Divine Sovereignty

“When politics becomes the pursuit of abstract perfection by means of legislation, freedom is in danger. There has, historically, been only one counterforce strong enough to prevent the slide from democracy into tyranny, as happened in Athens in antiquity and in France during the Reign of Terror: that is the recognition of the limits of human authority under Divine sovereignty. That remains, even today, the difference between Abrahamic politics and ideological politics, between a minimalist and a maximalist state, between the idea that civil society is sacrosanct because it is not based on relationships of power, and that idea that it should be circumscribed as far as possible so that political power should prevail.”

The Great Partnership, Chapter 7, p. 122