The Bible doesn't command either capitalism or socialism, say some. So we must choose a third way, something in between, the best of both worlds. Right? Most theologians straddle the fence like that.
An old article by Craig L. Blomberg, Professor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, prompted this blog because it seems Blomberg's points speak for many theologians today. His article, "Neither Capitalism nor Socialism: A Biblical Theology of Economics," gives seven (a Biblical number) reasons for his ambivalence.
Blomberg's first point was that neither capitalism or socialism existed in Jesus' day, which is true. But Blomberg needs to study the Torah, a typical weakness in theologians devoted to half the Bible. The government God gave Israel in the Torah had no human executive or legislature. It had only judges for government who adjudicated only the civil portions of the law, leaving the religious and moral laws to God to enforce. Moses' government fits the description of modern anarcho-capitalism, the purest form of capitalism. And Jesus, as God, wrote the Torah and gave that government to Israel. No, it was not a theocracy. Yes, that government didn't exist in Jesus', day. But it did exist in the Bible.
His second point is that Biblical passages referring to economic issues seem to be evenly divided between those that might support capitalism and those that might support socialism. For those supporting socialism, Blomberg has in mind the Torah passages on the dividing of the land, Jubilee, the sabbath year debt forgiveness, leaving gleanings in the harvest for the poor, promotion of charity, condemnation of the rich, etc.
He thinks dividing the land evenly is a socialist idea. But how else was Joshua to divide the land? The division according to the size of the tribes supports neither capitalism or socialism. As for the poor laws, judges did not adjudicate them or the religious laws. And Leviticus 19:15 instructed judges to not favor the poor. Judges left the poor laws to God to enforce. So, they offer no support for the state doing something similar. Besides, Jubilee was nothing like the socialist dream of land redistribution. God did not allow Israelites to sell their land, but to lease it for 49 years. Jubilee was merely the end of the lease.
The sabbath year debt forgiveness protected lenders, not borrowers. Those in debt benefit from loan forgiveness only when the decree surprises lenders. Regularly scheduled debt forgiveness, every seven years, prevents lenders from loaning more than borrowers could repay in seven years. That law sanctifies property and so supports capitalism.
Nowhere does the Bible support the state taking from one group of people to give to the poor. In fact, Leviticus 19:15 condemns such acts by government. It says, "You shall not do injustice in judgment; you shall not show partiality to the poor nor give preference to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly." If the government, that is, the judges, enforced the poor laws they would be in violation of this verse.
The New Testament gives governments the authority to tax the people. Jesus told the people to give to Caesar what belonged to him. That is, to pay their taxes. Paul told believers in Romans 13 that we pay taxes so the government can punish criminals. Theologians determined in the Reformation that the state can tax people for enough to perform that limited task. Any taxes above that amount is theft. God never gave government the authority to take any amount of money from the people that it wants to give to others.
The Bible contains many condemnations of the rich, which the author takes to be against capitalism, while urging charity for the poor, which he sees as socialism. But a major principle of hermeneutics is to consider the context. Jesus and the Apostles despised the rich in their day because most were criminals. The rich in Isaiah's day were princes, or government officials, who used their power to steal land from common people by bribing judges. That practice continued in Jesus' day. Jesus didn't exaggerate when he said the High Priest had turned the temple into a den of thieves. The Bible doesn't condemn wealth. It condemns people who gain wealth through immoral means. It considers wealth gained honestly to be a blessing from God.
Charity is not socialism. Capitalism enabled people to give more to charity because they had more to give. Socialists are dishonest to equate charity with socialism. Socialism is the state stealing from one group to give to another and buy their support for socialism.
Support for capitalism comes from Thou shalt not steal, one of the Ten Commandments. Much of the civil law in the Torah's 613 laws provide case studies of different forms of theft, including fraud. God warned Israel in I Samuel 8 that the kings they demanded would steal from the people. The major complaint by prophets was that the princes, the government authorities, stole from the poor and widows by bribing judges and buying false witnesses as king Ahab had done to steal Naboth's vineyard.
