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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
The first part of a paper presented at the International Symposium on Sociology and Theology, Oxford, January 1984.
From very early times men have spoken of and to their gods in political images, just as they have ascribed divine characteristics to their earthly rulers. This has been the case no less in the judaeo- christian tradition than in pagan cultures. Some of the most persistent images used of God in this tradition are taken from political discourse: king, lord, judge, to mention but three. Again, abstract concepts applied to God such as sovereignty, power, majesty and dominion have a strongly political connotation. Yet remarkably little attention has been paid to this phenomenon by theologians and historians of doctrine.
In the first part of this paper (published here) I wish to consider the way in which analogies between divine and civil domination were employed among some groups in seventeenth-century England, and set this in the context of a more general thesis about the use of such analogies. I shall conclude, in the second part of this paper (which will be published in the next issue), by suggesting certain significant implications which may be said to follow from this manner of thinking and talking about God and the state.
1 On some of the ways the analogy of divine and civil kingship was developed in the middle ages, see Ernst, Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies, Princeton (NJ) 1957Google Scholar.
2 Quoted in Ray Strong, Splendour at Court, London 1973, p. 223.
3 Isaak, Walton, ‘the life of Mr Richard Hooker’, in John, Keble, ed., The Works of that Learned and Judicious Divine Mr Richard Hooker, Oxford 1874Google Scholar ed., i, p. 85. J Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, London 1957, 1:4:5. On this subject see Robert West, Milton and the Angels, Athens (Georgia) 1955, and M. Walzer, The Revolution of the Saints, London 1966, pp. 155f.
4 Orgel, S., Ben Johnson: the Complete Masques, New Haven (Conn.) 1969. p. 232Google Scholar; Strong, Splendour. p. 76.
5 C.H. Mcllwain, ed., The Political Works of James I, Cambridge (Mass.) 1918, pp. 307 8.
6 H. Finch, Law, or a discourse thereof, London 1671, p. 81. For a discussion of these issues see C.C. Weston and J.R. Greenberg, Subjects and Sovereigns, Cambridge 1981. I have normally modernised the spelling &c. in these seventeenth century quotations, except in the case of the titles of books and pamphlets.
7 John Hayward, An Answer to the First Part of a Certain Conference Concerning Succession, London 1603, sig.b 4.
8 Filmer, ‘The Anarchy of a Limited or Mixed Monarchy’, in Peter Laslett, ed., Patriarcha and Other Political Works of Sir Robert Filmer, Oxford 1949, p. 277. See also G.J. Schochet, Patriarchalism in Political Thought, Oxford 1975, p.146.
9 G.R. Potter & E.M. Simpson, eds, The Sermons of John Donne, Berkeley & Los Angeles 1957. iv, p. 240
10 Potter & Simpson, iii, p. 262 & iv, p. 145.
11 Potter & Simpson, iii, p. 289 & ii, p. 314. The American theologian Walter Rauschenbusch criticised the way in which ideas of sin are influenced by ‘the monarchical institutions’ under which they were formulated, pointing particularly to the idea of sin as essentially rebellion. A Theology for the Social Gospel, New York 1918, p. 48; cf. David Nicholls, ‘Stepping out of Babylon: sin, salvation and social transformation’, in K. Leech & R. Williams, eds, Essays Catholic and Radical, London 1983.
12 Potter & Simpson, iii, p. 125 6. Compare Richard Hooker, writing of England in his day, ‘so is the power of the king over all and in all limited. that unto all his proceedings the law itself is a rule’. Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity, 8:2: 13; in J. Keble ed. The Works of ... Mr Richard Hooker, iii, p. 353.
13 Potter & Simpson, viii, p. 371.
14 John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Ann Arbor 1959, pp. 30 1.
15 Bodin’s position is fairly clear, see P.L. Rose Bodin and the Great God of Nature, Geneva 1980 and C.R. Baxter, ‘Jean Bodin’s Daemon and his Conversion to Judaism’, in Verhandlungen derInternationalen Bodin Tagung, Munich 1973. Hobbes’ position on the matter is somewhat more problematic, but 1 believe Bramhall’s assessment to be substantially correct, see David Nicholls, ‘Images of God and the State’, Theological Studies, 42:2, 1981, pp. 203 4
16 Henry Stubbe, Essay in Aid of the Good Old Cause, London 1659, Preface.
17 David Nicholls, ‘Images of God and the State’, pp. 205 14.
18 William Perkins, ‘A Clowd of Faithful Witnesses’, Works, London 1618, iii, p. 165.
19 W. Nicholson ed., The Remains of Archbishop Grindal, Cambridge 1853, p. 387.
20 H. Finch, Law, or a discourse thereon, p. 81; and James I, ‘Defence of the Divine Right of Kings’, in Mcllwain, ed.. The Political Works, p. 248.
