I. The Sacrifices
1 SACRIFICE, STEWARDSHIP, AND DEBT And the LORD called unto Moses, and spake unto him out of the tabernacle of the congregation, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, If any man of you bring an offering unto the LORD, ye shall bring your offering of the cattle, even of the herd, and of the flock. If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male without blemish: he shall offer it of his own voluntary will at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the LORD. And he shall put his hand upon the head of the burnt offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him (Lev. 1:1-4).
To understand any biblical law, we should first seek to discover its theocentric meaning. What does a law have to do with God and His relation to man? James Jordan argues that the whole burnt sacrifice symbolized the death of the sacrificer. This death was imputed judicially to the animal.
What actually happens is that the animal becomes dead. It is death, the penal judgment for sin, that is put on the animal. The man is given life, a new beginning, because the animal takes the death he deserves. The effect of the sacrifice of the animal is that the believer's guilt and sin are removed, but what is transferred to the animal is the sinner's liability to death.
Death is both primordial and eschatological. Adam rejected the Tree of Life in order to commit sin, so he chose death before he sinned. Death is also the eschatological punishment for sin -- those who choose death are given death. Man's death-nature is the wellspring of his sin, so death must be dealt with before sin is. To put this in systematic-theological language: justification comes before sanctification. Justification is initial, juridical life, which leads to a life of holiness, and culminates in glorification: eschatological life.
What the sacrifice removes is not sin but death, the judgment for sin. Death having been removed, it is now possible to live a righteous life.(1)
Leviticus begins with the law governing the burnt offering. "A male without blemish" was required, which was also the requirement for the passover lamb: "Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats" (Ex. 12:5). The phrase, "without blemish," is repeated throughout Leviticus.(2) The blemish-free sacrificial animal symbolized God's requirement of a final sacrifice that alone serves as a legal ransom payment (atonement)(3) to God for man's sin. Peter wrote:
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God (I Pet. 1:18-21).
The requirement of a blemish-free sacrifice meant that the individual who was seeking a legal eradication of the legal effects of sin could not expect to attain it at a discount. He had to forfeit something of obvious value. He could not offer an imperfect, less valuable animal and still expect to please God. The offering had to cost him something: an animal with higher market value than a blemished animal. David later declared: "Nay; but I will surely buy it of thee at a price: neither will I offer burnt offerings unto the LORD my God of that which doth cost me nothing. So David bought the threshingfloor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver" (II Sam. 24:24).(4) A later generation of Israelites broke this law by offering blind, lame, and sick animals (Mal. 1:8).
The same principle of costly sacrifice applied to the grain offerings: "And when any will offer a meat [meal] offering unto the LORD, his offering shall be of fine flour; and he shall pour oil upon it, and put frankincense thereon" (Lev. 2:1). (This rule did not apply to sacrifices involving birds, presumably for the sake of the poor.)(5)
A Blemish-Free Sacrifice I begin with the question: In what way does this law reflect the character of God? Second, in what way does this law reflect God's relationship with man, especially fallen man?
The whole burnt offering was the first of five Levitical sacrifices. This sacrifice established two legal principles. First, God deserves the best we have to offer: a blemish-free male sacrifice. Second, God places limits on our mandated sacrifices: men owed God only one animal. So, while the blemish-free male sacrifice testified to the Israelites' total indebtedness to God, the requirement of only one animal placed limits on the sense of guilt and obligation. We are not supposed to become paralyzed by the thought of our total depravity. We are not asked by God to burn up everything we own in a hopeless quest to placate Him with acts of personal sacrifice. We owe Him far too much for such futile acts of self-sacrifice to repay our massive debts.
When we offer a blemish-free male sacrifice to God, God acknowledges this as a representative act of our total submission to Him as absolutely sovereign. A blemish-free male sacrifice publicly symbolizes our acknowledgment of our total dependence on His absolutely sovereign mercy. In Leviticus 1, this blemish-free male sacrifice was a bull. In the New Covenant, this sacrifice was Jesus Christ (Heb. 9).
As we shall see in this chapter, any attempt to offer a blemished sacrifice is a judicially representative assertion of man's own partial autonomy: a denial of man's total depravity and also God's absolute sovereignty. On the other hand, any attempt to offer more than what is required is also an assertion of man's partial autonomy: a declaration that men are capable of paying God everything they owe Him out of their own assets.
Whenever men seek to evade either principle of the law governing the first Levitical sacrifice, they will soon find themselves in bondage to a god of their own making. This god will always establish boundaries. Boundaries are inescapable. Those inside these boundaries will receive the god's mercy; those outside will receive its wrath. This god will become progressively merciless toward some and indulgent toward others. In our day, this god is the State. The modern State is progressively merciless toward covenant-keepers and progressively indulgent toward covenant-breakers.
Substitute Sacrifices We are incapable of buying our own salvation; we are therefore required to acknowledge ritually the purchase of our salvation by the Son of God. This ritual sacrifice is not economically empty, however; it involves suffering a loss. Biblically, it involves the whole of our lives: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service" (Rom. 12:1). The required animal sacrifices of the Old Covenant were merely token payments -- judicial and economic representations -- of man's required sacrifice of his whole life.(6)
The Israelite was told that he had to bring a blemish-free animal to God's altar. He was not permitted to substitute a less valuable animal. God would not tolerate anything but the best of the flock. Wenham writes: "Only the best is good enough for God."(7) This pointed to the magnitude of God's own sacrifice: the best of His "flock," the very Lamb of God.
From the day that Cain offered an agricultural sacrifice rather than an animal sacrifice, men have attempted to substitute unacceptable sacrifices of their own choosing. This substitution symbolically asserts man's sovereignty in the transaction. Man also sometimes offers "discount" sacrifices. God rejects them. "Ye said also, Behold, what a weariness is it! and ye have snuffed at it, saith the LORD of hosts; and ye brought that which was torn, and the lame, and the sick; thus ye brought an offering: should I accept this of your hand? saith the LORD. But cursed be the deceiver, which hath in his flock a male, and voweth, and sacrificeth unto the Lord a corrupt thing: for I am a great King, saith the LORD of hosts, and my name is dreadful among the heathen" (Mal. 1:13-14).