Capitalism is a system of government that takes Thou shalt not steal seriously. It doesn't allow the nobility to steal from commoners, the government to steal from citizens, or citizens to steal from each other. So following the principles of hermeneutics, we find no support for socialism in the Bible and a great deal of support for capitalism. Jesus promoted capitalism in that he validated Thou shalt not steal.
Blomberg's third point is that "...neither system necessarily helps the plight of the involuntarily poor, disabled, widow or orphan, or numerous other vulnerable and marginalized people.... capitalist economies have no inherent mechanisms for helping the disenfranchised at all." In that statement, he advertises his ignorance of economics and history. Socialism has always and everywhere impoverished all classes of people except those at the top of the party.
But capitalism has always and everywhere lifted the poorest to higher standards of living. The West was poorer than Haiti from prehistory until the advent of capitalism in the Dutch Republic in the 17th century. Today, the West is 30 times wealthier, including the poor, thanks to capitalism. Freer markets have lifted over 500 million of the poorest people from starvation in Asia over the past generation according to the World Bank.
Capitalism did that by making food clothing, housing, transportation and other goods cheaper. But charity is still useful for some. Blomberg assumes that capitalism despises charity or that charity belongs exclusively to socialism. But capitalist countries have always practiced charity and increased giving to the poor because they have more to give as they became wealthier. A good history of such giving can be found in The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky. Capitalism is the only system that has ever lifted the poor out of poverty. Charity only maintains the poor in their misery.
Point four is "...the actual track record of modern economies apart from the mitigating effects of Christian values." He assumes the necessity of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, claiming the private sector could never replace them. But the country did well without those for 150 years while drastically reducing the poverty rate. Blomberg seems unaware that the Great Depression, caused by government intervention in the economy, created the perceived need for those programs. Without the state causing the Depression, there would have been no perception that such programs were necessary.
He points to the prevailing form of capitalism differing from the earlier one. However, capitalism hasn't existed in the U.S. for over a century. The U.S. enjoyed capitalism from before its founding until the election of President Woodrow Wilson who introduced socialism under the false flag of Progressivism. FDR then Johnson expunged the tiny remnants of capitalism.
Presidents Carter and Reagan did not reintroduce capitalism. They merely ended FDR's price controls. The Federal Register of new regulations has grown by over 70,000 pages per year since 1970. Today, federal regulations cost businesses over $2 trillion by some estimates. Such massive government regulation is the opposite of capitalism. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare are not capitalism, but socialist policies.
Blomberg insists that ending Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and welfare would condemn millions to death. But he doesn't ask how the U.S. got along without them until 1965. Again, Olasky answers the question in his book.
Blomberg again betrays his lack of study in economics with this: "...Private wealth depends on creating an actual or perceived scarcity to drive up the value of goods." The truth is, God created scarcity when he booted Adam and Eve from the Garden. Scarcity is a fact. No one needs to create it. But capitalism has reduced that scarcity through innovation.
Private wealth creation depends on entrepreneurs inventing labor saving devices that reduce the costs of food, clothing, housing, transportation, etc. Without a central bank, prices would fall as productivity increased. Central banks, which are part of socialist policies, cause prices to rise by printing too much money in the hope they can rescue economies from recessions.
The author needs to read Adam Smith, for Blomberg wrote, "Adam Smith could imagine social and moral pressures coming to bear on the tiny minority of irreligious businesspersons in eighteenth-century Scotland..." But Smith never imagined that. He wrote that the best way to protect consumers is in a free market where businessmen compete to please consumers. Attempting to control greed through regulations would be futile because businessmen can buy politicians cheaply.
Point five is, "Neither adequately acknowledges the depth of human depravity and sin that the Scriptures teach us remains in all human beings, even redeemed ones." Capitalists and socialists disagree, which shows Blomberg's ignorance of both. Socialists have insisted since the early 19th century when Henri de Saint-Simon launched the first modern socialist movement that people are born good and society makes them evil. The state through socialism can end the oppression that turn people evil. Socialism has always been a competing salvation story to Christianity.
