Note
“context” not “contest”

to gil:
the biblical “slavery” you refer to was a form of indentured servitude.

i cannot see that biblical teachings preach the sanctity of authority figures. children must honour their parents, not necessarily love them, nor follow their wishes unconditionally.

is it morally defensible to plea “i was only following orders”, when participating in evil deeds? i can understand the practical sense of acquiescence, just not the moral legitimacy.

if all authority comes from god as you posit, then no man is morally fit to rule his brother. sounds anarchistic.

anarchism has nothing to do with going to heaven, people will have their own views on the afterlife.

GIL said, “I stand by my assertion that Jesus was no anarchist. The New Testament repeats that ‘all authority comes from God’. The views on taxes are ambiguous and Jesus appears indifferent to paying taxes as if to say ‘if you want to live in Rome and earn an income there then pay the Roman taxes’. A similar indifference is shown towards slavery ‘slaves obey your masters’ which in turn seems to support the notion of ‘all authority comes from God.”‘ [punctuation adjusted]

Gil, there are so many problems with this paragraph that I think you might just as well acknowledge the fact that Jesus was an anarchist and get over it. In the first place, you quote “slaves…etc.” as though Jesus said that. He didn’t. In the second place, the statement, “give Caesar what is Caesar’s but give God what is God’s is not even slightly ambiguous. It could not be clearer. Had you said that his statement begs the question, what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar, you would be right, and I suppose you might posit that there is some ambiguity regarding who owns what, but in Jesus’ statement there is no ambiguity. Then you put your own words in quotes and say it is as if Jesus said them. Not! Not even close. What is as if, and what is the only as if Jesus said is what Jesus said, “give Caesar what is Caesar’s…etc.” What he said was so plain that only someone who was in line to share in some of the tax booty could possibly interpret his words to mean, as you–not Jesus–say, “pay the Roman tax.” Let me try to make it simple and clear: If an IRS agent knocked on your door and said “give me whatever you have that belongs to Uncle Sam,” what possessions of yours would you surrender thinking you were paying your taxes? And if you answer that you would give the agent anything more than his carfare home because of your generosity, than thank you, for I will finally have discovered someone, probably the only person in America, who abides by the notorious IRS oxymoron, “voluntary compliance.”

Finally, regarding your contention that Jesus wasn’t an anarchist because he believed “all authority comes from God,” it is precisely for that reason that he must be adjudged an anarchist. Regardless of some of the Old Testament stories, legends and teaching allegories, ever since the time of Jesus and thanks in large to his wisdom and teaching, it has been well understood by those who heed what he had to say that regardless of what one does in violation of God’s law and authority, human force will not be used to punish you. Thus, under God alone, benign anarchy reigns, and as it says of God’s chosen people in the last verse of Judges and before the idiots thought they would be better off with a king, ” In those days Israel had no king; everyone did as he saw fit.”

My reply to newson and G8R didn’t appear! Oh well, fumdamentalist your reply to Ned is more or less similar to what I would have wrote.

NEWSON, thank you kindly for your generous endorsement.

FUNDAMENTALIST: I am going to apply the two rules of hermeneutics, which you were kind enough to provide in your post, to the render-unto-Caesar incident from the synoptic gospels.

FIRST RULE: “Take the passage at face value unless the text itself gives you a reason not to.”

Ok. First read what I said to Gil in my last post on the thread before this one.. Both you and Gil have taken the words of Jesus, not at their face value (“give Caesar what is Caesar’s”), but according to your own values, and substituted your words (pay your taxes) for the words Jesus spoke. What rule of hermeneutics allows you to do that? As for my interpretation of the incident, I do not interpret the words Jesus spoke to mean anything but the words Jesus spoke. That is as close to face value as one can get.

SECOND RULE: Consider the context of the whole book, not just the immediate context of the passage.”

