70 LIFE AND DOMINION I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live: That thou mayest love the LORD thy God, and that thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest cleave unto him: for he is thy life, and the length of thy days: that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them (Deut. 30:19-20).
The theocentric focus of this law is God as the cosmic judge of life and death. God here invoked the language of a covenant lawsuit. For any capital crime, there must be two witnesses (Deut. 19:15). He called heaven and earth to testify as His witnesses. In this covenant lawsuit, God's witnesses for either the prosecution or the defense were heaven and earth: the creation. He is the creator of heaven and earth. God is sovereign in His court. This was not a seed law. The New Testament's invocation of the promise of long life on earth as an application of the promised Mosaic positive sanction of long life in the land (Eph. 6:3) makes clear that this was not a land law.
These words conclude the fourth section of the Book of Deuteronomy. Section five begins with Deuteronomy 31.(1) What is important in this regard is the nature of the judicial sanctions: life and death. Death is the ultimate form of disinheritance. He who is not alive cannot inherit. Life is the starting point of inheritance. We have here evidence of the unbreakable link between point four of the biblical covenant model and point five. Sanctions are inseparably linked covenantally to inheritance and disinheritance. To separate the discussion of point four from point five, and vice versa, inevitably produces a partial covenant theology.
Long Life in the Promised Land Verse 20 contains these words regarding God: "he is thy life, and the length of thy days." He is the source of long life, which is a universally honored positive sanction. But for Israel, long life was not sufficient. The goal was life in the land. The promise of long life had a goal, "that thou mayest dwell in the land which the LORD sware unto thy fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, to give them." The good life was life in the land.
Here again, we see the connection between point four and point five. Long life is a positive sanction. It is the basis of the inheritance. Dead men do not inherit. But is long life sufficient? The text specifies that the additional years given to God's covenantally faithful servants were to be used to extend Israel's dominion over the land. Dominion was the goal. The land was the arena. Long life was the means. But what was their tool of dominion? God's law. God called them to obedience (v. 20).
In the passage immediately preceding this one, God set forth the threat of negative sanctions. "But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it" (Deut. 30:17-18). To worship false gods is to commit suicide, both personal and corporate. God threatened Israel with the sanction of removal from the land. Israel's arena of dominion would be removed. To escape this negative sanction, God called on them to choose life.
This was a this-worldly frame of reference. It was also immediate. This was not pie in the sky bye and bye. "For this commandment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest say, Who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it, and do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it" (vv. 11-14). Because the law was close to them -- imbedded in their thoughts -- the covenant's earthly blessings were also close to them. God announced this to a generation that was about to inherit the land.
Compound Economic Growth The theme of compound economic growth is basic to the Book of Deuteronomy. As the fifth book in the Pentateuch, its theme is succession or inheritance. That is, its theme is the future. God promised Israel that the nation would persevere if it remained faithful to God's law. This perseverance was not merely a matter of linear succession; it was a matter of dominion. Dominion requires population growth. It requires personal wealth. It therefore requires compound economic growth. This is what God promised: "And the LORD thy God will make thee plenteous in every work of thine hand, in the fruit of thy body, and in the fruit of thy cattle, and in the fruit of thy land, for good: for the LORD will again rejoice over thee for good, as he rejoiced over thy fathers" (v. 9). But the basis of this process is obedience, both internal and external: "If thou shalt hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to keep his commandments and his statutes which are written in this book of the law, and if thou turn unto the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul" (v. 10). To maintain the kingdom grant, Israel had to obey.
Here God promised Israel expanding wealth. In verse 16, He promised biological reproduction. God therefore promised to match population growth with economic growth. Population growth was not a threat to them. It would not produce increasing misery as the number of mouths increased without a comparable increase in the food to feed them. Nowhere in the Bible can we find a warning of increasing numbers of covenant-keeping people who are suffering hunger as a result of their increased numbers. Hunger, yes, but always in the context of an external imposition of the sanctions of death.
Men are called to choose life. The more who survive, the longer they can reproduce. The more they reproduce, the faster the growth of population. By choosing life in the context of God's covenant, men thereby choose growth. They choose dominion. They also choose responsibility, for with blessings and power come responsibility (Luke 12:48-49). The extension of covenant-keeping man's dominion is the goal of the God's system of sanctions.
