INTRODUCTION
'This is he (Moses), that was in the church in the wilderness with the angel which spake to him in the mount Sina and with our fathers: who received the lively oracles to give unto us: to who our fathers would not obey, thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt (Acts 7.38-9)
we are witnessing today a recapitulation (def - repeat in it's development) of Moses' experience with the Jews of his day. Protestant fundamentalist Christians have their eyes on the sky, their heads in the clouds, ,their heart is Egypt, and their children in the government's schools. so, for that matter do most of the other Christian groups. the handful of Christian Reconstructionist authors who are serving as modern-day Stephens with respect to defending the continuing validity of biblical law have experienced a response from the various ecclesiastical Sanhedrin of our day somewhat analogous to the response that Stephen's testimony produced: verbal stones (Prior to 1986, we received mostly stony silence.)
if the modern church were honest, it would rewrite one of the popular hymns of our day: 'O how hate I thy law, O, how hate I thy law. it is my consternation all the day'. But the modern church. hating God's revealed law with all its Egyptian heart, is inherently dishonest. It is self-deceived, having no permanent ethical standards to use as an honest mirror. the hearers of the word who refuses to obey, James says,is like a man who beholds his face in a looking glass, walks away, 'and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. (James 1.24b) the modern Christian refuses even to pick up the mirror of God's law and look.
Tools of Dominion is the final volume of my economic commentary on the Good of Exodus. this multi-volume commentary on Exodus constitutes the second installment of my general series, The Dominion Covenant, also titled 'An Economic Commentary on the Bible'. No
*2 doubt these multiple names will drive future graduate students crazy as they try to footnote each volume. I had hoped to see Exodus published someday as a two-volume hardback set, but the size of this third volume precludes such a venture. the first volume of the general series, on Genesis, was published in 1982. (The Dominion Covenant) the first Exodus volume, Moses and Pharaoh, covers Exodus 1-18. (Moses and Pharaoh: Dominion Religion vs. Power Religion) the second volume, The Sinai Strategy, covers Exodus 20. (the Sinai Strategy: Economics and the Ten Commandments...I have found nothing with specifically economic content in Exodus 19. Given the costs of typesetting and the difficulty of re-indexing, I hope I never do.)
Fat Books And Social Transformation
this is a fat book. I have no illusions about its becoming a best-seller. But I hold to what I call the fat book theory of social transformation. most of the major turning points in western history have Augustine's City of God is a fat book and by adhering to the biblical worldview, it restructured Western civilization's concept of history. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica is a fat book and it gave the medieval West the crucial synthesis of scholastic philosophy, an intellectual tradition still defended by a handful of Roman Catholic conservatives and (implicitly, at least) by most contemporary Protestant fundamentalist philosophers. John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion is a fat book, and it structured a large segment of Reformation theology.
Christians have not been the only social transformationists who have written fat books that have changed Western civilization. Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan is a fat book, and it launched the long tradition of social contract political theory, Immanuel Kant's Critique of Practical reason as it s companion volume. this set restructured modern philosophy, and in the twentieth century, theology (by way of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner). William Blackstone's Commentaries
*3 on the Laws of England is a four-volume fat book, yet it was read by just about every lawyer in the British colonies after 1765. The Federalist is fat. (Of course, it had its greatest initial effect as a series of newspaper articles, 1787-8, during the debate over the ratification of the U.S. Constitution, which gives us some comparative indication of the recent effects of humanist public school programs to achieve universal literacy in the United states. Try to get the average American newspaper reader to read, digest and comment on The Federalist.
a decade after Blackstone's commentaries, came Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, a fat book. Karl Marx's Das Kapital is a fat book; if you include the two posthumous volumes, it is a very fat book. If you include his posthumous multi-volume Theories of Surplus Value, it is positively obese. all these fat books have sat on library shelves and have intimidated people, generation after generation. and a handful of influential people actually went to the effort to read them, subsequently believed them and then wrote more books in terms of them.
Exceptions to the Rule
there are exceptions to my fat book theory. Machiavelli's The Prince is a thin book. so is his Discourses. John Locke's Second Treatise of government is a thin book. Jean Jacques Rousseau's Social Contract is thin. So is Edmond Burke's reflections on the Revolution in France.
then there are medium-sized books. the first edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species was a medium-sized book. John Maynard Keynes' General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money is a medium-sized book. So is F.A.Hayek's road to Serfdom. ( but when he wrote it, Hayek's bookshelf contained Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk's three-volume Capital and Interest and Ludwig von Mises' theory of Money and Credit, Socialism and Nationalokonomie (Human Action), all of which are fat books).
Thin and medium-sized books have their rightful place in initiating social transformations. but to maintain such a transformation, there had better be some fat back-up books on the shelf. 'What should we do now? the initially victorious revolutionaries inescapably ask. Fat books provide answers. more than this: If Fat Books With Believable Answers Are Not Already On The shelf, There Will Not Be A Successful Social Transformation. Men will not draw others into their revolutionary cause unless the potential recruits become persuaded that the promoters have answers to specific real-world problems - problems that contemporary society is not dealing with successfully.
*4 Producing a true revolution requires the support of many kinds of printed materials, from pamphlets to thick, technical volumes. those in the midst of a revolution seldom have time to think through every aspect of the changes their slogans and actions are producing, but the revolution's leaders need to know that the basic theoretical work has been done, that workable, principled, and consistent answers to specific historical problems are in reserve and that after the dust settles, the heirs of the revolution will be able steadily to restructure society in ways that are consistent with the ideals of the revolution. this faith has been misplaced on many past occasions, the obvious example being Communists' faith in Marx's Das Kapital, which had been inaccurate economics in theory and which could not be applied successfully in any Communists' nation without destroying the productivity of that economy. but it was necessary that at least the first volume of Das Kapital be on the shelves of the revolutionaries (the three subsequent volumes were not published in the lifetime of either Marx or Engles). Its very presence gave confidence to those who were launching the Communist revolution. the book was fat and unreadable, but that was an advantage; men's faith in Marx's solutions was not shattered by ever having read it.
the wise social strategist writes fat books and thin books and books in between, not knowing which will work. Augustine and Aquinas wrote all sorts of books. So did Kant, whose brief Universal natural History and Theory of the Heavens first proposed the idea of galactic evolution. Darwin kept fattening up Origin, and then added The Descent of Man. Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto, plus endless journalism pieces, some of which constituted books. he also was in partnership with Frederick Engels, who was smart enough to extract and separately publish socialism: Utopian and Scientific from the stillborn Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in science. Lenin wrote materials of all sizes, decade after decade. ...
Why So Fat?
this book is fat, but it is not unreadable. It may sit on many shelves for many years, but those who open it will be able to find specific answers to real-world economic problems - answers that are self-consciously structured in terms of the revealed word of God. if my answers were not detailed, if my logic were not spelled out and if my sources were not cited in full, then this book could no more
*5 serve as a reliable guide to economic reconstruction than some fat polemical tract published by the Maryknoll Order or written by a sociology professor at Wheaton College.
Tools of Dominion is a commentary, not a novel; it is a reference work, not a catechism. it tries to accomplish a great deal:
exegete verses,
describe how they applied in the Old Testament era,
explain why they should be applied today and
offer examples of how they might be applied in practice.
It is large because I want it to serve for may years (preferably centuries) as one of the tow key reference works on specific applications of biblical law in economics and jurisprudence;
the other is not yet written: my commentary on Deuteronomy.
I have decided to extract from this book separate sections that deal with narrower problems, which I intend to publish under separate titles:
Clean Living: A Biblical View of Pollution
Victim's Rights: A Biblical View of Jurisprudence, and
Slavery: A Biblical View
Nevertheless, I have retained the same information in this volume, simply because not every library will have the other three books plus this one on its shelves....
In some ways, I wish I could imitate Moses Maimonides, the late-twelfth century Jewish scholar. in defending the style of the enormous output of his life's literary work (he was also a full-time physician to the Sultan in Cairo), including his monumental 14 volume Code (the Mishneh Torah),
he wrote: 'All our works are concise and to the point. we have no intention of writing bulky books nor of spending time on that which is useless. Hence when we explain anything, we explain only what is necessary and only in the measure required to understand it, and whatever we write is in summary form...Were I able to condense the entire Talmud into a single chapter, i would not do so in two'. The problem with his concise style is this: when we go to his Code (which is not a detailed commentary, despite its huge length), time and again we cannot follow his reasoning. it is not simply because we are gentiles living many centuries later; learned contemporary rabbinical correspondents expressed this same dissatisfaction to him. It takes considerable explanation
*6 plus running debates in footnotes, to clarify scholarly points. better to write a long book that can be digested in a series of bit-sized portions than a highly condensed book that takes enormous intellectual energy and vast background knowledge in order to decipher.
