Updated: 2/25/20
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This one was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him there was not one thing made that has been made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it (John 1:1–5).Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins: Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature: For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers: all things were created by him, and for him: And he is before all things, and by him all things consist (Colossians 1:12–17).
It is clear from these passages that the Second Person of the Trinity created the cosmos. He was later incarnated bodily as Jesus Christ. We cannot separate the creation from the Trinity, but we can and must assert that there was specialization in the creation process.
As you will see in this chapter and those that follow, I begin Section 1 of Analysis with a theocentric law. Why? Because I begin judicially with the creation. Christ’s creation of the cosmos established His legal ownership of it (Psalm 24:1–2). [North, Psalms, ch. 5] He is the center of the universe covenantally. But, even before the creation, there was purpose. The creation was governed by a supreme purpose. This purpose was redemptive. Paul wrote: “God chose us in him from the beginning of the world, that we may be holy and blameless in his sight in love. God chose us beforehand for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:4–5). Furthermore, “In Christ we were appointed as heirs. We were decided on beforehand according to the plan of him who works out everything according to the purpose of his will” (Ephesians 1:11). So, at the heart of economic theory is God’s purpose for the creation. Only after I have discussed the theocentric law do I go on to representative law and stewardship law.
1. Covenantal Foundations
This chapter is an extension of the first law under judicial (theocentric) laws: God owns everything. In Chapter 2, I wrote: “I devote Chapter 1 of The Covenantal Structure of Christian Economics to this topic: ‘The Judicial Sovereignty of God.’ Here is where Christian economics departs from humanistic economics: at the beginning. I do not mean merely the beginning of economic analysis. I mean the beginning of time: the creation. The universe began with God’s creation. So, not only is God in the picture, but this God is sovereign. He is sovereign because He created the universe out of nothing. In doing this, He thereby established full ownership of the earth. ‘The earth is the Lord’s, and its fullness, the world, and all who live in it. For he has founded it upon the seas and established it on the rivers’ (Psalm 24:1–2). Therefore, Christian economics announces: ‘God owns everything’” (2:C:1).
This chapter is also an extension of the first law under judicial (representative) laws: owners are trustees. In Chapter 2, I wrote: “This is delegated ownership. This is not original ownership. It is judicially based on God’s original ownership. Here is the supreme implication: this form of ownership is in no way autonomous. This is why Christian economics rejects any suggestion that there is autonomy in economic relationships. All wealth, including knowledge, is delegated by God to men” (2:D:1).
This chapter is also an extension of the first law under stewardship laws: purpose precedes planning. In Chapter 2, I wrote: “Man is made in the image of God. Thus, when a man thinks purposefully, he represents God. He is thinking in terms of the first point of the covenant, which is the sovereignty of God. The sovereignty of God is demonstrated in God’s creation of the universe out of nothing. This is why purposeful human action reflects God’s creativity. This is how we know that God is creative. He has purposes before He has plans of action” (2:E:1).
2. Purpose Preceded Creation
There was purpose before time began: God’s redemption of His people. Redemption from what? From sin. But sin came after day one. This means that redemption must shape our understanding of the dominion covenant. The New Testament affirms that Jesus is the Redeemer. It also reveals that Jesus, as the incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity, was also the Creator. John affirmed this. “He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But to as many as received him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:11–12). Paul said the same thing. “God chose us beforehand for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will. Our adoption results in the praise of his glorious grace that he has freely given us in the One he loves” (Ephesians 1:5–6). There was an original purpose for the creation: God’s redemption of specific covenant-breakers. They are adopted out of the disinherited covenantal family of Adam. This is an aspect of inheritance (point five of the pre-fall economic covenant). Christ’s creation of the universe out of nothing had to do with dominion (Genesis 1:26–28), but the dominion covenant looked forward to God’s program of redemption: a payment by Jesus Christ to God on behalf of specific individuals. Both creation and redemption have their origin in the person of Jesus Christ. It is a serious theological mistake to separate creation from redemption.
