The Default of Freedom

Before we can examine which laws remain binding and how they apply, we must understand something fundamental about the nature of law itself. Law does not work the way most people imagine. The popular conception treats law as a series of permissions, as if the legislator must enumerate everything the citizen may do, with anything not explicitly permitted being suspect. This is precisely backwards. And getting it backwards has catastrophic consequences for how we think about justice, liberty, and the proper limits of civil authority.

The truth, which Scripture establishes from its opening chapters, is that freedom is the default posture of law. Restriction is the exception, not the rule. The field is vast and open; the fences are few and specific. Understanding this principle is essential to the philonomic project, for it shapes how we approach every question that follows.

The Necessity Argument: You Cannot Legislate Infinity

Let us begin with a simple observation that carries profound implications. Life presents an infinite number of possible situations, actions, and combinations. At any given moment, a human being might do countless things: walk, speak, eat, work, rest, create, travel, trade, worship, play. The permutations are literally endless. No legislator, however wise or thorough, could enumerate them all. No code of law could anticipate every circumstance, prescribe every permissible action, and regulate every possible choice.

This is not a complaint about the limitations of human wisdom. It is a recognition of mathematical reality. You cannot enumerate infinity. You cannot write a list of all possible human actions any more than you could write a list of all possible numbers.

Consider language as an analogy. There are literally infinite possible sentences in any natural language. No grammar book attempts to list them all; such a list would be impossible. Instead, grammar works differently. It establishes rules that govern an infinite domain. The rules tell you which combinations of words constitute valid sentences and which do not. Within those rules, you are free to compose any sentence you like. The grammar does not permit each sentence individually; it establishes the constraints within which infinite creativity flourishes.

“Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks.” (Matthew 12:34)

Jesus understood that human speech flows from an inexhaustible spring. The heart generates utterances without end. What structures this outpouring is not a list of permitted phrases but the moral character of the speaker and the limits established by God’s law.

Law must work the same way. A legal system cannot function by listing every action a citizen may take. Such a list would be infinite and therefore impossible. Instead, law establishes boundaries that govern infinite possibilities. The law tells you what you may not do; everything else is permitted. The boundaries are finite; the freedom within them is infinite.¹

This is not a philosophical preference for limited government, though it has implications for that question. It is a structural requirement of any coherent legal system. Freedom must be the default because you cannot legislate infinity. The only alternative is the totalitarian pretense that the state can anticipate, regulate, and permit every human action – playing God, who actually grants more freedom than that – a pretense that collapses into absurdity upon examination and into tyranny upon implementation.

The Garden Paradigm: Every Tree Except One

Scripture does not leave us to discover this principle through abstract reasoning alone. From the beginning, God Himself established the pattern. In the Garden of Eden, we find the divine model for law’s proper posture.

“And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, ‘You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.’” (Genesis 2:16-17)

Do you see the structure? The default is radical freedom: “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden.” The emphasis falls on permission, on provision, on abundance. God did not hand Adam a list of approved foods. He did not specify which fruits were acceptable for breakfast and which for dinner. He gave him a garden full of delights and said, in effect, “All of this is yours. Enjoy.”

The restriction was singular and specific: “but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat.” One tree. One prohibition. Against the background of infinite provision, one boundary.

The ratio is striking and instructive. Countless trees freely given; one tree forbidden. A garden of unimaginable abundance; a single point of restraint. The structure assumes permission and then specifies exception. The default is yes; the law identifies what is no. This is the divine pattern for law: freedom is the field, restriction is the fence. The field is vast; the fence is narrow.²

The Serpent’s Inversion

Now consider what the serpent did with this arrangement.

“Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, ‘Did God actually say, “You shall not eat of any tree in the garden”?’” (Genesis 3:1)

The serpent’s question is not innocent confusion. It is deliberate distortion. God had said, “You may eat of every tree, except one.” The serpent inverts this: “Did God say you shall not eat of any tree?” He transforms permission into prohibition, abundance into restriction, gift into deprivation.

This is the totalitarian inversion in seed form. Where God emphasized provision, the serpent emphasizes restriction. Where God said “all this is yours,” the serpent implies “nothing is yours.” Where God established one narrow fence around an enormous field, the serpent pretends the entire garden is off-limits.