I had to make this book long in order to make each section coherent. Writing which is highly condensed is too difficult to read, too easy to skip over key parts in some argument, and therefore too easy to misinterpret. on the other hand, long, involved arguments are difficult to follow and remember. therefore, I have broken up long arguments into manageable portions by adopting a liberal use of subsections and sub-subsections, plus summaries at the end of each chapter, and in my lengthy chapter on pollution (Chapter 18), at the end of each major section. i strongly recommend that whenever you see a bold-faced subhead, you should pay attention to it; the same goes for the italicized sub-subheads. they are there to help you get through each argument, as well as for
convenient reviewing.
this book is supposed to be consumed in bite-sized portions; I have therefore done my best to make every mouthful both tasty and nourishing. to keep readers in their chairs and turning the pages of this book, I have done my best to put useful information on every page. there is no fluff in this book/ the extended footnotes are also filled with all sorts of choice tidbits that would otherwise be quite difficult to locate. I also use footnotes for running debates that do not belong in the main text. i sometimes settle scores with my critics in the footnotes. Footnotes can be fun.
Why an Economic Commentary?
I have explained in the Introduction to my economic commentary on Genesis why I began this project in 1973. I presented there my case for the whole idea of a specifically economic commentary. Basically, my reason is this: the bible presents mankind with a God-mandated set of social, economic, educational, political and legal principles that god expects His people to use as permanent blueprints for the total reconstruction of every society on earth. (..this book) provides a model of what kind of exegetical materials can and must be produced in every academic field if Christians are successfully to press the claims of Christ on the world. since the publication of the first two commentaries on Exodus, I have also edited
*7 and published a ten-volume set of books that I call the Biblical Blueprints Series, four of which I wrote. (footnote - ...I wrote the books on monetary theory, economic theory, foreign policy, and the introductory volume on biblical liberation.
What I want to stress from the outset is that writing this economic commentary has been very nearly a bootstrap operation. for almost 2000 years, Bible commentators - Jews and gentiles - have simply not taken seriously the specific details of Old Testament law. Despite the fact that John Calvin did preach about 200 sermons on the Book of Deuteronomy, including its case laws and that the Puritans, especially the new England Puritans, did take biblical law seriously, they did not write detailed expositions showing how these laws can be applied institutionally in New Testament times. This exegetical approach is unquestionably new, especially when coupled with Cornelius Van Til's presuppositional apologetics. This is why the Christian Reconstruction movement does represent a major break with recent church history. On this point - and just about only on this one -Reconstructionism's critics are correct. we represent a discontinuity in church history. (foot - I hope that it will be regarded by future church historians as a discontinuity analogous to the appearance of the Wycliffe movement or the advent of the Reformation rather than that other bold discontinuity, the introduction around the year 1000 of the doctrine of transubstantiation.) Christian Reconstructionists alone have gone to the Bible's legal passages in search of permanent authoritative guidelines ('blueprints') for what society ought to do and be. in this sense, we Reconstucionists are theological revolutionaries. if our view of biblical law continues to spread to the Christian community at large, as we expect it to do. there will eventually be a social revolution - hopefully nonviolent change, but unquestionably revolutionary. Why revolutionary? because one of the primary manifestations of the revolutionary
*8 character of this change will be a radical and comprehensive alteration of the West's legal order.
This commentary is the foundation of my attempt to reconstruct the entire field of economics in terms of the Bible. If I did not have total confidence in the Bible, i would not even attempt such an outlandish task. It involves too great a break with the past, as well as a break with the fundamental presuppositions of the most methodologically rigorous of all the social sciences, economics. To attempt such a project, a man has to be confident. To do so as part of a movement which seeks to reconstruct every other field also requires confidence.
The Question of Confidence
This 'reconstructionist confidence' is frequently misunderstood. Our numerous critics view it as arrogance. Those who accuse theonomists (theonomy - the state of an individual or society that regard its own nature and norms as being in accord with the divine nature.) of arrogance miss the point: We Are Totally Confident In Biblical Law. We are also totally confident that without Biblical law, there is no way to create a self-consistent intellectual system or academic discipline. On the other hand, we are not totally confident in our specific applications of the law to real-world problems. Thus, while we acknowledge that we may b e wrong in our particular interpretations, there is no possibility that we are wrong in our general intellectual strategy. king David said it well: he was wiser than his enemies, his teachers, and the ancients because of his commitment to. and continual study of, the law of God (Ps. 119. 98-100)...
The task we Christian Reconstructionists have set for ourselves - the reconstruction of every intellectual discipline in terms of the Bible - has always been the task of the church as ekklesia. The more that Christians have deferred to the humanists in intellectual affairs, the more pressing this task of reconstruction has become. Philosopher Alvin Plantiga is correct; our enemies have established the operating presuppositions in every academic field. 'In each of these
*9 areas the fundamental and often unexpressed presuppositions that govern and direct the discipline are not religiously neutral; they are often antithetic to a Christian perspective. In these areas, then, as in philosophy, it is up to Christians who practice the relevant discipline to develop the right alternatives. What he neglected to mention is that when Christians within the discipline fail to develop the right alternatives -or, in the case of economics, any alternatives - then someone outside the field has to attempt it.
Conflicting Hermeneutics (def - the science of interpretation)
...Serious Bible students can, do and will continue to disagree regarding the proper application of specific old Testament laws, both in ancient Israel and in the present New Covenant era. Our criterion of antinomianism is the acceptance of the principle of biblical interpretation which says, in Bowman's correct description of dispensationalism, that 'the commands
*10 of the Law are presumed to be no longer binding except where the New Testament repeats or ratifies them'...
....We do not ignore the question of personal ethics, but personal Ethical Issues Must Inevitably Be Dealt With Intellectually On The Basis Of Some General Principle Of Biblical Interpretation. Our principle of biblical interpretation is explicit (theonomy- the state of and individual or society that regards its own nature and norms as being in accords with the divine nature; that of our opponents is generally implicit (antinomianism - the belief that Christians are freed from the moral law by virtue of grace as set forth in the gospel.) our hermeneutical explicitness is now forcing our critics to respond explicitly, and this pressure bother. them. They resent it. They must give up either their antinomianism or their claims to cultural relevance as Christians. They do not want either position, but they no longer have any intellectual choice. They do not like to admit this...
*11 Dispensationalists have in the past been ethically explicit, denying God's revealed law in the new Covenant era. They have been self-conscious theological antinomians. they have argued for decades that a person can be saved eternally by accepting Jesus as Savior but not as Lord, a radically antinomian and widely accepted opinion which one of their number has recently criticized quite eloquently (foot-John f. MacArthur Jr., The Gospel According to Jesus, 1988)
*12 ...Our critics would much prefer to live in a world where they are not forced to deal with public issues in terms of a specific definition of Christian ethics, meaning specific Old Testament Civil Laws With Their Accompanying Public Sanctions. they wish that theonomists would go away and leave them in their ethical slumber. We won't. That is what the 1980s demonstrated : theonomists will not go away. We will not shut up.Our critics can ignore us no longer and still remain intellectually respectable. We have written too much and we continue to write. 15 years after the publication of R.J. Rushdoony's Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), over a decade after the publication of Greg L. Bahnsen's Theonomy in Christian Ethics (1977), there was still only one brief book-length academic reply from any critic in any theological camp: Walter Chantry's...
*14 Beating something with something better
...I have waited for a long time to see a well-thought out, detailed critical analysis from someone, an analysis that does not rely on lists of ideas that we do not believe and sometimes have specifically attacked (eg., 'Reconstructionists believe that the world will be transformed through political action'). a wise innovator knows the weak points in his own system. there is no man-made system without weak points. If a critic ever appears who can zero in on the weak points of Christian reconstructionism, he will receive my respect.Better to sharpen one's skills by arguing the basic points with a competent critic than bludgeoning a long series of amateurs. What i am saying, however, is that we have yet to see even one critic who understands our system well enough to go for the theological jugular. In short, we have done our home work; our published critics have not. ('If that be arrogance, make the best of it!')
What Christian Reconstructionists argue is that virtually all schools of biblical interpretation today,and too often i the past (excepting only the Puritans), have been far closer to dispensationalism's hermeneutic principle - 'the commands of the Law are presumed to be no longer binding except where the New Testament repeats or ratifies them' -than to the theonomists' hermeneutical principle, also correctly summarized by Bowman: 'The commands of the law are presumed to be binding today except where the new Testament modifies them or sets them aside in some manner'. This is why Christian Reconstructionism does represent a break with traditional Protestant theology, not in the details of theology -our distinguishing theological beliefs have all been preached before within orthodox circles - but in Our Packaging Of A Unique, Comprehensive System: predestination, covenant theology, biblical law, Cornelius VanTil's presuppositional apologetics, and postmillennialism.
