Tag: divine right of kings

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Archive Civic Polity Nota Bene Reformed Irenicism Simon Kennedy

Kuyper on Civil Government and Divine Right

In Common Grace, Kuyper combines the questions of God’s institution of capital punishment and the institution of civil government into one moment. He understands God’s command to Noah in Genesis 9:6 as the moment when God instituted civil government. He also rejects outright the modern liberal conception of the origins of civil government as founded upon […]

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Archive Civic Polity Reformed Irenicism Simon Kennedy

James I and the Will of the King

In his recent book, The Watershed of Modern Politics (Yale, 2015), the eminent historian of ideas Francis Oakley makes the case that the theory of the divine right of kings is a constant and central one for a large part of the history of western political thought. In short, the prominence of ‘sacral kingship’ in western […]