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VOWS, CONTRACTS, AND PRODUCTIVITY When thou shalt vow a vow unto the LORD thy God, thou shalt not slack to pay it: for the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee; and it would be sin in thee. But if thou shalt forbear to vow, it shall be no sin in thee. That which is gone out of thy lips thou shalt keep and perform; even a freewill offering, according as thou hast vowed unto the LORD thy God, which thou hast promised with thy mouth (Deut. 23:21-23).
The theocentric principle illustrated here is the predictability of God's sworn promises. God announced in Isaiah 45, a passage devoted to His sovereignty: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else. I have sworn by myself, the word is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear" (Isa. 45:22-23). The New American Standard Version adds "allegiance" to the final sentence. There is no escape from God's sworn word. The reliability of God's word is absolute. He swears by His own authority. There is no higher authority.
Isaiah compared the predictability of God's word with both the predictability and productivity of the seasons. "For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it" (Isa. 55:10-11). The element of productivity in God's reliable word should not be ignored. Nor should the hierarchical aspect of His word, which can be seen in the words that introduce this section: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (v. 9). A sovereign God speaks an authoritative, hierarchical word, and it accomplishes all that God proposes. God's spoken words are productive in history. More than this: they are the basis of progress in history. Cause and effect in history are grounded in God's covenants with men. Historical sanctions are applied by God in history in terms of men's responses to His authoritative word. Dominion is by covenant.(1) Covenants are established by judicial oath. The binding oath becomes the model for legally binding contracts. Contracts are tools of dominion.
This was not a land law. It is a universal law. The law of the vow is still binding.
Productive Words God speaks, and the world responds. He spoke the universe into existence (Gen. 1). It is not enough to affirm that His word is absolutely sovereign from the creation to the final judgment and beyond.(2) We must also affirm that His word is productive. There was more to this world at the end of the creation week than there had been at the beginning. There is progress in history because of His sovereign word, which He speaks prior to the events of history and above the processes of history. What God says He will do, He brings to pass. What He brings to pass is progress. History moves toward the final judgment, not randomly but according to God's sovereign decree. Nothing happens that is outside His decree.
In their public prayer to God, the disciples cited Psalm 2's description of the hopeless rebellion of the kings of the earth against God, and then applied this text to the crucifixion: "For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod, and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done" (Acts 4:27-28). Even in evil events there is progress in history. "The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil" (Prov. 16:4). Progress in history rests on God's absolutely sovereign, absolutely comprehensive decree. The kingdom of God advances in terms of His prior spoken word and His present sustaining providence, which corresponds in all details to His original word.
Analogous Words and Deeds
Man is made in God's image. He speaks as God speaks, but in a creaturely, representative way. The covenantal question is this: In the name of which god does he speak? Just as he is required to think God's thoughts after Him, so is he required to speak God's words after Him. After a man speaks, his subsequent actions are supposed to confirm his words, for God's actions invariably confirm His words. A man's actions are to testify to the reliability of his words. The more reliably he speaks, the greater his productivity because of his greater value to others. Other men can make plans confidently in terms of his words. Greater predictability makes cooperation less expensive. Where the price of something drops, more of it will be demanded. The social division of labor increases as a result of the predictability of men's words. Individual output per unit of input increases. Men grow wealthier. Greater wealth makes the tools of dominion more affordable.
The vow serves as the model of a contract. The words in a vow have greater authority than the words in a promise. The vow is made before God by means of an oath which implicitly or explicitly invokes the sanctions of God in history. The individual takes the vow on his own authority. There is no intermediary institution in between God and the vow-taker. It is not like a church vow, a civil vow, or a marital vow. A covenantal relationship between God and man is confirmed by the presence of a vow to God. The oath's sanctions serve as the link between heaven's throne and history. This is why the person who vows before God must be sure that he fulfills the stipulations of his vow. God is the direct enforcer of negative sanctions against the vow-taker who defaults.
The Judicially Binding Authority of the Oath "For the LORD thy God will surely require it of thee": this is an assertion of a threatened negative sanction. This threatening language identifies a promise to God as a vow. A vow is taken to God and enforced by God. The vow has covenantal authority. It is not the judicial equivalent of a contract made between men. It is a hierarchical, oath-bound contract between God and a person. He brings sanctions directly, for the oath invokes God's sanctions. The oath is self-maledictory ("bad-speaking"), calling down God's negative sanctions on the oath-taker should he fail to abide by the covenant's stipulations.(3) Thus, the vow has greater authority than a contract does, which invokes the State as the contract's sanctions-bringer. A contract is not lawfully sealed with a self-maledictory oath before God.