It is my opinion...that you cannot beat something with nothing. This is the strategic and tactical problem facing Christians today whenever they seek to challenge apostate humanism in any sphere of life.This inescapable fact of political life is the
*15 major stumbling stone for non-theonomic Christian activists. Christian pietiest who self-consciously, religiously, and confidently deny that Christians should ever get involved in any form of public confrontation with humanism, for any reason, have recognized this weakness on the part of antinomian Christian activists. They never tire of telling the activists that they are wasting their time in some 'eschatologically futile reform program'. Such activism is a moral affront to the pietists. Those of us who have repeatedly marched in picket lines in front of an abortionist's office have from time to time been confronted by some outraged Christian pietist who is clearly far more incensed by the sight of Christians in a picket line than the thought of infanticide in the nearby office. 'Who do you think you are? we are asked. 'Why are you out here making a scene when you could be working in an adoption center or unwed mothers' home?'(These same two questions seem equally appropriate for the pietist critic. who does he think he is, and why isn't He spending his time working in an adoption center or an unwed mothers' home?)
Pietists implicitly and occasionally explicitly recognize that the Vast Majority Of Today's Implicitly Antinomian Christian Activists possess No Biblical Blueprint For Building a Comprehensive Alternative To The Kingdom Of Humanism. The pietistic critics of activism also understand that in any direct confrontation,Christians risk getting the stuffings -or their tax exemptions- knocked out of them. They implicitly recognize that a frontal assault on entrenched humanism is futile and dangerous if you have nothing better to offer, since you cannot legitimately expect to beat something with nothing. They implicitly recognize that neither modern fundamentalism nor modern antinomian evangelicalism has any such blueprint, and therefore neither movement has anything better to offer, i.e., nothing Biblically sanctioned by God for use in New Testament times (the so-called Church Age). Fundamentalism and evangelicalism deny the legitimacy of any such blueprint, for blueprints inescapably require civil law and civil sanctions. Fundamentalists have for a century chanted, 'We're under grace, not law!' They have forgotten (or never understood) that this statement inescapably means: 'We're therefore under humanist culture, not Christianity'. When reminded of this, they take one of three approaches: 1) abandon their fundamentalismn in favor of Christian Reconstructionsim, 2)_ abandon their activism, or 3) refuse to answer.
*16 The Hatred of Biblical Law
Worse, those scholars who have accepted the intellectual burden of defending the Christian aith have generally had an abiding hatred for God's revealed law. 'Hatred' is the proper word. 'Indifference' misses the point. 'Ignorance' would be misleadingly gentle. The Can Be No Neutrality Regarding God's Revealed Law, Any More Than There Can Be neutrality Regarding God's Revelation Of Himself. You either accept his authority over you or you reject it. You either accept His law's authority over you or you reject it.
God's authority over mankind is manifested ethically by His law, and it is manifested judicially by His law's sanctions. You either affirm God's law in its specifics, especially its sanctions, or you deny it, especially its sanctions. You either accept the 119th psalm or you reject it, especially its sanctions. You either except the 119th psalm or you reject it. 'I will delight myself in they statutes: I will not forget thy word. (Ps. 119.16. there is no middle ground. Middle ground with respect to anything in the Bible is always deception: either self-deception or self-conscious deception of others.
The general attitude of the modern fundamentalist world -and really, of the whole evangelical world - regarding the authority of God's law today was stated plainly in 1963 by then-Professor S. Lewis Johnson of Dallas Theological Seminary, in the seminary's scholarly journal, Bibliotheca Sacra: 'At the heart of the problem of legalism is pride, a pride that refuses to admit spiritual bankruptcy. that is why the doctrines of grace sir up so much animosity. Donald Grey Barnhouse, a giant of a man in free grace, wrote: 'It was a tragic hour when the Reformation churches wrote the Ten Commandments into their creeds and catechisms and sought to bring Gentile believers into bondage to Jewish law, which was never intended either for the Gentile nations or for the church'. He was right, too.' operationally, all denominations believe this today, but it took Presbyterian Barnhouse and independent fundamentalist Johnson to state the position plainly.
Dispensationalist Roy L. Aldrich also did not flinch from the same conclusion '...the entire Mosaic system -including the Ten Commandments - is done away'. Again, 'the Mosaic ten laws cannot
*17 not apply to the Christian', although he hastened to affirm that 'the New Testament believer is not without the highest moral obligations'. Problem: these supposedly high obligations are unaccompanied by specific biblical content or specific biblical sanctions. That is to say, the Christian is on his own, making up his own rules as he goes along, at best illuminated by the mystical whisperings of the Holy Spirit. (if anyone wonders why Dallas Seminary has experienced continual student outbreaks of antinomian versions of Pentecostalism, which Dallas' dispensational 'no signs in the Church Age' theology explicitly reflects and even outbreaks within its own faculty, he need search no farther than Dallas Seminary's antinomian theology. if god does not direct Christians through His law, then only mysticism, antinomian intuition, and inner voices remain to provide uniquely 'Christian; guidance.
This hostility to Old Testament law is also why dispensationalism has always had an unstated working alliance with modern humanism: they both share an antinomian theology that seeks to 'liberate' man and the State from the restraints of God's revealed law and its sanctions. their agreement has been simple: Christians should stay out of politics as Christians. this explicit antinomianism is also why dispensationalism has never developed an explicitly Christian social theory. If it could have, it would have, especially in the crucial years of protest, 1965-71. The silence of dispensational leaders and scholars in those years indicated that the movement was incapable of responding to real-world problems.In that era, dispensationalism committed intellectual suicide. Intellectual rigor mortis has now visibly begun to set in.
*18 Natural Law Philosophy and Antinomianism
Some variation of the dispensational hermeneutic has long been adopted by theologians who officially claim they reject the idea of an ultimate ethical dualism between the Old Testament and new Testament. a good example is the statement by Robert Dabney, the Calvinist Presbyterian of the late-nineteenth-century American South. he assures us that the Ten Commandments provide universal ethical standards 'Although the ten commandments were given along with the civil and ceremonial laws of the Hebrews, we do not include them along with the latter, because the Decalogue was, i unlike them, given for all men and all dispensations'. the Gen Commandment were basically the Hebrews' version of natural law. 'It is a solemn repetition of the sum of those duties founded in the natures of man and of God and on their relations,enjoined on all ages alike.'
This has been the ethical argument of Christian commentators almost from the beginning. without exception, such a dispensationalist ethical argument rests either implicitly or explicitly on some version of natural law philosophy. If you abandon the continuing judicial authority of the Old Testament case laws And Their Sanctions, you ust actively adopt or at least passively accept some other civil law structure to serve as the judicial basis of society. There are no judicial vacuums. Either God's revealed Law is Sovereign in Society Or Else Autonomous man's Declared Law Is Sovereign. There is no third choice. when a
*19 Christian denies the unbreakable connection between the case laws and the Ten Commandments, he must then seek to apply the 'general moral principles' of the Decalogue to his own society in order to provide legitimacy to the 'common legal order'. yet he is then forced by his theory of natural law to defend the Decalogue's highly general principles in terms of their common status among all 'right thinking' people.
There is a major problem here; There have been so many wrong-thinking tyrants and societies In History. Christian have suffered under many of them, usually in silence, for they have been taught that there are no specific legal standards of righteousness on which to base their allegiance on the supposed 'natural conformity' to the Decalogue of their societies' legal order. Natural law theory then becomes an all-purpose smoke screen for the Christians' passive (or even active acceptance of specific social evils.
The Problem of Social Reform
The acceptance of natural law philosophy inevitably leads to two possible and recurring evils. first, it paralyzes the Christians' legitimate efforts to reform society, for it denies that there are specific biblical blueprints for social reform. this is the curse of the pietistic Escape Religion on Christianity, Second, it enables humanist reformers to enlist Christians in this or that reform effort that is wrapped in the language of the Ten Commandments but which is in fact inspired by covenant-breakers and designed to further their aims. This is the curse of the power Religion on Christianity.
In American history, no better example exists of both of these processes than the Unitarians' successful enlisting of evangelical Christians in the State-centralizing abolitionist movement. The fact is, the Quakers had pioneered the theory of abolitionism in the 1755-75 period, decades before the Unitarian Church even existed. The unwillingness trinitarian American Christians to obey the new Testament teachings with regard to the illegitimacy of lifetime chattel slavery allowed the Unitarians to capture the Quakers' issue
*20 and fan the evangelical's moral fervor, 1820-65, which in turn allowed them to capture the whole country for the Unitarian worldview from the 1860s onward. In short, American Christians ignored their social responsibilities by ignoring the Quakers' moral challenge regarding chattel slavery (1760-1820), for they did not recognized or acknowledge the judicial authority of the New Testament on this question. As a result, they became institutionally and intellectually subordinate to those who hated Christianity (1820-1865)
Simultaneously, a parallel phenomenon took place with the rise of the state school systems, another Unitarian reform in the United States. Funded by Christian taxpayers, the schools have been operated in terms of an alien world view. The Escape Religion Led To The Triumph Of The Power Religion. it always does. Dominion religion invariably suffers. This defeat of dominion religion is the temporal goal of the power religionists and the escape religionists, of Pharaoh and the enslaved Israelites. They always want Moses to go away and take his laws with him.
