Updated: 1/13/20
Christian Economics: Teacher's Edition
“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master’”(Matthew 25:14–21).There are two fundamental principles upon which the libertarian theory of just property rests: (a) Everyone has absolute property right over his or her own body; and (b) everyone has an absolute property right over previously unowned natural resources (land) which he first occupies and brings into use (in the Lockean phrase, “Mixing his labor with the land”). — Murray Rothbard (1982).
Here we have rival principles of ownership. The first one describes a system of delegated ownership, which is best understood as trusteeship. The owner possesses original ownership. It is absolute. The owner is God. The passage appears in the New Testament’s chapter on the final judgment: sheep and goats, heaven and hell (vv. 31–46). The second principle of ownership is the one associated with pure free market social theory: libertarianism. Murray Rothbard was the most articulate developer of libertarian social theory, most notably in his book, The Ethics of Liberty (1982). He was also the most gifted developer of what is known as Austrian School economics. His book, Man, Economy, and State (1962), is by far the most rigorous and comprehensive presentation of a zero-state version of Ludwig von Mises’ economic theories.
Mises and F. A. Hayek were Kantians, Darwinists, and utilitarians. They therefore denied the existence of innate natural laws and natural rights as social phenomena. Rothbard broke with them on this issue. He defended natural law theory, which was based on his understanding of Thomas Aquinas’ logic, which Rothbard said did not rest on theology but on Aristotle. He made this clear in his introductory chapter in The Ethics of Liberty: “Natural Law and Reason.” As with Mises and Hayek, he saw the individual as autonomous: not under God covenantally. Unlike Mises and Hayek, he denied that the individual is legitimately under the state judicially. He denied the legitimacy of all civil government. He was an anarchist. I regard him as the most logically consistent representative of the philosophy of autonomous man as it applies to economic theory.
The modern intellectual world is not Aristotelian. It is thoroughly Kantian. Kant rejected all forms of natural law theory. So do the followers of Charles Darwin, although Darwin never wrote about natural law. The modern intellectual views mankind as autonomous. He is Darwinian. He rejects the Christian idea of God’s creation of the world out of nothing. He denies also that the world is the product of personal design. It is the product of purposeless, impersonal cosmic evolution, including natural selection in all things biological. Up until the unplanned evolution of man, there was no cosmic purpose. Man is unique in nature. Individual men have purposes. Most Darwinians insist that mankind has purposes, although Rothbard did not. Therefore, according to Darwinism, mankind is the functional equivalent of God.
This is the heart of modern social theory. What the Bible presents as point two of the covenant—delegated sovereignty—Darwinism implicitly regards as point one. The Bible identifies God as absolutely sovereign due to His role as Creator. Darwinism denies the existence of such a God. Mankind is therefore God by default. For the Darwinist, point two of the biblical covenant is point one of the humanist covenant.
With respect to Christian economics, ownership begins with God. With respect to the humanist covenant, ownership begins with mankind. Darwinists generally see the state as the primary owner, as a result of the superior covenantal authority of collective man over individuals. The state possesses greater power than any individual does. For most Darwininsts, political power is the supreme mark of sovereignty in history. Socialists are pure statists. They believe that the state should own all the means of production. This is also the view of Communists, at least with respect to the era prior to the final withering away of the state and the triumph of pure Communism, which Karl Marx never described. But there are few socialists and communists around these days. There never were outside of Communist nations. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, academic communists in the West have either defected or else have gone into hiding. No one likes to be laughed at by his peers for having invested his career and his self-image in a failed social order, which was said by Marx to be inevitably victorious. It wasn’t. Keynesians are dominant in academia and politics. They are in favor of a mixed economy: individual owners and also bureaucrats who represent state regulatory agencies. In short, modern man views the state as God by default, but with the state as having delegated great authority to individuals and families.
