Rutherford was able to justify his position of resistance and still maintain a fidelity to the Scripture—particularly Romans 13. While obedience is expected to the authorities that God has placed over us, when they step out of the bounds of their God-given office, and break the covenant that they swore to uphold, they remove the basis for obedience—and lesser magistrates must fulfill their office of “doing good” (Rom. 13:4) by resisting them. Lex Rex was the work used to level a charge against Rutherford under Charles II. He was summoned to Edinburgh to give an account for its contents, but as John Macleod said, “there came another summons in the name of a higher than any earthly king that the accused must obey first.”¹⁶ In other words, he died. Lex Rex is an important work in the tradition of Scottish political theology, and it stood out among other productions in this field because it not only gave attention to a theory of resistance, but explored deeper questions about the origins and limitations of civil magistrates.

The concept of resistance to the power and rule of governments is not foreign to the Christian tradition. Particularly in Scottish theology, resistance has had a long-standing tradition going back to John Knox, George Buchanan, Andrew Melville, and Alexander Henderson.1 One of the passages of the Bible that is brought into the theories of resistance is Romans 13. In this chapter, the apostle Paul addresses how Christian citizens should relate to the “governmental authorities.” Paul writes:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.  Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. (Rom. 13:1-2).

The question that is raised is how this passage fits within a biblical view of resistance. If Paul calls Christians to be subject to the governing authorities, and those who resist are resisting those whom God has appointed—what kind of resistance would be acceptable for the Christian without violating the apostle’s imperative? The purpose of this article will be to answer that question in the thought of Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford in his work Lex Rex which is his locus classicus on the subject.

Samuel Rutherford was born at the turn of the century in 1600 in the southeast of Scotland, probably in the town of Nisbet in the parish of Crailing, which is a short distance from the English border.² One of the influences on young Rutherford was Presbyterian David Calderwood. He had the opportunity to hear Calderwood expound on the two kingdom theology of Andrew Melville which asserted that the church was independent of the crown. By the time that Rutherford entered the University of Edinburgh in 1617, he found fellowship with some of the “radicals” who were outside the University and would hold meetings together. Some of the activities of the radicals would include the boycott of services held by ministers on holy days or communions where the congregation was required to kneel in accordance with the Articles of Perth. Rutherford graduated from Edinburgh in 1621 and was appointed the Regent Professor of Humanity, but eventually demitted the office in 1625.³

In 1626, Rutherford was called to the parish of Anwoth in Galloway without giving any acknowledgment to the bishop⁴. This was something out of the ordinary in the 1620’s, although there are indications that there were some ministers that were ordained in the Presbyterian fashion.⁵ Rutherford found himself ministering to the landed gentry in a rural perish that did not have a central town or city.⁶ It was here that Rutherford had a fruitful ministry. His communion sermons were well attended, and through his preaching he emphasized Presbyterian doctrine and practice.⁷ It was during his ministry in Anwoth that Rutherford was summoned to appear before the Court of High Commission in 1630.⁸ The basis for his appearance had to do with his non-conformity to the Articles of Perth, along with a work he wrote in objection to the Arminian theology that was being promulgated in Scotland by William Laud. The Court of High Commission ended Rutherford’s ministry in Anwoth and exiled him to Aberdeen, where he arrived in 1636.

For the next year and a half, Rutherford was banned from pastoral ministry and was confined to writing, where he produced hundreds of letters. John Coffey observes that the 219 letters that survived reveal a man that vacillated between spiritual ecstasy and deep frustration over the constraints that were placed on him. It was from this bottled-up frustration that Rutherford released letters to various nobles and ministers all over Scotland. He was still in Aberdeen in 1636 when the Book of Canons was published in Aberdeen, and in 1637 when the Prayer book was read in St. Giles, causing a riot which began the resistance movement in Scotland to the policies of King Charles. Over the next few months, revolution began with the signing of the National Covenant, which bound the signatories to maintain the kirk laws and liberties of Scotland. It was after the signing took place that Rutherford was able to leave Aberdeen and return to Anwoth. He was a commissioner to the 1638 General Assembly which swept away bishops, canons, and the Perth Articles. It was also decided by the assembly that Rutherford be designated Professor of Divinity at St. Mary’s College, St. Andrews to which he consented with the contingency that he have opportunities to preach regularly.