These two evil consequences of natural law theory -retreat from social concerns and the co-opting of Christians by non-Christian social reformers - have been the curse of natural law theory for almost two millennia....
*22 Our critics can legitimately reply, 'All right, let's see if you can make sense of the case laws. let's see how you would apply them to today's problems. Put up or shut up.' This book is a detailed study of the economic applications of the case laws of Exodus. it offers no grand hypothesis, no major breakthrough in biblical hermeneutics. It is an example of what someone can accomplish if he is willing to spend a lot of time thinking about the specifics of biblical law, comparing his conclusions with contemporary scholarship in several areas. To write this book, i have made a detailed study of modern economics, plus at least a cursory examination of the relatively new academic discipline of law and economics, plus studies of Jewish jurisprudence (Mishna and Talmud), modern criminology the history of slavery, and ecology. this effort I regard as basic intellectual trench work, or what Thomas Kuhn calls 'normal science'. it is not in the same league with a breakthrough book like Rushdoony's institutes of Biblical Law, with its innovative insight that each of the case laws of the Bible can be subsumed under one of the Ten Commandments (even if the thesis is overstated), and which surveys a wide array of topics -academic, cultural, historical, and contemporary. tools of Dominion has neither the precision nor the relentlessness of Greg Bahnsen's apologetic defence of biblical law in Theonomy in Christian ethics. It does not have the organizational power of Ray Sutton's five-point covenant model. It does not have the innovative insights into biblical meaning that James Jordan's 'maximal' hermeneutic offers. (Ray R. Sutton, 'Dominion By Covenant) It just plugs along, trying to make economic sense out of the details of the case laws....
*23 Yes, this is a fat book. but like Volume 1 of Rushdoony's institutes of Biblical law, this book is divided into bite-sized portions: compact chapter sections and subsections. to make things as easy as possible for the reader, i have structured it for easy preliminary scanning and easy review. you deal with it as you would eat an elephant: one bite at a time. Chew well; it is occasionally tough.
Part I PROLEGOMENA
*27 RESTORATION OF BIBLICAL CASUISTRY (DEF - the application of general ethical principles to particular cases of conscience of conduct)
I have more understanding than all my teachers: for thy testimonies are my meditation. I understand more than the ancients, because i keep they precepts (Psalm 119.99-100)
we need to take David's words seriously. He defines personal progress in history in terms of a better understanding of God's revealed laws. he can measure his progress beyond anything achieved by those who have preceded him, not in terms of better study techniques, or improved means of communication, or greater per capita wealth, but in terms of his mastery of God's precepts.
Modern man regards such an idea of historical progress as preposterous. Sad to say, so does the modern Christian. this is why modern society is headed either for an enormous series of disasters or an enormous and culturally comprehensive revival. God will not be mocked His covenantal sanctions -blessings and curings -still operate in history. This book deals with God's covenantal case laws from an economic point of view. This strategy is theologically appropriate in the late twentieth century, of modern man worships at his own shrine in the hope of achieving unbroken compound economic growth per capita.
Tools of Dominion is a work of casuisty: the application of conscience to moral decisions. The conscience needs a reliable guide: biblical law. Casuistry has not been a popular academic endeavor within Bile-believing Protestantism since the late seventeenth century. The only works I can think of that are anything like The Dominion covenant in scope are Richard Baxter's enormous study, A Christian Directory, written in 1664-5 and first published in 1673, and Samuel Willard's equally massive commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, A Compleat Body of Divinity (1726). Richard Baxter's goal was basically the same as mine: 'I do especially desire you to observe,
*28 that the resolving of practical Cases of Conscience, and the reducing of Theological knowledge into Serious Christian Practice, and promoting a skillful Facility in the faithful exercise of universal obedience and Holiness of heart and life, is the great work of this Treatise;...Unlike Baxter, I had access to my library when I wrote my book; he did not having been barred from his pulpit by the State (after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660) and having to write most of it from memory, only subsequently checking the original sources.
Ignoring the Case Laws
The major problem I had in writing this book is that there are very few books that even explain the case laws, let alone take them seriously. there are at least three approaches to (or, more accurately, justifications for the rejection of) the case laws.
1. The Case Laws as Annulled
This is the standard Christian view. it has been the common viewpoint almost from the beginning of the church. This is why theonomy (def - appears to be a major break with broad church tradition. Basically, the position boils down to this: a compromise with late classical philosophy's natural law theory began in the early centuries of the church. Christian scholars appealed o universal human reason as the source of rational man's universal knowledge of civil law. This law was seen as natural, meaning that it is implicitly in the common possession of all rational men.
There was an early recognition on the part of church scholars and leaders that an appeal to old Testament case laws could not be conformed intellectually to natural law theory. They understood the obvious question: 'If these laws were universally binding on all men, then why did God have to reveal the specifics of his law to the Hebrews, and only to them? This, in fact, is a very good Christian rhetorical answer to those who declare the universality of natural law. the answer is simple: there is no such thing as a universal system of rational natural law which is accessible to fallen human reason. But this answer was too radical to suit scholars and apologists in the early church, just as it has been too radical for Christians ever since. it involves a sharp break with the doctrine of natural law.
*29 the early commentators were sorely tempted to seek a way out of their common-ground apologetic difficulty by interpreting Paul's language regarding the annulment of the law's eternal death sentence against redeemed mankind to mean that the old Covenant's legal order is in no way judicially binding on new Testament society. They abandoned the concept of God's historical sanctions as applicable in New Testament history. They lumped together Israel's civil case laws with the Old Covenant's laws of ritual cleanliness, and then they dismissed both varieties. This tradition lives on in modern conservative Christian theology.
2. The Case laws as Antiquarian
Christian Bible commentators pass over these laws on the assumption that they are only of antiquarian interest. Commentators almost never attempt to explain how these laws might have worked in ancient Israel. they never discuss how they might be applied in the new Testament era. Also, the commentators are unfamiliar with even the rudiments of economic theory, so their comments on the economic implications of these verses are almost nonexistent.Their few brief observations are what the reader could readily have figured out for himself. another major problem is that far too often, the commentators compare the biblical text with fragments of the legal texts of the surrounding near Eastern culture. This is not an evil practice in itself, but it is when they make the unproven assumption that Israel must have borrowed its legal code form these pagan cultures. They never discuss the possibility that Israel's law code preceded these pagan extracts, which once again raises the Question of the need for the reconstruction of biblical and near Eastern chronologies.
3. The Case Laws as Mythical
Liberal humanist Bible scholars are so enamored with biblical 'higher criticism' that they pay little attention to the meaning of the biblical texts. They prefer instead to spend their lives inventing multiple authors for each text, re-dating subsections in order to make the Book of Exodus appear to be a composite document written centuries after the exodus event (which many of then downplay anyway)
*30 When commentators believe that the oldest laws are remnants of some 'primitive nomadism' or else imports from pagan law codes, they have no incentive tr think through how these laws should be applied today. When they view most of the case laws as late developments that were inserted retroactively into older biblical texts for political reasons, they have little incentive to understand them as specific historical applications of permanent general principles. Jews and gentiles alike are afflicted with Bible scholarship that relies on the principles of higher criticism.
Useless commentaries
The Dominican Covenant is not a typical Bible commentary. The typical Bible commentary judiciously avoids the really difficult questions, especially in the area of ethics. It also neglects all but the most obvious of the economic principles involved...I long ago stopped wasting my time trying to find economic and judicial information in them...
Jewish commentaries
If Christian commentaries are unhelpful, what about commentaries written by Jews? Not much better I did not find the traditional Jewish commentaries useful in writing this commentary, including the Talmud. Until only about a century and a half ago,
*31 Jewish scholarship focused almost exclusively on the Talmud, which was completed around A.D. 500, parts of which extended back to several centuries before Christ in the form of oral tradition. Traditional Jewish commentaries on ethics often deal with highly specific legal cases involving economic disputes between men, or academic disputes among the rabbis, but there is seldom an attempt to spell out the general economic principles guiding any decision of a Jewish court. At best, the rabbis may try to explain why certain forms of restitution are imposed in certain cases, but nothing beyond a kind of common-sense view of economic justice. Thus, Jewish religious scholars until very recently did not bring their great skills of erudition and detailed scholarship to bear on the modern world. 'Secular' topics did not interest them, and even today, those Jews who have become illustrious academically in so many fields display little or no interest in the Talmud.
