A Catechism Concerning the Christian's Use of Tainted Instruments in a Fallen World
The following catechism is a companion to a separate Confession of Faith post on the same subjects. Both are offered not as settled or authoritative standards, but as working drafts drawn from Holy Scripture, the Westminster Standards, and the testimony of the faithful Covenanted Reformation — set down for the author’s own prayerful consideration.
A Catechism
Concerning the Christian's Use of Tainted Instruments
in a Fallen World, and the Obligation of Civil Government
Drawn from Holy Scripture, the Standards of the Covenanted Reformation,
and the Reformed Casuistical Tradition
Fifth and revised edition
Q. 1. What are the five positive characteristics of a fully lawful civil government?
A. Drawn from the testimony of Psalm 2 and the uniform witness of the faithful Reformed confessions, they are: first, official acknowledgement of the Triune God of the Bible as the source of all civil authority; second, the Lord Jesus Christ acknowledged as the only Mediator with dominion over all nations and kings; third, the Moral Law of God held as the supreme law of the land; fourth, the one true Christian religion established and maintained as the religion of the nation, with idolatry, heresy, and blasphemy suppressed; and fifth, civil magistrates required by solemn oath to profess and uphold these things. A government not owning all five in its constitution and laws is not a lawful Christian government in the full biblical sense.
Q. 2. Is a government that doth not answer to this description an imperfect but still lawful government?
A. No. A government that is a terror to good works rather than evil, that protecteth and promoteth idolatry, heresy, blasphemy, and the murder of the innocent, is not a partially lawful government — it is simply an unlawful government, exercising what Rutherford rightly calleth “a sinful and usurped power” in those acts by which it overturns the Law of God. It holdeth power by God’s permissive providence, even as God permitted Pharaoh and Nero; but permissive providence is not divine approbation. God’s decretive will in permitting a ruler is not His approving will.
Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex (A.D. 1644): “The powers that be are ordained of God… but kings commanding unjust things are but men, and sinful men, and the power by which they do such acts is a sinful and usurped power.”
Q. 3. What is a lawful civil magistrate?
A. A lawful civil magistrate is one whose government hath the morally excellent character befitting the ordinance of God — one that is not a terror to good works, but to the evil (Romans 13:3); that ruleth justly in the fear of God (2 Samuel 23:3); that maintaineth the true religion of Christ and suppresseth idolatry, heresy, and blasphemy; and that governeth for the genuine good of those under its care.
Q. 4. Is the civil magistrate himself subject to God’s law?
A. Yes, in the first and highest degree. The magistrate holdeth his office under God, not above Him; and the law is king, not the king law. When the magistrate himself refuseth to kiss the Son, he doth not merely fail his subjects — he is the first transgressor of the commandment that constituteth lawful magistracy. As Rutherford wrote: “Truth to Christ cannot be treason to Caesar.”
Q. 5. Did our Lord Christ, in saying “Render unto Caesar,” declare Caesar to be a lawful magistrate?
A. No. Our Lord said, render what is lawfully Caesar’s — leaving entirely open the prior question of what, if anything, was lawfully Caesar’s. He gave an answer so precisely framed that neither Pharisees nor Herodians could use His words against Him (Luke 20:26). The answer is found from a thorough study of God’s entire Word, not from this saying alone.
Q. 6. Are the nations of Scotland, England, and Ireland still bound by the Solemn League and Covenant?
A. Yes. Nations, like individuals, have a moral person binding them to solemn covenants sworn in God’s name. The Solemn League and Covenant of A.D. 1643 perpetually bindeth those nations and their posterity — including all who inhabit the United Kingdom and the wider Anglosphere today, whose settler founders carried those covenant obligations with them — to maintain the Reformed religion, extirpate false worship, and preserve the king’s authority only in the preservation and defence of the true religion. This obligation cannot be dissolved by national apostasy, the passage of time, or the will of later generations.
Neither with you only do I make this covenant and this oath; but with him that standeth here with us this day before the LORD our God, and also with him that is not here with us this day.
