Narnian Lessons for Idaho

Introduction

I have been urging American Christians for some time now to get reacquainted with Protestant resistance theory. This is not because I think everyone needs an odd hobby, although I do, but rather because this is a theology as practical as a fistful of sixteen-penny nails. And these are nails that we are going to need very much. We are also going to need them very shortly, not just very much.

A good introduction to Protestant resistance theory by Glenn Sunshine can be found here. Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos is a bracing treatment of the topic from a sixteenth century Huguenot. And Lex Rex gives us the Scottish version from the great Samuel Rutherford. There is also Book IV of Calvin’s Institutes. So . . . to paraphrase why I am urging this, you may not be interested in Protestant resistance theory but the despotic counterpart to Protestant resistance theory is interested in you.

What I would like to do in our time today is draw out one particular doctrine from Rutherford’s Lex Rex because I believe it will play an essential role in any resistance to the coming power plays. By the coming power plays, I mean the Coming Power Plays. And by “essential role” I mean a response that simultaneously does not take the bait (as you recall I have urged before), and at the same time mounts an effective resistance.

Not taking the bait does not mean that we do not resist. It means that we should not resist like idiots. And in order to avoid any more moronic lunges at The Man, and here’s looking at you J6, one of the things we really need to study is the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

Lesser Magistrates, or Inferior Judges

Rutherford poses the following question in his book:

Not to keep you in suspense, Rutherford argues that inferior judges (or lesser magistrates) have their authority directly from God, and they consequently answer to Him. They do not answer to the king in the first instance. This matters a lot, as we shall see.

According to one view, the Lord only has one direct report, that person being Caesar, or the King, or the Emperor, or the President. All the underlings report to this CEO, and serve at his pleasure only. In this view, the org chart has only one position appointed by God, and then that one person does all his own appointing of the rest, and delegating authority to the rest.

The alternative view, defended ably by Rutherford, is that God appoints multiple authorities, and not just one. In this understanding, the president of the United States has his authority directly from God (Rom. 13:1-7), but so does the governor of Idaho.

When Jehoshaphat established judges in the land, he was the one that God was using to set them up, but he was not the one who controlled their decisions. These judges were magistrates, and not staff. They, like he was, were all under the same law. Jehoshaphat installed them, but he did so with the explicit charge that they “judge not for man, but for the Lord.”

Clearly there is a distinction we must keep in mind between a lesser magistrate and staff. A district judge is a lesser magistrate while a press secretary is staff. The president can tell his press secretary what to do, and sack him if he doesn’t do it. But a lesser magistrate is not staff. His authority is from God.

Now this point has monumental ramifications. Here is how Rutherford puts it:

“For the judgment is God’s.”

In any healthy governmental arrangement, there is the constitution and there is also a chief executive, established by the constitution. If the society concerned is larger than a small village in a jungle somewhere, there will also be lesser magistrates. These lesser magistrates are beholden to the God who appointed them and established them. As already mentioned, this is a healthy society, and so things run smoothly for the most part. But let us say that one day the president loses his mind, and rebels against the constitution, his oaths, his responsibilities under the law, and he commands one of the lesser magistrates to do something expressly forbidden by the law. According to the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, the lesser magistrates have an obligation to disobey.

Allow me to make up a concrete example. Suppose the president signed an executive order requiring the governor of each state to confiscate all of the privately owned AR-15s in the state. If any governor obeyed this unlawful order (unlawful in multiple ways), then that governor should be impeached for dereliction of duty. Said governor has no right to obey such an order.

Such is the doctrine. With that established, allow me to bring in a brief trip to Narnia to anchor the doctrine, and then we will return to a practical assessment of what we should all do if there is any funny business in November.

A Narnian Excursus

I am happy to announce that at this point Lewis was a good Rutherfordian. To illustrate this, I would like to quote one passage at length from The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and then another one from The Horse and His Boy.

Notice how Reepicheep describes the possible action of trussing up the king—truest loyalty. That really is what it is. And we find a similar spirit in Archenland which should not be surprising to anyone who knows these books.

What Lewis is teaching us here is the spirit and nature of a constitutional monarchy, which is light years away from the despotism of the Stuarts—with their claims to an absolutist form of divine right. In the world Lewis is envisioning, kings are to be obedient. And when they are not, this does not remove the obligation of their citizens to be obedient. The absolutist divine right of kings nonsense was just the sort of impudence that Rutherford was standing against.

