FOREWORD And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man. For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil (Eccl. 12:12-14).
The Book of Deuteronomy is an unknown book among Christians in the pews. Two weeks before I completed the final draft of this book, I heard a sermon on the ninth commandment. The pastor cited Deuteronomy 19, the section dealing with the penalty for false witness. The woman next to me whispered to me, "Where is Deuteronomy?" She is a dedicated Christian lady and a teacher in an adult Sunday School. She had just completed a summer school course at a fundamentalist seminary. For her, Deuteronomy is a closed book, a lost book. She is not alone.
Deuteronomy is not read because Deuteronomy lays down the law. So does the Book of Exodus, but Exodus contains a lot of historical information in it. Pastors can preach from it without touching on biblical law. 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 Economics of the Pentateuch I began this economic commentary on the Bible in the spring of 1973. In August of 1977, I went into high gear: ten hours a week, 50 weeks a year. I am writing this on September 2, 1997. I have invested slightly over 10,000 hours in this writing project since 1977. With the completion of the Pentateuch, I have reached the end of phase one of this project.
No one before me had bothered to write an economic commentary of the Pentateuch. A major reason for this neglect is that there has never been any demand for such a Bible-based study. The economists are operational atheists, and so are the Christians. Both groups search for social truths through supposedly neutral reason. I wrote this commentary, above all, because I was curious about what God's law says about economics. I had to do the exegetical work to find out, since no one else ever had. I learn best by research and writing. It took a large investment of time for me to find out.
Was it worth it? To me personally? No. "Curiosity wore out the cat." But lots of projects that are necessary for Christian dominion are not worth it for those who do them. Writing this commentary is my calling, not my occupation. It is the most important project I can do in which I would be most difficult to replace. I don't get paid in money for doing it. On the contrary, I have to work an extra ten or more hours a week to produce the materials that generate the donations that finance the publication of this commentary.
Why do I think this commentary is important? Six reasons. First, it is important for God's people to understand what the Bible has to say in every area of life. The church cannot bring an effective covenant lawsuit against society if its members do not know what the Bible says is wrong, legally and morally, with every area of society. Sin reigns wherever God's law doesn't. To reduce sin, we must extend the rule of God's law. God's law is as comprehensive as sin. When empowered by the Holy Spirit, Christians can use the law to overcome progressively the rule of sin in every nook and cranny in which it reigns. God's law is Christendom's tool of dominion.
Oops. There I go again, using a naughty word: Christendom. Protestants for over a century have not used it in public except as a pejorative. Christendom implies that the city of God can have visible manifestations in history -- in the church ("well of course"), the family ("OK, we can accept that"), and the State ("Wait a minute -- that sounds like theocracy to us!").
I could ask the typical Christian: Is there sin in personal life -- personal self-government? His answer: "Yes." What is the solution? Answer: "God's grace and God's . . . uh, hmmm; oh, yes, God's principles!" (This sounds a lot safer theologically than God's law.) What about sin in the church -- church government? What is the solution? "God's grace and God's principles!" What about sin in the family -- family government? Solution? "God's grace and God's principles!" What about the State -- civil government? "Democracy and natural law!"
A second reason why this commentary is important is that there is a relationship between corporate obedience to God's law and corporate success in history. This relationship is denied by anti-theonomists, most notably Meredith G. Kline. My goal is to persuade Christians to begin obeying God's Bible-revealed law in preparation for preaching it, imposing it, and benefiting from it.
Third, I want this economic commentary to serve as a model for other practical and theoretical Bible commentaries in the social sciences.
Fourth, I am tired of hearing the Christian scholar's familiar slogan, "The Bible isn't a textbook in [academic discipline]," the discipline in which he was formally certified by humanists in some institution of higher learning, and for which is a mouthpiece for a baptized version of humanism's conclusions. The Bible is indeed not a textbook. But it does provide the governing interpretation and many facts necessary for writing accurate textbooks.
Fifth, I want write a textbook someday on Christian economics as a first step in restructuring the Christian curriculum. To do thus, I first must know what the Bible says about economics. The Pentateuch was the place to start: the law.
