An Informed Faith: The Position Papers of R.J. Rushdoony

Biblically, property and charity are personal responsibilities grounded in God’s ownership of all things, not gifts or guarantees of the state. Historically, property belonged to families and communities, fostering personal care, loyalty, and Christian charity. The Enlightenment especially through John Locke shifted property from a God-given trust to a state-protected abstraction, paving the way for depersonalization, bureaucracy, and eventually statism.

As property and charity moved from individuals, families, and churches to the state, freedom declined. Impersonal welfare replaced personal responsibility, taxes replaced charity, and owners lost real control over their property. True freedom does not come from tax revolts or political fixes, but from regeneration in Christ, obedience to God’s law, and renewed personal responsibility to care for one another under God not the state.

Freedom does not mean the same thing to everyone. In practice, there are two opposing definitions: freedom from law (lawlessness or antinomianism) and freedom under God’s law. Modern culture increasingly defines freedom as the right to reject all restraint justifying theft, immorality, censorship through “heckling,” and even silencing opponents while calling this lawlessness “liberty.”

Biblically, however, lawlessness is slavery. Jesus teaches that those who sin are slaves to sin, and that true freedom comes only through Him, resulting in obedience to God’s law as a way of life (John 8:33–36). A society that rejects God’s law in the name of freedom inevitably moves toward chaos and tyranny. False freedom leads to bondage; true freedom exists only under God’s righteous law.

True freedom is not license or lawlessness it is liberty under God’s law. History shows that societies which redefine freedom as moral autonomy or sexual license end in tyranny, while Biblical freedom places limits on power, protects property and family, and restrains the state. Israel’s law sharply limited civil and religious authority, grounding liberty in God’s sovereignty rather than human rule.

Biblically, freedom is moral and theological before it is political. “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36). Liberty flows from obedience to God, not rebellion against Him. When societies deny God, the state fills the vacuum and becomes a god itself taxing, regulating, and controlling all of life. Freedom will not be restored by policy alone, but by a renewed faith that recognizes God as the true Author of liberty.

State-funded vouchers promise relief but deliver control. History shows that wherever government money goes, government authority follows eroding the freedom, faith, and independence of Christian schools. What begins as “help” quickly becomes regulation, compromise, and eventual conformity to state standards.

Christian education has flourished precisely because it has been free from the state and sustained by sacrifice, commitment, and giving. To trade that freedom for public funds is to exchange responsibility for dependence. The cost of faithfulness is real but the cost of surrendering liberty is far greater.

True freedom always carries responsibility and risk. When people refuse to govern themselves under God’s moral law, they invite control by bureaucracies that promise security but deliver slavery. A “risk-free” society is not a free one it replaces personal responsibility with regulation and substitutes state providence for God’s providence.

Scripture links freedom to obedience, not license. God’s law requires accountability (as in safeguards that prevent harm), not bureaucratic micromanagement. When sin is excused and risk is treated as evil, freedom erodes, taxes multiply, and power shifts to unelected administrators. In rejecting God’s law, societies trade liberty for control and then complain about the chains they chose.

Historically, liberty meant a religious privilege or immunity freedom from state control because God alone is Lord. Churches, families, and professions possessed protected spheres of life grounded in Christian faith, where the state had no jurisdiction. This understanding survived into early American constitutional thought as “privileges and immunities.”

With the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, liberty was redefined. It no longer meant immunity under God’s law, but autonomous self-expression: the right to do whatever one pleases so long as others are not “hurt.” Once God was removed as the definer of man and morality, man and ultimately the state became the new authority deciding what liberty means, who counts as a person, and whose freedoms matter.

This new, humanistic liberty led not to freedom but to tyranny. When liberty is detached from God’s law, it becomes license, violence, and finally state control. True liberty, Scripture teaches, comes only from Christ and is grounded in God’s sovereignty, law, and order not in autonomous human will.

True religious liberty is not a gift of the state but a theological reality grounded in God’s sovereignty. During the Reformation, the relationship between Martin Luther and Frederick the Wise revealed this principle: faith, not political power, was the true source of protection. Liberty was understood as immunity from state control in matters of conscience, worship, speech, and instruction because these belong to God alone.

The First Amendment in the United States originally reflected this view. It unified religion, speech, press, assembly, and petition as expressions of one reality: freedom of faith. Over time, however, this understanding eroded as the state expanded its authority and faith was confined to private belief. Freedom came to be seen as a state grant rather than a divine privilege.

When liberty is divorced from faith, it collapses into control and slavery. Scripture teaches that freedom flows from obedience to God, not dependence on the state. Religious liberty survives only where faith is strong; when believers abandon the Author of liberty, they inevitably lose the liberty itself.

Throughout history, “liberty” has carried radically different meanings. In pagan cultures, liberty meant freedom from restraint especially moral and sexual restraint. It was celebrated in fertility cults, festivals, and carnivals where lawlessness was treated as a virtue and indulgence as a social duty. This idea of liberty was not about justice, responsibility, or human dignity, but about license: the supposed right to do as one pleased.

Biblical liberty stands in direct contrast. Scripture presents liberty as freedom under God’s law, not freedom from it. God’s law is described as “the perfect law of liberty” (James 1:25) because it frees man from sin, chaos, and self-destruction. Liberty in this sense is not bondage but joyful obedience a life ordered by God’s truth and empowered by His Spirit. As Paul declares, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (2 Cor. 3:17).

When societies abandon God’s law in the name of liberty, they do not become freer. Instead, they lose real freedoms religious, political, economic, and personal and descend into disorder and tyranny. License masquerades as freedom, while true liberty withers. Genuine freedom is found not in lawlessness, but in submission to the Lord who alone gives life, order, and peace.

Religious liberty recognizes Christ alone as Lord of the church and denies the state any authority to license, regulate, or define faith. Religious toleration, by contrast, makes the state supreme granting permission to religions only so long as they conform to government policy.

History shows that toleration leads to control, corruption, and persecution, while liberty produces faithful, free churches. The erosion of religious liberty today signals not neutrality, but a growing form of soft totalitarianism that Christians must clearly recognize and resist.

Rationalism treats human reason as the judge of reality and therefore reshapes God to fit man’s standards. By ignoring Scripture’s teaching that all people already know God and suppress that truth because of sin (Ps. 14:1; Rom. 1:18–22), rationalism misdefines atheism as an intellectual problem rather than moral rebellion. It assumes reason is autonomous, neutral, and capable of judging God, instead of recognizing that reason itself is fallen and dependent on God’s revelation.

Biblically, God’s existence is not something to be “proved” by reason; He is the ground of all proof and all reason. When man begins with autonomous reason, he inevitably replaces the living God with an imaginary, weakened god who answers to human judgment. Rationalism thus repeats the original temptation man seeking to be his own god (Gen. 3:5) and substitutes human authority for God’s self-revelation, preferring to judge God rather than be judged by Him.