FUNDAMENTALIST, my friend, that is precisely what I did in the essay, JESUS OF NAZARETH, ILLEGAL-TAX PROTESTER. In fact, what induced my to write the essay in the first place back in the late 1980s and early 1990s was that at the time I found many learned exegetes who interpreted the words of Jesus just as you and Gil do, but noticed that not one of those scholarly discourses on the import of Jesus’ words appeared to take into consideration the many negative things Jesus reportedly said at other times about taxes and tax collectors. These establishment-church exegetes seemed to intentionally ignore all the other things Jesus reportedly said on the subject of taxes in the canon and non-canonical gospels in reaching their unanimous conclusion. And I am confident today, since my claim has been on the worldwide web for over six years now without anyone contesting it, that JESUS OF NAZARETH, etc was the first (first ever in almost 2000 years!!!) comprehensive analysis of everything Jesus ever said or did viz-a-viz taxes and tax collectors. My conclusion regarding the meaning of his words at the time of the coin incident thus constitute the most authoritative analysis of what Jesus meant when he said, “give Caesar what is Caesar’s,” in spite of my homespun hermeneutics and PhD-less exegesis. And if today you do a Google search of the combined words “jesus taxes,” you will discover that quite a few people now reject the lie that Jesus said “pay your taxes.” Neither the Catholic nor the Baptist churches have yet to adopt my interpretation, but I am confident that in due course even they will be forced to do so because the current “official” interpretation that Jesus said “pay your taxes” is so obviously false and patently self-serving that they will be shamed into recanting.

FUNDAMENTALIST, you said this: “It is clear from the Gospels that Jesus did not see his mission as a social reformer.” That statement is what is know as a straw man. I certainly never said or implied anything that could be remotely construed as you do here. Please, refrain from using straw men if this debate is to be ongoing. And immediately following that statement you said this: “His entire effort was to try to get the people to see their sinfulness and need of a savior from it.” Yes indeed, but I said very much the same thing in the essay, JESUS, etc…(“Did he [Jesus] die to save us from taxes? If, as this essay shows, taxes are sinful because they violate God’s Commandment [Thou shall not steal.], it follows as night follows day that indeed he did.”)

Fundamentalist, you also said, “On top of that, you don’t even take the Bible seriously because you claim it is full of errors. ” That is a backwards non sequitur. Because I claim it is full of errors after having been hand copied by fallible and perhaps even dishonest, self-serving scribes and other people many times before it reach the form in which either you or I read it, doesn’t mean that I do not take the overall work seriously. As I believe the latest revision of the JESUS essay points out, a very learned, career-long, recognized bible scholar recently published a book that has become quite popular which makes exactly the same point. (MISQUOTING JESUS, Professor Bart D. Ehrman, HarperSanFrancisco, 2005)

FUNDAMENTALIST, you criticized my statement that “The Pharisees knew from previous encounters with Jesus exactly where he stood on the issue of taxes, and they knew from those previous encounters that he would not be put off from a truthful response for fear of any adverse consequences to himself.” You called this mind reading from 2000 years distant. I call it reading everything that is said in the gospels regarding Jesus, the Pharisees and taxes. However, it would have been more accurate if I has said “the chief priests, scribes, teachers of the law and the Pharisees,” or simply “the enemies of Jesus,” for those are who I was thinking of. And it also would have been more accurate if I had said they knew Jesus’ position not only from their own encounters but as well from reports they solicited and received from others, including spies intentionally sent. Now if you will allow me those corrections, you may be able to see that I wasn’t reading minds, I was reading the gospels and evaluating the words and deeds attributed to them. I believe there are eight encounters between Jesus and the Pharisees alone that are reported in Matthew. It really requires more bible reading than mind reading to realize that the chief priests, the Pharisees and the teachers of the law did not pick the question regarding Caesar’s tax out of a hat. And since we know from Luke’s account that they confidently expected him to answer, “No, don’t pay the tax,” and since we know Jesus used Rome’s tax collectors as exemplars of sinfulness in his teaching, equating them on one occasion with prostitutes, and from the fact that tax collectors flocked to him and two we know of, and likely several others, quit their positions without giving notice to follow him costing Rome untold loses of tax revenues, and from his upbraiding of Peter in Mt 17 for stupidly telling a tax collector that Jesus paid taxes when in fact he didn’t because he held himself (and his disciples) exempt, it is a relatively safe to deduce that his enemies new exactly what to expect in answer to their question based on a lengthy dossier on Jesus they had compiled from the very inception of his public ministry. It seems to me that deductive reasoning is the paramount skill required for analyzing the bible as well as human action.