This case law is an extension of an earlier case law: "If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth" (Num. 30:2). The word for "bind" is the same one used to describe what the Philistines did to Samson. The word is also used to describe harnessing a horse to a chariot. It is as if one's soul -- the breath of life -- could be tied down to a physical implement. Word and deed are bound together judicially. This bond is two-fold: verbal and historical. What a man says must correspond to the promised external deeds which he is subsequently required by God to perform. These deeds invoke God's deeds: sanctions, either positive and negative. Cause and effect in history are covenantal. This is why the structure of the covenant is the basis of biblical social theory. Biblical social theory is inescapably judicial. Having spent four decades in the wilderness under the negative sanctions that God had applied to their fathers, the Israelites of Joshua's generation should have begun to understand this.(4) (Three thousand five hundred years later, so should Christian intellectuals, but they rarely do.)
A promise made to God is more binding legally than a promise made to man. It is sometimes lawful to break a promise to a man, for there is no absolute authority in a relationship of a man to another man, unless that promise is a covenantal vow, as in marriage. A good example of breaking a promise was Solomon's promise to his mother: "Bath-sheba therefore went unto king Solomon, to speak unto him for Adonijah. And the king rose up to meet her, and bowed himself unto her, and sat down on his throne, and caused a seat to be set for the king's mother; and she sat on his right hand. Then she said, I desire one small petition of thee; I pray thee, say me not nay. And the king said unto her, Ask on, my mother: for I will not say thee nay. And she said, Let Abishag the Shunammite be given to Adonijah thy brother to wife. And king Solomon answered and said unto his mother, And why dost thou ask Abishag the Shunammite for Adonijah? ask for him the kingdom also; for he is mine elder brother; even for him, and for Abiathar the priest, and for Joab the son of Zeruiah. Then king Solomon sware by the LORD, saying, God do so to me, and more also, if Adonijah have not spoken this word against his own life" (I Ki. 2:19-23). Solomon realized that Adonijah was claiming the political inheritance for himself, for he was seeking marriage with the woman who had slept by King David to warm him. Adonijah was claiming continuity. He was attempting a political rebellion. Not only did Solomon break his word to his mother, he executed his older half-brother for this insurrection against his throne.
Other kings were not equally wise -- pagan kings. Darius, king of Medo-Persia, was tricked into promising to execute any man who prayed openly to God within a 30-day period. His advisors had devised this tactic in order to trap Daniel, who was immediately arrested and brought before the king. "Then the king, when he heard these words, was sore displeased with himself, and set his heart on Daniel to deliver him: and he laboured till the going down of the sun to deliver him. Then these men assembled unto the king, and said unto the king, Know, O king, that the law of the Medes and Persians is, That no decree nor statute which the king establisheth may be changed" (Dan. 6:14-15). Centuries later, Herod followed in this pagan tradition with respect to his stepdaughter: "But when Herod's birthday was kept, the daughter of Herodias danced before them, and pleased Herod. Whereupon he promised with an oath to give her whatsoever she would ask. And she, being before instructed of her mother, said, Give me here John Baptist's head in a charger. And the king was sorry: nevertheless for the oath's sake, and them which sat with him at meat, he commanded it to be given her" (Matt. 14:6-9). Both men should have broken their promises. They had been misused by those under their jurisdiction. They became vulnerable to manipulators.
In contrast, Solomon recognized this misuse of his authority by Adonijah. He humiliated his misused mother by breaking his promise to her, and then he executed his conniving half-brother. Adonijah had misused Bathsheba and intended to misuse the Shunamite girl. He was imitating Satan, who had used the serpent to deceive the woman in order to undermine her husband's lawful authority. Solomon recognized this tactic for what it was, and therefore had his brother executed.
A king's word is not God's word. Only when God was invoked to confirm a lawful vow did the vow of a king take on the character of an unbreakable covenantal oath. What was true of a king was true for a lesser man. After the Israelites had made a covenant with the Gibeonites, who had tricked them, they upheld their words. First the vow: "And Joshua made peace with them, and made a league with them, to let them live: and the princes of the congregation sware unto them" (Josh. 9:15). Then the fulfillment: "And the children of Israel smote them not, because the princes of the congregation had sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel. And all the congregation murmured against the princes. But all the princes said unto all the congregation, We have sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel: now therefore we may not touch them. This we will do to them; we will even let them live, lest wrath be upon us, because of the oath which we sware unto them. And the princes said unto them, Let them live; but let them be hewers of wood and drawers of water unto all the congregation; as the princes had promised them" (vv. 9:18-21).
God did not bring sanctions against Israel for having allowed a Canaanitic tribe to survive. On the contrary, He allowed the Gibeonites to serve the priests in the work of the temple. "And Joshua made them that day hewers of wood and drawers of water for the congregation, and for the altar of the LORD, even unto this day, in the place which he should choose" (v. 9:27). When an alliance of Canaanite nations attacked Gibeon, presumably to make them an example for having surrendered to Israel, Gibeon called on Israel to defend them. Israel came to Gibeon's defense and routed the Canaanites (Josh. 10). God had told the Israelites not to spare any nation in the land. "And thou shalt consume all the people which the LORD thy God shall deliver thee; thine eye shall have no pity upon them: neither shalt thou serve their gods; for that will be a snare unto thee" (Deut. 7:16). Yet Israel was oath-bound to spare Gibeon and even come to Gibeon's defense. This was the power of the covenantal oath under the Mosaic law. This was the authority of God's name, lawfully invoked.
Invoking God's Name A covenantal oath has great authority because God's name has great authority. This was what the rulers of Israel told the murmuring congregation. "We have sworn unto them by the LORD God of Israel." That was supposed to settle the matter. The matter was supposed to remain settled. Saul broke this oath with Gibeon some four centuries later. The Israelites living under David paid the consequences.
Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David enquired of the LORD. And the LORD answered, It is for Saul, and for his bloody house, because he slew the Gibeonites. And the king called the Gibeonites, and said unto them; (now the Gibeonites were not of the children of Israel, but of the remnant of the Amorites; and the children of Israel had sworn unto them: and Saul sought to slay them in his zeal to the children of Israel and Judah.) Wherefore David said unto the Gibeonites, What shall I do for you? and wherewith shall I make the atonement, that ye may bless the inheritance of the LORD? And the Gibeonites said unto him, We will have no silver nor gold of Saul, nor of his house; neither for us shalt thou kill any man in Israel. And he said, What ye shall say, that will I do for you. And they answered the king, The man that consumed us, and that devised against us that we should be destroyed from remaining in any of the coasts of Israel, Let seven men of his sons be delivered unto us, and we will hang them up unto the LORD in Gibeah of Saul, whom the LORD did choose. And the king said, I will give them. But the king spared Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan the son of Saul, because of the LORD'S oath that was between them, between David and Jonathan the son of Saul. But the king took the two sons of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, whom she bare unto Saul, Armoni and Mephibosheth; and the five sons of Michal the daughter of Saul, whom she brought up for Adriel the son of Barzillai the Meholathite: And he delivered them into the hands of the Gibeonites, and they hanged them in the hill before the LORD: and they fell all seven together, and were put to death in the days of harvest, in the first days, in the beginning of barley harvest (II Sam. 21:1-9).
God had not forgotten the oath made by Joshua and the rulers of Israel. Saul either forgot or believed that God would no longer hold him responsible for honoring it. God did not forget what Saul did. Negative sanctions came on Israel many years after Saul was dead. David spared one heir of Saul because of his prior oath to the man's father. The Gibeonites counted the matter closed with the execution of Saul's grandsons. The blood of their grandfather was on their heads, for their grandfather was dead and beyond historical sanctions. In this case, a Mosaic case law was lawfully violated: "The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin" (Deut. 24:16). In the case of Achan, who committed sacrilege,(5) the sons died for the sin of their father. In this case, the required sanction applied two generations later. The law governing the covenantal oath supersedes the law governing the application of civil sanctions on sons. This is evidence of the importance of the vow.
There is no biblical indication that the Mosaic laws of the vow have been annulled by the New Covenant. The New Testament strengthens the authority of the vow: the Son of God has confirmed the vow. "Also I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God" (Luke 12:8-9). To deny Christ is to disavow Him. Paul warns: "It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him: If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us: If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself" (II Tim. 2:11-13). The promised eternal sanctions -- positive and negative -- are grounded judicially on Christ's inability to deny Himself, His words, and His authority.
A Contract A contract does not have the same degree of authority that a lawful covenantal oath possesses. A lawful covenantal oath invokes God as the final sanctions-bringer. A contract invokes the State as the final sanctions-bringer. The State does not possess the same degree of authority that God does. To elevate a contract to the status of a covenant is to elevate the authority of the State over God. Any assertion of equality is a hidden assertion of superiority.(6) There cannot be equality with God; there is therefore no equality of a contract with a lawful covenant. Jesus warned about invoking God or the sacred implements of God to sanction a non-covenantal affirmation: "But I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven; for it is God's throne: Nor by the earth; for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem; for it is the city of the great King. Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black. But let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil" (Matt. 5:34-37).
The West's social contract theory since the late seventeenth century has placed the State at the pinnacle of power. Some versions invoke God; others do not. In none of them does the Bible gain authority over the terms of the social contract. This places some version of neutral civil law in authority, which in turn rests on a theory of mankind's rational corporate mind and also on a theory of the existence of universally acknowledged and binding moral standards, irrespective of the content of rival religious confessions. It also makes the State the sovereign interpreter and enforcer of the social contract's stipulations.
