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Lew Church was an exemplar of the entrepreneur.
He prospered in the free enterprise system through hard work, risk taking, innovation,
and making use of his talents for the benefit of others and himself.
Mr. Church remained true to the values of freedom, a market economy,
Limited Government, and the Private Property Order.
Through the Lew Church Educational Foundation, he hoped to preserve and perpetuate this system in which those who followed after him
would have the same opportunity to prosper and enjoy liberty that he had.
We are honored to have Robert Murphy deliver this year's Lew Church Memorial Lecture.
Dr. Murphy is visiting Assistant Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College.
He earned his BA magna cum laude in economics from Hillsdale College and an MA and PhD in economics from New York University.
Dr. Murphy has published numerous articles in popular and scholarly venues, including the Journal of the History of Economic Thought,
the Journal of Economics and Sociology, the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, and the Journal of Libertarian Studies.
He is the author of two book manuscripts, Chaos Theory and Minerva, and a home study course in Austrian Economics.
Dr. Murphy will speak on the topic, the tension between economics and religion.
Thank you, Jeff, for that introduction.
First, I would like to thank Lew Rockwell for inviting me to give this talk.
I'm very honored and humbled to be able to give this talk. Let me clarify the title. I don't mean anything more profound than what it suggests that there is in the popular culture this idea that free market economics in particular and Christianity in particular are somehow at odds with each other.
I think many people would say, for those of you who espouse and endorse free market economics, how can you call yourself a true Christian?
So that's what I want to discuss today, and as we'll see, I don't think that that criticism is entirely warranted, but on the other hand, I think those of us who are Christians can't just dismiss it as out of hand and think that, oh, there's nothing to that complaint.
So, there's one sense that's quite obvious in which if you're a free market economist that could conflict with your Christianity, and that would be if you place that above your faith, if you think that your occupation is more important in your life than your faith is, and of course you wouldn't say that in the abstract, but if by your behavior that's what you show you really care about, then of course that's a problem if you're a Christian. But there's nothing peculiar to economics in that regard, whether you're a botanist or a chemist or a philosopher,
To let you know though that this isn't just a remark I make just because it's obvious
and we move on that I noticed myself, I violated that very precept myself a few weeks ago.
I had to sign up for a new email account and I was, as you can imagine, there's more than
And then one Bob Murphy walking around and so I was trying different permutations of
things and I even think I tried Bob Murphy and put my bank pin number on, which is probably
the stupidest thing you could possibly do in retrospect.
So fortunately someone else is using my pin and Bob Murphy.
But finally I settled on one that was Bob Murphy and CAP, okay, and so that went through
and I was really pleased, okay, that's anarcho-capitalist for those of you who don't know.
And then it occurred to me a few minutes later, why was it that I was trying to come up with
some way to describe myself?
Why did I pick my political views?
Why didn't I say Bob Murphy Christian or Bob Murphy, my boss is a Jewish carpenter, to
make people pause and think and then, you know, oh, that's clever.
So why did I go the route of the political aspect?
Why did I choose that to describe myself?
And it disturbed me.
And I think that that is a problem.
And just not to justify why I did that, but just thinking about psychologically what was
it that led me to act that way, I was thinking about it and I realized, well, one thing is,
if you call yourself a Christian in America, that's not giving people too much information.
In other words, there's plenty of Christians and that doesn't, you know, it's sort of
like saying I have a heartbeat, right?
But whereas to say I'm an anarcho-capitalist, it's not like everyone's saying, yeah, tell
us something we don't know.
So there's that aspect to it.
But then also, and that's in a sense defensible, but then the aspect that's not defensible
and that I did regret was that there was also the element that, oh, you know, it's cool
to be an anarcho-capitalist, and it shows I'm a rebel, and that really gives an insight
in my personality, whereas, you know, a Christian.
But if you think about it, that's exactly wrong, that to be a Christian, if you are
a real Bible-believing Christian, that's far more radical than to be an anarcho-capitalist.
Sure, anarcho-capitalists, oh, you think the government is flawed and that you critique the government and that institution of power, but a true Christian believes that the world itself has fallen and that all forms of power, in a sense, are the realm of Satan and that that's his arena, and so I think that for the very reasons that we think, those of us who are anarcho-capitalists, that it's in a sense kind of cool and rebellious to be that, that by the same token all the more so, it's cool and rebellious in a sense to
against the institutions of this world, to be a Christian.