There is a very important reason why the writings of Jewish legal scholars and judges prove to be of little assistance: Jewish courts after the Bar Kokhba revolt of 135 A.D. 70, were not allowed to impose specifically biblical sanctions...When the Romans captured Jerusalem and burned the Temple in A.D. 70, the ancient official Sanhedrin court came to an end. The rabbis, under the leadership of Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, then took over many of the judicial functions of the Sanhedrin. They established as a principle that every Jewish court must have at least one judge who had been ordained by the laying on of hands (semika), and who could in principle trace his ordination back to Moses. This laying on of hands could take place only in the Holy Land. Legal scholar Georgtee Horozitz comments: 'A Court not thus qualified had no jurisdiction to impose the punishments prescribed in the Torah'. after the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Jews were scattered across the roman Empire in the diaspora.' the Rabbis were compelled, therefore, in order to preserve the Torah and to maintain law and order, to enlarge the authority of Rabbinical tribunals. This they accomplished by emphasizing the distinction between Biblical penalties and Rabbinical penalties. Rabbinical courts after the second century had no authority to
*32 impose Biblical punishments since they lacked semikah; but as regards penalties created by Rabinnical legislation, the Rabbis had of necessity, accordingly, a whole series of sanctions and penalties: excommunications, fines, physical punishment, use of the 'secular arm' in imitation of the Church, etc.' Thus, by the time of the Mishnah, which was Rabbi Judah the Prince's authoritative late-second-century compilation of rabbinical laws, Jewish courts had already abandoned Old Testament sanctions.
Thus tied intellectually and ethically to the Mishnah, to the massive Talmud (completed around A.D. 500), and to the literature produced in terms of this ancient tradition, Jewish commentators have never attempted to produce anything like the kind of Bible commentary that The Dominion Covenant represents. I am aware of no Jewish compilation of Old Testament case laws that is organized in terms of the Ten Commandments or any other biblical organizational principle (eg., the covenant model)which is comparable to R. J. Rushdoony's INSTITUTES OF BIBLICAL LAW, and no apologetic comparable to Greg L. Bahnsen. Furthermore, despite the intellectual dominance of economists who are Jews, there is as yet no body of scholarship known as Jewish economics. This is in sharp contrast to the Islamic academic community, which has produced a growing body of self-consciously Islamic economic literature, especially since 1975. with the exception only of Professor
*33 Israel Kirzner, I can think of no contemporary academically recognized Jewish economist who might agree with Rabbi Chajes' mid-nineteenth pronouncement: 'Allegiance to the authority of the said (oral) rabbinic tradition is binding upon all sons of Israel, since these explanations and interpretations have come down to us by word of mouth from generation to generation, right from the time of Moses. They have been transmitted to us precise, correct, and unadulterated, and he who does not give his adherence to the unwritten law and the rabbinic tradition has no right to share the heritage of Israel; he belongs to the Sadducees or the Karaites who severed connection to us long ago'.
Orthodox Judaism
During the last century in the West, Orthodox Judaism has almost disappeared from sight, so widespread has been the defection of millions of Jews who have been assimilated into modern society; by Chafes' definition, there are today few Jews remaining in the world , except in the State of Israel. Even the term 'Orthodox Judaism' indicates the nature of the problem; it was originally a term of derision used by liberal Jews in the nineteenth century against their traditionalist opponents. Grunfeld writes: 'The word 'Orthodoxy',
*34 on the other hand, which was applied by the Reformers to what they called 'old-Timers' or 'Old-Believers' (Altglaubige), was taken from the sphere of Christian theology and does not fit Judaism at all, in which the main stress is laid on action or law and not on 'faith'. This is indeed the main stress of orthodox Judaism, which nevertheless has an underlying theology: Salvation By Law. Writes Robert Goldenberg: 'Classical Judaism, drawing indirectly on its biblical antecedents, tends to emphasize act over intention, behavior over thought. Righteousness is chiefly a matter of proper behavior, not correct belief or appropriate intention. In contrast, Christianity stresses salvation by faith in Christ. But this faith means faith in Christ's Representative Perfect Obedience To God's Perfect law; Christian orthodoxy should never lead to a denial of the validity and moral authority of that perfect law which Christ obeyed perfectly.
Revolution and Law
I am convinced that both the West and the Far East are about to experience a major transformation. the pace of social change is already rapid and will get faster. The technological possibility of the successful Soviet nuclear strike against the US grows daily; so does the possibility of chemical and biological warfare; so does the threat of an AIDS epidemic. None of these threats to civilization may prove in retrospect to be devastating, but they are certainly perceived today as threats. Added to these grim possibilities is
*35 the much more predictable threat of an international economic collapse as a result of the vast build-up of international debt; this in turn could produce domestic political transformations. also possible is the spread of terrorism and Marxist revolution. Drug addiction is spreading like a plague. Changes in the weather as a result of the use of fossil fuels (the 'greenhouse effect') are in the newspapers because of international drought. Agricultural output may be endangered, long term, by weather changes and also by soil erosion. we are not sure. What Christians should be certain of is this: God Has Been Plowing Up The Ethically Erosion-prone World Since World War I, And This process Is Accelerating.
This has created a unique opportunity for Christian revival, but this time revival could lead to a broad-based cultural transformation. In short, revival could produce an international revolution: family by family, church by church, nation by nation. For a true social revolution to take place, there must be a transformation of the legal order. This transformation takes several generations, but without it, there has been no revolution, only a coup d'etat. There is today an international crisis in the Western legal tradition. This, far more than the build-up of nuclear weapons or the appearance of AIDS, testifies to the likelihood of a comprehensive, international revolution - not necessarily violent, but a revolution nonetheless. The Holy Spirit could produce such a revolution without firing a shot or launching a missile...
Harold Berman's point is correct: without a transformation of the legal system, there is no revolution. this is why I am devoting so much space to explaining the case laws of Exodus. It is these laws, and their amplification in the Book of Deuteronomy, that must serve as the foundation of any systematically, self-consciously Christian revolution. Natural law is a dead mule; it was always a sterile hybrid, and Darwinism has long-since killed the last known living specimens. (foot -R.J.Rushdoony writes: 'Darwinism destroyed this faith in nature. The process of nature was now portrayed, not as a perfect working of law, but as a blind unconscious energy working profligately to express itself. In the struggle for survival, the fittest survive by virtue of their own adaptations, not because of natural law. Nature produces many 'mistakes' which fail to survive and become extinct species and fossils. The destiny of the universe is extinction as its energy runs down'. Rushdoony, The Biblical philosophy of History..1969, p.7.
*36 of traditional Roman Catholic and Protestant college instructors and magazine columnists still visibly cling to one or another of these taxidermic specimens, each proclaiming that his specimen is still alive.) Thus, there is nowhere for Christians to turn for guidance in developing a believable social theory and workable social programs except to the case laws of the old Testament. Once the myth of neutrality is abandoned -really abandoned, not just verbally admitted to be a myth - then the inevitable question arises: By What standard? Christians who have abandoned faith in the myth of neutrality have only one possible answer: 'By This standard: Biblical law.
The Conflict Between Two Kingdoms
What I am attempting to do with my life is to publish Christian worldview materials that will lead to the steady replacement of the humanist intellectual foundations of modern civilization. The issue is the kingdom of God, both in heaven and on earth (Matt. 28.18) There are many books that deal with the kingdom of God, but my view of the kingdom of God as it is visibly manifested in history is simple:it is God's authorized and morally required Civilization. It is simultaneously internal (world and life view), ethical (a moral law-order), and institutional (covenantal judicial relationships). Raymond Zorn begins his book on the Kingdom of God with these words: In the broadest sense God's Kingdom refers to the most extended reaches of His sovereignty. As Psalm 103.19 puts it, 'The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens; and his kingdom ruleth over all'. The Kingdom of God is all-encompassing, in the same sense that a civilization is all-encompassing. I agree in principle with the Jewish
*37 scholar, I. Grunfeld, when he writes that 'true religion and true civilisation are identical. it is the view of the Torah as the civilisation of the state of God -where Torah is coextensive with life in all its manifestations, personal, economic, political, national.
Nothing less than this Comprehensive replacement of humanism and occultism with Christianity will suffice to please God. We are called to work for the progressive replacement of humanist civilization by Christian civilization, a replacement that was definitively achieved with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ, and manifested by the coming of the Holy spirit at Pentecost. we are to Replace Satan's humanistic kingdoms. 'Kingdom' is an inescapable concept. it is never a question of kingdom vs no kingdom; it is always a question of Whose kingdom. Rushdoony is correct in his evaluation of mankind's inevitable quest for utopia, the final order, which only God can inaugurate and bring to pass: 'The church accordingly has never been alone in history but has rather faced a multiplicity of either anti-Christian or pseudo-Christian churches fiercely resentful of any challenge to their claim to represent the way, truth and life of that final order. The modern state, no less than the ancient empire, claims to be the vehicle and corporate body of that true estate of man. As the incarnation of that final order, it views family, church, school and every aspect of society as members and phases of its corporate life and subject to its general government. It
*38 is in terms of this faith, therefore, that the state claims prior or ultimate jurisdiction over every sphere, and steadily encroaches on their activity.
