If there is a dispute between men and they go to court, and the judges judge them, then they will acquit the righteous and condemn the wicked. If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, then the judge will make him lie down and be beaten in his presence with the ordered number of blows, as was his crime. The judge may give him forty blows, but he may not exceed that number; for if he should exceed that number and beat him with many more blows, then your fellow Israelite would be humiliated before your eyes (Deuteronomy 25:1–3).
This passage makes it clear that God authorizes the state to impose violence on convicted criminals and rebels. Modern political theory insists that this violence is monopolistic. The Bible does not teach this. The blood avenger had the right of violence against someone who he suspected of murder, even when that person killed someone else by accident. It is not legal for someone to defend himself against a blood avenger. He had to be swift of foot to legally evade the blood avenger. The Mosaic law set up the cities of refuge as a way to mitigate and undermine the power of the blood avenger. Therefore, families do have some biblical authority to impose violence, but in New Testament times this is obviously limited. There are no more blood avengers. Jesus Christ fulfilled the office of the blood avenger, who was also the kinsman redeemer. Christ in final judgment will complete that office. This is why it is imperative that Christ the kinsman-redeemer defend you against Christ the blood avenger.
The Bible is clear on the legitimacy of civil government. I did my best to make this clear in the introduction to this section. I then devoted three chapters to topics related to the legitimate activities of the state. These are justice, national defense, bureaucracy and taxation, and issues related to the topic of eminent domain.
I covered public utilities. These include water systems, sewage systems, and electrical power. These make urban societies possible. These make large concentrations of population possible. Cities have existed for as long as we have historical records. Rome had an amazing system of aqueducts which made possible a city of a million people in the days of Jesus Christ. But Rome was a centralized government. It was increasingly tyrannical. The aqueducts made this possible. Is centralization what the government should do with our tax money? I have not seen any detailed monograph on this topic. I am not ready to write one today. It would be an exercise in utopianism. The cities exist, and they are growing. They are dependent on public utilities. The best that we can say for them is that the regulators will trade off political pressures from voters and the desire for profit by directors of public utilities. Compared with all of the other problems that confront the modern world, the theoretical and practical issues associated with public utilities are minimal. They are not a large portion of the household budgets of the middle class, who have a majority of votes.
I have dealt with topics in this chapter in which it is clear that the Bible authorizes the activities of civil governments. I have made it clear that the Bible testifies against the idea that civil government is illegitimate. Civil government does have legitimate functions. These functions make possible the social order, which makes possible the division of labor. This means that the free market’s auction process is dependent upon the enforcement of laws by the civil government. The Bible teaches this. Classical economics teaches this. All major schools of modern economics teach the this. The tiny handful of economists who identify themselves as anarcho-capitalists have not developed comprehensive monographs and treatises to show how society could function without civil governments. The Bible makes it clear that civil governments have superior authority to the free market in the limited areas that I cover in Part 6.
Free-market economic theory can offer a few insights into the operations of civil government. But free-market economics is based on the auction’s principle of high bid wins. The high bids that win in democratic politics are votes. They are distributed on this basis: one citizen, one vote. Operationally, the pooling of these votes in the form of political action committees and pressure groups makes possible the purchase of politicians' support for some kinds of legislation. There have been some positive insights from economists that throw light on these arrangements. That school of thought known as public choice theory has made some breakthroughs. But, on the whole, economics has little to say about the operation of institutions that do not operate in terms of an auction. This includes the church, the state, and the family. If it is inherently immoral to sell something, and therefore illegal, then whatever that item is will not be easy to analyze by means of the analogy of the auction process. Economists can analyze black markets accurately, but they cannot easily analyze the operations of nonprofit organizations, especially the state, which possesses a near-monopoly of violence.
It is a good idea for a Christian economist to understand what the Bible teaches on matters related to civil government. Even if his work is perceived as utopian, it is wise for him to devote time and effort to analyzing aspects of the government that are unlikely to be reformed in his lifetime. I have spent a great deal of my life making such analyses. This book is evidence. It took me four decades to do my homework to write this book. But a wise man understands the difference between utopianism that cannot be attained in history, unlikely political reforms that probably will not be attained in his lifetime, and reforms that are politically possible in his lifetime. Even if they are not capable of being reformed today, because the economy is stable, if the economy cannot sustain certain programs any longer, they will fall of their own weight. That is what happened in Communist China by 1979, and what happened in Communist Russia by 1991. It is wise to devote time and money to an analysis of how a biblical institutional arrangement ought to operate in today’s world. This way, it may be possible to devise a practical plan to get from where we are today to where we might be, and should be, tomorrow if the existing system of civil government ever loses legitimacy as a result of the negative outcomes of its mandatory programs. Christian economists should develop monographs, reform programs, and educational materials that could be used, especially locally, in a time of economic crisis, when voters will be rethinking their presuppositions about how the civil government ought to work. The old rule is true: we can’t beat something with nothing.
Persuading people to change their outlook is usually a fruitless task. It is expensive to change even one idea. This rule is true: we can’t change only one thing. This is especially true of ideas, at least for people who take ideas seriously. Our first task is always to change our own ideas. We have to count the cost. Then we have to develop educational materials that will lay the foundation for other people to change their ideas when the time is right. The New Testament Greek word for such time is kairos. It is contrasted with chronos. Chronos is about calendars. Kairos is about special times of opportunity. They become unified in unique times of significant change.
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