You rock. Will you be in town over Christmas? Let’s hang out and talk shop. I think, in all, we agree. And you are probably right to suggest that I do not understand libertarianism as much as I do.

Dave

Calvin’s third use of the Law raises concern in my mind. The didactic use, or the teaching use, of the Law says that the Law should be used to urge believers into good works. But this is a concept that is never alluded to in the Scriptures. There is no place where believers in the New Covenant are commanded to use the Mosaic Law as a means of provoking good works. Do you want to know why? The Law can’t provoke me to good works. It can restrain me from acting on my sinful passions, but it cannot excite the will to do good in me. That is the function of Grace. And that is what Paul tells us time and again in his various treatments of the relationship between Law and Gospel.

While I should hold firm to my conclusion—no law can change the hearts of men—I’ll note that I agree with all three of those points. Ironically enough, your basic argument is a non-sequitur.

Certainly the law can reveal and increase sin, but the relevant effect here is to prove the need for a savior. The law itself is not doing the changing; it is merely revealing the urgent need for an outside agent that can perform such a change.

And while the law also constrains evil—I wouldn’t use the word restrain here, and we’ll see why in a minute—it still doesn’t follow that this is changing the evildoers heart. If a person would not head in the direction that the law forbids without the law, then the law would not be necessary. The mere fact that the law continues to exist and constrain evil only shows that evil continues regardless of the law.

Your third point does no better of a job of proving that law can change a man’s heart. Law is a guide, yes! I’ll agree. This is why I used the word constrain earlier. The law is passive; it does not act. In order for a heart to change, an agent must be able to act upon it. A heavy-handed bureaucracy is not even close to a suitable outside agent.

While one of the chief roles of government certainly is to be an arbiter of justice, this in no way requires government to dictate a moral code to its people and attempt to mold them thusly in order to fulfill its obligation.

I don’t consider myself a staunch libertarian, and certainly not a Libertarian. I’d say I’m a libertarian conservative. Even so, I think you’ve got libertarianism wrong here, Dave, and I think we stand to learn a lot from libertarians. Libertarianism is strong enough to wield the sword and arbitrate justice both because, at its core, libertarianism is about protecting the rights of the sovereign individual. A libertarian would tell you that to act against another person through force—be it violence, coercion, or theft—violates their rights as a sovereign individual, and there are mechanisms in contract law and through the legal system that should be used to deal with this.

We could admit to playing semantics here by saying that, really, any law which says one thing is good and another is bad is defining a sort of moral ethic. The difference between libertarianism and what we have now, though, is a difference in kind rather than degree. A purely libertarian set of laws would include nothing that says, in effect, “You are forbidden to do this because it’s bad for you.” You see, that’s not the government’s job. That’s the Church’s job, and the responsibility of your friends and family that know and love you. Government does not love you, and it does not care for your well-being. It is irresponsible to conclude otherwise. To have your community vote to pass laws that demand you behave for your own well-being, rather than actually invest the time with you personally in an attempt to affect the proper change, reveals a stunning lack of love and a reckless use of government force against you.

One last note, in response to the pro-life comment: libertarianism isn’t anarchy. A such, laws still exist, but they are meant for the protection of the individual person from external forces. You cannot perform an abortion because it is a terminal violent act against another person without their consent. One cannot murder a person outside the womb for the very same reason.

My whole purpose for this blog post was to make the statement that a minimum of laws are fully necessary, but the design of each law should be viewed in the light that it is meant to construct a civilized system in which we can freely live with an assurance of the justice which those laws provide. (We know that justice denied is tyranny– regardless of the effect.) I don’t need politicians trying to help me be a better man and weighting me down with all manner of rules and regulations in an effort to achieve such an ever-shifting goal.

I love you bro, but this is classic false dichotomy and non-sequiter.

Of course morality can be legislated! And of course it should be! Read Calvin’s 3 uses of the law. 1) To increase sin and need for savior 2) To RESTRAIN evil and 3) to provide a guide. Now this is Calvin’s 3 uses for the moral law. How does it relate to government?

If we consider points 2 and 3, then we admit that law can actually change people’s hearts. Ideas matter, and they can affect us. Changing the hearts of humanity is only one end of law, though, and not the sole one, then. It is wrong to murder an innocent person. By your logic, this is mistake to be legislated. By this logic, we can forget the pro-life cause, then.

That’s the problem with libertarianism. It doesn’t have first principles, or at least moral principles. Conservatism has principles and acknowledges that the government does have a role in arbitrating justice. Libertarianism, in large part, sometimes acknowledges this and sometimes doesn’t. It’s first principles aren’t moral, they’re economic.

And, by the way, conservatives can have a strong passion for social justice, but still think private solutions are better than public ones. We’re all trying to answer the question of the role of government. From my end, liberalism is statism (these days) and has no place in the Christian worldview. And libertarianism doesn’t provide the government a strong enough influence to arbitrate justice and to weild the sword (both of which are afforded in Scripture), and thus I don’t find this affordable in the Christian worldview either.

Just my two cents. There are other reasons for law. Read Francis Schaeffer on this (maybe A Christian Manifesto). We can have a government that acknowledges the worldview of foundational law, and thus be a Christian worldview, even if no one in the govt. is a Christian. And that would be no small thing.

Dave Strunk