Even If God Were Not To Exist . . .

God's Rights Disdained

It is a boast of liberal theorists, with antecedents back to Grotius and before him to the School of Salamanca, that their accounts of law and right would be true even assuming God does not exist.

I think liberalism may indeed be the best possible account assuming God does not exist. The problem comes if we ask the opposite question:

Is liberalism the best possible account of law and right assuming God does exist? 

Given that liberalism, at least in all the forms we know it today, is absolutely committed to recognizing no public right of God's and no public duty of any individual or corporate person to God, I think the answer is clearly: no.

Liberalism's essential denial of God's rights and the public's duties to God is a problem because if God exists, on many (any?) reasonable theological views and the overwhelming majority historically (see, e.g., Moses and all the prophets of Israel) then individual and corporate persons owe some public duty to Him. Even granting that some theologies could reasonably affirm the existence of God and still deny any divine right or duty relating to the public, e.g., deism and perhaps Baptist theology, liberalism would be enforcing a particular theology over others, establishing one theological conviction over others.

If we aim really to be pluralistic and not to force men to live under a government based on certain religious views, shouldn't our governing philosophy be ready to prove itself true under the presuppositions not only of atheists but also of theists -- not only of skeptics but also Christians?

But liberalism can't because liberalism essentially involves a denial of public rights and duties respecting God, which inevitably constitutes a theological position -- e.g., the deistic or Baptist position -- or a tendentious assumption that God does not exist -- i.e. an establishment of atheism.

Established deism or atheism is the best understanding of what we have today.