sense of Leviathan being invested with what was, in a state of nature proper to man, but now that the State exists, can no longer be divested of the reigning civil power. This collective reality is not an eternal embodiment of material accumulation, but a historical (and thus temporary and dispensable) embodiment of an eternal rule. The magistrate’s efficient causality, by means of the law, is still ministerial rather than magisterial, if I may use language familiar to theological method.

In returning to the Genesis text, Bullinger had already said the same as Bastiat,

For muder destroyeth the very image of God; because man is created to the similitude and likeness of God. If a man should of purpose deface the image of the king or prince, set up at their commandment, he should be accused of treason committed: in how great danger is he then, that doth destroy a man, which is the reasonable, lively, and very picture of God himself!7

This rationale also explains the civil use of the sixth commandment and that primary place that the life of the individual has in the whole of our doctrine of law. This defense of life, Bullinger says, is that “whereupon all other things … do wait and attend … [and] the very natural order doth seem to require.”8 In other words, the defense of marriage or the defense of property or the defense of our neighbor’s good name—these are all for nothing if the life of those who would be married, the life of those who would have property, or the life of the man who would have a good name, if their very lives are dispensable.

To say that the civil magistrate’s whole reason for existence begins and ends with this defense of life, is practically equivalent to saying that civil government’s whole reason for existence is the same. The first statement simply focuses on the person in the office; the second statement only treats the same on an institutional level. The implications are that as the man can either be prince or tyrant, so the institution surrounding him can either be a nation’s government or a foreign occupation. The physical sword, or even a crown, a throne, or a badge or modern bureaucracy around him—none of these are the essence of his authority. These are the material machinery to carry out his calling from God, but, as these can be perverted, these must be distinguished and even discarded when their legitimate authority is usurped in the pursuit of animalistic and demonic violence.

Thus Bullinger speaks of two ways that the magistrate may fail in this duty.

For either they do by law, that is, under the coloured pretence of law, slay the guiltless, to satisfy their own lust, hatred, or covetousness; as we read, that Jezebel slew the just man Naboth, with the Lord’s prophets: or else by peevish pity and foolish clemency do let them escape scot-free, whom the Lord commanded them to kill.9

Bullinger cites Proverbs 17:15 to support these two sides. He then applies it outside of one’s borders to war: “for either they do unjusty themselves make war upon other men, and entangle their people therein; or else they suffer foreign enemies to rob and spoil the people committed to their charge, and do not with such force as they may keep off and defend that open wrong and manifest injury.”10

To the modern pluralist’s objection that a Christian magistrate—or at least magistrate playing the role of nursing father—that this is to create unjust favors for the church, Bullinger would reply, “As for them which object the church’s privilege, let them know, that it is not permitted to any prince, nor any mortal man, to grant privileges contrary to the express commandments and very truth of God’s word. St. Paul affirmed that he had power given him to edify, but not to destroy.”11 The objection assumes that Christian advantage is non-Christian disadvantage, when in fact, Christian advantage is an advance toward true humanity and thus always to the further advantage of all mankind—unless, that is, the “disadvantaged” we are thinking of are up to no good.

As we move from the matter of design to that of character, it is worth refining our answer to this modern objection. Let us not only suppose that a magistrate happens to conform more nearly to God’s law, and so protect the church and benefit humanity. Let us imagine a more self-consciously Christian magistrate. Now conformity to God’s law would be intentional. Is it not the case in any matter of obedience to God’s law that an intelligible and purposeful obedience is a greater obedience? Why would obedience in the realm of politics be any different in this respect? Most would not argue that it would. Instead, a set of modern assumptions prevents drawing conclusions from this agreeable to the goodness of God’s law.

