Constitutional Monarchy

[Clete]

If judges have final say over whether the king remains king, then they are sovereign over the kingship, whatever else you may call it.

Once again, this would only be so if the judges wrote the law or could remove the king by fiat. If all they are doing is performing a legal duty then it is not the men but the law that is removing the king by the same authority by which it also seated him.

They may not be sovereign over every royal function, but they are sovereign over his continued possession of the office.

Only if they are the source of the law, which they are not.

That's the contradiction I've been trying to point out to you this entire time.

It is not a contradiction. Your idea of how the law works, which is to say your understanding of what the rule of law means is faulty.

You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

It's one or the other.

Yeah, well, we live in a country right now that demonstrates that your all or nothing stance is a false dichotomy. This country has existed with a separation of powers that are each designed to limit and check the other branches of government - and it works. It's far away from perfect but it has demonstrated over a dozen or more generations that it does, in fact, work. The Congress can remove the President but it has failed to do so even once and that's with the Congress having the power to write new law. How much harder would it be for a sitting, but unpaid, non-political judge who cannot write new law to wield sufficient sway over a king by virtue of the mere threat of a legal proceeding that is not guaranteed to remove him from office, especially if the charges are trumped up?

 

[JudgeRightly]

Once again, this would only be so if the judges wrote the law or could remove the king by fiat. If all they are doing is performing a legal duty then it is not the men but the law that is removing the king by the same authority by which it also seated him.


Only if they are the source of the law, which they are not.


It is not a contradiction. Your idea of how the law works, which is to say your understanding of what the rule of law means is faulty.


Yeah, well, we live in a country right now that demonstrates that your all or nothing stance is a false dichotomy. This country has existed with a separation of powers that are each designed to limit and check the other branches of government - and it works. It's far away from perfect but it has demonstrated over a dozen or more generations that it does, in fact, work. The Congress can remove the President but it has failed to do so even once and that's with the Congress having the power to write new law. How much harder would it be for a sitting, but unpaid, non-political judge who cannot write new law to wield sufficient sway over a king by virtue of the mere threat of a legal proceeding that is not guaranteed to remove him from office, especially if the charges are trumped up?

Are judges and kings under the law?

 

[Clete]

Are judges and kings under the law?

They should be. The king is not under the law in the proposed constitution, except in theory and only barely that, it seems. The population is left to wait out the life span of a rogue king and just hope that his heir isn't as bad or worse.

 

[JudgeRightly]

They should be.

That's not what I asked.

Are the judges and the king under the law in principle?

 

[Clete]

That's not what I asked.

Are the judges and the king under the law in principle?

Asked and answered.

 

[Nick M]

He is judged by no man

Yes he is. I condemn him right now.

 

[JudgeRightly]

Asked and answered.

No, it wasn't.

You're making this way more difficult than it has to be. It's a simple yes or no question about your principles.

Fine, different question: are the king and the judges coordinate offices under the law, each with distinct authority and jurisdiction?

In other words, neither office is inherently above the other, correct?

 

[Idolater]

Yes he is. I condemn him right now.

Thanks for playing Nick.

 

[Idolater]

... those things are just the monarch's grunt work anyway. That's the work nobody else CAN do, it HAS to be him. It doesn't make any sense for anybody else to do those tasks and have those responsibilities, just him, the monarch. And there's no glamor in it either, it's hard work, thankless work, long work. None of it's fun. It's work. And somebody has to do it. And skubalon flows downhill, and that's where he is. He's at the bottom of the hill when it comes to responsibilities and duties, as the monarch.

Under Enyart's proposal, the king ought to look haggard and tired all the time, from working so much. Hopefully he doesn't need much sleep, to be completely refreshed, because otherwise, we pity his existence. He won't be able to ever really take a vacation, or even a weekend off from his nonstop duties. He's going to need his sleep, and he's not going to be able to get it.

He'll have servants tending to his every physical need, but that's still not going to buy him sleep, and he's still going to be working his fingers to the bone, administratively. Whatever his psychological bandwidth is, will be completely consumed 100% of the time by his responsibility as monarch, under Enyart's proposal. It's not a cushy job at all. We pity him, his subjects. We pray for him, and hope he does a good job, but we pity him. Under Enyart's proposal.

