Introduction to Part 3
Christian Economics: Student's Edition
[Updated: 1/18/18]
The bricks have fallen, but we will build with dressed stones; the sycamores have been cut down, but we will put cedars in their place (Isaiah 9:10).
The fall of man brought mankind under a series of curses: biological and environmental. But there was also hope: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15).
The dominion covenant of Genesis 1:26–28 was not repealed. Mankind is still required to subdue the creation for the glory of God. Mankind is still a collective steward under God. There has been no reduction of personal or corporate responsibility. But mankind is now divided into two branches within one family: the adopted heirs and the disinherited, the covenant-keepers and the covenant-breakers.
The earth is under a curse.
And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you shall eat the plants of the field (Genesis 3:17–18).
But this curse will be progressively removed in history.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:19–25).
What is God’s program of progressive redemption in history? What is His program of restoration? It is a program of redemption: to buy back. It is covenantal. It is therefore judicial. But it is necessarily also ethical, for all covenants are tied to ethics. Law is inescapably tied to sanctions: positive and negative. Sanctions in turn point to inheritance and disinheritance: in history and then eternity.
We have seen what mankind possessed pre-fall. This is the world we have lost. We have seen what covenant-breaking men have substituted for God’s economy. It is under a curse. Now we must see what God offers as a way to regain part of what we have lost before the final judgment. In Part 3, I discuss a reconstruction of economics. There has to be a reconstruction of economic theory and practice because the fall of man has corrupted economics. The economy before the fall was different from the economy after the fall. Covenant-breaking man adopted a new worldview, one which proclaims man as God. This is the essence of humanism.
Humanism was implied by the fall. Adam decided that he would decide whether God’s word was true or the serpent’s word. Man was the decision-maker. Man would choose. In affirming his position as the judge of the rival words, Adam elevated himself into the sovereign over history. He would decide. He would choose.
The reconstruction of every area of life is based on a replacement of humanism with Christianity. There is no neutrality in the world. Neutrality is a myth. It is used by humanists to persuade Christians to surrender intellectual leadership to the spiritual and philosophical sons of Adam. Adam also pretended to be a neutral investigator. But he was not neutral. He had rejected God’s word.
In reconstructing economic theory, I begin with God’s dominion covenant: God, man, law, sanctions, and time. Humanistic man has a parallel covenant. Instead of God, there is an impersonal universe which is said to operate in terms of an eternal struggle between pure physical law vs. pure chance: determinism vs. randomness. All theories of both nature and history reveal this dualism. They go back and forth between the two. If we are determined, we lose our freedom. If we are not determined, then how do we change the deterministic world around us? By mathematics? Then those people who have the best formulas and the fastest computers will become our masters. What about tools? What about robots? Will they become our new masters? Back and forth, back and forth: there is never any resolution.
Humanism makes man the king of creation. But is this individual man? If so, how can society operate? If this is collective man, how will freedom survive? Back and forth, back and forth: there is never any resolution.
Christianity calls men to honor God’s covenants: the dominion covenant, plus individual, family, church, and state covenants. It calls us to see the world God’s way. I cover this in Part 4.
How does this reconstruction affect economic theory? By offering a theory of redemption: to buy back the ethically lost world. How? By restoring what mankind lost in the fall and reducing the curses that God imposed. There are two aspects of this reconstruction, both covenantal. One aspect is judicial. The other is economic. One has to do with delegated legal sovereignty. The other has to do with delegated economic authority. Both are hierarchical. Both are ethical. Both have to do with sanctions in history. Both have to do with inheritance, both individual and corporate.
If Adam and Eve had not rebelled, they and their children would not have died. Second, the earth would not have been cursed by God. So, the birth rate would have been high, the death rate would have been zero, and mankind would have filled the earth within a few hundred years. Second, they would have increased their per capita wealth through the entire period. Instead, we still labor long and hard to earn our daily bread, and only in the last few decades has there been legitimate hope that the billions of people who live in subsistence poverty will be delivered from this curse within a few decades.
Beginning sometime around 1800 in Great Britain and the United States, the world began to experience compound economic growth and compound population growth. The world today bears almost no resemblance to the world of 1800. Yet all that it his taken to achieve this worldwide transformation has been compound growth of about 2% to 3% per year per capita. Economic historians are not agreed on how this unprecedented achievement has taken place. Therefore, they are not agreed on how this growth can be sustained.
In the next five chapters, I will describe how God requires covenant-keepers to implement the dominion covenant in a world that God has cursed because of the sin of Adam. The same five points remain in force. Mankind is still responsible for extending dominion by means of God’s covenant laws. I am going to cover the ways that these covenantal laws are supposed to be obeyed in the New Covenant era.
If we want to understand how, beginning around 1800, compound economic growth and compound population growth for the first time were sustained for over two centuries, we should begin studying the historical records in terms of five economic issues: the providence of God, the service-based economy, God’s leasehold, entrepreneurship, and compounding.