Social contract theory is the idea that the political community has its origins in, and that political legitimacy and obligation therefore rest upon, the consent of the governed. This lecture will revisit John Locke’s famous version of the social contract, while also touching briefly on both its antecedents in earlier political philosophy and its later influence on the American founding. The lecture will conclude with some questions that the Lockean social contract theory ought to have Christians everywhere asking today.

George Buchanan was a late 16th-century Scottish Reformed thinker who used Scripture, history, and the natural law to argue for the restraint of civil rulers, the resistance to tyranny, and the freedom of Christian citizens. Like its namesake, the George Buchanan Forum is a community of liberty-minded Christians seeking to integrate theology, political theory, economics, and history.