Nestor Ravilas
“Suportahan natin ang gobyerno dahil niloklok ito ng Diyos” (Let us support this government for God has put it in power) – blustered by one religious supporter of the current Duterte regime.
The beheading of Charles I of England could be monumental event that has proven the doctrine of divine right of the king is mere human construct. None has foreseen it to happen; neither the leader of parliamentary army, Oliver Cromwell, nor Charles I himself. The fusion of temporal and divine power in the throne of England which has spawned an abusive and tyrant line of monarchs has finally come to an end. England is now under the parliament with Cromwell as its head. Soon after the fleeting reign of Cromwell’s parliament, however, the people clamored again for the return of the divine right absolutism. Thus, Charles II, son of the beheaded Charles I, revived the throne under the religious emblem of “divine right to rule”. Blood spilled all over again, first of those jurists who had sent his father to the gallows.
All discussions on political theology from Carl Schmitt to Slavoj Zizek inevitably center on the person of the sovereign, says Graham Hamill. It comes with no surprise, therefore, why modern rulers remain enchanted with the glorious days of the Caesaropapists, those sovereign kings whose absolute rule made them subject to no one for they claimed to have both political and divine authority. The closest we remember are the English monarchs from Henry VIII, to James I, to Charles I, and James II, all asserted the divine right to rule. This history of political theology, where absolute power secured by divine ordination persists in our culture like the fruit in the middle of the garden where all are craving to have a taste of it.
Nestor Ravilas
By Nestor Ravilas
By Nestor Ravilas
Burn After Reading 