The Province of Rebels

Likewise also these filthy dreamers defile the flesh, despise dominion [or reject government], and speak evil of dignities.

Jude 8

Under the guise of opposing tyranny and endorsing freedom, many individuals reject human authority in history. They are rebels and anarchists at heart, and they appear in God’s three main spheres: family, church, state. In the family, obstreperous wives justify disobedience to husbands on the grounds of husbands’ sins, and rebellious children do the same on the grounds of parental errors. In the church, super-pious rebels despise church authority and use the flaws of eldership to excuse their mounting ecclesiastical insurrections. In the state, seditionists at heart validate their opposition to any civil authority by branding almost any law of any kind tyranny. The alleged Christians among these groups are quick to point out the fact of God’s absolute authority over all human institutions (in this they are right) and from this premise rebel against derivative human authority (in this they are wrong). The immediate authority of God does not obviate the mediate authority of man in the main spheres of the family, church, and state, even if that mediate authority is less than perfect and just (it will, in fact, always be less than perfect and just in a sinful world).

Christ confronted this province of rebels in his earthly sojourn. Jewish nationalism vehemently opposed to the Roman rule in Palestine flourished during Christ’s earthly ministry. The Nationalists, or, more properly. Zealots,1 a thoroughly political sect, pressed and battled for the overturning of Roman hegemony and interpreted the Messiah of the Old Testament to be none other than the supreme political figure whose emergence would guarantee political victory for the subjugated Jews. The Zealots wrongly assumed (as do many “dispensationalists” today2), that Messiah’s kingdom is mainly a political kingdom, and their disappointment at our Lord’s refusal to pander to their self-serving and provincial sedition may have precipitated his death.

Calvin was convinced that Jude 8 was especially applicable to the political insurrectionists of his day, “who…. wish to abolish all order.... [T]heir chief object is to be free from every yoke.”3 Though the text does seem to refer specifically to political radicals, it cannot be denied that this same attitude toward lawful human government obtains in other spheres as well.

The most noticeable instances of sedition are in the state, where fanatics, citing the sins of statist tyranny (real or perceived), threaten to overturn the social order, blow up state buildings, withhold taxes, and incite riot and anarchy. Some do this in the name of Christ and his word. They will receive no encouragement from the Scriptures, however. Our Lord was no political revolutionary, nor were his disciples. And when Christianity conquered the Roman empire, its victory was forged not by force of arms but by faithfulness of obedience. The gospel and Christian obedience can accomplish a social transformation of which the Utopian fanatics of armed, violent revolution can only dream.

They have not learned a crucial lesson: tyranny in any sphere is no justification for revolution (and there is scarcely the latter which does not engender a tyranny greater than that which elicited the initial rebellion). In all spheres, we must meet injustice with justice, not with greater injustice.

Rebellion in the State

The tyranny of the modern state is a grim fact. Actually, the history of the state is virtually a history of tyranny. Civil governments (of all forms, “free” democracy included) overtax, deceive, abuse, torment, and subjugate their citizens.4 We at Chalcedon have exposed and opposed this tyranny for three decades.5 There is no reluctance at Chalcedon and among other Christian reconstructionists to expose and refute this statist tyranny.

Unfortunately, not all who perceive this statist tyranny (and some tyranny they invent in their own minds) respond to it properly. They are driven by secular libertarian, and usually rebellious and anarchic, impulses. While political liberals worship the state as the supreme expression of the autonomous authority of man, libertarians worship the individual as the supreme expression of the autonomous authority of man. Both are wrong, and both are evil.

In Romans 14 Paul delivers the locus classicus on the Christian’s relation to the state. He is not presenting a full- orbed program of the godly state (the outline of which was revealed quite extensively in the Old Testament), merely addressing the question of how Christians should respond to civil authority in an unchristian society (see 12:17-21). He argues neither that Christians should worship the state nor that they should revolt. Rather, he requires them to submit to their civil rulers. Of course, he does not intend to contradict the Biblical injunction requiring obedience to God when divine and human authority contradict. Man must disobey the state (or any other authority) when it requires what God forbids or forbids what God requires (Ac. 5:29). However, the mere existence of evil or tyranny in the state is no justification for disobedience. That is, none may argue, “This is an evil state, and thus I am not obliged to obey the law.” When Christ responded to the crafty question of Pharisees and Herodians with “Render therefore unto Caesar’s the things which are Caesar’s and unto God the things which are God’s” (Mt. 22:21), he was not, as many Christians surmise, approving dualism between and God and civil government, much less the secularization of human government, but rather asserting that responsibility to divine authority does not cancel responsibility to civil authority.

God has furnished recourse for addressing tyranny in the state.

One of the great expressions of this fact occurs in the powerful movie. The Falcon and the Snowman. The character indicted for selling state secrets to the Soviet Union is asked by an FBI agent, “Why did you do it?”

