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No civil law can be fundamentally derived from a supernatural principle (i.e., a principle of grace). Civil society is fundamentally a human order and is ordered according to principles of human nature.
the end or telos of natural reason is Christian truth.
As Aquinas said, “General principles of the natural law cannot be applied to all men in the same way on account of the great variety of human affairs: and hence arises the diversity of positive laws among various people.”
The people themselves, in accordance with the particularity of spirit and their conditions and with their own creative power, are to give definitive shape to them, to particularize them and thus also to individualize them;
The Mosaic law is, as Junius states, a “perfect example” of law, for it is divinely prescribed law, and God prescribes for man only what is good and true.
The moral law refers to “nothing else than the testimony of natural law, and of that conscience which God has engraven on the minds of men.”
we are to “worship God with pure faith and piety [and] to embrace men with sincere affection.”
In other words, whether any civil law is good depends on circumstances, which requires the discernment and prudence of man.
Some civil laws in the Mosaic law are universal in a way. But they are universal because they are necessary for any just and commodious human society. Indeed, such laws are a part of the Mosaic law precisely because their absence would make the law imperfect; and God, being good, could not create anything but perfect law.
Hence, just civil law, even when determined by man, is both theonomic and, in a sense, autonomic.
The theonomists had the right spirit; they knew that civil order, liberty, and justice require bold action, confidence in truth, and resolve to succeed.
It is time to recognize that the theonomists were right about the direction of Reformed political theology as it manifested in the late 20th century up to today.
Furthermore, I affirm a form of theonomy: civil law ought to be in accordance with God’s law, and civil law ought to order man to both earthly and heavenly ends.
in their emphasis on law, theonomists seem to have neglected social power, social cohesion, and culture particularity.
in my experience, sometimes they are downright hostile to nationalism, the principle of similarity, and cultural preservation.
desires to elevate God’s people to the first rank in civil society and to declare the eternal good as the highest good.
law of God that inheres and enlivens our whole being.
Civil law must not demand what God’s law opposes or forbid what God’s law demands.
Now, a pastor can admonish his congregants to disobey a clearly unjust law, and he can exercise spiritual discipline over one who commits injustice in obeying that law.
Civil law by itself, however, is dead. The civil magistrate enlivens it by his authority and person.
“Christian prince,” mediates the people’s national will for their good, providing them the necessary and specific civil actions for that end.
He is their spirit.
the magistrate is the heart and spirit of the people.
the chief agent of Christian nationalism.
The national will alone cannot terminate immediately into national action.
It must terminate upon a me...
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an orchestration of civil leadership.
Thus, Christian nationalism exists when the Christian national will for itself is mediated through Christian civil leaders who command and inspire concrete actions performed by the people.
I cannot conceive of a true renewal of Christian commonwealths without great men leading their people to it.
This title denotes both an executive power (viz., one who administers the laws) and personal eminence in relation to the people.
I envision a measured and theocratic Caesarism—the prince as a world-shaker for our time, who brings a Christian people to self-consciousness and who, in his rise, restores their will for their good.
The nation can act for its good but only mediately: They must establish an ordering agent, namely, a civil government.
Hence, a prince is not bound to any specific dictates of the people (though certainly these should be taken seriously when expressed clearly); he is bound to what is good, namely, the moral law of God.
As Samuel Rutherford writes, “God and nature intendeth the policy and peace of mankind, then must God and nature have given to mankind a power to compass this end; and this must be a power of government.”4
Put differently, no one possesses an inherent, natural superiority in relation to other men such that, by pure nature alone, natural inferiors are bound by their nature to submit to them.6
The power is correctly understood then, only as a property entailed by such a mystical body so constituted.
being godless or idolatrous does not itself preclude true political order.
as Rutherford writes, “this or that power is mediately from God, proceeding from God by the mediation of the consent of a community, which resigneth their power to one or more rulers.”20
Consent is the mechanism by which divine civil power is bestowed upon the prince.
The proper motivation is quite the opposite. Submission is motivated by the rational need for ordered liberty wherein one finds opportunity to act with his neighbor for his own and his neighbor’s good.
Submission is good only insofar that it conduces to living well.
The prince, as a civil leader, holds an office on behalf of God, the creator. “The
Thus, the prince holds the most excellent office, exceeding even that of the church minister, for it is most like God.
The prince, unlike the church minister,23 is a mediator—“a vicar of God”—in outward, civil affairs.24
As Calvin said, civil rulers “represent the person of God, as whose substitutes ...
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Rutherford says, for example, that the king “hath a politic resemblance of the King of heavens, being a little god, and so is above any one man.”
Calvin likewise states that “when good magistrates rule, we see God, as it were, near us, and governing us by means of those whom he hath appointed.”
Having the highest office on earth, the good prince resembles God to the people.
The prince is a sort of national god, not in the sense of being divine himself, or in materially transcending common humanity, or as an object of prayer or spiritual worship, or as a means of salvific grace, but as the mediator of divine rule for this nation and as one with divinely granted power to direct them in their national completeness. He
The prince personifies their national spirit, unifies them under a mission, and inspires an intergenerational will to live.