And just to, if I can go on a little bit on this point and come back to the main topic in a moment,
it's funny because I think a lot of libertarians, radical libertarians, whenever there's something wrong with humanity,
some sort of social problem that we can all identify as, yes, that's a problem,
the standard libertarian solution or approach is to first say, okay, how is government causing that problem?
and that's and I there's usually the government certainly has a hand in it but
I think from a Christian viewpoint that that's that's missing the the big
picture that ultimately it's not merely that all government is messing things up
but the human beings themselves are flawed and there are plenty of things
that it's true government exacerbates it and of course you have fallen men in the
government doing it but it's even if even if there were a libertarian so
called utopia that really wouldn't be the Garden of Eden that even if everyone
The Alleged, or perhaps real, tension between free market economics and free market economics
and Economics and Christianity, I have this quote from C.S. Lewis, who most of us in this room, I think, respect, and we certainly can't just dismiss anything that he says as being foolish, and this is from mere Christianity, I believe, and he says,
There is one bit of advice given to us by the ancient Greeks and by the Jews in the Old Testament and by the great Christian teachers of the Middle Ages, which the modern economic system has completely disobeyed.
All these people told us not to lend money at interest, and lending money at interest, what we call investment, is the basis of our whole system.
Now, it may not absolutely follow that we are wrong, but I should not have been honest if I had not told you that three great civilizations had agreed, or so it seems at first sight,
and Condemning the very thing in which we have based our whole life.
So when I read that, it disturbed me.
And not in the sense that how could C.S. Lewis have been so crazy, but rather in the sense that, yeah, he's right.
And of course, coming from the Austrian tradition, we know about the law of time preference and that.
And that's the explanation and justification, if you will, for interest.
It did seem hard. How do you square it with that? How could it be that all these great traditions that we endorse in terms of our faith lives, how could they have been so completely wrong? Or rather, is it that they're wrong or is it more nuanced?
So that's an issue for me. And just to make it a little bit more personal to understand why I'm particularly interested in this one, my dissertation topic involved capital and interest theory.
and portions of it I was in a sense saying this is the proper way or this is a better way to defend the capitalist earning of interest in a market economy as opposed to some of the other defenses that have been given and so if C.S. Lewis, if his point is a valid one then that led me to worry a bit and just to tell you two incidents that happened I was, when I was a graduate student I was wrapping up my dissertation and so you'd work on it at home and then you'd go into the office and work on it there
And so I was at home working on my laptop and then I had to go into the office. I didn't want to be carrying around a floppy, so of course you email it to yourself so that when you get into the school you can get it off your email there.
And it must have been nearing the ends of the process because I converted it to an Adobe file that was really big and attached that so you can go and...
I don't know if they give it to all their graduates who are just PhD students or how it works, but I was filling out the formula.
How did you enjoy your time here? How did this compare with other institutions and so on?
And one of the things was a bubble sheet with all the different graduate school of the arts and sciences and what department were you in?
And what do you think the three-digit code for the economics department was? It was 666.
And I'm not making this up. You'd think someone would have caught that, but maybe they thought it was funny. I don't know.
This is what I'm saying. It's not merely an academic thing. There was a time when I was really concerned about these things.
Now, for Austro-libertarian economists who aren't particularly prone to excessive self-doubt, people like Walter Block, for example,
I don't know him that well, but I don't picture Walter Block laying awake at night saying,
And I'd say, am I doing the right thing with my life?
That's, he could explain these events, of course.
He could say, well, NYU, it's a bunch of commies.
And yes, of course, their program is from the devil.
They're teaching you to contrast the free market
decentralized outcome with the central planner solution.
And I'm not making that up.
I mean, you guys are familiar with Pareto optimality.
And that's the way mainstream economists say,
this is what ought to happen.
And then what does the market do in equilibrium?
But they didn't call it the Pareto optimal outcome.
They actually referred to it in class, on the board,
as the central planner solution.
And that was the benchmark against which.
So there, it's no surprise that that came up
as 666 in its description.
As far as my dissertation, well, I criticized Mises and Rothbard.
So what do you expect?
That would happen.
Now, but to be a bit more serious about this,
I think there is an element of truth in there, or at least
And even those of us who, in terms of academics, endorse the Austrian theories concerning interest,
in our personal lives, there are certain situations where we can at least understand the popular
rejection of interest as somehow being exploitation.
So for example, when we were newly married, my wife and I, on a few occasions, either from
my parents or her parents, we would get a moderate-sized loan for a few months.
