One of the oddest developments in the current campaign is the alliance or intersection between libertarians and recons, as if these were synonymous positions.
To take just two examples, Gary North used to work for Ron Paul. Not surprisingly, he continues to plug his old boss. Also, both theonomic and libertarian writers contribute to lewrockwell.com.
Now, from what I can tell, the only thing that theonomy and libertarianism have in common is a common opposition to statism.
Recons, in common with libertarians, also tend to favor local government—although that isn’t intrinsic to theonomy, that I’m aware.
But once we get beyond their shared support for limited government, theonomy and libertarianism are polar opposites. Perhaps we need to present some representative statements side-by-side to illustrate the stark contrast between their respective positions.
LIBERTARIANISM
As Libertarians, we seek a world of liberty; a world in which all individuals are sovereign over their own lives and no one is forced to sacrifice his or her values for the benefit of others.
Consequently, we defend each person's right to engage in any activity that is peaceful and honest, and welcome the diversity that freedom brings. The world we seek to build is one where individuals are free to follow their own dreams in their own ways, without interference from government or any authoritarian power.
We hold that all individuals have the right to exercise sole dominion over their own lives, and have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live in whatever manner they choose.
Since governments, when instituted, must not violate individual rights, we oppose all interference by government in the areas of voluntary and contractual relations among individuals
We oppose any abridgment of the freedom of speech through government censorship, regulation or control of communications media, including, but not limited to, laws concerning: _a) Obscenity, including "pornography", as we hold this to be an abridgment of liberty of expression despite claims that it instigates rape or assault, or demeans and slanders women.
Recognizing that abortion is a sensitive issue and that people can hold good-faith views on both sides, we believe that government should be kept out of the matter, leaving the question to each person for their conscientious consideration… We oppose government laws and policies that restrict the opportunity to choose alternatives to abortion.
The Issue: Politicians use popular fears and taboos to legally impose a particular code of moral and social values. Government regularly denies rights and privileges on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
The Principle: Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships. Government does not have legitimate authority to define or license personal relationships. Sexuality or gender should have no impact on the rights of individuals.
Solutions: Culture wars, social friction and prejudice will fade when marriage and other personal relationships are treated as private contracts, solely defined by the individuals involved, and government discrimination is not allowed.
Transitional Action: Repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act and state laws and amendments defining marriage. Oppose any new laws or Constitutional amendments defining terms for personal, private relationships. Repeal any state or federal law assigning special benefits to people based on marital status, family structure, sexual orientation or gender identification. Repeal any state or federal laws denying same-sex partners rights enjoyed by others, such as adoption of children and spousal immigration. End the Defense Department practice of discharging armed forces personnel for sexual orientation. Upgrade all less-than-honorable discharges previously assigned solely for such reasons to honorable status, and delete related information from military personnel files. Repeal all laws discriminating by gender, such as protective labor laws and marriage, divorce, and custody laws which deny the full rights of each individual.
http://www.lp.org/issues/platform_all.shtml
THEONOMY
Accordingly theonomy views God's laws directing moral behavior to be a reflection of His unchanging character; such laws are not arbitrary, but objectively, universally, and absolutely binding. It is God's law that "you are to be holy because I am holy" (1 Peter 1:16, citing Leviticus). The law may not be criticized or challenged by us. It is "holy, righteous and good" (Rom. 7:12). This moral law was revealed to Israel in oracles and ordinances, but even the Gentiles show the work of the law upon their hearts and know its ordinances from the natural order and inward conscience (Rom. 1:32; 2:14-15). Who, then, is under the authority of God's law? Paul answers "all the world" (Rom. 3:19).
What is crucial to notice here is that theonomic ethics comes to these conclusions on the basis of Biblical instruction. Men have no right to alter or spurn Old Testament laws on their own say-so, social traditions, or preconceived ideas about what is morally appropriate or inappropriate in the Mosaic law. They have no right to include more in the discontinuity between old and new covenants than can be warranted from divine revelation.
Theonomy thus teaches that we should presume that Old Testament laws continue to be morally binding in the New Testament unless they are rescinded or modified by further revelation.