 

[Clete]

No, it wasn't.

You're making this way more difficult than it has to be. It's a simple yes or no question about your principles.

I answered your question the best way I know how.

Fine, different question: are the king and the judges coordinate offices under the law, each with distinct authority and jurisdiction?

In other words, neither office is inherently above the other, correct?

This is not a yes or no question either. It depends on how the system is structured. Generally speaking, the king occupies the highest office and does not normally answer to anyone. In Bob's proposed system, that position is absolute, but it does not have to be, and I do not believe it should be.

Israel's kingdom had God Himself as a fail-safe mechanism, for want of a better term. We would not have that luxury, so I believe it is wise to build such a mechanism into any system we devise in an attempt to emulate Israel's. In such a system, the king may choose to subject himself to legal action by deliberately and flagrantly violating the constitution. By doing so, he would undermine his own authority, usurp the very office he holds, and jeopardize the integrity of the government and the nation it is intended to protect.

No nation should be expected to tolerate such conduct, and it makes little sense to design a system in which such an eventuality is not merely tolerated but extolled as a feature rather than recognized as a flaw.

 

[JudgeRightly]

Sorry this took so long. I've been busy with work, but I’ve also been doing a bit of research on this topic, mostly going through material from BEL and DBC.

I’ve also been catching up on uploading the CDs/DVDs I have from the store, including one DVD I thought I had uploaded previously: God's Principles of Government, where Bob goes through the entire proposed constitution in six full videos. It has now been uploaded to the Drive folder I sent you.

This is not a yes or no question either. It depends on how the system is structured. Generally speaking, the king occupies the highest office and does not normally answer to anyone. In Bob's proposed system, that position is absolute, but it does not have to be, and I do not believe it should be.

Then we have identified the structural disagreement. Generally speaking, the king occupies the highest earthly civil office and does not normally answer to anyone beneath him. That is precisely the point I have been pressing. The king’s office is not absolute in relation to God or God’s law; it is “absolute” only in the sense that there is no superior domestic civil office over him.

You do not think that structure has to be retained, and you do not think it should be retained. Fine. But that means you are proposing a structural change, and that change has to be judged by whether it preserves or undermines the principles the system is built on. If your proposed correction creates a domestic authority with final jurisdiction over the king’s office, then it has not merely added a safeguard to Bob’s system. It has changed where final earthly authority terminates. That may be the system you want, but it is a different structure than a constitutional monarchy built on the foundational biblical principle that authority flows downward from God through real heads.

And one that has far reaching consequences.

Israel's kingdom had God Himself as a fail-safe mechanism, for want of a better term. We would not have that luxury, so I believe it is wise to build such a mechanism into any system we devise in an attempt to emulate Israel's. In such a system, the king may choose to subject himself to legal action by deliberately and flagrantly violating the constitution. By doing so, he would undermine his own authority, usurp the very office he holds, and jeopardize the integrity of the government and the nation it is intended to protect.

I reject your premise. The goal is not to emulate Israel’s kingdom. Israel was special. We both agree on that. But she was not just special, but unique. Israel had God’s direct covenantal participation in a way ordinary nations do not. She had prophets speaking God’s word to the king, a priesthood, a temple system, tribal allotments, land promises, and national covenants that do not belong to ordinary Gentile nations.

So if your argument is, “Israel had God as a fail-safe, therefore any system attempting to emulate Israel needs an earthly substitute for that fail-safe,” then my answer is simple: we are not attempting to emulate Israel in that manner. Israel gives us important data, but Israel is not the standard in the way your argument against my position requires. The more foundational biblical pattern is older than Israel’s monarchy: top-down, personal, patriarchal authority under God.

Adam was the head of humanity. Noah, as the head of his household and the ancestor of all post-Flood mankind, received from God the command that “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Abraham functioned as the head of a great household and later became the father of many nations; and when Lot was captured, Abraham armed the 318 trained men born in his house and led them into battle, giving an early biblical precedent for patriarchal headship including military command. Moses was not a king, but he stood as Israel’s chief earthly ruler, leading God’s people out of Egypt with Aaron’s help; and when Jethro advised him, Moses appointed judges over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, with the harder cases brought up to him. The later judges exercised rule over Israel, and David then gives the clearest royal example.