FUNDAMENTALIST: “They accused him of a lot of things, all of which were found to be false charges. Read the trial of Jesus.” As the essay JESUS, etc., points out, the life-long bible scholar, John Dominic Crossan, who is the most prolific author of books on the life of Jesus in recent decades and one of the exegetes most highly regarded by his peers, discounts the accuracy of the canon-gospel accounts of the trial of Jesus because the canon accounts all derive from original accounts of his apostles, all of whom fled the scene before his trial to save themselves from the same fate Jesus was about to experience. The remarkable differences (glaring contradictions) between the four accounts clearly suggests they are based on hearsay and speculation and are sufficient cause to cast them all in doubt. Have you not noticed, for example, that three of the accounts make no mention of Herod’s part in Jesus’ trial, whereas in one Herod and his soldiers play a prominent role? Or have you noticed in John’s lengthy account of the trial that much of it goes on inside the “palace” where Jews could not enter, so even an account by Jesus’ enemies as opposed to the absent apostles couldn’t report what went on inside the palace, and yet John’s gospel purports to give a verbatim transcript of what was said between Jesus and Pilate behind those stone walls. I go along with Crossan, an historian of good repute, that the passion narratives of the four gospels is not “history remember,” by the evangelists but rather “prophecy historicized for propaganda purposes at a time when the marginalized followers of Jesus were locked in combat (sometimes mortal) with other Jews for adherents. (see the introduction of WHO KILLED JESUS, Crossan, HarperSanFrancisco, 1995).

FUNDAMENTALIST: “No one “concocted” the traditional interpretation of the passage. It follows naturally from honest hermeneutics.” No it doesn’t, it was concocted by the Roman church exegetes to lend legitimacy to the Roman taxes upon which those exegetes depended for their sustenance. There is nothing honest about their interpretation, but if you can show me any evidence of anyone interpreting “render unto Caesar” to mean Jesus said “pay your taxes” before the time when Constantine co-opted the church and made its clergy dependent and its prelates wealthy with the revenues from Roman taxes, I will recant.

FUNDAMENTALIST: “To believe that Jesus was an anarchist requires violating the rules of hermeneutics.” What rules? Quite obviously from what I said above, that conclusion can be reached without violating the two rules of hermeneutic that you mentioned Furthermore, it is a conclusion that can be logically deduced from a fair reading of the gospels.

Fundamentalist, I have by no means ignored the context. Jesus knew his interrogators were trying to trap him, and he said so. (Hypocrites, why are you trying to trip me up.) So he then asked them a question–which tripped them up. (Show me a coin used to pay the tax. Whose face and inscription are on it.) Then he answered their original question about whether to pay Caesar’s tax or not. (Give Caesar what is Caesar’s,etc…)

Now if you can’t see how Jesus turned the tables on his interrogators and left them scratching their heads in utter confusion, than you are simply unable to consider any another interpretation than the one to which you have been wed since someone likely told you what to believe. Jesus’ question about the coin does not change his answer one iota. (Face value, face value, face value!!!) What his question about the coin did was confuse those dishonest (spies who posed as honest men, the bible says) interrogators–and it obviously still confuses many of those exegetes and their disciples who refuse to accept Jesus words at face value but rather insist on replacing them with their own.

Furthermore, if you want to make of Jesus’ coin question something more than what I contend was its purpose, than you must accept the only other alternative analysis to the one I have here presented, which you may have noticed is also examined in the JESUS, etc., essay. Here it is:

The coin of the tax, according to virtually every historian who has studied the issue, was the Roman denarius, which bore a bust of Caesar and described him as the son of “divine” Augustus. Mosaic law forbade any Jew from using such coins with their idolatrous image and superscription, and Jesus certainly didn’t–wouldn’t–have one. So, if you want to interpret the coin’s role in the incident for more than the stumbling block it was designed and proved to be for those duplicitous spies, and if you want to say that Jesus unambiguous words meant give such coins to the fool whose face is on them, that still can not by any stretch of a fertile tax-dependent’s mind be construed to mean “pay your taxes.” The only thing that it could possibly mean is “if you have any of those explicit coins, get rid of them, give them back to that idiot. Furthermore, since all of those orthodox exegetes assert that the denarius was the only coin that could be used to pay Caesar’s tax (logically impossible, btw), that still meant Jesus and his disciples as well as all other observant Jews did not have to pay Caesar’s tax because they didn’t and wouldn’t have any of Caesar’s coins to give him. Maybe that is why Jesus said he was tax exempt in Mt 17.

