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Gary North
"The State's Monopoly of Vengeance"
Leviticus: An Economic Commentary on the Bible
Tyler, TX: Institute for Christian Economics 1994, ch. 16, pp. 263-277
http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/21fa_47e.htm

North supports the concept of "the State." His purpose here is to prove that the State's acts of vengeance are (1) ethically legitimate and (2) only the State can ethically take revenge. We argue that even if violence is legitimate, God nowhere requires vengeance to be undertaken only by those calling themselves "the State." The Church, the Family, the Free Market -- all are able to engage in acts of violence if anyone is. 

The theocentric focus of this law is this: only God can know a person's heart (Jer. 17:9-10). Therefore, only God is entitled to judge a person's heart. Because a civil judge is not God, he cannot legitimately claim to be able to search another person's heart in his quest for civil justice. The affairs of the heart and mind are off-limits to the State. There can be no lawful civil sanctions against thoughts or attitudes. 

North is correct, however, that normally no civil penalties attach to "thought crimes," at least in civilized nations.

If a person accidentally kills another without holding a grudge in his heart, he will be convicted of manslaughter. If he killed deliberately, and evidence convinces a jury that he held a heart-felt grudge, he will be more likely to be convicted of murder.

The "ceremonial" law pointed to the work of Christ, and is not to be followed literally in our day: laws concerning blood sacrifices, for example. The line between "civil" law and "ceremonial" law is also not always easy to draw, as we argue elsewhere.

Civil law also cannot enforce an attitude of love; hence, civil law is not the focus of the command to love one's neighbor, except insofar as love is defined judicially: treating the neighbor legally, i.e., love as the fulfilling of God's law (Rom. 13:10). But even in this case, there would have to be an infraction of a specific civil law or an act against another person's rights -- lawful immunities (protected boundaries) -- in order to enforce this law of compulsory love. Hence, this law, too, is inherently unenforceable by the State.

Biblical social order is not state-centered but God-centered. This explains why we do not find a set of judicial laws in the Bible. All the laws of Scripture, including the social laws, are religious. The social laws are God-centered. Some of them relate to Christian civil government, but there is no corpus of civil law or judicial law because the Bible is not a Statist document.

We will repeatedly return to these questions as the debate progresses.

Nevertheless, this verse begins with a prohibition against individual acts of vengeance. This is clearly an aspect of civil law; the relevant Mosaic case law is the requirement that any man who injures another man in a fight must pay restitution to him (Ex. 21:18-19): no private vengeance. But why is this verse's negative injunction attached to two other injunctions that are clearly individual moral injunctions -- aspects of self-government rather than civil government? By prohibiting personal grudges and requiring personal love, this verse makes it clear that the concern of the civil portion of this civil law is the elimination of privately imposed vengeance. The civil prohibition against taking vengeance applies only to individual actions. This prohibition does not apply to the State. Civil law applies negative sanctions to individuals who commit specified prohibited acts; hence, it applies to individual acts of vengeance. Vengeance is legitimate when imposed by the State.

There will be vengeance in history because God promises it. "I will repay, saith the Lord."

God sometimes uses the armies of civil magistrates to execute His vengeance. These murdering hordes "serve" God's "ordained" purposes (Rom 13:1-4) by violating God's commandments against murder, theft and kidnapping. God then judges His statist deaconate for their violation of His revealed Law. The commandments against vengeance in Leviticus and Romans 12 apply to everyone, even those who call themselves "the State," and even though "God works all things together for good" (Rom. 8:28).

The links in North's statements are ours. The Bible is both pacifistic and (therefore) anarchistic. "Turn the other cheek" is designed to move society in a pacifistic direction. We are to leave vengeance to God. This means we are not allowed to institutionalize vengeance and grant it a socially-approved monopoly.

The Bible is "Anarchistic!?"