The Character of the Magistrate

Returning to that Exodus 18 passage, one of the traits mentioned in Jethro’s counsel is that such are “men who fear God, who are trustworthy and hate a bribe” (v. 21). The next generation was told as they were coming into the land: “Choose for your tribes wise, understanding, and experienced men, and I will appoint them as your heads” (Deut. 1:13). The civic leader is compared to a shepherd, as Joshua was (Num. 27:17, 18), and as David was (2 Sam. 5:2). We can see the element of personal care in the imagery of shepherd coming together with the idea of development from households to larger groups of the same people, or nation. One of the stipulations for the people when they were to select a king was this:

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 (Deut. 17:15).

Obviously, loyalty and therefore love of one’s people and place are character issues. I say this is obvious, but in a pluralistic empire where the reigning talking heads conceive of “the nation” as something more like an economic zone rather than as a unified people in a homeland, it becomes anything but obvious. Now say in our own context that, “A foreigner cannot serve.” Do you see how it strikes differently upon our ears? The Christian ear should not be so sensitive and historically challenged. The foreigner too may see this, as the elite does, as a “land of opportunities,” but not all opportunities are equally conducive to the preservation of life.

To summarize such passages as the crucial Deuteronomy 17 text, Bullinger offered four basic qualities of a magistrate: (1) strength of force, or what we today call “executive function”; (2) the fear of God; (3) honesty in word and deed; and (4) a servant’s contentment, free of covetousness.12 I will not modify any of these with the word “proven,” since all of these require some discernible track record to examine. History proves that these four go together, such that if one of these seems to be discerned but not another, the one supposedly discerned was in fact a counterfeit, or else an original virtues long since hijacked by the enemy.

There is another presuppositional roadblock to our rediscovery of character. We do not believe in it to begin with. We have heard of the word and we think we are using it properly, yet we are products of the effect of modern ideology upon our history. Our past has been deconstructed by malcontented half-wits who, not being gainfully employed, have larger units of time than we do to spin their intellectual yarns. We mistake this for profound thinking, and, in the realm of history, we have allowed them to tell us who we are and where we have come from. This is a vast subject in its own right, but the casualty of their grand false narrative that matters here is in the death of character. Specifically, we do not believe in great men. All are sinners at any rate.

We have no trouble believing in greatness in athletics, entertainment, or even in an expert class coming to us with their unsearchable data dumps. In short, Constantine, Richard the Lionheart, and George Washington could not have done the things that we once knew they did do, because of those lesser things they probably did, and especially those other things that they probably did not. No matter. We must grovel and give up on greatness where our lives most depend upon it.

Why does greatness in the character of the magistrate matter so much? There is something to shifting focus from “civil government” as the impersonal national will to the older language of the prince. I understand the classical liberal impulse to focus on the rule of law rather than the rule of man. But if the question is not the source of law, but rather than source of action, classical liberalism’s focus here is one dimensional and destined to be hijacked by revolutionaries who can use abstractions to their own advantage. Wolfe, in offering his own reason for utilizing this language of the Christian prince, writes,

I cannot conceive of a true renewal of Christian commonwealths without great men leading their people to it. Nor can we expect the national will to find its end through an administration led by wonks and regulators. So I will primarily use “prince” as the mediator of the nation’s will for itself. This title denotes both an executive power (viz., one who administers the laws) and personal eminence in relation to the people.13

Wolfe then clarifies that this does not necessitate monarchy, contrary to popular misunderstanding. It does require, if I may add my own rebuke to the liberal critique, masculine sentience. In other words, this office requires the specific kind of executive function that one would expect to find of men when other men are plainly in the act of murdering, plundering, raping their women, and permanently subjugating their people. This very basic manly stance to such evil is precisely what has been banished from the public square.

In piecing together what was said earlier about collective action safeguarding individual rights, with this discussion of greatness in character, perhaps Wolfe’s most salient comment comes in a footnote:

Contrary to the calumnies of G. K. Chesterton against “Caesarism” … men trust a great man not because they distrust themselves but because social conditions deny their self-trust an outlet for noble action, and the great man offers a path to noble action. viz., a path out of ideological mediocrity, slavishness, and indignity.14

I would suggest only one caveat, where the word “trust” should be modified to “entrust” (which implies a more temporary stewardship) to at least guard against that point of descent back into mental and effeminate servitude. Often a man that appeared great and promised to make things great again, can be revealed to have been either controlled opposition or at least to have been serving his own interests. It is no manly virtue that continues to take up for him as the brain-rotted devotee to a cult leader, constantly moving the goal posts of his failed prophecies.