Eve, to her credit, initially corrects the distortion:

“And the woman said to the serpent, ‘We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, “You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.”’” (Genesis 3:2-3)

She restates the original structure: freedom is the default, with one specific exception. Yet even in her correction, there is a troubling addition. God had not said “neither shall you touch it.” Eve has begun to extend the fence beyond what God established, the first step toward legalism, which adds restrictions God never required. The serpent’s question has already begun its corrupting work, making the law seem more restrictive than it actually was.

The pattern reveals itself: the enemy attacks God’s law by making it appear oppressive rather than liberating. He takes generous provision and reframes it as stingy restriction. He takes a single fence and implies a prison.

This satanic inversion has two offspring that plague every generation: legalism and totalitarianism. Both share the same fundamental error. Both invert the ratio of freedom to restriction. Both treat the exception as the rule.

The legalist looks at God’s generous provision and asks, “But what is forbidden?” He begins adding fences where God planted none, extending restrictions beyond divine warrant, turning liberty into bondage. He is suspicious of freedom, as if the open field were itself dangerous.

The totalitarian does the same in the civil sphere. He looks at human society and asks, “What may the state permit?” He assumes that all activity requires permission, that freedom is granted rather than inherent, that what is not explicitly licensed is suspect. He builds systems where citizens must justify their liberties rather than governments justifying their restrictions.

Both commit the serpent’s error. Both invert Eden. Both treat God’s “every tree” as if it were “no tree,” as if provision were the narrow exception and prohibition the broad rule.

Why the Fences Multiplied

Here we must address an apparent tension. If freedom is the default and restriction the exception, why does the Mosaic law contain so many more commands than the single prohibition of Eden? Has God become more restrictive? Has the ratio of fence to field shifted toward bondage?

The answer lies not in any change in God’s character but in the catastrophic change in ours. The multiplication of laws after the fall is not evidence of divine oppression but of human incapacity.

Consider what Adam possessed before the fall. He had unclouded communion with his Creator. His mind was not darkened by sin. His affections were rightly ordered. His will was inclined toward the good. When God said, “Do not eat of that tree,” Adam understood immediately and intuitively what obedience required. He did not need a detailed exposition of what “eating” meant, what counted as “the tree,” or how close he could come without technically violating the command. His unfallen mind grasped the principle; his unfallen heart embraced it; his unfallen will could execute it.

One command was sufficient because one command was comprehensible. The just man, as Paul would later write, does not need the law to be laid down for him; he already knows what righteousness requires (1 Timothy 1:9). Adam was that just man. The law written on his heart was legible without commentary.

But the fall shattered this clarity. Sin darkened the mind, disordered the affections, and enslaved the will. Now the same human being who once grasped righteousness intuitively became expert at self-deception, rationalization, and the exploitation of ambiguity. “Did God actually say?” became not merely the serpent’s question but the perpetual posture of the fallen heart, always probing for loopholes, always seeking to minimize obligation while maximizing license.

In this condition, a single command would be endlessly evaded. Tell the fallen man “do not steal,” and he will invent a thousand ways to take what is not his while technically avoiding theft. Tell him “do not murder,” and he will find ways to destroy his brother while keeping his hands clean of blood. Christ Himself exposed this pattern when He indicted the Pharisees for using their traditions to evade the Fifth Commandment: “You say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban”’ – and so you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, thus making void the word of God by your tradition” (Mark 7:11-13). The command was clear; the evasion was ingenious. The unfallen man needed one fence; the fallen man needs the fence to be specified, illustrated, and applied to every circumstance he might exploit.

This is why the Mosaic law expands the Decalogue into case after case. The eighth commandment says “do not steal.” But what about wages withheld overnight from a laborer who needs them? What about the man who “finds” an animal that wandered from its owner? What about the creditor who takes a widow’s cloak as collateral? Each case law is an instance of the same principle (respect for another’s property), but fallen man needs each instance spelled out because he will exploit any ambiguity.

