Professor Cox makes a number of good points, but to hold up the New Testament (written in parables, designed to be interpreted in many, sometimes conflicting ways) as some kind of series of individualist/economic models is to invite ridicule, if not disaster.

Remember the servant who, fearing he was to be terminated, went around to his master’s creditors and told them to reduce the declared amounts of their debts? He gave away the master’s money, to feather his own retirement!

What about the day-laborers, hired throughout the day, who were each paid the same at the end of the day? The message was that the master could pay anyone any amount, as long as they were in voluntary agreement, a priori, and that’s a good lesson. But as a lesson in management, we might ask: How many workers could he find the next morning?

Let’s leave Bible lessons for those who need to explain them, and develop management and economic models empirically.

A great article!!! In addition to what Mr. Cox has said, I would like to note the importance of the Old Testament as the foundation for what was written in the New Testament. In Genesis we read about the origin of scarcity (the crux of the economic problem), which was also the result of individual choice when the forbidden fruit was eaten. A few chapters later we read about the division of labor as people began to migrate and settle throughout the world. In Deuteronomy we see the establishment of the institutions of law and private property rights, which are the essence of a thriving national economy. We also read that government authority should not multiply the currency (Deut. 17:17 KJV). Hmmm…reminds me of something. Oh yes, I guess that’s what we Austrians keep preaching!

Thanks for another great article! I find it hard to accept that people take The Da Vinci Code seriously, but I guess they do. Good reason exists to believe that Christians oppose individualism: The Catholic Church fought individualism for most of its history. It took the Erasmian Protestants of the Dutch Republic to offer us our first taste of religious and individual freedom, while Lutherans and Calvinists opposed both. The Catholic Church considered the individualism of the Dutch a great evil.

That the “social gospel” and “social justice” movements are associated with Christianity is just sad, because those movements were started by non-Christians who retained the title. The founders of the social gospel movement followed the German theologians who denied the divinity (and some the humanity) of Jesus, the virgin birth and the resurrection (the crucifixion was OK). In their search for the “historical” Jesus, they rejected the accuracy of the principal historical documents that refer to him—the Gospels. Those people called themselves Christians, when in fact they were nothing but Marxists who wanted to use the power of religion to advance their own agendas.

David:”…the individualisim that Jesus preached was probably already very embeded in Jewish religion and culture.”

You’re right. We tend to forget that Jesus was a Jew and for the first century, Christianity was considered a Jewish sect. Pharisaism and Christianity were the only two sects to survice the Roman destruction of the temple in 70 AD. Only after the rebellion of 120 AD did Pharisees turn against their Christian brothers because the Christians refused to follow Bar Kochba, whom the Pharisees declared the Messiah.

F.L. Light,

Am I to understand that the greatest freedom is to live as a slave to your animal passions?

The teachings of Jesus ensompass more than just the articles of faith as summarized by the Nicene Creed. They also touch on things that are knowable by reason without the need for revelation. But, as Aquinas writes, for example, “there is nothing to prevent a man, who cannot grasp a proof, accepting, as a matter of faith, something which in itself is capable of being scientifically known and demonstrated.” Although I am not committed to Biblical inerrancy, it is highly improbable that anything would be attributed to Jesus that would be actually false. What He says has to be interpreted correctly, however, and Stephen Cox’s does a very good job doing just that.

Hey Light, there is no connection between monotheism and hostility to freeedom. On the contrary, as Cox points out, Christianity is famous for its emphasis on the worth of the individual and its stress on the need to cooperate with grace freely. Of course, “freedom of the will” is different from individual freedom in society, but nevertheless the latter actualizes the former. Mises tells a great story:

In a society based on caste and status, the individual can ascribe adverse fate to conditions beyond his own control. He is a slave because the superhuman powers that determine all becoming had assigned him this rank. It is not his doing, and there is no reason for him to be ashamed of his humbleness. His wife cannot find fault with his station. If she were to tell him: “Why are you not a duke? If you were a duke, I would be a duchess,” he would reply: “If I had been born the son of a duke, I would not have married you, a slave girl, but the daughter of another duke; that you are not a duchess is exclusively your own fault; why were you not more clever in the choice of your parents?”

It is quite another thing under capitalism. Here everybody’s station in life depends on his own doing. Everybody whose ambitions have not been fully gratified knows very well that he has missed chances, that he has been tried and found wanting by his fellowman. If his wife upbraids him: “Why do you make only eighty dollars a week? If you were as smart as your former pal, Paul, you would be a foreman and I would enjoy a better life,” he becomes conscious of his own inferiority and feels humiliated.

The much talked about sternness of capitalism consists in the fact that it handles everybody according to his contribution to the well-being of his fellowmen. The sway of the principle, to each according to his accomplishments, does not allow of any excuse for personal shortcomings. Everybody knows very well that there are people like himself who succeeded where he himself failed. Everybody knows that many of those whom he envies are self-made men who started from the same point from which he himself started. And, much worse, he knows that all other people know it too. He reads in the eyes of his wife and his children the silent reproach: “Why have you not been smarter?” He sees how people admire those who have been more successful than he and look with contempt or with pity on his failure.