A prohibited sacrifice might also be an expensive sacrifice. Cain did in fact bring something to God's altar; for all we know, it was the best of his crop. But it is not simply the value of the sacrifice that God has in mind; it is the specific character of the sacrifice. In Cain's case, God required a blood offering. When a blood offering was required, there could be no lawful substitution of a less valuable animal, let alone a forbidden animal or a grain offering.
God did eventually accept a physically blemished sacrifice, a sacrifice with stripes or welts. It was an ethically clean sacrifice but a physically blemished one. As Isaiah said, "he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed" (Isa. 53:5). This unique sacrifice was born blemish-free, lived blemish-free, but died blemished. This sacrifice alone in history was lawfully brought to God's altar in a blemished condition: lawfully for God, but unlawfully for the courts that tried Him.(8) These blemishes represented the results of man's sin -- negative sanctions imposed by a court (Matt. 27:26) -- and Jesus Christ on Calvary became sin for us representatively. "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him" (II Cor. 5:21).
By offering anything except the best of his flock, the Israelite was declaring ritually that his sin was really not so great in God's eyes, and therefore the price that God would ask the Messiah to pay in man's stead would not be excessive. This was another way of saying that the negative sanctions that God imposes on sin are not really absolute. In short, this was an assertion of man's ability to pay for his own sins. By offering a substandard, prohibited sacrifice, the atonement-seeker was saying that the magnitude of his own sin was not so great that the leftovers of his flock could not serve as a lawful payment in God's court.
Except in the case of birds, the texts required that the sacrificed animals be unblemished, meaning valuable. Nevertheless, the whole burnt offering was a limited sacrifice: only one animal was required, not the whole flock. Mosaic man was reminded that he dare not try to cheat God by offering a blemished sacrifice, for he owed God everything; nevertheless, he was not to deceive himself by offering everything he owned in a vain attempt to buy his salvation.
Public Sacrifice and Implicit Stewardship Because a covenant-keeping man in Israel offered the best of his flock as a token of God's absolute ownership of both him and his flock, he thereby retained lawful title in God's court to everything that remained in his possession. His life and his possessions were no longer tainted, for his representative sacrificial act removed God's curse in history. By sacrificing the best of his flock, he re-established his claim of legitimate ownership in God's court. Because he personally bore the economic loss, he established lawful title to future benefits from his property. Only someone who has the legal authority to disown a piece of property can accurately be said to own it.(9) An Israelite disowned his representative animal -- the best of his flock -- by sacrificing it. He publicly acknowledged in principle that he owed God everything he owned, and that whatever he retained, he retained by God's grace as a steward in history. His sins were judicially covered in God's historical court, and therefore his remaining property was to be retained under his lawful control as God's steward.
Had he sacrificed a low-value animal, he would have been symbolically asserting that God had lawful title to only the dregs of his capital assets, the leftovers. This would have constituted a rebellion on his part: the theft of God's property, meaning the public repudiation of his delegated position as God's steward. But this stewardship cannot legally be repudiated. Man is still held responsible by God for the faithful administration of God's property. Stewardship is therefore an inescapable concept. It is never a question of "stewardship vs. no stewardship"; it is always a question of stewardship for whom. This is why Jesus warned, "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon" (Matt. 6:24). But we cannot serve no master, either. We have to serve someone or something: point two of the biblical covenant model.
The Sovereign Owner
When we identify the sovereign agent for which men work as economic stewards, we have identified the god of that particular society. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, the right wing of the Enlightenment(10) proclaimed the free market as the institutional master, which in this century has been labeled consumers' sovereignty.(11) Also beginning in the eighteenth century, the left wing of the Enlightenment proclaimed the State as the institutional master (citizens' sovereignty). In each case, it was autonomous man rather than God who was identified as the sovereign owner.(12) The question became: Which institution best represents this new sovereign, the free market or the State?(13) Christians ever since have chosen sides between these rival humanist viewpoints; they have not gone to the Bible in search of another approach. This is why my economic commentary represents a radical break with the past.
Consider the comparative political appeal of these rival doctrines of final earthly sovereignty. The State rules by the monopolistic sword, while the market is dependent on this sword to adjudicate and then enforce disputed contracts.(14) The State concentrates power; the market diffuses power. The State's representation of sovereign power is publicly visible;(15) the market's representation of subordinate power is confined to such emblems as profit-and-loss statements, balance sheets, and share prices on a stock market. The State's manifestation of power is easily understood by the average man; the market's manifestation of power is understood only through complex chains of highly specialized economic reasoning. In the struggle to gain public allegiance, and therefore moral legitimacy, the State has most of the advantages most of the time. If the State is not restrained by a theology of God's primary sovereignty, it will threaten man with servitude in history. What man grants to the State theologically he will pay for economically.
The whole burnt offering symbolized God's primary ownership and man's stewardship under God. Whatever man owns has been granted to him by God. Whenever the doctrine of sovereignty is transferred from God to the State, so is the concept of primary ownership. The State is then regarded as the absolute owner. Individuals become stewards of the State. They own only what the State allows them to retain. A grant of tax exemption by the State is regarded as revocable at any time. This is why a successful defense of freedom must begin with the doctrine of God's sovereignty and permanent restraints on those covenantal agencies that represent God in history. The permanent economic limit on the church is the tithe: 10 percent of a person's net output (= income). The permanent economic restraint on civil government is also the tithe: all combined levels of the State may not lawfully claim so much as a tithe (I Sam. 8:15-17).
Whenever men deny God's absolute sovereignty, they also deny His right to place economic and judicial limits on those institutions that represent Him judicially. This leads inevitably to an attempt by men to transfer final sovereignty in history: from God to some human agency, usually the State. The State then seeks to place boundaries around God's revealed word, the Bible. The alternative is to admit that God's revealed word has placed boundaries around the State. Boundaries are an inescapable concept. The questions are: Who creates them? Who lawfully announces them? What are they? How are they enforced? How are they modified over time? The one who successfully commands sacrifice is the god of the society, the law-giver.
Debt Relief This law made it plain to all that there is a price to be paid for sin. Man must pay this price. There is no escape. God imposes it and then collects it. The question is: How high is this price? If it is higher than any sin-corrupted man can pay in history, must all men pay the penalty throughout eternity? If not, who can and will pay it?