The reader may wish at this point to explore our "anarchist" interpretation of Romans 13. This format (a point-by-point interaction with North's essay) makes impossible to restate our position in full. We believe that when God says He "ordains" the State He is saying nothing more than when He says He is going to send a tornado to judge a city. James Benjamin Greene, in his Harmony of the Westminster Standards, says of Romans 13, "It is not meant that God directly ordained the state by saying to man, Thou shalt set up a government or organize a commonwealth." Adam didn't. Abraham didn't. Even Moses didn't set up "the State." Not until 1 Samuel 8 did Israel move from patriarchy to politics, and God said it was a rejection of His government. God never commanded the formation of "the State." (It is, in fact, sinful to do so.)

Vine & Fig Tree's Romans 13 Home Page

Survey of the Bible: God Never Commands the Formation of "The State." 

Calvin, in his exposition of Romans 13, directly denies our thesis. North joins him. But Calvin is clearly mistaken. He emphatically declares that the State is not like a tornado:

Understand further, that powers are from God, not as pestilence, and famine, and wars, and other visitations for sin, are said to be from Him; but because He has appointed them for the legitimate and just government of the world. (comm. at v.1)

God Sends EVIL!

That essay consists of dozens of Scripture passages which refute Calvin's assertion. That page is must-reading in this debate. This is the central issue in the debate. "The State" is "ordained" by God in the same way pestilence, famine, war, the destruction of Job's Household by Satan, and the Mafia are all "ordained" by God. 

The parallels between pestilence, famine, wars, and the State are striking and continuously asserted by Scripture. Indeed, "wars" are simply the instrument of the State. (How could Calvin miss this obvious point?) "War" is "the sword."

There is no ethical distinction between "the State" and "the Mafia." Both are organized theft and murder. God is in control; but these institutions are evil. Human beings who self-consciously participate in these "negative physical sanctions" commit evil acts which are contrary to God's Law. The State is evil. God Ordains Evil. 

Further, throughout Scripture, the demonic powers that animate pestilence and famine are said to be the same "powers" that animate the State. This point is inescapable. Paul says "we wrestle" against the principalities and powers that be (Ephesians 6:12). Calvin needs to muster a great deal more evidence to refute our exposition. Ditto for North.

• Abraham was a model of a "well-governed" society -- without "the state."
• "Self-government" is more important than "civil government."
• Service, not Swords, Creates Social Order.
• Indeed, you can have a "well-governed" society without a "civil government," but not without "self-government," according to America's Founding Fathers.
• Therefore, a "liberal arts" education (one which makes men free from oppressive government, by nurturing self-government) is more important in preventing crime than a civil magistrate is (because the State merely punishes crime after it has already happened).
• God rewards our efforts to create a well-governed society when we use Biblical means and not the methods of the secular militaristic state. We must trust in God, not the State.

We face terrorists and criminals. What we need is not "the State," but an end to a secular society. We need a pervasively-religious society, where the Law of God is honored at every turn. By "religious" we mean not a "liturgical" society where there are lots of priests and churches, but a truly religious society where everyone is a priest. James says true religion is taking care of widows and orphans (James 1:27). Paul says "love your neighbor" means to obey God's Law with respect to your neighbor (Romans 13:8-10). This creates a "well-governed" society. Taxation and vengeance are unnecessary.

Admittedly, no Christian anarchist can claim that abolishing the State will lead to a perfectly-governed society continuously. We believe that "Anarcho-Theocracy" leads to the most order more of the time. But government occasionally breaks down. It is at this point that some call out for "the government." When injustice is done, they want "the government" to bring "justice." What is "justice?"

Suppose Jones steals $1,000 from Smith. What is "justice" in this case? Two solutions have been proposed:

1. Jones is locked in prison to be sodomized by violent felons. Smith, the victim, pays for the prison, the guards, and cable TV and weightlifting equipment for the felons. Approximate cost: $30,000 per felon per year.
2. Jones makes restitution to Smith, according to Biblical standards. Smith is made whole. The thief takes personal responsibility and grows more like Christ.

Neither option requires "the State." Prisons can be private; restitution can be arranged by private arbitration or insurance agencies. Most Christians would agree that restitution is justice and prisons are not. 

