Frazer Responds on Whether American Revolution Was a Just War

In the comments here. He writes:

It is too bad that too many people apparently accessed the article for free and the publisher shut down access. If you could actually read the article, you would see the answers to all -- or at least almost all -- of your questions/criticisms.

I address the Romans 13 issue -- but not in a caricatured fashion as in Mark's hypothetical. Incidentally, my view of Romans 13 is identical to that of Calvin -- though not to that of some CalvinISTS.

I address the so-called "lesser magistrate" issue and I deal specifically and at length with Wilson's argument in "Considerations." A major problem that some have -- including Eric Patterson in his article -- is that they automatically assume that everything that the colonists (inc. Wilson) said was TRUE. If that's the case, then, yes (tautologically), it would be foolish to take another position. But not everything they said was in fact true.

I am not blissfully ignorant of English law. Those who make the argument that the law was the highest authority (or that the Constitution is the highest authority in the US today) are, of course, correct. But what does that mean practically? "The law" (or "the Constitution" -- as we've seen in the last two days) is not self-interpreting. Someone has to interpret and apply the law in order to make the rubber meet the road. The issue is: who has authority to do that?

Those who claim that authority for themselves are antinomian and make themselves the law. In Romans 13, God gave authority to PEOPLE -- to agents of His; in the language of Romans 13: to "ministers of God" and "servants of God." In the Old Testament, to "shepherds" and "anointed" and "My servant." As Calvin rightly says: "even if the punishment of unbridled tyranny is the Lord's vengeance, we are not to imagine that it is we ourselves who have been called upon to inflict it. All that has been assigned to us is to obey and suffer." Calvin also said: "if you go on to infer that only just governments are to be repaid by obedience, your reasoning is stupid."