FUNDAMENTALIST: “That’s a very strange assertion. I don’t know of a time in history when that was true. In the OT law, humans would often use force to hurt you if you violated God’s laws regarding property or murder. And there is nothing in the NT that indicates Jesus intended to do away with punishment of criminal behavior by human authorities. If he had, he would not be an anarchist, but a proponent of chaos and the rule of criminals.”

God’s law is self-enforcing. It does not require human intervention nor enforcement by human authorities. You don’t have to trust me on this, but you do have to trust God. I am unaware of God appointing any human authorities to implement his laws or punish transgressors. Your prophesy of chaos resulting from the demise of the state must be set against the wars, chaos, slaughter, war-induced famines, genocide, etc., etc., etc., instigated by self-appointed enforcers of their own and God’s law. The chaos you prophesy couldn’t be worse than what has prevailed from the time of Moses until today under the toxic law-enforcement authorities. What’s more, your prophecy may not come to pass. Also, in the paragraph I quoted above you’re argument contains another straw man and your conclusion is a non-sequitur. To borrow your technique of arguing: Nothing in the NT indicates that Jesus wanted or appointed Rome to enforce God’s law.

Ned Netterville wrote ‘In the second place, the statement, “give Caesar what is Caesar’s but give God what is God’s is not even slightly ambiguous. It could not be clearer. Had you said that his statement begs the question, what belongs to God and what belongs to Caesar, you would be right…’

No, he would be wrong, because far from begging the question this passage does not even raise the question at all (you do know what begging the question is, don’t you? rigging a question by building in an answer). It is interesting here for precisely that reason, because in other comparable cases where people asked Jesus questions there often are follow up questions, e.g. they followed the answer “love thy neighbour” with “who is my neighbour?” and were given the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

And the answer is deliberately ambiguous, because it doesn’t answer the (trick) question in the terms the questioners wanted – terms which would get Jesus into trouble with either the Jewish or the Roman authorities. That is, it is an unambiguous statement, on its own, but it does not answer the original question unambiguously. There is a story of a politician giving a press conference who was asked “when are you going to start giving us straight answers?”, to which he shot back “when are you going to start asking me straight questions?”. But a follow up straight question to Jesus would have got the questioners into trouble, because it would have exposed them as trying to create an offence.

Anyway, you cannot read this story as Jesus taking a position either for or against paying taxes, as the whole point is that he wouldn’t let others put him on the spot for this. You really do have to look elsewhere and combine things with context – including your context, for your tax bills – to get an answer. Hint 1: do the taxes form part of something that claims to pre-empt God, i.e. breaks the first Great Commandment? Hint 2: do the taxes form part of something that works against loving your neighbour, i.e. breaks the second Great Commandment? Jesus’s actual answer, in this narrow situation, made it clear that the first Great Commandment was not to be violated (with “give unto God what is God’s”) and avoided violating the second Great Commandment (with “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s”) but did not go into further detail to give general directions to apply to all cases. Doing that, after all, would have been the wrong legalistic approach.

Gil wrote “In the New Testament eternal hellfire is the punishment for non-believers. Yes, God gives you a choice just as the IRS give you a choice if you want to pay your taxes.”

No, it is not a punishment but rather a self inflicted consequence under free will (read C.S.Lewis for an understanding of how anyone in Hell can be seen as being there freely). It is not like the IRS thing, as that consequence is a deliberate construct set up by the IRS to produce that effect, whereas Hell is the final implication of free will, which to be meaningful must allow wrong choices; it is not something created for a purpose, but the outworking of negation rather than creation.

Ned: “Jesus’ question about the coin does not change his answer one iota.”

