Updated: 1/13/20
Christian Economics: Teacher's Edition
The first came before him, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made ten minas more.’ And he said to him, ‘Well done, good servant! Because you have been faithful in a very little, you shall have authority over ten cities.’ And the second came, saying, ‘Lord, your mina has made five minas.’ And he said to him, ‘And you are to be over five cities’ (Luke 19:16–19).That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins—all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built. — Bertrand Russell (1903)
I cited Bertrand Russell’s statement in Chapter 1 of Volume 1 of my 1982 economic commentary on the Bible. That chapter is an exposition of Genesis 1:1. It is titled “Cosmic Personalism.” (http://bit.ly/gngenv1) Here I am, 38 years later, ending this book where I began. But I am not dealing here with the doctrine of origins. I am dealing with the doctrine of eschatology.
Eschatology is the doctrine of the last things. Every social philosophy has a distinctive eschatology, either implicit or explicit. There is no such thing as a social philosophy with no eschatology.
I begin with Christianity’s eschatology. Luke’s version of Matthew’s parable of the talents teaches that there is a close relationship between productivity in history and productivity beyond the grave. Economic success in history produces a reward: rulership in eternity. There is a close relationship between God’s imputed value to covenant-keepers’ work (point four of the biblical covenant) and His transfer of authority to them after the final judgment (point five). Matthew’s version of this parable appears immediately before the description of the final judgment. Immediately before the parable of the talents is the parable of the ten virgins and their lamps: another description of events leading up to the final judgment. Luke’s version is slightly different. It connects economic success with a broader form of authority: rulership. This makes Luke’s version of the parable the most important passage in the Bible on work beyond the grave. Work in history is a training ground for service beyond the resurrection. Success in history provides personal capital beyond the resurrection.
There is very little information in the New Testament on heaven. There is Jesus’ parable of the poor man and the rich man in Luke 16. It mainly describes existence in hell, not heaven. There is the brief passage in Revelation 20:14–15, which deals, not with hell, but with the lake of fire into which hell will be deposited after the final judgment. “Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire. And if anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.” This indicates that hell is a temporary holding area where things are not too bad compared to the lake of fire. This passage also indicates that there will be a comparable contrast between heaven, another temporary holding area, and the world that succeeds the bodily resurrection. Heaven is a place for disembodied souls. Here, there is no resolution of the issues of history. “When he opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain for the word of God and for the witness they had borne. They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth’” (Revelation 6:9–10)?
Most Christians think of heaven as static: no work, no progress, and no dominion. There will be a total discontinuity between history and eternity. Basically, they see heaven, which they equate with eternity, in much the same way that neo-classical economists see the world of equilibrium. The difference is this: they see this realm as real. Neo-classical economists see equilibrium as hypothetical. But this is not the way that John describes eternity in the final section of the New Testament. He describes a transition from heaven to the post-resurrection world.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:1–4).
This is why the parable of the minas in Luke 19 is crucial to a correct understanding of the post-resurrection world. It describes the beginning of the final inheritance. The resurrection will launch eternity, which will be an extension of history for covenant-keepers. In contrast, entropy will swallow up covenant-breakers. As I wrote in Chapter 53, there will be no progress in the lake of fire. There will be no unforeseen changes. There will be no prices. There will be no profit opportunities. There will be no human action. The lake of fire is the world of equilibrium—literally. This is the biblical view of eternity for covenant-breakers.