The multiplication of laws, therefore, is not a tightening of the fences but a clarification of where the fences stand. The field remains vast. Freedom remains the default. But now the boundaries must be marked more explicitly because fallen eyes no longer see them clearly. The man with perfect vision needs only a gesture toward the property line; the man with impaired vision needs the line surveyed, staked, and posted with signs.

Think of it this way: a child of three needs different instruction than a youth of eighteen, not because the moral law has changed but because the child’s capacity to understand and apply it differs. Similarly, unfallen Adam and fallen Israel stand in different relations to the same moral reality. The content of righteousness has not changed. The pedagogy has changed because the pupil has changed.

This understanding prevents two errors. First, it prevents us from viewing the Mosaic law as somehow more oppressive than the Edenic arrangement. The law is not a reduction of liberty; it is an accommodation to incapacity. The fallen man who complains about the detailed case laws is like the poor student who complains about the textbook’s length; the length exists because he needs more explanation, not because the subject has become more complicated.

Second, it prevents us from imagining that regeneration abolishes the need for detailed instruction. We are renewed in Christ, but we are not yet perfected. The noetic effects of sin³ are being healed but are not yet fully healed.

The pattern of Eden remains: freedom is the default, restriction is the exception. But the expression of that pattern must now accommodate fallen capacities. The single tree has become a detailed survey of the boundary, not because God planted more forbidden trees, but because we can no longer see the one He planted without extensive marking.

The Psalmist’s Broad Place

Scripture repeatedly confirms that God’s law, rightly understood, liberates rather than constricts. The imagery is not of walls closing in but of spaces opening up.

“Out of my distress I called on the LORD; the LORD answered me and set me free in a broad place.” (Psalm 118:5, ESV margin)

“I shall walk in a broad place, for I have sought your precepts.” (Psalm 119:45)

A “broad place” is the opposite of confinement. The psalmist does not say, “I sought your precepts and found myself hemmed in.” He says he walks in a broad place precisely because he has sought God’s precepts. The law is not a narrowing corridor but an open country. Those who keep it find freedom, not bondage.

This is why James calls God’s law “the perfect law, the law of liberty” (James 1:25). The paradox dissolves when we understand the default of freedom. The law establishes boundaries; within those boundaries, liberty flourishes. The boundaries are for our protection, not our imprisonment. Remove them and you do not have more freedom but chaos, the false freedom of the man who tears down his garden walls only to see his garden overrun with weeds.

Peter likewise warns against misusing freedom while affirming its reality: “Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God” (1 Peter 2:16). Notice that he affirms we are free. The danger he identifies is not freedom itself but its misuse. The default of freedom remains; the fence against evil remains. Both are necessary.

Paul exults: “For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery” (Galatians 5:1). The gospel does not impose a new legalism; it delivers from bondage into liberty. The pattern of Eden is restored in Christ: abundant provision with specific boundaries, a vast field with clear fences.

Implications for Civil Justice

What does this principle mean for civil law? Several conclusions follow directly.

First, the burden of proof lies on restriction, not liberty.⁴

When a legislator proposes to restrict some human activity, the question is not “Why should this be permitted?” but “Why should this be forbidden?” The default is that citizens may do as they please. The state must justify its restrictions; citizens need not justify their freedoms.

This is not libertarianism derived from autonomous individualism. It is a structural necessity derived from the nature of law itself. You cannot enumerate all permissible actions; therefore, permission must be assumed. You can only enumerate specific prohibitions; therefore, the burden falls on those who would restrict.

The question before any just legislature is never “Shall we grant this liberty?” but “Shall we impose this restriction?” The liberty is already present. The restriction requires justification.

Second, general equity identifies the fences, not the field.

The work of philonomy is to identify which moral boundaries established in Scripture continue to bind civil society. We are asking: What are the fences? What restrictions does justice require? We are not asking: What activities should the state permit? That question is malformed. The state does not “permit” human flourishing; it restrains human wickedness. Its proper jurisdiction is the boundary, not the interior.

When we examine case laws and ask what general equity they contain, we are identifying where the fences stand. We are not attempting to map every square foot of the field. The field is infinite; only the fences can be charted.

Third, this principle guards against both antinomian chaos and legalistic tyranny.