The intellectuals' hatred of both population growth and economic growth in the late twentieth century is indicative of a radical hatred of life, man, and God. That the legalization of abortion has accompanied the various zero-growth movements is not surprising. The humanist world is a culture of death because it is a culture built on a lie: "And thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth" (Deut. 8:17). This invocation of man's autonomy is suicidal. "But he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: all they that hate me love death" (Prov. 8:36). Two centuries of unprecedented economic growth and population growth have disturbed many God-haters who fear hell. They fear God's final judgment, as well they should. They see that compound growth in a finite universe points to one of two things: the end of growth or the end of time. Seeking to avoid dealing with the latter, they deny the legitimacy of the former. The war on growth is a war on God. It is a war on man's dominion.
It is the sign of a terrible compromise with evil that we now find Christians -- generally academics who have spent their lives in humanist institutions -- echoing this anti-growth propaganda. Christians today are bombarded by alien messages from morning to night if they participate in the world around them. They pick up the clichés of humanists who dominate culture today. Christians have not been taught to think biblically, meaning covenantally, meaning judicially. They cannot sort out the wheat of common grace from the chaff of ethical rebellion. They pick up slogans from God-haters who are at war with the dominion covenant. They internalize bits and pieces of an alien worldview that is at war with the biblical doctrines of God, man, law, sanctions, and time. They do not recognize that they have joined the enemies of God. They have not self-consciously switched sides. Some have, of course: wolves in sheep's clothing.(2) But the typical Christian layman is stumbling through life in a kind of intellectual fog. He does not recognize his immediate surroundings: the bog of humanism.
Conclusion God calls on men to choose life. This passage makes it clear that at least four things are involved in choosing life: longer life spans, greater numbers of heirs, greater wealth, and an arena of service to God. Also implied are greater authority, dominion, and responsibility. This is the meaning of biblical inheritance.
The positive sanction of life is contrasted with the negative sanction of death. But death in this context -- the conquest of Canaan -- meant removal from the Promised Land. Death meant life outside the land. It meant life under another nation's gods and governments. Death meant the tyranny of pagan idolatry because idolatry produces death. "But if thine heart turn away, so that thou wilt not hear, but shalt be drawn away, and worship other gods, and serve them; I denounce unto you this day, that ye shall surely perish, and that ye shall not prolong your days upon the land, whither thou passest over Jordan to go to possess it" (vv. 17-18). Idolatry is the way of spiritual death. Spiritual death leads to historical disinheritance.
Modern Christians, especially academic theologians, do not believe this. They insist that this historical cause-and-effect relationship ended with advent of the New Covenant. They are persuaded that historical cause and effect is either random or perverse. Either there is no relationship between idolatry and wealth or else the relationship is perverse: evil prospers and righteousness starves. Both views are antithetical to the concept of dominion by covenant, or at least dominion by God's covenant. Both views proclaim that dominion is by man's covenant. Because covenant-breaking man is dominant culturally today, the defender of random cause and effect proclaims the long-term victory of evil-doers by default.(3) In partial contrast is the defender of perverse cause and effect in history. He insists that covenant-breaking man extends dominion because covenant-breaking man possesses the wealth formula: power religion.(4)
In stark contrast to both views is dominion religion, which proclaims dominion by God's covenant. It rests on faith in the continuing applicability of God's law. Specifically, it rests on the Book of Deuteronomy, which sets forth God's law, God's sanctions, and the triumph of God's people in history. Deuteronomy tells men to choose life. This does not mean life lived in the shadows of history or life lived in a pietistic ghetto, meaning life lived in fear of the enemies of God, who supposedly hold the keys to the ghetto's door. It means a life of progressive dominion over the creation.
Footnotes:
1. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (2nd ed.; Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1992), ch. 5.
2. Gary North, Crossed Fingers: How the Liberals Captured the Presbyterian Church (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1996).
3. Gary North, Millennialism and Social Theory (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 7.
4. Ibid., ch. 4; cf. North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989), ch. 3.
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