A Liberty Catechism
Understanding the Origins and Applications of Liberty in Jesus Christ
The original Liberty Catechism was authored by Pastor Douglas Wilson. He appeared to be focused on catechizing children when he created it. And, indeed, I found it to be an excellent help in a high school government and economics class I taught for several years.
As I worked through the Liberty Catechism in class with my students, I also found it beneficial in my personal and professional efforts to apply Scripture to the problems we face in the public square. And it occurred to me that most Christian adults could benefit from being catechized on this topic—many lack understanding of how to apply God’s Word to our society, especially when it comes to civil government. So, over about two years, I revised it by making additions to the text, renumbering, combining old, and adding new questions, and adding scriptural proof texts (the version with proof texts may be read here).
As you will see, the bulk of it is still Pastor Wilson’s. Where possible in the context of maintaining readability, I have italicized the changes I made from his original version. I believe it is still fairly child friendly but have focused my efforts on those who want to make a study of the relationship between Christian liberty and civil liberty, especially in the context of our covenantal relationships with God and each other. My contributions reflect my own thoughts developed through years of theological study, public policy work, teaching, and discussion with others; any errors I have introduced into it are my responsibility.
A Liberty Catechism
“Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” — John Adams
1. Who is God?
A: Almighty God, Father, Son, and Spirit, is the only true God.
2. What is this God’s relationship to the created order?
A: God is the uncreated Creator of all things. He owns and is sovereign over the world and those who dwell therein, and as such has the sole right to determine how we must live.
3. How does God communicate our relationship with Him?
A: God uses covenants and the law to communicate the binding, structural nature of our personal and societal relationships with Him and with each other.
4. What is the chief covenantal obligation of mankind in history?
To exercise dominion over the earth until we have prepared it as the eternal dwelling place of God with man. We will accomplish this under the governance of Jesus Christ and through the provision of the Holy Spirit as we faithfully walk in liberty.
5. What is liberty?
Liberty is the privilege of living under the blessing of God, with freedom to worship Him in accordance with His Word. This includes obeying His commandments, honoring our covenantal obligations to Him and our neighbors, and faithfully exercising our rights given us by Him in pursuit of His purposes.
6. Where does human liberty originate?
A: All human liberty originates from outside our created order and is grounded in the transcendent will of the Creator, who is the sole giver of our liberty.
7. Why is this important to understand?
If such were not the case, then we have no liberty and no rights from God and no obligations to Him or our neighbors. Instead, we have only privileges granted to us by fellow creatures who at the moment are stronger than we are. Whatever they give, they may also take away.
8. What is the foundational government that God has established among men that we might walk in liberty?
The foundational government is self-government, or self-control, which is a fruit of the Spirit.
9. Why was it necessary for God to give this gift?
Because of the rebellion of our first parents in the Garden of Eden, we were born into slavery, a slavery to our passions and desires.
10. What is the nature of slavery to sin?
A slave to sin wants freedom from responsibility and maturity. He consequently wants freedom from the consequences of his actions.
11. How does liberation from this slavery to sin come about?
Through the objective truth of the gospel, that being the death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Christ, and this gospel is apprehended subjectively by faith alone, by faith from first to last.
12. Is widespread slavery to sin consistent with political or social freedoms?
No. Political or social freedoms are only possible for a “moral and religious people,” i.e., those to whom Jesus Christ has proclaimed liberty and set free. They are “wholly unfit for any other.”
13. What are the three governments among men that God has directly established to aid them in their self-governance?
They are (a) the government of the family, (b) the government of the civil order, and (c) the government of the church.
14. Are there other human governments besides these three?
These are the only three directly established by God. Other human governments exist—clubs, teams, societies, schools, businesses, and so on, but they merely have a human authority, and thus must fall under the authority of one or more of the governments established by God.
15. What are the responsibilities of these three governments?
Respectively, (a) the family is the ministry of welfare, education, and commerce, (b) the civil government is the ministry of justice, and (c) the church is the ministry of Word and sacrament.