Comprehensive Revival
Christian Reconstructionists are self-consciously attempting to lay new intellectual foundations for a comprehensive moral and therefore intellectual, social, political, and economic transformation of the world.Not until at least the preliminary steps in this theological and intellectual transformation are accomplished can we expect God to send worldwide revival.If the coming revival is not comprehensive in its effects, it will no more change the world permanently than earlier revivals have changed it permanently. The regeneration of people's souls is only the first step on the road to comprehensive redemption.Christian philosopher Cornelius Van Til, who died in 1987, has issued a warning: 'The temptation is very great for the believers in these times when the Church is in apostasy, and its conquest of the world for Christ seems to be losing out, that they shall spend a great deal of their time in passive waiting instead of active service. Another danger that lurks at a time of apostasy is that the few faithful ones give up the comprehensive ideal of the kingdom and limit themselves to the saving of individual souls'. We need a comprehensive revival that will produce comprehensive redemption.
We must understand from the beginning that the message of the kingdom of God rests on a concept of Salvation Which Is Supernaturally Imparted, not politically imparted. The kingdom of God is categorically not a narrow political program of social transformation; it is rather a supernaturally imposed salvational program that inevitably produces world-changing political, social, legal, and economic effects. The Amillennial theologian Geerhardus Vos was correct: 'The kingdom represents the specifically Evangelical element in our Lord's teaching...Jesus' doctrine of the kingdom as both inward and outward, coming first in the heart of man and afterwards in the external world, upholds The Primacy Of The Spiritual And Ethical over the
*39 physical. The invisible world of the inner religious life, the righteousness of he disposition, the Sonship of God are in it made supreme, the essence of the kingdom, the ultimate realities to which everything else is subordinate. The inherently ethical character of the kingdom finds subjective expression in the demand for repentance....
if we do not get ...revival soon, my work and the work of those who are involved in the Biblical Blueprints project will remain curiosities, and then become antiquarian curiosities, until the revival comes.
Blueprints and Responsibilities
Without a bottom-up religious transformation of civilization, the policies that we Christian Reconstructionists recommend will at best have only a peripheral influence on society. The reader should understand,however, that we expect the revival and this bottom-up transformation, if not in our own lifetimes, then eventually. The Bible's blueprints for society will eventually be universally adopted across the face of the earth as the waters cover the sea (Isa. 11.9) Christian Reconstuctionists regard this as historically inevitable.This confidence is what makes theonomic postmillenial world-view so hard-nosed and uncompromising...
Christians who doubt the future earthly triumph of God's kingdom tend to be less confident and less sure about the practical reliability of the Bible's blueprints. sometimes they even deny that the Bible offers such blueprints. If it does offer such blueprints, then evangelical Christians have major responsibilities outside the sanctuary and the family....this prospect...frightens...Christians. They have adopted eschatologies that assure them that God does not hold them
*40 responsible for anything so comprehensive as the transformation of today's sin-filled world. They do not believe that God offers to His church the tools, skills, and time necessary for such a generations-long project of social transformation. Therefor, they adopt the philosophy that says that Christians should not even try to reform society, for such efforts are futile, wasteful, and shift precious resources from the only legitimate tasks of the church: preaching individual salvation the lost and sustaining the converted spiritually in a time of inevitable cultural decline. They equate social reform programs with polishing brass on a sinking ship....
Doubt vs. Dominion
Christians, paralyzed by their own versions of eschatological pessimism, have not taken advantage of the growing self-doubt that is progressively paralyzing their humanistic opponents.Christians should recognize the extent of the despair that has engulfed those who have rejected the idea that the Bible is the infallible word of God. An example of such despair is the following:
We live in a time in which old perspectives informing our understanding of the world have been seriously shaken by events of modern times. In many cases these old perspectives have collapsed; they no longer hold as our centers...Against the backdrop of such events, an erosion of traditional values has taken place - an erosion which has left us feeling that we (are) adrift in a sea of relativity in which anything, including such evils as the holocaust or nuclear war might be rationalized as 'necessary'. It is with this experience that we know that the cultural foundations have been shaken. We know that we are no longer guided by a vision of coherence and relatedness concerning our individual existence. We know that we are no longer bound together by a set of values infused with a common sense of destiny. Our sense of destiny, if any, is dominated by an uneasiness and sense of foreboding about the future. The future itself is now feared by
*41 many as the ultimate danger to the fragile hold we have on whatever security we have achieved in the present. All of this has left some to question the meaning of their endeavors, while it has left many with a sense of isolation and loneliness. The irony is that this new sense of insecurity has come at a time when the material well-being of those in the advanced industrial nations has reached a
height hitherto undreamed of.
This is precisely what the Book of Deuteronomy predicts for a society that has covenanted with God, has been blessed with external wealth, and then has forgotten God in its humanistic confidence (Deut. 8.17) '...the Lord shall give thee there a trembling heart and failing of eyes , and sorrow of mind: And they life shall hang in doubt before thee; and thou shalt fear day and night, and shalt have none assurance of they life' (Deut. 28.65b-66) This sort of widespread pessimism leads either to cultural collapse or military defeat, or else to revival. The first is taking place visibly, the second is a growing possibility, and the third, revival, is becoming more likely. Sociologist Robert Nibet asks this question: 'What is the future of the idea of progress? any logical answer must be that the idea has no future whatever if we assume the indefinite, prolonged continuation of the kind of culture that has become almost universal in the West in the late twentieth century. If the roots are dying, as they would appear to be at the present time, how can there by shrub and foliage? but he is correct when he says that 'never in history have periods of culture such as our own lasted for very long'. he sees 'signs of the beginning of a religious renewal in Western civilization,notably in America'.
Guilt and Social Paralysis
This should not be a time for pessimism among Christians. Yet it is. They are missing an opportunity that has not been seen since the late eighteenth century, and possibly since the resurrection of Christ. A universal world civilization now exists for the first time since the Tower of Babel. it is disintegrating morally as it grows wealthy. it is ripe for the harvest.
A successful harvesting operation requires tools. To take advantage of this unique historical opportunity, CHRISTIANS NEED TOOLS OF DOMINION -blueprints for the reconstruction of the world. But Christians today do not see that God has given them the tools of dominion, His revealed law. they agree with the humanists who in turn agree among themselves, above all, that the Bible offers society no specific legal standards for comprehensive reform and reconstruction. They agree with such statements as the one made by the editor of The Journal of Law and Religion, who is also a professor of Constitutional law at a Catholic law school:
'First, I assume that the Bible is not a detailed historical blueprint for American society, and that it does not contain much concrete guidance for the resolution of specific political conflicts or constitutional difficulties such as slavery and racism, sexism and equal opportunity to participate in society. The biblical traditions are not to be viewed as an arsenal of proof texts for contemporary disputes. Contextual leaps from the situations in which the biblical authors wrote to the situations with which we find ourselves faced are likewise to be avoided.
Notice that he raised the controversial issue of slavery. So does a professor of Hebrew scriptures at Notre Dame University in Indiana: 'Then there is the larger hermeneutical issue of the CHRISTIAN
appropriation of Old Testament law and the binding nature of biblical norms and stipulations in general. who today, for example, would be prepared to argue that laws concerning the conduct of war or slavery retain their binding authority for the Christian or for anyone else? Who would? I would, and so would those who call themselves Christian Reconstructionists. This is why Christian Reconstuction
*43 represents a radical challenge to modern antinomian Christianity and modern humanism.
The enemies of God continue to bring up the issue of slavery in their war against Christianity. They seek to make Christians feel guilty regarding Christianity's theological and historical legacy. Christianity unquestionably condoned and even sanctioned chattel slavery until the nineteenth century. The enemies of Christianity then trace this judicial sanctioning of chattel slavery back to the Old Testament. In this way, they seek to create a sense of guilt and doubt in their targeted victims. They understand that guilt-ridden people are not effective opponents of the prevailing messianic social order. Rushdoony is correct when he says that 'The reality of man apart from Christ is guilt and masochism. And guilt and masochism involve and an unbreakable inner slavery which governs the total life of the non-christian. The politics of the anti-Christian will thus inescapably be The Politics Of Guilt. In the politics guilt, man is perpetually drained in his social energy and cultural activity by his overriding sense of guilt and his masochistic activity. He will progressively demand of the state a redemptive role. What he cannot do personally, ie. to save himself, he demands that the state do for him, so that the state, as man enlarged, becomes the human savior of man.
That the Christians failed for many centuries to challenge chattel slavery is a black mark in the history of the church. but to lay the blame at the doorstep of the Bible, is either a mistake or an ideological strategy. as i will prove in Tools of Dominion. if this book persuades Christians that this doubt-inducing accusation against the Bible regarding its supposed support of chattel slavery is false, then it will have achieved a major success.