Deuteronomy 29:14–15Q. 7. Is it sufficient for a magistrate to pay lip-service to Christian obligations in his constitutional oath?
A. No. The Lord seeth through all insincerity and hypocrisy. The Solemn League and Covenant required its subscribers to labour with their estates and lives, sincerely, really, and constantly. A magistrate who taketh a vestigial Christian oath — such as the Coronation Oath of Great Britain — and thereafter promotes and establishes what God forbids, and who faileth to own the binding national covenant attainments of the nation over which he ruleth, is not in a materially different position from one who repudiates all Christian obligation; for he addeth the aggravation of oath-breaking to his covenant-breaking. The nominal retention of Christian constitutional forms is not without all significance — it distinguisheth such a nation from one that explicitly repudiates Christ in its founding documents — but it falls altogether short of the standard God requireth, and is no ground for owning such a government as a lawful Christian magistracy.
Q. 8. What are the three tiers of obligation, and how do they differ?
A. The first tier is the pagan or unevangelised nation — not yet brought under the covenant light of the Gospel — whose magistrates may be submitted to as exercising natural law functions, insofar as they protect the just rights of citizens without imposing false religion or persecuting faithful Christians. The second tier is the Christian-heritage or Anglosphere nation — one whose legal settlement was shaped by the Reformation, or whose founders carried covenant obligations with them — which faces a higher standard, being in the position of Israel rather than Egypt. The third tier is the formally covenanted nation — Scotland, England, and Ireland, together with their posterity — which is bound by the most stringent obligations of all, having sworn perpetual covenant with the Lord in His own name. The Westminster Confession’s statement that “infidelity, or difference in religion, doth not make void the magistrate’s just and legal authority” referreth to the first tier only, and hath no application to covenanted or Christian-heritage nations.
Q. 9. May a Christian submit to the civil government of an unlawful government?
A. He ought indeed to submit to all its lawful commands — not merely out of fear, as a matter of prudential necessity, but out of conscience toward God Himself, whose moral authority underlieth every lawful command regardless of the character of the instrument through which it is issued; for it is God’s Law that is obeyed, not the unlawful ruler’s person. But he cannot submit to such a government as a lawful magistracy — that is, as the Lord’s ordained minister for good in the sense of Romans 13:4 — for it hath inverted that very description; and to own it as such would be to render to the creature the honour that belongeth to God alone. He that payeth taxes to such a government under compulsion doth not thereby acknowledge its legitimacy; but he that payeth for conscience’ sake, as though to a lawful minister of God, ceaseth to be a faithful witness.
Q. 10. What is the difference between ordinary taxation and a declaredly wicked tax?
A. Ordinary taxation is that levied for the general purposes of civil order — payable for wrath’s sake even under an unlawful government, not for conscience’ sake. A declaredly wicked tax is one whose very enactment stateth an explicitly sinful purpose from its own terms — as did the Scottish cess of A.D. 1678, levied by open declaration for the suppression of faithful Gospel meetings. Such a tax must be refused; for to pay it is active and knowing participation in the specific declared evil.
Q. 11. Is it possible to live in this fallen world without making use of things tainted by the sin of others?
A. No. The fall hath so pervaded the works and institutions of men that no instrument, product, or service in common use is wholly free from taint. To avoid all such contact would require a man to go out of the world altogether.
For then must ye needs go out of the world.
1 Corinthians 5:10Q. 12. Doth not Holy Scripture command separation from evil? How then may tainted instruments ever be used?
A. Holy Scripture doth command separation from evil — specifically, from those called a brother who live in manifest and unrepented sin within the visible church (1 Corinthians 5:11). Those who are without, making no Christian profession, are left to God’s judgment; and the Christian is not called to separate from all commerce and contact with the fallen world and its institutions. Furthermore, a false asceticism — multiplying prohibitions beyond what God’s Word requireth — hath a shew of wisdom in will worship but is itself condemned in Scripture (Colossians 2:21–23).
