John Calvin's View Of Romans 13 In Libertarian, Neo-Orthodox And Baptist Thought Part 1
posted by TheoPoet at TheoPoetic Musings - 13 minutes ago
Recently in my study of Romans 13 (since we talked about that verse this past Sunday) I came across this interesting article---here's an excerpt: The Calvinist Connection By Dave Kopel Liberty magazine ...
and I definitely saved my post several times but somehow Blogger decided to erase my post so since I can't remember all I posted in part 1, I went ahead and erased part 2 as I don't feel like typing everything again---besides I can't remember all that I typed in part 1. Looking up all my links would take time as well so sparing you two long posts---here is just the main part of Part 1:
The Calvinist Connection
By Dave Kopel
Liberty magazine
October 2008, pp. 27-31
Many modern libertarians assume that religion and liberty are necessarily in opposition. Many modern people in general assume that religion and revolution are opposed. At times, of course, they are, but the history of the American Revolution indicates that more care is required in making this kind of judgment.
In the American colonies, the hotbed of revolution was New England, where the people were mainly Congregationalists—descendants of the Calvinist English Puritans. The Presbyterians, a Calvinist sect which originated in Scotland, were spread all of the colonies, and the network of Presbyterian ministers provided links among them. The Congregationalist and Presbyterian ministers played an indispensible role in inciting the American Revolution.
To understand why they were so comfortable with revolution, it helps to look at the origins of Calvinist resistance theory, from its tentative beginnings with Calvin himself, to its full development a few decades later.
Born in 1509, John Calvin was a small child in France when the Reformation began. By 1541, he had been invited to take permanent refuge in Geneva, which provided a safe haven for the rest of his life. Geneva was a walled city, and constantly threatened by the Catholic Duke of Savoy and others. Pacifism was never a realistic option for Calvin, or any of the Swiss Protestants.
Calvin always believed that governments should be chosen by the people. He described the Hebrews as extremely foolish for jettisoning their free government and replacing it with a hereditary monarchy. He also came to believe that kings and princes were bound to their people by covenant, such as those that one sees in the Old Testament.
In Calvin’s view, which was based on Romans 13, the governmental duties of "inferior magistrates" (government officials, such as mayor or governors, in an intermediate level between the king and the people) required them to protect the people against oppression from above. Calvinism readily adopted the Lutheran theory of resistance by such magistrates.
In a commentary on the Book of Daniel, Calvin observed that contemporary monarchs pretend to reign “by the grace of God,” but the pretense was “a mere cheat” so that they could “reign without control.” He believed that “Earthly princes depose themselves while they rise up against God,” so “it behooves us to spit upon their heads than to obey them.”
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