38 CASUISTRY AND INHERITANCE Judges and officers shalt thou make thee in all thy gates, which the LORD thy God giveth thee, throughout thy tribes: and they shall judge the people with just judgment. Thou shalt not wrest judgment; thou shalt not respect persons, neither take a gift: for a gift doth blind the eyes of the wise, and pervert the words of the righteous. That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee (Deut. 16:18-20).
The theocentric focus of this law is the impartial judgment of God. "Wherefore now let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts" (II Chron. 19:7). This was not a land law. It was universal. Men are to render honest judgments in history because God does. Their covenantal judgments in history are to conform judicially to God's covenantal judgments in history and eternity. In rendering covenantal judgment, men are to think God's thoughts after Him as creatures. They can do this because they are made in God's image. The essence of man's status as God's image-bearer is his ability to render judgment.(1) This is why Satan tempted mankind through the serpent by telling Eve to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve were supposed to render judgment against the serpent in terms of God's revealed word. The covenantal hierarchy(2) of God > man > creation was to be preserved by man's representative act of rendering God's judgment against Satan's representative agent, the serpent. Adam and Eve were to render judgment against Satan by refusing to follow the serpent's advice, i.e., his false rendering of judgment against God's revealed word. The essence of the temptation in the garden was the rendering of judgment for or against God's revealed word, for or against the serpent's word. Adam and Eve were to render a joint verdict of "guilty" against the serpent. His crime was having testified falsely against God's word. They were to impose the appropriate sanction by crushing his head. Because they refused to do this, God prophesied a son of Adam who would do this (Gen. 3:15).
Stoning and Hierarchy This raises the issue of stoning. Here are two reasons why stoning was required by the Mosaic law as the proper means of public execution. First, stoning conforms to the imagery of the crushed head. A stone is most likely to be fatal when it crushes the head. Second, stoning allows joint participation in the judicial act. Both Adam and Eve would have participated in the execution of the serpent, not just Adam. Men imposed this sanction before God revealed His law to Moses. The practice of stoning was understood by both the Egyptians and the Israelites: "And Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifice to your God in the land. And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo, shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us? We will go three days' journey into the wilderness, and sacrifice to the LORD our God, as he shall command us" (Ex. 8:25-27). Again, in the wilderness, Moses despaired: "And Moses cried unto the LORD, saying, What shall I do unto this people? they be almost ready to stone me" (Ex. 17:4). The penalty against coming close to Mt. Sinai when God revealed His presence to the nation was stoning, both of man and beast (Ex. 19:13). For an animal to gore a man calls forth stoning (Ex. 21:28-29, 32). This is a breach of the covenant's hierarchical order: man over animal. Only after these events and case laws did the Mosaic law mandate stoning against those who testified falsely about God. False prophets were to be stoned (Deut. 13:5-11). So were members of an Israelite household who tempted other members to worship a false god (Deut. 17:2-6). Finally, an unmarried woman who had sex with another man before marriage, and who did not tell her betrothed husband about this in advance, could be accused of this crime by her newly wedded husband. The penalty was stoning (Deut. 22:21).
What did these crimes have in common? A violation of the covenantal hierarchy: a goring beast over a human being, a false prophet over the community, a rebellious family member over the others, a false wife over her husband. Whenever a major violation of point two of the biblical covenant took place, the appropriate sanction was stoning: crushing the head.(3)
Local Civil Courts To this law were attached positive sanctions: life and property. "That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee" (v. 20). The State was in no position to provide the sanction of life. That was God's prerogative. These sanctions were not civil sanctions, for they were positive sanctions. They would come in response to honest judgment. God would give Israel life and inheritance if Israel's judges rendered honest judgment.
This law governed the establishment of local civil courts. These courts could not have been not ecclesiastical, for this law made no reference to priests or Levites. The ecclesiastical covenant was not here invoked by Moses. This means that the civil covenant was the focus of this law. Officers and judges were civil magistrates.
Hierarchy, Casuistry, and Economic Growth The Mosaic legal system, like all legal systems, was hierarchical: point two of the biblical covenant model. The issue here was authority, namely, the voice of authority. Someone must speak God's word authoritatively and representatively in history. Rendering covenantal judgment is a representative act. This is why point two of the covenant -- hierarchy, representation, authority -- is always connected with point four: rendering judgment, imposing sanctions. In declaring God's word in history, God was above Moses, Moses was above the civil judges, and the civil judges were above the people. God revealed His law to Moses, who taught God's law to civil magistrates, who then served as judges.