God also had a plan. He had a decree. These were not sequential chronologically. There was not yet time. But, conceptually, purpose preceded planning. The model for purposeful human action is God’s purpose in creating the universe. The universe is theocentric. Christians should begin with the creation in their understanding of cosmology. The world works in a covenantal way because God is sovereign. The supreme mark of His sovereignty is His creation of the universe out of nothing. Man had nothing to do with this.
How should this insight affect Christian behavior? The supreme purpose for Christians is this: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33). [North, Matthew, ch. 15] Men are to seek God’s kingdom in their lives. “Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; everyone who seeks, finds; and to the person who knocks, it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7–8). This is a required procedure. [North, Matthew, ch. 16] Before someone can develop a plan of action, he needs purpose. There is no escape from the fundamental principle: purpose precedes planning. This is true in every area of life, not just economics.
God’s purpose and His plan are conceptually distinct categories. They were pre-creation. They existed outside of time. There is no meaning to chronological sequence when applied to the world before the creation. For man, purpose and planning are sequential. Purpose precedes planning.
This leads us to the distinguishing feature of Christianity, separating it from all other religions: the doctrine of the Trinity. Here is where Christian economics departs from Jewish economics, which does not exist as a separate discipline, and Islamic economics, which does. “God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth’” (Genesis 1:26). The words are clear: “our image.” With the advent of Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, God the Son, Christianity was able to extend the implications of the Old Testament. This extension includes insights into the nature of the sovereignty of God. This planning operation was a joint process. There was cooperation and discussion. The same was true of God’s decision to destroy men’s cooperation in building the tower of Babel. “Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they may not understand each other” (Genesis 11:7). This indicates that there was a reconciliation of plans before man’s creation and before Babel’s destruction took place. This concept of plan reconciliation is extremely important in developing an explicitly Christian economic theory.
God is both one and many. He is three Persons in one being: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This means that there is an underlying cosmic foundation for all issues that reflect both the unity and plurality of man. Man is made in God’s image. Mankind therefore reflects both the unity and plurality of the Godhead.
I begin with God’s original purpose for the creation. God is the model. God had a purpose for the creation before he began to create. I begin with God, not with man. We can learn a great deal from Genesis 1 regarding the implementation of God’s plan for the ages, but even before there was a plan for the ages, there was purpose. When I say “before,” I mean conceptually. Obviously, there was no chronology prior to the creation. Our concept of time is governed by chronological sequence. Chronological sequence began with the creation week, not before. But, from the point of view of making sense of our own lives, as creatures made in God’s image, we have to use language and concepts suitable for creatures and not the Creator.
1. Redemption
The purpose of the creation was originally redemptive. I have already explained this. When we say redemption, we mean bought back from sin. It would be a mistake to explain Satan’s temptation and man’s fall in terms of the cleverness of Satan in overcoming God’s plan for the ages. Perhaps Satan indulges in such a fantasy, but the biblical texts do not support it. The concept of redemption has an economic element in it. It means that Jesus Christ had to pay a price. He had to pay it to somebody else: God the Father. This raises the idea of representation. That is inherent in the Christian concept of redemption. Jesus Christ is the Redeemer. But, as I have shown, He is also the Creator. There was a hierarchical, representative element in the creation.
Once we understand this, we can see that man is not autonomous. Man functions as a judicial trustee and as an economic steward for God. Man’s purposes are always subordinate to God’s purposes. Christians should be self-conscious about this. This is why I began my discussion of God’s purpose within the context of an ultimate hierarchy, meaning an ultimate system of judicial representation. This hierarchical system of representation began before the creation. In this sense, it is theocentric. Even within the Godhead, there was a system of hierarchy of the three Persons of the Trinity with respect to the creation. This is the model of hierarchy. The Second Person of the Trinity was not autonomous in His work of creation. In his incarnation as the person of Jesus Christ, He was also not autonomous. In neither His office as Creator nor Redeemer is the Second Person of the Trinity autonomous.
This should be the biblical cosmic framework and also the theological framework of any Christian presentation of man’s purposes. This applies to every aspect of man’s decision-making. This is why it applies to all social theory. I am using economics as a model of how Christians should approach social theory.