He replies, “Did you know we are the only nation on earth to use nuclear weapons against our enemies? We destabilize other governments. The CIA assists insurgents in other countries. This country is hypocritical.”

To which the agent responds insightfully, “There are other forms of protest.”

Indeed, there are. Prayer for our civil rulers (1 Tim. 2:1-2), imprecatory prayer (Ps. 79; Rev. 6:9-11), godly prophetic witness (Rev. 12:10-11), including confrontation (1 Kin. 18; Mt. 14:4), and other actions are Biblically justified—and demanded. Nor is the obligation of Christians to defend their lives, families, and property from direct molestation (Ex. 22:1-4) in any way questioned. Moreover, the traditional Calvinistic view6 that lower territorial magistrates may forcibly protect citizens in their charge from the tyranny of higher civil magistrates (that is, as a defensive action) may be Biblically legitimate (e.g., Jud. 3:12-30). But insurrection and revolution are inappropriate and injurious.

We do not advance Christ’s kingdom by guns and bombs (2 Cor. 10:4, 5). Christ’s is not a political kingdom: it is a religious kingdom with political effects. Likewise, ours is not a political vision: it a religious vision with political implications.

Rebellion in the Church

The church today in many quarters is in a horrid condition. Virtually every mainline Protestant denomination long ago apostatized from its historic orthodox moorings, the Roman Catholic Church (especially since Vatican II) has been unable to assuage the onslaught of modernity in its midst, and the evangelical churches are rife with existential (me-first, feel-good) reductionism.

The response by the godly to these errors, like the response to the errors in the state, is not insurrection and anarchy but faithfulness and obedience, submission to God’s absolute authority and to man’s derivative authority without in any way endorsing the sins of the latter. “We have today in the church,” Rushdoony notes, “a fearfulness to exercise godly authority as well as a prevalence of humanistic authoritarianism.”7 Both are evil.

Christ intentionally taught in the apostate synagogue of his day, and St. Paul always seemed to seek out the synagogue for the site of his ministry, consistently one of rebuke to Jewish apostasy. The unbelieving Jews eventually cast out both Christ and Paul (and most of the rest of the true Christians, for that matter). God’s eternal judgment rested on the apostate Jewish order (Mt. 23:37-39), and eviscerating that order by insurrection or stealth was not necessary. It is not necessary to revolt against sinful or tyrannical authority to witness against it.

The reformers did not press to divide the Western church, but were perfectly willing to purge the evils from within. Only when the Pope anathematized them with thunderbolts did they reluctantly start “Reformational” churches. As firm supporters of catholic substance,8 they were dedicated not to schism but to faithful obedience. When schism occurred, it was in spite of—not because of—their faithfulness.

Ecclesiastical insurrectionists today who damn all churches unless they measure up to some abstract subjective standard may not derive comfort from the Scriptures. The churches of Corinth and Galatia and many others were something less than sterling examples of ecclesiastical fidelity, yet they were the objects not only of the apostles’ stern reprimand (1 Cor. 3:1-9; 5:1-6:8), but also tender affection and concern (2 Cor. 6:11, 12). From the human perspective, the infallible indicia of the church, suggests Calvin, are “the word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to the institution of Christ [;] there, it is not to be doubted, is a Church of God.”9 Unfortunately

there have always been persons, who, from a false notion of perfect sanctity, as if they were already become disembodied spirits, despised the society of all men in whom they could discover any remains of human infirmity. Such, in ancient times, were the Cathari, and also the Donatists, who approached to the same folly. Such, in the present day, are some of the Anabaptists, who would be thought to have made advances in piety beyond all others.10

As a prime instance, during my pastorate, one couple visiting my congregation was incensed that I did not preach against smoking and alcohol. They asserted, “In all the churches we have ever attended, the elders never listened to our correction.” These Pharisees saw the sins (at least perceived sins) in everybody else’s lives, but not their own. They were soon on their way to “correct” more elders! They erroneously judged the church from the standpoint of their own antinomian and subjective “piety,” rather than from the objective indicia revealed in Scripture.

Christians may follow legitimate forms of protest in sinful churches just as they may in sinful states. If those protests (usually in the form of judicial process) prove unfruitful, members can always (if they have acted circumspectly) obtain transfer to another, but more sound, congregation. They may work judicially to purge the church, or they may transfer; they may not mount seditions to subvert the church. The judgment of sinful churches rests in the hands of the just. Almighty God (Rev. 2, 3).The solution to sinful churches is not to foment sedition, withhold giving, start rumors, and slander or otherwise torment the eldership: “For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” (Jas. 1:20).