The judges were required by God to render judgment in specific cases. This meant that they were required by God to apply the Mosaic law to disputes that would arise between men. The judges were therefore required by God become experts in the art of casuistry: the application of general legal principles and specific case law precedents to new situations. The general legal principles were the Ten Commandments. The case laws were those specific biblical laws that extended the Ten Commandments to recognizable historical situations.(4) By means of casuistry, the judges were supposed to bring justice to Israel. Over time, a body of judicial opinion and precedents would be accumulated which would serve as judicial wisdom. Judicial precedents would then extend the rule of law. Men would begin to think covenantally, judging their own actions in advance. This would not be judge-made law; it would be judge-declared law. God makes the law; His judges are to apply it in history and even in eternity. Jesus announced to His disciples at the Passover meal: "And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father hath appointed unto me; That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel" (Luke 22:29-30). Paul announced to the church at Corinth: "Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?" (I Cor. 6:3).
The original revelation of the law was top-down: from God to Moses to the judges. This top-down hierarchical element was to be re-confirmed in Israel once every seven years, when the entire nation was to be assembled at a common location, and the entire law was to be read to them publicly (Deut. 31:10-13). But this event was comparatively rare. The teaching of God's revealed law would normally have been local: by the Levites, who were judicial specialists, and by the civil judges in actual cases. The Levites were agents of God who declared God's revelation and who served as judges in ecclesiastical disputes. The civil magistrates were officers ordained through the civil covenant who possessed the power of the sword: the monopoly of physical coercion. They declared the civil law publicly and applied it to men's bodies (whipping(5) and capital punishment(6)) and their property (fines(7) and restitution(8)).
Legal Predictability
The predictability of a legal order will increase over time if judges govern in terms of God's revealed law. Men will better be able to predict what the outcome of a legal dispute will be. When both parties are fairly certain that the law's sanctions will be imposed on the disputant who loses the case, the person with the weaker case has an incentive to settle out of court. This reduces the number of cases that are brought to trial. A successful legal system is one in which the high predictability of the law leads to increased self-government and a reduction in the number of cases brought to trial.(9) A vast increase in the number of court cases is evidence of the breakdown in the rule of law: the clogging of the courts.(10)
The greater the predictability of the courts, the greater the incentive for men to cooperate with each other. Why? Because the higher predictability of the judge's application of the law's sanctions reduces the cost of predicting the results of human action. As with any other scarce resource, as the price is lowered, more is demanded. The price of the division of labor is reduced by predictable law. The division of labor is increased by an increase in the rule of law: more and more people take advantage of the opportunities offered by increased social cooperation. This increased division of labor raises the output of cooperating individuals, and therefore increases their wealth. The decentralized decisions of individuals become more predictable. This reduces the cost of obtaining that most precious of all scarce economic resources, accurate knowledge of the future. We can predict more accurately what other people will do when we and they abide by the rules. F. A. Hayek, the free market economist and legal theorist, puts it this way: "The maximal certainty of expectations which can be achieved in a society in which individuals are allowed to use their knowledge of constantly changing circumstances for their own equally changing purposes is secured by rules which tell everyone which of these circumstances must not be altered by others and which he himself must not alter."(11)
The capitalist West is wealthy because it has been the beneficiary of the rule of law. As I wrote in Moses and Pharaoh,
Hayek has made a point which must be taken seriously by those who seek to explain the relationship between Christianity and the advent of free enterprise capitalism in the West. "There is probably no single factor which has contributed more to the prosperity of the West than the relative certainty of the law which has prevailed here."(12) Sowell's comments are especially graphic: "Someone who is going to work for many years to have his own home wants some fairly rigid assurance that the house will in fact belong to him -- that he cannot be dispossessed by someone who is physically stronger, better armed, or more ruthless, or who is deemed more `worthy' by political authorities. Rigid assurances are needed that changing fashions, mores, and power relationships will not suddenly deprive him of his property, his children, or his life."(13) Hayek quite properly denies the validity of the quest for perfect certainty, since "complete certainty of the law is an ideal which we must try to approach but which we can never perfectly attain."(14) His anti-perfectionism regarding the rule of the law is also in accord with the anti-perfectionism of Christian social thought in the West.(15) Christianity brought with it a conception of social order which made possible the economic development of the West.(16)
What always threatens the rule of God's law in history is the judge who departs from the revealed law of God. The judge who substitutes his own wisdom for the law of God or the body of legal opinion is a threat to biblical civil justice. So is the judge who seeks bribes for rendering judgment that deviates from God's fundamental law and constitutional laws. Bribes pervert justice. It is the court's task to extend justice. Civil justice in turn makes possible capitalism's increase of a society's wealth. The positive sanction of wealth is the outcome of civil justice.