The antinomian tears down all fences, declaring that freedom means no boundaries at all. But a garden without walls is not a garden; it is wilderness. Freedom without law degenerates into license, and license into mutual predation. The antinomian, in the name of liberty, destroys liberty itself.

The legalist, on the other hand, multiplies fences until the field becomes a maze. He adds restriction upon restriction, treating every human activity with suspicion, requiring permission for what needs none. The legalist, in the name of order, destroys the order he claims to protect, for a society that requires justification for every action will suffocate under its own regulations.

Philonomy rejects both errors by maintaining the biblical balance: a vast field of freedom bounded by specific, identifiable fences. The fences are real and must be respected. The field is equally real and must not be constricted.

Fourth, the state that attempts to legislate infinity has become totalitarian.

If freedom is the default, then the state that presumes to specify all permissible activities has overreached catastrophically. Only God could enumerate infinity, and even He chose not to, preferring instead to grant freedom within limits. The state that attempts what God declined has claimed a jurisdiction that belongs to the Almighty alone.

This is why totalitarian regimes require comprehensive surveillance, endless bureaucracy, and constant expansion of regulatory authority. They have taken on an impossible task: mapping the infinite field rather than simply maintaining the finite fences. The task can never be completed, so the state must grow without limit, intruding ever deeper into human life, attempting to anticipate and regulate every possible action. The project is not merely tyrannical in effect; it is idolatrous in conception. It claims for the state what belongs only to God.

A Positive Vision

Let me paint for you what a society that understood this principle might look like. It would not be a society without law (that would be antinomian chaos), nor a society where law touches everything (that would be totalitarian bondage).

It would be a society where citizens are free to pursue the good within God’s wise boundaries. The law would establish clear limits against murder, theft, fraud, perjury, and those violations of justice that Scripture identifies. Contracts would be enforceable because the Ninth Commandment guarantees the sanctity of a man’s word. Property would be secure because the Eighth Commandment stands guard over what belongs to another. False witnesses would face the penalty they sought to impose on the accused, because justice cannot function where testimony is unreliable. These are not incidental features of civilization; they are its load-bearing walls, and every society that has undermined them has collapsed. Within those limits, human beings would be free to create, trade, worship, build, love, serve, and flourish according to their callings and circumstances.

The fences would be clear and stable. Citizens would know what was forbidden and could plan their lives accordingly. They would not need licenses and permissions for ordinary human activities. They would not need to justify their freedoms to suspicious authorities. They would live and move and have their being in a broad place.

This is not utopia. It is simply law functioning as law was designed to function: finite rules enabling infinite flourishing. Grammar for the language of life. Boundaries for the garden of human society.

Think of the analogy of music. The rules of harmony and counterpoint are strict and specific. They tell you which combinations of notes work and which produce cacophony. But within those rules, the possible compositions are infinite. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven: each found inexhaustible creativity within the same constraints. The rules did not limit their genius; they enabled it. Without the rules, there would be no music at all, only noise.

So it is with law. The boundaries are specific and finite. The flourishing within them is unlimited. The boundaries do not restrict human creativity; they channel it productively. Remove the boundaries and you do not get more creativity but less, the cacophony of lawlessness that drowns out every voice except the loudest.

Connection to What Follows

Understanding the default of freedom shapes everything that follows in this book.

When we clear the ground in the next chapter, identifying categories of law that no longer bind, we are not reducing the field but clarifying the fences. We are removing barriers that Scripture itself declares fulfilled (the ceremonial shadows, the seed laws, the land-specific regulations) so that we can see more clearly what boundaries remain.

When we examine general equity, we are asking what fences justice requires, not what activities justice permits. The question is always: What does God’s law identify as wrong? Not: What does God’s law grant permission to do? The field is assumed; the fence is identified.⁵

When we consider the state’s proper limits, we will remember that the state claiming comprehensive jurisdiction has claimed infinity for itself, and only God possesses infinity. The state that knows its place maintains the fences; the state that forgets its place attempts to cultivate the entire field.

This principle runs through every chapter. It is not an afterthought or an application but a fundamental presupposition. Law assumes freedom and then identifies restriction. That is how law works. That is how it must work. And that is how we must think about every question of justice and legislation.

The Pattern Restored in Christ

Finally, consider how the gospel restores what Eden lost.