We must go against the grain of another popular opinion here. The Bible’s character examples are not restricted to their failures so as to prepare the way for Christ. That they do, but not exclusively so. Of course Christ alone is the Ideal without defect, but intelligible ideals do not depend entirely on perfections. We may think of David, Solomon, Josiah, and Hezekiah as examples that offer one or a few virtues in each case, not to mention Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, prior to the monarchy.

Here too there is greatness. But in order to see this, one must also see its universal applicability in its own diversity of form. In the specific case of Israel, the form of government underwent development. This historical change has raised debates about the exact objects with which God was displeased in Israel’s later demand for a king in 1 Samuel 8. What matters for our purposes is something of a charter for the ideal king set forth in Deuteronomy 17. First, the accumulation of riches and entangling alliances are all of one cloth.

Only he must not acquire many horses for himself or cause the people to return to Egypt in order to acquire many horses, since the LORD has said to you, ‘You shall never return that way again.’ And he shall not acquire many wives for himself, lest his heart turn away, nor shall he acquire for himself excessive silver and gold (Deut. 17:16-17).

Saul violated the first, and Solomon the second. Of course all it takes is one foreign wife to introduce more dark forces into the land, as it did for Ahab with Jezebel (1 Kings 16:31). The heart of the magistrate is always a castle door, for the enemies of God’s people to target with many a Trojan horse, whether filled with women or court flatterers.

The instruction for the king ends with these words:

And when he sits on the throne of his kingdom, he shall write for himself in a book a copy of this law, approved by the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read in it all the days of his life, that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by keeping all the words of this law and these statutes, and doing them, that his heart may not be lifted up above his brothers, and that he may not turn aside from the commandment, either to the right hand or to the left, so that he may continue long in his kingdom, he and his children, in Israel (Deut. 17:18-20).

He may not be thought of—whether by the people or by himself—as above the people. In raising himself above the people, he presumes to raise himself above God, as those people are still made in God’s image. Deuteronomy 17 does not leave Genesis 9:5-6 behind anymore than Romans 13 leaves Genesis 9:5-6 behind. The sword is for upholding the image. The magistrate who does has God’s authority; the one who turns the sword utterly inward toward his people is not merely a “tyrant” in some light use of the word, but quite literally a usurper and a rouge. His government is illegitimate, as it is a hostile, foreign military force that the sixth commandment requires the people to repel by reconstituted government. How to do this would bring us the so called doctrine of “the lesser magistrate,” which is subject for another study.

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1. Henry Bullinger’s remarks on this are worth noting, “Magistratus … doth take the name a magistris populi designandis, ‘of assigning the masters, guilders, and captains of the people.’ That room and place is called by the name of ‘power’ or ‘authority,’ by reason of the power that is given to it of God. It is called by the name of ‘domination,’ for the dominion that the Lord doth grant it upon the earth. They are called princes that have that dominion: for they have a pre-eminence above the people. They are called consuls, of counselling; and kings, of commanding, ruling, and governing the people.” The Decades of Henry Bullinger, Volume 1 (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2004), 309.

2. Bullinger, Decades, I:278.

3. Bullinger, Decades, I:327.

4. Calvin, Commentaries, VIII.2.39-40.

5. Frederic Bastiat, The Law (New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1998), 1, 2.

6. Bullinger, Decades, I:338-39.

7. Bullinger, Decades, I:305.

8. Bullinger, Decades, I:298.

9. Bullinger, Decades, I:307.

10. Bullinger, Decades, I:308.

11. Bullinger, Decades, I:333.

12. Bullinger, Decades, I:319-320

13. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 2022), 278-79.

14. Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism, 279, n.2.