2. Individual Purpose
Individual purpose is the primary motivation in history. In the Bible’s account of redemption, people are either saved or lost. It is clear from Matthew 25 that each individual should pay attention to this distinction. This is the great biblical chapter on the saved and the lost, the sheep and the goats (vv. 31–42). This description of the final judgment is introduced by the parable of the talents (vv. 14–30). [North, Matthew, ch. 47] This is clearly an economic parable. It is presented in terms of the categories of economic profit and loss. Jesus offered this pocketbook parable because He wanted His listeners to understand the great theological point regarding eternal personal salvation and eternal personal damnation. Jesus understood that individuals seek to better their conditions. They seek to exchange their present conditions for better conditions. Jesus made it clear that present conditions in history are related covenantally to each individual’s eternal condition. Life truly is a matter of ends and means. It truly is a matter of profit and loss.
This was the dominant theme of Ludwig von Mises in his magnum opus, Human Action. He built a deductive system of economic analysis on the simple statement that people act. Human action is purposeful action. Mises developed a comprehensive deductive economic system based on this simple concept. But Mises used this approach to exclude God from any consideration in either economic reasoning or historical events. He argued that God, being perfect and therefore content, cannot act. Perfection is antithetical to action. He wrote this in Human Action:
Scholastic philosophers and theologians and likewise Theists and Deists of the Age of Reason conceived an absolute and perfect being, unchangeable, omnipotent, and omniscient, and yet planning and acting, aiming at ends and employing means for the attainment of these ends. But action can only be imputed to a discontented being, and repeated action only to a being who lacks the power to remove his uneasiness once and for all at one stroke. An acting being is discontented and therefore not almighty. If he were contented, he would not act, and if he were almighty, he would have long since radically removed his discontent. For an all-powerful being there is no pressure to choose between various states of uneasiness; he is not under the necessity of acquiescing in the lesser evil. Omnipotence would mean the power to achieve everything and to enjoy full satisfaction without being restrained by any limitations. But this is incompatible with the very concept of action. For an almighty being the categories of ends and means do not exist. He is above all human comprehension, concepts, and understanding. For the almighty being every “means” renders unlimited services, he can apply every “means” for the attainment of any ends, he can achieve every end without the employment of any means. It is beyond the faculties of the human mind to think the concept of almightiness consistently to its ultimate logical consequences. The paradoxes are insoluble. Has the almighty being the power to achieve something which is immune to his later interference? If he has this power, then there are limits to his might and he is no longer almighty; if he lacks this power, he is by virtue of this fact alone not almighty (II:11).
Mises was wrong. The Bible teaches us that God has acted in history. It also teaches that He is perfect. Christian economics must therefore reject Mises’ rationalistic humanism. It must insist that there is purpose in the universe because God created it purposefully and sustains it providentially.
Mises’ view echoed Frank H. Knight, the intellectual founder of the Chicago School of economics. Knight was a vocal atheist. In a 1940 article for the academic journal, Ethics, he wrote the following. “God must not be thought of as statically complete or “infinite,” in any ordinary meaning. In fact the ideas of omnipotence, omniscience, and infinite goodness are self-contradictory; in the final analysis they negate the ideas of power, knowledge, and goodness. If God, or the ultimate cosmic reality, is to have any of these spiritual attributes—to which “taste” should certainly be added—he must be thought of in essentially human in terms of struggle to achieve the several values.” The article appears in his book, Freedom and Reform (1947), Chapter XI. The quote appears on page 296. God cannot possibly be what the Bible says He is. He must be conceived of as being in man’s image, not the other way around.
Mises argued that God, being perfect, cannot act.
