THE THEORY OF THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE STATE

According to this theory, the state was established and governed by God, the King is the
representative of God. In early society, the religious and political authority were combined
into one. The authority of the king was to be accepted and obeyed due to the fact that he
represented divine power. The Jews were exponents of this theory. The king bore
responsibility only to God for his acts. This theory prevailed in the old age when religion and
politics were combined in the person of the King. In Greek and Roman states, the king was
considered indirectly divine whereas a state was a natural manifestation of man's political
instincts. In ancient India, the Kings ruled over the people according to the injunction of the
Dharma, which stood for both religion and politics. Laws fay deep in the profusion of the
Sastras. In the medieval period the Christians held the Pope in semi-God status. In the
Muslim world, the Caliph was the Priest-King. The Dalai Lama was the head of the
Theocratic state of Tibet. He was considered there as the incarnation of the Buddhist god
Avalokitesvara. G.H. Sabine in "A History of Political Theory" writes that the new
monarchies that came into existence after Alexander was predestined to be absolute in which
the king was identical with the State. Later on, the kings have also enrolled, among the Gods
of the big cities. "Thus, the belief in the divinity of the king" came into European thought and
persisted, in one form or another, down to modern times." A true king was divine because he
brought harmony to his kingdoms; God brings harmony into the world. The ruler was
Animate Law, a personalised form of the principles of law and right that govern the whole
universe. For this reason, he possessed a divinity. His authority had a sanction, moral and
religious which his subjects had to recognise without loss of their own moral freedom and
divinity. There was a strong conviction that kingship and despotism are essentially different.
The Stoics propagated a theory of two laws which each individual had to follow, i.e. the law
of his city and the law of the world city, the law of custom and the law of reason. A belief in
a world state prevailed for both gods and the men. This law was called the law of God. In
medieval church the state human society was considered divinely ordained to be governed by
two authorities i.e. the spiritual and the temporal, the one wielded by God and the other by
rulers both in accordance with the divine and natural law. Both were subordinate to the divine
Government of nature. St. Thomas drew a picture of nature according to which the universe
forms a hierarchy reaching from God at its summit down to the lowest being. In this
hierarchy, the higher one rules Over the lower one. The common good requires that such a
system should help a ruling part. Hence the rulership is an office or a trust for the whole
community. The power of the ruler is derived from God for the happy ordering of human life.
So, the moral purpose of Government is paramount. The theory of the divine origin of the
state, later on, was transformed into the theory of thę Divine rights of the state. As a matter of
fact, it happened in the 16th and 17th century. It was propagated by James I, the first Stuart
King, and Sir Robert Filmer. Bousset in France elaborated this theory for supporting the
despotism of Louis XIV. The theory was interpreted by James I in such a way that he claimed
to be subject to God and his conscience alone. He disclaimed all legal obligations to the
people. For him, the free monarch was a monarch who was free to do what he pleased. The
subjects had no night to rebel against even tyrannical ruler. A tyrant was the result of peoples'
sins sent by God. The only check on a tyrant was the fear of punishment in the life after
death. The theory of the divine origin of state emphasised that monarchy was divinely
ordained. The King was accountable only to God and to the tenets of the law. The main
purpose of this doctrine was to free the political authority from the ecclesiastical control of
the Church. While doing so, the danger of a king who turned into a tyrant was overlooked.
The theory of divine origin became less popular with the growth of political consciousness
and the rise of democratic ideas and was completely rejected in the 18th century.
Causes of Decline of the Divine Theory of State
1. The advent of a more acceptable theory like the social contract theory. When Social
contract theory came out, it was rejected by people as they realised that the state is a creation
of men and not a grace of God.
2. Reforms for the separation of the church from the state. This reformation degraded the
value of the divine theory. This movement led to the non-religious politics. Therefore the
secular outlook made the divine theory completely unacceptable.
3. The emergence of democracy. The emergence of democracy gave a big blow for the
dogma of mixing religion with politics and thereby it blunted the edge of identifying God
with the King. Democracy not only gave value to the individuals but also desanctified the
divine origin of the slate.
4. The growth of scientific enquiry. The growth of scientific temperament and value to the
materialism resulted in the rejection of blind faith and superstition. This encouraged people to
accept only those things which stood the test of rationality and verification. Although the
divine theory of the state is fully discredited as an origin of the state, there are some good
elements in it. The highest good of the theory is that it enforced discipline and law-
abidingness among the subjects in those anarchical conditions. This theory also created the
moral responsibility of the rulers, because they were cast with a divine injunction to rule to
the perfect satisfaction of heaven