Time for a Change There is a sixth reason. I am convinced that P. A. Sorokin was correct a generation ago: the West is facing a monumental breakdown.(1) We live in a culture which rests on the humanistic presupposition that anything that cannot be touched, measured, or manipulated by scientific techniques is not socially relevant. Sorokin called it sensate culture. No society can survive indefinitely that holds such a view, he said. He believed that Western culture is facing a complete breakdown. So do I. He wrote his prediction in 1941.
The world's division of labor will collapse if there is a breakdown in the means of payment: bank money. If this happens, there will be a worldwide disaster. In the aftermath of that disaster, not to mention during it, Christians will be among the local competitors for social and political influence. They are not ready for this huge increase of responsibility, but it is coming anyway.
After the crisis period ceases to be life-threatening, I expect theonomy to receive a hearing among Christians, who will be facing that ancient political problem: "You can't beat something with nothing."
I now possess a monopoly: an economic commentary on the Pentateuch. Maybe I can at long last generate a some demand at something above zero price. Maybe its publication will no longer demand subsidies from ICE's supporters. But without fractional reserve banking and today's high-tech division of labor, meeting this demand will not be easy.
Here is the looming social problem, in the words of real estate master Jack Miller: "Voters will call for a man on a white horse, and there are a lot of guys out there with brown horses and whitewash." To distinguish accurately between white horses and whitewashed horses, you need to have a model for white horses (Rev. 19:14). The Bible provides this model. The problem is, this model is found mainly in the Old Testament. Christians today prefer men on brown horses to the Old Testament.
A Weak Reed Christians prefer affluent bondage under free market humanism to searching for an alternative, for they recognize where the answer will lead: either to their belated acceptance of Christian theocracy or their belated public acceptance of the legitimacy of some other theocracy. Christians want to believe that they can avoid theocracy. They can't. Theocracy (theos = God; kratos = rule) is an inescapable concept. It is never a question of theocracy vs. no theocracy. It is a question of which God rules. That which a society believes is its source of law is its operational god.(2)
Christians do not want to admit this fact of political life, either to the public or to themselves. It embarrasses them. Typical are the views of Dr. Ralph Reed, an articulate, 36-year-old political technician who built Pat Robertson's political training organization, Christian Coalition, until 1997, when he resigned to become an independent political consultant. To him, politics is a profession. He walked away from considerable influence in the national media, which he enjoyed solely because he ran a national organization that in 1994 had over a million people in its computerized data base, which generated donations of $20 million a year(3) -- in short, a major political force. He has not been heard from since. I doubt that he will be.
Before he decided that running individual political campaigns for money is a far better use of his time than shaping and articulating the political agenda of millions of American evangelicals -- a conclusion I wholeheartedly agree with, given his views of what constitutes legitimate political compromise -- he wrote Active Faith (1996). It was published by the Free Press, a secular international book publisher owned by the huge Simon & Schuster publishing company. He received that book contract because he possessed a great deal of national influence. A year after its publication, he possesses almost none. I bought the book in a used book store in September, 1997, for half price.
Clinton, Yes; Rushdoony, No
In that book, he specifically attacked Christian Reconstruction. He did so within the context of his defense of President Clinton: "I oppose President Clinton's policies. But I do not despise him. Nor do I despise Mrs. Clinton, who has come under a blizzard of attacks in recent times. If Bill Clinton is a sinner, then he is no worse or less than you or me."(4) This statement placed him in the camp of the loyal opposition. This is where a day-to-day political operative always has to be. But for a man living just before a time of monumental change -- possibly civilizational change -- to become a member of the loyal opposition is to betray the future on behalf of the present. It means tinkering with peripheral issues at a time when shaping the future requires a principled break with the present order. Political operatives exchange influence in the future for influence in the present. They are paid to do that. Their creed is: "Business almost as usual."
Dr. Reed has done well what he has been paid to do: keep the deck chairs of the Titanic neatly arranged in a group effort with Mr. Clinton. He gives no indication that he believes the ship of state is sinking. He remains optimistic. He is wrong. It is surely sinking. Above all, it is sinking morally. It is therefore only a matter of time before it sinks visibly, just as the Soviet Union sank, overnight, in August of 1991. In the 1980's, the West's politicians bet on the success of Gorbachev's reforms and his political survival. They lost this bet. Dr. Reed is making a similar bet regarding the future of American politics.