In the period immediately preceding the conquest, Moses revealed this case law, which recapitulates Leviticus 19:15: "Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment: thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honour the person of the mighty: but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbour." It recapitulates Deuteronomy 1:17: "Ye shall not respect persons in judgment; but ye shall hear the small as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of man; for the judgment is God's: and the cause that is too hard for you, bring it unto me, and I will hear it." Its theocentric focus was God's judgment. God is not a respecter of persons when He judges any man. God does not look at the person's class position, money, good looks, or any other distinguishing feature. He does not accept bribes to corrupt His judgment. He looks at His law and the person's thoughts, words, and actions, and He judges the degree to which the person before Him has conformed to or deviated from His law. In other words, God applies His law to historical circumstances. He interprets it and makes assessments in terms of it. God practices the judicial art of casuistry. He does not wait until the end of time to render judgment. He renders preliminary judgments in history. As creatures made in His image, men are required by God to do the same: thinking God's thoughts after Him, declaring His law, and applying sanctions in terms of His law. Men are to render righteous judgment. They do this through biblical casuistry.
In our day, biblical casuistry is a lost skill. Worse; it is a skill widely derided as theocratic and therefore illegitimate. This is not merely the opinion of covenant-breakers; it is announced with equal fervor and confidence by Christians: social theorists (few in number since 1700 precisely because of this hostility to biblical casuistry), church leaders, civil leaders, and people in the pews. But there is no escape from the requirements of casuistry. If men do not render judgment in terms of God's fundamental law -- the Ten Commandments -- and God's biblically revealed constitutional laws, which have extended the Ten Commandments to real-world cases, then they must render judgment in terms of some other law-order. Judges dare not remain silent if social order is to be maintained. Disputes will be settled: in covenantal courts or by clan feuds or on battlefields. Sanctions must be imposed in order to settle disputes. The judicial question is this one: By what standard?
Sanctions and Inheritance Verse 20 reads: "That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee." There can be no question about the unbreakable covenantal connection between the law's sanctions and inheritance. The art of rendering biblical judgment is the art of deciding guilt or innocence in terms of biblical law. But this must involve judicial sanctions. To the law are attached sanctions. The imposed sanctions must fit the violation. This is the biblical principle of the lex talionis: an eye for an eye.(17)
The context of this principle of justice was abortion: "If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" (Ex. 21:22-25). It is indicative of the contemporary crisis in Protestant thought that legalized abortion did not become the target of widespread Protestant political opposition until several years after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade in 1973. But after 1980, a growing minority of evangelicals began to organize against legalized abortion. It was this public issue which dragged Francis Schaeffer into political activism.(18)
Because there can be no neutral zone in the abortionist's office between a dead baby and a live one, the myth of neutrality is definitively denied in matters of abortion. This inescapable fact of abortion persuaded Schaeffer's son to write A Time for Anger: The Myth of Neutrality.(19) Whenever the myth of neutrality fades, the conflict between rival religious worldviews escalates. The always mythical zones of neutrality between Christianity and humanism are recognized increasingly as being mythical. This pressures Christians and humanists to go their respective ways to develop their respective views of what constitutes a legitimate earthly kingdom. This in turn pressures both sides to impose their vision of the kingdom on both the political order and the social order.
