Introduction to Libertarian Theology

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

United States Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Libertarian political philosophy is rooted in the Declaration of Independence, and its assertion that all power and rights are given to men by God, not by government, that government receives its powers when granted them from the citizens, and thus, anything that doesn’t need the government to do it, shouldn’t have the government doing it.

Most Political Science courses today, and most theories of government, work in the other direction: that government has all powers and grants or limits those powers when it chooses to give freedom to its subjects. Said freedoms can be removed at any time when the government so decides it is best (don’t try to define “best”).

Most theology today aligns itself with the description of governments and political science that I outlined above: that God has all power, grants freedoms on a whim, and can remove those freedoms upon his divine whim. Of course, being divine, his “Best” is best and should not be questioned.

But what if we have it backwards? What if the true understanding of God is not in his three Omnis (Omniscience, Omnipotence, Omnipresence) but in his limitations? What if God is not seeking subjects but citizens, not slaves, but children? Or to phrase it in a way I have done for some time now: How can God be Omnipotent if he doesn’t have the power to limit Himself? And is it in these limitations that we come to understand the true nature of God? How and Why has God chosen to limit Himself? What does He seek to accomplish that could not happen any other way?

And thus I work my way back to the Declaration of Independence. God limited Himself to grant us Free Will, as seen in “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” Because Free Will was the only way He could have children that could love Him, instead of robots and slaves that could not. That knowing the pain it would cause Him and us he yet chose to create and give us that Free Will, not because He needed us to love Him, but because He was so full of love that it overflowed into its creation of us, and our Free Will, even knowing the pain involved, He deemed it worth all the suffering and cost. That we were worth it all, including the death of His Son on the Cross.

And flowing out of this is the one key tenet of Libertarian Theology: God never abrogates our free will. He never coerces but only entices and lures. He neither sends people to hell, annihilates his enemies, or makes us do anything we don’t want to do. We create our own hells when we choose to reject God, and he allows us that liberty, and we find there is nothing there.

So now you have your start on Libertarian Theology: A God of absolute power who chooses to become powerless to grant us free will, to grant us “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Note, that was the pursuit of happiness, not happiness itself. Obtaining happiness itself depends on the choices we make with our liberty, and whether we give up both life and liberty in our pursuit.