Political Background

While Rutherford was at St. Andrews, tensions were heating up on the political front. Civil war broke out in England in 1642 and in desperation, Parliament drew up the Solemn League and Covenant with the Covenanters of Scotland in 1643. In the agreement, the Scots would provide military assistance to the English Parliament and in return Parliament would abolish episcopacy and reform religion according to the word of God—which for the Covenanters meant England would be Presbyterian.9 The Scots provided England 20,000 troops in exchange for the promise that the English and Irish churches would become similar to their own. In this way, the Scots would ensure that the reformed religion would be maintained.10 It was agreed to that Parliament would call an assembly of divines to meet in London and to determine the type of government and liturgy that would be imposed on the church in England and Ireland. The Scots were invited to send commissioners to the assembly in order to aid the divines in their work, and Samuel Rutherford was among them. John Coffey notes that Rutherford more than likely was chosen because he had just published Peaceable Plea for Paul’s Presbyterie in 1642, and he had revealed himself to be an authority on New England Congregationalism which would have been considered as an alternative to Scottish Presbyterianism. In November 1643, Rutherford took his seat in the assembly and throughout 1644 he vigorously defended the Presbyterian cause, exercising an important influence. It was in that year that he wrote his well-known treatise Lex Rex.

Lex Rex

Broadly speaking, Rutherford wrote Lex Rex to justify the Parliamentary and Presbyterian campaign in the English Civil War and more specifically to answer a Royalist treatise by John Maxwell, the deposed Bishop of Ross. Rutherford not only drew from the Scottish tradition, but also from the large well of continental thought in the tradition of Thomas Aquinas—even quoting Jesuits when it suited his purpose. For example, within the first two sections of the work, Rutherford quotes from one Greek philosopher (Aristotle) and nine Roman Catholics—six of them being sixteenth century Spanish neo-Thomists.11 In this treatise, Rutherford adopted the scholastic approach of question and answer with his interlocutors, and as Coffey has confessed, it is a work of complexity and, at times, downright confusion. The confusion comes where it is difficult to distinguish between Rutherford and an opponent that he is quoting. Be that as it may, Lex Rex can be broken up into four broad categories. Questions 1–14 dealt with the origins of government, questions 15–21 dealt with the relations between the king and the people—in particular the relations between the parliament and judiciary, questions 22–27 dealt with the relationship between the king and the law with the assertion that the king is submitted to the law, and questions 28–48 dealt with miscellaneous topics. To prevent getting tangled in the intricacies of a book this size, we will focus on a few categories and themes that are important to Rutherford’s exegesis of Romans 13.

Rutherford’s View of the Old Testament

It is clear when one reads Lex Rex that Rutherford had a deep appreciation for the Old Testament and understood much of it to still be normative. For example, he often appealed to Deuteronomy 17 as the prototype for kings of all ages, ruling in a godly way according to the divine law of God. This did not mean, however, that everything in the Old Testament was binding, including some of the typical laws of Israel. Yet, as Coffey points out, the real question was where the line was drawn between the moral laws (which were still binding) and the typical laws. While the Reformed theologians agreed that the ceremonial laws were fulfilled in Christ, and therefore no longer binding, the disagreement came at whether or not both moral and judicial laws were applicable. Rutherford’s understanding of the Mosaic law was complex, whereas he believed that the judicial laws were no longer binding on nations so long as kings were following the “moral equity” of the Old Testament law. However, Rutherford strongly believed that the concept of national covenanting and the civil authorities’ responsibility to protect the true religion was still binding on Christians of his day, and he held the magistrates responsible for upholding that standard. The concept of a “covenanted nation” was very important to Scottish identity, and Rutherford upheld the notion. This two-fold covenant idea was that first there was a covenant between God, the king, and the people.

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