That general continuity which we presume with respect to the moral standards of the Old Testament applies to political ethics. John Murray called it a fatal error "if it is thought that the Christian revelation, the Bible, does not come to the civil authority with a demand for obedience to its direction and precept as stringent and inescapable as it does to the individual, to the family, and to the church"
So theonomy teaches that civil rulers are morally obligated to enforce those laws of Christ, found throughout the Scriptures, which are addressed to magistrates (as well as to refrain from coercion in areas where God has not prescribed their intervention). As Paul wrote in Romans 13:1-10, magistrates -- even the secular rulers of Rome -- are obligated to conduct their offices as "ministers of God," avenging God's wrath (compare 13:4 with 12:19) against criminal evil-doers. They will give an account on the Final Day of their service before the King of kings, their Creator and Judge. Christian involvement in politics calls for recognition of God's transcendent, absolute, revealed law as a standard by which to judge all social codes and political policies. The Scottish theologian, William Symington, well said: "It is the duty of nations, as subjects of Christ, to take his law as their rule. They are apt to think enough that they take, as their standard of legislation and administration, human reason, natural conscience, public opinion or political expediency. None of these, however, nor indeed all of them together, can supply a sufficient guide in affairs of state" (Messiah the Prince, p. 234).
The Apostle Paul affirmed that one of the uses of the Old Testament law which we know to be good is the restraint of criminal behavior (1 Tim. 1:8-10)… Although Israel as a political body has expired -- and along with it its judicial law as a constitution -- the general equity of those judicial laws is still required (Westminster Confession XIX.4). Similarly, when a public library goes out of business (and your library card thus expires), the truth of what was written in its books is not abolished or changed. Political codes today ought to incorporate the moral requirements which were culturally illustrated in the God-given, judicial laws of Old Testament Israel. George Gillespie, widely regarded as the most authoritative theologian at the Westminster Assembly, wrote: "the will of God concerning civil justice and punishments is no where so fully and clearly revealed as in the judicial law of Moses.... He who was punishable by death under the judicial law is punishable by death still" ("Wholesome Severity Reconciled...," 1645).
Those who do not favor taking God's law as the ultimate standard for civil morality and public justice will be forced to substitute some other criterion. The civil magistrate cannot function without some standard of good and evil. If that standard is not the revealed law of God, then in some form or expression it will have to be a law of men -- the standard of self-law or autonomy. Men must choose in their civil affairs to be governed by God's law (theonomy), to be ruled by tyrants, or acquiesce to increasing social degeneracy.
http://www.cmfnow.com/articles/pe180.htm
Oh, so libertarianism is freedom, and theonomy is merely a dictatorship taken to a higher level. Thanks for the clarification :)
ReplyDeleteIt reminds me of Louis XIV, except, because its God of course, THIS time the dictatorship is legitimate: "I AM the state!"
Thanks, Aaron. We can always count on your to miss the point. I didn't evaluate either position in this post. I merely presented both positions to illustrate the substantive contrast.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, the fact that a raving atheist like Aaron Kinney is a Ron Paul supporter may give you a good idea of how Ron Paul's libertarianism filters out his Christian values.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the theonomist and llibertarian come from different moral standpoints, doesn't it seem possible that a theonomist could support the same sort of minimalist gov't structure that a libertarian supports? Can one be a theonomist and believe that gov't should consist only of a police, a court, and an army? I mean, assuming you leaned towards a "that which governs least governs best" kind of philosophy to begin with.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand it (and as I have been persuaded), recons believe too many go to the state as if the state is God. People ask the state for wealth, health, knolwedge, and to make people behave properly. They assume that the state can omnipotently provide these things. This leads to a bankrupt nation (fiscally and morally).
ReplyDeletePure libertarianism, I will admit, is the other extreme and probably just as bad.
The recon position, as I understand it, is that wealth, health, knowledge, and moral behavior comes from God, through the spread of the gospel. On a Rushdoony perspective, this starts at the family level. Recons view the current civil government as hindering the spread of gospel by controlling the schools and essentially claiming to be able to provide everything you need.
I don't think libertarianism is perfect, but it might be a lesser evil than what we have right now.
semper reformanda said...
ReplyDelete“Although the theonomist and llibertarian come from different moral standpoints, doesn't it seem possible that a theonomist could support the same sort of minimalist gov't structure that a libertarian supports? Can one be a theonomist and believe that gov't should consist only of a police, a court, and an army? I mean, assuming you leaned towards a "that which governs least governs best" kind of philosophy to begin with.”
