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.
