on Civil Government

Civil authority exists to protect the integrity of a people by promoting true goods and restraining true harms in accordance with the natural law.

Patriotism is not affection for an idea but love for a people and a land—a concrete extension of brotherly love. Where common loves endure, civic peace becomes possible, because duties—to God, family, neighbor, and place—discipline our freedoms toward what is good.

Rights are stable when duties are honored. Freedom for its own sake is not freedom at all. Authority is contextualized by responsibility. And human laws ought to be consistent with the law of human nature. These ideas are not novel—they are the heartbeat of the old West.

The civil government cannot save us. Only Christ can. Yet that confession does not make civil authority irrelevant or optional. It actually makes it more necessary. Scripture is very clear that the magistrate is “God’s servant for your good” and that “he does not bear the sword in vain,” because he is “an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer” (Rom. 13:4).   That is not salvific language. It is political language. It concerns the ordering of public life toward the common good when and where we are.

The kingship of Christ does not erase earthly authority. Rather, the kingship of Christ points earthly hierarchies and authority upward toward heaven. Christ is King of kings. That title assumes the ongoing legitimacy of kings and other authorities, properly ordered under Him. The question is not authority or no authority, but whether authority is ordered toward the good—whether those who wield the sword do so as usurpers, or as stewards.

Civil authority exists to promote virtue and restrain vice. Virtue is not defined by the individual, nor by democratic processes. Virtue is defined by nature, and human nature orders us toward intelligible goods. A civil authority that fails to restrain public viciousness cannot truly promote right living.

A king, a governor, a father, a pastor—these are all variations of a single pattern of paternal care. Political authority is at its best when it imitates the good father: protecting, providing, disciplining, and teaching.

Monarchy, in that sense, is not a mere fascination with crowns and palaces. It is the clearest image of this paternal form of rule. A good king is a public father. But the point is not that every society must have a literal king. The point is that all healthy authority—whether lodged in a king, a council, or a local magistrate—ought to follow that paternal pattern.

The role of the civil authority is not unlike the role of a parent over a child. A parent cannot forgive sin. However, a parent ought to train and discipline his children to pursue good habits—because that is what virtue is: a habit. In the same way, the civil authority cannot regenerate the human heart. Yet he can train, restrain, and habituate a people toward a measure of external justice and peace. Law is a schoolmaster.

God has placed rulers over us in accordance with His providence. At the same time, Paul told the civil authority that it has a duty to promote what is good and restrain what is evil. Isaiah describes kings and queens as “foster fathers” and “nursing mothers” to the people of God. This is parental political imagery.

We ought not believe that the civil authority’s responsibility to promote right living and restrain wrong living is subject to the consent of the uncivilized.

Civil authority ought to act with prudence and not too forcefully, in order to ensure peace. Law without wisdom is tyranny. However, when a people descend into chaos, when they refuse to govern themselves  morally, a strong authoritative hand becomes necessary. Christian nations have often viewed strong authority as medicinal to disordered and vicious peoples. Augustine describes earthly rule as a necessary remedy for sin and a means of restraining wickedness.

(a) John Adams said that the American Constitution was made 'only for a moral and religious people' and is 'wholly inadequate to the government of any other.' Self-government is an ideal that is contingent on proper education, self-control, and civil behavior. Even then, self-governmentis radically different from 'autonomy,' because it is heavily related to the classical idea of imperium and the biblical concept of 'dominion.' A people who have lost the habits of virtue cannot be 'self-governing' in any meaningful sense, no matter how often they vote.

(b) If we were to turn back the clock to 1776, America would easily fit that 'authoritarian' bill according to most modern standards. Only wealthy landowners were allowed to vote in many places because there was an expectation of civility, stability, and self-government among that demographic. That restriction was not about denying human worth outside that class. It was the use of authority and exclusion for the purpose of maintaining proper order and peace. Right or wrong, that was seen as common sense to many of the founders.

(c) The ultimate end (telos) of political community is piety and virtue. Cicero taught that 'the welfare of the people shall be the supreme law' and that welfare includes not only physical safety but the moral health of the body politic. When large portions of the populace are formed by a degenerate culture, civilization decays. The classical world recognized that the antithesis of the citizen is the man unformed by right reason. Citizenship, for the ancients, was not a mere accident of birth but a moral qualification rooted in participation in the civic virtues. 

The American argument in 1776 was not an argument against authority as such. It was, in large part, an argument from proximity. A king across the ocean - or even a king ruling a whole continent - does not automatically have a divine right  to rule over a people that he neither knows nor serves. Authority is tied to real fatherhood, real protection, real responsibility. 

Thomas Jefferson - often treated as the most liberal of the founders - regularly praised the  Anglo-Saxon model of feudalism, which emphasized both strong local governance and  a strong social hierarchy. His admiration was not for an egalitarian mass of isolated individuals, but for a network of communities and local authorities.

A strong and just ruler is better than a democracy of tyrants. It is better to be ruled by one person who noble, than by a degenerate mass. 

The office of civil ruler and the office of pastor are two distinct offices with their own distinct jurisdictions. We should not expect our civil rulers to act like pastors. The administration of the Word and sacrament  is uniquely given to the pastor. The power of the sword is uniquely given to the civil magistrate. But both are forms of paternal care under God. Both participate, in their own way, in that same pattern of fatherly responsibility which God has woven into creation.