There are two separate, but related issues here. One involves the size of gov’t, how many departments and agencies, as well as whether or to what extent this or that gov’t function is best handled at a local or federal level. To some extent, that’s a process issue.
The other issues is what forms of social condition should be prescribed or proscribed by law. For example, the libertarian platform that I excerpted prizes radical individualism. It subordinates social ethics to personal ethics.
Theonomy, by contrast, doesn’t drive a wedge between the two, and a major reason that theonomy raids the OT is because the OT has far more to say about social ethics and statecraft than the NT.
So there’s an asymmetry between theonomy and libertarianism. In principle, theonomy could go along with libertarianism on process issues, but libertarianism couldn’t go along with theonomy on what forms of conduct ought to be regulated or penalized.
Hence, they don’t arrive the same destination by different routes. They may converge on process issues, but they diverge on moral issues. It’s not just a question of where they’re coming from, but where they’re going. At a substantive level, they are going in opposite directions.
stephen butler said...
“As I understand it (and as I have been persuaded), recons believe too many go to the state as if the state is God. People ask the state for wealth, health, knolwedge, and to make people behave properly. They assume that the state can omnipotently provide these things. This leads to a bankrupt nation (fiscally and morally).”
“The recon position, as I understand it, is that wealth, health, knowledge, and moral behavior comes from God, through the spread of the gospel. On a Rushdoony perspective, this starts at the family level. Recons view the current civil government as hindering the spread of gospel by controlling the schools and essentially claiming to be able to provide everything you need.”
These are valid grievances. Unfortunately, I don’t see how we can turn back the clock at this point, and that’s because I think that many female voters like the nanny state. So the gender gap kills any realistic prospect of drastically scaling back the encroachments of statism.
Another problem is that state gov’t simply follows the lead of the Federal gov’t. If you downsized the Feds and decentralized power, you would simply have the Federal gov’t replicated in miniature, on a state-by-state basis. Indeed, the states to a great extent already duplicate Federal functions. So the nanny state mentality is deeply entrenched at all levels of gov’t. And that’s because many voters are addicted to nanny state values.
“I don't think libertarianism is perfect, but it might be a lesser evil than what we have right now.”
My basic problem with libertarianism is that it installs a filter on Christian values, screening Christian social ethics out of public policy and law. I can’t tell the practical difference between a Christian libertarian politico and a secular libertarian politico.
It’s like the candidate who says about abortion, “I’m personally opposed, but I won’t impose my personal beliefs on anyone else.”
""I AM the state!""
ReplyDeleteHey, I'll take the immutable God as dictator and king over a democracy run by atheists any day.
Everybody remember the French Revolution and the guillotine?
I do understand the feeling that it may be too late to scale back the encroachments of statism. This may be true.
ReplyDelete"Another problem is that state gov’t simply follows the lead of the Federal gov’t. If you downsized the Feds and decentralized power, you would simply have the Federal gov’t replicated in miniature, on a state-by-state basis."
I think this is a good point. To keep this on the topic of your post, even after realizing your point, recons would still push for the decentralizing of the Fed, (1) because we have a fondness for recognizing ultimate law and bringing it back into the debate. The ultimate law of the U.S. is the Constitution and Bill of Rights, which limits the Fed's power over the states. The twelfth article in the Bill of Rights basically says, "And anything we forgot to mention, the Fed can't do that either."
(2) If the Fed is severely limited back to where it ought to be, it may produce a domino effect. My guess is that many state governments are exercising too much power; beyond what has been designated to them.
"My basic problem with libertarianism is that it installs a filter on Christian values, screening Christian social ethics out of public policy and law. I can’t tell the practical difference between a Christian libertarian politico and a secular libertarian politico."
I look at it in the way you look at Berkeley's idealism. It goes to far, but it is useful as a weapon against the other extreme. I find these Rushdoony quotes helpful in understanding the recons use of libertarianism:
"Man without God seeks to expand his power exponentially, whereas man under God seeks to place his entire being under the law of God. Statist power will increase and develop to the degree that the state and its people are not Christian. The non-Christian who wants to limit the power of the state will seek then to increase his own. Humanistic libertarianism is an exceptionally good critic of state power, especially in the economic realm, but it then warps its own position too commonly by replacing the power of the state with the power of the individual to be lawless sexually" (Institutes of Biblical Law vol. 3, p. 156).