Action is a display of potency and control that are limited. It is a manifestation of man who is restrained by the circumscribed powers of his mind, the physiological nature of his body, the vicissitudes of his environment, and the scarcity of the external factors on which his welfare depends. It is vain to refer to the imperfections and weaknesses of human life if one aims at depicting something absolutely perfect. The very idea of absolute perfection is in every way self-contradictory. The state of absolute perfection must be conceived as complete, final, and not exposed to any change. Change could only impair its perfection and transform it into a less perfect state; the mere possibility that a change can occur is incompatible with the concept of absolute perfection. But the absence of change—i.e., perfect immutability, rigidity and immobility—is tantamount to the absence of life. Life and perfection are incompatible, but so are death and perfection (II:11).
The Bible is clear: God is perfect, yet He acts in history. Mises' humanistic logic led him to dismiss the biblical description of the God who is sovereign over history. This undermined his concept of historical causation.
Mises was correct in beginning with purpose as the initial category of human action. He was incorrect in beginning with man rather than with the Trinity. But, in discussing economic theory, he was correct in not starting with scarcity. He started with individual decision-makers. My analysis does the same. But mine always places individual decision-making within a framework of covenantal responsibility. Man is responsible upward to God, outward to those not under his legal jurisdiction (customers), downward to those under his legal or economic authority, and inward to himself (conscience). The decision-maker is never autonomous. He always operates within this system of personal responsibility, which is hierarchical.
The analytical starting point of Christian economics should begin with this question: “Whose purposes are authoritative?” The correct biblical answer: God’s purposes. Therefore, men are to subordinate their purposes to God’s purposes for them. God’s purposes provide the standards of purpose, both individual and corporate. These standards are ethical. But they are also eschatological: the last things. They are therefore historical: getting from now until then. This is progressive sanctification, both individual and corporate. Men must progressively conform their thoughts, words, and deeds to God’s ethical requirements, as revealed in the Bible. Knight wrote:
I do not agree with his atheism. God exists, and He acts. But with respect to individual human action, I agree with his starting point. We live in a fallen age. The term uneasiness would not be appropriate to the pre-fall world of Adam. Adam was not driven by uneasiness until his wife tempted him to eat the forbidden fruit. The dominion impulse was originally not based on anything lacking in man’s personality. Man was created perfect. The world was created perfect. But neither man nor the world was fully mature. Man never becomes fully mature in the sense that God is mature. God is infinite; man is not. But man’s finitude is not a defect in man’s condition. This was Mises’ mistake. He contrasted God and man with respect to the imperfection of uneasiness. God, he said, does not act. That is because God is not uneasy. “An acting being is discontented and therefore not almighty. If he were contented, he would not act, and if he were almighty, he would have long since radically removed his discontent. For an all-powerful being there is no pressure to choose between various states of uneasiness; he is not under the necessity of acquiescing in the lesser evil. Omnipotence would mean the power to achieve everything and to enjoy full satisfaction without being restrained by any limitations. But this is incompatible with the very concept of action” (II:11). Yet we know from the Bible that God does act in history. So, there is something fundamentally incorrect about Mises’ analysis.
Paul wrote about contentment. “Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we have brought nothing into the world. Neither are we able to take out anything. Instead, let us be satisfied with food and clothing. Now those who want to become wealthy fall into temptation, into a trap. They fall into many foolish and harmful passions, and into whatever else makes people sink into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people who desire it have been mislead away from the faith and have pierced themselves with much grief” (I Timothy 6:6–10). With respect to ownership, we are be content with very little. This takes great spiritual maturity. It takes courage. So, with respect to how most men are motivated, Mises was correct. Most men are discontented. They strive to improve their conditions by becoming wealthier. This is the religion of mammon: more for me in history. The religion of “more” is inherently insatiable. Mises would have admitted this. That is because he based all human action on the concept of insatiability. That is to say, built his theory of human action on a theory of finitude striving to be infinite.
I single out Mises, not because he was unique in his outlook on human motivation, but because he was uniquely forthright. All humanistic economists begin with the contrast between the individual’s supposedly infinite desires in relation to a finite number of resources: infinite ends vs. limited means. They see ends and means in terms of the categories of infinite vs. finite. They are implicitly comparing man with God. This is the Adamic mistake: the original Adam and also Adam Smith. This is the desire to become God. This is manifested in economic theory in the concept of equilibrium, a conceptual model that rests on the idea of man’s action in a world without uncertainty. In other words, it is a world in which man is omniscient. This model is ultimately self-contradictory. It is therefore irrational. I have explained why in Chapter 54 of the Teacher’s Edition.