Every social philosophy has an eschatology. Here is the eschatology of modern humanism: the heat death of the universe. The heat death of the universe is the realm of frozen wastes. There will be no discrimination between the realm of humanistic covenant-keeping and covenant-breaking. The heat death of the universe is the outcome of the second law of thermodynamics. It is basic to cosmology. We read in the Wikipedia entry for “heat death of the universe”:
The heat death of the universe is a plausible ultimate fate of the universe in which . . . the universe reaches thermodynamic equilibrium (maximum entropy). . . . The idea of heat death stems from the second law of thermodynamics, of which one version states that entropy tends to increase in an isolated system. From this, the hypothesis infers that if the universe lasts for a sufficient time, it will asymptotically approach a state where all energy is evenly distributed. In other words, according to this hypothesis, in nature there is a tendency to the dissipation (energy transformation) of mechanical energy (motion) into thermal energy; hence, by extrapolation, there exists the view that the mechanical movement of the universe will run down, as work is converted to heat, in time because of the second law.This scenario greatly bothered Charles Darwin. He wrote this: “. . . the view now held by most physicists, namely that the sun with all the planets will in time grow too cold for life, unless indeed some great body dashes into the sun and thus gives it fresh life—believing as I do that man in the distant future will be a far more perfect creature than he now is, it is an intolerable thought that he and all the other sentient beings are doomed to complete annihilation after such long-continued slow progress.” But the intolerable must be borne with a stiff upper lip, if you are British.
The heat death of the universe is the outer limit for all humanistic social thought. It announces an inescapable re-conquest of man’s imputed meaning by cosmic meaninglessness. The title of Appendix A of my 1982 economic commentary on the book of Genesis is this: “From Cosmic Purposelessness to Humanistic Sovereignty.” (http://bit.ly/gngenv2) The heat death of the universe teaches the reverse: from humanistic sovereignty to cosmic purposelessness.
I have written a chapter on this in my book, Is The World Running Down? (1989). I have posted this book on my site for free: http://bit.ly/gnworld. Read Chapter 2. There is no way for humanism to remain faithful to modern evolutionism’s cosmology and also avoid the despair of meaninglessness. Modern man believes that meaning is imputed only by autonomous men. But men are never autonomous in humanistic thought. They are extensions of the impersonal cosmos. This cosmos offers no autonomous meaning. Only self-proclaimed autonomous man provides meaning in the otherwise purposeless universe, unless there is another, even more powerful species out there, which may not be friendly to man. If we lose in some inter-species war to that species, might will make right. In any case, the victors also face the conquest of meaninglessness. Mankind announces: “No one will take away my meaning until he pries it from my cold, dead hand.” To which nature says: “That’s just what I have in mind.” Here is Darwinism’s alternative to the biblical doctrines of creation, dominion, ethics, imputation, and resurrection: meaningless impersonalism, endless work, situation ethics, personal death, and meaningless impersonalism.
Darwinism is the epistemological foundation of every academic natural science and every academic social science.
Purpose is the foundation of human action. That is because it is foundational to God’s action. God spoke the world into existence. He had a plan, what I call the dominion covenant (Genesis 1:26–28). He created the world so that mankind, as His covenantal agents, would rule in His name judicially and on His behalf economically. The universe operates in a world of comprehensive personalism. There is not a trace of impersonalism anywhere. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1).
Men respond instinctively in some areas of life, such as breathing or blinking their eyes when a bright light flashes in front of them. But when they act, they act purposefully. To understand the economy, Ludwig von Mises argued, begin with the individual, his purposes, and his plans. He made this foundational to his economic analysis.
1. Eternity
Christian economics affirms that God is the original source of purpose. God’s providence is comprehensive. Nothing is outside His decree. His decree extends to the final judgment and beyond into eternity. Nothing comes as a surprise to God. This should be the conceptual framework for any Christian discussion of purpose. Men’s purposes are subordinate to God’s.
God has granted corporate mankind sufficient time to fulfill the dominion covenant. Men do not know how much time this is, but it is limited. It is not open-ended. God has also granted individuals a specific amount of time to fulfil their purposes. Covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers labor side by side in the field, meaning history (Matthew 13:24–29, 36–43). Each group has been given the same amount of time to complete its corporate purposes.
The original arena of dominion was the garden. Men were then to move down the four rivers after the trial period ended with a covenant meal at the tree of life. The world would become the new garden. Sin changed this agenda. God has imposed negative sanctions, death being the main one (Genesis 3:19). He has placed temporal limits on the trial period. Today, covenant-keepers await the eschatological escalation of the new heaven and new earth: a new arena of dominion that will extend for all eternity. His purpose has not changed.