Here is the five-point biblical economic covenant. First, God is sovereign. He possesses primary ownership as the Creator. But God is triune. He is both one and many. So, ownership is both one and many. There is individual ownership and collective ownership by the Godhead. Second, God has delegated ownership to individuals and groups. Human ownership is both one and many. It is divided. It is not absolute. There is a rule associated with ownership: multiplication (Genesis 1:28). In economic terms, this means: “Produce a net increase.” This is the message of the parable of the talents. The profit in the parable is monetary profit because the capital originally assigned to the stewards was monetary. But the parable is about profit in the widest sense: kingdom productivity. Third, there is a general ethical rule: do not steal (Exodus 20:15). Honor the property rights of all men and institutions. Fourth, there will be a day of reckoning. This is the meaning of accountability: accounting. The parable of the talents focuses on economics, but it applies to lifetime performance. The meaning of this is imputation: God’s subjective evaluation and objective verbal declaration of value as applied to the output of a man’s lifetime of work. Fifth, there will be an inheritance. Those who were profitable servants will inherit. Those who were unprofitable servants will be disinherited. “So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth’” (Matthew 25:28–30).
In contrast, there is the humanist five-point economic covenant. There is either autonomous self-ownership or else state ownership. There is the “Adamic confession”: Adam, Adam Ferguson, and Adam Smith. The heart of the humanist covenant is a confession of faith: “more for me in history.” This is the confession of faith of the religion of mammon. First, man’s ownership is original. This can mean either the individual’s ownership or the state’s ownership. Second, there is hierarchy. Each owner is responsible. But to whom? Who is the God to whom he is responsible? The libertarian answers: “the free market.” The Keynesian answers: “the state.” Third, there are ethical rules. The libertarian says this rule is the free market’s rule: ‘Make a profit.” This is based on a judicial rule: “high bid wins.” The Keynesian also says the rule is “make a profit,” but this rule is modified: “according to state bureaucratic guidelines.” Fourth, there will be an accounting. The libertarian affirms that the market is constantly conducting an accounting. The Keynesian agrees, but with this modification: “with bureaucratic administrative law courts exercising a veto.” Finally, there will be an inheritance. The libertarian sees this as governed by a last will and testament for individuals, or else by corporate succession. The Keynesian adds this: “after death taxes imposed on the rich.”
God has purposes for His creation: the dominion covenant (Genesis 1:26–28). This is the basis of the subordinate purposes of mankind. Men are made in God’s image, meaning they are analogous to God. The implications of purposefulness are different in the rival covenants: the biblical covenant and the covenant of self-professed autonomous man. In both systems, purpose preceded planning. Purpose is in the form of a mission statement.
1. Trusteeship
The first question of the shorter catechism of the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), a Presbyterian document, reads as follows:
Q. 1. What is the chief end of man?
A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.
This is a cogent summary of the primary purpose attributed to mankind by all Christian traditions. No theologian would argue vehemently against it.
Mankind must glorify God. Yet God is in no need for further glorification. He is perfect. This is what Christian philosopher Cornelius Van Til called the full-bucket paradox. Mankind is supposed to add to God’s glory, yet God is perfect. The same paradox applied to the creation. Adam had to care for a perfect garden and improve it.
Jesus’ economic mission statement is this:
Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you (Matthew 6:31–33).
This is presented within the context of overall subjective contentment. Paul wrote:
But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction (I Timothy 6:6–9).
There is God’s general command to be fruitful and multiply (Geneses 1:28). This is a call to biological reproduction. But the goal is not per capita poverty, so this is also a call to increasing per capita wealth. The West has achieved this since about 1800. The entire world is now experiencing this, beginning no later than 1950.
2. Autonomy
According to Mises, at the core of purposeful human action is discontent or uneasiness. “What determines action is the fact that in choosing among various ways which can remove future uneasiness the length of the waiting time in each case is a necessary element” (Human Action, Ch. XVIII:2). The acting individual seeks to exchange one set of conditions for another.