The common thread is not “copy Israel’s kingdom.” The common thread is personal headship and ordered authority. My position is built on that top-down structure: God delegates authority to real heads, and those heads delegate authority beneath them. God > king > lesser rulers > heads of households. That is the structure monarchy grows out of. It is rooted in patriarchy and extended upward into civil government.

So when you say Israel had God as a fail-safe and therefore we need to fabricate an earthly substitute in order to emulate Israel, I reject the premise. We should not try to recreate Israel’s unique covenant monarchy by treating a process designed by men as a substitute for God’s direct covenantal role. That cuts against the whole Plot of the Bible, which is that men cannot attain righteousness without God. We are trying to preserve the biblical principle Israel itself also reflects: ordered, personal, top-down authority under God. A domestic mechanism by which lesser offices can remove the chief civil ruler reverses that flow at the decisive point.

And a king does not “choose to subject himself” to a lower tribunal (or what have you) merely by committing a crime against his office. His wickedness may make him guilty before God. It may destroy his moral credibility. It may justify refusal, resistance, rebuke, and non-cooperation. But it does not, by itself, create jurisdiction in lesser domestic offices to remove him.

No nation should be expected to tolerate such conduct, and it makes little sense to design a system in which such an eventuality is not merely tolerated but extolled as a feature rather than recognized as a flaw.

No one is extolling a wicked king acting above the law as a feature. That is a caricature. For Gentile nations, enduring wicked rulers has been the norm throughout history. That does not make wicked rule good, and it does not mean subjects must obey wicked commands. It simply recognizes that in a fallen world, evil rulers often exist without a lawful domestic mechanism to remove them.

And the reason such evil may be tolerated is not only that we live in a fallen world, but also that the alternative is worse. A wicked king is bad, but a lawful mechanism by which lesser domestic authorities can remove the chief civil ruler may be worse, because it creates a standing rival authority over the throne and gives ambitious men a lawful-looking path to seize or control final earthly authority.

 

[Clete]

Sorry this took so long. I've been busy with work, but I’ve also been doing a bit of research on this topic, mostly going through material from BEL and DBC.

I’ve also been catching up on uploading the CDs/DVDs I have from the store, including one DVD I thought I had uploaded previously, "God's Principles of Government," where Bob goes through the entire proposed constitution in six full videos. It has now been uploaded to the Drive folder I sent you.

Then we have identified the structural disagreement. Generally speaking, the king occupies the highest earthly civil office and does not normally answer to anyone beneath him. That is precisely the point I have been pressing. The king’s office is not absolute in relation to God or God’s law; it is “absolute” only in the sense that there is no superior domestic civil office over him.

You do not think that structure has to be retained, and you do not think it should be retained. Fine. But that means you are proposing a structural change, and that change has to be judged by whether it preserves or undermines the principles the system is built on. If your proposed correction creates a domestic authority with final jurisdiction over the king’s office, then it has not merely added a safeguard to Bob’s system. It has changed where final earthly authority terminates. That may be the system you want, but it is a different structure than a constitutional monarchy built on the foundational biblical principle that authority flows downward from God through real heads.

And one that has far reaching consequences.

Two things here.

First, your premise seems to be more than just that authority flows downward from God. Your premise is that it is a unidirectional flow even after such authority reaches a human government; that there can be no such thing as shared authority and that any sort of check or balance usurps the proper flow of governmental authority.

The result is an all or nothing sort of mindset that says that any limitation imposed on the kings authority is usurpative by definition and that any other office given any sort of authority whatsoever over the king, no matter how well defined, limited and difficult to impose, makes the holder of that office the one and only true king.

Secondly, have you ever attempted to establish such a premise biblically? I very much doubt that it could be done given the fact that Israel is the biblical example and it is very clear that her king could be removed from power. Of course your focus is on the fact that God is the one doing the removing, while my focus is on not on who is doing it but why it is being done. I submit that a governmental system that attempts to imitate, not only Israel's portion of government by God's interaction with that government is still based on the same biblical principles.

