Limited Government Biblically Speaking
Implicit in the contrast between what we owe to God and what to Caesar is the principle of limited government. You owe Caesar your taxes, but you do not owe him your soul. Or to put it another way, there is only one Messiah, and the state is not it. Your ultimate allegiance is to God, and thus any state that asks for that kind of allegiance commits treason against the very God who grants its existence and authority. God has ordained the powers that be, and he permits some pretty corrupt ones to exist at times. But he has preferences about the kind of government we should have. He disapproves of totalitarian government in principle, because it usurps his prerogatives. If he disapproves of totalitarianism, then he must approve of limited government in principle. If he approves of limited government, then he favors those forms which support and enable it, such as separation of powers and checks and balances.
I’m not just saying this because I am a classical political conservative. The principle is not just implicitly but explicitly biblical. You can see it in the Old Testament. Why was it forbidden for the same man to hold both the kingship and the priesthood? Because then one man would have too much power. This is the first articulation of the principle of the separation of powers in history, and Saul got into serious trouble by violating that separation when he offered sacrifices himself rather than waiting for Samuel (1 Sam. 15:9f).
What is the upshot? We should thank God for the privilege of enjoying the freedoms we have as Americans, the foundations for which were laid by him in the Old Testament. Some at least of our founding Fathers were aware of this and knew what they were doing when they incorporated such principles as the separation of powers into our Constitution. We should be thankful specifically for that. And therefore, we should oppose tyranny here and everywhere, and we should never take our freedoms for granted—even as we live in submission to the legitimate authority of government.
Donald T. Williams is Professor Emeritus of Toccoa Falls College. He stays permanently camped out on the borders between serious scholarship and pastoral ministry, between theology and literature, and between Narnia and Middle-Earth. He is the author of fourteen books, including Answers from Aslan: The Enduring Apologetics of C. S. Lewis (DeWard, 2023). He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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