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Theocracy-Encyclopedia.Pdf

Theocracy-Encyclopedia.Pdf

Theocracy

THEOCRACY emperor was the head of the church; and the The term theocracy signifies in governance by divine (Stati Pontificii) during the Middle Ages, in which the guidance, a form of regime in which or plays was the ruler in a civil as well as a spiritual sense. the dominant role. It denotes thus a political unit gov- In during the early modern period in erned by a or by officials thought to be divinely Europe, the republic of Florence under the rule guided. The word theocracy originates from the Greek (1494–1497) of (1452–1498) theokratia. The components of the word are theos, “,” became a theocracy in which God was the sole sovereign and kratein, “to rule,” hence “rule by god” or “ and the Gospel constituted the law. After the Protestant by god.” Reformation of the sixteenth century, there were many The concept of theocracy was first coined by the attempts to establish theocracy. The most famous is the Jewish historian Flavius (37 CE–c. 100 CE). theocratic regime that (1509–1564) estab- Attempting to explain to Gentile readers the organization lished in Geneva when he was at the height of his power and of the Jewish commonwealth of his (1555–1564); Geneva’s civil life was based upon total obe- time, Josephus contrasted theocracy with other forms of dience to God, whose moral order is declared in the scrip- government, such as , , and republics: tures. According to Calvin, a well-ordered Christian “Our [] had no regard to any of these community results from a synthesis of rule, cooperation, forms, but he ordained our government to be what, by a and order emanating from the divine laws of God; such a strained expression, may be termed a theocracy [theokra- community is unified, organized, and structured upon the tia], by ascribing the and power to God, and by idea of advancing the glory of God in the world. The same persuading all the people to have a regard to him, as the view is evidenced in the theocratic government that author of all things” (Josephus 1737). (1484–1531) established in Few concepts have changed more radically over time from 1525 to 1531. In Zurich, the city council was the than the concept of theocracy. According to its oldest lawful government of a (both church and meaning, as used by Josephus, the implication is not that canton) and administrated the divine commands from the ministers assumed political power. However, according to Bible. For interpretation of these commands the council the more modern definition in the The Shorter Oxford sought and acted on the advice of Christian ministers. English Dictionary on Historical Principles, theocracy is “a With the Puritan migration to New England during system of government by sacerdotal order, claiming divine the 1630s, theocratic were established in commission” (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on what became Massachusetts and Connecticut. For the Historical Principles, vol. 2, 1939, p. 2166), a state in New England , theocracy was considered the best which exercise political power, or, more precisely, a form of government in a Christian commonwealth state ruled by ministers. In this entry, both meanings will because only this type of government acknowledged be used. Christ as a sole ruler over the people. Spiritually saving Theocratic forms of government have existed grace was the prerequisite for admission to freemanship or throughout history. Theocracies were known among citizenship in the Puritan theocracy. The Puritans’ goal ancient people, as in Egypt and , where kings repre- was not to invest ministers with political power, but rather sented and even incarnated the deity. (In pharaonic Egypt, to appoint civil magistrates who would govern according the king was considered a divine or semidivine figure who to God’s word and will. Only “visible saints,” or those ruled largely through priests.) This was the case also with who were able to prove the power of saving grace in their early American civilizations, such as the Mayas, Toltecs, hearts, were allowed to vote, while “the ungodly,” or pro- Aztecs, and Natchez. fane people, were excluded from political power. In In , the community established by the prophet England too, during the Puritan Revolution (1640– (c. 570–632) in Medina (622–632) was a 1660), especially after the execution of King Charles I in theocracy in which Muhammad served as both temporal 1649, many zealous Puritans strove to establish a theo- and spiritual leader. The communities established by cratic government by introducing a “Sanhedrin of saints,” Muhammad’s father-in-law and successor, Abu Bakr (c. or a of the godly. 573–634), the first caliph, were also based on theocratic In the contemporary world, the regime that Ayatollah government. The largest and best-known theocracies in Ruholla Khomeini (1900–1989) established in in history were the Umayyad (the first Islamic 1979 is considered a theocracy because political power dynasty, 661–750) and the early Abbasid caliphate (the and authority is held in the hands of the or reli- second major Muslim dynasty, 750–1258), in which state gious leaders. The purpose of such a fundamentalist and religion were closely intertwined; the Byzantine regime is to organize society exclusively under Islamic reli- (fourth–fifteenth centuries), in which the gious law, the shari’a. The state in