This passage could easily be misinterpreted apart from a clear understanding of its theocentric foundation. It would be easy to conclude that fallen man can purchase the favor of God, or at least temporary legal standing before God, through the payment of a price. By forfeiting the ownership of a valuable asset, fallen man might conclude that he can buy God's blessing or avoid God's wrath. Salvation would then be understood as a temporary period of healing in between sacrifices: the outcome of a payment by fallen man to a powerful God. He might conclude: "My offer of a sacrifice buys time from God." This has been the view of religions throughout history, at least those that acknowledge the reality of time.(16)
The Bible teaches that fallen man is incapable of offering anything to God that is sufficiently valuable to placate His wrath for man's sin. Fallen man has nothing of value to offer God. Isaiah 64:6 informs us: "But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags;(17) and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." The moral corruption of man has tainted the whole creation; it, too, is under the curse of death.(18) All of our offerings are inescapably tainted. Therefore, it is impossible for the blood of animals, in and of itself, to placate the God of the Bible. "For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" (Heb. 10:4). Shed blood did defer God's wrath in history. How? Because the animal's death was judicially representative: part of a hierarchical system of authority. The shedding of the blood of certain specified animals was covenant-keeping man's public acknowledgment of his subordination to God and his legal debt to God.
Hierarchy and representation -- point two of the biblical covenant model -- lead us to the issue of ownership: point three. The necessity of representative sacrifice involves the necessity of economic loss. Adam violated God's boundary; God therefore imposed a cost on Adam and his heirs. Adam stole what was God's; God therefore imposed restitution payments on Adam and his heirs. Adam denied God's absolute sovereignty (#1) and revolted against God's authority (#2) by violating God's property (#3). God's sanctions (#4) are mandatory. Who pays? Under the Mosaic law, the owners of sacrificial animals paid with their valuable animals, and the animals paid with their lives. This chain of events raises some fundamental questions.
Substantial Losses
Why was there a Levitical requirement of blemish-free sacrifices? Why did God impose a system of sacrifice on fallen man, whether blood sacrifice or economic, if the specific sacrifice is insufficient to cover sin? Why require a high-value, blemish-free animal? Because man is made in the image of God, and his acts are supposed to reflect God's acts. This raises the question of God's acts.
God has offered a sacrifice to Himself: a high-value, blemish-free sacrifice. To meet His own judicial standards, God forfeited in history the most valuable Lamb of His flock, His own Son. It is not what fallen man pays to God that repays God for sin (a trespass or boundary violation); it is what God pays to Himself. The blemish-free animal in the Mosaic sacrificial system symbolized (i.e., judicially represented) this perfectionist aspect of lawful atonement. Even closer symbolically than slain animals was God's announcement to Abraham that he would have to sacrifice Isaac, a payment for which God later mandated a substitute: the ram (Gen. 22:13). The faithful Israelite of the Old Covenant acknowledged ritually and economically that such a sacrifice by God would be substituted by God in the future; until then, he would have to bear earthly economic losses in order to regain lawful standing before God. Isaiah made it clear that the coming Messiah would be the one to pay God's full price (Isa. 53:2-12).
It was not that the faithful Israelite could legitimately expect to pay for his sin through the forfeiture of a blemish-free animal. It was only that God required him to suffer a loss. God's negative sanctions against sin impose inescapable costs on man and beast (Gen. 3:17-19; Rom. 8:18-22). Man is required to acknowledge the existence of these costs, as well as the judicial necessity of his bearing such costs, either personally or through his representative legal agent.
The Hierarchy of Debt
These costs, however, are greater than mankind's total wealth. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36). This lack of sufficient funds was the message of Jesus' kingdom parable in Matthew 18: a servant who owed a gigantic amount to his master was conditionally forgiven of this debt by his master. Then the servant demanded the immediate repayment of a comparatively tiny amount from a poor debtor, and when the poor man could not pay, the steward had him thrown into debtors' prison. Then the master revoked his mercy and delivered the servant to debtors' prison. "Then his lord, after that he had called him, said unto him, O thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou desiredst me: Shouldest not thou also have had compassion on thy fellowservant, even as I had pity on thee? And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due unto him. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses" (Matt. 18:32-35).
If we are to take this parable as a representation of God's judicial relationship with fallen man, we must conclude that God's forgiveness of a man's debts is conditional.(19) The former debtor must forgive the debts owed to him by his neighbor. The neighbor, according to the parable of the good Samaritan, is that person who walks the same road we do who has been harmed along the way through no fault of his own (Luke 10:30-37). When we help him, we should not insist on repayment. Similarly, when I lend to him for commercial purposes, I should not expect him to repay me if I have had my debts forgiven. My continuing legal status as a forgiven debtor is conditional on my granting the same status to those who owe me anything.
Why should this be true? Because the debt-credit relationship is inescapably hierarchical. The borrower is servant to the lender (Prov. 22:7). When God grants me credit, and I in turn grant someone else credit, that person has become God's servant through me. This is why biblical law recommends that God's people become creditors to covenant-breakers, but not become debtors to them (Deut. 28:12).
What commentators rarely (if ever) mention is that the poor debtor owed the money to the rich master. The steward had merely served as an economic and legal middleman. The steward had advanced the poor person money that did not belong to the steward; it had been borrowed from the master. The steward had legal control over the money temporarily; he did not own it. This is the definition of all stewardship: temporary legal control over the use of another person's asset. This leads to an important conclusion: the master's legal annulment of the debt owed to him by the steward was therefore also a legal annulment of the debts of all debtors under the steward's economic authority. In other words, the debt structure was hierarchical: from the poor man to the master through the steward.
Why was the steward unjust? His sin was more than ethical injustice to a poor person; it was judicial rebellion against the master. By trying to collect payment from the poor man, the steward was saying: "I am no longer a middleman, now that my debt has been forgiven. I am now the owner of assets. The credit I extended with borrowed money is still owed to me irrespective of my previous obligations. I am therefore no longer a steward. I am no longer under hierarchy. I can now collect what is lawfully mine from those who are under me." His refusal to cancel the debt that had been owed to the master through the steward's lending was a rebellious declaration of independence. He became a thief and a usurper, for he was trying to collect for his own account assets that, economically speaking, had belonged to the master. He was trying to profit from the master's mercy. He refused to acknowledge the economics of forgiveness: the master had implicitly released the poor man from his debt, which had been owed to the master by way of the servant, the day the master released his steward from his obligation. The unjust steward refused to acknowledge the legality of this indirect (representative) release. He held to the letter of the law -- the terms of the original debt contract -- rather than to the underlying economics of the transaction: hierarchical representation and lawful subordination. So, the master reimposed the debt in order to remind the steward that he was still nothing but a steward, that he was still under the master's lawful authority.
