Samuel Rutherford and Kinism

Posted at Design of Providence:

Introduction

There is a Faith and Heritage article by Nathaniel Strickland wherein Mr. Strickland provides some quotes from Samuel Rutherford's famous work Lex Rex. Mr. Strickland claims that, in Lex Rex, Rutherford "touches on the ethnic nature of the law of kin rule in Deut. 17:15." The "Law of Kin Rule," as I discussed in a previous article, is the Kinist notion that Deuteronomy 17:15 is a divine command for governments to be led by those who come from among the people's own ethnic lineage. In fact, to Kinism, to consent to someone ethnically different ruling over you is an act of treason against God:

Even if a native ruler, under pretense of law, sold his people out to a foreign power, the people should not consent to it. To do so would be lawlessness and treason to the nation, and ultimately to God Himself, because it is God who designed mankind to live tribally and codified that order in the strictures of His Word. [source]

In the aforementioned article from Mr. Strickland, he provides the quotations from Rutherford in favor of the Law of Kin Rule, adding afterward:

Isn’t it funny how the modern church “discovered” that Deut. 17:15 is actually talking about religion and not ethnicity only after it had completely succumbed to cultural Marxism? Historical Christianity held the opposite view.

(Granted, as I showed in my Law of Kin Rule article, even John Calvin, who lived long before the rise of Cultural Marxism, saw the verse as one in regards to religion and not ethnicity - but, as previously seen, Kinists are unable to respond to that without diverting the topic. Also, since Historical Christianity has come up, let's ask who, before the rise of Kinism, thought Rahab wasn't a Gentile, or who, before the rise of Kinism, didn't believe she was the Rahab mentioned in Matthew 1:5.)

One will notice that the quotations, as provided by Mr. Strickland, make use of an extravagant use of ellipses. My own personal experience has taught me to always be wary when such things are seen, and therefore it might be worth going over each quotation from Mr. Strickland, and seeing if, as Mr. Carlton argues, Samuel Rutherford really did argue along the lines of the Kinist view of Deuteronomy 17.

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