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In the Middle Ages, the idea that God had granted certain earthly powers to the monarch, just as he had given spiritual authority and power to the church, especially to the Pope, was already a well-known concept long before later writers coined the term "divine right of kings" and employed it as a theory in political science.
Eusebius worked out this threefold classification, writing: "And we have been told also that certain of the prophets themselves became, by the act of anointing, Christs in type, so that all these have reference to the true Christ, the divinely inspired and heavenly Word, who is the only high priest of all, and the only King of every creature, and the Father’s only supreme prophet of prophets."
More significantly, in the section titled, "The Obedience of Subjects unto Kings, Princes and Rulers," Tyndale states that the "powers that be" (36) are powers ordained by God, and that resistance to earthly authority is resistance to God's authority, but the bishops have usurped earthly authority from secular rulers, and therefore, they must ...
The emperor, regarded as God's representative on earth, ruled as an absolute autocrat. [62] Jennifer Fretland VanVoorst argues that "the Byzantine Empire became a theocracy in the sense that Christian values and ideals were the foundation of the empire's political ideals and heavily entwined with its political goals". [63]
God's sovereignty, as the right to exercise his ruling power over his creation, is contingent upon his creation. God's sovereignty only takes effect once creation exists for it to be expressed upon. If the sovereignty of God is considered one of his attributes, it is a temporal one. [9]
The people in Christ's kingdom are equipped with spiritual weapons—the armor of God, the shield of faith, and the sword of the Spirit to fight against the devil, the world, and their own flesh, together with all that arises against God and his Word. The people in the kingdom of this world fight for a perishable crown and an earthly kingdom.
Coercive temporal authority over their bodies or estates could only be given by concession from the temporal ruler. Moreover, even spiritual authority over members of the Church, i.e. baptized persons, could not be exclusively claimed as a right by the Church tribunals, if the subject matter of the cause were purely temporal.
Medieval opposition to hierocracy, insisting on a clear separation of temporal and spiritual power, is often termed "dualism": in practice hierocratic and dualist positions often overlapped, with hierocrats acknowledging the distinct authority of secular princes while dualists accepted the pope's overall leadership of the Christian community.