However, by consigning the unjust steward to prison, the master was implicitly reimposing the debt on the poor man. The master in the parable did not order the release of the poor man. Why not? Because such a unilateral act of debt release would have been theft: stealing from the steward, i.e., taking away an asset that the steward could use to repay his debt. The master could forgive the poor debtor only by forgiving the steward's debt by the same amount. The steward's wife or heirs were legally empowered to collect everything owed to him in a vain attempt to pay off the master.
The day of reckoning -- an accounting concept -- had come for both the steward and the poor debtor. Time had run out for both of them. Their debt pyramid had toppled. The hierarchy of debt repayment would now be felt up and down the chain of obligations. Those foolish enough to have indebted themselves would now be reminded of the hierarchical nature of debt. The master had at last pressed his lawful claims. By indebting himself to an unjust steward, the poor man brought the master's judgment on his own head. Covenant-keepers should learn this lesson well: do not become indebted to covenant-breakers. "The stranger that is within thee shall get up above thee very high; and thou shalt come down very low. He shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail" (Deut. 28:43-44). When God periodically collects His debts from covenant-breakers in history, all those obligated to them or dependent on them feel the economic pain, including covenant-keepers.(20)
Representative Forgiveness
There was one reasonable hope for the unjust steward: his kinsman-redeemer. Legally, he was still the head of his household, but economically, his kinsman-redeemer was in authority. Only if someone possessing legitimate authority would show mercy in his name could he escape. There were only three ways for the kinsman-redeemer to help: 1) pay off the debt; 2) offer to replace the steward in prison; 3) pay off the poor man's debt and then plead for mercy from the master on the basis of this representative act of mercy. If the steward publicly consented to this third action on the part of his kinsman-redeemer, he might receive mercy from the master. But if the steward remained adamant against the poor man, he himself would remain in debtors' prison. This much is sure: the poor debtor's fate was not in his own hands. He required mercy to escape: from the master or from his kinsman-redeemer.
When God granted the grace of additional time to fallen mankind, He thereby also granted the grace of time to the creation that was (and is) under man's lawful authority. The covenant's hierarchical authority structure remained (and remains) in place. Fallen man still owes the restitution payment to God; nature is still under God's authority through man, and therefore is under God's curse on man. Fallen man is told to treat those under his authority with mercy analogous to the mercy shown by God to fallen man. What is the evidence of God's mercy? A system of representative blood sacrifice.
Why did God require animal sacrifices? What had the animals done to deserve this? Biblically, the answer is simple: they fell with their commander, Adam. Their representative fell, and they came under a curse. This is why certain animals could serve as sacrificial offerings acceptable to God. The animal had to be slain before it was placed on the altar. This symbolized the death of a cursed being, fallen man. After death comes fire with salt.(21) The sacrifice announced symbolically: "Either the dead animal roasts in history or else the dead sinner roasts in eternity." In order to preserve man's relationship with God, man must offer sacrifice. Old Covenant man had to offer animal sacrifices. These sacrifices also preserved the animal world's relationship with God. The sacrificed animals represented both the animal world and fallen man's world.
The animals came under God's judgment when Adam did. When God annulled the debts of all those who will ever come representatively under the debt protection of His Son Jesus Christ, He also annulled the sacrificial system that had previously governed His set-apart covenant people. Animals today need no representative sacrifices by other animals, since their debts, like the debts of God's covenant people, have been paid representatively by Jesus Christ. When covenant-keeping men's debts were forgiven, so were the debts of the animal world, debts that had been paid representatively from Abel's day by the sacrifice of certain animals. This debt cancellation took place definitively with the crucifixion of Christ and finally with the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70.
There can be no mercy without sacrifice. God's mercy to mankind as a whole is demonstrated in his willingness to sacrifice His Son, a perfect man.(22) Men's mercy to the animal kingdom as a whole under the Mosaic system was demonstrated by the Israelites' willingness to sacrifice their own blemish-free animals. The fact that God was willing to sacrifice His Son testifies to His protection of mankind. Similarly, covenant-keeping men's willingness to sacrifice their most valuable animals testified to their hierarchical obligation to protect the creation. God's required sacrifices are testimonies to His mercy. When men refuse to offer God's mandatory sacrifices, they become progressively merciless.(23) In the New Covenant, the blood sacrifices are no more. There is only one sacrifice: the death of Jesus Christ (Heb. 9:12). But all men are required by God to acknowledge this sacrifice: verbally, ritually, ethically, and financially, i.e., the tithe.
Man's debt to God was not forgiven under the Old Covenant economy; its repayment was only deferred. In a sense, the sacrifices could at most meet the required "interest payments" to God; they did not repay the principal. Analogously, whenever Israel quit paying because of her rebellion, these missed payments were added to the principal owed. Israel's debt to God grew ever-larger.(24) Finally, in A.D. 70, God called in the debt.(25) Israel went bankrupt publicly. "Forgive us our debts" (Matt. 6:12) is no idle phrase. The presence of the required sacrifices in the Mosaic economy testified to the continuing presence of the debt in God's account books, and also to each man's need to repay God in the future. The cosmic Creditor will eventually demand repayment of everything owed to Him. On that final day of reckoning, every person will have to produce one of two things: sufficient funds to repay his debt (impossible) or evidence that he had already accepted the generosity of the Kinsman-Redeemer who had repaid his debt. At the final judgment, the books are forever closed. So is the exit from the ultimate debtor's prison.
By forgiving a sin against us, we symbolically and legally forgive a debt owed to God through us. This is why one version of the Lord's prayer says "forgive us our sins" (Luke 11:4), while the parallel in Matthew says "forgive us our debts" (Matt. 6:12).(26) By extending forgiveness as God's representative agents, we are showing God's mercy to God's debtors in God's name. Offering up a scarce economic resource to God as a sacrificial offering is economically the same as forgiving a debt legally owed to us.
