Lord Acton has famously stated, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men …”

People take this statement as the highest wisdom in politics, and various Christian writers and thinkers proclaim that this statement is an essential truth.

But is it? After all, Lord Acton was a Roman Catholic of the strongest variety.

Roman Catholicism and much of Protestantism erroneously teaches that the saintly Christian man is still substantially evil, flawed and under the yoke of sinfulness. Even if so to a lesser degree. But the Scripture shows:

“For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” (James 2:10).

“Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin.” (John 8:34).

What does that say of Lord Acton’s ultramontane views and his contemporary powerful popes? It is not the power that corrupts, but bad men, when they obtain power, do bad on a grander scale.

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” (Proverbs 29:2).

Therefore, it is not authority, not wielding power which corrupts. It is sin which corrupts. But if a person is righteous, then, as the Scripture in Proverbs 29:2 quoted above states, the people rejoice.

In other words, it is good for good people to have power, and maximum power must therefore lead to maximum good.

Constantine or Theodosius did much good, as did the Protestant monarchs. Nothing has changed in this principle, therefore it is highly desirable that good people be elevated to good positions.

“He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the LORD’s, and he hath set the world upon them.” (1 Samuel 2:8).

So those supposed Christian political thinkers who raise up the human ideology over the Spirit-led Biblical view are either deceived or, worse, deceivers.

Here’s a quote showing the mistaken consequences of reasoning that power must be in some way corrupt:

“Since power corrupts and government power tends to naturally corrupt, if a society safeguards freedom of speech, its government becomes far more accountable to the people. Freedom of speech allows people to speak out and criticise the government when they think it is going awry. Consequently, freedom of speech ought to be viewed as a fundamental mechanism against the concentration of power.” (Augusto Zimmermann).

The flawed logic is that government power must be corrupt, and that the only way to deal with this is a form of libertarianism. In other words, allowing unBiblical and anarchic licence to say whatever is essentially a justification for anti-authoritarianism.

It is ridiculous to posit that the concentration of power is a bad thing, else one must reject the rule of Christ Jesus Himself! And if this is meant only for earthly government, then when shall Christian influence ever be allowed, for by such flawed reasoning, Christian government should be banned, which is the exact intention of Infidelity (consider, for example, its rigorous anti-Christian practises in the French Revolution, and to its consequences in the Social Revolution which permeated the English-speaking world from the late 1960s).

Mere socialist democracy, separation of powers by dilution, rejection of official religion and secularist removal of all religion in governance is, by its very nature, and in its origins and in its consequences, complete warfare against traditional Protestant Christianity.

The Gospel does not require some arbitrary grant of “freedom” of one sort or another to empower people to either speak out against “oppression” or else, to have the right to preach righteousness and “proselytise”.

Let us therefore turn to the higher and better way, that with the righteous, the truly ascending and attaining Christian, power is to be used well.

Christianity which is surrendered to at least the principles of Infidelity is already on its slow and tedious journey towards what is called the Left. The fact that almost all those on the so-called Christian Right have embraced the fundamental erroneous foundations of erroneous thought is deeply problematic, and requires empowered Christian action to bring Christian ideology to the sound foundation of Scripture and spiritual certainty.