Action is always directed toward the future; it is essentially and necessarily always a planning and acting for a better future. Its aim is always to render future conditions more satisfactory than they would be without the interference of action. The uneasiness that impels a man to act is caused by a dissatisfaction with expected future conditions as they would probably develop if nothing were done to alter them. In any case action can influence only the future, never the present that with every infinitesimal fraction of a second sinks down into the past. Man becomes conscious of time when he plans to convert a less satisfactory present state into a more satisfactory future state. (Ch. V:2.)This is the humanist’s version of Adam’s assignment: to multiply. It is the dominion process. The difference is this: the humanistic economist does not explain this in terms of God’s delegated capital and His expected rate of return. Man is seen as autonomous.
Men can seek to make themselves rich. Or they can give away their wealth. They may seek money, sex, power, and fame. Beautiful women seek to marry men who have achieved these four goals. Other men seek life in a library. They do not marry. But the issue for humanistic economics is their focus: to serve themselves or else some aspect of the creation. Their confession of faith is this: “more for me in history.” It can mean more money, or more respect, or more personal satisfaction, or more self-esteem. This is the confession of faith for the religion of mammon. Jesus warned: “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36).
We live in a world of cursed scarcity (Genesis 1:17–19). This forces us to cooperate with others to gain the benefits of the division of labor. It forces us to make economic plans. We have individual purposes. We must make plans in order to achieve them.
1. Trusteeship
Because we use God’s capital, we are in debt to Him. We hold capital as trustees. So, we are servants upward. This is the primary form of service. It is at the heart of ownership.
This is not the only form of service. We serve God by serving others.
But Jesus called them to him and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:25–28).
This is the basis of productivity in history: serving others. The incarnation of Jesus is the model. Service is the basis of success.
Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:5–11).Service is also downward to those under our judicial authority in family, church, or state. Finally, we serve paying customers in order to improve ourselves in terms of wealth. Wealth is a positive sanction for righteousness and efficient service. It is a covenant sanction. “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your fathers, as it is this day” (Deuteronomy 8:17–18).
We accumulate capital by thrift: keeping our expenditures on consumption lower than our total income. We also accumulate it by wise investing: buying low and selling high. This takes wise forecasting. But it is all done in order to extend the kingdom of God.
When we possess greater capital, we can be even better servants. We seek greater capital in order to provide better service to more people. The process is other-directed.
2. Autonomy
Adam Smith placed consumption at the heart of his economic theory. Service is for the sake of consumption: “more for me in history.” He was the covenantal son of the original Adam.
Consumption is the sole end and purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer. The maxim is so perfectly self-evident that it would be absurd to attempt to prove it. But in the mercantile system the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce. (Wealth of Nations, Ch. IV:8:49).
This is why we serve others. It is the only way we can consistently persuade them to provide us the things that we desire.
But man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and shew them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this: Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages (Ch. I:2:2).
This is the essence of free market capitalism, as presented by humanists. It is man-centered. While this is better than socialism, it is not biblical. While the outcomes are the same in free market capitalism and biblical capitalism, namely, service to the buyer, the motivations are different. The result of autonomous man’s service to the customer is the same as Christian man’s service to the customer: profit or loss, as determined by the customer’s decision to buy or not to buy, and also by the accuracy of the planner’s forecast and his implementation of his plan.
Rules govern every competitive system. This includes the free market. These rules place legal boundaries around the market’s transactions. They may be enforced by social custom. They may be enforced by the state. To be effective, the negative sanctions must correlate to the infractions. This is crucial for the voluntary support by the public of a sense of justice. This sense of justice is fundamental in promoting self-government under law. Self-government reduces the costs of law enforcement. The society gets more justice for the same expenditure of money.
1. Trusteeship
Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 are long passages devoted to the relationship between covenant-keeping and prosperity, and also covenant-breaking and poverty. The section in each chapter on negative sanctions is four times as long as the section on positive sanctions. These sanctions, positive and negative, are threatened by God. They are not civil sanctions. They are God’s direct sanctions into history. This means that the primary function of negative civil sanctions against specific crimes is to restrain God’s corporate negative sanctions. The civil sanctions are preventative, not merely in the sense of preventing criminal behavior, but in the sense of avoiding the wrath of God in history. This is not the outlook of those who defend the autonomy of man and society.
