The Populist Implications of Archbishop James Ussher’s Political Theology of Sovereignty
Most people don’t know James Ussher, perhaps even mistaking a reference to him with the singer of the near-same name (spelled slightly differently). If they do know something of him, it likely concerns his attempt to pinpoint the creation of the world to October 22nd, 4004 BC, around 6:00pm.
Yet, quite apart from trying to date creation, James Ussher was a theological and intellectual giant of his time. He was born in 1581 in Dublin, Ireland. He held great expertise in Hebrew that helped verify our Old Testament texts and did important work distinguishing legitimate and spurious documents from the Early Church. He was ordained a bishop in 1621 and Archbishop of Armagh in 1625. By 1634, he became the Primate of the (Protestant) Church of Ireland. His theology was both conformist to the Church of England’s liturgy and Reformed in much of his doctrine. One can see his thought in part in the Irish Articles of 1615 of which he likely was the primary author.
Ussher also wrote a book-length work of political theology, The Power Communicated by God to the Prince, and the Obedience Required of the Subject. He composed this volume at the request of King Charles I in response to unrest in the Kingdom. The manuscript was approved for publication in the 1640s, but did not then see the light of day (whether from the printer honestly or conveniently misplacing it). After Ussher’s death in 1657, the original manuscript was found among his papers. Under the restoration of the monarchy under Charles’ son, the work was published.
Ussher’s book makes an important contribution to political theology on several fronts. In particular, he articulates an important perspective on political sovereignty. The political sovereign was the person or group who held the highest authority within a political community. It was the power without equal in a polity.
Among other points, Ussher in this book took up the question of resistance to the sovereign by those under him or them. Much discussion of Reformed political theology of this period focuses on those who opened the door for some kind of resistance to the sovereign when that ruler became tyrannical. Calvin’s understanding of the role of the lesser magistrates, George Buchanan’s De Jure Regni Apud Scotos, and the Huguenot tract, Vindicae Contra Tyrannos, come to mind. Ussher did not fall into this category. Though generally agreeing with the Reformed views concerning God’s sovereignty the role of Scripture, Ussher denied any legitimate power existed on earth to resist the supreme magistrate of a political community. On this point, then, he formed a distinct strain of Reformed political theology, one that tracked closely with those who conformed to the Church of England during and after the Reformation.
Ussher grounded his view in Romans 13:1-7 the classic text wherein St. Paul declares God as the establisher of governing authorities. Resisting those rulers amounted to resisting God’s own power—a sin against the ultimate king of the universe. This point applied regardless of the type of regime. Ussher himself preferred monarchy. But he accepted the classical categorizations of the rule of one (monarchy), the few (aristocracy), and the many (democracy) as well as that each regime where it existed was ordained by God and that those under it had an equal obligation to obey.1
Ussher thus rejected any concept of lesser magistrates checking superior ones. Their power was delegated by the sovereign, and thus possessed no independent ground by which to resist the superior governor. The people could not rightly appeal to them against the actual sovereign, or they would violate God’s ordained system of government in that regime.
This view did not make rulers lawless entirely. Lesser magistrates must abide by existing laws. Subjects could appeal to higher rulers against these magistrates on either the grounds that these governors did not follow the law or begging mercy from the actual sovereign. Ussher gave St. Paul as one example in the Apostle’s appeals within the Roman Empire’s legal system.
Moreover, the superior magistrate did have a law that applied to him. Quoting Church Father Gregory Nazianzen, Ussher stated that, ““a king therefore is not hereby made lawless, nor hath given liberty unto him to do whatever him listeth. For God’s Word and right reason must ‘give a law to the lawgivers themselves.’” On this point, Ussher affirmed both revealed and natural law as standards to which sovereigns had an obligation to abide. God was these laws’ Author and, He being of higher authority than any human ruler, those magistrates must submit.
Yet, the enforcement of these laws by other humans did not follow. In fact, no earthly authority existed that could hold these highest human rulers to account. Ussher wrote that “to make any one upon earth superior to the supreme governor, would imply a manifest contradiction.” Only a superior could correct an inferior in the chain of command. Thus, to have such a checking power would amount to a regime change, for the one who could call the ruler to account was itself the real sovereign. Since only one superior existed above the political sovereign, God Himself, only God rightly could act to enforce His laws against a political sovereign. And Ussher freely admitted that God could and did judge, whether doing so in this world or surely doing so upon the magistrate’s death.
Ussher did articulate instances where one could and should refuse to obey a magistrate, an act he distinguished from active resistance. When that magistrate sought to make subjects violate God’s laws, then the people could disobey. Ussher gave the example of the Hebrew midwives in Egypt who did not participate in the slaughter of the male children born under their care. In that case, one must choose between obeying God or the human ruler. The logic that had established the unquestioned authority of the sovereign led to this limited exception to obedience. For, given that the obligation to obey the human ruler stemmed from the original, unequaled power of God, God’s dictates prevailed.