In Rousseau's contractual theory, this statism is more pronounced than in Locke's version.(7) In Locke's contractualism, there can be a theoretical appeal to God, or to a higher law, or to the sovereign people, but there is a theoretical question here: Who lawfully represents God or the higher law? The doctrine of contractual representation is necessarily a doctrine of historical representation. This is the question of the voice of authority. If the king does not hear a grievance from the people, Locke wrote, "the appeal then lies nowhere but to heaven . . . and in that state the injured party must judge for himself when he will think fit to make use of that appeal and put himself into it."(8) This does not settle the issue of conflicting voices in history. It merely defers it. Locke's god in the Second Treatise is not part of a covenantal relationship which is established in terms of revealed law and predictable corporate sanctions. How, then, does the aggrieved party know if he is in the right or if God will defend his cause?
By invoking the State, the parties to a voluntary private contract reduce the costs of enforcing the stipulations of the contract, but only in a society in which the civil authorities predictably uphold private contracts. This reduction in the costs of cooperation increases the likelihood of on-going cooperation among the parties to the contract. By lowering the parties' costs of enforcing compliance, the State encourages cooperation. It increases the predictability of men's outcomes. It thereby reduces risk (statistically predictable loss) in society by lowering the costs for men to pool risk and reduce risk's burden on any single participant to the contract. The insurance contract is the obvious example, but the same process of dispersing risk applies to contracts in general.
When the costs of gaining predictable law enforcement increase to such an extent that invoking the State's sanctions is more expensive than the value of the expected income stream offered by the contract, cooperation breaks down. This is why self-government is crucial for sustaining a contractual society. If the participants must resort to the State continually to gain mutual compliance, the legal costs and delays will increase so much that their cooperative venture fails. If any society relies on lawyers alone to interpret the law, the lawyers' guild will make full use of this monopoly. The society will fail to obtain predictable justice. It will fall.
Conclusion Covenant-keepers are under the confessional vow of subordination as members of the church covenant. Beyond this, they are not asked to take personal vows of service. They may lawfully do this, but they are not required to. Once a person takes a personal vow to God, he is bound by it. He must fulfill its terms. "If a man vow a vow unto the LORD, or swear an oath to bind his soul with a bond; he shall not break his word, he shall do according to all that proceedeth out of his mouth. If a woman also vow a vow unto the LORD, and bind herself by a bond, being in her father's house in her youth" (Num. 30:2-3). "When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools: pay that which thou hast vowed. Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay" (Eccl. 5:4-5).(9) As with a covenantal oath, the vow is legally binding. God brings negative sanctions to those who do not comply with its terms.
A contract has less authority than a vow, but it has similar aspects: a sovereign enforcer (the State), a hierarchy of enforcement (representatives), stipulations, sanctions, and continuity. This means that a contract's terms are supposed to be honored by the participants. This theological aspect adds an element of authority to private contracts. A biblical covenantal society will eventually develop into a contractual society. Late medieval Christianity developed the legal institutions that established and have maintained the Western legal tradition.(10) This should come as no surprise.
Oath-bound covenantal vows before God make possible social cooperation by establishing the church, State, and family. A contract is analogous to a covenant. It has analogous effects. A contract increases the likelihood of social cooperation among men by lowering the costs of cooperating. It increases the precision of the agreed-upon deeds which men promise to perform. It also makes it legal for the State to impose negative sanctions against those parties to the contract who fail to fulfill the terms of the contract. Contracts lower the costs of cooperation, thereby increasing the amount of cooperation demanded. Increased social cooperation increases the division of labor and therefore men's individual productivity and income.
Footnotes:
1. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992).
2. It is surely not enough to affirm that His word is relatively sovereign, i.e., sovereign except for substantial gaps of historical indeterminacy commonly known as man's free will. Pharaoh had no free will in opposing Moses: "For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee, and that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth" (Rom. 9:17-18). Judas had no free will in betraying Christ: "And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed!" (Luke 22:22).
3. Sutton, That You May Prosper, ch. 4.
4. Gary North, Sanctions and Dominion: An Economic Commentary on Numbers (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1997).
5. Gary North, Boundaries and Dominion: The Economics of Leviticus (computer edition; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1994), Appendix A.
6. Consider bigamy. The second wife asserts equality with the first wife. The first wife knows better. She is the loser. She has become "used goods." She is Leah; the new wife is Rachel.
7. Robert A. Nisbet, Tradition and Revolt: Historical and Sociological Essays (New York: Knopf, 1968), ch. 1.
8. John Locke, Of Civil Government: Second Treatise (1690), section 242.
9. Jesus' answer to the Pharisees went to the heart of the matter: "But what think ye? A certain man had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went. And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go, sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you" (Matt. 21:28-31).
10. Harold J. Berman, Law and Revolution: The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1983).
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