But it directs the interpretation of his answer, otherwise why ask the question. His question about the image on the coin and his answer about what Caesar owns are directly related. The first is necessary for understanding the second. In fact, the question is doubly important because how do we determine what belongs to God? The question about the image on the coin suggests that whatever has Caesar’s image on it belongs to Caesar. What has God’s image on it? Mankind, because mankind was created in God’s image.

Ned: “I found many learned exegetes who interpreted the words of Jesus just as you and Gil do, but noticed that not one of those scholarly discourses on the import of Jesus’ words appeared to take into consideration the many negative things Jesus reportedly said at other times about taxes and tax collectors.”

You might consider that “learned exegetes” didn’t adopt your interpretation because it violates so many of the rules of hermeneutics, not because they were in conspiracy with the state. And as far as Jesus’ negative comments about tax collectors, you’re making a huge leap in logic when you assume that criticism of people in positions of authority constituted criticism of the institution. That’s the same mistake all anarchists make. Jesus criticized the money changers and sellers of animals in the temple, which were employees of the chief priest, but he never intended by that to destroy the priesthood and tear down the temple.

Ned: “I certainly never said or implied anything that could be remotely construed as you do here.” (That was in response to my statement that Jesus wasn’t a social reformer.)

Everyone wants to draft Jesus to do the heavily philosophical lifting for their pet social reforms, socialists, anarchists, environmentalists, unionists and others. If you make Jesus a tax reformer and reformer of government, you make him a social reformer regardless of how much you protest.

Ned: “That is a backwards non sequitur. Because I claim it is full of errors after having been hand copied by fallible and perhaps even dishonest, self-serving scribes and other people many times before it reach the form in which either you or I read it, doesn’t mean that I do not take the overall work seriously.”

I rest my case. If it’s so full of error, why bother with it? Just ignore the whole thing. You are clearly very confident in your ability to slice and dice sentences and determine which pieces are accurate and which aren’t, but I don’t have any confidence in your ability. Like all liberal theologians who see error everywhere, you really too much on your ability to reads the minds and motives of people who lived 2,000 years ago. And mind reading is your main methodology for determining the accuracy of sentences.

Ned: “The remarkable differences (glaring contradictions) between the four accounts clearly suggests they are based on hearsay and speculation and are sufficient cause to cast them all in doubt.”

So why bother with the Bible at all? How do you know that Jesus’ state about giving to Caesar what belongs to Caesar is accurate? You don’t seem to be aware of the whole debate on the historical Jesus. It flares up every generation or two, but it began in Germany in the late 19th century. By the time the first wave end, all liberal scholars had come to the same conclusion that the only thing they could determine accurately was that a man named Jesus lived around 2,000 years ago. At the same time, conservative scholars patiently debunked the “evidence” of the liberals, word for word. As with you, liberal “evidence” consisted almost exclusively of trying to read the motives of the writers and rejecting anything that might be a miracle. Really intellectually heavy stuff! Every succeeding phase of the historical search has gone pretty much the same way. There are thousands of books written by conservative theologians that debunk every one of your claims and every one of those of the liberal theologians, but clearly you don’t want to read any of those. They would destroy your prejudices.

Anyone who has read the works of people who claim the Bible is full of errors knows that there are only two honest paths to take: 1) ignore everything in the Bible because it’s impossible to tell what is error and what isn’t or 2) accept the Bible as it is. Those who try to slice and dice the Bible are guilty of hubris.

Ned: “My conclusion regarding the meaning of his words at the time of the coin incident thus constitute the most authoritative analysis of what Jesus meant when he said, “give Caesar what is Caesar’s,” in spite of my homespun hermeneutics and PhD-less exegesis.”

Scholars derived the principles of hermeneutics because of people like you who want to apply their own home spun interpretations. They are derived from the principles of logic and honesty. Honest people want to determine what the author of a document or speech intended to mean, because if you make the author say something he didn’t intend to say, you’re being dishonest and violating the golden rule to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

PM, As I wrote above, I think the issue of the image on the coin was Jesus’ way of telling his disciples to pay the tax. But the issue is much larger. Had Jesus clearly told his followers not to pay taxes, it would have had few consequences for him. The leadership already wanted to murder him. They were merely looking for an excuse to make it appear legal and draw the Romans in because only the Romans could execute a criminal.