"There is another important aspect to God's law, to Biblical law. It may seem to a modern lawyer or judge that 613 laws are too few. The truth is even more radical. As we shall see, of the 613 laws, many are not enforceable by man, but only by God. This means that the jurisdictions of church and state are very limited. We have here a godly libertarianism which severely limits the powers of all human agencies. Biblical law seems oppressive to those who want freedom to sin." (Institutes of Biblical Law vol. 3, p. 1)
So I think we see popular libertarianism as a tool to bring about a beneficial environment for the spread of the gospel.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteThanks, Aaron. We can always count on your to miss the point. I didn't evaluate either position in this post. I merely presented both positions to illustrate the substantive contrast.
I did not miss that point. Indeed, I noticed that an evaluation was conspicuously absent. But since you are a Christian, its not your place to evaluate the position of your Master and Commander. Yours is not to wonder why, yours is but to do or die, as the old military saying goes.
I was providing the evaluation that you were not allowed to. I think thats the point that you missed :P
Incidentally, the fact that a raving atheist like Aaron Kinney is a Ron Paul supporter may give you a good idea of how Ron Paul's libertarianism filters out his Christian values.
Even though Ron Paul is a self-proclaimed Christian, he does tend to attract a lot of atheists. I guess people who like freedom in the material realm tend to desire the same in the spiritual realm, eh?
Saint and Sinner,
ReplyDeleteHey, I'll take the immutable God as dictator and king over a democracy run by atheists any day.
I choose neither. Im an anarchist. What say you now? Would you choose spiritual freedom if given the chance? Or do you prefer to be enslaved and in chains?
aaron kinney said...
ReplyDelete“I did not miss that point. Indeed, I noticed that an evaluation was conspicuously absent. But since you are a Christian, its not your place to evaluate the position of your Master and Commander. Yours is not to wonder why, yours is but to do or die, as the old military saying goes. I was providing the evaluation that you were not allowed to.”
I’m allowed to evaluate which position is the God-honoring position. Not only is that my place, but it’s my duty.
No, I don’t have any difficulty taking orders from my Creator and Redeemer—from an agent who is infinitely my moral and intellectual superior.
And, on your worldview, you are taking orders from blind physical determinism. I prefer my Master to yours.
“I guess people who like freedom in the material realm tend to desire the same in the spiritual realm, eh?”
If atheism is true, then your freedom is an illusion. You’re just a chemical reaction, Aaron.
“Im an anarchist. What say you now?”
I say, how can an anarchist make his living as an accountant? Are you a *certified* account?
Aren’t there laws governing financial transactions? If there were no laws, you’d be out of a job.
I've read Vol. 1 of that series, I need to get volumes 2 and 3 as well.
ReplyDeleteAnd I don't know about you guys, but there is some good discussion going on here, and Mr. Kinney's comments, which are about as intelligent as our good friend Anon's "yawn" posts, are distracting...
CMA
"anarchist"
ReplyDeleteTranslation: Slavery to majority will. Same flaws as communism: an overly optimistic view of human nature.
And Aaron...
Looking back after being a Christian for 6 yrs, I can tell you right now that being a bondservant of Christ is so much more fulfilling than being enslaved to your own evil desires.
I'll take Christ over my own autonomy any day.
“Therefore having overlooked the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all people everywhere should repent, because He has fixed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness through a Man whom He has appointed having furnished proof to all men by raising Him from the dead."
Ah yes, and as to anarchists...
http://www.protestwarrior.com/misc/pw_book_sample.pdf
Aaron,
ReplyDeleteFellow Egoists like Rousseau (and later/contemporary social contract theorists) thought anarchy not in the individuals best interest. Indeed, quite the opposite was proffered. Thus, a serious philosophical case has been made by many Egoists that anarchy is inconsistent with an Egoism that takes future selves into account as the standard (this kind of Egoism is the most intellectually defensible). So, it may be that there's a hiccup between your ethical theory and your political theory.
Aaron hankers for the Hobbesean state of nature:
ReplyDelete"No arts, no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short."
The anarchist version of paradise lost. Enough to make one wax nostalgic for the good old days of yore.