Why I am not a Libertarian - Part II

What is the Purpose of Governments?

Libertarianism also presents a completely different view of government than the view espoused by Scripture. It holds the to the social contract theory of government formulated by John Locke in the late seventeenth century. This political theory says that governments gain their legitimacy from the people since the first governments were formed when human beings decided to endow certain individuals with powers that would preserve their rights to life, liberty, and property. Therefore, governments are the creation of the people and can be formed or dismissed at the whim of the general will (Locke, of course, believed that the overthrow of governments should not be common, however). Libertarians have a very solid foundation for this theory in the American Declaration of Independence which is essentially an argument from social contract theory.

However, this theory of government is not the same as the one put forth by the Bible:

¹Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. ²Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. ³For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of the one who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, ⁴for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer. ⁵Therefore one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. ⁶For because of this you also pay taxes, for the authorities are ministers of God, attending to this very thing. ⁷Pay to all what is owed to them: taxes to whom taxes are owed, revenue to whom revenue is owed, respect to whom respect is owed, honor to whom honor is owed.

(Romans 13:1-7)

According to this famous biblical text about governments, governments are not instituted by the people but by God. Also, the text does not say that the only point of government is to protect people’s rights (that is, freedom of indifference) and in fact rights or any precursor to rights are not even mentioned in the verses. Instead, Paul says that the government is “the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer.” Thus the purpose of government is not the upholding of rights but the upholding of virtue and justice. St. Paul is writing, contrary to what many libertarians teach, that the government is a benefit to society because it establishes justice. Libertarians see government as a necessary evil and believe that the government should be extremely small in scope.

Some theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, even taught that the even if the Fall had not occurred, governments would still be a intrinsic part of human society. Even if it did not exist to restrain evil, as evil would not exist among men, it was still necessary to the ordering of society and the production of culture. This was because Aquinas believed that earth would mirror Heaven; just as God is king of Heaven, so a man would be king of society. I do not know that I would subscribe to this belief necessarily, but in contrast to modern theologies I do believe that governments exist for a positive good rather than a negative good. What I mean by this is that in libertarian thinking government is intrinsically bad, but the world would be much worse without them. Thus, governments are an evil, but are the lesser of two evils. I, however, believe in the Pauline view that governments, even ones that are not Christian, are still an integral part of God’s sovereign plan to redeem the world. They exist to propel man to excellence (redemption) not just to maintain indifference.

The reasoning behind my stance lays in a simple question: What is the first command that God gives to mankind? Many will no doubt answer that it was “do not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” Yet this is incorrect. This command does not come until Adam and Eve are placed in Eden in Genesis chapter two. The first words, recorded in the Bible anyway, that God speaks to his creation man is "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:24). God’s primary mission is to be stewards of the earth for God and rule over it. Many have seen in this, and I would agree with them, a cultural mandate. Human beings are mandated to create culture, to “fill the earth and subdue it.” The command is, in short, the pursuit of excellence. Now rule and dominion implies government of some sort or another and, interestingly, despite human sin we are never told in Scriptures that the command is removed. In fact, God reiterates a command similar to this one to Noah after the Flood subsides in Genesis 11. It would seem that, even in human sinfulness, we are commanded to pursue excellence in culture knowing that one day the world will be redeemed and made new by God.

Thus I believe that governments can have a hand in God’s redemptive plan even when they are un-Christian. First they restrain human willfulness and ensure that justice is upheld in society that enables the members of society to safely pursue the activities of their lives. Among these activities is economic, cultural, and intellectual production which aids in the fulfillment of the cultural mandate. This restraining of willfulness also extends internationally where a nation or group of nations can stand against oppressive and evil regimes across the world, whose citizens lack the ability to enact change from within. However, more on this subject will be discussed in part three.

Governments can also create infrastructure to support these activities. They can create a centralized system of roads, highways, ports, waterways, etc. In essence, governments support infrastructure. While it is true that private companies or even states/provinces can also do these things, they will not be centralized, ordered, or uniform. One only needs to look at the difference between state and federal highways to understand this. Before the Eisenhower Highway System built during the 1950s it took far longer to travel across the United States because highways lacked any coherent, uniform order. Libertarians also do not acknowledge that, historically, governments were the first institutions to provide these components of infrastructure. Governments also have the resources to create many public places and spaces. Many of the greatest edifices and parks in the world were the creations of governments. While it is true that private institutions can do this as well they are not available to the public since they rely on profits in order to function. Public museums, parks, and concert halls all help humanity continue to fulfill the cultural mandate by making cultural activities publically accessible. Governments can also create uniform environmental policies. What has completely bewildered me is the hostility that many Christians have toward environmental movements. Part of the cultural mandate is that we are stewards of the earth and that we are to rule the world wisely. This certainly implies conservation of biological diversity, resources, and scenic places. We forget that world is God’s handiwork and that our rule, while pursuing cultural excellence, should not destroy that handiwork. As one GCC college professor has put it, he would hate to have to stand before God one day and have to admit to killing God’s last bear cub. As a caveat, I admit that this must be done according to reason. Many environmentalist groups (e.g. PETA) go too far. We must balance conservation with dominion. There is also ever present dilemma of how to balance economic growth and people’s livelihoods with environmental protection.

Finally, governments can counteract the effects of sin. Libertarians offer an extremely inaccurate picture of the historic development of welfare. They preach that welfare last a late-nineteenth/early twentieth century development that was directly related to Marxism/democratic socialism. In reality, social welfare programs go back centuries to the Middle Ages. It was not uncommon for kings or lords to subsidize poor houses or economic relief for common folk. The great reformer, John Calvin, encouraged the introduction of a welfare system during his time in Geneva. Again, I must offer a caveat. I am by no means advocating the welfare state as it exists in Europe and is beginning to exist in the United States. Such programs are offer cumbersome, hinder economic growth, and make people reliant on the state. However, I think that programs that give people temporary relief and help them develop skills and seek unemployment. Therefore, I do not seek that destruction of American welfare but its reform and limitation that will temporarily aid people and help them regain their feet. I do not believe that any handouts should be long term and should be more in the form of education and career development.

I must offer one final caveat for this entire section. I have said that governments are instituted by God and serve his purpose in the plan of redemption by upholding justice and virtue in society in the forms of law, economics, and education. What I do not mean is that governments are, in and of themselves, redemptive. They may be a tool of redemption but they are not the sources of redemption. This has been a problem throughout the twentieth century; the state plays of the role of God and acts as a redeemer. This has been the case in Nazi, Germany, Stalinist Russia, Maoist China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia. What happened was that governments and states ceased to see themselves as under God and elevated themselves to the position of God and thereby became idols. The government must always be limited by some higher law so that people understand that governments only have a restrictive role, a role assigned to them by God who is their institutor. What breeds tyrannical governments is when a leader or group of leaders see the state as the mechanism of salvation and not just an aid to it according to the mysteries of God. All the great totalitarian governments did not set out to do evil but rather believed that they were achieving good. However, they became horribly twisted when they made their institutions an absolute and suddenly the end justified the means. Thus government cannot become an idol and when it does the results will be horrifying. Thus two things are important for governments. The first is recognition that there is a higher being and a higher reality above the government so that citizens and politicians realize that the government does not cover the whole of human existence but only part of it. Secondly, which is a practical application of the first, governments need constitutions that limit them to their own sphere of influence so that they do not cross into other spheres (such as the Church of family) and thus become tyrannical. More of this will be said in the next section.