Covenant-breaking man does act from a sense of discontent. He is always pursuing more. He never has enough. This is the religion of mammon. It is insatiable. This is not to be the economic model for Christian economics. The fact that we are finite should not bother any Christian. The fact that the dominion covenant is eternal should also not bother any Christian. It was eternal for Adam and Eve. There will always be an unbridgeable discrepancy between man’s knowledge, power, and wealth when compared with God’s. This did not bother Adam until he recognized the meaning of the boundary around the forbidden tree. This boundary announced that he was not God. He did not understand good and evil in the way that God did. This bothered him. It was not supposed to bother him. It still bothers covenant-breaking man. It should not bother covenant-keeping man.
Therefore, when we come to the question of purpose, the purpose is always theocentric. Covenant-keeping man’s purpose is to build the kingdom of God. This kingdom is corporate.
Jesus made this clear: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and all these things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33). He also made this clear: "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24, King James Version). Other translations translate mammon as money or wealth. The word came into the Greek language by way of the Hebrew cognate language, Aramaic. From the context of Jesus’ words, this was a form of service that bordered on the religious. Jesus was speaking of mammon as if this were another god. I think the best assessment of the meaning of the word is this: more for me in history. [North, Matthew, ch. 14]
There is now competition in the world for dominion. Covenant-breakers and covenant-keepers have rival purposes. They serve rival kingdoms. Yet they both are driven by the desire to expand their dominion in history. Karl Marx said that the world is driven by class competition. He was incorrect. The world is driven by covenantal competition. This is the biblical worldview.
The great insight of Adam Smith was this: when acting to improve their individual conditions, people serve each other in the market. This mutual service increases a nation’s wealth, yet this was not the purpose of competing individuals in the marketplace. The purpose that drives an individual is the desire to improve his personal circumstances, not increase national wealth. Nevertheless, individual purpose and individual striving after personal goals have the beneficial result of increasing per capita wealth for other participants in the marketplace. Smith titled his book The Wealth of Nations, and it was correctly titled. The word “nations” was plural. It is not just that individual striving after wealth increases the wealth of those inside the geographical boundaries of one nation. Where there is free trade across national borders, individual striving after wealth increases wealth in more than one nation. All free market economists argue along these lines.
Smith’s insight was one of the most important intellectual breakthroughs in the history of man. For millennia, ethical leaders had disparaged the pursuit of individual gain. But Smith showed that, because of the effects of competition in the marketplace, many individuals are benefited. Competition within the framework of the market process is not destructive of the social order. On the contrary, it improves the wealth, knowledge, and way of life available to the masses as never before in history. This was done initially through mass production and price competition. Poor people who could never have afforded the luxury of several changes of clothes could now afford to buy mass-produced cotton clothing that could be easily washed and ironed. The mass production of cotton clothing was the first great breakthrough of the Industrial Revolution. It began in earnest in the final quarter of the eighteenth century. It transformed Great Britain and the North American English-speaking colonies, and then it soon transformed Western Europe.
Because of man’s sin, God cursed man and the earth (Genesis 3:17–19). [North, Genesis, ch. 12] This placed extra limits on the productivity of mankind. But God always intended for these limits to be overcome through man’s efforts. God does not want people to remain satisfied with these limits on man’s productive activities. This is why Jesus included this request in what is known as the Lord’s prayer: “Give us today our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). [North, Matthew, ch. 12]
God had a purpose in imposing curses on man’s world. He wanted men to cooperate with each other. The reduction in individual productivity associated with the curse of the ground forced men to cooperate with each other in order to gain the added productivity associated with an increased division of labor and therefore also the associated increase in the specialization of production. The curse of the ground was a curse, but it was also a blessing. If sinful men had not been restrained by reduced productivity, they would have spent their lives pursuing low-cost evil. The lower the price of evil, the more would have been demanded. Even with the curse, men achieved great evil, which is why God brought a great flood. He offered an ark as a place of safety. The ark provided boundaries against the flood.