We hit trouble and rather than having to go to get a cash advance and a credit card, of course, one of the set of our parents would say,
well, here, we'll lend you the money and just pay us back in a few months when you can.
And of course, they didn't let us pay them interest on it. They would have been insulted.
They wanted us to pay them back. It wasn't that they was giving us the money, but they would have never, you know,
it would have been inconceivable to them that they would have charged us prime rate plus 10 points or something because, you know, that's what the market will bear.
So, if you just think about it, why is that then? It seems there's some validity to someone who might say,
see, you economists, you free market economists, you have these theories that you think apply to the anonymous market,
but as a Christian, don't you realize that everyone's your brother and that we're all,
everything is really, in a sense, a face-to-face transaction.
How can you endorse one set of ethics or norms for the so-called marketplace, but a different one in your personal life?
But the more I was thinking about that, it's not so cut and dry, and it really doesn't have anything to do particularly with interest.
For example, if our lawnmower broke down and my dad heard the story, I'm sure he would say,
well, you can come borrow my lawnmower, and he wouldn't charge me $20 to do that.
It would have been fine, even though in a sense I'm giving him back the lawnmower that was slightly more depreciated than when he lent it to me.
And so, you see, it's not so much having anything to do with money in particular.
I think it's just more that they had certain goods that we needed for a temporary period.
And also there's the issue that they knew I was good for the loan,
whereas a credit card company just going off my credit history wouldn't have as much information
and be as sure that I wasn't going to skip town and not pay them back.
And so the more you think about it, these examples aren't, it's not so crystal clear that
we're advocating one set of norms for your personal family life and a completely different one in the marketplace.
and of course if we wanted to go buy a house our parents wouldn't have given us $30,000 and said just pay us back whenever you can and let's not even bother writing a contract and you know they of course would have said okay and what interest rate are you going to pay us if the numbers got bigger and bigger so as I say it's not so obvious that there really is this double standard that one would be advocating even if you do agree that yes in certain situations if you're lending money to your kid or you're borrowing money from your parents that it would
be a bit unseemly if they were charging an interest rate.
And this is similar, I think, to some arguments
I had with people over Katrina that I wrote a few articles
on the complaints against the price gouging.
And I was saying things, well, that's
exactly the exact opposite of what
we need that the rise in prices of bottled water and batteries
and so on, that's the signals that the market
uses to ship the goods to the people who need them most and some people were
emailing me and say oh come on you say that I can't believe you people really
believe that stuff are you telling me that you know someone walking through
New Orleans and it's flooded and there's all these people dying of thirst and he
has bottled water and you really think that he ought to be going 30 30 30 I
hear 30 or 25 and the auctioning off the wall while these people are all dying of
thirst and how can you say that with a straight face and it's true in that
That particular situation, no, I do think that if that person is a Christian and there are people literally dying in front of them and he has the water there, that it would be incorrect, without knowing more information about the situation, to not give them the water and to insist that they pay them and if they can't pay them, they die, or to give all the water to somebody who offers a $100 bill and let 90 other people who don't have any money on them at that moment die of thirst. I do agree that that wouldn't be a Christian thing to do, but as I was
I was arguing with this person and trying to push it back. What exactly does the person think ought to be done instead besides just telling people if you're in situations like that, do what you think is right?
Because I think where this person was coming from, if you pushed it far enough, basically the entire United States would have had to stop using money altogether.
Because you could say, well, the bottled water company, how could they continue to ship water to these people and just hand it out for free? They would have gone out of business.
The answer could be, oh, well, that's only because those people are being green. If we lived in a just society, then the workers would realize, well, we can't insist on wages right now. We have to drive the trucks down and hand out the water, do our part to help these poor people.
And you could say, okay, but then if they didn't get wages, well, how would they feed their family?
And you could just keep pushing it back and saying, well, the supermarkets ought to give food for free to the people who are volunteering to help the people in Katrina by giving them water.
And it would just keep moving in larger and larger circles. And it's not, eventually, it wouldn't just be a matter of incentives.
It wouldn't be unrealistic because at some point you'd run up against people who were hypocrites and acting in an unchristian manner.
Manor, but eventually you would have to be planning the entire economy without money prices that people would need to know okay these bottles of water should go down to New Orleans and it's not just which goods need to go down there because there'd be the problem that you know what if a thousand flashlights went down but only 200 batteries went down and then you know would be pointless and so little things like that that don't just automatically follow from the Sermon on the Mount quantitative issues that really it's not a matter of pure justice that it's there's there's quantities involved
And so there's numbers involved, and that's where economic calculation assists us greatly.
