The Civil Magistrate
By Gordon H. Clark, Ph.D.
Godless people outside the Church of Christ, if by chance and by mistake they ever should read the previous articles on effectual calling, saving faith, assurance, and so on, would consider the topics trivial, or even nonsense, and the reading tedious. But in this age few of them would dismiss the problems of civil government as unimportant. When Dictator Franco and the Roman church attempt to force American military and civilian personnel to beg permission of a Roman bishop in order to marry one another, even a full fledged secularist develops an interest in the relation of church to state. Many non-Christians are also interested in the moral problem of war and pacifism. On these two subjects the Westminster Confession has something to say.
Any conclusion relative to church and state, war and peace, and capital punishment depends on some theory of the nature of civil authority. By what right does a government exist? Those who reject divine revelation base the state either on naked power and brutality, or on some sort of social contract, or on a natural development from the family. Elsewhere I have argued in detail that the latter two reduce to the first; with the result that secularism eventuates in dictatorship and totalitarian rule. It is only in the Hebrew-Christian revelation, e.g. in the account of King Ahab and Naboth's vineyard, that the rightful power of government is limited.
"God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, hath ordained civil magistrates to be under him over the people, for his own glory and the public good; and to this end, hath armed them with the power of the sword, for the defense and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evil doers" (sec. 1) .
Here the Confession, summarizing the Biblical position, gives the origin of the state and settles the discussion on pacifism and capital punishment. Even Christian pacifists, who in spite of their lovely character we believe to have misunderstood the Bible, do not claim that the Old Testament forbids all war. But neither does the New Testament. Christ said, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Christ knew that Caesar had an army; he did not refuse to pay taxes to Rome on the ground that some of the tribute would be used to support that army. Yet in the United States today some people think it a Christian duty to refuse to follow Christ's teaching and example. They would rather go to jail than to pay one penny to support the military. Of course, in Christ's statement war is not explicitly mentioned—it is an inference, howbeit a justifiable inference, we believe. But the New Testament provides more than an inference. In Rom. 13:4 the power of the sword is explicitly assigned to civil government. This disposes of pacifism and the objection to capital punishment. If the courts and the juries of our land were not so adverse to capital punishment, it is likely that brutal crimes would be fewer; and if the relatively juster governments of the west had been willing to wage war against international criminals, the lives of twenty million Chinese, Koreans, and Russians might have been saved. And the United States would have been in a much safer position today.
The relation of church to state is another lively issue at the present time. Where the Roman church controls the government, Protestants suffer oppression and physical persecution. Their churches are bombed and their ministers are murdered. The Greek church, a part of the World Council, has caused the arrest and is prosecuting two Protestants for distributing New Testaments. In our own land the Romanists are constantly attempting to divert public funds to their own purposes. A while back they were advocating an ambassador to the Vatican, and will probably push it again when they see an opportunity. In New Mexico, that is, in the United States, Protestant Indians have been denied by court order the right to hold Protestant prayer meetings even in their own homes (cf. United Evangelical Action, Feb. 1, 1954, p. 18) . And bills have been introduced into Congress to honor the Virgin Mary by issuing commemorative stamps for the Marian year.
Unfortunately there are also Protestants who want a close tie-in of church and state. Some of the large denominations support lobbies for socialistic legislation. But what is worse, there are those who want the state to define the articles of religion. For example, the North Rocky Mount Baptist church, in North Carolina, by majority vote, withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention. As to the issues involved and the wisdom of their withdrawal, I have nothing to say. It is their legal right to withdraw that is the important point. The minority went to court and the court awarded them the property. The judge claimed that he did not rule on religious beliefs. But the court defined what a Church is, and held that a Baptist church could not withdraw from the Convention and be independent. Now, certainly, the definition of the Church is a religious belief on which denominations differ. The Baptist, contrary to the Presbyterians, have always held to independency and have claimed that there is no ecclesiastical authority superior to the local congregation. But the news reports