Theocracy is therefore an inescapable concept. It is never a question of theocracy vs. no theocracy. It is a question of which theocracy. The issue of legalized abortion has dragged evangelical Protestants into the political arena, forcing them to abandon their previous pietism-quietism, forcing them to come up with theologically precise answers to the crucial judicial and ethical question: By what standard? The moment a Christian raises this question, he must confront the issue of theocracy vs. pluralism, not just in the church and family but in civil government. This is why the issue of legalized abortion has led Christians to issue manifestoes that sound theocratic. They are theocratic. They undermine Enlightenment pluralism, which has served as the judicial basis of modern Western society since the late eighteenth century. But because modern Christians have embraced Enlightenment pluralism in the name of Christ, there is an inevitable schizophrenia in their manifestoes.(20)
By what standard? Anglo-American Protestants have resisted dealing with this crucial question from an explicitly biblical point of view ever since the end of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate with his death in 1658, but legalized abortion is now forcing their hand. Peter's injunction is before them: "But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear" (I Pet. 3:15). This hope is more than faith in the world beyond the grave. It is hope that someday, infants will not be deliberately sent to their graves, which include trash bin "dumpsters" located behind the offices of abortionists.(21)
The covenantal issue of sanctions cannot legitimately be separated from the covenantal issue of inheritance. This is obvious in the case of abortion. "Who will inherit?" is the fundamental issue of the death penalty: the earthly one as well as the eternal one. Abortion imposes the death penalty on those who have done neither good nor evil (Rom. 9:11). When abortion is legalized by the civil government, abortionists become agents of the State, for only the State has the right to impose the death penalty. In the name of personal privacy for women, the U.S. Supreme Court necessarily swore in an army of executioners: mothers, physicians, nurses, and their support staffs. A civil oath -- a swearing in -- is unofficial and implicit in the authorization of abortion, but it is nonetheless binding. This is why an entire social order is at risk before the judgment of God when it allows its civil representatives to delegate such powers of execution to private citizens. Biblically, these executioners are no longer private citizens; they are agents of the State, which is in turn an agent of the corporate society. As with a citizens' posse that is sworn in by a sheriff, so are the executioners sworn in by the State. Members of a sworn-in posse have a delegated though circumscribed right to kill those who resist their authority. So do abortionists and their assistants in a nation that has legalized abortion. In today's legal order, abortionists possess much greater judicial immunity from post-execution civil action than a posse does.
Justice and Positive Sanctions We return to the issue of positive sanctions: "That which is altogether just shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee" (v. 20). The positive sanctions of extended life and land were extensions of the Mosaic seed laws and land laws. These laws were the result of Jacob's messianic prophecy regarding Judah: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be" (Gen. 49:10). Seed laws and land laws were laws confined to Israel. They were not cross-boundary laws.(22) The question arises: Were the promises of verse 20 more than extensions of the seed laws and land laws? This raises a subsidiary question: Does this connection between civil justice and personal possessions extend into the New Covenant? That is, was this law a cross-boundary law that applied beyond the borders of Mosaic Israel?(23) Or was it confined historically and geographically to Mosaic Israel?
This hermeneutical question raises the issue of covenantal continuity. Meredith G. Kline's dictum regarding the mystery of God's New Covenant historical sanctions comes into play: "And meanwhile it [the common grace order] must run its course within the uncertainties of the mutually conditioning principles of common grace and common curse, prosperity and adversity being experienced in a manner largely unpredictable because of the inscrutable sovereignty of the divine will that dispenses them in mysterious ways."(24) If correct, this would negate the possibility of an explicitly biblical social theory. Christians would have to look either to autonomous nature or autonomous man to provide the predictable sanctions that make possible both social cohesion and social theory. The existence of cross-boundary laws that were binding outside of Mosaic Israel, and are still binding today, is what makes possible an explicitly Christian social theory.
Is there a principle of continuity between this Mosaic principle and New Covenant law? There is no doubt that the general judicial principle of not respecting persons in judgment is a cross-boundary law. Peter cited this principle in his confession to Cornelius after Peter's vision of the clean and unclean beasts: "Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him" (Acts. 10:34). This is a fundamental New Covenant principle:
For there is no respect of persons with God (Rom. 2:11).
But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: and there is no respect of persons (Col. 3:25).
My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons (James 2:1).
And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear (I Peter 1:17).
The question, then, relates to the covenantal connection between rendering civil justice and God's external blessings. Did life and land serve as representative blessings for a broader class of blessings? Or were they narrowly circumscribed extensions of Mosaic Israel's seed laws and land laws?