Our contention is that the Bible does not command "punishment," but restitution: restoration, undoing the damage, making the victim whole. A well-governed society has many ways of securing justice, not just "the government." In Matthew 18 Jesus says:

15 Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If your brother listens to you, you have regained your brother.
16 But if if will not hear you, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses.
17 If the member refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector.

"Trespass" in this passage does not mean a vague "spiritual" offense that causes someone to whine: "you offended me." This is the realm of civil and criminal law. The Greek word for "trespass" is found in the Greek Old Testament (LXX) in Leviticus 6:

4 when you have sinned and realize your guilt, and would restore what you took by robbery or by fraud or the deposit that was committed to you, or the lost thing that you found,
5 or anything else about which you have sworn falsely, you shall repay the principal amount and shall add one-fifth to it. You shall pay it to its owner when you realize your guilt.

In Matthew 18 Jesus clearly establishes the principle that our goal is not "punishment," but gaining a brother, that is, of persuading the offender to right his wrongs. It is a good thing when a thief repents and voluntarily decides to return the stolen goods and restore all damage done. Simply sticking the offender in a prison is a violation of Jesus' commandment, we believe.

Most people have never received a practical education in how to follow Jesus' steps. This is why a good Bible-based education is so important to a well-governed society. Jesus never mentions Caesar ("the State") in these steps. "The government" is not necessary. But it would be perfectly legitimate for someone to establish a corporation which teaches people how to effectively follow Jesus' steps and regain a brother. The Bible promises that in the future the demand for such a business will be increasingly great, even from consumers who are not Christians. Other businesses could be formed to compile databases of those who would not be restored, so that people could decide whether they wanted to do business with these thieves or whether they wanted to obey Jesus and treat the offender like a tax-collector. (Isn't it interesting that in our state-worshiping day, people go to "the government" to restore offenders when Jesus says that unrepentant offenders are (or are like) "the government"). In an Anarcho-Theocracy there could be many such Matthew 18 agencies, all working to bring restoration of offenders, each using a different approach, with different styles, different costs, specializing in different crimes, serving the different consumer groups that make up the church universal.

Where does the Bible prohibit this? Where does the Bible require only one institution to deal with crime and prohibit competitive agencies? Where does the Bible require that this monopoly be funded by violence? Take away the monopoly, and substitute voluntary funding, and you have abolished "the State" and established "anarcho-capitalism." It's that simple

Problem area: what about murder? How does a murderer "make it right?" 

It is clear that under our present system of "government," the murderer does not make it right in any way. He is not even forced to be a lifetime indentured servant for the benefit of the estate of the victim. Instead, the victim's estate is forced to pay for the lifelong incarceration of the murderer. 

Some favor capital punishment. But this "solution" does not require "the State." In the Old Testament the power to shed the blood of the offender was given first to the family, and is never removed from the family and transferred exclusively to "the State," thereafter prohibited to the family or to Free Market agents of the family. We question the need to shed the blood of murderers after Christ's work on Calvary. But capital punishment, if appropriate, does not require a strong centralized monopolistic state. Competing capital punishment agencies, voluntarily funded, would be less likely to execute the innocent than "the government."

The analysis that follows will be most valuable to those who are open to anarcho-capitalism. They will see that there is no Biblical barrier to such a society. Those who are dedicated at all costs to following Calvin and North, however, will not be persuaded by our remarks. 

The Bible makes it clear that the judicial role of the State is derived directly from God. The civil government is a covenantal institution, along with the family and the church. The State is an agency that applies negative physical sanctions in addition to enforcing restitution. This authority to bring negative physical sanctions is granted by God to fathers (the "rod") and to the State (the "sword"). The family lawfully brings positive sanctions; the State does not. The family creates wealth; the State protects wealth, but does not create it.(4)

North the capitalist says the State does not bring positive sanctions, but Romans 13 says the state will "praise" those who do good (Rom. 13:3). How? Will the State forcibly redistribute wealth from the evil to reward the good? (More below.)

