The Christian Prince

Public justice under the Lord

Essay VIII of Christ, the Nations, and the Public Square

The old books call him a Christian prince when the man who bears the sword actually fears God. The name does not make him a second Christ, and it does not make his court a presbytery. It names an office: public justice under the Lord, outward care of true religion, no claim to the keys.

The present dictionary will not let the name sit there. One room hears “prince” and reaches for a Caesar. Another hears “Christian” and reaches for a campaign. A third hears both and says the only safe magistrate is a clerk of outcomes who will not — or even should not — know what worship is. This page keeps the old name and refuses those three rooms.

Earlier essays owned a name, kept a word, refused America-as-Zion and America-as-machine, kept particular peoples, and denied neutrality. Essay VII recovered the nursing father after the American revision of Westminster 23.3.⁴ This essay names the same office by the older noun.

Christ is Lord over all nations, which are real and distinct. The magistrate answers to God, and the church holds spiritual authority. The public square is never morally neutral. A republic can have office without a crown. America is not Zion, and the person in office is not a savior.

The inference some want

Call the office P: the magistrate who fears God, bears the sword, and has an outward care of true religion. Two inferences travel with the word now.

(C) If P, then a Caesar: one great man of a people, the living law, the church his department.

(E) If not Caesar, then the square is empty: the magistrate must pretend the square is empty.

(C) and (E) look like the only two rooms: either Caesar, or an empty square. They are not. They are two ways of refusing the same office. One inflates the prince into a savior. The other evacuates him into a clerk. What follows shows why.

The name is older than the panic

Prince, in the old use, is the public person who judges. The magisterial reformers often read Psalm 82 that way: rulers called gods because the charge is God’s, then told they will die like men. That reading made a useful fear. This essay does not require it. Psalm 82, read as a council scene, still yields the same limit by another road: whoever holds a borrowed authority is not the Most High, and borrowed authority is judged. The clearer mirror for the office is Psalm 101. The king will not set a worthless thing before his eyes, and he will destroy slander in the land. A teacher could set that psalm before a young prince without inventing a new seat in the Godhead.¹ The noun was never the problem; the problem is that a baptized people forgot the magistrate is still answerable to God. Baptism teaches the use of the sword. It does not mint a new one.³

There is power in a ruler as ruler, ordinary and civil, whether the man is a pagan or a Christian. Christianity adds no new civil power. Rather, It adds a fitness to use the power he already has. A pagan magistrate is still God’s servant in the sense of Romans 13 when he punishes evil and praises good.¹ A baptized magistrate is that servant with a conscience that has heard the law. He is not a new species of ruler. He is a ruler who can no longer plead that he never sat under Word.

Honor in civil affairs is not the keys

The old books will pile titles on the office until a modern reader flinches: minister of God, deputy, even vicar.² They mean the sword represents God’s judgment in the civil realm. They do not mean the prince preaches, fences the Table, or writes a confession as Christ’s ordinance for the church. Outward care of religion — peace for worship, restraint of open blasphemy, protection of ministers — is not the keys.⁵ The American churches denied him the keys and left him the duty to nourish. Essay VII is that settlement.⁴ This page does not unwind it. A court that remembers the grammar is still not a session.

The crown is not the doctrine

Scripture names kings because Israel and Rome had kings. It does not thereby require a crown of every people. “Whether to the king as supreme, or to governors” is already a wider net.¹ A president, a council, a parliament can bear P if they judge under God and leave the keys alone. To say a Christian people must invent a Caesar in order to have a Christian magistrate is to confuse the furniture with the charge. Form of government is a prudence. The ordinance of magistracy is a doctrine.⁶

A people is not a gospel, and hardness is not the office

The magistrate rules a people, not a theory of a people. It is perfectly lawful to love them as his own. It is not a gospel to make their blood the covenant. Nor does a hard pagan become a Christian prince by winning. The man who hates the church, breaks both tables for sport, and uses the faith as a banner may have a sword, but he does not have this office. Calling him prince in the old sense is theft.⁶

The empty square is not humility

(E) says: if we will not have Caesar, we must have neutrality. Essay V already refused that. Someone’s morality will run the square. The prince who will not know what worship is has not become modest. He has changed gods and kept the stationery. Two offices under one Lord is how the fear of Caesar is kept from eating every civil claim. His refusal to name the Lord is not a third office. It is a dereliction.

Conclusion

Call the load-bearing claim

(Q) P is a real office: the magistrate under God, sword in hand, outward care of true religion, no claim to the keys.

(C) does not follow from (Q). From an honored office it does not follow that one man must become the living law, or that the church is his department. The inference (E) — empty square if not Caesar — does not follow from the denial of (C). From “not Caesar” it does not follow that the square is empty.

So (Q) stands if Romans 13 and the two offices stand. The prince answers. He is not the One who is answered. He comes to the Table as a member and sits in judgment as a public servant. Those are two seats. A people may keep both without a crown and without a savior in the palace. The name is old. The panic is new. The office was never either.

Notes

1. Romans 13:1–4; 1 Peter 2:13–14; Psalm 82; Psalm 101. On Psalm 82: the Reformed use as a word to human judges is historical; the reading followed here takes the Elohim as members of the heavenly council under judgment (so Heiser). Neither reading makes the magistrate the source of the charge.

2. John Calvin, Institutes IV.20. The titles he loads on the magistrate are civil. The keys remain with the church.

3. Samuel Rutherford, The Due Right of Presbyteries: Christianity adds no new kingly power; it teaches the use of the power already given.

4. Westminster Confession 23, and Essay VII on the American revision and the nursing father.

5. Isaiah 49:23 names protection, not pulpit. The image is treated at length in Essay VII.

6. This page does not require a monarchy and does not baptize a tyrant. It names an office.

Scripture quotations are from the Christian Standard Bible®.