Christian Reconstructionists are on the other side of this bet. Almost no one else is -- surely not in the Christian community. We are not on this side of the bet based on our interest in politics as such. We are on the other side because of our conviction that God will establish His kingdom in history, which includes politics. God says of the power of every covenant-breaking social order, contrary to political operatives in every generation: "I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him" (Ezek 21:27).
Dr. Reed wrote in 1996: "Some of the harshest criticisms of Clinton have come from the `Christian nation' or Reconstructionist community, which argues that the purpose of Christian political involvement should be to legislate biblical law. Some of the more unyielding elements even advocate legislating the ancient Jewish law laid out in the Old Testament: stoning adulterers, executing homosexuals, even mandating dietary laws."(5) Unyielding elements? Unyielding to what? To President Clinton? Most of the Reconstructionist authors I know ignore the man and his wife. We are not all that interested in politics. I have written far more in criticism of George Bush's New World Order rhetoric than I have written about Bill Clinton. Both Rushdoony and I publicly opposed Bush's invasion of Iraq in 1991. It is also worth noting that I do not remember seeing Mr. Reed take on Mr. Bush's New World Order rhetoric in print, although this may be because I have not spent much time reading things written by Mr. Reed.
I am aware of no Christian Reconstructionist who believes that the State should enforce the Mosaic dietary laws. Rushdoony personally adheres to the dietary laws, and he has written, possibly, up to a total of three whole pages on this topic, scattered among his tens of thousands of pages of books and articles. He has never called for the State to enforce them. Dr. Reed may or may not understand this. Either he has misunderstood Rushdoony's position on the dietary laws, or else he is cynically misrepresenting it. In either case, he has called his own would-be scholarship into question.
Faking It Academically
Next, he misinformed his readers about Reconstructionism's eschatology. He described it as premillennial. Here, he moved from merely misleading rhetoric to good, old fashioned ignorance of the position of those whom he criticized. He hasn't a clue that he is dealing with postmillennialists -- something that, by this stage, I should imagine that everyone else who knows anything about Reconstructionism understands. "Led by R. J. Rushdoony, a theologian who serves as the intellectual fountainhead of the movement, they believe that the primary objective of Christian activism should be to perfect society so that it is ready when Christ returns for His millennial reign."(6) On the contrary, we teach that the progressively righteous society is the millennial kingdom made visible in history. Christ reigns in history through His people, not in person. This is the traditional postmillennial argument -- nothing unique here -- but Dr. Reed is oblivious to it. Yet he speaks as if he were a master of Reconstruction's literature.
By now, I suppose I should be used to this treatment. Our critics are legion. In most cases, they are not scholars. They do not know how to debate in public. They do not have the training or the inclination to engage in scholarly debate. But Ralph Reed earned a Ph.D. in history at an academically rigorous institution, Emory University, one of the most liberal universities in the United States. Had handed in an equally unsupported critique of some liberal figure or movement to one of his liberal professors, he would have received an F. "Don't submit your right-wing fundamentalist tirades in my class, sir. This is not scholarship; this is character assassination, and shoddy scholarship, too." Obviously, Dr. Reed did not do this when his liberal professors were grading him. He survived. But once out from under their control, he has reverted to form. He is a political operative with footnotes -- although not enough of them. His main professional concern is neither theology nor truth; it is politics.
The basic rule of scholarship is that you must understand your opponent's position and summarize it accurately before you attack it. The humanists are way ahead of most Christians in matters academic. Christians too often ignore the rules of honest criticism. This leaves them vulnerable to rebuttals such as this one. They wind up looking like dolts, with or without Ph.D.'s. While we Reconstructionists are often highly critical of other intellectual positions, no one has ever accused us of not providing the footnotes that prove that our targeted victims have written exactly what we say they have written. Dr. Reed has abandoned both his humanist training and the ninth commandment here. He offers not a single footnote in his attack on Christian Reconstruction. He does not understand our position, yet he writes authoritatively as though he has mastered it. He dismisses it without understanding it, except for its current political liabilities, which he does not mention. It is just as well that he has disappeared from public view. For sincere but uninformed Christians to follow a man who conducts himself in public in this manner would be a blot on the church. Christ deserves better.