Some more St. Thomas for you: “The very hiding of truth in figures is useful for the exercise of thoughtful minds and as a defense against the ridicule of the impious, according to the words ‘Give not that which is holy to dogs.’”

It is peculiar that Christianity and the teachings of Jesus Christ are credited with being concerned with the ‘Individual’ without offering a shred of evidence that Jesus Christ was actually a real person.

Fanatics have no space for freedom, who’d
Confine the people to their certitude.

Fanatics have no space for freedom, not
Permitting variance in our common lot.

Fanatics have no space for querulous
Correction, not in queries hearing us.

Fanatics have no space for diffidence,
By giddy furor gauging sapience.

Fanatics have no space for diffidence,
Pressing dissenters into dread events.

Thanks for a great article, I really enjoyed it.

Now I’ve just got to figure out why some pagan showed up and chose this site as his battlefield against monotheism. F.L. Light, just go away. You’re not contributing anything, you’re not going to win any converts, and your poetry sucks.

I must express my disappointment that the Ludwig von Mises Institute is taking on the appearance of a religious organization. Well over half of my charitable giving over the past two years has gone to the Institute and LewRockwell.com, and I once proudly displayed links to the organizations’ web sites in my message board signatures.

I recently removed the LRC signature link, because the site seems to increasingly be endorsing religious beliefs. I was clear to me that Mr Rockwell, though a tenacious defender of liberty from government, does not share my understanding of religion. I now see that I must also remove the link to Mises.org. I can no longer be confident that a person who clicks on that link on any given day will not be presented with something which I do not wish to endorse. I will also be ceasing my charitable donations to both organizations.

There are many organizations and websites which carry and support the argument for religious belief very well. This mission is not that of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, which reads as follows:

“It is the mission of the Mises Institute to restore a high place for theory in economics and the social sciences, encourage a revival of critical historical research, and draw attention to neglected traditions in Western philosophy. In this cause, the Mises Institute works to advance the Austrian School of economics and the Misesian tradition, and, in application, defends the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations, while opposing government intervention as economically and socially destructive.”

This saddens me deeply. Mises.org and LewRockwell.com were instrumental in the development of the philosophy which has freed my mind and transformed my life over the past two years. But I cannot with clear conscience continue to support an organization which appears to say that the study and understanding the Austrian School and its traditions, the market economy, private property, sound money, and peaceful international relations requires or is enhanced through religious belief. It most certainly was not the case with me. To the contrary, the critical thinking skills I have learned through the works of the Institute have played an important part in my leaving behind the religious beliefs of my youth.

I look forward to the day that the Ludwig von Mises Institute returns to its stated mission.

RodP,

It will be a lonely place that is inhabited only by those who hold all of, and nothing more than, one’s own your beliefs. Other than your reflection in a mirror or the echo of your voice, you will have no other stimulation.

As a Christian, I have learned a lot about the church’s history through the .MP3 lectures of Rothbard available on the web site, and Rothbard was, to my knowledge, an atheist; as was Mises.

Additionally, I have found some articles on LewRockwell to be personally offensive as they espoused, as I interpreted them to be, anti-Christian views. But, I enjoy that web site immensely.

That this singular article did not hit the mark for you is no reason to sever ties. Your world is going to end up very closed if you let religion be the defining line of what you will consider and acknowledge. Rothbard was adamant that religion touches every aspect of history and society, whether you like it or not.

Professor Cox,

That was a fine article. Thank-you.

There is something that has disturbed me for some time on both Rockwell’s site and with this article the Mises site and that is what I can only describe as Gnostic-bashing. “Gnostic” turns out to be a scholarly constuct which doesn’t antedate the 18th century, a term of convenience to lump together sects which lost out to the most popular current of Christianity which self-designated itself “catholic”. They had precious little in common, for example some were highly acetic and others were libertine.

This should only be a matter of scholarly interest, but I have noticed “gnostic” being used as a pejorative term by several writers on Rockwell com and now (if only by implication) by a writer on Mises. Obviously it is considered tacky to use words like “heathen” and “infidel” these days, and “gnostic” has just enough mystery and ambiguity to invite the reader to fill in the blank with a religious group or philosophy he or she dispises. Instantly everybody becomes a Gnostic: Karl Marx, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Hanks. As a rehtorical position it may have a long half-life of utility, but it is very much contrary to the spirit of Ludwig von Mises and his modes of expression.

Of course “The DaVinci Code” is far-fetched. Since religious sects multiply with abandon it might even be described as a “gnostic” manifesto. But it is just one sect (as it happens, a French legitimist and ultraconservative one) which got classified as “gnostic” and has nothing to do with
the movements in classical antiquity (Valentinianism, Basilidianism etc.) which are labeled “gnostic” for purposes of simplification.

I think the people at Mises Institute are doing a great job of spreading the freedom message, but in this rhetorical point I think their editorial policy has made a step in the wrong direction. Furthermore I have a hypothesis as to how this happened. Some person or persons have been influenced by the thought of Eric Voeglin, a prime influence on conservative thought. Now Voeglin may have been a deep thinker but his use of “gnostic” to designate what might better be termed millenarian or chiliastic thinking is disingenious.