Consider the words of Jesus, the long-awaited representative who offered up Himself to God as a holy sacrifice: the ultimate Kinsman-Redeemer. He prayed to God from the cross: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do. And they parted his raiment, and cast lots" (Luke 23:34). He legally annulled this horrendous sin for those who had truly acted out of ignorance -- most obviously, the Roman guards who gambled for His clothing. His death and His words annulled these specific debts to God the Father. These men had sinned against God the Father by sinning against Jesus. When He forgave them, He did so as the victim. The principle of victim's rights allows such forgiveness.(27) He thereby also forgave them on His Father's account, as God's legal heir and representative agent.
The loss of the value of a sacrifice made to God symbolizes two things: 1) God's payment of His own Son, the Messiah, and 2) the patience that we have shown to those who had sinned against us. We are stewards, not owners. When we forgive others, we offer up a sacrifice to God: extending grace to sinners by forfeiting whatever they legally owed to us.(28) Of course, we are gaining heavenly resources by doing this. "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal" (Matt. 6:19-20).
New Covenant Burdens
Because Jesus' sacrifice is now behind us, we are no longer required by God to offer periodic animal or vegetable sacrifices. This removes from us an economic burden that the Old Covenant saint owed to God. Does this mean that we are not under comparable economic burdens? In some sense, yes. The costs of offering sacrifices have been eliminated. We no longer walk three times a year to Jerusalem. But in another sense, analogous economic obligations do remain. We still owe to God-fearing men what Old Covenant saints owed to God-fearing men.
Consider the morally mandatory charitable loan. In the Mosaic economy, a person who had been extended a zero-interest charity loan was under the threat of involuntary servitude that would last until the next national sabbatical year (Deut. 15:1-7).(29) Bankruptcy was expensive in those days. One did not just declare oneself bankrupt and escape the obligation of restitution through indentured servitude. Not so today. "But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil" (Luke 6:35). Understand: the loan in this commandment is not a business loan; it is a charity loan. Jesus did not tell us that we have a moral obligation to make business loans to our rich enemies whenever they ask, and then suffer meekly when these debtors refuse to repay. That would deliver us economically into the hands of covenant-breaking masters. Jesus was talking about acts of mercy: charitable loans. We are to offer zero-interest loans, not for our gain, but in order to help the deserving poor.(30) We are not to loan money to drunks on the street to finance their drunkenness. We are not to subsidize evil.(31) We are to show intelligent mercy.(32) When a truly impoverished debtor cannot repay, due to forces beyond his control, then we are to forgive the debt. In doing so, we make a sacrificial offer of forgiveness.
God will not collect what we owe to Him if we acknowledge publicly that Jesus has paid our gigantic debt.(33) Because of the shift in covenants, people no longer are required by God to spend money for, or forfeit income from, animals or grains offered as sacrifices. We nonetheless are required to suffer losses when God extends financial mercy through us to impoverished debtors: the legal right of a poor man to declare bankruptcy, thereby escaping his obligation to repay beyond the market value of his assets, which he forfeits. This is why bankruptcy laws are a legitimate aspect of a Christian society. That a person in the United States is allowed this God-granted privilege once every seven years is a dim reflection of the Mosaic Covenant's law of sabbatical release (Deut. 15:1-7). Since the late nineteenth century, there have been no debtors' prisons in the West. In the United States, if a debtor is willing to forfeit all his assets except the clothes on his back and the tools of his trade, he has identified himself as an impoverished person. He therefore is allowed to escape the demands of his creditors by declaring bankruptcy. If he is wise, however, he will later repay his creditors if he can; because he owes so much to God, he should not seek to profit from the sacrifices borne by those who willingly extended credit to him.(34)
Mandatory Sacrifices and Free Markets Covenant-breaking man instinctively looks to the works of his own hands as the basis of his redemption. He believes that the work of his hands will placate God. He exhibits this faith in two ways. First, he seeks to offer a public sacrifice of reduced value. Cain's offer of agricultural produce rather than a slain animal is representative of man's search for an alternate sacrifice. He proclaimed ritually that he believed that his blood (life)(35) was not on the line. Second, man repeatedly places himself under the covenantal jurisdiction of false divinities that time and again claim total sacrifice. This is why the quest for autonomy from the God of the Bible has led politically to the divinization of the State, no matter how strong the technical case against the omnicompetent State may be. Autonomous man returns to the theology of the messianic State like a dog to its vomit. That which can command unlimited sacrifice is seen as the savior of man and society.
Covenant-breaking man is schizophrenic. He seeks a divinity in history powerful enough to bless the works of his hands, yet not so powerful as to constitute a threat to his autonomy. This is why, whenever and wherever God's required public sacrifices(36) are either ignored or denied by society, we can expect to see increasingly successful attacks on the legitimacy of private property. Put differently, whenever and wherever the limits (boundaries) placed by God on man's required sacrifices are ignored, we can expect to see the State substitute itself as a new god which in principle requires unlimited sacrifice. Whatever property that the State allows men to retain under their personal control will be understood as due to the present grace of the State, or due to the State's present political inability to confiscate everything, or due to the State's present perception that individuals acting as taxpaying stewards can more efficiently expand the State's capital base. What God has delegated to the family in history, the Moloch State will eventually attempt to confiscate.(37)
This is the reason why an intellectual defense of economic freedom, if it is to be culturally successful over the long run, must be paralleled by the church's successful proclamation of the gospel of redemption -- the buying back of individuals and institutions -- through Christ's once-only sacrifice. The professed universalism of modern economic theory is no more valid than the professed universalism of Unitarianism. No matter how brilliant the technical intellectual defenses of specific aspects of the free market may be, and no matter how visible the failures of socialist economic planning may become,(38) the judicial foundation of the free market society and the epistemological foundation of economic science both must begin with the public proclamation of the covenantal reality of God's curse in Eden and the covenantal reality of God's redeeming sacrifice at Calvary. Economic theory is no more autonomous than society is. If a believable theological justification of economic theory and policy is not produced, the power-seeking State will revive and flourish once again. The theological appeal of statism will eventually overcome technical criticisms of economists. Men want to worship something more powerful than the textbooks' supply and demand curves. The visible sanctions of the State are more easily understood and more readily feared than the complex sanctions of the free market. The visible hand of the State, however spastic or grabbing it may be, is more readily believed in and feared that the invisible hand of the free market.