In Adam, we received abundant provision and one prohibition, and we transgressed the prohibition, losing both the tree of life and access to the garden. Our sin was not that we lived in the broad field but that we crossed the one fence we should have respected. The serpent convinced us that the fence was the problem. It was not. The fence was for our good.

In Christ, we receive restoration. “For freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). We are brought back into a broad place, invited to feast at a table spread before us, welcomed into a kingdom where joy and liberty abound. But the fences are not abolished; they are internalized. The law is written on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10). We no longer resent the boundaries because we love the Lawgiver. We no longer chafe against the fences because we recognize they protect the garden we cherish.

The new covenant does not abolish the pattern of Eden; it perfects it. Freedom remains the default. Boundaries remain necessary. But now we have new hearts that delight in the law rather than rebel against it. The psalmist’s cry becomes our own: “Oh how I love your law!” (Psalm 119:97). We love it not because we are earning favor by obedience, but because we recognize in its boundaries the wisdom of our Father. The fences are not our enemies; they guard our flourishing.

This is the hope toward which philonomy presses: not a society of endless regulations, but a society that recognizes God’s boundaries and flourishes within them. Not a garden walled into a prison, but a garden walled for protection: vast within, secure without, fruitful in every season.

The serpent’s question echoes through every generation: “Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree?” And the answer remains what it has always been: No, He did not. He said we may eat of every tree, except one. The provision is abundant; the restriction is narrow. The field is vast; the fence is specific.

Let us not be deceived by those who would invert this pattern, whether they speak in the language of religion or of politics. The totalitarian spirit, like the legalistic spirit, is at war with the liberty God designed into creation itself. Both must be resisted. Both must be identified for what they are: the serpent’s ancient distortion, still at work, still inverting Eden, still pretending that God’s generous provision is really miserly restriction.

Freedom is the default. The ground is now cleared to ask: What fences remain?

This structural observation – that law is characteristically negative (“thou shalt not”) rather than positive (“thou shalt”) – has profound implications for enforcement. A negative command is readily enforceable: either the act was committed or it was not. A positive command (“thou shalt produce,” “thou shalt achieve,” “thou shalt be happy”) becomes tyrannical precisely because compliance can never be fully demonstrated and the state’s power to demand more is therefore unlimited. See also James R. Otteson, The End of Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 2014), on the characteristically negative form of legal speech. ↩
Gary North makes this same observation from Genesis 2:16-17: “Adam was allowed to do anything he wanted to do in the garden, with only one exception. He had to avoid touching or eating the forbidden fruit. He did not have to ask permission to do anything else. He was free to choose. This biblical principle of legal freedom is to govern all our decisions.” North also presses the impossibility of comprehensive legislation as a creaturely limitation: “Because God alone is omniscient, He controls the world perfectly. Men, not being omniscient, must accept judicial restrictions on their own legitimate spheres of action…. They must not pretend that they can foresee the complex outcome of every activity of every person in society.” See Gary North, Victim’s Rights: The Biblical View of Civil Justice (Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), 259-260. ↩
From the Greek nous (mind). The “noetic effects of sin” refers to the corruption of human reasoning by the fall – the darkening of the mind that makes us prone to self-deception, rationalization, and the suppression of truth (Romans 1:18-21). Regeneration begins to reverse this corruption, but sanctification is progressive, not instantaneous. We still need the case laws as wisdom, even if we no longer need them as an external constraint threatening condemnation. The regenerate man loves the law (Psalm 119:97), but he still benefits from seeing righteousness worked out in concrete cases. ↩
The American founders grasped this principle and enshrined it in the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” The structure is unmistakable: government possesses only delegated powers; everything else belongs to the people. The default is liberty; restriction requires explicit warrant. Whatever one thinks of the founders’ broader theology, they understood the structural logic of law. ↩
There is one notable exception to this pattern: worship. The Regulative Principle of Worship holds that in worship, the logic inverts – only what God commands is permitted, and everything else is excluded. This is not a contradiction of the default of freedom but a recognition that worship belongs to a different category than civil life. See Appendix E for a fuller treatment of how the Regulative Principle relates to the philonomic framework. ↩