Now Voeglin may be right in his debunking of secularist-eschatological thinking, but to slip Voeglinian ideas into Misesian, let alone Rothbardian-libertarian context without identifying their source is playing with a stacked deck.

Indeed, I strongly suspect that a dyed in the wool Voeglinian would reseve a special term of abuse for Rothbard’s brand of libertarianism: Gnosticism.

I think the people at Mises Institute are doing a great job of spreading the freedom message, but in this rhetorical point I think their editorial policy has made a step in the wrong direction.

There’s an editorial policy?

JCR,

This: “Just like one can read the US constitution in such a way that socialism is what the fathers intended.” — I’d like to see. Have you seen anyone do this? Yourself, perchance? Would you have links or, possibly, an example?

Thanks, in advance~

M E Hoffer. According to the well-publicized case “Kelo versus New London”, socialism is clearly in the Constitution and private property is quite a shaky concept! I don’t think this was the fathers’ intentions. It might be that current interpreters of the Constitution understand that they are straying from the fathers’ intentions… In any case that points to the “flexibility” of those texts. But I am feeling bad here not to stick to the Bible issue and getting offtopic with my analogy. Sorry! I am sure mises.org will publish something on private property and the Constitution sooner or later…
Can you use the Bible to prove any point? I think so and I observe that people with wide different opinions still refer to the same Bible. The Liberation Theology versus the Vatican for instance. Which side is “dishonest”? Well that depends on which side you are on!

David C. wrote:

What wasn’t embeded in the Jewish culture was “love thy neighbor”

Oh really? “V’ahavta l’reyahkha kamokha” (and you shall love your neighbor as yourself). Leviticus, 19:18.

TCCG,

you posit : “I was under the impression that the founding fathers were NOT adamant on “separation of church and state”. Nearly every state had laws against blasphemy and many had established state churches.”

Does the Constitution enumerate the Rights of the several States?

Does the Constitution, as adopted, in the whole, proscribe the establishment of an “official” Religion?

Rod P & others,

While I agree with your concerns, I think a more subtle but onerous concern should be the matter of ommision rather than commission
An endeavor to “Restore a high place for theory in economics and the social sciences . . .” must necessarily involve attempting to establish economics as a Scientific discipline; and to that end, philosophical underpinnings must be examined and established. Certainly, no one should want the role that religion might have played in this to be left out. And as you pointed out, LRC.com and Mises.com leave no dearth here. And I, a non-theist, truley enjoy these articles and find them, for the most part, edifying.
But I also find them often, but not always (depending upon who author’s them) lacking in scientific methodology . . . a concern which, as I pointed out, is required for the stated goals. Wheather the author was just so focused on making his religiouly held point or actually intended on leaving out a non-theistic alternative (even if only a mention thereof), an act of ommission occurred. That, in itself, is also instructive of the article (and the author), that the scientific method of multiple working hypothesis was not being applied, but it detracts considerably from the edifying impact that the article could have had.
Should LRC.com and Mises.com adopt an editorial policy that incorporates my concern, I think they might attract some very good writers who otherwise refuse to submit articles because they do not want to appear to endorse in any way the unscientific views of the few who lack such discipline.

Bob writes: “But I also find them often, but not always (depending upon who author’s them) lacking in scientific methodology.”

What may be lacking in the way of scientific method when talking about religion is the application of hermeneutical principles. Hermeneutics wasn’t created just to annoy undergrads. It intends to corall the imagination and apply reason to the interpretation of texts. The elementary principles are 1) determine who the author is, 2) who the audience is, then 3) what did the author intend to say to that audience, 4) context must rule interpretation.

For example, in Mark 10:17-22 when Jesus instructed the rich young man to give all he had to the poor, Jesus was responding to the question, What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus gave him the stock reply first: Follow the law. The young man said that he had done so perfectly. Jesus then tells him to give all he has to the poor. Jesus wasn’t expounding upon economic principles, but was responding directly to the young man’s question.

In the context of the rest of Jesus’ teachings, and the rest of the New Testament, we would be wrong to assume that Jesus required poverty as the price of entering His kingdom (or eternal life, they’re intechangeable). As Cox pointed out, Jesus never asked that of another rich person, although many followed Him. Neither did the other New Testament writers.

So what was Jesus’ point? It’s most likely that Jesus was trying to get the young man to examine his character. Jesus’s principle teaching was that all men are sinners. No one could keep the law perfectly and everyone needs God’s forgiveness, but the young man didn’t think he was a sinner. He thought he had kept the law perfectly. By asking the young man to give up his wealth, Jesus may have been pointing to his sin of greed.

I apologize for the Sunday School lesson, but I wanted to show that Bible interpretation can follow scientific principles, called hermeneutics, and that you can’t take single verses out of context and build any kind of philosophy upon it that you want.

We may recall that on one occasion, and one occasion only, Jesus advised a wealthy would-be follower to give up all his possessions (Mark 10:17-22). That was a challenge for that particular individual. So far as we know, it was never posed to anyone else.

Thanks for the clarification. Great article.
Leigh Miesse