Can you point to a biblical text that teaches not merely that authority originates with God, but that the ideal human government must consist of a single, uninterrupted chain of command with no overlapping jurisdictions or mutually limiting offices?

I reject your premise. The goal is not to emulate Israel’s kingdom. Israel was special. We both agree on that. But she was not just special, but unique. Israel had God’s direct covenantal participation in a way ordinary nations do not. She had prophets speaking God’s word to the king, a priesthood, a temple system, tribal allotments, land promises, and national covenants that do not belong to ordinary Gentile nations.

So if your argument is, “Israel had God as a fail-safe, therefore any system attempting to emulate Israel needs an earthly substitute for that fail-safe,” then my answer is simple: we are not attempting to emulate Israel in that manner. Israel gives us important data, but Israel is not the standard in the way your argument against my position requires. The more foundational biblical pattern is older than Israel’s monarchy: top-down, personal, patriarchal authority under God.

Adam was the head of humanity. Noah, as the head of his household and the ancestor of all post-Flood mankind, received from God the command that “whoever sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.” Abraham functioned as the head of a great household and later became the father of many nations; and when Lot was captured, Abraham armed the 318 trained men born in his house and led them into battle, giving an early biblical precedent for patriarchal headship including military command. Moses was not a king, but he stood as Israel’s chief earthly ruler, leading God’s people out of Egypt with Aaron’s help; and when Jethro advised him, Moses appointed judges over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, with the harder cases brought up to him. The later judges exercised rule over Israel, and David then gives the clearest royal example.

The common thread is not “copy Israel’s kingdom.” The common thread is personal headship and ordered authority. My position is built on that top-down structure: God delegates authority to real heads, and those heads delegate authority beneath them. God > king > lesser rulers > heads of households. That is the structure monarchy grows out of. It is rooted in patriarchy and extended upward into civil government.

So when you say Israel had God as a fail-safe and therefore we need to fabricate an earthly substitute in order to emulate Israel, I reject the premise. We should not try to recreate Israel’s unique covenant monarchy by treating a process designed by men as a substitute for God’s direct covenantal role. That cuts against the whole Plot of the Bible, which is that men cannot attain righteousness without God. We are trying to preserve the biblical principle Israel itself also reflects: ordered, personal, top-down authority under God. A domestic mechanism by which lesser offices can remove the chief civil ruler reverses that flow at the decisive point.

And a king does not “choose to subject himself” to a lower tribunal (or what have you) merely by committing a crime against his office. His wickedness may make him guilty before God. It may destroy his moral credibility. It may justify refusal, resistance, rebuke, and non-cooperation. But it does not, by itself, create jurisdiction in lesser domestic offices to remove him.

You cannot eat your cake and have it to, JR.

The biblical system Bob based this constitution on was Israel's system. There is one and only one biblical kingdom that God had anything to do with setting up the specifics of and that was Israel's kingdom. You can say that they aren't the model but the fact is that they were and are.

No one is extolling a wicked king acting above the law as a feature. That is a caricature.

I don't think so! You are here telling me that any system that does not tolerate such a king and that has ANY system in place to deal with such an eventuality is fundamentally flawed, usurpative, and unbiblical!

For Gentile nations, enduring wicked rulers has been the norm throughout history. That does not make wicked rule good, and it does not mean subjects must obey wicked commands. It simply recognizes that in a fallen world, evil rulers often exist without a lawful domestic mechanism to remove them.

You are arguing more than that they merely exist. You are arguing that any system put in place to deal with it is fundamentally unauthorized by scripture and therefore inferior to one without such a system.

And the reason such evil may be tolerated is not only that we live in a fallen world, but also that the alternative is worse.

See?!

A wicked king is bad, but a lawful mechanism by which lesser domestic authorities can remove the chief civil ruler may be worse, because it creates a standing rival authority over the throne and gives ambitious men a lawful-looking path to seize or control final earthly authority.

Thus, a wicked king acting above the law as a feature!