2. Entropy
Purpose is future-oriented. It is personal. This is why Darwinists argue that the cosmos was impersonal before the evolution of man. Darwinism's denial of purpose and future-orientation in any aspect of the unexplained Big Bang, or the chance appearance of life, or the chance evolution of man is the the heart, mind, and soul of Darwinism.
For the Darwinist, time is bounded, but in amounts that do not seem to threaten anyone. Time is bounded because of the heat death of the universe. Mankind will disappear long before this takes place. Mankind has no legitimate hope of survival. Entropy will veto all purpose retroactively. There will be no memory of mankind.
There is the possibility of the replacement of mankind. The replacement species could be nature-made, according to Darwinists: a new evolutionary development. It could be man-made: the test tube bacteria scenario. It could be robot-made or algorithm-made. It could be a conquering species from outer space. Mankind at all times must defend his species and his dominion over nature. The dominion covenant drives men, but there is no guarantee of final success in the world of entropy. There is rather a guarantee of failure. Nature will swallow up man, and then ages later it will die. Cosmic equilibrium will triumph through its total defeat of life.
A purpose requires a plan for implementation. This idea is the foundation of human action. Purposes are not autonomous. They require future-orientation, ideas, and resources to bring to fruition. Mankind is limited by scarcity. At zero price, there is greater demand for resources than their supply. So, people must allocate resources in specific ways to achieve their ends. Creativity is an aspect of entrepreneurship: an X factor. It cannot be ordered in a catalogue. It is inherently unpredictable. Raw materials are always in short supply at some price. Men must also deal with uncertainty and risk. They do not know the future in detail.
The three questions of every plan should begin here:
1. What do I want to accomplish?
2. How soon do I want to accomplish it?
3. What am I willing to pay?
1. Eternity
God has a perfect plan. It is coherent. It is comprehensive. It culminates in eternity. In between today and the arrival of the consummate new heaven and new earth is the final judgment.
Time is bounded: short. For each individual, the time of testing is short. “And Jacob said to Pharaoh, ‘The days of the years of my sojourning are 130 years. Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life, and they have not attained to the days of the years of the life of my fathers in the days of their sojourning’” (Genesis 47:9). It is down to about 80 years these days (Psalm 90:10). This does not mean that longevity will not increase. Isaiah said it will (Isaiah 65:17–20). But short are our days at the end of our lives. The question of the aged is universal: “Where did the time go?”
Eternity provides a second opportunity. Covenant-keepers who fail to take full advantage of their many opportunities will still enter eternity with their lives. “If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire” (I Corinthians 3:15). They need not live in mortal fear of poor performance. They cannot buy their way into heaven. “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8–10). This offers covenant-keepers a degree of confidence that is not available to the covenant-breaker. Their eternity is secure.
2. Entropy
The Darwinist denies any cosmic plan other than man’s, and even here, there is no single plan. Mankind is not unified. There are competing plans. Men seek to gain cooperation with others. The free market enables people to gain considerable cooperation, but ignorance, sin, and conflicting purposes prevent anything like full coordination. Mankind does not speak with a unified voice>/i>.
Entropy produces waste. There is no escape from entropy’s universal waste except by using energy to delay this waste in limited sectors of the universe. This is a central idea of modern physics. The world is running down. There is no way to reverse this process, according to the second law of thermodynamics. Men must expend knowledge and energy in order to establish pockets of order in a universe governed by the second law of thermodynamics. The trend is not man’s friend.
According to the Darwinist, there is only one source of useful information: people. There is no outside source of order. The cosmos is said to be autonomous. It is on its own. Disorder is constantly increasing. Energy is constantly dissipating.
The Darwinist denies the idea of a second chance. He denies the final judgment. He denies karma: reincarnation.
