In his study of Puritan political theory, Richard Flinn discusses the important work of Samuel Rutherford and his classic work, Lex Rex. Rutherford was confronting in his time a similar question about the source of law. Some of the papists of his day had argued that the king as a man was subject to God, but in the practice of his office as king, he was not subject to God’s law. Rutherford saw that this meant that the king was either above God, or co-equal with God, which are both “manifest blasphemies.” Flinn points out that at the heart of the Calvinist view of biblical political theory is that the civil government must be under God’s law, or be blasphemous. Furthermore, “unless we are willing to grant this doctrine and build upon it, there can be no Christian politics; there can only be humanistic politics, which, when practiced by Christians, is idolatry.

Joseph Boot on Richard Flinn’s study of Puritan political theory in The Mission of God