The Bible establishes the civil government as God's monopoly of vengeance. Individuals must be protected from vengeance by anyone except a civil magistrate. A trial is required by God before vengeance is imposed. There are two archetypes of such a trial: the historical trial of Adam, Eve, and the serpent (Gen. 3), and the final judgment (Matt. 25). There must be a public declaration of the court's decision before there can be a lawful imposition of vengeance. Vengeance, being judicial, must be preceded by a public declaration of guilt. The imputation of guilt is always a covenantal act. It is never lawfully an individual act, nor is the subsequent imposition of negative penal sanctions.(5)

It certainly is good to prove ("try") the guilt of an offender before taking action. Any victim or any agency hired by a victim to bring justice should consider this responsibility carefully. But these considerations do not force us to limit the number of agencies which prove guilt or innocence to just one.

This covenantal aspect of penal sanctions places judicial and institutional boundaries on the spread of violence. God delegates to officers of the State the sole authority to declare guilt and impose vengeance. The investiture of such judicial authority is the civil equivalent of the church's anointing or laying on of hands. In modern democracies, an implicit priestly authority of individual voters is the humanistic covenantal basis of this political anointing.

The function of judicial declaration and shedding of blood was given "to Noah and his sons" (Genesis 9:1,4-6). There is no evidence that this responsibility was taken from the Family and given monopolistically to "the State."

Civil sanctions must be exclusively negative. They are penal sanctions. They punish those who have violated the protected legal boundaries. Any attempt to transform the State into an agency that lawfully dispenses positive sanctions is an aspect of political messianism. A messianic State is regarded as a healer, meaning an agency that is a legitimate source of wealth rather than the absorber of the wealth of the citizen-priests who constitute it judicially. One politician who saw the implications of such a view of the State was Frédéric Bastiat. In 1848, the year of the European revolutions,(6) Bastiat, a free trade polemicist and member of the French Legislative Assembly, had his essay, "The State," printed in the Journel des debats. A master of analogies, he compared the State with a pair of hands:

For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: 
Romans 13:3

Of course it goes without saying that we agree with North: the State has no right to "heal" society through income redistribution.

The fact is, the state does not and cannot have one hand only. It has two hands, one to take and the other to give -- in other words, the rough hand and the gentle hand. The activity of the second is necessarily subordinated to the activity of the first. Strictly speaking, the state can take and not give. We have seen this happen, and it is to be explained by the porous and absorbent nature of its hands, which always retain a part, and sometimes the whole, of what they touch. But what has never been seen, what will never be seen and cannot even be conceived, is the state giving the public more than it has taken from it. It is therefore foolish for us to take the humble attitude of beggars when we ask anything of the state. It is fundamentally impossible for it to confer a particular advantage on some of the individuals who constitute the community without inflicting a greater damage on the entire community.(7)

See if [the State] takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if [the State] benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

What one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away . . . plus an extra percentage for administration. (In the United States in the late 1980's, this extra fee amounted to 100 percent: half went to the beneficiaries, half to government bureaucrats.)(8)

Establishing the Judicial Conditions of Wealth-Creation

The State makes wealth-creation possible for individuals by protecting private property, i.e., by protecting individuals who own property. 

The State does not claim to "protect" property. If your property is stolen, don't bother filing suit against the State for failure to protect your property. It's been tried. It's a loser. All the State does when property has been stolen is to imprison the thief and send a bill to the victim. No further "wealth-creation" is made possible.

This is, after all, the real meaning of the phrase "enforce legal boundaries." If someone violates the sovereignty of the property owner, the State inflicts violence on the trespasser. Specifically, the State engages in actions which would be universally condemned as "immoral" if carried out by the property owner himself.

But where does God give "the State" the right to carry out these violent acts? Where does God say these violent acts cannot be carried out by the property owner, or that the "elders of the church" cannot carry out these acts against the offender, or that the property owner cannot hire one of many competing agencies of vengeance to carry out these acts? Where is the monopoly?