When I first encountered Protestant resistance theory I took to it like a trout being released back into the stream by a kind fisherman, and the reason for this—I am convinced—is because I had taken it in many years earlier, like mother’s milk, thanks to Lewis.

As a result of this tough-minded theology in Lex Rex, Samuel Rutherford was summoned to appear before the bar of the Scottish House in order to face a charge of treason. But by the time the summons arrived, he was already on his deathbed. From that place he gave a message to the officers who had delivered the summons. “Tell them that I have a summons already from a superior Judge and indicator, and I behoove to answer my first summons; and ere your day arrives I shall be where few kings and great folk come.” Had he been healthy enough to answer the summons, he would almost certainly have been executed. And why? Because he anticipated the wisdom of King Lune—”it’s the law makes him a king.” Lex Rex.

So if it is a constitutional monarchy, then the law establishes all the authorities, and not just one of them. And all of them have an obligation to God because they will answer directly to God for what they do or do not do.

Come November

I spoke above about the possibility of funny business come November. Our opponents, who are still functioning as though it were ten years ago, are trying to shame and shush us as “conspiracy theorists” because we are budgeting for the prospect of the election in November being an event that stinks to high heaven. As we most certainly are.

Keep in mind that the reason we think the election will stink to high heaven in November is because it stinks to high heaven now. We believe there will be attempts to rig the election then because they are rigging the election now. Think of it—bogus impeachment attempts, ginned up indictments, stupid raids, a disease-riddled conviction, possible imprisonment before the election, an assassination attempt that our church security team could have handled better than the Secret Service did, topped off with some truly lame bureaucratic stonewalling to cover up what the Secret Service did or did not do. If Trump is reelected, he really needs to make his own arrangements for security with Blackwater, dispatching the Secret Service to guard some kindergartners’ birthday parties.

The coverage that the media is currently giving the Harris/Walz ticket—and by “coverage” I mean tongue bath—is remarkable. Biden retaliated against those who perpetrated the coup by endorsing Kamala, which the powers that be did not want, and it was an effective punch. She really is the word salad queen, and you can almost see that buffering circle on her face while she talks. She is a terrible campaigner, not very smart, and yet VERY entitled. You can’t do DEI hires, I would remark mildly, without getting DEI hires. She was widely recognized as being like this—unlikable, not competent, incoherent, and untroubled by what has been. And then, overnight, whammo, she became America’s sweetheart. What does this mean?

The full court press propaganda move is intended to persuade conservatives that Kamala is within range. They want to create the illusion that she could win the election, counting only the fair and square votes. But if you note my point above, the election is already being rigged. What fair and square votes? Do we count all the votes that Trump would have gotten had there been no deep state collusion against him? And what do we do with all the votes that Trump has picked up because of the deep state collusion? We are already deep inside Counterfactualville. The prospect of an ordinary election, where the people are allowed to decide what direction they would prefer to go, without a gun at their temple, is a prospect that is long gone. We don’t live there anymore.

Those conservatives who still want to live there are the conservatives that this Kamala-fever propaganda is aimed at. When the move comes, come November, they want a large portion of the conservative votes to be rubbing their foreheads and saying, “well, maybe she really did win. I know the election in Texas was cancelled because the power grid there went down, but official reports say that it really was a huge asteroid that hit the main power station. These things do happen. And the grainy footage of those commandos running away right before the explosion could be a deep fake AI thing.”

Put all of this together. I have before said that taking the bait would consist of doing the sorts of things that they are trying to provoke us into doing. Ask yourself this. Were the FBI plants in the J6 crowd trying to get them to go into the Capitol or to stay out of the Capitol? Which direction played into whose hands? That is what I mean by taking the bait.

I have also said before that an effective response to manifest shenanigans would be to take a page from the Solidarity playbook. No government on earth, however despotic, can muscle through a general strike. If they require us to believe the unbelievable and accept the unacceptable, the answer should be “let us think about it, no.” And tying this in with all the foregoing, this general strike should be organized and led by governors, backed up by their state legislatures.

If there is clear resolve beforehand to not accept any ungodly power grab, this diminishes the likelihood that there will be an attempt at an ungodly power grab. This scenario might not unfold. But if it does not unfold, the possibility of lesser magistrates doing their duty might well be one of the reasons.