Inheritance and Dominion completes Gary North's economic commentary on the Pentateuch, which he began writing in 1973. This seven-volume set lays the exegetical groundwork for the development of an explicitly biblical economics, which must begin with the doctrine of the covenant -- specifically, the covenant's five-point structure.
The Book of Deuteronomy is an unknown book among Christians in the pews. Deuteronomy is not read today. There is a reason for this: Deuteronomy lays down the law. So does the Book of Exodus, but Exodus contains a lot of historical information. Pastors can preach from it without touching on biblical law and its continuing authority. Leviticus has a lot of law in it, but there is so much material on the sacrifices and the ceremonies that pastors can preach on Leviticus' many "types" of this or that New Testament theme. They can avoid the law. Like Exodus, Numbers has historical information in it.
Not so with Deuteronomy. From its opening section to the end, Deuteronomy lays down the law. This is why pastors avoid this book like the plague of biblical leprosy. On every page, it proclaims, "trust and obey, for there's no other way." Protestants sing these words, but they do not believe them. They proclaim: "We're under grace, not law!" They are wrong. They are under humanist civil courts and humanist lawyers. They will remain in this condition of bondage until they discover an explicitly biblical answer to this question: "If not biblical law, then what?"
The Pentateuch sets forth laws which, when obeyed, make socialism impossible to establish. They also make the Keynesian "mixed economy" impossible to establish. Yet other biblical laws make the modern libertarian society impossible to establish. Thus, the suggestion that biblical law remains authoritative today is resisted fiercely by the powers that be.
The kingdom of God must replace the kingdom of Satan in history, which is the kingdom of self-proclaimed autonomous man. Part of this replacement process is the reconstruction of all modern academic disciplines in terms of the Bible. Any attempt to do this is resisted strongly by two groups: non-Christian scholars and Christian scholars. The first group does not want to surrender power. The second group does not want to abandon the fruits of the intellectual, emotional, and economic investment it made by accepting the methodology and most of the conclusions of humanistic higher education.
This commentary series challenges the legitimacy of the corrupt bargain made between humanist-certified Christian scholars and those who certified them: the surrender of education, and therefore everything the humanist academy claims to speak to authoritatively, to those who say that the God of the Bible and His revelation are irrelevant to formal education.
Christian scholars, in their professional work, have preferred to bow to the god of the academy rather than bow to the law of God. This has been going on from the day that philosophical defenders of the Christian faith first invoked Greek philosophy as the basis of their defense. In short, it is an ancient tradition. It is time to call a halt to it.
Because this is an economic commentary, it is narrowly focused. The entire series on the Pentateuch was designed from the beginning as a model for other academic disciplines in the social sciences. The Bible speaks to the fundamental issues of every generation, and it speaks specifically. Every academic discipline must be restructured in terms of the Bible. This project demonstrates that such a reconstruction is possible.
About the Author Gary North is the author of over 40 books. He is the founder of the Institute for Christian Economics. His books have been translated into Russian, Spanish, and Korean. His favorite reply to his critics is, "You can't beat something with nothing."