The Biblical-Covenantal Basis of the Republican Tradition

By dr Adi Schlebusch

8 September 2025

1. Introduction

The covenant occupies a central place in God’s relationship with creation as a whole and with humanity in particular. The very word “covenant” points to the bond between Creator and creation. That our human existence is covenantal in nature is assumed throughout the Bible. God enters into covenant with the first human, Adam, and throughout Scripture we see how the Lord deals with humanity in covenantal terms, and how the promises of the covenant find their fulfillment in Christ’s work of redemption and his dominion over creation. The covenant not only binds humanity to God, but also people to one another. The covenant implies that human beings do not exist as isolated individuals. From the very beginning of salvation history, individualism is explicitly rejected as something “not good for man” (Gen. 2:18). In his providence God has so ordered it that we enter this world as part of a family. From there our identity radiates outward, and our lives are shaped by membership in a congregation, community, or neighborhood, and by belonging to a people. All these social bonds are essentially covenantal, since they are God-given ties established by the Lord in his providence with a sacred purpose—namely the service and expansion of his Kingdom. In Scripture God reveals himself supremely as the God of the covenant.

2. The People, the Magistrate, and the Covenant

The Reformed political philosopher Johannes Althusius (1563–1638) writes in his magnum opus, Politica, that the entire social order of humanity is composed of covenantal units, of which the family is primary (Althusius 1610:715). Where liberalism and Marxism aim to isolate the individual from these God-given social bonds—so that only the vulnerable individual and the all-dominating state remain—God’s order establishes various covenantal structures that protect and sustain human beings. Next to the family, we may think of the congregation, the neighborhood or town, and of course the nation. In Scripture we see that God redeems nations as nations and makes them part of his kingdom (Psalm 22:28; Rev. 7:9, 15). From such God-given communities—cities, tribes, and peoples—political authorities arise. The magistrate, as a God-given institution, is covenantal precisely in terms of its relation both to God and to the people.In Deuteronomy 27 we read how Moses and the Levites called the whole nation together to explain the covenantal agreement. Moses addressed the people: “Today you have become the people of the LORD your God” (Deut. 27:9). They were then instructed that when entering Canaan, six tribes were to stand on Mount Gerizim to bless, while the other six were to stand on Mount Ebal to pronounce curses. The Levites proclaimed that all who obey God’s law would be blessed, while all who disobey would be cursed. Here we see how the entire nation—the leaders, priests, Levites, and family heads—bore joint responsibility to ensure obedience to God’s law and the maintenance of pure worship. The covenant was made not with individuals alone, but with the nation as a corporate body composed of families. In Deuteronomy 28 we then read of the blessings and curses directed to the nation according to whether they and their rulers upheld the covenant.So too the civil reforms wrought by God through Moses must be understood in light of the covenant. In Exodus 6:5–6a we read:

“Therefore say to the Israelites: I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the burden of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the LORD your God.”

God binds himself to Israel by covenant, and the responsibility falls upon the nation to honor him with their culture. In the New Testament this covenantal responsibility is extended to every nation, and every Christian people becomes, in essence, a covenant people. The Reformer Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) connected this covenantal responsibility of Exodus 6 directly to the political life of a Christian nation. In a 1528 tract, he has God speak to the Swiss people in the first person:

“In all your wars and struggles I was your God. I fought for you, I protected you … I will be your God as before, and you will be my people … Forsake your ways and serve me with faith, love, and purity … If you fall away, if you fail to protect the good and punish the evil, if you do not abandon your wars and sins and establish a Christian government, I will punish you as I punished Israel and Judah.” (Bullinger 1528:7, 52)

Here Bullinger places his own people covenantally on the same footing as Old Testament Israel. His view of the Swiss as a covenant nation is underlined not only by analogy, but especially by his hermeneutical use of covenant texts such as Exodus 6 and Deuteronomy 28.

3. The Covenant and the Republican Tradition

One of the most important documents in the development of the republican tradition is the Huguenot resistance tract Vindiciae Contra Tyrannos (1579). In this work the biblical teaching concerning the magistrate and the magistrate’s relation to God and the people is set forth as essentially covenantal:

“The covenant between God on the one hand and the king and people on the other aims to confirm the people’s status as God’s people—the people must be God’s church. Certainly, this covenant could not have been made without good reason. For unless the people themselves were held responsible for their promises, such a covenant could not be made at all. To restrict the Lord’s congregation to a single individual would have catastrophic consequences, since the king might easily fall into ungodliness; therefore the entire people are included. Should the king fall away, the people may stand in his place before God. According to this principle, both king and people bind themselves jointly and willingly to the same condition. The high priest requires of them the undertaking to be God’s people, to preserve God’s church, and to maintain pure religion. King and people are thus two legal persons in this covenant. The people are not merely a collection of individuals, but themselves one body, as is evident from the very nature of the covenant itself.” (Brutus 1579:2.5)

Here lies the heart of the republican tradition: the recognition of both people and magistrate as two full covenant parties standing before God the Sovereign King. Republicanism thus stands opposed not only to the despotism of absolute monarchy and the communist state, but also to liberalism with its ideal of individual sovereignty. According to Vindiciae, not only the state but also the church as a people’s church bears a public or republican character. This thought is echoed later by the Dutch anti-revolutionary statesman Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer (1801–1876), who expressed the republican ideal thus:

“Averse to the revolutionary State, averse to the former absolutism of princes … On the contrary: precisely in the gradual modification of that original trait lies the progress of European constitutional law; the growth, in doctrine and practice, of the conviction that every State is the concern of the common good, the res publica. Precisely in this public and republican character of Church and State … lies the condition, the principle of life, and the strength of a national constitutional monarchy.” (Groen van Prinsterer 1862:7–8)

Though Groen, as a Dutchman, consciously supported a constitutional monarchy—something foreign to other traditions—he nonetheless described the republican principle as the vital force of every political order. In essence, though the forms of government differ and the manner of appointing rulers varies, the core of the republican tradition remains the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty as it finds expression in the civil covenant, where magistrate and people stand as covenant parties and full legal persons.It is crucial to distinguish this covenantal character of the republican tradition from the notion of the social contract underlying the modern democratic unitary state. Liberal philosophers such as Rousseau (1712–1778) and Locke (1632–1704) argued that societies arise from an imagined contract implicitly made by all before birth, whereby individuals form a state (Locke 1690:93; Rousseau 1762:93). In this contract, individuals surrender natural autonomy and freedom for the sake of peaceful coexistence. By contrast, the covenantal view sees society not as a collection of detached individuals, but as an organic union of God-given bonds—family, clan, town, and people. From these natural communities, republican political bodies such as provinces and states arise. For this reason subsidiarity—the principle that smaller communities such as family, congregation, or town must never be swallowed up and controlled by the larger state—is such an integral part of the republican tradition.

4. Conclusion

The republican tradition that unfolded in the West drew deeply from the framework of Reformed covenant theology, particularly as it took shape in the Zurich Reformation and spread through Europe. Across the centuries, this covenantal understanding of politics profoundly shaped resistance to tyranny, informed the formation of constitutions, and gave coherence to the public life of nations.The acknowledgment of God as supreme authority, the covenant between people, magistrate, and God, with the magistrate serving the public good and being held accountable by the people before God himself—these are foundational principles of the republican tradition. From this covenantal stream flowed much of what we recognize in later Western political life: the Dutch Republic’s defense of liberty, the English constitutional settlement limiting royal absolutism, and even the American founding, where covenantal and federal language permeated the framing of government.These principles, born of covenantal thought, remain a wellspring from which the Western world today can and must still draw strength in its ongoing struggle for freedom against all forms of tyranny and imperialism which seeks to overthrow the God-given social order.