There is an inherent scarcity associated with finitude. Scarcity existed before the fall of man. But the cursed scarcity that exists today can be steadily overcome through covenant-keeping, which includes respect for private property, self-restraint on jealousy and envy, and unlawful coveting. Biblical law is opposed to these thoughts and their activities. When people honor biblical law as it applies to private property and private ownership, and when civil law does not interfere with men's attempts to work out exchanges with each other, we see the limits of cursed scarcity rolled back. People living in the scarcity-dominated world of 1800 would not have been able to conceive of the wealth that poor people enjoy around the world today, with a few regional exceptions. These exceptions will probably not be exceptions by the middle of the twenty-first century.
God imposed boundaries on men’s productivity that did not exist before the fall. These boundaries can be overcome by covenant-keeping. By honoring the ethical boundaries imposed by biblical law, mankind can roll back much of the curse that was imposed on mankind as a result of Adam’s violation of the ethical and judicial boundary around the forbidden tree. God imposed boundaries on man’s productivity because Adam and Eve had violated the judicial boundary that God had placed around His private property.
It is therefore legitimate for people to adopt a purpose of gaining increased individual and family wealth. Because a God-honoring society establishes laws protecting property, men who live in such a society have valid ways of cooperating with each other in productive ventures. By seeking their personal self-interest through voluntary exchange, including the exchange of labor, they benefit society as a whole. They benefit other individuals by means of their own increased productivity. This is why the boundaries associated with the curse of the ground are not entirely curses. They promote cooperation, capital investment, and greater output per unit of resource input.
Jesus spoke of two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the kingdom of mammon. They are the kingdoms, respectively, of covenant-keepers and covenant-breakers.
Because of the free market social order, it is lawful for dedicated members of both kingdoms to pursue their own individual purposes of increasing their wealth. They do this through voluntary exchange. A small percentage of them do it by becoming entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are skilled at forecasting the future economic state of affairs, and then devising plans that may enable them to profit in the future by selling consumers what consumers want to buy at prices consumers are willing to pay. Profit is the positive sanction that paying consumers provide to those producers who have met consumer demand at prices consumers are willing to pay. Losses are the negative sanctions that customers impose on producers who have not met their specifications at prices they are willing to pay. They impose these sanctions simply by not purchasing the output of entrepreneurs who have failed to meet the standards required by paying customers.
When members of both kingdoms are successful in their pursuit of profit, this benefits the members of both kingdoms. I do not mean that the productive enterprises of members of one kingdom benefit only members of their own kingdom. On the contrary, the increased productivity of members of one kingdom benefits members of the other kingdom. This is the great benefit of voluntary exchange. Adam Smith understood this in 1776. This was why he was an advocate of international free trade. He understood that citizens on each side of a national border benefit from the productivity of citizens on the other side of the border. Citizens on both sides of the border have an increased range of choice. There are more goods and services available because of the productivity of people on the other side of the border.
We come to the great discrepancy between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of mammon. The kingdom of God has to do with the sovereignty of God in His grace of redeeming fallen individuals and fallen societies. Redemption is both individual and corporate. That is because man is both individual and corporate. That is because the Trinity is both individual and corporate. In contrast, the kingdom of mammon is grounded in this confession of faith: “more for me in history.” The kingdom of mammon cannot offer consumption beyond history.
