The need for divine monarchy to guard against tyranny
Why the concept of divine monarchy is so important
As I mentioned the other day, recently I’ve been re-reading Mike Ovey’s short book Your Will be Done. The book itself is Mike’s response to an issue which had been debated in evangelical circles for some years prior: that is, the question of whether Jesus is ‘subordinate’ to the Father in eternity. Modern theologians, notably Kevin Giles, had written about how this view of the Trinity led to (in his view) unbiblical views of authority e.g. male headship in marriage. From Giles’ perspective, the Trinity is more like a ‘society of friends’ — three equals — without any notion of authority. He argues that authority view of some modern evangelicals, i.e. the Son obeying the Father in eternity, is actually heretical — a heresy known as Arianism, which held that Jesus was a creature rather than God himself and therefore lesser than the Father.
Mike’s book is his attempt to push back on this, and in my view he does this comprehensively and conclusively. However, while the theological debate itself may be interesting (to me, at least), I don’t want to talk about that specifically. You’ll have to read the book for that! What I’d like to pick up on here are a few comments made towards the end of the book about tyranny.
As I have spoken about many times on Sacred Musings, when a society abandons God there are many consequences. One of those consequences is the way that we handle authority: in the absence of a divine monarch, we end up with human tyranny. Let me explain.
What is tyranny
Let me begin with a quotation from the book:
Further, Moltmann understates the way that Christian theology in fact does envisage and has envisaged over the ages that it is precisely on the basis of divine monarchy that abusive structures here on earth can be weighed, criticised and if necessary challenged and changed. Thus Athanasius and Hilary both charged the emperor Constantius with tyranny. Over the course of time later theologians articulated an account of tyranny in which the divine monarch God was seen as the delegator of authority in certain relationships — notably in church, state and family. Since these were delegated authorities, they were authorities held on terms stipulated by the delegator. In fact those with delegated authority remained under the law. They did not have untrammelled authority and were not absolute monarchs. They could not be so, since their authority was not free-standing and independent but derived from another higher authority. They became ‘tyrants’ in their respective spheres when they broke the laws on which authority had been delegated to them, ultimately divine law, in the view of Christian theologians. The political philospher Leo Strauss writes:
‘Tyranny is essentially rule without laws, or, more precisely, monarchic rule without laws.’
The key point here is that no human authority is an independent, autonomous authority. All human authority is a delegated authority — delegated by God. Theologians have traditionally recognised three areas of life in which authority is delegated: church, state, and family. In every area, it is wrong to use authority without the approval of the One who delegated the authority in the first place. Tyranny, therefore, is a ‘monarchic rule without laws’, that is, a monarchic rule without the law of God.
You could say that tyranny is to exercise power in a way which stands against the way that God exercises power. How do we know how God exercises power and authority, his divine monarchy? We see that in the relationship of the Father and the Son. The Father is the divine monarch; Jesus his obedient Son. However, the fact that the Father is monarch and the Son obedient in no way implies that this is a misuse of authority.
For example, look at the way that Jesus describes his relationship with the Father:
Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. John 5:19-23
Does this look like an unhealthy relationship? It seems to me, on the contrary, like the very picture of the way a relationship between Father and Son should be. “The Father loves the Son and shows him all he does”; “The Father has entrusted all judgement to the Son, that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father”. There is a unity, a one-ness, to the relationship — even while Father and Son are different. The Father uses his authority to honour the Son, and the Son in his obedience honours the Father. There is mutuality and, above all, love.
This relationship between Father and Son is the ultimate pattern for every authority relationship there is in every area of life. For example, we saw last time how husbands are to love their wives in a way which makes them flourish. In the church, authority is to be exercised for the protection of the faith and the gospel. Similarly, authority is to be exercised in the state to enable everyone to live freely and peacefully.
What I am saying here is that all authority derives from God. When we see those in any kind of authority using that authority to love and serve others, we see a picture of godly authority. When, by contrast, we see that authority being used to oppress and coerce, that is an ungodly and thus tyrannical authority.
Before we move on, let me ask the question: what do you think happens when we as a society move away from God — the Christian God? When we no longer have that model of divine monarchy and power used in a good and godly manner, then it is not surprising to me that power relations become tyrannical. I believe this is what we are seeing all over society at this point: power is being misused everywhere. This is simply the consequence of rejecting God.
The book continues:
… because precisely all legitimate power springs from delegation from the divine monarch, the divine monarchy is the legal and practical basis for the accountability of power-holders to God. As such, it is imperative to uphold the divine monarchy: it guarantees not only ultimate salvation and also not just the theoretical accountability of those who abuse power and authority tyrannically but the inescapable nature of that accountability.
Divine monarchy means that, not only is all earthly authority delegated, but there will be accountability required for the use of that power. As Mike says, that accountability is ‘inescapable’. Those who believe in divine monarchy should exercise their authority with fear and trembling, knowing that they will be held accountability for how they have used it.
It seems to me totally unsurprising that our current power-obsessed government are so keen to dispense with the idea of God: not only do they not like the idea of their power being delegated from God, but they don’t like the idea of being held accountable for it! The good news for us is, although we the people may not be able to hold them to account, God certainly will. They will one day need to face their Creator and give account for the way they have used their power.