The real consequences of telling his disciples to not pay taxes would have fallen on the church after Jesus’ ascension. One of main principles of the church would have been to refrain from paying taxes of any kind. As a result, all governments everywhere would have a legit excuse for murdering Christians. Christians suffered a great deal by refusing to worship Caesar. They didn’t need more excuses for persecution.

“Everyone wants to draft Jesus to do the heavily philosophical lifting for their pet social reforms, socialists, anarchists, environmentalists, unionists and others.”

How true. Thanks fundamentalist for your contribution here.

fundamentalist says:
“The real consequences of telling his disciples to not pay taxes would have fallen on the church after Jesus’ ascension. One of main principles of the church would have been to refrain from paying taxes of any kind.”

the interesting point is how to establish the inflection point, where the “good”, minimalist state becomes the “bad”, overreaching one. would paying taxes to genocidal regimes (eg. nazis) still be moral? and if the bible teaches obedience towards authority regardless, how can peoples ever rebel?

“You actually think anarchy has a chance of becoming a reality? !!!”

…and the world-view championed by jesus, what odds should we give?

fundamentalist

First, there is a distinction between violence and aggression. According to AC, violence is justified against criminals, not aggression. The logic for condemning the State follows thus: the State is an institution based specifically on aggression; we accept the NAP, which says aggression is evil; therefore the State is evil.

Second, how exactly is the state “a legit institution under the principles of natural law”? Which “principles of natural law” are you using? Rothbard dealt deduced that property an absolute based on these two assumptions (1) each person has absolute self-ownership (which has its own justification) and (2) property is an extension of self-ownership (I know of no other justification for the existence of property; if you know one, please explain it).

Third, the State is not a tool, like a hammer or even a gun, but an association of people who engage in immoral behavior. The State can do good thing (such as punishing criminals), but the State performing these actions requires prior immoral action.

I await your response with anticipation.

Not crazy at all, Brett. In living systems there is a sort of paradox though. Order is chaos and chaos is order. If natural systems are let go, they spontaneously form order and life; if one has the power to direct them, they fall apart and die. (Of course no one has the power to completely direct everything. Anarchical relations exist everywhere today (most non-criminal), our only savior. (sorry, “fundamentalist”. Well, actually, Jesus is a great source of societal power)

Classical liberalism isn’t the paradigm, it could only be a tool used by a natural elite to convince the timid and spooked that they were being watched over when in reality they are on their own. That is all over though. The leaders have sold nearly everyone on straight nanny-ism. I don’t know how you get around this problem of millions of superannuated children, their influence on the next generation, and how entrenched their con-men/lunatics/great fathers in D.C. are. I actually agree with all the naysayers here against the article. Look at how their wailing has made such a great case (like the Israelites sniping at Moses, haha). Their claim is that people are too base, too rotten, too weak. They have merely projected their traits on to others (usually Arabs, as Hollywood, the MSM and the Pentagon have taught them to do).

to fundamentalist:

first, pearls-cast-unto swine: this is what i’d call practical time-management in jesus’ disciples’ proselytizing. i don’t see any expediency in this sensible advice to carefully husband a scarce resourse (time), and seek out ears that are ready to listen, avoiding those that are closed.

second, jesus eschewed political power and celebrity, hence the miracle of the fishes and wine wasn’t repeated, to the displeasure of those who gathered for the encore. your military example is yet another where he avoids being cajoled into performing miracles on the behest of some interest-group.

third, i was going to cite the narrow gate/wide gate teaching to illustrate that the payment of taxes is always going to be the easy way for the church to win favour with the authorities.

fourth, i understand your night-watchman view of the state, but ultimately it still comes down to a view that the minority who do not want to participate in a defense or police scheme are to be overruled for the greater good of the majority. this i see as a dangerous starting premise, allowing free entry to the great enemy of justice, arbitrariness.

fifth, i cannot see how jesus’ cryptic response to the tax question the pharisees posed to him can be construed in any way as an endorsement of taxation. i see it as a side-step; less about the merits or demerits of taxation than about avoiding a trap set by the pharisees. the stakes would have been much higher over such an issue, and the pharisees would have been keen to involve the romans in their campaign against jesus.

fundamentalist

“Thinker: “First, there is a distinction between violence and aggression.”