Most men’s plans are limited to what they can achieve in their own lifetimes. Only through gaining converts can men hope to extend their plans beyond their own time of authority institutionally or intellectually. Converts come only to a handful of men in history. Over time, most men’s influence fades. Their ideas are drowned out in a sea of intellectual noise. This is the intellectual equivalent of entropy: dissipation.
For Darwinism, there is no long-term solution to entropy’s dissipation. It can be delayed, but not reversed.
Every plan needs a theory of causation. There must be laws of nature and society. Without laws, men are flying blind.
There must also be raw materials and capital. It is not sufficient to have an accurate idea of causation. You must also control assets. Otherwise, your ideas are vapors in the air.
There is a need for cooperation. The division of labor is crucial for the successful implementation of a plan.
1. Eternity
Christianity affirms the existence of God’s plan for the ages. This plan governs historical processes and events. But there is more than a plan. There is a decree. It will come to pass.
The king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will (Proverbs 21:1). “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations” (Jeremiah 1:5).“I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted” (Job 42:2).
Christianity teaches that the world is governed by ethical laws. God’s ethics and His goals for mankind are intertwined. This is true of the individual decision-maker.
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers; but his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night. He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers. The wicked are not so, but are like chaff that the wind drives away. Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous; for the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked will perish (Psalm 6).
It is also true of collectives.
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. And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the Lord your God (Deuteronomy 28:1–2).
This is why adherence to God’s Bible-revealed laws will produce success over time. Causation is structured to reveal God’s law-order. Men’s plans should factor in this fact. This means that man’s world is not governed by dissipation. It is governed by ethics. The effects of the second law of thermodynamics are offset by God, who intervenes in history to guarantee His designed order, which is at bottom ethical. Whatever energy is lost in replacing disorder by order, it is sufficient. While this reduction of energy could be invoked by the Darwinist to argue for the hastening of the arrival of the heat death of the universe, the doctrine of final judgment offsets this threat. The timetable of man is brief. It is not billions of years. Covenant-keeping may reduce the supply of usable energy, but there is plenty available, given the covenantal limit of time.
The day of judgment will be a day of final historical sanctions. The stability of the New Testament’s legal order is therefore unchanging. The dominion covenant will remain authoritative. Social causation will continue to be ethical. There will be no evolution of ethics.
2. Entropy
The Darwinist sees social laws as the products of men’s minds, either through central planning by the state or else through the coordination of plans provided by the free market. He denies that God has designed such laws to enable mankind to fulfill the dominion covenant. This means that there is no divine social order by which God extends His social order through human cooperation.
Social laws are said to be the products of social evolution. There is no guiding mind that guarantees ethical cause and effect. Social laws were not originally planned, any more than biological laws were planned, we are assured. But, most Darwinists affirm, scientific experts who are employed by the central state are capable of planning the entire economy, or at least offsetting some of the ill effects of practices that specific Darwinists do not like. These social laws are said to change over time because of political pressures, changing social customs, and market forces. Prior patterns of causation are not guarantees that future patterns will persist in nature or society. This was F. A. Hayek’s argument. It is an argument for social evolution. It is sometimes called situational ethics. This concept is widely shared among intellectuals. It is almost universally shared. I discussed this in detail in Appendix B of my 1982 commentary on Genesis. (http://bit.ly/gngenv2)
Social evolutionists assume that long eons of time guarantee the evolution of social laws. They also assume that long eons of time are inevitable. There will be no final judgment to cut short the affairs of mankind. Mankind will disappear, but so will all life, sooner or later. There will be no survivors.
Modern economic theory explains economic value as the product of individual imputation. Economic value is subjectively determined. This is an implication of nominalism. What men say something is, really, is what really is. There is no inherent value.
Men make plans. Some men make lifetime plans. It is widely accepted among business economists that people who make written long-term plans, and who then review and update these plans, are statistically more successful than those who are less systematic.
Men need motivation to adhere to their plans. They expect to profit from this self-discipline. But this raises a crucial question. What is the source of reliability for the success of a life plan?
