[Vision2020] Libertarianism and Christianity

[Nick Gier]

Greetings:

I've writing the essay below on the back of my mind for over two 
months.  It is especially dedicated to Dale Courtney and other professed 
libertarians within the fold of Christ Church.  Again I challenge any and 
all Kirkers to answer the arguments I present.

This essay, as well as all others that I have posted, has been scanned for 
rage, hate, slander, and anti-Christian sentiment with a negative 
result.  But my scan did picked up intolerance, especially for those who 
speak with a forked tongue.

LIBERTARIANISM AND CHRISTIANITY
By Nick Gier, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Idaho
For a quick introduction to political philosophy see 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/103/polphil.htm

I first came in contact with the term "libertarianism" during the Idaho 
Congressional campaign of 1972.  Steve Symms, under the "philosophical" 
tutelage of Ralph Smeed of Caldwell, used this term to describe himself as 
he ran on the Republican ticket for Congress.  We became acquainted and 
engaged in a feisty but friendly debate, mainly through letters.  As a 
congressman he was very helpful in releasing my FBI files (heavily edited) 
of my activities during the Vietnam War.

I'll never forget one of the libertarian sayings I learned from Symms. It 
goes something like this: "A liberal will let you do anything with your 
body, but not everything you want to do with your money.  A conservative 
will allow you to do anything you want with your money, but not anything 
you want to do with your body.  A libertarian will allow you to do anything 
you want with both your body and your money."  The point of this of course 
is to show that only the libertarians have a consistent political 
philosophy, one based on maximizing personal liberty.

Most people don't realize that Symms was pro-choice at that time and also 
danced around other libertarian issues such as decriminalizing drug use and 
prostitution.  Of course he learned that most libertarian positions did not 
set well with the Idaho electorate, so he dropped the "body liberty" side 
of the motto above and called himself a "limited government conservative" 
for the rest of his quite undistinguished political career.

As a result of my interaction with Symms, I research the topic and the 
result was published as a full page article in the Lewiston Tribune 
(9/22/72).  (Those were the days when local newspapers still had space for 
intellectual discussions!) In that article I used J. S. Mill's "Essay on 
Liberty" as a basis for libertarian political philosophy and critiqued 
Symms from that standpoint.  Dean Wollenweber, a libertarian UI graduate 
student in economics, was given a full page to respond to me a week 
later.  He was an especially bright forerunner of now retired UI economics 
professor Jack Wenders.

Sometime in the 1970s James Buckley, the brother of Wm. F. Buckley, spoke 
at the Borah Symposium.   When he called himself a "libertarian Christian," 
my immediate response was that this phrase is an oxymoron.  To put the 
contradiction as concisely as possible: libertarians affirm the absolute 
sovereignty of the self, while orthodox Christians believe in the absolute 
sovereignty of God.  This is why consistent libertarians such Ayn Rand and 
her followers are atheists.

This brings us to a delicious irony.  Doug Wilson and Doug Jones have 
attacked everything modern, liberal, and secular, and yet libertarianism is 
one of the most dramatic expressions of these qualities.  Indeed, 
libertarianism, with is emphasis on free market economics and personal 
liberty is the most radical movement out of classical liberalism. Morphing 
the "fraternite" of the French Revolution's motto as "community," one can 
say while the contemporary conservatives emphasize community, the liberal 
focuses on equality, and the libertarian affirms liberty 
exclusively.  Libertarians and anarchists, their close associates, are the 
true revolutionaries of the modern age.

The conservatives and liberals who dominate in the world's liberal 
democracies operate within the bounds of classical liberalism, and they 
realize that they have to balance the three values of classical liberalism 
carefully.  In other words, good conservatives, while emphasizing 
traditional community values, do not give up liberty and 
equality.  Likewise, good liberals, while emphasizing equality, do not lose 
sight of liberty and community. My main problem with libertarians is that 
they see no need for balance, and as a result, they threaten the great 
achievements of classical liberalism.

The achievements of those political parties allied with the Socialist 
International constitute an empirical disconfirmation of libertarian 
theory. Democratic Socialist, Social Democratic, and Labor parties around 
the world have developed the most prosperous and civilized nations in world 
history.  They have broken every libertarian economic rule in the book, but 
a recent "New Republic" article (6/16/03) shows that they meet or exceed 
the US on all economic statistics except for unemployment rates.  Of course 
there is no comparison in terms of quality of life indices: the lowest 
crime rates, infant and adult mortality rates, recidivism rates, and 
smallest prison populations.  Their schools, heavily unionized and 
centrally controlled, are some of best in the world.