I’m sorry. You’ll have to explain the difference for me.”

Aggression is the initiation of violence in contrast to self-defense or punishment which are responses to previously initiated violence.

“I was referring to the natural law tradition that began with Hugo Grotius. That natural law tradition justified the state much the same way that Mises did. Rothbard claimed to be following natural law tradition, but he actually went in the opposite direction. I can’t remember the exact natural law justification for private property, but it was mostly practical without making property an absolute as Rothbard does. For Christians and Jews, the justification is found in the Bible’s general attitude toward property, especially the passages about not stealing.”

If you are going to continue claiming that property is not an absolute, I suggest you look up that “natural law justification” because the only explanations either of us has provided treat it as an absolute. I personally am wholly irreligious (pun intended) and follow Rothbard’s logic, but to Jews and Christians the word of God is pretty absolute.

“The state is the institution that defines the rules for the association of the people. There is a distinct difference in the minds of almost all people between the institution of the state and the people who fill roles in that institution. Yes it is exactly like a tool.”

If the individuals comprising an association do not engage in systematic aggression, then the association is not the State. Aggression, an immoral action according to the NAP, is therefore a prerequisite to any other action the State may take or any purpose it may be assigned by the people. This means that your example of a school does not apply to this discussion; a school does have certain requirements to exist, but none of them necessarily violate the NAP.

Yes, the State does define rules for a society, but societal rules are not dependent upon the State; they can be, and are, established by other, voluntary associations. All that is truly necessary for a society to function cohesively is enforcement of the NAP, which the State violates, making it a poor choice of enforcer (unless you want to enforce something else…)

Gil:

Gil: Jesus certainly was a libertarian. He taught the truth, and, as he said, “The truth shall make you free!” However, the essay, JESUS OF NAZARETH, ILLEGAL-TAX PROTESTER, was written for the following reasons, which are stated in the Introduction:

This essay contains three hypotheses. The primary thesis is that, contrary to what most people have been led to believe by their church and government leaders, Jesus did not condone taxation nor endorse the concept of nation-state when he said “render unto Caesar therefore the things which are Caesar’s.” (Mt 22, Mk 12, Lk 20) If the essay succeeds in persuading some readers of that one point, and we are confident all who read it with an open mind will be persuaded, our research, writing and prayers will be vindicated.
The second hypothesis is this: Jesus taught and lived by principles diametrically opposed to government and taxes. If that is true, then those who would live their lives according to the principles Jesus taught will neither collect, receive, nor voluntarily pay taxes, nor be involved with the state in any way that can possibly be avoided.
Finally, although Jesus died of his own volition in compliance with his Father’s will in order to save mankind from sin, which may be the most important fact to know about Jesus, our third hypothesis holds that it is likely and eminently logical to believe that Pontius Pilate crucified Jesus for “forbidding the payment of taxes to Caesar” and teaching his disciples that taxation is condemned by God’s commandment, Thou shall not steal. Pilate obviously didn’t kill Jesus to save mankind from sin, although Jesus died for that purpose. Did he die to save us from taxes? If, as this essay shows, taxes are sinful because they violate God’s Commandment [Thou shall not steal!], it follows as night follows day that indeed he did. http://www.jesus-on-taxes.com/uploads/JesusMarch17th08-_2.pdf

P.M. LAWRENCE: Thank you for joining the discussion with your particularly thoughtful comments.

Regarding begging the question, I thought I knew what it meant, but your comment made me check, and obviously I was wrong. After discussing its proper usage, here is what Wiki says under a heading MODERN USAGE:

“More recently, to beg the question has been used as a synonym for to raise the question, or to indicate that the question really ought to be addressed. This usage is commonly followed by a colon and the statement of the question. For example, “This year’s budget deficit is half a trillion dollars. This begs the question: how are we ever going to balance the budget?” Using the term in this way, although common, is considered incorrect by prescriptive grammarians. This usage is the result of confusion over the translation of petitio principii, which literally translates as “assuming the starting point”.Arguments over whether such usage should be considered incorrect are an example of debate over linguistic prescription and description.” Evidently, you, sir, are a prescriptive grammarian.

