Mandate of Heaven - Divine Right in Other Countries

Divine Right in Other Countries

The Mandate of Heaven is similar to the European notion of the Divine Right of Kings in that both sought to legitimize rule using divine approval. However, the Divine Right of Kings granted unconditional legitimacy, whereas the Mandate of Heaven was conditional on the just behavior of the ruler. Revolution is never legitimate under the Divine Right of Kings, but the philosophy of the Mandate of Heaven approved of the overthrow of unjust rulers. Chinese historians interpreted a successful revolt as evidence that the Mandate of Heaven had passed. In China, the right of rebellion against an unjust ruler has been a part of political philosophy ever since the Zhou dynasty, and a successful rebellion was interpreted by Chinese historians as evidence of that divine approval had passed on to the successive dynasty.

The greatest theologians of Europe, from John Calvin and John Knox to Thomas Aquinas, Robert Bellarmine, and Juan de Mariana, were closer in their beliefs to the Mandate of Heaven than to the Divine Right of Kings. In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, first published in 1536 and the foundational document of Calvinism, Calvin argued that legitimate governments are those ruling with the consent of the governed and in covenant with God and the people. When ordinary citizens are confronted with tyranny, he wrote, ordinary citizens have to suffer it (whereas in the Mandate of Heaven and in the theology of the Jesuits Bellarmine and Mariana, they have the right to rebellion and tyrannicide), but magistrates have the duty to "curb the tyranny of kings," as had the Tribunes in ancient Rome, the Ephori in Sparta, and the Demarchs in ancient Athens -- and indeed the Censorate of China.