God’s Caring Vice-Regent: The Lutheran Transformation of the Senecan Ideal of the Benevolent Monarch as the Basis of Absolutism and Social Responsibility

Abstract

This article centres on the role of the Lutheran confession in societal development in the Nordic countries, especially Denmark. Using the concept of social imaginaries, it argues that the Lutheran Reformation refined a monarchical ideology already existent in ancient Roman stoicism that both moved society toward absolutism and emphasized the government’s responsibility for social welfare. This thesis is documented by examples of royal ideology from material in the Danish national archives. The use of Denmark as a case exemplifies how confession can play a formative role for society and, at the same time, offers new material for the correct interpretation of Luther’s two kingdoms doctrine as an ontology and a world view.