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In the sixteenth century, subjects were required to adopt the religion of their rulers. But two questions quickly arose:

What should Christians do when their “true religion” conflicted with the beliefs of the ruling authorities?

What should Christians do if civil authorities persecuted them?

Most Protestants answered by endorsing the idea of passive resistance: God, rather than human beings, must be obeyed. Romans 13, a passage often quoted in the 1500s, commands Christians to be in “subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God.” Thus in some circumstances, it was admitted, individuals might refuse to obey commands contrary to God’s law. But no sixteenth-century reformer believed forcible resistance was ever justified—until John Knox came along.

Knox insisted that if the circumstances were right, Christians had the obligation to revolt against a tyrannical monarch. Previously, it had been a sin to revolt. The Scottish reformer now said that it was a sin not to overthrow an idolatrous monarch.

Knox’s views shocked European society. How did Knox arrive at such a radical position?

Knox’s intense hatred of Catholicism, a hatred generated by the persecution of Protestants, played no small part in forming his views. But Knox was primarily a religious reformer, and his resistance theory was a means to an end: the reforming of religion in Scotland.

Knox believed that the ruler’s highest obligation was to preserve pure faith and worship. If he had found a godly ruler, a second Josiah, to establish the Reformation, no theory of resistance would have developed. But Knox found no such sovereign (with the exception of Edward VI of England). Instead, Knox spent most of his life witnessing, and sometimes running from, persecution by Catholic rulers.

Thus Knox wanted to neutralize belief in passive resistance, particularly an overdependence on Romans 13. So he turned to the Old Testament. In fact, Knox was preoccupied with issues addressed by the Old Testament: purifying national religion, holding to the covenant, and resisting authorities who promoted “idolatry” (by which Knox meant Roman Catholicism).

Knox littered his writings with allusions to Elisha, Hezekiah, Abraham, Samuel, Jehu, Moses, Jezebel, Deborah, Josiah, Isaiah, Elijah, Amos, and Jeremiah. Indeed, Knox adopted the role and rhetoric of an Old Testament prophet to 1500s Scotland.

While the entire Bible was important to Knox, his resistance theory depends heavily on concepts derived from a literal interpretation of certain Old Testament texts concerning sin (especially idolatry), God, and the covenant.

Knox’s notion of political resistance related to his belief in corporate resistance to sin. As Knox stated in a 1564 debate, the faithful, when in a minority, are required only to separate themselves from idolatry. When in a dominant position and reasonably unified, however, they must not simply separate from idolatry, they must also abolish it. And if exterminating idolatry meant overthrowing a Catholic sovereign, then such action became necessary.

Idolatry was the primary sin that concerned Knox. In his 1549 tract, A Vindication That the Mass Is Idolatry, Knox did not define idolatry literally as substituting a false god for the true God. Rather, he said, idolatry entails not only worshipping what is not God, but also trusting in anything besides God. To honor anything in religion contrary to God’s Word is to lean on something other than God. That’s idolatry.

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