- Apr 28, 2017
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We know through Scripture that we are to obey and submit to governing authorities. This is highlighed by Paul in the book of Romans:
Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God's wrath on the wrong doer. Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath but also for the sake of conscience. For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed. (Romans 13:1-7; ESV)
Yet what do we, as Christians, do when those over us are tyrants? Do we submit to the authority of tyrants despite their clear transgression against their God-given boundaries? Surely not! The reformer Theodore Beza spoke to this very issue in his publication De jure magistratuum:
It now remains for us to treat of the other question which has not without reason been debated by numerous people in these present times; that is, what may subjects of good conscience do whenever their supreme rulers, who are legitimate in other respects, degenerate into manifest tyrants? Must the authority of the supreme rulers who have become undisguised tyrants remain so sacred and inviolate that the subjects are obliged in all circumstances to endure it so that they can in no way offer resistance to it? Or if indeed resistance is in some way allowable, may they go so far as to seize arms?
Beza goes on to define the "three kinds of subjects." There are "private citizens" that have no public duties. There are "subaltern or inferior magistrates," which are those who have a public duty but are subject to superior magistrates. The third "kind" is described in the following manner: "though they do not indeed hold the highest authority nor yet wield supreme and regular power, yet are placed in such a station that they are as it were the bridles and reins to keep the supreme ruler to his duty."
Regarding a private citizen's right to resist tyranny, Beza states the following:
Whether therefore those who are of private station have freely and openly agreed to the rule of an unjust usurper (as the Roman people of their own free will submitted to Augustus and his successors) or whether he who was their lawful ruler has become a manifest tyrants (as was Abimelech among the Israelites , the Thirty at Athens and the Decemvirs at Rome , and others elsewhere), I then maintain that (apart from a special injunction from God which I do not here discuss) no private citizen is entitled on his own private authority to oppose the tyrant with violence against violence, but that it in every way behooves him either to depart from the realm of that (ruler) and change his domicile or to bear the yoke of the tyrant patiently by taking refuge with God in prayer, provided only (as we have remarked from the beginning) he be not constrained to become the instrument of that very tyranny against someone or to refrain from performing any of those acts which are due to God or to his neighbor.
Regarding the inferior magistrates, he states the following (second and third "kind"):
But since on the other hand those subordinate instruments of the kingdom have received this office from the supreme power as such that they may be on their guard for the observance and protection of the laws among those who have been entrusted to their care, and since they have bound themselves by oath to perform that duty in all faith — an oath from which they cannot be absolved by any fault of him who from a king has become a tyrant and quite openly violates those conditions upon which he was appointed king and the observance of which he undertook upon oath — would it not be just according to all law, diving and human, that by reason of the oath taken by them to ensure the observance of the laws, somewhat greater (liberty of action) should be granted to these subordinate magistrates than to those (citizens) who are of entirely private station and without any public office? I therefore maintain that, if they are reduced to such unavoidable compulsion, they are certainly bound, even by means of armed force if they can, to protect against manifest tyranny the safety of those who have been entrusted to their care and honor, as long as their public interests have been better consulted and fittingly provided for in accordance with the collective counsel of the States-General or the Nomophylakes, that is, of those with whom all the legislative authority of the kingdom or empire in question rests. This moreover is not to be factious or a traitor towards your supreme ruler, but rather to be a most faithful keeper of your oath towards those whose direction you have undertaken, against perjury and against the oppressor of a kingdom whose protector he should have been.
So while it is not up to the private citizen to determine when to resist tyranny, it is up to the inferior magistrates to determine this resistence. However, resistence becomes not an option to tyranny, but a requirement on the part of the conscious Christian. So I believe it is necessary to define what tyranny actually is. I touched on this in my post on another thread, which I will quote below:
Modern magistarates are in a covenant with the people. The people give them power in order to receive order and protection. However, the covenant is broken when the political ruler becomes a tyrant. John Witte Jr., in his book entitled The Reformation of Rights, describes Theodore Beza's view of this:
Again, like private contracts of marriage, political covenants that were freely and properly entered into might eventually end through divorce for cause. In a marriage, where one party spiritually and physically deserts the other or betrays the essence of the marriage by committing adultery or inflicting mortal abuse on the other, the innocent party may sue for divorce. Similarly in a political community, Beza continued, where the magistrate deserts his people or betrays the fundamentals of his political office by becoming a tyrant, the people may properly seek to divorce him.
But Just as the dissolution of a private marriage contract through annulment or divorce requires orderly procedures, so does the dissolution of a public political covenant. Disgruntled spouses may not simply walk away from their marriages, and declare themselves divorced or declare on their own that their marriage is annulled. By reason of its consecration by the church and registration by the state, the marriage contract has become a public institution. It transcends the interests of the couple themselves, and implicates the interests of the whole community. The disgruntled spouse must thus file complaints before the appropriate authorities, seek the authorities' intervention and protection if they are being abused, and request a public judgement that the marriage has ended by annulment or divorce, that the guilty spouse must be punished, and the innocent spouse has been liberated. Until such public judgement has been rendered, the parties are bound by their marital contract, which they had entered into "for better or worse."
That is to say, a covenant is entered into between a the population and the magistrate. However, God is also involved in the covenant. If the magistrate becomes a tyrant and breaks the political covenant, then the covenant is now void and rebellion/revolution is permissible. But it helps to define a tyrant. Althusius defined a tyrant as one who violates the fundamental laws and rights (lex et jura fundamentalis) of the nation, country, territory, etc. or the natural laws and rights (leges et iura naturali) on which the fundamental laws and rights are based. I would say this is a rather universal undersatnding of what a tyrant actually is.