16. How many of these governments are absolute?
Only the government of God is absolute. No human government is or can be absolute. God has delegated certain authority to mankind, yet it must be exercised subject to His sovereign will.
17. How are they to be kept from thinking of themselves as absolute?
Human government must confess the only true God, and the Christ He has sent. If there is no God above a human government, then that human government will want to deify itself. So kings and princes must kiss the Son; a reluctance to do so publicly demonstrates a lust to be the only true God.
18. Should we trust the governments to make this confession, or hold to it if they make it?
No. Because all men are sinners, we must constantly guard against the tendency to abuse power that all those who are entrusted with such power will face.
19. How should we guard against this kind of abuse in the civil realm?
We must adopt a constitutional order based on two sources. First from the Scriptures as God’s special revelation to us. Second, from natural revelation—how God created the natural world, together with our consciences that instinctively recognize how He made the world.
20. What two blessings does constitutional government hold in balance?
The two great values of constitutional government are form and freedom together, such that the people enjoy the blessings of both structure and liberty.
21. What are the basic limitations that should be placed on civil government?
The limitations against absolutism flow out of Scripture’s teaching on the decentralization of human authority and power. They include recognition of the sovereignty of God, the authority and responsibilities of self-governance and family and church governments, the limitations of enumerated powers, the separation of powers between the legislative, judicial, and executive, and the hierarchy of powers in federalism.
22. What is meant by enumerated powers?
The only authority humans have is the authority delegated to them by God. Thus, civil rulers possess only those powers delegated to them in Scripture and expressly granted in their country’s constitutional framework.
23. What is meant by separation of powers?
It means the basic functions of governance reflected in God’s rule over us—making laws, interpreting laws, and enforcing laws—are entrusted to different institutions within one government.
24. What is meant by a hierarchy of powers?
All magistrates, whether at the county level, municipal level, state level, or national level hold their position in trust from God. This means lesser magistrates at the state and local level provide an additional balance to the authority of the national government.
25. Is this all?
No. In addition, to better maintain decentralization of power, these basic limitations may be intermixed, such as dividing the legislative body into two houses with one house appointed by lesser magistrates.
26. Is this constitutional form of government consistent with arbitrary rule by one branch or level of government, such as regulation through executive agencies, coercive federalism, or a tyrannical local government?
No. All forms of arbitrary government are antithetical to a biblical form of governance.
27. How does the character of God affect the laws that He gives to mankind?
God is immutable, and God is holy. This means that law that is grounded in His character will be law that is fixed and unchangeable, and is law that will be good.
28. How does the character of man affect the laws that he seeks to give to mankind?
Man is changeable, like water, and he is a sinner, unholy. This means that law that is grounded in his character will be constantly shifting and will be corrupt and unholy.
29. What rights and obligations has God consequently given to us?
Because we are made in the God’s image, He has given us the rights of life, liberty, and property, which correspond to our covenantal obligations to respect the life, liberty, and property of others.
30. What is entailed in the right to life?
The right to life means that the life of every person as created in the image of God is to be respected as inviolate, and is not to be taken, except as a sentence passed by a lawful court operating within the framework of biblical justice, or taken in the course of a just war, or as a direct and clear matter of defending others or one’s self.
31. What is entailed by the right to liberty?
The right to liberty means the right to pursue any activity not proscribed as criminal by the law of God.
32. What is entailed by the right of property?
Basic property rights are foundational to all human rights. The right to property means that a man is free to apply his labor and creativity to God’s creation in order to use, buy, sell, inherit, or trade it and the goods he makes from it, and to own and keep the profits from his industry or good fortune.
33. Does this mean there is a limit on the power of civil government to tax?
Yes. A civil government that taxes to fund activities that are not in accord with its biblical or constitutional responsibilities or sets a tax rate exceeding 10%, the tithe that God requires, reflects the character of man rather than of God and sees itself as a rival to God.