And so that's, and again, it's not just the consumption good, it's also, okay, let's suppose
we can agree that this bottled water ought to go down to the people in New Orleans and
we can decide on that in the waters, you know, up in Washington, D.C., well, how do we get
it down there?
Do we charter a private jet and fly down there and get it there in a few hours, or do we
put it on a bus and get it there in a few days?
These are the sorts of trade-offs that even if we can agree on the ultimate moral ends,
it's not entirely obvious the way to achieve them.
And that's again where economic calculation comes into play.
So it's not that I had a definitive answer for the person.
I could identify in every single situation, oh yes, this would be the Christian thing
to do or this wouldn't.
But it doesn't immediately follow that this person's pointing to what he called price
gouging was an evil thing, that in certain aspects I think it would be entirely appropriate
for someone to raise prices, in a sense, taking advantage of the situation, the temporary emergency situation of those people, because if you don't allow that person to do that, and you apply that principle to more and more people, well then we just lose the ability to help the people as effectively as possible, and it's not, just to clarify, I'm not merely saying that, oh it's a violation of property rights and you can't use coercion, and so that's why it would be unacceptable, even put that aside, I'm saying if we can agree that just our sole aim were to help
The Federal Reserve, fiat money, fractional reserve banking,
by or have their volunteers go and hand the things out for free and the way they pay the
suppliers of bottled water is through those voluntary donations that other people have
given.
So it's not that, let me put it this way, respecting property rights is consistent with
all sorts of responses to Katrine that if everyone had been completely indifferent and
said, yeah, those people should have known better than to live down there and done absolutely
nothing, then I think that would have been sinful perhaps for many people to ignore the
and the plight that was right before their eyes, or on the other hand, people responding and going and donating a lot of money and responding generously would also have been consistent with voluntarily obeying property rights and not abandoning the market order.
Now, I want to move on to some passages in the Bible to elaborate on these themes.
When it comes to property in the Old Testament, I think it's clear that it's certainly not an unjust institution,
that it seems that God has no problem with property per se, and that might seem like a strange thing for me to talk about,
out, but again, the relevance for me was in arguing with certain leftist anarchists who
believe that not only the government but private property itself is an unjust institution that
relies on force.
We went back and forth with our intellectual arguments, but the thing that really reassured
me that I think I'm on the right side of this debate is the Ten Commandments say, do not
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They listen to this form, they repent, and then God doesn't carry out the destruction
that he would threaten them with.
And what's ironic is the thing that's bad about being a prophet is not only are you
saying things that are unpopular, but most of the time people just ignore you and you're
powerless and you see the warnings you had issued come fulfilled, whereas with Jonah
you'd think he would be ecstatic that here he goes to the city, he tells them to change
their ways and they listen to him, but no, of course, Jonah, he's miserable, he actually
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So he wanted me to kill 120,000 people who, for all practical purposes, didn't really
know how bad what they were doing, what it was, so we needed you to go tell them.
And then he adds, and you wanted me to destroy all that livestock too.
Now of course it could just be that Jonah was very materialistic, we're not sure from
the book itself, and maybe the Lord was just trying to wake him up and get him to see,
look at what you were asking me to do.
But nonetheless, that always struck me as a strange thing for him to say, that you were
asking me to destroy all this property.
So now if we move on to the New Testament, I think the modern critic who says that there's
all sorts of things in Christianity that are inconsistent with free market economics or
the endorsement of free market economics, there are plenty of passages in the Gospels
that at least superficially lend some credibility to that claim.
But I think, let me just read a somewhat lengthy excerpt to sort of put them in perspective.
I think most of these passages, it's not so much that Jesus is denouncing wealth and riches
per se, but rather the attitude that you're getting your security from them.
So it's not if you have wealth that that means you're automatically, you must not be a good
person or you must not be following God's commands, but rather if you're really worried
about the future and so what do you do, oh, I'm going to go diversify my portfolio and
now I feel a lot better about myself and I can handle the uncertainties of tomorrow.
If that's your attitude, rather than, well, I'm going to trust in the Lord, whatever happens
tomorrow is consistent with His plan, and so even if I don't understand it at the time,
I better just accept it and try to know that at some point it will make sense to me.
If the first thing is your solution, then yes, I think that's what Jesus specifically
is saying the problem is.
