Subject Unto the Higher Powers: A Radical Account of Passive Obedience

In any history of the Church of England, or the Reformation in England, one is bound to come across the doctrine of "passive obedience". This concept became key during the Reformation, particularly among churches established or integrated with a ruling regime. This concept developed along with early-modern efforts to strengthen the power of monarchies, usually concomitant with divine-right absolutism and the baroque (somewhat totalitarian) aesthetic that bedecked it. This crisis was put forward as a stop-gap, a strengthening of some institutions to prevent the rapid collapse of social legitimacy. The Gelasian dyarchy (the two-swords) had always been something of the farce (the concept was developed by a pope Gelasius who lectured a Byzantine/Roman emperor who yawned at such goofy pretensions). But after the Reformation, there was a real crisis of authority and legitimacy throughout most of Europe.

Was this a cause of the Reformation? No. Rather, I would point to the late Medieval crisis that the ultramontane papacy had created and survived, as well as the Renaissance turn to both bolstering, and undermining, absolutist regimes. The high papal hand that Leo X wielded was a product of both a highly fraught Italian politics and the short-lived victory over conciliarism. And, of course, the mood was intensified by the victorious Turks in the East, who were rapidly advancing beyond the borders of the dead Roman imperium into the heart of Europe. All of these things coincided to create a frantic mood, as various features of society threatened to overthrow pope or emperor. Sometimes one or the other backed opposition, as France supported the Florentine republic sans Medici; sometimes with both closing ranks against a common foe, as in the case of Bohemia with the Hussites.

Yet, in any circumstance, absolutism intensified as popes paled before god-princes (both Catholic and Protestant). And yet the official propaganda to support these regimes many times papered over internal weaknesses. Only really in the case of Louis XIV did the propaganda match the effective machinations of a keen schemer. In England, the rhetoric of the Stuarts provoked upheaval, as the various organs of society (in England, and in other British kingdoms) turned on each other. In the aftermath, the Church of England (which had survived exile, official sanctions/proscription, and doses of persecution) embraced the doctrine of passive obedience as a sine qua non of faith. To Dissenting contemporaries, and most modern readers, this doctrine smacked of toadyism and luke-warm erastian politicking. It was the triumph of mediocrity and the reign of quislings.

But one realize what this doctrine did. Passive obedience was, in the main, formulated as a negative. One ought to not resist the ultimate authority of the land if he seeks to punish you. This is especially noted in the cases where the supreme authority is a tyrant and persecutes the people. This doesn't mean "active obedience", or giving aid/support to said supreme authority. It simply means not resisting, not rebelling, and not attacking the right of said authority to inflict you with punishments. It doesn't mean you have to keep your mouth shut, or to not tell such authority that it acts unjustly. Rather it simply means you don't seek to overthrow said authority if it misuses its authority. Hence why, during the reign of James II, the seven bishops refused to serve the king, even as they didn't challenge his authority. To some Anglicans, this was a principled application of passive obedience that shamed the king and stirred the nation against his unjust proceedings.

But, more interestingly, is how this doctrine actually implies a level of radical ambiguity. Ironically, during the later Stuart period of William III and Anne I, and more so after the Hannoverian succession, to speak too loudly about passive obedience could get you in trouble with the government. Preaching about passive obedience was considered to be subversive by the ruling Whigs. Why? Because it really wasn't clear who or what the supreme magistrate was in England/Britain during these heady days.

George Berkeley, getting himself in a little troubled, wrote a tract in defense of passive obedience against Lockean arguments about contracts and older whiggish constitutionalist arguments. However, as much as Berekely sounds like a stick in the mud, he signifies how this doctrine is something of a basic principle that needs establishing, and not so much a recipe for political action. In other words, passive obedience was a universal virtue in the same way honoring your parents or fidelity to a spouse was. And, in the converse, rebellion was a universal vice in the same way parricide or adultery was. But these values, taken in the abstract, don't answer practical questions. Here, Berekely lays out the simple moral dimension and the complicated application:

In morality the eternal rules of action have the same immutable universal truth with propositions in geometry. Neither of them depends on circumstances or accidents, being at all times and in all places, without limitation or exception, true. ' Thou shalt not resist the supreme civil power ' is no less constant and unalterable a rule, for modelling the behaviour of a subject toward the government, than 'multiply the height by half the base' is for measuring a triangle. And, as it would not be thought to detract from the universality of this mathematical rule that it did not exactly measure a field which was not an exact triangle, so ought it not to be thought an argument against the universality of the rule prescribing passive obedience that it does not reach a man's practice in all cases where a government is unhinged, or the supreme power disputed. There must be a triangle, and you must use your senses to know this, before there is room for applying your mathematical rule. And there must be a civil government, and you must know in whose hands it is lodged, before the moral precept takes place. But, where the supreme power is ascertained, we should no more doubt of our submission to it, than we would doubt of the way to measure a figure we know to be a triangle. 

