With such a provocative question posed in the title, it is likely expected that this article would be long—perhaps even weighty enough to be turned into a book; however, this question is simple and, therefore, will only make up a few paragraphs. It is important to deal with because I find that many Christian libertarians get the answer to this wrong. The correct answer is that the interpersonal relation(s) in the Kingdom of Heaven are not properly monarchic but are in fact anarchic.
Anarchism (or the anarchic society) are predicated on the principle of non-aggression. In such a society no person engages in aggression and certainly no central authority engages in aggression. What is aggression? Aggression is when a person uses a physical resource in a way that violates the consent of the person who legitimately owns that physical resource. Legitimate ownership stems from first using a physical resource; therefore, a person must first inhabit a space or displace physical resources before one legitimately claims the property as their own.1 While being labeled anarchism, this is also the perspective of libertarianism consistently applied.2
By this standard, does not God qualify as legitimate owner of the world and everything within it? Of course! God owns the universe and everything in it—including humans.
If the story ended here, there would be no question that God’s governance is consistent with an anarchic order—He could do anything to us, and it would not be a strike against Him. However, God made a covenant to man—promising to man salvation. This salvation, however, is not universally administered. There will be those who are saved and unsaved.
For the unsaved, they bear the just fruits of their work. They are sent to the fiery lake primarily for original sin. For the saved, they are inducted into the Kingdom of Heaven as sons and daughters of God and citizens of the Kingdom. Sounds like a king-subject relationship, right? If we are to just go by the language of Scripture, I agree. In a sense, the Kingdom of Heaven is a monarchy, but this is not the way that this conversation is framed. Monarchy as an idea is not necessarily identifiable with all the people that have been deemed monarchs, kings, princes, etc. by historical accident—monarchy is a form a statism.
Monarchy is a form of statism—essentially, a negation of the anarchic principle. If God is to be called a king, then He is about as much of a king as a landlord is to their tenants. This may seem like it diminishes God in some way, but not so. In fact, it is much more admirable to be a legitimate owner of private property, as a landlord is, then someone who conquered what is not rightfully theirs, such as proper monarchs.
Additionally, the subjects of the Kingdom of Heaven are reformed. God plants the seed of faith in the elect, and when the elect are given new bodies and enjoy God, there is no discord. There is nothing that can be done to tear Christ’s beloved, the Church, from Him. There is nothing that He cannot command that His beloved will not gleefully and consensually do. This applies for all of eternity.
So, for the saved, God still functions as the legitimate private property owner, doing with His creation as He pleases and giving out what He has promised without exception, and the saved—the beloved of Christ—willfully submit to God. This is not the mark of a statist society. Christ can be called our King; however, to say that anything in Him qualifies as statist is to deny either His justness or the unity of the Church with Him in heaven. Denying either of these would commit one to non-Christian positions. Consequently, God cannot be properly called a monarch in the sense that it is usually posed as an alternative to anarchy as understood above. Therefore, we can understand the Kingdom of Heaven as an anarchic society rather than monarchic.
This article was written rather quickly, so I did not feel to justify everything mentioned with Biblical references. I do not think that I said anything with respect to the Christian faith that is wrong or inaccurate. If I am in error, feel free to leave a comment below.
This may seem extreme. If I ran through a forest before anyone else got there, does that mean I legitimately own it? Technically, yes; however, claims to resources cannot be maintained on the basis of personal attestations. If so, then one person could claim nearly anything, and their word must be taken for granted. That is why physical transformation of the resource is so vital to establishing a legitimate claim—because it is a step towards establishing a demonstrable linkage between land and the first user. Otherwise, the baseless claims to land must be rejected as being the idle ramblings of a babbler.
I recognize this presentation is slightly different from other presentations of the non-aggression principle, but for the purposes of this article, I don’t care. I will leave the elaboration of this for a future work.