The rules in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 are ethical. They are based on God’s ethical code. First, there will be positive sanctions. “And if you faithfully obey the voice of the Lord your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the Lord your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth” (Deuteronomy 28:1). A list follows. Second, there will be negative sanctions. “But if you will not obey the voice of the Lord your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you” (v. 15). A much longer list follows.
These rules are the equivalent of a business’s manual of operations. The manual sets forth the rules of procedure that govern the business. These rules are constraining factors that limit the general rule of every business: “Make a profit.” This positive command means: “Buy low. Sell high.” This is the governing principle of the parable of the talents. But that parable applies to kingdom expansion, not just a profit-and-loss statement based on monetary returns. It is much broader than business, which is governed by the laws of exchange. Yet it is clear in Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28 that the parallel lists of sanctions are overwhelmingly economic. To get the Israelites’ attention, Moses did what Jesus also did in His pocketbook parables. He focused on economics.
2. Autonomy
In the worldview of autonomous man, there is no concept of God as a judge who brings visible sanctions in history. The only gods are impersonal nature and mankind. The law of gravity is seen as impersonal and universal. There are negative sanctions for disobeying it. In contrast are man-made laws of society. While they are imposed by the market, they are the results of personal decisions. Rothbard wrote:
Each individual producer, then, is sovereign over his own actions; he is free to buy, produce, and sell whatever he likes and to whoever will purchase. The farmer is not compelled to sell to any particular market or to any particular company, any more than Ford is compelled to sell to John Brown if he does not wish to do so (say, because he can get a higher price elsewhere). But, as we have seen, in so far as a producer wishes to maximize his monetary return, he does submit himself to the control of consumers, and he sets his output accordingly. This is true of the farmer, of Ford, or of anyone else in the entire economy—landowner, laborer, service-producer, product-owner, etc. Ford, then, has no more “control” over the consumer than the farmer has (Man, Economy, and State, Ch. 10:3).
The sanctions are impersonal with respect to nature's laws. Nature's laws are not ethical for autonomous man. But what about economic laws? Are they based on ethics? Rothbard believed in natural law theory that is based on ethics. The vast majority of economists do not. This included Mises and Hayek. This made Rothbard unique. He wrote:
The natural law, then, elucidates what is best for man—what ends man should pursue that are most harmonious with, and best tend to fulfill, his nature. In a significant sense, then, natural law provides man with a "science of happiness," with the paths which will lead to his real happiness. In contrast praxeology or economics as well as the utilitarian philosophy with which this science has been closely allied, treat "happiness" in the purely formal sense as the fulfillment of those ends which people happen—for whatever reason—to place high on their scales of value. Satisfaction of those ends yields to man his "utility" or "satisfaction" or "happiness." Value in the sense of valuation or utility is purely subjective, and decided by each individual (The Ethics of Liberty, Ch. 5:2).
In contrast, Mises wrote this: “Law and legality, the moral code and social institutions are no longer revered as unfathomable decrees of Heaven. They are of human origin, and the only yardstick that must be applied to them is that of expediency with regard to human welfare” (Human Action, Ch. VIII:2). This is the essence of autonomy in economic theory.
Economic value is imputed subjectively. This is the central premise of modern economics. Classical economics believed that economic value is intrinsic. It is either the product of the infusion of labor into production or else the cost of production generally. Classical economists disagreed as to which was the source. In the early 1870's, this view changed. Beginning with Austrian economist Carl Menger, economic value was seen as subjectively imputed by customers. Customer bidding is what sets prices, not the cost of production. He was joined in this by William Stanley Jevons and Léon Walras, who simultaneously and independently came to the same conclusion. This insight re-structured economic theory. It moved economic theory from philosophical realism to nominalism. This forthrightly moved economic theory back to a theory of legal sovereignty. Who is sovereign in the economy? This is a legal concept: the concept of ownership. The modern economist identifies owners as sovereign: buyers and sellers. Austrian economics going back to an essay on money by Menger in 1892 that identified money as the most marketable commodity. Mises made this idea central in his Theory of Money and Credit in 1912. Because the buyer owns money, he has greater economic authority, though not greater legal sovereignty, than the seller.