So let me just, to back that particular interpretation up that I don't think is too, that many people
Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is there, your heart will also be.
and a little bit later he says no one can serve two masters
rather he will hate the one and love the other else he will be loyal to the one
despise the other you cannot serve God and mammon
therefore I say to you do not worry about your life what you will eat or what
you will drink
nor about your body what you will put on is not life more than food in the body
more than clothing
okay then he says a little bit later
therefore do not worry saying what shall we eat or what shall we drink or what
shall we wear
for after all these things the Gentiles seek for your heavenly Father knows that
you need all these things but seek first the
The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
Okay, so there, he wasn't saying you don't need material goods, no, he was saying the
exact opposite.
You do need them, but God knows you need them, and the point wasn't don't, when he says don't
worry about them, I don't think he means forget about them and just don't even consider them.
I think he means literally don't worry about them, that it'll take care of itself in a
sense if you first put what's most important and set that as the priority in your life.
Now there's a few other passages that I think the critic would point to and say these particularly show the flaw in your thesis, if you're a free market economist.
So let me just deal with those. These will be shorter quotations.
So, if we look at Matthew chapter 5, it's the famous passages about, you know, if someone
wants to borrow, go ahead and lend to them, and if someone wants your cloak, give them
your tunic as well, or your tunic, give them your cloak as well, and he says, if anyone
If anyone wants to sue you and take away your tunic, let him have your cloak also, and a little bit later, give to him who asks you, and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away.
And in and of itself, it does look like that's saying, how could you be a capitalist who charges what the market will bear?
But in context, you see the, right before those, it says, for example, you have heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I tell you not to resist an evil person.
Whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other one to him also.
Also, and then immediately after that is, if anyone wants to sue you and take away your
tunic, let them have your cloak, and then, there's another first, but then the next one,
give to him who asks you and from him who wants to borrow from you, do not turn away.
So in that context, it seems as if the person who is just coming up to you and asking to
borrow money, it's possible that that person, in a sense, is aggrieving you the same way
that someone comes up and slaps you on the cheek is.
And so the fact that he's saying there, you can go ahead, you should lend to the person
Anyway, I don't think he's saying, therefore, anytime you're lending money to someone, don't expect to ever be paid back and don't worry about repayment.
I think it's more that he's just showing this is the way you deal with, in a sense, affronts to you or insults to yourself, that you just respond with generosity and kindness.
Okay, what about the probably the most famous example in this tradition of the apparent
tension between Christianity and free market economics?
In the Gospel of Mark, we have the rich man comes up to Jesus and he says, good teacher,
what do I need to do to inherit eternal life?
And he says, follow the commandments and he lists some of them and he says, I've done
that.
And he says, okay, one more thing.
go your way, sell whatever you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come, take up the cross and follow me.
But the rich man was sad at this word because he had many possessions and he just walked away sorrowfully.
And so then Jesus turns to his disciples and says, how hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.
And they were astonished at his words and he says again, and this one in particular,
how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Alright, so there, certainly it seems as if that's evidence in favor of the thesis that there's a conflict, but again, at least in this translation, the second time he uttered it, he speds more specifically for those who trust in riches to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
And so in context of the other things I've mentioned to you, I think it's not so much that someone who has riches per se, but rather the type of person who has riches is probably also going to be the one who really seeks after them.
And so that's, I think, his point. And also, of course, Jesus knew when that particular rich man came up to him that he was going to say that he wasn't going to listen to him.
So it's possible that the reason he said to him, what I want you to do is to sell your riches and give to the poor and come follow me, was that he wanted to have a lesson for his disciples.
So I don't think it necessarily follows just from that story that if you are rich right now, that means Jesus wants you to sell everything and go join a monastery or something.
And, again, it's not that we're sure he doesn't mean that, but I don't think that passage
alone you could conclude straightforwardly that that's what he does mean for all people
who are rich to do.
And also, one thing to consider is by their standards, just about everyone in America
today is fabulously wealthy.
So I think a lot of people, like blue-collar churchgoers, for example, probably think,
yeah, when they read something like that, Bill Gates is going to hell for sure.
But you know, I'm not, because look at how hard it is.
I only have my cars beat up and we you know we don't even have cable and we have a you know a dial-up internet connection where
Where of course compared to the you know there are probably many respects richer than Herod was okay, so it's again
It's always a relative thing and so what do we mean by by rich?
I I don't think Jesus had in mind a particular material standard of living. I think it was more an attitude that do you
Do you derive your personal self-worth, or do you derive your security from your material possessions, or do you realize that they're really nothing, that that's not an important thing in the grand scheme?
