Christian Ethics and Political Power: Origins and Evolution

Christian Ethics: Middle Ages

From the Christian perspective, man is a creation of God, and therefore, God becomes the ultimate goal, the supreme good of man. Man has to go to Him all his life to reach contemplation in another life, where he will find happiness. In St. Thomas Aquinas's philosophy, the concept of natural law took a leading role, since it is a law that exists in all humans, and it dictates what to do. This law coincides with the Ten Commandments.

Modern and Contemporary Ethics: Utilitarianism

David Hume denies that moral rules are justified by reason. Instead, he believes they depend on sentiment, as it is sentiment that leads man to talk about good and bad behavior. Someone endorses something if they like it, and vice versa. When an act is bad, it is not reason that is affected, but moral sentiment. Useful behaviors are also pleasing and therefore adopted, as they will be good not only for the individual but also for society. These ideas of Hume were also defended by other authors such as Jeremy Bentham, who was the first to talk about utilitarian ideas, and Stuart Mill. Both wanted to make morality an exact science, and so they wanted to base it on real facts. For Bentham, one should seek pleasure and flee from pain, and something is good if it produces happiness, and happiness makes others happy too.

Political Power and Legitimacy

People who live in a society have some interests, common needs, and other ends, leading to clashes. It is therefore necessary to have an organization and an authority, a person or group of people who make decisions that should be obeyed. Few thinkers oppose the existence of power, although many will criticize the excessive power often given to someone. Legitimacy refers to the source of power, that is, where a person's command over others comes from. It also refers to how the person who has authority has come to gain power.

The Source of Power

Divine Origin

Many cultures thought that power comes from God. Therefore, those who exercise power are not like other men but have something that makes them different. In many peoples of antiquity, it was even thought that the one who had power was like a God, and that his association with the divine was so strong that it was thought they could rule over human beings and nature. But this linkage of power to a divine gift is not only a matter of antiquity, as today there is still a link between the divine and political power in Christian or Muslim thinking.

Christianity

In the last decades of the fourth century and during the Middle Ages, it was thought that the power of rulers came from God, following several passages in the Bible. It was also thought that power was divided into the spiritual, which is occupied by the Church, and the temporal, which was exercised from other institutions, with the king at the top. Thus, citizens were subject to the power of the king and the Pope. During this stage, the Pope had power over all churches, all Christians, and even kings. But in the fourteenth century, the alliance between the cross and the sword began to enter a crisis. This situation changed at the start of absolutism, as the kings were not only the temporal power but wanted to become the superior of each Church.

The People as a Source of Power

To politicize the mentality now is that the power of the rulers should come from the people who elect them. Therefore, the people are the only ones who have power, so that authorities can send if they choose. This understanding of power is called democracy. The reasons that led to the idea that power resides in the people is that since the Renaissance, there has been a renewed trust in everything human, and especially in human reason (humanism). Therefore, it no longer made sense that power came from God. Another important factor in changing the mentality was the emergence of the bourgeoisie, who fought for political power in order to create better conditions for the economy.