https://reformedlibertarians.com/reformed-libertarianism-statement/
- " 1. Culture is human production; a response to being created in God's image; grounded in religion, either towards the true God or a false idol.
- 2. Culture is expressed in various reciprocally influencing layers of objects, behaviors, societal relations, values, and beliefs.
- 3. God created all reality ordered by various norms, which humans can more-or-less conform-to or violate.
- 4. By God's redeeming grace in Christ, the regenerate (though still sinning) are made able to increasingly conform to God-given norms. And by God's common grace, even the unregenerate in some measure can externally conform to some norms.
Principles of Society
- 5. Society is not a single whole, but various kinds of relations. Neither individuals nor communities are more basic than the other, but each are wholes themselves.
- 6. God delegates a distinct and limited jurisdiction to various different kinds of communities, none of which normatively subsumes or controls those of either the same or a different kind.
- 7. All the various kinds of societal relations normatively coordinate together emergently by the proper self-government of each.
- 8. Any attempt at economic regulation or restrictions on peaceful acquisition, ownership, or use of resources violates God-given norms and is highly destructive.
Principles of Civil Governance
- 9. Civil governance is the administration of civil justice; the adjudication of disputes over civil rights according to the norms of civil justice, with the rules and enforcement that accompany it.
- 10. Civil justice and rights concern legitimately coercively-enforceable normative claims on one’s person or property, and is properly distinguished from what is more broadly morally due.
- 11. God in Christ is the Creator and Owner of all things and humans, and has given each person a stewardship over themselves and their property, which is an ownership in relation to other humans.
- 12. Ownership, or property right, is the right to exclusive control, use, or disposal of oneself or a resource.
- 13. Corresponding to property rights is the obligation to never aggress against (to initiate, or employ first use of coercion, against) another’s person or property
- 14. The only legitimate use of coercion against another’s person or property is in proportional response to those who commit prior aggression.
- 15. This "non-aggression principle" is a God-given norm for civil justice, expressed in the Biblical affirmation of the law of proportionate retribution (lex talionis).
- 16. In the Bible God reveals His prescriptive ordination of the legitimate use of coercive retribution against aggressors, to enforce restitution by aggressors to their victims, strictly limiting civil governance to this task.
- 17. It is not only orders to sin that must be refused, but any claim to civil power or exercise of power or coercion on any pretense that violates civil justice is not ordained by God, and may be legitimately resisted.
- 18. Those who are unjust are not legitimate authorities to whom believers should submit civil disputes among themselves.
- 20. An individual or a community may legitimately defend themselves and their property or that of others, consensually on others’ behalf, using proportional responsive coercion against aggressors, including lethal coercion and enforcing restitution by aggressors to their victims. "
