The Dominion Covenant: Genesis
I always answer as follows: "Yes, there really is a Christian economics. It is called economics. Anything else is pseudo-economics and a fraud. Other types of economics are systems that have been constructed with premises stolen from Christianity, and then restructured to conform to the rebellious speculations of self-proclaimed autonomous men. There is Christian economics, and no other kind."
Can such a claim be proven? The evidence is available. The more sophisticated secular economists have already admitted philosophical defeat You can read their admissions of defeat in Chapter 4 of The Dominion Covenant: Genesis. If it is true that they have no case -- and it is true -- then it is our task, as Christians, to press home God's claims and to confront them with an alternative: Christian economics. The Dominion Covenant: Genesis is, appropriately, the beginning
There are many Christians who argue explicitly that God has no dominion mandate for mankind in the post-Eden world Many more Christians assume this, even when they are afraid to say it Man is supposedly not required to extend the reign of God's law in every nook and cranny of existence. There is therefore some neutral area of life which is beyond the rule of God's law. Verse by verse, chapter by chapter, this view of God's law is refuted in The Dominion Covenant: Genesis.
The three most successful ideologies today are Marxism, militant Islam, and modern science. They share three fundamental beliefs. First, the doctrine of predestination. History is the rule of unbreakable laws. Nothing happens by chance. There is order in history. Second, man can be optimistic. They can join a movement which represents the wave of the future. Nothing can stop the march of history's chosen people. Third, the doctrine of law. These groups believe that their version of law can and will unlock the secrets of the universe. Their unique law-order will give them power over events. The predestined world of the future is theirs, for they possess the key to history: a proper understanding of universal law.
Christianity has been paralyzed in our day precisely because the vast majority of those who profess themselves to be Christians have abandoned all three doctrines. They believe in a chance-filled universe. God has not predestined all things. They also believe in earthly failure. God has not ordained a special social law-order. Any law-order can be used by Christians, except one: the law--order of the Old Testament. That, and that alone, has been rejected by God as a valid source of social order in our era. That's what we are told by most theologians, pastors, and "Bible students".
Christians have abandoned any belief in the dominion covenant because they feel unprepared to fulfill its terms. They are unprepared, for they have abandoned the three doctrines that make possible the long-term social reconstruction of a civilization; predestination, optimism, and law. This combination is a powerful package. By abandoning it, modem Christians have steadily abandoned power. "But ye shall receive power," Christ promised (Acts 118a). If we do not exercise it, then something is radically wrong.
What is wrong is that Christian scholars and social philosophers have abandoned the foundation of power, namely, orthodox theology. They have substituted pietism and neo-platonism for orthodoxy. They have rewritten theology in order "to let themselves off the hook" of the responsibility of transforming all culture.
The Dominion Covenant: Genesis focuses on the third neglected doctrine, the doctrine of law. It argues that there is a specifically Christian view of economics, and that a biblical social and economic order will produce the visible, external, and distinctly economic fruits promised in Deuteronomy 28:1-14. God has offered His people the possibility of long-term economic growth, which is the means of fulfilling the terms of the dominion covenant God as assigned to man the responsibility of subduing the earth and exercising dominion over it (Gen. 1:28; 9:1-7). He has also given His people the law-order which is in tune with the creation, for He made both the creation and the laws governing it, including the laws of society.
The chief intellectual rival of Christianity is not Marxism, however, for Marxism is only one tributary of a roaring river: Darwinism. All types of secular economics are Darwinistic, although they vary with respect to certain points in the Darwinian synthesis. The Dominion Covenant: Genesis traces the development of the single most important idea in modem thought, the most ingenious sleight-of-hand (mind?) operation in man's history since the Fall From the beginning Darwinism taught two mutually exclusive, yet absolutely vital, doctrines. First, all change is uniformitarian. The processes of development are slow and continuous. Given sufficient time -- and there must have been sufficient time -- the perceived order of the universe came about apart from design. There was never a Mind, a Planner, a Purposeful Being who produced this order. In other words, God is a "hypothesis" which fire modern scientist can do without -- indeed, he must do without, if he is to remain truly scientific.
But there was a second doctrine, even more fundamental than the first Man represents a discontinuous leap of being -- a man-honoring and therefore fully legitimate transgression of the God-denying law of uniformitarian change. Just as life sprang from non-life, so did man appear discontinuously in the midst of purposeless continuity. At last, the universe has produced a purposeful agent. There was never a God, but now there is: man the thinker, man the planner, man the purposeful being.
The doctrine of uniformitarianism was from the beginning a subterfuge, a gimmick. Its use was clear--to get God shoved back into the mist of (almost) limitless time. Once removed from the universe, He was immediately replaced by the new purposeful being, man, the highest court of appeal. And beyond man, the State.
This two-step argument has made socialism and interventionism the religions of the 20th century. Men seek a reliable sovereign, and the free market is too "chaotic", too random, too independent of centralized, man-elevating planning agencies. Thus, the humanistic defenders of the free market have failed to gain a serious hearing A single, long-forgotten book destroyed Social Darwinism (the pro-free market position in the late-19th century), Ward's Dynamic Sociology (1880). The Dominion Covenant: Genesis offers a detailed study of exactly how Ward's arguments conquered the West.
To restore men's faith in free institutions, we must reject all forms of Darwinism. This is the key contribution of The Dominion Covenant: Genesis. It makes the break no other economics book does so in a systematic, self-conscious way.
Darwinism teaches a series of implausibilities: that life sprang from non-life, that purpose sprang from purposelessness, and that law sprang from chaos. These implausibilities constitute the most successful religious rival to Christianity in the world. Christian economics must scrap every trace of Darwinism. This must be the first step in reconstructing the failing modern economy. That first step has been taken in The Dominion Covenant: Genesis. Secular economists will pay no attention to its arguments, but Christians had better take it seriously. To compromise with Darwinism is to compromise with death.
Are you tired of hearing that Jacob was evil for tricking his father? That Joseph was a socialist, as he demonstrated in Egypt? That Christians should avoid any signs of personal wealth? That silver and gold are obsolete? That population growth is immoral? Are you sick unto death of hearing that the Bible teaches that "we are our brother' s keeper"? If so, you need The Dominion Covenant: Genesis. You need the biblical ammunition it supplies. (Besides, if you hang onto those dollars much longer, what will they be worth?)
**Any footnotes in original have been omitted here. They can be found in the PDF link at the bottom of this page.
Christian Reconstruction Vol. 5, No. 2b (March/April 1981)
For a PDF of the original publication, click here: