The Auto-pen, the Christian Mind, and the Silver Bullet Mentality

I Tertius, who wrote this letter, greet you in the Lord.¹

See with what large letters I am writing to you with my own hand.²

Social media is again flooded with frothing. This week’s catalyst:  The dreaded, (or is it the demonic?) auto-pen.  It’s come to light that evidently President Biden used a mechanical device – the auto-pen – to affix his “signature” to certain presidential matters, including the unprecedented 11^th hour pardons of the January 6 Committee.³ Folks on the Right are lathered up and now contending that virtually everything that President Biden did is void and of no legal effect – because he used the auto-pen.  President Trump poured gasoline on this fire with his usual rhetorical bombast:

 “The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT because they were done by Autopen. In other words, Joe Biden did not sign them, but more importantly, he did not know anything about them! The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime. Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two-year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!”⁴

Well, President Trump also uses the auto-pen for “unimportant papers”, as he acknowledges.⁵  Does the Christian worldview provide any insight in navigating these claims?  Indeed, it does.  Let’s get to the gist.

Some Biblical Considerations

The problem with much of this boisterous banter stems from agenda-driven, yet remarkably uninformed, passion.  It’s really a camouflaged search for a shortcut, a silver bullet to defeat an opponent by affirming a pre-packaged conclusion: 

“Biden’s actions stunk; now we can – in one fell swoop – NULLIFY all that he did because he used the auto-pen”. 

No further thought needed.  Forget tough arguments, diplomacy, and persuasion – let’s just pull a rabbit from our hat and presto! – all our political problems disappear.  This is wishful and simplistic thinking – a theory that supposedly “explains everything.”⁶ It’s also fallacious as it embraces hasty generalizations.  And, these errors are not new.

Recall these biblical scenarios.  Opponents of Jesus, wanting to discredit His work, seized upon something they believed dismantled His ministry:

And as he reclined at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”⁷

In their hostile minds, eating with tax collectors and sinners negated Jesus’ entire ministry.  Or consider this incident, perhaps a less hostile view, but one still rooted in a sliver bullet mentality:

Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.”⁸

This genetic fallacy colored Nathanael’s thinking.  Or consider this episode:

Then a demon-oppressed man who was blind and mute was brought to him, and he healed him, so that the man spoke and saw. And all the people were amazed, and said, “Can this be the Son of David?” But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this man casts out demons.”⁹

In each situation, the sceptics invoked and relied upon a generalization, believing it conclusively provided “THE answer.”  They vested a purported silver bullet with grand and comprehensive explanatory power. This one thing justified their suspicion or rejection of Christ.  Like Archimedes’ lever on a fulcrum, they could move the world with the right silver bullet.

The Auto-pen, the Constitution, and Paul’s Apostolic Authority

OK – now let’s consider the blather about the auto-pen.  What’s all the fuss?  The auto-pen is a device which has existed for decades and has been used by governmental officials regularly.  This device duplicates a signature, making real and fresh ink strokes in doing so.  It differs from “fake” printed signatures often affixed to mass mailings in an effort to “personalize” them, often seeking donations.

People are lathered up in this instance because given former President Biden’s obviously diminishing cognitive acumen, the assumption is that he had no idea about affixing his actual signature anywhere.  He was supposedly a veritable puppet at the mercies of some shadow cabal who imitated and affixed his signature on their own preferential policies.

Why is this problematic?  Why all the conspiratorial fuss?  Because the constitution requires the President to “sign” proposed legislation before it becomes law,¹⁰ it is contended that this ministerial act requires the POTUS to personally and physically affix his signature.¹¹  This contention imbibes a Pharisaical, reductionistic, and legalistic view, as do most simplistic silver bullets.¹²

The reality is that the White House Counsel’s Office during the Bush years affirmed that “signing” – properly understood historically – is ministerial and that what matters is whether POTUS intended and directed that his signature be affixed – not that he personally and physically did so.  As this lengthy legal opinion concluded:

Accordingly, we conclude that neither past practice nor previous opinions relating to the signing requirement of Article I, Section 7 foreclose reading that requirement in a manner that is consistent with the traditional common law understanding of “sign,” with Attorney General and Department of Justice opinions applying that understanding to statutory signing requirements, and with the settled interpretation of the related presentment and return provisions.