The Moral High Ground
Politicians and judges are the ministers of the civil order (Rom. 13:4); they alone can lawfully impose physical sanctions. The scribes known as economists(39) can offer nothing that can permanently thwart the expansion of the State, for the economists' sanctions are intellectual, not physical. The economists' worldview is overtly technical, not moral. (In fact, their covert worldview is intensely theological: the religion of autonomous man in an autonomous universe.) Economists naively deny the legitimacy of morality in their formal pronouncements.(40) They have been doing so ever since the late seventeenth century.(41) The politicians affirm morality in their judgments. What is incorrectly perceived as the moral high ground eventually triumphs. The State enforces its power-based sovereignty over the free market.
If the illusion of occupying the moral high ground becomes widespread among the defenders of the statist order of self-proclaimed autonomous man, then only an economic cataclysm born of inherently irrational socialist economic planning can place anything like a permanent boundary on the State's expansion. The free market may triumph temporarily, as it did in England from 1845 to 1875, but eventually the moralists will once again invoke their god, the State, and the people will worship at its temples. The State possesses monopolistic power (negative physical sanctions). Infuse it with the messianic morality of the modern welfare State (positive sanctions), and it will either buy control of the free market (Keynesianism) or else suppress it (socialism).
Without explicitly biblical foundations, free market economic thought will remain merely a technical application of right-wing Enlightenment philosophy: knowledge without power. Free market social theory will remain the intellectual plaything of a minority of professional economists, most of whom are employed by the State in tax-funded universities. Without its epistemological grounding in sacrifice and sanctions, economic analysis will begin, at best, with an acknowledgment of the visible effects of God's curses in Genesis 3:17-19:
And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
What must become central to economic analysis is the underlying theology of the five-point covenant that preceded God's imposition of negative sanctions against the creation:
1. The integrated doctrines of the special creation, the sovereignty of God as Creator, and therefore His absolute ownership of the creation (Gen. 1:1);
2. The doctrine of God's delegation of secondary ownership of the creation to man (Gen. 1:26-28);(42)
3. The doctrine of the law of God, which appears in the form of an exclusive (and therefore exclusionary) property boundary (Gen. 2:17a);
4. The doctrine of God's negative sanctions against the person who violates His law and His property (Gen. 2:17b);
5. The doctrine of the promised negative historical sanctions against Satan through God's promised Seed (Gen. 3:15).
The acknowledgment of the reality of God-cursed economic scarcity is necessary but not sufficient for the reconstruction of economic analysis. We must also discover in God's word and apply covenantally the judicial foundations of economic reconstruction: the progressive removal in history of the effects of God's curse.(43)
Conclusion By sacrificing to something sovereign over him (point 1), man acknowledges his debt to this higher authority (point 2). He seeks to draw a boundary of safety or immunity around himself, his works, and his property (point 3). He believes that his sacrifice will enable him to avert the wrath and/or gain the blessings of this higher authority (point 4), enabling him to leave a valuable legacy to his heirs (point 5). Offering sacrifice is a ritual acknowledgment of someone else's sovereignty and one's own economic subordination: stewardship.
Covenant-keeping man in the Mosaic Covenant era was told by God to sacrifice animals from his flock. The animal had to be the best of his flock: blemish-free. This pointed symbolically (representatively), as had Abraham's sacrifice of the ram in place of Isaac, to the ultimate sacrifice: God's ethically blemish-free Son. At the same time, God did not require total sacrifice from His holy people. That which would constitute total sacrifice from fallen man is insufficient to pay the required bill to God. Thus, the person who presented the sacrifice to the priest was proclaiming ritually and publicly that he in principle owed everything to God (i.e., the best of his flock), but at the same time, all that he owned would not suffice to repay God (i.e., one animal only). The individual sacrifice was to be of high value but not total.
God placed specific limits -- boundaries -- on the required sacrifices.(44) These sacrificial boundaries put man in his proper place. They also allowed him to retain the majority portion of the wealth under his jurisdiction. In order to keep what he owned, he had to acknowledge ritually that it was all a gift from God. He acknowledged that his property was a residual: things left over for his use after God had taken His fair share. This same theology of residual ownership undergirds the tithe.
Mosaic sacrifices were representative. They represented the death of man and the death of nature. Both man and nature are under the curse of death because of Adam's rebellion. When God extended grace to man through Jesus Christ, He also extended grace to nature. No longer does God require animal sacrifices. Men may lawfully keep their blemish-free animals, and the blemish-free animals now keep their lives. Because God the Father has definitively extended grace to man and nature in history through the perfect sacrifice of Jesus Christ, there is no further need for man to shed blood in order to placate God.
Economically, bankruptcy laws acknowledge the Bible's view of debt forgiveness. When a man declares bankruptcy, he hands over all his assets to his creditors, including all debts owed to him. He can no longer demand payment of debts owed to him, for they are no longer owed to him. Whatever had been owed to him is now owed to his creditors. This acknowledges the hierarchical nature of stewardship and forgiveness.
The Bible's definitive limitation on blood sacrifice has placed a definitive limit on mandatory economic sacrifice. Neither the State nor the church possesses an unlimited claim to our wealth. The tithe sets the maximum limits of both institutions in New Covenant times. This is a great blessing from God; under the Mosaic law, the combined burden was far greater -- at least twice as great.(45) But when men refuse to sacrifice to God, they eventually wind up sacrificing far more to the State. God graciously limits His economic demands on us. The State, representing the collective god, autonomous man, is not equally gracious. This is why widespread moral rebellion always brings high taxes and inflation. The State demands to be placated. It claims the moral high ground by proclaiming the economics of confiscation. It robs the productive and gives to the unproductive. This is Satan's political economy: the disinheritance of the righteous. To thwart this satanic system of wealth redistribution, men must place God's boundaries around the State, but this means that they must pay their tithes to their local institutional churches.
Summary The animal's death was representative of man's subordination to God: representing the death of the sacrificer.
The sacrifices had to be blemish-free.
The animal died representatively: an acknowledgment of man's subordination to God.
Man must suffer a sacrificial loss even though he cannot afford to repay God.
The price men must pay is high: blemish-free sacrifice.
The price men pay is less than owed: only one sacrifice.
Man is not allowed to offer a substitute for the required sacrifice (Cain's rebellion).