Capitalism is the only system built on the Christian doctrine of original sin, which says that people are born with a strong tendency to evil, especially to theft. The state can do nothing to improve morals. Capitalism limits the state to the task of punishing criminals because we know that people are evil and those with state power can do the most evil while proclaiming to be working for the common good. The larger the state, the more politicians and bureaucrats commit waste, fraud and abuse, which are features of government, not bugs.
Blomberg wrote, "Even Adam Smith’s original form of capitalism assumed that the market was guided by an invisible, transcendent hand, more akin to the belief system of deism than to either Christianity or pure materialism..." But he is wrong again. Smith never wrote that. He wrote that in a free market, people would naturally achieve greater prosperity as if guided by an invisible hand. He never thought the hand was real. Blomberg needs to read Smith.
Also, "Mainstream capitalism has always believed in the human being as 'a rational individual who satisfies her preferences efficiently. She can mentally order her preferences and rationally choose the most effective way of satisfying those preferences...'” It's true that many economists hold that consumers are rational. But they merely mean that people tend to buy less when prices rise and buy more when prices fall. Socialists have taken that simple foundation of price theory as some kind of all encompassing world view.
Blomberg's sixth point is that capitalists and socialists agree on some things. Wealth is good. Both want to help the poor. Then he adds, "Socialists have the edge on the fourth point, that because some have too little, others have too much..." No, socialists don't have the edge. Socialists have resurrected the medieval economic thinking that says one can gain only at the expense of others. If true, how is it possible that the entire world is wealthier than a century ago? Because socialists and third way promoters like Blomberg refuse to learn any economics, they will never grasp that since the advent of capitalism, most wealth has been new and created by entrepreneurs without taking from others. Only organized crime, such as the mafia and government, take without giving something in exchange.
More importantly, socialism was never an effort to help the poor. Socialism has always been driven by envy, the deadliest of the seven deadly sins.
Blomberg's seventh point, and the one he thinks is most important, is that capitalism is individualistic while socialism is communal. Again, he reveals his ignorance of capitalism by spouting socialist propaganda. Capitalism is individualistic only in that it insists on the rights of individuals to life, liberty and property. The right to life comes from Thou shalt not murder; the right to property from Thou shalt not steal; and the right to liberty from Biblical prohibition of kidnapping. The state cannot infringe on those rights. Otherwise, capitalism is as communal as people want to be. But capitalism doesn't force communalism as socialism does.
He adds, "...when we realize that the annual government spending on the poor in the United States, irrespective of the political party in power, has often been a hundred times as much as all parallel Christian efforts put together, it is utopian to lobby for drastic cuts in government help by imagining that the church would fill the void."
Blomberg assumes that current government spending is necessary. How do we know how much is necessary? And why does he limit charity to just Christian giving? Wealthy non-Christians have always given a great deal to charity. Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Warren Buffet, and Bill Gates, each the wealthiest man in the world in his day, and each gave away most of his wealth. The US took care of the poor very well according to historians of charity until the 1960s when welfare began. How did we do that?
Blomberg fixates on charity, especially that forced by the government through socialist policies. Yet, he is unaware that charity has never lifted anyone out of poverty. It merely keeps them alive in poverty. The only system that has ever lifted anyone out of poverty has been capitalism. Socialism only impoverishes.
Simple reflection would clarify Blomberg's thinking. If the government gives 100 times more than Christian charity provides, where does the wealth come from? The government doesn't have it. The government gets all of its money by taxing the wealth of others. The private citizens it taxes must have created that wealth. So, those citizens could give their wealth to charities instead of the government if they wanted to. But socialist programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare have crowded out giving to charities. Today, most expect the government to take care of them. That wasn't the American attitude before 1965. Getting rid of government forced charity through high taxation would free up vast amounts for people to give to charity. But Blomberg merely assumes they wouldn't give it.
Blomberg hoped to avoid criticisms from economists that theologians don't show respect for their science by learning the elementary principles. Unfortunately, the article advertises Blomberg's ignorance of history and economics. A glance at his notes shows that he didn't try to engage economics, but for the most part regurgitated socialist bullet points.
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