Who has the right to rule over you?

For the Christian, this raises theological as well as political questions.

Of course, from the Judeo-Christian perspective, God stands as the ultimate sovereign. II Chronicles 29:11-12 describes the sovereignty of God.

“Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours. Yours is the kingdom, O Lord, and you are exalted as head above all. Both riches and honor come from you, and you rule over all. In your hand are power and might, and in your hand it is to make great and to give strength to all.”

Clearly, a sovereign God has the right to rule over every person. But He chooses not  to exercise complete complete power over humanity. Every sovereign has the right to delegate power to others. God chose to grant humankind dominion over the earth. God retained sovereignty, but delegated some authority and power to us.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’” (Gen. 1:26)

Again, God always remains sovereign, but grants us autonomy to freely choose whether we wish to live under his dominion – at least for as long as we remain on earth. We can reject his rule and govern ourselves. While we were “bought with a price,” until we submit to God, we maintain self-ownership. During our earthly life, we retain complete control over ourselves. In other words, for our span of years on earth, we possess a “limited” sovereignty – limited to our lifetime.

This fact has important ramifications when it comes to political rule.

Through early human history, rulers were thought to hold their positions of authority by divine right or sheer force of will. In other words, it was assumed kings had an inherent, God-given right to rule. Their authority was unquestionable. They stood above the common man.

Robert Filmer was an English political theorist. In his best known work, Patriarcha (1680), he defended this “divine right of kings.”

“Men are not born free, and therefore could never have the liberty to choose either governors or forms of government. Princes have the powers absolute and by divine right; for slaves could never have the right of compact or consent. Adam was an absolute monarch, and so are all princes ever since.”

In his First Treatise of Government, John Locke demolishes this idea. He builds his argument based on the principle of equality – no person naturally stands above others. We all have an equal right to direct our own lives.

“Man has a natural freedom, notwithstanding all our author [Filmer] confidently says to the contrary, since all that share in the same common nature, faculties, and powers, are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the same common rights and privileges, till the manifest appointment of God, who is ‘Lord over all blessed forever,’ can be produced to show any particular person’s supremacy; or a man’s own consent subjects him to a superior.” [Emphasis added]

If we accept this Lockean conception of equality, it follows no person inherently has the right to rule over another. Because God does not force his sovereign will upon humanity, no person has the right to force his or her will on other people. Locke alludes to this idea in A Letter Concerning Toleration.

“If, like the Captain of our salvation, they sincerely desired the good of souls, they would tread in the steps and follow the perfect example of that Prince of Peace, who sent out His soldiers to the subduing of nations, and gathering them into His Church, not armed with the sword, or other instruments of force, but prepared with the Gospel of peace and with the exemplary holiness of their conversation. This was His method. Though if infidels were to be converted by force, if those that are either blind or obstinate were to be drawn off from their errors by armed soldiers, we know very well that it was much more easy for Him to do it with armies of heavenly legions than for any son of the Church, how potent soever, with all his dragoons.”

Locke draws these ideas out to their logical conclusion in his Second Treatise of Government. If all people are equal in their right to self-ownership and self-direction, government can only exist for their mutual benefit and by their consent.

“To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.

“A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another: there being nothing more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the Lord and Master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another and confer on him by an evident and clear appointment an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty.”

Locke later writes:

“Men being, as has been said, by nature all free, equal and independent, no one can be put out of this estate, and subject to the political power of another, without his own consent. The only way whereby anyone divests himself of his natural liberty and puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to join and unite into a community, for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living one amongst another, in a secure enjoyment of their properties, and a greater security against any that are not of it.”

This idea of government by consent was fundamental in the founding of the United States. Thomas Jefferson enshrined the concept in the Declaration of Independence.

“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. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” [Emphasis added]

America’s founding generation built their political system on what was at the time a revolutionary change in thought. It was an evolutionary process to be sure, but eventually the colonists began to conceive of sovereignty residing in the people, not in any part of government. Instead of a monarch or a legislative body holding plenary power, the people stood supreme.

By affirming that government derives its power from the consent of the governed and that the people can alter or even abolish it at their will, the Americans flipped the British conception of government on its head.

But we still stand one step short of carrying the principle of individual sovereignty and government by consent to its logical conclusion.

In the American system, sovereignty theoretically resides in “the people” en masse. (In practice, Americans have regressed to a system based on government supremacy.) But if every individual has the right to direct her or his own life, how do we get to the idea that a majority of people legitimately rule over the minority? What gives 50 percent plus one in a group authority to rule the others? One could argue that the people consent to majority rule. But doesn’t consent imply the right to withdraw it?

This is the fundamental problem with the “state.” We talk about sovereignty in the people and government by consent, but the state exercises complete authority and a monopoly on coercive force. Individuals cannot extricate ourselves from the state. We cannot withdraw our consent.

The principle of individual self-ownership and sovereignty can only be fully realized in a voluntary society.

The American political system was revolutionary in its time. It offered a level of liberty and personal autonomy unheard of in prior political systems. But we’ve yet to take the next step forward. In fact, the world has regressed to more deeply entrenched statism with all of its accompanying coercion, force and violence. It’s time to begin contemplating the next step forward.