Biblical Foundations of the Principles of the Christian Liberty Party

The following article presents the Biblical foundations for the principles of the Christian Liberty Party. They are succinct, cursory comments on four areas: (1) the importance of worldviews; (2) the beginning axiom of the Biblical worldview; (3) no neutrality; and (4) the source of law.The Importance of World Views

Civil government, law, politics, and economics—like all areas of life—always have an underlying philosophical foundation. This foundation should provide an explanation of human knowledge (i.e., epistemology), the nature of reality (i.e., metaphysics), and how we should live our lives (i.e., ethics). In other words, the various aspects of civil government do not stand alone; they are part of a worldview. A worldview is a network of basic assumptions or presuppositions by which we (consciously or unconsciously) place or fit everything we believe and by which we interpret and judge reality.

Everyone has a worldview or a philosophy of life (whether they know it or not). Everyone interprets all alleged “facts” in terms of his or her worldview. Thus “facts” never stand alone.

The Christian Liberty Party is wholly committed to the Christian world- and life-view.

The Beginning Axiom of the Biblical Worldview

The beginning axiom of the Biblical worldview: the Bible is the criterion or standard of truth.

In His great high priestly prayer, the Lord Jesus Christ prayed to His Father saying these words, “Your word is truth” (Jn 17:17). Note that Jesus did not merely say that God’s word is “true,” but that it is “truth.”

The difference is significant, for this statement encourages us to think of the Bible not simply as being “true” in the sense that it conforms to some higher standard of truth, but rather to think of the Bible as being itself the final standard of truth. The Bible is God’s Word, and God’s Word is the ultimate definition of what is true and what is not true: God’s Word is itself truth. Thus we are to think of the Bible as the ultimate standard of truth, the reference point by which every other claim to truthfulness is to be measured. Those assertions that conform with Scripture are “true” while those that do not conform with Scripture are not true. What then is truth? Truth is what God says, and we have what God says (accurately but not exhaustively) in the Bible.

This leads J.I. Packer to conclude, “If biblical teaching and my own thoughts clash, it is my thoughts that are wrong every time!” Thus, mankind’s findings in fields such as science, history, political theory, economics, education, child-raising, welfare, etc. must be subordinated to the benchmark of Scripture, which alone is absolute truth.

In the Biblical worldview, truth is absolute and unchanging (i.e., the same for all people in all places for all time); truth is not relative. Man, God’s finite creature, was created to think God’s thoughts after Him, i.e., to be a truth-receiver, not a truth-maker. Man does not discover truth by starting from his empirical observations, his autonomous reason, or his enlightening mystical experiences. Truth is not functional, i.e., whatever works (pragmatism). (Pragmatism is a false god that many Christian politicians have bowed down to and served.)

The beginning axiom (or ultimate authority) of the Biblical worldview is: God’s Word is truth (Jn 17:17; cf. Gn 1:1; Jn 1:1). This means that the Bible—in its entirety—is the Word of God, and it functions as the criterion or standard of truth by which all other claims to truth must be judged. The Bible is our epistemological foundation; we can know truth because “the Bible tells me so.”

The infallible, revealed Word of the-God-Who-knows-everything gives us the basic axioms by which we can make sense of any and every area of life. There is no area of life, thought, or culture in which man is not dependent upon God’s revealed Word.

No Neutrality

There is no such thing as intellectual, religious or ethical neutrality. The Lord Jesus Christ taught that “He who is not for me is against me” (Mt 12:30; Lk 11:23). The New Testament teaches that every thought is to be made prisoner of Christ (2 Cor 10:5). Jesus Christ is to have the preeminence in all things (Col 1:18; Ps 110:1–2ff). Christians must “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength” (Mk 12:30; quoting Dt 6:5). “Jesus Christ…is Lord of all” (Ac 10:36). These verses teach that all human thought must be submitted to the absolute lordship of Jesus the Messiah—all thought concerning: history, science, politics, church and state relations, economics, business, agriculture, food and drugs, health care, education, helping the poor and needy, etc. There can be no demilitarized zone between God and Satan, or between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan. God Himself has decreed this perpetual antithesis (Gn 3:15; Mt 25:41).

Applying this Biblical teaching to the realm of civil government, no civil government can be religiously, intellectually, or ethically neutral toward the present dominion of the Lord Jesus Christ. God the Father is now commanding all kings, rulers, and judges to bow in submissive obedience to His Son (Ps 2:10–12; Ph 2:9–11). The nations are the Son’s inheritance from His Father (Ps 2:8; cf. Rv 11:15). Jesus Christ is presently “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rv 19:16; cf. 17:14; Ac 17:6f; Ps 89:27), “the ruler of the kings of the earth” (Rv 1:5), and the “head over all things” (Eph 1:20–23).