But let us return to savor the irony of professed libertarians in the fold 
of Christ Church.  Wilson's view of the world is premodern and 
illiberal.  He rejects the individualism that classical liberalism 
celebrates and fosters in the social and personal arenas.  Wilson has a 
premodern view of the self as a subordinate part of a greater whole. The 
"federal husband" and theocrat demands absolute obedience and tolerates no 
personal autonomy, the most important element of libertarianism. Wilson 
rejects the formal equality that all liberal democracies guarantee for 
their citizens.  He also rejects the unfettered personal liberties that 
libertarians hold dear.  Specifically, following the Southern Agrarians, he 
condemns capitalist economics as modernist and unbiblical.

The Christian libertarian rejects governmental regulations by saying that 
God is the only authority to which they can submit.  Consistent 
libertarians, however, argue that there can be no submission to any 
authority except individual conscience.  They also maintain that those who 
live at the government's largess develop bad habits of dependency that 
undermine personal initiative and integrity.  The Christian libertarian 
cannot say that dependency is healthy in religion, but turn around to say 
that the same dependency undermines personal initiative in society.  As 
Wilson himself once taught his UI students, there must be a "unity to 
truth"what holds in one sphere holds in all others.

Wilson is obviously a classical conservative, a view that affirms a natural 
hierarchy of top males who have a divine right to rule over other men and 
women, who are not equal and have only limited freedoms.  He can also be 
called a premodern communitarian, a view that affirms traditional community 
values but rejects equality and liberty for all people.  This is different 
from Gandhi's constructive postmodern village republicanism and of 
ever-widening, ever ascending circles national and international 
cooperation.  Premodern communitarians expand only by insisting that their 
own values become universal, whereas Gandhi's vision is multicultural with 
tolerance for all religions and beliefs.  For more see 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/nvcv.htm.

The only way to get libertarianism and Christianity together without 
contradiction would be to revise the concept of divine power.  In an 
article published in "Process Studies" (Winter, 1991), I argued that there 
are at least three ways to envision divine power (DP).  (See 
www.class.uidaho.edu/ngier/305/3dp.htm) The first idea (I call it DP1) is 
divine omnicausality: God is the immediate and originative cause of every 
event and every thing.  This is Luther and Calvin's view of divine power 
(and Wilson's I presume) and means, as they themselves admitted, that human 
beings have no free will.  It also means, as Luther himself admitted, that 
God is the direct cause of evil as well as good: "Since. . . God moves and 
actuates all in all, he necessarily moves and acts in Satan." This is a 
view of divine power that any reasonable being, let alone a consistent 
libertarian, must reject.

The second view of divine power is DP2.  Here God is omnipotent but chooses 
to delegate power to an independent, self-regulating nature and 
self-determining moral agents.  Such a view has a number of advantages: it 
makes an autonomous science possible--evolution simply follows the natural 
laws that God has created--and makes moral responsibility 
intelligible.  (It is significant that in the first edition of "Origin of 
Species," Darwin included an epigraph that supported DP2.)  The other 
advantage for many Christians is that God has veto power.  God can recall 
his delegated power and perform miracles, and can cancel free will and 
harden the hearts of the Pharaoh and Judas.

There are two problems, however, with DP2: (1) all attempts to make God's 
delegation of power intelligible have failed (see my article, Section B); 
and (2) many believe that divine veto power undermines personal autonomy 
and integrity even if it is never used.  (But in orthodox Christianity it 
is indeed used.) This has led process and feminist theologians to propose 
DP3, a view of divine power that gives God all possible power that is 
compatible with a truly self-regulating nature and fully self-determining 
agents.  (Indeed, if things do not have power that is truly their own, then 
they cease to exist as independent things.  Ironically, DP1 and DP2 imply 
pantheism, the greatest of all Christian heresies!) In DP3 there is no 
federal husband/father in the sky that demands absolute obedience and the 
surrender of our wills and our autonomy.

So Christian libertarians have some hard choices to make if they are to be 
logically consistent and preserve their personal integrity. Evangelical 
theologian Carl Henry states categorically that DP2 and by implication DP3 
are not biblical, but if this is so we should be ashamed of what the Bible 
says, because all people love their freedom and want equal freedom and 
opportunity for others. I personally do not want Christian libertarians to 
give up their belief in God, so I heartily welcome them to embrace the DP3 
God of their choice.  And A Happy Free Willing to All!

A Postscript on Four Wheeling. The three types of divine power can be 
expressed nicely by an analogy with driving a car. This analogy does not 
come out very well for DP1. Here God is the driver and I have kiddy seat 
with a plastic steering wheel, clutch, brake, and accelerator pedal. I am 
going through the motions of driving, but God obviously is still in 
complete and direct charge of the car. In DP2 the vehicle is a driver 
training car equipped with dual controls. I am at my wheel and God is 
letting me drive, but he can intervene and take control of the car at any 
time.  (Please note that if I drive into a bus loaded with school children 
and kill them all, God is just as responsible as I am.) In DP3 I have an 
ordinary car, I'm in complete control of the car, and God is a very 
persuasive "back seat" driver.