Consent can mean an awful lot of things. \u00a0Many people today are inclined to think that doing all things by common consent means a\u00a0unanimous vote within an\u00a0idealized process of democratic legislation. \u00a0When people object to the claim that “the church is not a democracy” with their own appeals to “common consent” they definitely have such a reading in mind.<\/p>\n
The idea of consent, however, was originally much more rooted in a republican than it was in a democratic tradition. \u00a0The strongest modern exponents of government by consent can be traced to the British social contract theorists: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. \u00a0These men were not, however, strong advocates of government by the people – an idea that is much more associated with the Frenchman Jean Jacques Rousseau and his notion of the “general will.” \u00a0<\/p>\n
What these British thinkers were primarily concerned with was a theoretical justification for the very possibility a legitimate rebellion against a\u00a0king. \u00a0The medieval doctrine of rule by the divine right of kings provided no justification whatsoever for the common person’s\u00a0rebellion against their king, let alone his execution by them. \u00a0(A similar absence of justified rebellion was to be found, unsurprisingly, within the medieval Catholic church.)\u00a0\u00a0Having thus established the possibility of justified rebellion, consent thus meant to Hobbes and Locke nothing more than the mere absence of such a\u00a0rebellion, not a rejection of\u00a0monarchy altogether. While these two men \u00a0differed greatly on what constituted “justified” rebellion, they essentially agreed on what “consent” meant and it had precious little to do with democratic legislation.<\/p>\n
This, I suggest, is what “common consent” still means within the\u00a0church today (with\u00a0its praise for prophets, priests and kings)<\/em>. \u00a0When we “manifest” our consent by raising our hand, we are in no way voting on who should have what position, what church policy\/doctrine should be or directing the church in any sense. \u00a0Rather, we are demonstrating an absence of justified rebellion (in this case a rebellion inspired by personal revelation) and thus consensual submission to the righteous dominion of church authorities. \u00a0(Pace\u00a0the democratic tradition, “righteous dominion” is not a contradiction in terms.)<\/p>\n Most of this is probably obvious to many, but apparently not all within the bloggernacle.