Divine Right

The divine right relates to the justification of a nondemocratic capacity with the choice of God. This choice is often expressed by the assertion of a genealogy, of a “selected race”.

In the Christian Occident, the Protestant Réforme did not modify these doctrines inevitably where it existed. It underlined of them one of the consequences which did not have either escaped with the Catholicisme: the monarch by divine right must obey God, under penalty of losing his legitimacy.

The the Vatican justifies also the capacity of the Pape by the divine Right, just as any religious institution for its “ministers”. But it is rather here about a Théocratie. The designs resulting from the Coran concerning the fusion of the spiritual and temporal roles in the hands of the Caliph also lead to modes legitimated by the divine right.

With the Japan, the Emperor is supposed to go down from the goddess Amaterasu, which expresses the denomination of the Empire of the Rising sun being reproduced on the emblem of the flag.

Three monotheisms

It is practically impossible to know at which time exactly this theory occurred in the political institutions of Western Europe, nor exactly which was the first author having defended this theory and having sought to apply it. Historically, one can locate this theory with appearance of Christianity while also saying that it found throughout the history of Western Europe and during the last 20 centuries, several applications in various forms. This theory of the right is always in application today but in various forms. Admittedly, it underwent a very great evolution; in particular the theological ideas that one can classify under this heading changed contents. The divine right does not remain in its traditional direction for the restoration of monarchy, there are also the new more democratic readings which are confirmed by the crowned Writings.

Moreover, it is what distinguished Islam compared to the Judaism and with Christianity. Christianity did not have a theory of the State in spite of the prevalence, in the Christian occident, during several centuries, of the theory of the divine right. This one was presented against the theory: that of the natural right of the man, even for his period of glory and domination to the Middle Ages. This is why the Church wanting to extend its capacity, just like the Moslem emirs, had to some extent forgotten the famous command of Jesus, especially his Blisses which could have involved to codify the human rights and the natural political right of the man. However independently of the historical circumstances, it is noted that there is in Christianity a theory of the State by negation. I.e. Christianity, even today in its for interior, is a religion which denies the existence of a relationship between the temporal one and the spiritual one, and accepts secularity, at least on the level of the political institutions. Thus monarchical legitimism founded on the divine right and the tradition, which existed hardly has today than a historical interest.

On the other hand, Islam is a religion which has a theory of the State by assertion, admitting in theory, the existence and the need for establishing a confusion on the one hand between the temporal one and the spiritual one, and on the other hand between the divine right and the natural political right. However among the hundreds of thousands of books and epistles written by the Moslem oulémas before 1900, pas only one devoted specifically to the natural rights of the man in Islam. That is not astonishing, because the birth and the development of a religion monotheist were comparable with close links, to see inseparable, between the divine right and the human rights. While behind the emergence of the ideas of the human rights the principle of separation between the divine right and the human natural rights resides without this separation meaning forcing contradiction or conflict report/ratio. In this case the natural political right requires that the men brought together in political company profit from a government, and a good government; the democratic form is not essential, in any time and any place; neither the natural right, nor the divine right take party between the forms and the methods of government. But they discuss on the principles legitimation and the contents these forms.

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