The Issue Is Inheritance
The exegetical problem facing us here is to identify the covenantal basis of the extension of both long life and property ownership into the New Testament economy. I argue that the non-theonomist has the burden of proof to prove discontinuity. But the non-theonomist insists that it is the theonomist's burden to prove continuity. So, for the sake of argument (since I know I can win it in this instance), I shall willingly bear this burden.
The solution is found in Paul's citation of the fifth commandment. "Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee" (Ex. 20:12). Paul wrote: "Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right. Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;) That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth" (Eph. 6:1-3). The Greek word for earth applies to specific geographical locations: "And thou Bethlehem, in the land of Juda, art not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of thee shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people Israel" (Matt. 2:6). "Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel: for they are dead which sought the young child's life" (Matt. 2:20). The Greek word for land can also refer to the whole earth: "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth (Matt. 5:5). "For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Matt. 5:18). Paul's epistle to the gentile church at Ephesus obviously was not intended to persuade them that in order for them to receive the blessing of long life, all of the members would have to move to Israel. Yet this would have to be the argument of anyone who denies the covenantal continuity between the promise of long life on the land in the fifth commandment and Paul's citation of this law to strengthen his case regarding the child's obligation to obey his parents.
The most general law governing the case law application of Deuteronomy 16:18-20 was not Jacob's promise that Judah would bear the sword in Israel until Shiloh came (Gen. 49:10). Rather, it was the fifth commandment. Because the fifth commandment and its sanctions extend into the New Covenant era,(25) Deuteronomy 16:18-20 is a cross-boundary law. Rendering civil justice in terms of God's revealed law without respect to persons will produce the blessing of long life. Biblical civil justice will also protect private property. The word land in this passage represents inherited property in general. In fact, it asserts the right of inheritance.
Health and Wealth This passage informs us that there is an economic correlation between honest judgment and life. First, civil judges who refuse to take bribes or pervert justice thereby secure men's inheritances. Secure inheritances represent a defense of private property, including contracts. Second, judicial respect for private property is the legal basis of free market capitalism. Third, free market capitalism consistently increases per capita wealth. Fourth, increased per capita wealth increases average life expectancy. Long life is a visible blessing which is positively correlated with increased per capita wealth. As a nation's per capita wealth increases, so does the average life expectancy of its residents. So does their general health.(26)
The measurable blessing of increased life expectancy is revealed statistically in decreasing rates for life insurance premiums.(27) Those theologians, such as Kline, who deny any measurable correlation between corporate obedience to God's covenantal law and corporate blessings must demonstrate that decreasing term insurance rates are not correlated to corporate covenantal faithfulness, i.e., external obedience to God's law. They must first deny that the West's increased life expectancy came as a result of widespread adherence to the stipulations to God's law, most notably laws protecting private property (Ex. 20:15), including contract law. Then, second, they must prove it.
The Mosaic law informs us, and the history of the West confirms, that the civil government's enforcement of God's Bible-revealed civil law increases national wealth in the long term. The continuing trustworthiness of verse 20's covenantally linked promises -- private property, honest judgment, and life -- has been verified by the history of the West, especially since the late eighteenth century, when the rule of law, Protestantism's concept of personal responsibility and self-government, limited civil government, and eschatological future-orientation(28) produced the Industrial Revolution in late eighteenth-century England, which spread within one generation to the European Continent and the United States.
Conclusion The same covenantal connections linking life, property ownership, and faithful civil judgment are found in the sanction attached to honoring one's parents. Long life (measurable blessing) in the land (secure inheritance) for honoring parents (legal stipulation) is affirmed in Exodus 20:14. He who would in any way deny the covenantal link between the stipulations of biblical law and visible, positive, corporate sanctions must deny the continuing validity of the fifth commandment. He must also explain why Paul's citation of the fifth commandment and its sanctions in Ephesians 6:2 does not re-confirm Exodus 20:14. In short, he must apply an antinomian hermeneutics to the New Testament. He must argue for a radical judicial discontinuity between the two covenants, despite the fact that the author of Hebrews twice cites as fulfilled Jeremiah's prophecy that the law will be written in the hearts of men as being fulfilled in the New Covenant (Heb. 8:10-11; 10:16).