1. Trusteeship
God is sovereign. He was the creator. On this basis, He secured absolute and total ownership. But then He delegated ownership to trustees. From then on, sellers have competed against sellers. Buyers have competed against buyers. Out of this objective competitive bidding for ownership comes an array of objective prices. Nevertheless, the imputation of economic value is subjective. Owners impute subjective value to scarce resources.
God imputes economic value to all things. His imputation is subjective. That is to say, it is personal. God is a Trinity. He is one God in three Persons. Thus, subjective imputation is both individual and corporate. But it is legally objective. It is based on ownership. He knows what prices should be in a world of covenant keeping, i.e., “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). He also knows what today’s prices are. There is an objective process of accounting. It is continual. It is comprehensive. It is accurate. This points to the final judgment (Matthew 25).
Men are analogical to God. We are made in God’s image. Therefore, we also impute economic value. Out of our individual subjective imputations and objective market bidding comes an array of objective prices. These are monetary prices in the modern economy.
The Bible says that covenant-keeping men will judge the angels (I Corinthians 6:3). This indicates the extent of men’s capacity to judge. Applying permanent ethical standards to specific historical circumstances is the essence of rendering judgment. This is judicial imputation. It is the model for economic imputation.
There is profit and loss in history because there is profit and loss at the end of history. Paul wrote of covenant-keepers:
For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each one's work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire (I Corinthians 3:11–15).This involves self-judgment under God’s law. It is judgment in the name of God (judicial) and also on behalf of God (economic). Men’s ability to make these estimates regarding God’s final judgment is the moral and philosophical foundation of making economic judgments in history.
2. Autonomy
For the humanist who insists on autonomy, there is no way philosophically for him to equate objective value with subjective value. This is true of individual subjective judgments over time. Tastes change. It is also true of making corporate judgments. Under the assumptions of methodological individualism, which is nominalism, there can be no interpersonal comparisons of subjective utility. There is no objective measuring scale of economic value that is common to all people.
There is monetary profit and loss. Other people impute economic value to what they own and what others own. They make objective bids. But there is no way to know who wants anything the most. A rich man may barely want to buy some item that a poor man desperately wants. The poor man cannot match the rich man’s bid. The rich man goes home with it: high bid wins.
Which institution should judge who goes home with it? The market or the state? How can this be decided? Not by way of the market process itself. It cannot set its own limits. Ethics sets the legal limits. This is the issue of representation: legal and economic. Should the property owner act on behalf of himself? His family? His clan? His church? His community? How should he decide? What sanctions are involved? Imposed by whom? On whose authority?
Competing ethical systems identify the responsibilities of the owners, who are representatives. But there is no agreement among these systems. This is the plight of all systems of man’s autonomy. So, the issues are resolved by state power. Mises put it this way.
The essential problem of all varieties of universalistic, collectivistic, and holistic social philosophy is: By what mark do I recognize the true law, the authentic apostle of God's word, and the legitimate authority. For many claim that Providence has sent them, and each of these prophets preaches another gospel. For the faithful believer there cannot be any doubt; he is fully confident that he has espoused the only true doctrine. But it is precisely the firmness of such beliefs that renders the antagonisms irreconcilable. Each party is prepared to make its own tenets prevail. But as logical argumentation cannot decide between various dissenting creeds, there is no means left for the settlement of such disputes other than armed conflict. The nonrationalist, nonutilitarian, and nonliberal social doctrines must beget wars and civil wars until one of the adversaries is annihilated or subdued. The history of the world's great religions is a record of battles and wars, as is the history of the present-day counterfeit religions, socialism, statolatry, and nationalism (Human Action, Ch. VIII:2).
