Was reading this week and came across an encouraging three-hundred-year-old work that strongly argues against the position I take on a biblical understanding of government. It was an encouraging find because it’s well researched arguments further demonstrate how historically ignorant and theologically lazy the church was during Covid.

The book was “The Short History of the Regal Succession and the Rights of the Several Kings Recorded in the Holy Scriptures” by John Lindsay (1686-1768). In it he criticizes Protestant political theory specifically, he is addressing William Whiston’s “Scripture Politicks: or an Impartial Account of the Origin and Measures of Government Ecclesiastical and Civil.”

The section below is from Lindsay. His position is that Christians are obligated to show passive obedience to just and unjust rulers alike. He briefly summarize s the opposing view, provides a lengthy list of men who hold the opposing view, and finally he states his aim to examine this position over the course of his work.

“That the magistrate is the minister of God no longer, or otherwise, than while he exercises his office for his people’s good! That in case of idolatry, heresy, popery, persecution, tyranny, arbitrary power, or any mal-administration, the people lawfully may resist, and their representatives are bound in duty, for the public good, to depose, yea to arraign and put to death, ‘any the most rightful prince; being in all such cases (of which also they are the judges) freed from all subjection and allegiance! That such resistance is justifiable by scripture in case of necessity; and there is no obligation to passive obedience in such like cases!

These, and a great many more of the like them, are
abundantly interspersed throughout the known writings of Calvin, Beza, Knox, Goodman, Suarez, Mariana, Parsons, Penry, Buchanan, Leighton, Burton, Calamy, Marshal, Bradshaw, Milton, Goodwin, Ashcam, Harrington, Hobbes, Ludlow, Baxter, Owen, Locke, Sidney, Hunt, Johnson, Tutchin, and others of the association, as well Jesuits as Puritan-Rebels and Regicides : not to speak of some moderns of
greater note ; whom (as a learned divine says) I forbear to ‘ name, both to avoid the loss of time, which Such a long catalogue would take up, and the envy which would fall upon me, for naming some of all professions, who yet live, or whose memory is yet fresh among us. But I cannot omit Mr. Whiston whose Scripture Politics will fall under a particular examination in the process of this work.”

He begins by summarizing the initial idea he is rejecting stating “the magistrate is the minister of God no longer, or otherwise, than while he exercises his office for his people’s good!” Romans 13 states “rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad . . . for he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” The position that Lindsay is countering states that when governments fail to function within their God designed role, as an agent of God’s wrath upon the wrongdoer, that those governments have become illegitimate and therefore can and should be resisted and overthrown. Governments that have become tyrannical and terrorize those who do good can justly be rebelled against according to this position.

Only a handful of individuals and organizations within
evangelicalism did anything other than promote a flat isolated reading of Romans 13 during Covid or present effeminate love thy neighbor arguments. The
majority failed to do the work of systematic theology, biblical theology, and historical theology that their offices and positions require. Which is where the quote comes in.

The Covid lockdown was not the first time the church has faced tyranny, government overreach, or persecution in the past two thousand years. And no small amount of ink has been spilled crafting arguments, exegeting texts, and countering arguments throughout church history. Lindsay
provides a wonderful list where the modern theologian or pastor could begin his study; most notably on his list are Calvin, Beza, and Knox. Start there and then branch out into the work and arguments of others mentioned.

Most evangelicals bought into the lie that these were
unprecedented times. Nothing could be farther from the truth. What was unprecedented what the church’s laziness in the face of such a foe as the modern tyrannical technocratic state. We simply didn’t do the research. We didn’t do the reading. We ignored our forebears and the wealth of wisdom they left behind.