God Makes Kings, but by the People

Samuel Rutherford’s “Lex, Rex,” q. 5

In question five, Rutherford responds to the claim made by the “popish prelate,” John Maxwell, Anglican Archbishop in Scotland, namely that the sovereignty of kings comes immediately from God and apart from the people. According to Maxwell, while the authority of some rulers in Scripture was immediately from God—Moses, Saul, David, etc.—yet the making of kings today may still be a “special work” of God, even if there has been no special act of revelation from heaven. Rutherford begins his response by stating, once again, that those who hold that kings are created by the people do not deny that the sovereignty of kings also comes from God. It also doesn’t follow that, because a king’s authority comes from God, that he is above all law and may not be lawfully resisted, or that “there is no armor against his violence but prayers and tears.”[1] Bad kings may be opposed, therefore, in the same way that bad pastors may be. To say otherwise is to commit the same error with respect to kings that the Catholic Jesuits that Maxwell himself opposes do with respect to the pope. Saul and David, moreover, were not kings “only by the extraordinary revelation of God from heaven,” for in addition to their prophetic anointing, they were also made kings by the people, as has been shown.

The apostles were appointed for apostleship immediately by God and without any act of the people, and so are a bad example of king’s relationship to God. In saying that the people make the king, this does not mean that the people first make the king, and God only afterwards ratifies their decision. Rather, God makes a man to be king precisely by the people making him to be a king. Rutherford compares his opponents confusion on such matters with the position held by some Anabaptists, namely that because it is God who writes his law on our hearts and teaches the children, therefore books and education by men is not necessary. Likewise, the fact that all the sciences and arts are from God does not mean that sciences and arts are not also the products of men. Maxwell insists that kings are from God; Rutherford replies: very well, so are also the congregation of the judges and all other lesser magistrates, including parliaments, prelates, mayors, sheriffs, judges, provosts, bailiffs, constables, and pastors; by Maxwell’s logic, we ought to suppose all of their authority to be no less from God and therefore inviolable as a king’s. Yet it remains the case that the way in which God commanded to choose their king was unique. Moses, Saul, and David were by extraordinary revelation designated as rulers, but this was a distinct privilege that other nations both then and now do not have. Likewise, God covenanted with the house of David in a way that he does not do so now. From the fact that the right to rule comes from God, moreover, it does not follow that that right cannot ever be revoked. But should God revoke the right to rule, what is the means by which he does so? By the people. To the statement that Scripture teaches that rebellion against the king is rebellion against God, Rutherford replies that “arbitrary governing has no alliance with God,” reminding us that bad rule is no less rebellion against God.

What about Rutherford’s claim as to the uniqueness with which Israel’s kings were appointed? Here he raises the objection that Scripture presents such rulers as Pharaoh, Abimelech, Hiram, Hazael, Hadad, Nebuchadnezzar, and Cyrus as no less kings than David and Saul. Rutherford answers that Pharaoh is called by Paul a “vessel of wrath fitted for destruction by God’s absolute will.” As for Nebuchadnezzar, true, he is called God’s servant, but only in the sense that he was to be a “hammer” by which the Lord would judge the nations, including his own people. And while heathen kings are called kings in Scripture, they nevertheless came to their kingdoms not by prophetic anointing, but typically either by the election of the people or by violent conquest. Nebuchadnezzar and many other kings, in any event, made their way to the throne in a way directly violating God’s law. True, God gives kingdoms to whom he will, but he also gives tyrannical conquests to whom he will, and Nebuchadnezzar, for example, was just such a tyrant. Rutherford denies that Nebuchadnezzar had any just title to many of the kingdoms over which he ruled, including the kingdom of Judah, even though God had given it to him. If God had not specially commanded his people by way of Jeremiah to obey Nebuchadnezzar, they would have been justified in resisting him with the sword and defending their liberty as they might have done any other enemy threat.

Those who defend the authority of kings, therefore, on the same grounds as divinely appointed kings such as David and Hezekiah, actually do so at the expense of making all of God’s people into rebels any time they resist foreign rule. They deny, moreover, that the leaders which God has raised up had any justification from natural law to defend their own liberty from those who would violently and unjustly take it from them. They make tyranny as dependent upon and derived from God no less than lawful and just rule. But on the contrary, Scripture itself teaches that Nebuchadnezzar’s oppression of the people of God was avenged by God (Jer. 1:6-7). True, the people of God were commanded by God to submit to Nebuchadnezzar, to serv him, pray for him, and not rebel against him, but this was not because he was their lawful king, anymore than from the fact that Christ had a commandment to suffer the death of the cross, we may infer that Herod and Pilate had any warrant from God to crucify him. In the final paragraph of the chapter, Rutherford critiques the view that even heathen kings have their authority directly from God and not also by the agreement of men. On the contrary, the contracts that heathen men make in drawing up a kingdom and conferring rule on a particular person is something that is within their right to do, and if they have the right to create a king, so they have the right to depose him. And if kings had their authority directly from God without any human intermediaries, then kings could kill themselves as Saul did by divine right and could not be lawfully prevented, which Rutherford takes as absurd.

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[1] Cp. Aquinas, On Kingship, and Calvin, “On Civil Government.”