Pietism vs. God's Law
What we find in or day is that Christians despise biblical law almost as much as secular humanists do. these Christians have begun to adopt arguments similar to those used by the English Deists. for example, they attack the very thought of stoning drunken, gluttonous sons - not young children,but adult sons who are living at home with their parents, debauching themselves - as some sort of 'crime against humanity', when stoning them is specifically a civil sanction authorized by God (Deut. 21.18) The very idea of execution
*44 by public stoning embarrasses Christians, despite the fact that public stoning is by far the most covenantally valid form of execution, for God's law requires the witnesses to cast the first stones, and it also requires representatives of the entire convenantal community to participate directly, rather than hiding the act in a sanitary room in some distant prison. The Bible is clear; 'The hands of the witness shall be first upon him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. so thou shalt put the evil away from among you'. (Deut.17.7)
Stoning was a communal activity an aspect of the civil covenant: sanctions. It took place outside the town (Lev. 24.14; Num. 15.35-6; I Ki. 21.13)'If sentence was passed with the help of eyewitnesses, the witnesses had to begin the execution. (Deut. 17.7 This was to discourage frivolous testimony in court.' Boecker argues that it was a form of excommunication, and that those stoned were not entitled to burial in the family plot, but he cites no Scriptural evidence. 'For the ancients, the criminal was possessed of a real guilt which jeopardised the community. By covering the evildoer with stones outside the town, the evil that he could spread was banished. This argument is ridiculous, a liberal's self-conscious attempt to reinterpret the Bible's covenantal concepts as magical. The execution of the evil-doer was sufficient to stop the spread of his evil. The pile of stones was intended rather to serve as a covenantal remainder. Each pile of stones testified to the reality of covenant sanctions, a monument to God's judgment of cursing in history, just as the stones from the River Jordan were made into a memorial of God's judgment of the deliverance of Israel (Josh. 4.7-8)
Public stoning forces citizens to face the reality of the ultimate civil sanction, execution, which in turn points to God's ultimate sanction at judgment day. Stoning also faithfully images the promised judgment against Satan: the crushing of his head by the promised Seed (Gen. 3.15). Because most people, including Christians, do not want to think about God's final judgment, they prefer to assign to distant unknown executioners the grim task of carrying out God's judgment
*45 in private. This privatization of execution is immoral; it is itself criminal. It is unjust to the convicted criminal,
(*foot - Public stoning would allow a condemned man to confront the witnesses and his executioners. The idea of a private execution where the condemned person cannot have a final word to those who have condemned him is anything but liberal-minded. it was long considered a basic legal privilege in the West for a condemned person to have this final opportunity to speak his mind. the sign of the intolerance of the 'liberal'French Revolutionaries was their unwillingness to allow King Louis XVI to speak to the crowd at his execution. The judges had ordered drummers to begin drumming the moment he began to speak, which they did
and it is unjust to the surviving victims, who do not see God's justice done in public. The Systematic Impersonalism Of Capital Punishment is the problem, not capital punishment as such. This deliberate impersonalism has corrupted the entire penal system today.)
The growth of impersonalism has been a problem for the West from the beginning. Even in the days of public executions, several centuries ago, the axeman wore a face mask. The Bible does not allow the establishment of a professional, taxpayer-financed guild of faceless executioners show, over time, inevitably either grow callous sadistic. Instead, the Bible imposes personal responsibility on members of society at large for enforcing this ultimate sanction. But people in the Christian West have always refused to accept this God-imposed personal responsibility. they prefer to make a lone executioner psychologically responsible for carrying out the sentence rather than participate in this covenantal responsibility, as god requires. This refusal to accept personal responsibility by citizens has led to a crises in western jurisprudence in the twentieth century. decade by decade, the more consistent haters of God's law have become politically dominant. They have used the same kinds of arguments against capital punishment in general that embarrassed Christians had accepted in their rejection of public stoning. Step by step, society eliminates capital punishment. Men's hatred of God's law is steadily manifested covenantally in modern civil law.
*46 Economic Restitution
A considerable percentage of this book is devoted to a defense of the biblical concept of penal restitution.Convicted Criminals Are Supposed To Make Restitution Payments To Their Victims. This 'revolutionary' idea is at last being taken seriously bya few judges in the United States. But behind the ability of today's civil courts to impose the sanction of restitution lies a greater threat to the criminal: Imprisonment. This is the 'dirty little secret' of those atheists, pietists, and antinomians who ridicule the biblical system of slavery: they have accepted the horror of unproductive imprisonment in place of the biblical institution of penal labor servitude, out of which an industrous slave could purchase his freedom. If the criminal in ancient Israel was financially unable to pay his victim, his sale to a slave-buyer was what provided the victim with his lawful restitution payment. The prison system has always been the Bible-hater's preferred substitute for the Old Testament's system of law-restricted labor servitude. In short, in order to enforce the Bible's principle of economic restitution to victims by criminals, there always has to be a more fearful support sanction in reserve: death, imprisonment, whipping, banishment, or indentured servitude. The critics of biblical law just never seem to remember to mention this fact.
The Fear of God's Law
This hatred of God's law has affected millions of Christians who sing the old hymn, 'O How Love I Thy Law'. Even when they do not actively hate it (and most do), they are simply afraid of God's law. They have not studied it, and they have been beaten into intellectual submission by humanists, Christian antinomians , and those who fear personal and cultural responsibility.
A discouraging example of this is Dr. James Dobson, whose books, films, and daily radio broadcasts on Christian family issues have inspired millions of Americans, and who by 1988 had become the Protestant evangelical leader in the united States with the largest
*47 and most dedicated following. He has led the fight against abortion and pornography, and the fight for home schooling and the re-establishment of godly disciplining of children in the home. Yet in the pamphlet against abortion, he rejected as inapplicable the single most important passage in the Bible that deals with abortion, one which makes ABORTION a CAPITAL CRIME, Exodus 21.20-21 (?) Do you believe that we should stone to death rebellious children (Deut. 21.18-21 ? Do you really believe we can draw subtle meaning about complex issues from Mosaic law, when even the obvious interpretation makes no sense to us today? we can hardly select what we will and will not apply now. if we accept the verses you sited, we are obligated to deal with every last jot and tittle.
What wee see here is an attempt to avoid dealing with 'every last jot and tittle'of God's inspired word. Yet it was Jesus who warned His people: 'Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise (way) pass from the law, till all be fulfilled (Matt. 5.18) Are we to ignore this? ...admittedly ,t is possible to argue that 'heaven and earth' here mean the Old Covenant order, and that the fall of Jerusalem did fulfill the law. It is also possible to argue, as James Jordan has argued, that the death of Christ buried the law, and that His resurrection restored it in a new form, with the various dietary and ritual cleansing laws fulfilled (and therefore annulled in history) by the resurrection (Acts 10; I Cor. 8)). But this does not absolve us from the difficult task that so disturbs Dr. Dobson,
*48 namely, selecting 'what we will and will not apply now'. To retreat from this task of applied Christianity is to turn over the running of the world to pagan humanists and their theological allies, Christian antinomians. it Is To Turn The Medical World Over To The God-Hating Abortionists Who Are Opposed So Vigorously By Dr. Dobson. Yet this is precisely what every publicly visible Christian leader has done throughout the twentieth century, and what almost all of them did after the late seventeenth century. it is universally assumed by Christians that the case laws of Exodus are null and void, and should be. it is this assumption which this book is designed to challenge.
Tom Pine' demon: The Bible
We know where antinomian (anti-God's law) theology has headed in the past: to Unitarianism, atheism, and bloody revolution. It winds up with the words of tom Paine: that in consideration of 'the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God.
Is the Old Testament the word of a demon? If not, then why do antinomian Christians, liberals and conservatives, neo-evangelicals and fundamentalists, continue to ridicule Old Testament law? They stick their fists in the face of the God of Psalm 119, and shout the abstract, impersonal dispenser of equally abstract and impersonal laws?
*49 Yes, He is Much more than this. Among other things, He is the Eternal Slavemaster over those who revel against Him, the dispenser not of abstract law but of personally experienced agony forever and ever. hell is real. The lake of fire is real. god is therefore not to be mocked. But He has many mockers, and many of these mockers call themselves by His name. They do not fear Him. For now. But eventually God will stick His fist in their faces. people may choose to ignore God's law; they will not be able to ignore AIDS much longer. Another major alternative of Paine's sort of outright apostasy is some variation of Marcion's second-century heresy of the two-gods theory of history: That an evil god operated in the Old Testament, but a nice god runs the world today. (For more details, see below: The Continuing Heresy of Dualism'.) Robert Davison is correct when he says that a 'Marcionite tendency may be fairly traced in much modern discussion of Christian ethics, nor is this tendency confined to scholarly discussion'.
The third alternative is dispensationalism: God used the revealed laws of the Bible to govern people before the advent of Christ , but today we have new laws in operation, meaning vague, undefined personal laws and no specifically New Testament cultural laws at all. The road to cultural impotence is paved with neat (and ultimately unworkable) solutions to difficult biblical problems. slavery is one of these difficult problems.