Okay, another famous story from the Gospels, I'm not going to read it, comes from the Gospel of Luke as it mentions it, where Jesus tells a story of the rich man who was dressed in fine robes and so on, and then there's the beggar Lazarus,
and the Lazarus begs him for crumbs and then when they both die the rich man is being tormented
by hellfire and Lazarus is in paradise and Abraham explains to the rich man that you
had good things on earth and now Lazarus was a poor beggar and now the situations have
been reversed and that I think epitomizes the anti-capitalist interpretation of Christianity
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I don't think so. If we consider what happened with Solomon, so of course he's placed on the throne after David, he's the son of David, he gets on the throne and then the Lord comes to him in a dream and asks him, ask me what you want and I'll give it to you and Solomon asks basically for wisdom and discerning justice so that he can effectively rule over the people in the way that God wants and God's very pleased with that answer. He says you didn't ask me for riches, you didn't ask me for long life, you didn't ask me to
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to give him riches and of course there's other places too when God is telling them I told
you to tithe and you're not tithing and he says things to the effect that just trust
in me and tithe and then you will get more than paid back in essence.
And so it's not so much that of course God wants the material goods that they're offering
to him but rather he wants them to obey his word and to trust him that even though it
seems in a sense silly why would I give up one tenth of my goods especially when God
the Capitalist Way of Life and Christianity
Okay, let me move on. I'm running out of time here. One thing I would say is whether or not we think that they can feel comfortable in the grand scheme of things, I think Austro-libertarian economists, at least if there is this tension, their actions are far more defensible than other possible economists, because what Austro-libertarians do, yes, they're scientists, they use economic science, and that's what they devote their occupation to,
The point of it is not just to study economic science per se, but then they go and apply and try to diminish or eliminate what they perceive to be as injustice.
So somebody who gets involved in the arguments over the drug war, for example, it's not simply an academic exercise, but the point is to stop people getting locked up and to stop drive-by shootings and things like that.
And so if we go back to the C.S. Lewis quote, it's true.
I'm not sure if, as an Austrian economist, you can say the world would be worse if more
people lowered the rate of interest that they insisted on when they were giving loans to
people.
I'm not sure that the other way is true too, but it's not clear to me voluntarily if people,
especially Christians, said, you know, maybe I should lend out to more people without asking
for interest.
Maybe there wouldn't be any ramifications from them.
would be good, but what I am pretty sure about is if the government uses guns basically to
punish people who are charging interest, that I think would clearly be worse than the alleged
evil that we're trying to remedy.
And so to the extent that what we're doing is not so much telling individuals how to
live their lives, but rather just taking certain means off the table, namely intervention by
the government, then I think there's a much stronger case where the Austrian libertarian
and economists can clearly say, yes, what I'm doing is not inconsistent with the tenets of Christianity.
Now having said that, I do think that there are aspects of Austro-libertarianism that we do need to be careful about.
So I've mentioned one that I think it's incorrect or short-sighted perhaps to say,
oh, the government's causing all these bad problems and not to realize, if you're a Christian at least,
And another point I would want to make is that I think libertarians sometimes lose sight of the fact that there are plenty of things that are legal from a libertarian point of view that are far more sinful than other things that would be illegal from a libertarian point of view.
and another point I would want to make is that I think libertarians sometimes lose sight of the fact there are plenty of things that are legal from a libertarian point of view that are far more sinful than other things that would be illegal from a libertarian point of view and for example suicide would be presumably legal in a Rothbardian world but of course that's if you're a Catholic that's you know one of the if not the worst thing you can do or just to blaspheme against the Holy Spirit for example is that's a very serious
You can criticize something and not mean, and therefore I'm going to use force to try to stop it.
You can just say, oh, that's a bad practice, and I don't think those people should do that, and they're wrong for doing it, and I'm not going to associate with them.
And just to say, well, gee, they're not violating anyone's property rights, that isn't an adequate response necessarily.
Okay, let me deal with two last biblical episodes that people would point to, specifically regarding anarcho-capitalism and Christianity.
Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except
from God and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists
the authority resists the ordinance of God and those who resist will bring judgment on
themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil. Do you want to be
unafraid of the authority? Then do what is good and you will have praise from the same.
For he is God's minister to you for good but if you do evil be afraid for he does not bear
the sword in vain for he is God's minister and avenger to execute wrath on him and who
who practices evil.