Offering the required sacrifice to God publicly acknowledged His absolute ownership of everything a man owned.
Offering sacrifice therefore established a man's subordinate legal title to whatever remained after the sacrifice.
Modern man acknowledges one of two rival sovereign masters: the State or the free market.
The State has monopolistic power; so, men more easily believe in the State as the sovereign owner than the free market.
The State is seen as primary owner and sovereign.
The battle against statism must begin with the assertion of God as primary owner and sovereign.
Man cannot buy favor from God; his debt is too great.
The kinsman-redeemer alone could buy a bankrupt man out of debt in ancient Israel.
The debt structure was hierarchical: the forgiven debtor had to acknowledge that those under him deserved debt-forgiveness.
Man is legally bankrupt before God.
When God cancels a man's debt to Him, He thereby cancels the debts of the man's debtors: hierarchical debt cancellation.
This debt cancellation is conditional: extending mercy down the hierarchy.
Jesus, as kinsman-redeemer, died a sacrificial death and extended the ultimate debt-relief to His people.
This established the principle of intelligent mercy: we are to lend freely to the deserving poor.
Bankruptcy laws are also legitimate.
Covenant-breaking men reject Jesus Christ's representative act of mercy.
They wind up subservient to the State: a presumed sovereign agency of salvation.
Covenant-breakers want a god powerful enough to bless them, but not powerful enough to judge them.
The State does not recognize God's boundaries on sacrifice; it demands much greater sacrifice.
A successful war against the messianic State must begin with a biblical doctrine of sacrifice and stewardship.
We need a political economy based on the biblical doctrine of the creation and the covenants of God.
Footnotes:
1. James Jordan, "The Whole Burnt Sacrifice: Its Liturgy and Meaning," Biblical Horizons Occasional Paper, No. 11, p. 4.
2. Leviticus 1:10; 3:1,6; 4:23,28,32; 5:11,18; 6:6; 9:2-3; 14:10; 22:19; 23:12,18. It also appears repeatedly in Numbers.
3. Wenham says that the Hebrew word kippur, "to make atonement," may be derived from one of two words. One means "ransom price," and the other means "to wipe away." The ransom price was the money a legally condemned man could pay to escape the death penalty (Ex. 21:30; Prov. 6:35). In some passages, the former seems more appropriate (Ex. 30:15; Num. 31:50). The latter seems more appropriate in passages that deal with the altar (Lev. 15:33). Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 28.
4. David paid 600 shekels of gold for the land (I Chron. 21:25). The 50 shekels were the price of the oxen.
5. Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, vol. 3 of The Anchor Bible (New York: Doubleday, 1991), p. 167.
6. The Communists in their formative years fully understood this biblical principal of sacrifice, a fact reflected by the title of Communist defector Benjamin Gitlow's study of American Communism, The Whole of Their Lives (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1948).
7. Wenham, Leviticus, p. 51.
8. That which was evil for men to do -- offering a blemished sacrifice -- resulted in that which was not only acceptable before God but actually predestined by God from the beginning. This two-fold character of the atonement process was also present in Judas' betrayal: "And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!" (Luke 22:22).
9. F. A. Harper, Liberty: A Path to Its Recovery (Irvington, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949), p. 106.
10. The Scottish Enlightenment: Adam Ferguson, David Hume, Adam Smith, etc.
11. The man who coined the phrase was the British-born South African economist William H. Hutt. See Hutt, "The Nature of Aggressive Selling," Economica (1935); reprinted in Individual Freedom: Selected Works of William H. Hutt, edited by Svetozar Pejovich and David Klingaman (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 1975), p. 185. Ludwig von Mises adopted it: "The economic foundation of this bourgeois system is the market economy in which the consumer is sovereign." Mises, "The Economic Foundations of Freedom," The Freeman (April 1960); reprinted in Mises, Economic Freedom and Interventionism, edited by Bettina Bien Greaves (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1990), p. 4. The idea is consumer supremacy. "What matters is not the behavior of the entrepreneurs but the supremacy of the consumers." Mises, "Inequality of Wealth and Incomes," Ideas on Liberty (May 1955); reprinted in ibid., p. 46.
12. See Chapter 4, below, subsection on "The Enlightenment's Two Wings."
13. A parallel argument took place after Darwin's Origin of Species (1859). Social Darwinism was divided between the defenders of the free market social order and the statists. The former -- most notably Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner -- based their defense on the competitive nature of free market capitalism, which, they argued, is analogous to a ruthless, unplanned, directionless, evolving nature. Autonomous nature is to be the model for society, they believed. The statists -- most notably Lester Frank Ward -- counter-argued that human society has now superseded the rule of once-planless nature, just as the brain of man has superseded all other brains in nature, and therefore a scientific elite can successfully direct the social evolutionary process through the application of State power. See Gary North, The Dominion Covenant: Genesis (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), pp. 289-313.
14. Bruce L. Benson presents a case for a society without civil courts: The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State (San Francisco, California: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1990). The judicial problem is that some disputes can be resolved only through the imposition of sanctions or the threat thereof. Who has the authority to impose such sanctions within a geographical area? Which laws are legitimate? Which sanctions are legitimate? What is to prevent the development of a warlord society if the principle of civil sanctions is not honored?
15. There is a link between totalitarianism and military symbols. The two major twentieth-century totalitarian societies, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, had annual parades where tanks rolled and soldiers marched. Nisbet writes: "The final attribute of totalitarianism that tends to be emphasized in conservative analyses since Burke is the militarization of culture and society. . . . Once Trotsky took on the responsibility of transmuting the Czarist into the Red Army, military symbols began to burgeon. The military tunic received a value in society it had never held before; so did military rank in all councils of government. . . . Far more important than actual war in mobilizing a population is war-society, irrespective of outbreaks of war." Robert Nisbet, The Making of Modern Society (Brighton, Sussex: Wheatsheaf, 1986), pp. 202-3.
16. Biblical religion also requires a redeeming sacrifice. Were it not for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in history, to which God looked forward in time, Adam would have been executed on the day he sinned (Gen. 2:17). The difference between biblical religion and pagan religion with respect to sacrifice is that Christianity teaches that the sole acceptable sacrifice before God is the single, representative, judicial act of the life of an ethically perfect man, Jesus Christ. Covenant-keeping man is to redeem the time -- buy it back -- through a Holy Spirit-empowered, progressive ethical conformity to God's law. The biblical concept of salvation is therefore both judicial and ethical. Paul's injunction to redeem the time appears in the middle of an intensely ethical passage. "Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise, Redeeming the time, because the days are evil" (Eph. 5:14-16).
