Resistance theory in the early modern period

It is argued that the beginnings of Protestant resistance theory lay in the legal positions worked out after the 1530 Diet of Augsburg, by jurists working for the Electorate of Saxony and the Landgraviate of Hesse.[2] A summary on Lutheran ideas about resistance was included with the 1550 Magdeburg Confession.[3][4] It argues that the "subordinate powers" in a state, faced with the situation where the "supreme power" is working to destroy true religion, under very specific circumstances (such as when the Beerwolf clause is fulfilled) may go further than non-cooperation with the supreme power and assist the faithful to resist.[5]

The mainstream ideas from the Magdeburg Confession recur in Calvinist writings, from 1558 onwards.[6] A little before that development come statements of John Ponet, Christopher Goodman and John Knox (The Monstruous Regiment of Women).[7] The annotations of the Geneva Bible pointed to exemplars of resistance theory (and were not unique in that).[8]

The literature includes but is not limited to the Huguenot resistance theory of the French Wars of Religion. Theodore Beza produced the 1574 work Right of Magistrates; it was followed by the anonymous Vindiciae contra tyrannos (1579). Resistance theory also became important for the justification of the Dutch Revolt. In the Politica (1603) of Johannes Althusius, one of the occasions justifying resistance to a supreme magistrate by inferior magistrates (roughly, members of the "ruling class"), in the case of tyranny, is for a prince or group of rulers of provinces, extended to the provincial "authorities", this matching the situation of the Revolt. Althusius was closer to Zwingli than Calvin in his approach, in fact, and clarified his views on church and state in successive editions.[9]

Hugo Grotius, expelled from the Dutch Reformed Church because of his Remonstrant views, altered the question of resistance theory in two ways. In De jure belli ac pacis he argued against the distinction from the right of self-defence and accountable government. But he also modified the question, influentially, to include the removal of private warfare from political society (an issue of pacification).[10]

In the French context, Catholic resistance theory grew on the ultramontanism of the time, and developed through controversy and political alignment. This situation came about because the opposite "cismontane" tendency, Gallicanism, came to be allied with the politiques, and the royalist view tending to divine right.[11] Therefore, the opponents of the monarchs Henry III and Henry IV in France, in the Catholic League, came to reason in favour of the limitations on royal power that their opponents denied. The position after the Council of Trent left the Jesuits opposed to the "liberties" claimed by the Gallican Church, and defenders of ultramontanism.[12] The tradition of the papal deposing power was defended, in indirect form, by Robert Bellarmine in 1586, which amounted to validating some resistance by subjects; in reply Louis Servin in 1591 wrote a vindication in extreme form of Gallican liberties.[13]

The Church of England after the Elizabethan Settlement was a church open to Calvinist ideas, rather than a Calvinist church: Reformed theology was accepted on a piecemeal basis. The 1568 Bishops' Bible contained annotations with political content similar to those in the Geneva Bible.[14] Thomas Bilson published in 1585 The True Difference betweene Christian Subiection and Unchristian Rebellion, in the context of the Treaty of Nonsuch between England and the United Provinces. It was reprinted in 1643, at the outbreak of the First English Civil War.[15] Bilson argued against religion alone as a basis for resistance, so discounting the resistance theories of Christopher Goodman, John Knox and Huldrich Zwingli as politically based.[16]

In The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), James VI of Scotland set out his views on the relationship of king and subjects, against the current contractarian theories and especially the resistance theory of George Buchanan, who had been his tutor. Besides theoretical reasons for denying what Buchanan had written in De juri regni apud Scotos (1579), and dedicated to James, he felt that Buchanan had used Scottish history to support his claims only by misprision; and those views led to disorder. These opinions he did not vary on becoming king in England five years later; as for religious strife he was a conciliarist of an older tradition, in harmony with the views of Richard Hooker.[17] Hooker's actual views on resistance theory were careful; he criticised aspects of the Vindiciae contra tyrannos, but avoided commenting in particular on legitimate resistance.[18] Churchmen who would later be seen as poles apart on theology, Thomas Morton and David Owen, wrote in the period 1605–10 on resistance theory in a way equating it with a Catholic tradition; Owen commented that the analogy general council is to papacy as peers to monarchy is false.[19]

By the time of the reign of Charles I, other considerations had come to matter more. Arminianism in the Church of England had become a source of great tension. But in theological terms Arminianism was compatible with divine right, as it was with resistance theory. The argument on resistance was going on elsewhere.[20]