Okay, so as I say, he doesn't qualify this, and Christians email me and say, how can you
possibly say you're against the government, and moreover, you try to argue that that's
what a truly Christian viewpoint would be, when look at what Paul's saying, what do you
do with that?
And let me admit, it is difficult.
It does seem as if Paul is saying that, yeah, how could you possibly say the government
ever does anything wrong?
And at the same time, forget anarcho-capitalism, just with people with regular political beliefs,
it seems that Paul's statements here can't possibly mean what it seems that they say.
For example, he himself in the previous chapter is saying, if it is possible, as much as depends
on you, live peaceably with all men, beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give
place to wrath, for it is written, vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.
and then a little bit later, do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.
Okay, so I've discussed that with non-anarcho-capitalist Christians at Hillsdale College, other professors and they don't,
and I say, how do you reconcile those two? Is he assuming that the people in government aren't themselves Christians?
And the answer, the person was, what are you talking about? No, he's not assuming that, it's just that in your private life,
If you're not supposed to be wrathful and you're supposed to turn the other cheek and so on,
but if you're acting as God's minister of justice in a governmental capacity, then of
course the other chapter is relevant and that's your fulfilling God's...that's the way that
the Lord takes his vengeance is that he works through the government officials.
So again, that's an understandable interpretation.
Even beyond that though, I mean certainly it just seems there's no qualification here
that Paul doesn't say governments that seem to be doing the right thing.
I mean there were plenty of historical cases of governments persecuting Christians.
And so clearly I don't think Paul would say to them, don't worry about it, that the government's
persecuting you because you did something wrong.
I mean I'm not sure exactly what he would do with that, but what I'm suggesting is this
This passage in and of itself, I don't think, if you're an anarcho-capitalist and a Christian,
this should make you realize you're being inconsistent because it seems hard to reconcile
with all sorts of more moderate political views.
For example, of course, I don't endorse this, but many mainstream Christians who, if they're
arguing me over anarchism, would point to this, also supported the invasion of Iraq,
but you could just as well ask them, well, wasn't Saddam Hussein the minister of God
and if the Iraqis were getting killed by him, they must have done something unrighteous
And that's why they were, right? And so I think, you know, even mainstream Christians who were, you know, fundamentalists and literally believed every word of the Bible would say, well, no, that doesn't follow.
And so by the same token, it's just that with our political views, if you're an anarchist, that you think all types of human government are similarly not following other precepts of Christianity.
Okay, and then the last thing I want to talk about is the famous render unto Caesar's what
is Caesar's quotation.
Now there, the context of that, of course, is they were trying to trap Jesus, okay?
So I think it's wrong to conclude from that that, oh, see, Jesus said, therefore, pay
your taxes, because he couldn't have said one thing or the other.
In order to get out of that situation, he had to give an answer that was unobjectionable,
The Theory of Money and Credit
And of course, he was very ambiguous because he prefaced that by saying, you know, show me the coin, whose image is that on the denarius and it was Caesar's.
And so that certainly makes it sound as if he's saying, oh well then therefore the coin belongs to him.
But again, it's not clear that, you know, I could hold up a box of Wheaties and say whose picture, whose image is that, and you could say Michael Jordan's and say, okay, well give unto Jordans what is Jordans.
And it doesn't follow, right? And so again, and it's, I don't think I'm just being flippant that, you know, they were trying to trap it.
to trap it, I didn't explain why in case you're not familiar with the story. They were trying
to trap him because they said, you know, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? So if he
says yes unambiguously, then the masses who view him as their savior, the one who's going
to deliver them from the occupation, you know, the Roman authorities, they're going to be
upset, they're going to think he's a sellout, so he can't just clearly say yes, but he can't
say no because then, you know, he's saying don't pay your taxes to Caesar and then he
And so they were trying to give him a question, no matter which way he answered, he was going to be in trouble, and so that's why I think he needed to use that sort of evasion to be as wise as a serpent but as harmless as a dove.
And then the last thing I'll say, and then there's a few more minutes for questioning, is certainly the libertarian objection to taxes on the very same page in my Bible earlier, he's telling the chief priests, you know, they're arguing with him back and forth, and he says, okay, tell me, so there's one son, he says, what do you think, a man had two sons, and he says that the first one go to work in my vineyard, and he says I'm not going
So, the fact that he's picking tax collectors in conjunction with Harlots to tell them just
I think shows that certainly Jesus was not a big fan of taxation.