Antinomianism is the denial of biblical law and its sanctions in New Testament times. It threatens the judicial inheritance of the West. This, in turn, threatens the economic inheritance of the West: the increasing per capita wealth made possible by free market capitalism. Whether this antinomianism is the scholastic variety, the Lutheran variety, the Reformed variety, or the dispensational variety, the result is the same: the undermining of covenant-keeping men's faith in the positive corporate results of corporate covenantal faithfulness. This loss of faith then undermines the development of an explicitly biblical social theory, including economics.
Footnotes:
1. You might want to commit this sentence to memory. It is important.
2. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 2.
3. That such a suggestion appalls modern Christians indicates the extent to which pluralism has undermined Christian social thought. The crime of treason against God no longer is regarded as a crime by modern man; hence, the appropriate Mosaic sanction is considered barbaric. In a society in which blasphemy is a trifle, stoning is an offense.
4. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990).
5. "Forty stripes he may give him, and not exceed: lest, if he should exceed, and beat him above these with many stripes, then thy brother should seem vile unto thee" (Deut. 25:3). See ibid., p. 443.
6. For a list of cases, see ibid., pp. 318-20.
7. Fines must be used to compensate victims of unsolved crimes, not as revenue sources for the State. Ibid., pp. 395-96, 423, 490-91.
8. Exodus 22:1-13.
9. F. A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 208.
10. This is the situation of the United States today. Macklin Fleming, The Price of Perfect Justice (New York: Basic Books, 1974).
11. F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol. 1, Rules and Order (University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 108-109.
12. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, p. 208.
13. Thomas Sowell, Knowledge and Decisions (New York: Basic Books, 1980), p. 32.
14. Hayek, Constitution of Liberty, p. 208.
15. Benjamin B. Warfield, Perfectionism (Philadelphia: Presbyterian & Reformed, 1958). This is an abridged version of his two-volume study, published posthumously by Oxford University Press in 1931 and reprinted by Baker Book House in 1981.
16. Gary North, Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1985), p. 212.
17. North, Tools of Dominion, ch. 12.
18. Francis A. Schaeffer, Whatever Happened to the Human Race (1976); reprinted in The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview, 5 vols. (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, 1982), V, A Christian View of the West, pp. 281-410.
19. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway, 1982.
20. On the unresolved schizophrenia of Francis Schaeffer's A Christian Manifesto (1981), see Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), pp. 180-85.
21. George Grant rummaged through one such dumpster in the late 1980's, searching for the remains of executed children. He was chased away by a gun-bearing security guard. The guard threatened to shoot him if he did not stop. When Grant fled in a car, the guard pursued him in a pickup truck in a high-speed chase. George Grant, Grand Illusions: The Legacy of Planned Parenthood (rev. ed.; Franklin, Tennessee: Adroit, 1992), pp. 11-13.
22. North, Leviticus, ch. 17.
23. Gary North, Leviticus: An Economic Commentary (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), pp. 642-45.
24. Meredith G. Kline, "Comments on an Old-New Error," Westminster Theological Journal, XLI (Fall 1978), p. 184.
25. The non-theonomist hastens to assure us that the sanctions of the fifth commandment do not apply in New Covenant times. But he is cut off at the knees by Paul's citation of the entire commandment, including the positive sanctions for obedience. Paul singled out this law as the first law with a promise. He did not call into question the promise, i.e., this law's sanctions. On the contrary, he affirmed the promise.
26. Aaron Wildavsky, Searching for Safety (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction, 1988), pp. 58-75; John D. Graham, Bei-Hung Chang, and John S. Evans, "Poorer Is Riskier," Risk Analysis, XII, No. 3 (1992). John C. Shanahan and Adam D. Thierer, "How to Talk About Risk: How Well-Intentioned Regulations Can Kill," Heritage Talking Points, No. 13 (Washington, D.C.: Heritage Foundation, 1966), p. 14.
27. I refer here to term insurance: payment only to insure against death.
28. Postmillennialism first appeared in a comprehensive, developed form in the Protestant West in early seventeenth-century Scotland and England. The belief in the possibility of long-term compound economic growth for society did not exist prior to seventeenth-century Puritanism. This positive eschatology was secularized by the Enlightenment in the next century. Robert A. Nisbet, "The Year 2000 And All That," Commentary (June 1968).
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