1. Eternity
The covenant-keeper believes that there are predictable sanctions in history. God imposes these sanctions. He has designed the social order to impose reliable sanctions. These sanctions are cumulative. Positive sanctions accumulate over time. This is the message of Deuteronomy 28:1–14). Jesus reaffirmed this. “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33). This means that positive sanctions in history are achievable in history. This in turn becomes the judicial basis of inheritance in eternity. This is the message of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, and the parable of the minas in Luke 19. There will be a day of final accounting.
The New Testament also teaches that these final sanctions provide a person’s initial capital in eternity. But they do not provide currency for legal access to heaven.
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 3:15–15).
This passage clearly teaches the doctrine of economic inequality in eternity. This inequality is based on inequality in history.
The tasks of the dominion covenant are meaningful. They are meaningful in history because they will be meaningful in eternity.
Austrian School economics began when Carl Menger reformulated the theory of economic value. He abandoned philosophical Realism: the idea of the built-in value of goods in terms of either the labor invested in them or the costs of production in producing them. The philosophy of Realism has causation backwards, he said. He argued that today’s economic value is dependent on the expected imputation of subjective value of customers, and their ability to bid prices to gain ownership. This same future-orientation is basic to Christian economics. Present economic value depends on future value. Both forms of value are imputed. But future value depends on God’s subjectively imputed value: today and in the final judgment.
2. Entropy
The economic value of what we do today depends on subjective assessments of future consumers. This is not true of only economic value. It is true of all forms of value.
The economic problem of entropy is this: there will be no human imputation of present economic value when entropy eliminates human life. The final judgment of entropy declares: “You’re all the same: dead men imputing.” There will be no economic value in the long run. Therefore, there are only short-term imputations of economic value by buyers and non-buyers. This process works for this lifetime, but what of eternity? Darwinists dismiss eternity as economically irrelevant. But if eternity’s bids are not relevant today, which bids are? Answer: those bids that are affected least by the rate of interest. The higher the rate of interest, the lower the present value of future goods. High-time-preference people discount the future sharply. These are lower-class people.
Those actors in the present who are not concerned about final judgment will make their subjective imputations in terms of the criteria they regard as the most motivating. This may be any of the big four: money, sex, power, and fame. As they increase their purchases of the highest-value good, they will shift to the next-highest valued. Because money enables people to purchase sex, power, and fame, money is usually the supreme motivator. It is the most marketable commodity. It serves mammon: “more for me in history.”
Opinions vary as to the supreme mark of success. There is a phrase: “He who dies with the most toys wins.” But is it true? What good are toys at the end? What assets provide a sense of accomplishment in a world governed by entropy? The heat death of the universe produces nothing of value. It destroys all value.
Darwinian decision-makers today do not impute value to gaining a high return at the final judgment, which will transfer wealth to eternity. They look only to history to provide their wealth. They face the problem of inheritance.
Most people hope to be remembered. They want to leave a trace. But few men are ever remembered two decades after their grandchildren die. They should have little hope for retrospective recognition if they are not star athletes, major politicians, founders of mass movements, or celebrities.
Rich people can hope to leave their children money. But will this help them to be remembered? I had a friend who wrote biographies for pay. He wrote about a successful businessman. A few years after the man died, he called the man’s children, hoping to buy copies of the book for re-sale. The heirs said they had tossed out all copies of the book. My friend concluded: “The heirs cared only for their father’s money.” Money alone is not a legacy worth building in order to leave behind to heirs. There should be more.
1. Eternity
For covenant-keepers, eternity is guaranteed. The value of the legacy which people will transfer into eternity depends on their purposes. If they accumulated capital in order to further the kingdom of God, the transfer of wealth will take place. Jesus said: “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). Once transferred beyond the final judgment, treasure can continue to accumulate.
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.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two 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 25:20–23).
Compound economic growth is the standard for history. There is nothing in the New Testament that indicates that it will not be the standard in eternity. This parable and the parable of the minas point to the conclusion that men will still be responsible in eternity for accumulating wealth as stewards of God.