Q. 13. What is the difference between formal and material cooperation with evil?
A. Formal cooperation is when a man shareth in the intention and purpose of the wrongdoer; it is always sinful. Material cooperation is when a man maketh use of something produced through another’s wrong, without sharing that intention. Material cooperation is further graduated: immediate is more serious than mediate; proximate more serious than remote; active more serious than passive. The closer the cooperation approacheth the original sin, the greater the moral warrant required to justify it.
Q. 14. What criteria determine whether material cooperation with evil is lawful?
A. Several criteria are to be applied together: whether the taint is constitutive of the instrument itself or merely historical and indirect; whether present use actively sustaineth the original evil; whether the evil is the declared purpose of the instrument or an incidental corruption of an otherwise lawful one; whether restitution hath been made, or the wrong continueth with full impunity; whether genuinely equivalent alternatives exist; and whether the wrongdoer maketh any Christian profession — since obligations of separation are most stringent toward those called a brother. No single criterion is decisive; they are to be weighed together.
Q. 15. Is there a difference between the 1 Corinthians 5 categorical distinction and the moral dependency principle?
A. Yes, and the distinction is important. The 1 Corinthians 5 within/without distinction governeth personal fellowship and ecclesiastical association — it is most stringent toward those who profess the name of Christ whilst living in manifest sin. The moral dependency principle governeth a different question: whether a specific product or instrument carrieth moral dependency upon a specific act of wickedness in its very constitution. These two principles operate on different ground and must not be conflated. A secular company making no Christian profession may still produce an instrument whose character is constituted by a specific declared evil; the 1 Corinthians 5 distinction doth not dissolve that moral dependency.
Q. 16. What is a scrupulous conscience, and is it to be commended?
A. A scrupulous conscience is one that maketh that to be sin which God hath not declared to be sin, multiplying obligations beyond what Holy Scripture requireth. It is not a mark of superior holiness but of a conscience imperfectly informed by God’s Word. It is to be corrected by careful study of the Word, not commended as piety. As Baxter observed: “He that will join in no good that is mixed by men with faultiness and evil must separate from all the world, and all from him: But how will he separate from himself?”
Q. 17. In what manner ought the Christian to use the instruments of this present world?
A. He ought to use them, and not abuse them; holding them as a pilgrim in a foreign country — gratefully, wisely, and without making them his home. He is to redeem the time: to buy up and consecrate to worthy and fruitful purpose the hours God’s providence hath placed before him, knowing that the days are evil and that the fashion of this world is passing away.
And they that use this world, as not abusing it: for the fashion of this world passeth away.
1 Corinthians 7:31Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
Ephesians 5:16For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come.
Hebrews 13:14Q. 18. What remaining obligations doth the lawful use of a tainted instrument carry?
A. It carrieth several. The Christian useth the instrument with thanksgiving to God, who hath in His common grace brought forth something profitable from the works of fallen men. He maintaineth a continuing moral concern for the wrongs that attended its production, and beareth faithful witness against those wrongs. He preferreth cleaner alternatives where they become genuinely available and practicable. He holdeth the instrument loosely, ready to relinquish it should his conscience, better instructed, bind him to do so. And he refuseth to allow his use of it to be construed as an endorsement of the evil that produced it, any more than Paul’s use of Roman roads was an endorsement of the slave labour that built them.
Q. 19. What comfort may the Christian take when, after careful and prayerful inquiry, uncertainty remaineth?
A. He may take comfort in the grace of Christ, who is the propitiation for sins of ignorance as well as presumptuous sins, and who hath not left His people without the Spirit of wisdom and counsel. He may take comfort in the biblical pattern, which consistently sheweth that God doth not reckon the taint of a fallen world to the account of those who use it wisely and without shared intention in its wrong. He may take comfort in the promise that where the heart is sincerely bent toward obedience, God doth not deal with His people after the strict rigour of the law but according to covenant mercy. And he may take comfort in the assurance that the final accounting is left not to the imperfect courts of this present world, but to the perfectly just Judge of all the earth, before whom all things shall be made plain.
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
James 1:5He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.
Psalm 103:9–10Soli Deo Gloria.
Responses & Reflections