So, okay, I'll, so thank you and I'll let Jeff come up.
Let's start with you.
Bob, just kind of an addition on that too, that particular incident in the temple, if you remember,
you're inside the temple, he asks, does anybody have a denarius?
And who pulls out a denarius? Well, it has Caesar's head on it.
Now, that's an image of Caesar, remember, who claimed to be God,
which would be absolutely anathema to have carried, you're not supposed to carry images of other gods into the temple, carry itself, so at that point Jesus already had them, because, you know, that, in other words, there's a larger hidden aspect of that as well, and one other thing too, that Romans 13 was written at a time when the Roman government was not persecuting the Christians per se,
that their actual, they were having a fight with, in Jerusalem, with the, you know, with the Jews, because the Jews were saying, you know, know that you're wrong, and they were arguing back and forth.
If you go into the book of Revelation, okay, and with the reference towards Nero, you know, the 666, then in fact, they're not saying very nice things about the Roman government at all.
Paul's calling them harlot, they're going to get overthrown, these guys are evil, and so it seems to me that also in the context of that time, Paul's telling people to live peaceably, that our job is not to overthrow the Roman government any more than that, but later on, when in fact the Roman government really does start persecuting the Christians in full force, at that point we also see the judgment put upon them.
Yeah, I certainly think it would be entirely appropriate if he just said, you know, don't use violent means against the government.
But it does seem like he says more than just that, that what they're doing is God's will, and that's difficult to understand.
Yes, Dr. Pree.
I think the most unusual thing about the Jewish beliefs is to honor the Almighty with your everyday activity in the market.
and Market. It says the Lord loves honest weights and measure, for example. And then, especially around private property, it is so well documented that even the king couldn't use eminent domain to see, say, the vineyard.
David had to pay for it, and this is so well documented that I don't tell anybody to click.
Yeah. Roger.
Paul came from Carson, the center of stoic philosophy, and he often borrows stoic terminology to make a point,
which makes me wonder, if stoics held, we should always obey the law, we should always obey the ruler.
They also held that no one counts as a genuine ruler unless they rule justly.
Nothing counts as a genuine law unless it's done.
Given the poem as a passage says that all legitimate authority comes from God,
you could read it the other way and say that any authority that doesn't come from God, therefore it's not legitimate,
any rulers that aren't from God are not legitimate rulers.
So that passage might be ambiguous the same way that the temple passage is.
Obey any legitimate ruler whose authority comes from God.
Okay, well, which way does that set?
Okay, yeah, that's very interesting.
Yes?
I would like to make a point about usury. It has a long history, especially in Roman Catholic thought, of being just misunderstood.
And I think part of it is that they didn't get time preference until some of the early Austrians came on the scene.
But in addition to that, there's a history of God's people being subjected to other people than being taken advantage of.
Hans-Lewis' criticism of the change in doctrine.
There was no change in doctrine.
See, one of our guys made his master's thesis on analysis of riches in the Bible,
and comparing riches at that time with riches today.
At that time, there was no opportunity called.
The latin phrase of it is domino emergent, and little by little we came to realize that if one did loan one, he is losing on another field, he is losing on alternative investment, and that type of interest is perfectly legitimate.
It wasn't realized that bridges in the Old Testament was a barn full of food for the next few years.
And so then that stuff, that interest, is mostly lost.
Because there's no domino emergence, there's no opportunity for it.
And that explains the difference and the change in the theory.
The interest was being paid back to compensate you for the lender's loss, whereas usury was charging over and above that.
I make the point to my students that yes, in a modern economy, at least in general equilibrium, those two things are the same.
You can't charge over and above that. The opportunity cost is exactly what you would be able to get in the market.
I thought you left out that passage in Acts that mentions the early church and how they did not consider their property to be their own. Maybe you left it out to the key to show the problems that be. Could you address that just briefly and why that's not so much communistic?
Clearly, if particular Christians want to come together and pool their property and
live communally, and they think that that's how Jesus wants them to live, then that certainly
is radical libertarians.
Not only do we have, you know, we wouldn't object to that in terms of that's not violating
one's rights, but perhaps that even, there should be examples of that in those types
of communities.
And maybe, that's what I'm saying, I can't say whether or not that should happen, that's
a personal decision, and maybe it would be good if more people would live like that.
I'm not sure, but clearly that's consistent with anarcho-capitalism, and as you say, that's not communism the way, when I say I'm an anti-communist, I don't object to people doing that.