Mistakes in history can be overcome in eternity.
According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. 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 3:10–15).This reduces the pressure to succeed. Failure is not a permanent condition for a covenant-keeper. Modern man no longer faces starvation in most regions. Soon, no one will face this negative sanction. Economic growth will abolish life-threatening poverty. At that time, people will then be pressured by less severe setbacks. This is God’s pattern for living. Life-and-death choices will recede. Eternal life-and-death choices will not.
2. Entropy
Under the conditions of entropy, disinheritance is guaranteed. No one’s legacy will survive the heat death of the universe. The Darwininst can console himself by saying that the inheritances of all men will result in nothing. But then leaving a legacy is vanity. The universal veto of the cosmos on all men’s work undermines ethics. It also undermines meaning.
This is the universal sanction of death. This is the triumph of absolute loss. Time guarantees this. These words confront every Darwinist. “My work will not matter. I will not matter.” This leads to a philosophy: “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” This sustains people who are high-time preference. They are lower class.
The Darwininst denies that he is God’s steward. But, for a time, he is a hierarchical steward on behalf of his non-adult children. He is a steward for his wife. He is a steward for future customers. The greater his legacy, the more he is a steward for those who will inherit his wealth. He will have little control over them in most cases. The more the control that he can exert through the by-laws of a nonprofit foundation, the more narrow the range of uses for his money. The future expands the range of opportunities as men grow more productive and therefore richer. A narrowly focused legacy will have little influence.
Because of the dominion covenant which God has built into all people, some men strive to leave an economic legacy, despite the obvious implications of entropy: vanity, vanity, all is vanity. His legacy is all money down a cosmic rat hole. It is meaningless. It is hopeless. Yet this is theologically impossible good news, which rests on a presupposition: God will not impose a final judgment. It assumes that the rich man with the barns had not made an eternally fatal miscalculation.
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).
Bertrand Russell was one of the greatest philosophers of modern times. He was a master of mathematics and symbolic logic. He was also among the most gifted writers of philosophy. His 1903 assessment of the meaning of entropy for the purposes and plans of men was not far-fetched. Indeed, no major philosopher has denied Russell’s conclusions. This is why I selected his words to assess the fundamental difference in worldview between Christianity and humanism. Humanism is inherently pessimistic. It is without cosmic hope. It is therefore without individual hope.
Modern economics is based on Menger’s recognition that economic value is imputed by individuals. Value is not inherent in consumer goods. Individuals today impute economic value as consumers today or in the near future. Entrepreneurs impute economic value in terms of their expectations regarding the imputations of future consumers. Everything is future-oriented. Everything is what philosophers call teleological: ends-driven. Yet the concept of entropy rests on this conclusion: the second law of thermodynamics guarantees the end of life, the end of meaning, and the end of imputation.
The Bible ams a totally different worldview. It affirms cosmic personalism: the absolute sovereignty of God. There is economic imputation in the present. Primary imputation is God’s. Secondary imputation is man’s. There will be imputation in the future. It drives the free market. God’s imputation will still be primary. Men’s imputation will match His. There will be no rebuttals. “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 2:9–11).
There is imputed economic value today because there will be imputed economic value tomorrow. This continuity of imputed economic value will not culminate with the final judgment for covenant-keepers. It will extend beyond the final judgment into eternity. For covenant- breakers, all development will end. But there will still be inequality. It will be an inequality based on ethics.
And the Lord said, “Who then is the faithful and wise manager, whom his master will set over his household, to give them their portion of food at the proper time? Blessed is that servant whom his master will find so doing when he comes. Truly, I say to you, he will set him over all his possessions. But if that servant says to himself, ‘My master is delayed in coming,’ and begins to beat the male and female servants, and to eat and drink and get drunk, the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know, and will cut him in pieces and put him with the unfaithful. And that servant who knew his master's will but did not get ready or act according to his will, will receive a severe beating. But the one who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, will receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:42–48).
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