At a philosophy of religion conference last year, I met one of the great 40-something theistic philosophers, Trent Dougherty. Trent completed his MA at the University of Missouri, where he was influenced by Peter Vallantyne, one of the three famous philosophical left-libertarians (who combine a commitment to self-ownership with an egalitarian distributive principle governing external resources). The other two are Michael Otsuka and Hillel Steiner. Trent suggested to me that theism can provide an attractive foundation for left-libertarianism, at least the egalitarian distributive principle part.

The argument Trent suggested (and I hope I’m reporting it correctly) is that God owns everything He creates and has given us permission to use the natural resources in the world around us. And since God loves all equally, and has special concern for the least-advantaged, God would guarantee everyone an equal share of natural resources (not all resources). This way, He shows no partiality and ensures that the poor are entitled to enough resources that, if respected, would ensure that most would not fall into poverty. The conclusion, Trent suggested, was knowable a priori based on God’s nature and the existence of the world.

Now, admittedly this was an informal conversation, so I don’t want to hold Trent to what he claimed, but I think his suggestion is interesting. I also think it’s wrong, but I want to explain both why it is interesting and why it is wrong.

The reason the view is interesting is that most libertarians want to say that if you create of X with justly acquired resources, then you’re the owner of X and X cannot be taken away from you without your consent. Insofar as these rules apply to God, if God exists (and we’re assuming He does for the sake of argument), then it makes sense that God owns the world, since He created it.

It also makes sense that God is benevolent (He is by definition), so he cares about everyone and wishes everyone to live well. So it is unlikely that God would transfer his right over nature (temporarily or permanently) in ways that disadvantage some and enrich others. So we should expect that if God has transferred his right over nature, he has done so in an egalitarian fashion.

If you are noticing a resemblance to Locke, good, because you can anticipate my reply. Locke said that God owned the world and that He gave the world to humanity in common. And yet, Locke was no philosophical left-libertarian (though he arguably had some leanings). Why? Well, there are a few reasons.

First, God recognizes that the commons isn’t fixed and that labor can dramatically increase its yield. This is why He gives us the intuition (or lays down the natural law) that those who transform a piece of the world in a productive manner have title to it, as a reward for people engaging in productive work. And this productive work, God surely knows, has positive externalities in the sense that there is more wealth in circulation for everyone. So God gives us a way to privatize the commons in order to make everyone better off.

Second, Locke thinks that God has restricted the acquisition of natural resources such that there must be “enough, and as good” left for others, which I think is most naturally interpreted as a sufficiency proviso, that so long as everyone has enough property, that others can accumulate all they like. This is why he thinks a proto-market economy helps satisfy the proviso (I’m setting aside the spoilage proviso for now), because it makes the daylaborer in England richer than a King in America. The poor person in England can’t complain about the practice of property acquisition and transfer if it makes him better off than he would otherwise be.

I know there are many complications here. But what Locke suggests is that there is a potential conflict between a property rule that makes everyone better off and a property rule that gives everyone an equal share in natural resources. Now, perhaps for empirical reasons, there is no conflict. But there is an in principle conflict, if for no other reason than that an unequal distribution of natural resources might incentivize owners to put more of nature into economic circulation, and some of the resources in circulation reach others through properly rights-respecting institutions.

In other words, God may have to choose between a sufficientarian property rule and an egalitarian property rule, given the goods he wishes to realize within a world of scarcity.*

If God does have to choose, which rule is He going to go for? Well, my intuitions say sufficiency. Trent’s seemed to be equality. (Or perhaps priority.)

But this suggests a problem with the method that the argument depends on. Given that our intuitions differ, perhaps we cannot determine a priori which property rules God follows. In other words, it just isn’t clear a priori whether theism supports philosophical left-libertarianism or some sufficiency-bound version of right-libertarianism (which I endorse).

Perhaps our clashing intuitions could be resolved in some way or another. But this is at least the first step in identifying a problem using theism to justify left-libertarianism. Theism just doesn’t advance the sufficiency-equality debate very much.**

That said, I do think theism makes the standard right-libertarian view that no one owns natural resources until they are homesteaded implausible, since it is hard to deny that God owns those natural resources.

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* Yes, this implies there are logical limits on God’s power; no, that does not mean that God is not all-powerful – being omnipotent means being able to realize any state of affairs that does not contain a violation of a logical limit.

** This is not because God’s will makes no moral difference in our rights and duties; even if you reject divine command theory, that view is surely false. For instance, believers in God may have duties to serve and worship Him, so God makes a moral difference just by existing and having a relationship with some of His creatures.