The theory of divine origin, considered one of the oldest theories of the origin of authority, covers two related arguments. One relates to the theory of divine origin of kingship as the sole authority of the State in general and the other relates to the theory of divine rights of the kings as a justification of royal absolutism in medieval Europe. The latter witnessed its full-blown operation in the Church versus the State controversy.
According to the theory of divine origin, political power and the State are extensions of divine power and its arrangements. The State has been instituted by the will of God and the king is the agent of that will. All powers and actions of the kings and rulers are supposed to be in the name of God and drawn from God’s authority. It is not uncommon, as Gettell has pointed out, that in early Oriental empires rulers claimed a divine right to control the affairs of their subjects. G. Lowell Field, alluding to some of the earliest states in the form of ancient military monarchies, such as Egypt, Babylonia, Assyria, and Persia, mentions that ‘the ruler tended to assume the character of a high priest and even usually of living divinity’.12 This means that the kingly (political) and the priestly (religious/ecclesiastical) powers were neither separated nor differentiated.
We find mention of divine sanction in favour of rulers in the literature of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism and Islam. According to R. G. Gettell, ‘the Hebrews believed that their system was of divine origin, and that Jehovah took active part in the direction of their public affairs’.13 Early Church Fathers also supported this theory and the Bible in the Old Testament hints at the divine origin of the kingship and rulers. Robert Filmer in his Patriarcha (1680) gave a systematic treatment to this theory by arguing that all authority came from the establishment of patriarchal power in Adam. Thus, all kings become heir to Adam’s authority, which has divine origin.
In Islam, the religious–spiritual and the political are not differentiated. In the Quranic vision, there is no dichotomy between the two.14 To begin with, the Muslim ummah or the Muslim community was a politically organized polity in the Medina city-state, which the Prophet led. The Prophet has been described as the vice-regent of Allah on earth. The polity in Islam, inseparable from the spiritual and religious, has a divine origin. This was continued in the form of Khalifah (caliphs), the successors of the Prophet. The divine origin of polity in Islam may be said to manifest in two forms—one as Caliphates, the central seat of Muslim power, which got discontinued after the First World War and the other as theocratic states, based on religious and Quranic injunctions, that still continue in many Muslim countries.
Mention of divine intervention in the origin of kingship is also found in Manu’s Dharmashastra or Code of Law and the Shantiparvan in the Mahabharta. They maintain that when the world became anarchic and greed and selfishness dominated the people, God created the king for protection, peace and order.15 In his Arthasastra, Kautilaya presents the king as occupying the position of both Indra, the god who is dispenser of favour and Yama, the god who is dispenser of punishment. A combination of these two qualities in the king points towards divine rights. However, it seems, Kautilaya’s formulation is less developed than that mentioned in Manu’s Dharmashastra, where it has been asserted that ‘a king is an incarnation of the eight guardian deities of the world, the Moon, the Fire, the Sun, the Wind, Indra, the Lords of wealth and water (Kubera and Varuna), and Yama’.16 Thus, we find that the theory of divine origin of kingship and the State is present in religious traditions. However, the most relevant use of this theory was to support the royal absolutism in medieval Europe.
In England and France, emergence of the authority of monarchy was preceded by the claim of the Church to both ecclesiastical (religious) and temporal (secular or worldly) authorities during the medieval times. To counter the claim of the church in temporal and secular matters, the doctrine of divine origin of the rights of the kings argued that the power of the kings was derived from the same source from where came the power of the church. When Europe was engaged in the Church–State controversy, the question of political obligation of the people to the king or the monarch was a matter of debate. The very claim by the kings of divine rights raised various issues relating to political obligation of the subjects to the king. Three issues engaged the attention of those who advocated royal and monarchical absolutism (royalists) and those who advocated subject’s right to resist the kings (anti-royalists):
- Are the subjects obliged to obey the kings if they command against the law of God or act against the Church?
- What could be the nature of obligation and scope of resistance when subjects following a different path of religion (Catholics, Protestants) than the ruler or the majority, face oppression or tyranny?17
- ‘Is heresy in a ruler a valid ground for civic disobedience?’18
France and England, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, faced civil and sectarian wars. Protestants and Jesuits attacked the claims of the kings and monarchs and argued for the right of people to resist in such cases. While the divine right doctrine sought to establish legitimacy of the king’s right to rule, the anti-royalist attacks gave credibility to bases for resistance against the king’s claim to absolute obligation of the subjects.
These circumstances required the absolutist monarchy to invoke the theory of divine rights of the kings to justify their position. The important elements of this theory may be listed as:
- Kings are vicars/representatives of God on earth, hence their actions have divine sanction
- Subjects owe their rulers a duty of passive obedience
- Rebellion against the king is sacrilege, even in the name of religion and by implication, even if the ruler is a heretic
- Divine rights of kings lead to hereditary power and royal legitimacy, which is based on birth and God’s choice
Initially, the doctrine of divine rights of kings found its expression against the Pope’s refusal to recognize accession of Henry of Navarre as the King of France on the ground of his being Protestant. Henry had to convert to Catholicism.19 William Barclay, a Scotch Catholic, who had taken refuge in France, provided an elaborate statement of the theory in 1600.20 He argued that all political authority proceeded from God and it never came from the people. However, it was James I of England, who, in his The Law of Free Monarchies (1598), gave a fuller exposition of the theory of divine rights of the kings. James I argued that ‘the essence of free monarchy was that it should be power over all its subjects. He stated, ‘Kings are breathing images of God upon earth’ and ‘The state of monarchy is the supreme thing upon earth; for kings are not only God’s lieutenants upon earth, and sit upon God’s throne, but even by God himself they are called Gods.’21 These statements of James I seek to establish the divine claim of the monarch/king to rule and therefore, to be obeyed, respected and revered by the people and not to be resisted. Secondly, for his activities and actions, the monarch becomes answerable to God only. Thirdly, monarch/king became the divinely instituted lawgiver for his people. This way, legal supremacy is sought through divine dispensation. Further, James I also advocated an inalienable and natural right of the king to his heir and any dispossession of the rightful heir as unlawful. The English royal family employed this argument during the English Civil War to justify their power.
The doctrine of Divine Rights of kings is based on the old theory of divine origin of kingship. This doctrine is weak in its theoretical and intellectual base. In fact, to achieve the same goal that this doctrine sought, Jean Bodin, Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes invoked completely different arguments of sovereignty, which discredited the doctrine of divine rights. However, in a period when religious and political affiliations of the people were pulled against each other, this doctrine enabled the people to remain loyal to the church and religion and at the same time fulfil political obligation to the king and monarchy as if they are serving their faith. Nevertheless, in the wake of emerging constitutional state and liberal values, the doctrine of divine rights of kings was thoroughly discredited.
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