Rebellion in the Family

What is true of church and state is equally applicable, if anything more applicable, in the Christian family, the most important divine institution. The husband is the head of the wife (1 Cor. 11:3), and the parents (unitedly) are the authority of the offspring (Eph. 6. 1). The proximity of the familial relationship renders the sins and flaws of authority even more noticeable to its subjects than the sins and flaws of authority in the church and state to their subjects. Wives readily perceive the sins of husbands; children as readily recognize the sins of parents. This recognition tends to undermine familial authority if its Biblical mandate is not maintained. Wives grasp at the husband’s distemper, laziness, indecisiveness, lust, ingratitude, thoughtlessness, and a host of other sins as excuses for their own rebellion. Similarly, children almost instinctually justify their own province of insurrection by pointing to sins of parents. None, to be sure, can minimize the significance of these sins. Today’s family, no less than church and state, is far from its ideal; indeed, in many cases it is positively perverse. In a recent essay exposing the flaws of the modern relation between husbands and wives, and uncharacteristically accurate and frank for a secular publication, the author notes:

The fact is that it’s not easy being a guy these days. In the 1950s, family life reflected the reality that a man and woman would marry, have children, and for the rest of his days, the man would support them.... In this era, family life is under siege: Young men face a real uncertainty about being able to earn a living to support themselves, let alone their families, and lots of women want to have their children alone. there are no real fathers for those kids. And the relationship between the men and women who brought them into the world is going very poorly.11

Naturally, it is “going very poorly.” One cannot flout the laws of Biblical revelation and the created order with impunity: the debt to the law, including familial law, cannot be escaped.

The solution to these and manifold other sins and errors in the family, however, is not insurrection. The wife may not cajole, slander, and undermine a husband, much less threaten to divorce, merely because he is sinful or does not meet her expectations. Marriage is more than romantic arrangement. It is a divinely appointed covenantal sphere (Mat. 2:14, 15). It cannot be severed merely because one spouse “falls out of love” (as though love were something one “falls” into in the first place!), or wearies of the sins of the other. Marriage as a covenant is a judicial, not a conventional or “spiritual,” arrangement. Because it is easy to end marriages in modern antinomian culture, wives (husbands too) treat the marital covenant diffidently; they act as though imperfection or sin in the spouse is justification for rebellion against the covenant oath. In this they are gravely mistaken.

Likewise, children stand under covenantal authority of parents. They may not undermine parental authority even if that authority practices drunkenness, unconcern, or tyranny. If parental authority violates civil law in mistreating children, it is the obligation of the civil magistrate (or, lacking that exercise in a non-Christian state, the church) to intervene. It is not the prerogative of children, however, to strike their parents, slander them, or abandon their home.

Recourse to tyranny and sin in the family is no less available than in the church and state. An aspect of the blessing of what has come to be called today “extended” families is the recourse to its members in time of need (1 Tim. 5:8). Additionally, the church is commissioned to assist the family (1 Tim. 5:9, 10), to serve the covenant (this includes assistance in times of serious conflict). The state, moreover, in certain limited cases in which family authority violates civil law in harming a family subject, is authorized to deter that sinning authority. The church and state are checks, carefully limited checks, but checks nonetheless, on the tyranny of family authority.

Insurrection in the family is by far more egregious than insurrection in the church or state, since the family is the central covenantal institution. In fact, as the case of Absalom (2 Sam. 14-18) and others indicates, insurrection in the family readily leads to insurrection in the church and state. Wives who spurn their husbands or commit adultery will eschew church discipline and state sanctions. Teenagers who slander their parents or young adults who marry against Christian parents’ wishes are no more inclined to heed church and state authority. Rebels tend to be rebels in every sphere.

Conclusion

In the family, as in the church and state, subjects (wives and children) must meet injustice, not with the greater injustice of sedition or anarchy, but with justice, faithfulness and obedience.

Sin on the part of authority is especially grievous (Jas. 3:1), but rebellion is never appropriate (Num. 16). The province of rebels is the province of God’s judgment.

1. Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (New York, 1905, eighth ed.), 1:237-242.

2. See, e.g., J. Dwight Pentecost, Things To Come (Grand Rapids, 1958), 446,447. For an excellent corrective, see George E. Ladd, Crucial Questions About the Kingdom of God (Grand Rapids, 1952), 111-117.

3. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. John Allen (Grand Rapids, 1949), Bk. 4, Ch. 1, Sec. 8.

4. See Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland and New York, 1958 ed.).

5. R. J. Rushdoony’s first position paper, significantly enough, was “Conflict With the State,” Roots of Reconstruction (Vallecito, CA, 1991), 1-5.

6. Calvin, op. cit., Bk. 4, Ch. 20, Sec. 31. See also M. Eugene Osterhaven, The Faith of the Church (Grand Rapids, 1982), 184, 185.

7. See R.J. Rushdoony, Systematic Theology (Vallecito, CA, 1994), 2:725, 726.

8. Jaroslav Pelikan, Obedient Rebels (New York and Evanston, 1964).

9. Calvin, op. cit., Bk. 4, Ch. 1, Sec. 9

10. ibid., Bk. 4, Ch. 1, Sec. 13.

11. Lionel Tiger, “Nasty Turns in Family Life,” U. S. News and World Report, July 1, 1996, 57.