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(1996–2001) was similar. In the first decade of the anthropology. Still, construing theory broadly as any twenty-first century, various fundamentalist Muslim attempt to systematize and explain certain phenomena, it groups are striving to establish theocratic forms of govern- is clear that theories play a central role in social science. ment in Algeria, , Egypt, Sudan, Turkey, and Many social-science pioneers, for example, Karl Marx, other Islamic countries. There are also various fundamen- Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, Sigmund Freud, Clark talist Christian groups in the United States, Canada, and Hull, and Paul Samuelson, developed ambitious theories Australia who advocate aspects of theocratic government. intended to explain a wide range of social phenomena. In , too, several ultra-Orthodox factions advocate Today the tendency is toward more modest theories with restoring the theocracy of ancient times. narrower scope. Philosophers of science have also adopted a more SEE ALSO Government; Religion; Vatican, The flexible and eclectic account of theorizing. For much of the twentieth-century, philosophers (and many social sci- BIBLIOGRAPHY entists) accepted the logical-positivist view that a theory is Belfer, Ella. 1986. The Jewish People and the Kingdom of Heaven: an axiomatized deductive system consisting of a few basic A Study of Jewish Theocracy. Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar-Ilan principles or laws (e.g., Newton’s laws of motion consti- University. tute his theory of universal gravitation). These principles Clarkson, Frederick. 1997. Eternal Hostility: The Struggle between contain a theoretical vocabulary describing entities that Theocracy and . Monroe, ME: Common Courage are often unobservable (e.g., electron, utility, social role), Press. and also bridge laws that link the theoretical vocabulary Josephus, Flavius. 1737. Against Apion, Book II. In The Genuine with observable things. Such theories are tested by deriv- Works of Flavius Josephus, trans. William Whiston. ing predictions from basic principles, bridge laws, and http://wesley.nnu.edu/biblical_studies/josephus/apion-2.htm. statements describing the test situation, and then deter- Nobbs, Douglas. 1938. Theocracy and : A Study of the mining whether those predictions come true. Disputes in Dutch from 1600 to 1650. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press. By the 1960s, every aspect of the positivist view was Runciman, Steven. 1977. The Byzantine Theocracy. New York: under attack, and today few philosophers accept it. The Cambridge University Press. notion of laws has come to play a smaller role in philo- The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles. sophical discussion and that of models a larger one. But 1939. 2 vols. Prepared by William H. W. Folwer, et al, rev. there remains no consensus about the nature of theories in and ed. C. T. Onions. Oxford: Clarendon Press. the social sciences. Some are still expressed in formal, Siddiqi, Mazheruddin. 1953. Islam and Theocracy. Lahore, mathematical terms, with basic principles (axioms) from Pakistan: Institute of Islamic Culture. which predictions are deduced. But many are less formal, Walton, Robert Cutler. 1967. Zwingli’s Theocracy. Toronto, with a looser connection between theory, on the one Canada: University of Toronto Press. hand, and explanation and prediction, on the other. Zakai, Avihu. 1993. Theocracy in Massachusetts: Reformation and However, even relatively modest theories can be illuminat- Separation in Early Puritan New England. Lewiston, NY: ing. To the extent that a theory allows one to make predic- Mellen University Press. tions, it provides some measure of control over the social world. Moreover, some theoretical assumptions are Avihu Zakai needed to guide exploratory research, or even mere obser- vation, since otherwise there are potentially an infinite number of things that might be relevant.

GOALS OF SOCIAL SCIENCE , Views about the nature of theories in social science go hand in hand with views about the nature of social science LIBERATION itself. Naturalists (e.g., in cognitive psychology) see the SEE . social and natural sciences as continuous in their goals and methods. They aim to explain human behavior by uncov- ering its causal mechanisms. As objects of study, however, people are distinctive because they think about, and so THEORY guide, their own actions. Given this sort of agency, some The notion of a theory is controversial in social science. A social scientists (e.g., in cultural anthropology) hold that single and simple conception of theory is unlikely to apply mechanistic theories are inappropriate for studying across all fields, from mathematical economics to cultural humans. The point of social-scientific theories is, on this

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