17. Literally: menstruous rags. Hebrew root word meaning woman's period: ayd. See Strong's Hebrew #5708: James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible.
18. North, Dominion Covenant, ch. 10; North, Is the World Running Down? Crisis in the Christian Worldview (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1988), pp. 8-11.
19. Ray R. Sutton, "Whose Conditions for Charity?" Theonomy: An Informed Response, edited by Gary North (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1991), ch. 9.
20. Anyone who doubts this should consider carefully what happens to debtors and everyone who sells goods and services to debtors during a deflationary economic depression.
21. "And every oblation of thy meat offering shalt thou season with salt; neither shalt thou suffer the salt of the covenant of thy God to be lacking from thy meat offering: with all thine offerings thou shalt offer salt" (Lev. 2:13). "All the heave offerings of the holy things, which the children of Israel offer unto the LORD, have I given thee, and thy sons and thy daughters with thee, by a statute for ever: it is a covenant of salt for ever before the LORD unto thee and to thy seed with thee" (Num. 18:19). "And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.For every one shall be salted with fire, and every sacrifice shall be salted with salt" (Mark 9:47-49).
22. Jesus did not die to save all men from hell, but His death provided the legal basis of the gift of life in history: common grace. Gary North, Dominion and Common Grace: The Biblical Basis of Progress (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 1.
23. The animism and the pantheism of the modern ecology movement are denials of the God of the Bible and His required system of sacrifice. If this movement's stipulations are enforced by international civil law, we can expect tyranny on an international scale. Men will seek to overturn the Bible's hierarchical system: God> man> nature. Mankind will be sacrificed to nature. For a defense of just this sort of sacrifice, see Bill McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).
24. In real estate contracts, this is called a backward-walking mortgage: the missed monthly mortgage payment is added to the principal owed, so the subsequent payments must be larger. The national debt of the United States by 1994 is well advanced into a backward-walking phase.
25. David Chilton, The Great Tribulation (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).
26. Protestant churches that place heavy emphasis on liturgy (i.e., sacrifice-oriented) often pray "forgive us our trespasses." This is closest to the covenantal focus of Leviticus: boundaries and their violation.
27. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 7.
28. We can still lawfully ask for economic restitution, but we can also forgive this payment or any penalty payment.
29. This did not apply to a non-compulsory, interest-bearing loan: North, Tools of Dominion, pp. 705-18.
30. On the idea of the deserving poor, see Gertrude Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty: England in the Early Industrial Age (New York: Knopf, 1984; London: Faber & Faber, 1984).
31. Rousas J. Rushdoony, Bread Upon the Waters (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig, 1969), ch. 3: "Subsidizing Evil."
32. Sutton, "Whose Conditions for Charity?"
33. "For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation" (Rom. 10:10).
34. I am not speaking here of civil governments. Anyone so unwise as to extend civil governments credit should not complain when these debtors declare bankruptcy, either directly or through mass inflation. Also, any Bible-affirming new administration in a civil government should feel no moral compunction against declaring the government's bankruptcy if previous administrations unwisely pledged the government's obligation to repay. Defaults on loans made to governments by foreign governments or foreign commercial banks are especially productive in this regard. Periodic bond defaults by civil governments are healthy for capital markets: they remind creditors not to loan money to institutions that are as wasteful and corrupt as modern civil governments. Investors should loan their money to productive enterprises, not governments, except in emergency situations such as wartime (maybe). The only other justification for lending to civil governments is in cases where private debtors are even less reliable.
35. Blood and life are linked biblically: "For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul" (Lev. 17:11). "For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off" (Lev. 17:14).
36. The Lord's Supper is public. It is not mandated by the State; it is mandated by God.
37. Gary North, The Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1986), ch. 5: "Familistic Capital."
38. In 1989, these failures at last began to be acknowledged by intellectuals in the West because of the public admission by Communist officials of the economic breakdown in Communist nations. The intellectuals of the West once again took their cues from public statements by the tyrants who were running the Soviet Union. The West's economists had long been much better informed in this regard, yet even they continually overestimated the productivity of the Soviet economy. One of the few mainstream economists who recognized the magnitude of the USSR's weakness earlier than his peers was Harvard's Marshall I. Goldman, USSR in Crisis: The Failure of the Soviet Economic System (New York: Norton, 1983). As an outsider, I had concluded this by 1968. After surveying the critical analyses of Western economists through 1967, I concluded my appendix, Soviet Economic Planning, with these words: ". . . it seems clear that without decentralization economically and the advent of a consumer society based on private ownership and profit, the basic issues will remain unsolved. The economy will shift back and forth between planning at the top and localism, growing more and more irrational as the complexity of the planning task grows ever greater. The system, in good Marxian terminology, contains the seeds of its own destruction." Gary North, Marx's Religion of Revolution (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1968), pp. 225-26. Reprinted by the Institute for Christian Economics, 1989, p. 231.
39. On economists as priests of the modern world, see Robert H. Nelson, Reaching for Heaven on Earth: The Theological Meaning of Economics (Savage, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991). This book is a brilliant exposition of a conceptually flawed thesis: "Roman" (Stoic, Catholic, rationalistic, corporate) economics vs. "Protestant" (individualist, non-rational) economics. The proper classification is realist economics vs. nominalist economics -- in permanent dialectical tension -- with covenantal economics as the biblical alternative.
40. This is the myth of value-free economics. For a critique, see North, Tools of Dominion, Appendix D: "The Epistemological Problem of Social Cost." A shortened version is North, The Coase Theorem: A Study in Epistemology (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992). See also North, Dominion Covenant, ch. 4: "Economic Value: Objective and Subjective."
41. William Letwin, The Origins of Scientific Economics (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1963).
42. That is, the dominion covenant.
43. North, Is the World Running Down?, chaps. 8, 9.
44. North, Tools of Dominion, ch. 30: "God's Limits on Sacrifice."
45. See the Introduction, above: subsection on "Who Paid? Who Benefited?"
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