 John is willing, under exceptional circumstances, to extend this discretion to direct political action against evil rulers. He describes two circumstances that warrant public concern: the commission by rulers of minor offenses, which can be tolerated by the community, and of flagrant crimes, which endanger the well-being of the body politic (PC: 140–41). In the first instance, citizens should express their disapproval and recommend corrective measures, but should not challenge the king’s position. In the second case, when the common good and religion are threatened by a tyrant, members of the political organism ought—indeed, are bound by the functionalist terms of the political order—to take action to deflect injury to the body. This claim forms the basis for John’s controversial doctrine of tyrannicide. Scholars have debated whether these remarks amount to a theory of tyrant-killing or merely an account of the bad endings that have come to all tyrants (Van Laarhoven 1984; Nederman 1988). John’s seemingly contradictory claim that tyrants are both the servants of God and assured of divine punishment (PC: 201–02) finds resolution through numerous historical examples of the destruction of tyrannical rulers once their ordained purpose has been achieved.