"Moses Was a Tyrant"
Dr. Reed is shocked -- shocked! -- at Christian Reconstructionism's hostile attitude toward taxpayer-funded education. "Many reject school choice and efforts to reform public education as short-sighted and self-defeating. Instead, they call for the eventual elimination of public schools."(7) He has that right. Oppose the public schools? Opposed to the idea that education can ever be religiously neutral? Can such things be? Dr. Reed can see clearly where this is leading: to tyranny. Reconstruction promotes the tyranny of parents' control over their own children's education through direct parental control over its funding. He might well have added that we also promote the same negative view of State-funded retirement programs and State-funded medicine. Dr. Reed understands exactly what this means in the late 1990's: lost elections. And so, he writes, "Reconstructionism is an authoritarian ideology that threatens the most basic civil liberties of a free society."(8) Yes, it does: the civil liberty to steal by means of the ballot box, which is modern politics' most cherished principle.
Let us be quite clear about his position. Dr. Reed is arguing that the God of the Old Testament laid down as mandatory an authoritarian system of civil laws which "threatens the most basic civil liberties of a free society." He is not saying that Christian Reconstructionists have misinterpreted Old Testament law. On the contrary, he is saying that we have promoted, as he so delicately puts it, "the ancient Jewish law laid out in the Old Testament." Because of our deviant practice in this regard, he insists, the pro-family movement "must unequivocally dissociate itself from Reconstructionism and other efforts to use the government to impose biblical law through political action. It must firmly and openly exclude the triumphant and authoritarian elements from the new theology of Christian political involvement."(9)
Triumphant politics. Imagine that! Christian Reconstructionists actually believe that the purpose of political action is -- you won't believe this -- victory! They believe that civil laws cannot be religiously neutral, and that -- you won't believe this, either -- religious neutrality is a myth. They believe, fantastic as it seems, that when Jesus said, "He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth abroad" (Matt. 12:30), He was including civil law.
Dr. Reed has now disappeared from public view. I suppose that he is out there somewhere, trying to line up some non-triumphalist Christian politician to pay him a bundle of money to design a campaign to reform public education. No doubt Dr. Reed thinks that all it will take to please God in the political realm is a national Christian political campaign based on the slogan, "Back to religious neutrality: Equal time for Satan!" No more of that Old Testament stuff. God was all wrong back then. God used to be the promoter of "an authoritarian ideology that threatens the most basic civil liberties of a free society," but no longer. God has changed His mind. He has come to his senses. Dr. Reed and his political peers applaud God. God now has their full approval. This no doubt is a great comfort to God.
Please do not imagine that I am contemptuous of Dr. Reed. That would be like being contemptuous of an unhousebroken St. Bernard puppy that has just relieved itself on the living room carpet. The puppy did not know what else to do when nature called. Nature called the puppy in the same way that natural law theory called Dr. Reed, and the results are analogous. Dr. Reed does not know any better: he has a Ph.D. from Emory University. The average carpet owner knows enough to clean up puppy's pile, but only after rubbing the puppy's nose in it, so that he will not do it again. That is what I am doing here with Dr. Reed.