In the Various Changes and Fluctuations of Government, it is impossible to prevent that Controversies shou'd sometimes arise concerning the Seat of the Supreme Power. And in such Cases Subjects cannot be Denied the Liberty of Judging for Themselves, or of taking part with some, and opposing others, according to the best of their Judgments; all which is Consistent with an exact Observation of their Duty, so long as, when the Constitution is clear in the Point, and the Object of their Submission undoubted, no Pretext of In|terest, Friends, or the Publick Good, can make them depart from it. In short, it is acknowledged, that the Precept enjoyning Non-Resistance is Limited to particular Objects, but not to particular Occasions. And in this it is like all other Moral Negative Duties, which consider'd as general Pro|positions, do admit of Limitations and Restrictions, in order to a distinct Definition of the Duty; but what is once known to be a Duty of that sort, can never become otherwise by any good or ill Effect, Circumstance, or Event whatsoever. And in Truth if it were not so, if there were no General Inflexible Rules, but all Negative as well as Positive Duties might be Dispensed with, and Warpt to Serve particular Interests and Occasions, there were an end of all Morality. (Berkeley, Discourse of Passive Obedience, LIII-LIV)

Part of Berkeley's point here is to frame the difference between universal/general laws and concrete historical application. "Don't commit adultery" is a universal command but it doesn't actually tell you who your spouse is or every instance of what constitutes adultery. The problem Berkeley has with Lockeans and more radical Whigs is that they deny the universal law. Either because government is a contract that can be dissolved (Locke's reworking of Hobbes' naturalist myth) or because man can rebel for a higher cause (liberty, property, God's kingdom, etc.), this permits one to override an obligation to obey. Throughout the essay Berkeley deals with various concerns, complaints, and criticisms advocates of these positions would put forward. However Berkeley stands his ground: exceptional times don't permit you to sin. And if rebellion is a sin, it's always a sin, even if it's a smaller sin when compared to a tyrant abusing his own people (an argument Berkeley makes). Berkeley is interested primarily in the principle, and less so in the application. It's from the principle that people can reason. But Berkeley's work was rejected and his career put on the backburner because these kinds of arguments smelled of Jacobitism, support for the now deposed Stuarts who lurked in exile.

However, it's quite clear that Berkeley is softballing the argument in a bid to articulate what he sees as basic Christian morality. Who is the supreme authority? That's something that people will have to determine when it's not clear: is it Anne and the succeeding Hannoverians? is it James III? or is it Parliament? Berkeley discounts the idea that "the People" can be the supreme authority because it's ultimately incoherent, but this too could be on the table. And this passive obedience is directed towards this sovereign authority, not lesser ones (who don't have the right to rebel, rejecting the Lesser Magistrate doctrine of radical presbyterians). All in all, politics involved this level of epistemic uncertainty without disguising it. All Berkeley wanted to nail down is the basic demands of Romans 13.

In this way, the Anglican concept of Passive obedience was not toadyism but a faithful articulation of  New Testament ethics. While not a few Anglicans became partisans of this or that monarch, the general principle was sound: it is a vice to join revolutionary violence against the ruling sovereign and state. Ironically (a lot of irony here) this meant conservative members of a state-affiliated church (a relationship become more and more strained) had a stronger grasp of distinguishing between church and state than parliamentary revolutionaries generations before. I'm not saying these churchmen exhibited the apostolic ethic completely, or that they fully grasped the proper understanding of the church amid the worldly powers. However, what this does underline is how liberalism and dissenters were not necessarily the architects of a NT free-church tradition.

The problem of contested power is quite common and it can often lead to either a kind of rebelliouness against the unjust (not something st. Paul countenances in Romans 13) or a defacto indifferentism. The latter case is what becomes toadyism, especially as Christians become involved with hubs of power. Christians struggle to remain both residents and aliens. The separatist ethic does not amount to becoming Amish, but it does demarcate loyalty to Christ through which the ethic of passive obedience finds  a place. Loyalty to a state is conditioned by other ethical requirements, but the doctrine of passive obedience is useful to describe this conditioning. One only has to not rebel against the supreme authority's right, not support, defend, justify, or abet it, let alone praise or celebrate it. And, per Berkeley, this command does not necessarily identify where that supreme power lay.