21 Lex, Rex or the Law and the Prince, London 1644, p. 8.
22 Lex, pp. 69 & 195.
23 T.B. The Engagement Vindicated, London 1650, p. 7.
24 P. Bayne, A Commentarie upon the First and Second Chapters of St Paul to the Colossians, London 1634, p. 74; John Preston, Life Eternal, London 1631, p. 150
25 A.S.P. Woodhouse, ed., Puritanism & Liberty, London 1951, p. 49; and S. Rutherford, Lex, p. 8.
26 Henry Parker, Observations on Some of His Majesties late ‘Answers’ and ‘Expresses’, London n.d. (1642), p. 18p. 21.
27 W.K. Jordan, Men of Substance, New York 1967 ed., p. 147.
28 William Prynne, The Soveraigne Power of Parliaments, London 1643, iv, p. 15. For a consideration of Prynne’s extraordinary changes of position see W.M. Lamont, Marginal Prynne: 1600 1669, London 1963.
29 William Prynne, God no Imposter nor Deluder, London 1629, pp. 28f.
30 See Brown, L.F., The Political Activities of the Baptists and Fifth Monarchy Men in England, Baltimore 1912, p. 45Google Scholar; and P.G. Rogers, The Fifth Monarchy Men, London 1966, p. 43. While they were politically influential, in the ‘Barebones’ Parliament, these Fifth Monarchy Men had attempted to use the coercive power of the state to impose their ideas on others.
31 James Parnel, ‘To you who be called Judges’, in A Collection of the Several Writings Given Forth from the Spirit of the Lord, London 1675, p. 465 & Parnel, ‘A Shield of Truth’ (1665). in A Collection, pp. 84 & 88 9.
32 Analogically, of course, as James 1 had observed, anarchism is the companion of atheism. ‘It is atheisme or blasphemy to dispute what God can do ... it is presumption and high contempt in a subject, to dispute what a king can do, or to say that a king cannot do this or that’, in C.H. Mcllwain ed., The Political Works of James I, p.333.
33 John Lilburne, The Free Man’s Freedom Vindicated, London 1646, pp. 11 12, quoted in Woodward ed., Puritanism & Liberty, p. 317. Political theorists still gnaw at this old bone, see David Nicholls, ‘A Comment on “Consent”’, Political Studies, 27:1, 1979, pp. 120f.
34 G. Winstanley, ‘A New Year’s Gift for the Parliament and Army’ (1650), in The Law of Freedom, and other writings, Harmondsworth 1973, p. 199; and G. Winstanley, ‘The True Levellers’ Standard Advanced’ (1649), in The Law of Freedom, p. 83. Michael Walzer cites other examples of the military analogy in The Revolution of the Saints, p. 278.
35 G. Winstanley, ‘The Breaking of the Day of God’ (1648), in The Law of Freedom, p. 390.
36 In G.H. Sabine, ed., The Writings of Gerrard Winstanley, Cornell 1941. p. 114.
37 Isobel Ross, Margaret Fell, London 1949, p. 119; and C. Hill The World Turned Upside Down, Harmondsworth 1975 ed., p. 43.
38 Milton’s God, London 1965 ed.
39 Henry Bullinger, Decades, London 1849 52, iii, p. 330.
40 Quoted in Perry Miller, The New England Mind: the Seventeenth Century, Cambridge, (Mass.) 1954 ed., pp. 376 7.
41 Miller, The New England Mind, p. 399
42 Quoted in Miller, The New England Mind, pp. 382 and 413.
43 ‘Political liberty, as such, never was and never will be an ideal of Puritanism’, J.N. Figgis, ‘A Puritan Utopia’, Church Quarterly Review, 1903, p. 126. See David Nicholls, The Pluralist State, pp. 33f.
44 Miller, The New England Mind, p. 418.
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