Actually, Dr. Reed has done my educational work for me. He used Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition to persuade millions of American evangelicals to get involved in politics. He trained hundreds of thousands of them. These shock troops are now ready for action. Meanwhile, their trainer has disappeared, just in time for a worldwide crisis: in economics, politics, and legitimacy. The day of reckoning is looming. In its aftermath, Dr. Reed's loyal oppositionist views will be abandoned as naive, deeply compromised, and no longer relevant. Christian activists will be compelled by the crisis to ask themselves: "If not biblical law, then what?" In the early 1990's, Dr. Reed softened up the evangelicals for Christian Reconstructionism, just as Dr. Ron Sider softened them up in the late 1970's.(10)
Dr. Reed was a minor figure, at best, in his brief days of public notoriety. He had influence only because Pat Robertson hired him. On his own authority, almost no one would ever have heard of him, as is the case today. I have devoted this much space on him, not because his views of Christian Reconstruction amounted to anything important, but because his kind of compromise is dangerous to God's kingdom in times of major crisis. Christians are supposed to understand their times. We have limited resources. We cannot fight every battle. We must select our battles accordingly. To regard political tinkering and the working out of marginal political compromises as a legitimate substitute for prophetic confrontation at a turning point in history is a great mistake. It is the mistake of substituting the peripheral concerns of the fleeting present for the future of God's kingdom in history. I pray that you will not make this mistake.
When Establishments Fall Phase two of Christian Reconstructionism will soon begin. Its theoretical framework is now basically complete. It is almost time for making preliminary local applications. It is time to say forthrightly, "No more loyal Christian opposition." Why? Because there will soon be no more opposition to be loyal to. The present Establishment is about to suffer a mortal blow. Today's loyal Christian opposition will be interred alongside the humanists' civil order after a joint funeral service. RIP.
We have seen this before. The early church in Jerusalem was part of the loyal opposition. Not that Jesus Christ had been loyal. He had been disloyal. The Establishment crucified Him for His disloyalty. He had told them plainly, "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof" (Matt. 21:43). But it took the Jerusalem church from the stoning of Stephen until Nero's persecutions in A.D. 64 to break with the Jewish political Establishment. The Christians finally left Jerusalem permanently shortly after Nero's death in A.D. 68, or so church tradition says. Then, in A.D. 70, the Jewish political Establishment fell to pagan Rome's Establishment. Rome's army destroyed Jerusalem. Never again would the church be in loyal opposition to the Jewish political Establishment. That Establishment was gone.
If this be triumphalism, make the best of it.
Conclusion I began writing this commentary when Dr. Reed was 12 years old. I think it will still be read in a hundred years, though not read by many. Its longevity is made easier to secure because there is one advantage that commentaries possess over other books: they help pastors interpret difficult Bible passages. The Pentateuch has many difficult passages.
This book is long because it is a Bible commentary relating to a specialized area. A standard Bible commentary comments -- or should -- on every passage. It cannot include too much information on any one passage. This commentary is different. It is designed to convey extensive knowledge about a few verses that relate to the topic at hand: economics. The reader is seeking more information per passage than a standard commentary can provide. This book can be read cover to cover, but it is designed to be read one chapter at a time. I assume that a pastor who is preaching on one passage wants information on this passage and no other, for today. The same is true of a reader who reads a passage and wants to see if it has any economic implications. This is the reason why the book is repetitive. I assume that most people will not read it straight through, and even if they do, they will forget what I say about a specific passage. They will come back to the book, if at all, for clarification regarding one passage. A topical Bible commentary should meet the needs of readers who are seeking clarification, one passage at a time.
I have spent over 10,000 hours trying to clear up a few of these passages. I have scheduled another 7,500 hours or so. Let me say this: after the first 7,500 hours, it starts getting easier. I offer this as encouragement to all those who would like to imitate my efforts. I also offer a warning: those who continue to insist that "there's no such thing as Christian economics" have their work cut out for them.
Footnotes:
1. Pitirim A. Sorokin, The Crisis of Our Age (Oxford, England: Oneworld, [1941] 1992).
2. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 5.
3. Ralph Reed, After the Revolution: How the Christian Coalition is Impacting America (Dallas: Word, 1996), p. 200. For future reference, gold was at $350/ounce in this period.
4. Ralph Reed, Active Faith: How Christians Are Changing the Soul of American Politics (New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 261.
5. Idem.
6. Ibid., pp. 261-62.
7. Ibid., p. 262.
8. Idem.
9. Idem.
10. See Appendix F.
If this book helps you gain a new understanding of the Bible, please consider sending a small donation to the Institute for Christian Economics, P.O. Box 8000, Tyler, TX 75711. You may also want to buy a printed version of this book, if it is still in print. Contact ICE to find out. icetylertx@aol.com