However, active resistance he denied entirely. Even submissive disobedience must be done not brashly or defiantly, submitting to punishment even when that punishment was unjust. To the objection that no permissible resistance could result in a tyrant destroying all of a “man’s estate” and the commonwealth itself, Ussher replied, “[i]t becomes us in obedience to perform our part; and leave the ordering of events to God, whose part only that is.” In fact, he noted that God might give bad rulers as a judgment and to actively resist them meant resisting the punishment God meted out through them. God’s sovereignty here pushed against taking matters into one’s own hands, according to Ussher.
Ussher’s effectual absolutism would seem clean contrary to American political sensibilities. Ussher would have roundly condemned the fight for American independence and the theory of revolution articulated to justify it. He also would decry those deploying similar arguments today, seeing revolution as a legitimate option to resisting tyranny wherever it substantively and persistently arises. In fact, most who articulate some form of absolutism in the American context, often citing Romans 13, tell their audience they must obey their American rulers or violate God’s Word.
Yet, in so doing, they miss a crucial point. For rarely do political philosophers, theologians, pastors, or public commentators explore this theory’s implications for the kind of government we constitutionally have. “We, the People” ordained and established our political system. Our regime is one where the sovereignty clearly is supposed to reside in the people. This theory remains a consistent thread that runs from the Declaration of Independence to the Constitution to state constitutions to myriad statements by the Founders and their posterity.
But commentators lecturing the public to obey then speak of presidents, congressmen, judges, and bureaucrats as if sovereignty originated and remained in them. When we disobey them, we sin, essentially. Thus, they make a category mistake, treating our popular regime like a mixed regime combining a monarch and elite aristocrats. They thereby exclude the actual sovereign, the people, from rule. Instead, we must understand governmental officials as exercising a delegated authority, one allotted to them by the people. The people never give up their ultimate human power nor, therefore, their oversight regarding its application by officeholders.
This proper understanding of sovereignty and its delegation holds significant implications for an Ussher-like political theology of obedience. When the government follows the law, whether that be the Constitution or statutes passed within the Constitution’s boundaries, then the Pauline mandate to obey applies. The people obey the government official but only in a proximate sense. They actually obey the sovereign, themselves, and therein fulfill God’s requirement to submit. Only a statute commanding violation of God’s law, natural or revealed, rightly could be disobeyed. This point applied both to God’s natural and revealed laws. If the sovereign people passed a law mandating women abort their children, for instance, individuals must refuse to comply under Ussher’s perspective. Also, if the state demands false worship, to that overtly called a god or to that covertly treated as such, one can and should keep from obeying. As we are a nation full of idols, this point is quite relevant.
Yet another element is just as true. Officeholders can demand that citizens say and do things contrary to the laws passed by the people’s representative or ratified by the people themselves in the Constitution. When official make such demands, then it is those officials, not the people, who disobey the sovereign. It is they, not the people, who actually violate the command found in Romans 13 to submit to the authorities established by God.
I would take this point even another step. The people express their will not only in the Constitution and statutes. They do so in elections, whereby they send legislators and executives to exercise their own power to make and to carry out law. The government then can ignore the will of the people so expressed, legislating and enforcing according to their own views. They act like the sovereign they are not. When officials clearly refuses to heed the people’s will so expressed, they also refuse to obey the authorities God put in place to rule in our country. This last point especially is a problem today with the Administrative State, an apparatus of agencies with little to no accountability to the people who increasingly acts like sovereign rulers, not servants with delegated responsibility. This point applies, too, whether the sovereign people have mandated a principle in pursuance of justice or merely a matter otherwise indifferent that they wish to make a rule. Either way, they merely are exercising what God established them as rulers to do.
Thus, for the people to hold political officeholders to account on these grounds seem to be no revolution in the sense Ussher condemned. Instead, it is merely the sovereign put in place by God demanding the obedience God Himself requires and acting in ways to secure that required obedience.
Ussher hewed a path regarding political sovereignty distinct from many of his fellow Reformed thinkers. This path Americans do chafe at with our longstanding views of political resistance. But pastors and theologians should be more careful in their application of arguments like his to our own political context. Here, the people are supposed to rule, not elected officeholders and especially not bureaucrats. Populist movements like we currently see in our politics should be assessed on that account. Whether right or wrong on principles and policy, a fundamental tenet of these men and women consists in asserting anew the implications regarding the kind of regime God has established among us. To tell American Christians to follow another ruler would not honor Ussher’s Romans 13. For Ussher, it would be defying God Himself.
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