IV.

For the foregoing reasons, we conclude that the President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law. Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen.¹³

Legally this is standard stuff.  Law, which the constitution is¹⁴, must be interpreted as law in context.  A reductionistic hyperliteralism actually undermines the constitution’s function and design.  For example, while the 1^st Amendment constrains the State using apparently categorical terms – “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech” this does not – in context – mean that all speech of whatever kind receives protection.  Why?  Because “the freedom of speech” referenced in the amendment is historically itself a term of legal art.  That term specifically excludes certain categories from protection:  obscenity, defamation, “fighting words,” child pornography, incitement to imminent lawless action, speech integral to crimes, (like conspiracy or fraud), and emblematically, falsely yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater.

Given this context, only a crabbed reading of the operative constitutional language would insist that the President personally and physically affix his signature to bills or executive orders.  It would be like saying that the “speech” protected by the 1^st Amendment only refers oral verbal utterances but not writings or non-verbal symbolic expressions.  Liberty would be truncated by this type of wooden interpretation.  This “method” would lead to silly results too:  It would be like saying that since the constitution does not mention an Airforce or a Space Force, that these military branches lack constitutional warrant and thus are “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT.”¹⁵  Reading a text in this way, especially a constitutional text, would be equivalent to using a meat cleaver to perform neuro-surgery – no one would fare well.

Christians need to elevate their thinking, including how they think about the auto-pen.  In doing so they must avoid histrionic hissy-fits, hasty generalizations, and reject the simplistic search for utopian silver bullets.  Rather, in our thinking Christ calls us to be mature¹⁶ and sober-minded,¹⁷ not like the Gentiles [unbelievers] who are “futile in their thinking”¹⁸ “in the futility of their minds.”¹⁹  Many policies of the Biden Administration conflict or undermine Christian morality; his using the auto-pen is not one of them and contending otherwise comprises a simplistic, unthinking, uninformed, emotivism unworthy of the Christian mind.

1. Rom. 16:22 ↩︎
2. Gal. 6:11 ↩︎
3. It’s likely that those members of Congress would have immunity under the “speech and debate” clause aside from any pardon granted.  Art. I Section 6, Clause 1.                  ↩︎
4. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-joe-biden-jan-6-pardons-void-vacant-2045724 ↩︎
5. https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-admits-he-uses-autopen-unimportant-papers-joe-biden-pardons-2046252 ↩︎
6. This notion garnered a popular following when physicist Stephen Hawking’s story became a 2014 film.  No actual unified field “theory of everything” exists; it comprises wishful thinking, but enjoys huge subjective explanatory power, not unlike grand conspiracy theories.  https://www.forbes.com/sites/annapowers/2018/03/14/the-theory-of-everything-remembering-stephen-hawkings-greatest-contribution/ ↩︎
7. Mark 2:15,16 ↩︎
8. John 1:45, 46 ↩︎
9. Matt 12:22-24 ↩︎
10. U.S. Const. Art. I, Section 7 ↩︎
11. Yet the same provision notes that if “any Bill shall not be returned by the President within 10 days (Sundays excepted) after it shall have been presented to him, the Same shall be a Law, in like Manner as if he had signed it . . .” ↩︎
12. This claim is not unlike the notion that since Paul sometimes used an amanuensis, his letters are null and void, lacking apostolic authority.  See, Romans 16:22 and Gal. 6:11 ↩︎
13. Here is the comprehensive legal opinion analyzing the constitutional wording in historical context.  https://www.justice.gov/file/494411/dl?inline=&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email ↩︎
14. Art. VI stating that “This Constitution [the written document] shall be the supreme law of the Land.” ↩︎
15. See note 4. ↩︎
16. 1 Cor. 14:20 ↩︎
17. 1 Tim. 3:2, 1 Tim. 3:11, 2 Tim. 4:5, Titus 2:2, 1 Peter 1:13, 1 Peter 4:7, 1 Peter 5:8 ↩︎
18. Romans 1:21 ↩︎
19. Eph. 4:17 ↩︎