What we must search for is the moral principle that undergirded each Old Testament law. When we find it, we can then begin to discuss how or to what extent God expects the civil government or some other government to enforce it today. Those who begin with the presupposition that a particular Old Testament law or God-required Hebrew practice was innately evil have already taken the first step toward Paine's view: that the Bible is the word of a demon.
Christians today are afraid of the laws in the Bible. They are actually embarrassed y them. They do not recognize that Biblical law is a two-edged sword of God's judgment: blessing for the righteous, but cursing for the unrighteous (Rom. 13.1-7) They do not understand that God's Law-Order For Society Is Merciful. for example, God allows the death penalty for kidnappers (Ex. 21.16). The death penalty
*50 used to e imposed on kidnappers in the United States, and kidnapping was rare. It is no longer imposed regularly, and kidnapping has become a blight. kidnapping by terrorists in Europe is commonplace. who says that God's law regarding kidnapping is too harsh? Harsher than kidnapping itself? So it is with All of god's civil laws. They are merciful compared with the effects of unpunished evil. The modern world is learning just how unmerciful a society can be that is not governed by biblical law.
Theocraphobia': Fear of God's Rulership
When, in a court of law, the witness puts his hand on the Bible and swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him god, he thereby swears on the word of God - the Whole Word of God, and Nothing But the Word of God. The Bible is a unit. It is a 'package deal'. The New Testament did not overturn the Old Testament; it is Commentary on the Old Testament. It tells us how to use the Old Testament properly in the period after the death and resurrection of Israel'
s messiah, God's son.
Jesus said: 'Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am come not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I ay unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one joy or one tittle shall in no wise (way) pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven'. (Matt. 5.17-9) Christ took the Old Testament seriously enough to die for those condemned to the second death (Rev. 20.14) by its provisions. The Old Testament is not a discarded first draft of god's word. It is not 'God's word (emeritus),.
If anything, the New Testament law is more stringent than the Mosaic law, not less stringent. Paul writes that an elder cannot have more than one wife (I Tim. 3.2) The king in the Old Testament was forbidden to have multiple wives (Deut. 17.17) this was not a general law, unless we interpret the prohibition of Leviticus 18.18 as applying to all additional wives, and not just to marrying a woman's sister, as ethicist John Murray interprets it. if we attempt to interpret
*51 Leviticus 18.18 in Murray's fashion, the question arises: Why specify kings as being prohibited from becoming polygamists if the same law applied to all men anyway? Possibly to prohibit the system of political covenanting through marriage (Solomon is a good example here). Certainly, there is no equally clear-cut Old Testament prohibition against polygamy comparable to I Timothy 3.2, which indicates a tightening of the legal requirements for at least church officers. The New Testament appears to be more rigorous than the Old in this instance, another alteration in marriage law that we find in the New Testament is the abolition of concubinage that resulted from Christ's fulfillment of the terms of the Old Testament's bride price system (see Chapter 6). there are no more second-class wives.
Dominion Christianity teaches that there are four covenants under God, meaning four kinda of Vows under God: personal individual), and the three institutional covenants: ecclesiastical, civil and familial. All other human institutions (business, educational, charitable, etc.) are to one degree or other under the jurisdiction of one or more of these four covenants. No single human covenant is absolute; therefore, no single human institution is all-powerful. Thus, Christian liberty is Liberty under God and God's law, administered by plural legal authorities.
Biblical Pluralism
There is no doubt that Christianity teaches pluralism, but a very special kind of pluralism: Plural Institutions under God's single comprehensive law system. It does Not teach a pluralism of law structures, or a pluralism of moralities, for this sort of hypothetical legal pluralism (as distinguished fro Institutional pluralism) is always either polytheistic or humanistic. Christian people are required to take dominion over the earth by means of all three God-ordained institutions, not just the church, or just the State, or just the family. The Kingdom Of God includes Every Human Institution, And Every Aspect of Life For All Of Life Is Under God Includes Every Human institution, and Every Aspect Of Life, For All Of Life Is Under God And Is Governed By His Unchanging Principles. All of life is under God and God's law because God intends to Judge all of life In Terms Of His law.
*52 In this structure of Plural Governments, the institutional churches serve as Advisors to the other institutions (the Levitical function), but the churches can only pressure individual leaders through the threat of excommunication. As a restraining factor on unwarranted church authority an excommunication by one local church or denomination is always subject to review by another, if and when the excommincated person seeks membership elsewhere. Thus, each of the three covenantal institutions is to be run under God, as interpreted by its lawfully elected or ordained leaders, with the advice of the churches, not their compulsion.
All Christians are in principle theocrats. All Christians say that God rules the universe. God (theos) rules (kratos). Theocracy means simply that God Rules. He rules in every area of life: Church, State, family, business, science, education, etc. There is no zone of neutrality.. There is no 'king's x' from God. Men are responsible for everything they think, say, and do. God exercises total jurisdiction.Jurisdiction means law (juris) and speaking (diction). god Speaks His word. It is a comprehensive word. anyone who says that God's law does not apply to some area of life is thereby saying that God does not have jurisdiction in that area. 'No law - no jurisdiction'.
A Scare Word
The word 'theocracy' is a scare word that humanists and frightened Christians use to chase dedicated Christians away from areas of their God-given responsibility. The critics focus on politics and civil government as if God's rule in this area were somehow evil. Because almost all humanists today believe in salvation through legislation,
(foot - The exceptions to this rule are
classical liberals and free market economists like F. A. Hayek and Milton Friedman,
traditional conservatives like Russell Kirk and William F. Buckley,
neoconservatives like Irving Kristol, and
outright anarchist like Murray N. Rothbard.)
they necessarily believe that politics is the primary means of social healing.
(foot - R.J. Rushdoony, The One and the Many: Studies in the Philosophy of Order and Ultimacy)
The Marxists are the most consistent defenders of human transformation through political action: the religion of revolution. Because Christians are today also used to thinking in these humanistic terms, they seldom think to themselves: 'Wait a minute. I know that God rules the family, and the government of my family.
*53 should reflect this fact. God also rules the church, and the government of my church is supposed to reflect this fact. I know that God rules all civil governments, too. So why should it be evil for Christians to work hard to see to it that the civil government reflects this fact, just as they do i their families, churches, and businesses?' In short, why should politics be outside the realm of God-honoring Christian action?
Humanist critics present Christians with a kind of mental image: a scarecrow that is locked in the stocks of Puritan New England. Every time a Christian walks by this scarecrow, a tape recorded message blares out: 'Beware of theocracy! Beware of theocracy!' if the critics meant, 'Beware of ecclesiocracy', meaning civil rule by the institutional church, they would have a valid point, but they mean something different: 'Beware of ecclesiocracy', meaning civil rule by the institutional church, they would have a valid point, but they mean something different: 'Beware of ecclesiocracy', meaning civil rule by the institutional church, they would have a valid point, but they mean something different: 'Beware of Christians in every area of life who seek to exercise biblical dominion under God by obeying And Enforcing God's holy law'.
What 'Beware of theocracy!' really means is, 'Beware of God's righteous rule!'
The Dismantling of the Welfare-Warfare State
Those who reject the theocratic ideal are ready to accuse Calvinists of being tyrants. Historian Ronald Wells of Calvin College has written an attack on Francis Schaeffer, which appears in a collection of essays that is best described as a neo-evangelical tirade. he points to the unfootnoted and unmentioned links between certain aspects of Schaeffer's social thought and Christian Reconstructionism, and then observes: 'This tendency to promote one's own view by 'law' has always been the dangerous part of Calvinism: one sees Calvinists in power as triumphal and dictatorial...Calvinists in power have wielded that power oppressively'.
The Dismantling of the Welfare-Warfare State
Those who reject the theocratic ideal are ready to accuse Calvinists of being tyrants. Historian Ronald Wells of Calvin College has written an attack on Francis Schaeffer, which appears in a collection of essays that is best described as a neo-evangelical tirade. He points to the unfootnoted and unmentioned links between certain aspects of Schaeffer's social thought and Christian Reconstructionism, and then observes: 'This tendency to promote one'sown view by 'law' has always been the dangerous part of Calvinism: one sees Calvinists in power as triumphal and dictatorial...Calvinists in power have wielded that power oppressively'.
I suspect that we Reconstructionists were Mr. Wells' target, for we are the only Christians on earth calling for the building of a biblical theocracy. What I also suspect is that what really disturb our neo-evangelical academic critics is that we perceive this theocracy as a system of decentralized power. we call for a vast purging of present
*54 day national power, both political and economic. We call for the dismantling of the welfare-warfare State, most notably every aspect of taxpayer-financing for education (except for the national military academies...maybe). I have called for a REDUCTION OF AGGREGATE TAXES to the level required by I Samuel 8: where
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