What I should have said was that Jesus’ answer requires (begs, sends) us to answer the question, what is God’s and what is Caesar’s? I stand corrected and enlightened, for which I thank you.

I do not agree that Jesus’ answer was intentionally ambiguous. Rather I would say it was perfectly clear to the many observant Jews who were intimately familiar with Scripture and thus knew what is God’s and what is Caesar’s. From the point of view of the duplicitous spies who asked the question, who likely were not observant–or they would not have been carrying the idolatrous coin–his answer may have been incomprehensible rather than merely ambiguous.

Btw, in the essay, JESUS, etc., various aspects of this render-unto-Caesar incident are compared to the just preceding similar incident recorded in the Synoptics, when he was asked where he got the authority to preach (and heal, I presume) in the Temple.

P.M. Lawrence: “Anyway, you cannot read this story as Jesus taking a position either for or against paying taxes, as the whole point is that he wouldn’t let others put him on the spot for this.” I am glad to see that you agree with the first hypothesis of the essay, JESUS, etc., which I copied in my previous post above responding to Gil. For the past 1700 years yours has been the interpretation of only a very small minority of exegetes. Tolstoy was one, unlike most of the others who agree with Gil and Fundamentalist, that Jesus said, pay your taxes. Of course Tolstoy did not work for the Russian Orthodox Church, which disagreed, for it shared in the revenues from taxation.

I also want to elaborate on the point that Newson raised. The suggestion that Jesus would get in trouble not matter how he answered the question, is an interpretation which, I believe, was first concocted by those exegetes who said Jesus said pay your taxes in order to strengthen their case, but it has no foundation in the gospels or in logic. They posit that Jesus’ answer meant “yes you should pay Caesar’s tax,” but he did not come out and say so in plain Aramaic because many Jews hated the tax and he would lose support among that group. This stupid interpretation, which depicts Jesus as a people-pleasing, pussy-footing popularity hound, was necessary to explain why he avoided saying “yes” straight out. Of course Luke’s account explicitly debunks the idea that the question was concocted to get him in trouble no matter how he answered, for it shows his enemies only intent was to bring him to grief with the Roman authorities. This utterly demeaning interpretation of Jesus’ motive is found in many if not most of the *official* “interpreter bibles” of the Catholic and Protestant churches. It too served as a stimulus to the research and writing of the essay, JESUS, etc.

So Ned what is to made of the part where Jesus instructs a young rich man to give up his wealth so he may get into heaven? That’s more hardcore than saying “give a portion of your income to Caeser”.

Really newson? How is saying “keep your wealth and go to hell” versus “pay your taxes or go to jail” any different?

to gil:
as scineram says, there’s a gulf between the physical and the metaphysical.

besides, jesus rails against those who put riches before all other values, not against being wealthy as such. the parable of the talents is nothing less than an invocation that money be invested fruitfully.

DixieFlatline said, “Do you accept the premise that the initiation of violence is moral or not? … Me, I don’t think it is ok to use violence against innocent people. That is why morally, the only consistent position I can take, is voluntarism/ancap.

Why is that when someone endorses the existence of some form of State, anarchists automatically assume an endorsement of all incidences of immoral, State-initiated violence against nonviolent innocents?

I believe it is entirely moral for the State to use violence in response to those who have initiated violence against the persons or property of those living under its jurisdiction, acting on their behalf. People commit moral crimes against others, and it is a moral act of the State to capture, impartially try, and carry out temporal punishment upon those criminals (barring forgiveness on the part of the wronged party in the form of voluntarily choosing to not press charges).

No, Chad Rushing, the state (any state) cannot do or be anything moral at all, even when the action or omission would have a moral content when done by a moral being; it is an empty vessel, a mere legal person, and can no more be meaningfully praised or damned than can a tame elephant or a rogue one – even when that might have an effect on its behaviour.

Keep the good information comming, we need more authors like you!