CORE: Christian Vision of a Free Government

To be free and flourishing, a society needs (1) the rule of law and (2) freedom. A free and flourishing people must be obligated in law not to wrong each other and they must have power and liberty of choice and action to decide for themselves what is to be done. The purpose of government is to secure those two conditions. Right away we run into an obstacle. For the dominant view today is that the rule of law and freedom are in opposition to each other in a zero-sum calculus. The more law a society has, the less freedom, and vice versa. But the Christian conception of government does not require us to choose between the rule of law and freedom. It allows us to have both.