In his exposition on the various dead ends of all forms of humanistic philosophy and living, the author of Ecclesiastes made clear the fundamental problem with the kingdom of mammon: the issue of economic inheritance. “I hated all my accomplishments for which I had worked under the sun because I must leave them behind to the man who comes after me. For who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will be master over everything under the sun that my work and wisdom have built. This also is vapor. Therefore my heart began to despair over all the work under the sun that I did. For there might be someone who works with wisdom, with knowledge, and skill, but he will leave everything he has to a man who has not made any of it. This also is vapor and a great tragedy. For what profit does the person gain who works so hard and tries in his heart to complete his labors under the sun? Every day his work is painful and stressful, so at night his soul does not find rest. This also is vapor” (Ecclesiastes 2:18–23). [North, Ecclesiastes, ch. 4]
Cosmic death is the promise by and for cosmic Darwinian evolution. Everything will be swallowed up in the heat death of the universe. There will be no meaning to life when life throughout the universe ends. There will be no one to impute meaning retrospectively to the lives of each of us in history. There will be only impersonal cosmic death, which is a fitting end for the impersonal Big Bang, which supposedly began it all. Darwinian cosmology has this tombstone: “From purposelessness to purposelessness.” It has a confession of faith: “Purposelessness giveth, and purposelessness taketh away.” I discuss this in greater detail in Appendix B.
Purpose is inescapably eschatological. It has to do with a personal eschatology: where each individual will spend eternity. It also has to do with corporate eschatology: the kingdom of God vs. the kingdom of mammon. Individuals are motivated by the issues of eschatology. This is why Matthew 25 is such an important chapter in the Bible. The willingness of individuals to sacrifice in the present for the sake of the future is an eschatological issue. It is this issue: “What is the motivational cutting-off point chronologically for personal self-sacrifice?” It is also this issue: “What is the motivational cutting-off point institutionally for personal self-sacrifice?” That was the question raised by Ecclesiastes. Personal motivation has to do with posthumous inheritance.
First, Christian economic theory should begin with the concept of God’s creation out of nothing. So should all science. That is because the Bible starts here: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1) This is the theologically supreme issue of cosmology. Genesis 1:1 establishes the Creator/creature distinction. Christian cosmology is self-consciously in opposition to evolutionary cosmology: the purposeless Big Bang to purposeless life; purposeless life to purposeful mankind. Second, Christian economics should begin with the concept of God’s original ownership, which is the economic application of God’s creation (Psalm 24:1–2). Third, Christian economics should begin with the concept of providence. So should all science. This is the foundation of metaphysics: why the world works coherently. This establishes the biblical principle of cosmic personalism. God’s sovereignty is the foundation of cause-and-effect. Fourth, Christian economics should begin with God’s purpose as a model of man’s purposes. Purpose is revealed in the Bible’s account of God’s creation of the universe out of nothing. It is reflected by the creation. Paul was clear about this.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of people, who through unrighteousness hold back [suppress] the truth. This is because that which is known about God is visible to them. For God has enlightened them. For his invisible qualities, namely his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. This is because, although they knew about God, they did not glorify him as God, nor did they give him thanks. Instead, they became foolish in their thoughts, and their senseless hearts were darkened. They claimed to be wise, but they became foolish. They exchanged the glory of the imperishable God for the likenesses of an image of perishable man, of birds, of four-footed beasts, and of creeping things. Therefore God gave them over to the lusts of their hearts for uncleanness, for their bodies to be dishonored among themselves. It is they who exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and who worshiped and served the creation instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen (Romans 1:18–25).
Purpose is the starting point of Christian economic analysis: how and why people act economically. Economics is the study of a specific form of human action. What is called economic science is a narrow theory of how and why people act in the judicial context of the market process, which is a gigantic action that is governed by the judicial principle of high bid wins.
Austrian School economics is by far the most forthright in basing its economic analysis on human purpose. This is why it is the closest school of humanistic economics to Christian economics. Rival schools of economics share its humanistic presuppositions about God, man, law, sanctions and time, but they do not share its purpose-based methodology, at least not to the same degree. To this extent, they are less faithful to economic causation. But all schools of academic economic thought rely on a theory of causation that silently invokes impersonal cosmic evolution, impersonal human evolution, and atheism. To this extent, they are all wrong. They begin with a false presupposition about creation. Therefore, they cannot logically end with an accurate assessment of the way the world works. Cornelius Van Til used an analogy of a series of buzz saws that are set at incorrect angles. None of them can cut straight. But the Austrian School’s buzz saw is closer to the biblical angle than the other schools of opinion on the issue of the centrality of purpose in economic analysis.
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