Many contemporary Christian leaders promote the unbiblical notion of political pluralism. However, political pluralism is based on epistemological pluralism (i.e., all views are equally true, which is relativism). Political pluralism promotes religious pluralism (i.e., all religions are equally valid), which promotes polytheism (i.e., belief in many gods and goddesses) and relativistic ethics (i.e., no absolute right and wrong, ethical relativism). Such pluralism is antithetical to the one true God, the self-existent, infinite, personal, triune God revealed in the Bible. All other gods are imposters (1 Ki 18:21, 24; Pss 135:15–18; 115:4–8; Is 41:22–26; 43:9; Jer 10:5, 10; Dn 5:23; Hab 2:19; 1 Cor 8:5–7; 10:19f; 16:22; 1 Jn 5:21; Ex 20:3).

In sum, no one comes to a discussion having no presuppositions, no view of truth, no view of right and wrong, no worldview by which to interpret empirical data. The fact that everyone has a worldview—with its presuppositions regarding truth, morality, etc.—makes intellectual, religious, and ethical neutrality an impossibility. All humans live and work on the basis of either the Biblical worldview or some non-Christian, anti-Biblical worldview.

The Source of Law: God Reveals Justice in the Bible

Defining good and evil is the prerogative of God alone. (Parenthetically, one cannot rightly interpret the role of the civil magistrate in Romans 13 apart from this constantly-overlooked truth.) Law defines good and evil (i.e., morality). Thus every law is enacted morality and is inherently religious (contra the assertions of our Libertarian friends). Thus, the source of law for any society is always the god of that society. The question is always, Whose morality will be enacted into law?

The tri-personal God of the Bible is the only ultimate Lawgiver and Judge (Ja 4:12; Gn 18:25; Is 33:22). He alone determines and defines good and evil, justice and injustice. Man, God’s finite creature, is to be an ethic-receiver, i.e., to reflect ethically God’s moral character as God’s image-bearer. The moral law of God (summarized in the Ten Commandments, Ex 20:1–17) defines right and wrong. Thus ethics are absolute (i.e., the same for all people in all places for all time) and objective, not relative (i.e., different for different individuals, cultures, historical periods) and subjective. Ethics are not personally, culturally, pragmatically or statistically determined (e.g., by the latest public opinion poll). Normative ethics (the “ought”) cannot logically be derived from what “is.”

This has immense implications for legislators, judges, and other civil magistrates: they are not to create or enforce whatever laws seem good to them or to their constituents, or to legislate for the purpose of conserving traditional cultural practices or values; instead, they are to uphold and apply God’s unchanging revealed law (which is given in the Bible) to their contemporary situation. To choose to live under man’s laws rather than God’s law results in oppression and a broken judicial system (Hos 5:11 nkj). When God’s law is not applied, obeyed, and enforced “justice never goes forth” but “perverse judgment proceeds” (Hab 1:4).

It is also imperative for civil magistrates to use Biblical definitions for terms such as “justice.” God particularly instructs us regarding justice in the Old Testament, where “every violation and disobedience received its just punishment” (Heb 2:2 niv). To say that “every violation and disobedience received its just punishment” is to say that God’s infallible, sufficient, written Word defines and illustrates justice.

God’s law defines both sin (1 Jn 3:4) and crimes. Not all sins are crimes. Sins that God’s Word does not criminalize (e.g., covetousness, selfishness, being unloving), the state must not criminalize, for God has not given civil magistrates the authority to punish sins as such (contra some of Mike Huckabee’s policies). Biblical crimes are those sins to which God attached civil punishment (e.g., stealing, murder).

Civil laws criminalizing what God has not criminalized are unjust (Is 10:1; 24:5; Pss 82:1f; 94:20; Lk 18:6, 2, 4; 2 Th 2:3; Rv 13). A magistrate creating unjust laws is a “throne of destruction” “which devises mischief by decree” (Ps 94:20). Unjust judges are “an abomination to the Lord” (Pr 17:15). Indeed, God speaks a prophetic curse on unjust magistrates saying, “Woe to those who enact evil statutes and to those who constantly record unjust decisions” (Is 10:1; cf. 5:20). Thus the Bible is diametrically opposed to “legal positivism,” the tyrannical doctrine asserting that there is no higher authority than the state, and law is whatever the state says it is—which is the legal theory taught in every law school in America! The state is not to be the source of law!

Because God’s Word is a higher authority than man’s law, civil magistrates, as well as all others living in the nation, are bound to obey it—and will be punished by God for violating His law-Word. Because God’s Word is a higher authority than man’s law, the people have a transcendent, infallible, unchanging standard by which to judge civil laws, court rulings, and the behavior of civil magistrates. And because God’s Word is a higher authority than man’s law, the people are morally bound to disobey those civil laws in which obedience would require them to violate God’s Word, since “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Ac 5:29). This principle also applies to lower civil magistrates, military personnel, and police officers nullifying and disobeying unjust laws and orders given by their superiors.

In Summary

• 1. Everyone interprets all alleged “facts” in terms of his or her worldview.

  2. The beginning axiom of the Biblical worldview asserts that the Bible is the criterion or standard of truth. There is no such thing as intellectual, religious or ethical neutrality.

  3. The source of law is the Bible, in which God reveals true justice.

(Credit: Much of this material is taken from Robert E. Fugate, Key Principles of Biblical Civil Government, © 2007.)