34. What specific rights are entailed under these three headings?
Rights such as the right to freely assemble, or to free expression, or to keep and bear arms, or to be secure in our person and possessions, are all specific instances of, and protections for, the right to life, liberty, and property.
35. What role does the civil magistrate have with regard to our rights?
The civil magistrate does not grant us our rights, which come from God alone. The magistrate, however, must recognize, honor, and protect our rights, just as all other creatures must do.
36. How are rights and obligations related?
If a man has a right to something, then all other men have an obligation to recognize and honor that right. Every right comes with a corresponding covenantal obligation.
37. On whom does a right place this obligation?
Upon everyone: on the one who possesses the right in question, and upon all others as well—including rulers.
38. Are there two rival conceptions of rights?
Yes. One conception of rights, which relies on the promises of God, liberates a people, while the other conception of rights, which relies on the promises of men, enslaves them.
39. How does the concept of “corresponding obligation” illustrate the difference between these rival kinds of rights, such as the right to own property and the right to free dental care?
In the first instance, all others respect his right to property by not stealing from him. This is not a burdensome requirement. The second instance requires the conscription of dentists, or the conscription of those who must pay for the dentists.
40. What is tyranny?
Tyranny is arbitrary government in violation of the covenantal obligations placed upon civil rulers, detached from the authority of the Creator.
41. What is the duty of Christian citizens when confronted by tyranny?
It is the right and the responsibility of every Christian to resist tyranny as it arises.
42. How may we resist tyranny?
In the first instance we may do so by preaching, protest, or legal action. In the second instance, we may do so by fleeing. And in the final extremity, we may do so by taking up arms, but for defensive purposes only.
43. How may lesser magistrates resist tyranny?
As lesser magistrates (such as commissioners, mayors, and governors) generally don’t have the option of fleeing, their resistance will be limited to protest, legal action, and taking up arms, all in defense of those under their protection.
44. Do a Christian people have the right to resist tyranny directly themselves?
In an extremity, yes. But we are Christians, not anarchists, and we should seek to locate our resistance under the authority of lesser magistrates whenever possible.
45. Does this understanding of liberty disregard the need for a separation of church and state?
No. Church and state are distinct governments, and as such should be kept distinct and separate as institutions. But it is not possible to separate any state from its covenantal obligations to God.
46. Why is it important for our liberties that nations and peoples honor their covenant with God?
Because it was the widespread acceptance of Christianity and the nations’ covenantal relationship with God that recognized these liberties in the first place, and it has been the erosion of Christianity and the understanding of our covenantal relationship with God and each other that has resulted in the subsequent erosion of our rights.
47. What are the consequences for our rights if the prevailing worldview is that of secular atheism?
In such a scenario, our rights evaporate. Bits of protoplasm, the end product of time and chance acting on matter, that crawled out of a primordial swamp, and later climbed down from trees, don’t have rights.
48. So then, is the confession Jesus is Lord the foundation of all true liberty?
Yes. It is Christ or chaos.
49. Are all these ideas a novelty, unique to this generation?
No. They are grounded in Scripture, and have been articulated ably for at least five centuries in Protestant resistance theory. This catechism is simply a summary of this historic theological tradition.
50. Why do they seem like such a novelty?
Because enlightenment philosophers secularized the covenantal foundation of government, which included replacing it with social contract theory. This secularization continues to affect the teachings of the church.
51. What is to prevent them from seeming like a novelty?
Leaders in the church, especially the evangelical and Reformed church, must be true to the Scriptures, true to their theology, and true to their heritage. They must live up to what we have already attained.
52. How do we restore a widespread biblical understanding of our liberties, obligations, and rights under God?
Preachers of the Gospel, politicians, and all citizens as they engage in discourse on culture and public policy should bear witness to the whole counsel of God’s Word on the kingdom of God, including our covenantal obligations to God and each other, our covenantal obligation to prepare the world as the dwelling place for God with man, and the authority of self-government and of family, church, and civil governments.