The Ultimate Sovereign, God

THE ULTIMATE SOVEREIGN, GOD

According to Webster's dictionary a sovereign is, "One who exercises supreme, permanent authority."(www.dictionary.com/search?q=sovereign) This definition would seem to be accurate when compared to sixteenth century theorist Thomas Hobbes' definition of what a true sovereign is. Hobbes believed that the sovereign be it one man or a counsel of men, rules supreme over the populous in the land. When paralleled to Christianity, there are a few evils that plague Hobbes' theory of who reigns as the supreme sovereign. God is the characterization of a sovereign.

In Hobbes', LEVIATHAN there are multiple themes that are contemplated and philosophized on however one theme protrudes through the book more than the others and that comes in chapter twenty seven where Hobbes begins to establish a theory on sin and crime. He states, "A sinne, is not onely a transgression of a law, but also any contempt of the legislator. For such contempt, is a breach of all his Lawes at once. And therefore may consist, not onely in the commission of a fact, or in the speaking of words by the Lawes forbidden, or in the omission of what the law commandeth, but also in the intention, or purpose to transgresse."(Tuck, 201) Here Hobbes is stating that when a person commits a sin, they are not only defying God's law, but they are also showing disrespect for the law of their earthly legislator. This is found to be true of God's word in first Peter in the third chapter at the fourth verse where Peter states, "Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness."(Barker, 1,950) There are other passages in the Bible that state that one must obey the law of the land as well as the laws of God. The laws of God are higher than the laws of man so there is a point of conflict here. One must uphold the laws of God before the laws of man for God is immensely more powerful than any on being on earth could ever be and His punishments are eternal. "The law of the Lord is perfectÐ'..." (Barker, 806) This passage illustrates the sovereignty of God by stating how absolute is power is. There is no wrong to be found in Him for he is faultless in everyway hence, His laws are perfect. Man can not posses this trait because we are all born into sin. Therefore, any proclaimed sovereign on earth will have faults in his or her laws. So if any person violates a law of his sovereign on earth in order to obey the laws of God, that person is simply obeying the natural law of self preservation. One must ensure their life which from a Christian perspective would mean ensuring their eternal fate.

One could even be as bold to say that having an earthly or human sovereign would be in violation of the commandments sent forth from Mount Sinai with Moses since the fist commandment is, "You shall have no other gods before me" (Barker, 116) and the second being, "You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or in the earth beneath or in the waters below." (Barker, 116) If one were to put the laws of earth above the laws of God it could be perceived as one putting the laws before God thus making them idols. This is not so say that people should not obey the laws bestowed upon them. One should only disobey a law when the law conflicts with that of The Lord's. Abortion is a primary example of this; many Christians believe that a fetus is human life and the termination of that life would be considered murder. It is obvious that there are extenuating circumstances and situations where certain actions during pregnancy are necessary, but that is a whole other paper topic. So this example will be dealt with as is for the purposes of tackling the task at hand. No law in the United States' penal code states that abortion is necessary however in communist China there are laws that state how many children a family can have. Many families in China want to have their name past on through the generations and this would require a male child. If a family is only aloud to have two children and the family already has one female, a male would be desirable. Therefore if the family has a female for their next child, they posses the option of either aborting the fetus or risk having the name die with the father; so in many cases the fetus is aborted. However if this is a Christian family in China, they would not want to abort the fetus, but they may still want to have a male child. Hence the family would break the law of the land by having more children until they have a male. This would be pleasing to God, but not to the legislature. Fear of earthly consequences is feeble to the fear of eternal consequences.

As for sovereigns on earth, there can be no such thing in existence under a Christian world view and any theory to the contrary is divergent from the word of God. According to Hobbes in chapter thirteen of LEVIATHAN, "But where God himselfe, by supernaturall revelation, planted religion, there he also made to himselfe a peculiar kingdome; and gave lawes, not only of behaviour towards himselfe; but also towards one another; and thereby in the kingdome of God, the policy, and lawes civill, are a part of religion; and the distinction of temporall, and spiritual domination, hath there no place. It is true, that God is king of all the earth; yet may he be king of a peculiar, and chosen nation. For there is no more incongruity therein, than that he that hath the genrall command of the whole army should have withall a peculiar regiment, or company of his own. God is king of all the earth by his power:" (Tuck, 83) This statement by Hobbes is an oxy-moron. If God has supreme rule of the earth, than in theory he is the ultimate sovereign and therefore no person on earth may posses the sovereign rule over any place on earth. There may be an earthly hierarchy of leaders, but they can not and would not be considered sovereign rulers because they would be in submission to God. Hence a leader on earth is to be recognized as a leader however not a sovereign. They do not posses the absolute power that God possesses because they are not perfect; they are found to have faults. Earthly leaders are to be appointed by the people through exercising their free will to vote. God would already know the outcome of any election before it were to take place but would allow it to occur to ensure justice was served to the people. Thus a candidate would be divinely appointed as well as appointed by the populous to make decisions in favor of the people while being careful not to contravene the laws of God. No man could ever posses the divine wisdom necessary to rule. This is evident through the analysis of scripture as well as world history. Any earthly leader's objective should be to guide the populous in striving for Godly