The twentieth century was not favorable to Mises’ doctrine of nineteenth-century classical political liberalism. Classical political liberalism rested on widespread faith in philosophical realism, natural law, and natural rights theories. That faith disappeared when subjectivism, nominalism, and methodological individualism triumphed in the final third of the century. In economic theory, the Austrian School was at the forefront of that triumph.
There is an inheritance. The transfer of wealth is inescapable. It is an aspect of death.
1. Trusteeship
Jesus taught that inheritance beyond the grave is accomplished by means of a representative legal transfer of ownership in history. “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19–21). So, this is a call to charity in history and also a guarantee of wealth in eternity. The rich covenant-keeper surrenders his wealth in history in the name of God. But God holds the value of this property in reserve, when He will hand it back.
There is a theocentric model for this arrangement: Jesus’ transfer of His kingdom back to God the Father at the end of time.
Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all (I Corinthians 15:24–28).
God the Father transfers authority to God the Son in history. Then, at the end of time, He receives it back. If this arrangement is good enough for God the Father, it is surely good enough for covenant-keepers.
There is legitimate wealth accumulation in history. This makes available a larger capital base for God-honoring purposes. More is better than less. But the crucial covenantal question is the issue of trusteeship. On whose behalf is the capital being accumulated? God’s or mammon’s?
Ultimately, there is no escape from imputation by others. It is ultimately imputation by God. This is best seen in this famous biblical text, wherein the kingdom was removed from Babylon in one night.
Then from his presence the hand was sent, and this writing was inscribed. And this is the writing that was inscribed: Mene, Mene, Tekel, and Parsin. This is the interpretation of the matter: Mene, God has numbered the days of your kingdom and brought it to an end; Tekel, you have been weighed in the balances and found wanting; Peres, your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians (Daniel 5:24–28).
2. Autonomy
At the heart of autonomy is death. The Book of Ecclesiastes warns about the uncertain nature of inheritance. First, there is the hope of fame.
Then I said in my heart, “What happens to the fool will happen to me also. Why then have I been so very wise?” And I said in my heart that this also is vanity. For of the wise as of the fool there is no enduring remembrance, seeing that in the days to come all will have been long forgotten. How the wise dies just like the fool! (2:15–16).
Second, there is wealth.
I hated all my toil in which I toil under the sun, seeing that I must leave it to the man who will come after me, and who knows whether he will be wise or a fool? Yet he will be master of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity. So I turned about and gave my heart up to despair over all the toil of my labors under the sun, because sometimes a person who has toiled with wisdom and knowledge and skill must leave everything to be enjoyed by someone who did not toil for it. This also is vanity and a great evil (2:18–21).
One way around this is to create a corporation. Legally, it need not die. But who will manage it in the future? Will the new managers maintain its original mission statement at the expense of reduced profits? Probably not.
There is always the threat of dissipation through waste.
Autonomy for one person is surrendered at his death. Inheritance is inescapable. A new source of economic imputation replaces the former owner. The former owner possesses little control over the uses that to which his wealth will be put. He can build in restrictions on the use of his capital into the inheritance document, but those who impute value to this inheritance are beyond his control.
All forms of economic theory teach that property is held in trust. The asset owner manages the asset as a trustee. There is no way in history to escape this judicial position. The question is this: Whom do they represent? God? The state? Other property owners? Wives and children? Their clans, if any?
The Bible is clear: owners represent God judicially, i.e., in His name. They also represent Him economically: on His behalf. They do not own themselves. They do not own their property. They are entrusted with ownership by God. They work at God’s pleasure. Their wealth is bounded. Their years are bounded. They are mortal. There is no escape from full disinheritance in history except through charitable transfers of wealth on behalf of God’s kingdom and in His name. High bid wins, but only when the property is transferred to God.
And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:16–21).
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