Samuel Rutherford
Scottish Presbyterian theologian whose Letters from prison became one of the treasured devotional works of the Reformed tradition. His Lex, Rex defended the rule of law against royal absolutism.
1600–1661
Biography
Samuel Rutherford was born around 1600 in Nisbet, Roxburghshire, Scotland. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he became a regent (professor of humanities) in 1623. He was dismissed in 1626 after a scandal involving a premarital relationship.
Rutherford was appointed minister of Anwoth, Kirkcudbrightshire, in 1627, where he served for nine years. His preaching and pastoral work at Anwoth became legendary. In 1636, Archbishop Laud's ally, the Bishop of Galloway, had Rutherford deposed from his ministry and confined to Aberdeen for his Nonconformity.
During his exile in Aberdeen (1636-1638), Rutherford wrote the letters for which he is most remembered. These letters, published after his death as Joshua Redivivus, are intensely personal expressions of devotion to Christ, written in language of romantic passion that drew on the Song of Solomon. They have been read continuously since their publication.
When the Covenanting movement overthrew episcopal church government in Scotland in 1638, Rutherford was restored and appointed professor of divinity at St Andrews. He was one of the Scottish commissioners to the Westminster Assembly in London (1643-1647).
In 1644 Rutherford published Lex, Rex, a systematic argument that the law is above the king and that resistance to tyranny is legitimate. The book was burned by the hangman after the Restoration of Charles II. Rutherford was deprived of his positions and summoned to answer charges of treason, but he was already dying. He died on March 29, 1661, in St Andrews.
Life & Career
Why Rutherford Matters
Rutherford's influence ran along two very different channels: devotional writing and political theology.
His Letters are among the most intense expressions of personal devotion in the Reformed tradition. Rutherford wrote about Christ with a lover's language drawn from the Song of Solomon. This was not mere rhetoric. Rutherford believed that the Christian's experience of Christ was rightly described in the language of desire, longing, and delight, and his letters modeled a form of piety that was warmly affective without being doctrinally careless.
Lex, Rex made a different kind of contribution. Rutherford argued systematically that all political authority derives from God through the people, that the king is bound by law and covenant, and that subjects may resist a tyrant who breaks his covenant with the people. These arguments influenced later political theorists, including John Locke, and contributed to the intellectual foundations of constitutional government.