Everything I have covered so far is what you might expect — the use and misuse of power by (especially) governments and rulers. However, the book moves on to a form of tyranny which I think is especially interesting — a tyranny which can be exercised through democracy. Let’s move on to look at that.
If you’re interested in tyranny, you might like Francis Schaeffer’s book A Christian Manifesto. I covered it on the podcast a few years ago, which you can find here.
The tyranny of democracy
Let me quote briefly once again:
It is, though, one thing to say that democratic government is a legimately possible and very appropriate way of giving effect to the creation of each human being in the image and likeness of God and another thing to say that democratic regimes themselves enjoy total power and have no higher accountability.
The point about democratic regimes having “no higher accountability” is well made. Before moving on, one point I’d like to make — which I don’t think Mike had in mind when he wrote this — is that democracy has come to be seen as a kind of badge of legitimacy for today’s Western regimes. They think that if a government is ‘democratic’, it automatically lends moral legitimacy to anything that government does… even if what the government does is manifestly anti-democratic.
This is why Western governments can go to war in order to install ‘democracy’ around the world. Because they are fighting for ‘democracy’, they can tell themselves that they are the good guys. Even if they are acting in a tyrannical way!
A few years ago, Frank Furedi wrote a piece for Spiked called Democracy besieged. He said:
Democracy today is simply not valued in and of itself. Rather it is valued only as a process, in the main, for the election of representatives, and even then only if it delivers the right results. If the wrong people are elected, then democracy, valued only as means for the election of the right people, loses what instrumental value it had. In this, its procedural version, democracy possesses no inherent value.
The modern elites view democracy as a way not of honouring the will of the people, but of legitimising whatever they wanted to do in the first place — so long as they get the ‘right’ outcome and the ‘right’ person in the job. Furedi makes the point that this is not really democracy; it is only masquerading as such.
However, we need to consider another question, which is: is it possible for a democratic majority to nonetheless be tyrannical? Let me quote one more time from Mike’s book:
It is for this kind of reason that J L Talmon coined the term ‘totalitarian democracy’. Talmon’s point was that a democratic regime can in fact manifest totalitarian tendencies, shown notably in its treatment of those who dissent from the democratic majority’s views. We should return here to Strauss’ comments about tyranny — that it is ‘monarchic rule without laws’. When, as de Tocqueville describes, legislative, executive and judicial powers are in fact vested in the democratic majority, then there is indeed a ‘monarchic’ rule, in the sense of a single consolidated regime of power. It is simply that that regime is not vested in a single individual, but in a collectivity…
If individual rights are simply those rights which a current general opinion accepts, then it is not fanciful to say those rights depend on the judgment of the majority as it is from time to time. Aquinas’ comment that the tyrant is one who oppresses through power very aptly focuses us on the extent of the power that a majority may claim to have.
Just because an opinion may be held by a majority does not in itself make that opinion right. The majority of people in this country may be happy with things such as gay marriage, but that does not make it right. To put a sharper edge on it, opinion polls across the country during covid made depressing reading: many people wanted more restrictions to be placed upon us, and harsher penalties for e.g. vaccine ‘refuseniks’.
The point here is that democracy is not against a defence against tyranny, when one uses the biblical understanding of tyranny.
I should add that I do not believe this is the purpose of democracy. I believe democracy was developed as a limit to power — to spread power around as thinly as possible, so it was more difficult for people to abuse. The idea of democracy is to try and prevent rulers from oppressing the people. It is not a guarantee of producing godly opinions!
Rulers have a responsibility before God not only to maintain law and order, but to promote what is good and godly — the promotion of true religion. A good and godly ruler should not simply be ‘anti-woke’, or have common-sense policies, but be pro-Christ and pro-Church. This is, in fact, what matters most.
Why this matters today
I believe it’s helpful for us to think about democracy in this way because we are often encouraged to use our democratic voice to make a difference. Over the last year we’ve had an election in the UK, and we are currently suffering the consequences of a government who are doubling down on the globalist agenda. There has also been an election in America, and many people have been hailing Trump’s win as a kind of victory over the darkness.
But the truth is that democracy itself will not necessarily bring about the kind of government that we need. Tyranny is the use of authority outside of God’s laws. In a sense, this requires the person at the top to have an understanding of God’s laws and personal faith. While Trump may have been vastly superior to Kamala Harris in that respect, does he really submit to God and his laws? And, in the UK, does Nigel Farage and the Reform party (who came #1 in a recent poll) submit to God and his laws? And, if they do not, are they not simply another form of tyranny?
It seems to me that Christians across the Western world must not get distracted. As Paul says:
No one serving as a soldier gets entangled in civilian affairs, but rather tries to please his commanding officer.
2 Timothy 2:4
We are soldiers, serving in Christ’s army. What we want to see is the world submitting to Christ. We do not wish to see one form of tyranny in government replaced by another. The kind of government we need is one which places the cross of Christ as front and centre. Ultimately, every government which does not acknowledge the divine monarchy will fall away into tyranny. We as Christians need to have our eyes open to what’s most important when it comes to government, and remember — we are seeking to do the Lord’s work in the Lord’s way.
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