Authority Spheres

Chapter XXIII of the Confession is entitled "Of the Civil Magistrate" (you knew I had to go there eventually). The first paragraph reads as follows:

"God, the supreme Lord and King of all the world, has ordained civil magistrates, to be, under Him, over the people, for His own glory, and the public good: and, to this end, has armed them with the power of the sword, for the defence and encouragement of them that are good, and for the punishment of evil doers."

Some have written that government is a necessary evil. I disagree. In my previous posts, although it may have been rather subtle, I have built a case that government is a positive good, a creation ordinance--God governs, and man created in his image is charged with government--and that good government is all the more necessary given the fallen moral state of man.

But not all government is equal. There exist spheres of authority, a concept most commonly associated with Abraham Kuyper, the Dutch Reformed thinker and one-time prime minister of the Netherlands. In brief, it can be asserted that the supreme authority is God himself and that under him there are divinely-appointed secondary authorities: the civil government, the church, and the family. Because human relationships are multifaceted there will be some overlap of these spheres, but there will also be areas in which each sphere operates exclusively (under God, of course) of the others. Later posts will spend some time fleshing these ideas out. But next I turn my attention to some political images seen in the Bible, drawing upon the work of James Barr.