Doug Wilson on Christian Liberty

On God, government and freedom:

The American Christian pastor and author Douglas Wilson is not afraid to speak his mind. That results in some believers strongly disliking him, and others strongly liking him. I more or less tend to be in the latter group. Needless to say, one need not agree with everything he says to appreciate his sharp mind and his commitment to Christ and the gospel.

I happen to have quite a few of his books, but one volume that I have been looking at a number of times of late is Mere Christendom (Canon Press, 2023). One good thing about this book is that it is primarily a collection of his various writings and podcasts from over a number of years. It is nice to have so many of them gathered together in one place.

Previous articles of mine have examined various themes he makes in the book. Here I want to discuss and quote from Chapter 9: “All Liberty Is Founded in Christ”. It raises a number of important points, so it is worth drawing to your attention. The chapter begins this way:

Christ is the foundation of every true form of liberty. Civic liberty is an impossibility for a people who are enslaved to their lusts. For such a people, constitutional liberties—the kind of thin surety that tends to satisfy slaves who need to be flattered by their masters. My argument is not just that mere Christendom is consistent with true forms of personal liberty. The argument is that some sort of mere Christendom is the only place where it is possible to gain and maintain true liberty. It is the foundation upon which liberty itself is built. (p. 113)

He quotes some American Founding Fathers on these matters and then looks at how the work of the Holy Spirit is essential in all this. He goes on to say this:

“Liberty cannot be locked up in a cage, whether that cage is a party platform, a national constitution, a bill of rights, or a campaign slogan. Liberty exists, or does not exist, in the hearts of the people. If the people are free, then civic freedom for the people becomes a possibility.” (p. 115)

Wilson develops this thought as follows:

“The battle for liberty never ceases, and it never ceases anywhere. Tyrants are always waiting in the wings, looking for an opportunity. When the people become complacent, drifting into sloth and lust, they have that opportunity—and they always take it. What do you have to do in order to have a garden full of weeds? The answer to this trick question is nothing.” (p. 115)

And this extended quote is quite useful:

We live in a generation that is totalitarian in principle, having accepted all the basic totalitarian premises. Denying the Lordship of Jesus Christ drives you to those premises—for if Jesus is not Lord, then there is a vacancy that men will always want to fill….

 

Secularism is simply not capable of sustaining limited government. It cannot be done, and this is a problem. Because men are sinners, they require governance. Because men are sinners, they cannot be trusted with governance. Limited government is therefore the first and foundational problem to be solved in any exercise of practical theology.

 

That said, it is a problem that cannot be solved apart from the widespread dissemination of the gospel among the people.

 

Incidentally, if you solve the problem of limited government by denying any real need for limited government, this is not an exercise in creative problem-solving, but rather an example of going over to the adversary. The Spirit of God is the spirit of liberty. The Holy Spirit is not the spirit of coercion. The impulse to control everything is the machinery of Isengard, and those who want to be a cog in that machinery have all their aspirations pointed in the wrong direction.

 

If the gospel runs freely, enough people are converted to enable them to understand the problem. If that happens, enough people are converted to enable them to begin to execute a biblical solution—a sample of which we can see in the form of government our nation had at the founding (checks and balances, separation of powers, etc.). That form of government really was a glorious achievement, and it should be no surprise that it is routinely disparaged by our generation of soi-disant political theorists, a.k.a. fiddlers and fussers. “You can’t put banana peels in that can! What are you, evil?”

 

The gospel, pure and unadulterated, is there for the thing that Christians must emphasize, and that the adversary will always attack…. (pp. 117-119)

Wilson then discusses what a godly form of government might look like:

A government appointed by God to be a ministering servant is not a government appointed by God to be a swaggering bully. Divinely established authorities can also be put under severe restrictions — and in Scripture, the authorities have been.

 

So if we withhold divine sanction from government in order to keep them from claiming too much authority, we discover that we have simply opened the door to allow them to claim all authority. If there is no recognized God over the state, then who has now become god? Who is now the highest authority in the lives of those governed? (p. 121)

He continues:

If there is a court of appeal past our human government, then in principle I have admitted theocracy. If there is no court of appeal past them, then I have just made them god. Having made them god, I discover that I am still in a theocracy, but instead of a loving Father, the theos of this system is corrupt and grasping, mendacious and low, and full of flatulent hubris. Requiring government to remain modest and within the bounds of sanity is therefore one of the most profound ethical requirements that has ever been promulgated among men. (p. 122)

And he finishes by noting that we should dismiss any form of Christian anarchy:

What governmental power exists must be fixed, defined, nailed down, watched very carefully, even though it is swathed in the duct tape of multiple Bible verses about man’s depravity. To take government down to zero is simply to create manifold opportunities for ad hoc warlords. Theocratic libertarianism suspects the heart of all men, all the time, while anarchy, eternally suspicious of the current rulers, fails to suspect the hearts of those forming hypothetical militias on the fly. (p. 123)

As I keep saying, reading the full chapter, and the full book, will give you a much clearer sense of the argument he is seeking to make here. So I recommend that you get a copy of this thought-provoking volume.

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