* And why is it, conversely, that the property owner who defends property or pursues justice is said below to be "an agent of the State" acting "in the name of the State?"

This means that property rights are human rights. With one exception, any attempt to distinguish property rights judicially from human rights is inherently statist and anti-biblical. That exception is the subset of rights that can be called priestly rights: worship and life. Sacrilege and murder are to be defended against, even at the expense of violations of other legal immunities. Where an individual is threatening one of these priestly rights, the State must intervene to protect the victim. In some cases, God authorizes another individual to intervene if the State refuses.(10) Apart from these two priestly exceptions, however, the distinction between human rights and property rights is a subversive attempt to legitimize State power in its interference with a person's stewardship over the property assigned to him by God and for which he is held responsible by God. Property rights are inescapably an aspect of human rights. It is true that property rights are not absolute -- nothing since the closing of the canon of Scripture is absolute -- but they are on the same judicial level as any other human rights except those associated with worship and life. Property rights are not impersonal and therefore are not judicially subordinate to personal rights; property rights are both personal and judicial. The familiar dualism between human rights and property rights should always be resolved in terms of stewardship under God. The key question is this: To whom has God delegated the authority to exercise representative control His property? A discussion of the rights of property should begin with a consideration of God's rights to property.

But North legitimizes socialism here. God has not given a monopoly of rights-violation to the State.

Positive Benefits Through Negative Sanctions

By remaining exclusively negative judicially, a biblically restricted State serves as a beneficial agency of government within society. This is the only way that it can remain an exclusively positive force in society, given its source of funds. The State is financed by the collection of taxes.(11) Taxes, like the church's tithe, apply legitimately only to individual income and net increases in an individual's wealth (capital gains).(12) The State is an economically dependent institution, not an economically creative institution.

The State has a God-given right to collect taxes by threat of violence. It is therefore not authorized by God to become an agency of positive sanctions, for that would involve asserting its authority as a compulsory agency of healing.(13) There is no compulsory, earthly, covenantal agency of healing in history. Churches and families, while covenantal agencies of healing, are voluntary institutions.(14) The State is compulsory. It can reward one group only by imposing penalties on some other group. God has therefore placed it under strict judicial boundaries. It is not to be regarded by anyone as a creative institution. It is instead exclusively protective. It is a monopolistic agency of vengeance against wrongdoers (Rom. 13:1-7). Its task is not to make men good; rather, it is to penalize biblically identified evil acts. To this end, God has given it the sword.

Where does God establish the moral legitimacy of non-voluntary institutions? Why are Churches and families limited to voluntarism? Isn't it because only voluntarism comports with the demands of the Eighth Commandment?

The idea that "the State" is limited is attractive, of course, and both sides in this debate are on the same wavelength. But giving "the State" a monopoly and centralizing its power is inherently dangerous, as history shows. A far more effective way of limiting its negative powers is stripping "the State" of its monopoly and its mythology and decentralizing all its legitimate functions into voluntaristic competing agencies.

God is the original source of lawful violence -- negative sanctions -- in both history and eternity. The State is God's designated monopolistic agent of lawful violence against convicted criminals. God brings negative sanctions; so does the State. God's negative sanctions are physical, in time and eternity. The State's ultimate negative physical sanction is the right of execution: excluding people from continuing access to the blessings of God in history. By executing a person, the State transfers the person's soul into God's heavenly court for final judgment. The State's court thereby becomes the agency of next-to-the-last judgment. God's court brings the final judgment.

There are "negative sanctions" which might be considered "violent" or "hateful" by those who receive them, but these negative sanctions are the core of a Godly society. They are briefly described here. There is no monopoly on these negative sanctions. Everybody is obligated to impose these sanctions. They produce a "well-governed" society without "the government."

Self-Defense

This does not mean that only the State can lawfully possess and use deadly weapons. The person who kills another in self-defense is acting as a lawful agent of God. There are civil laws governing this God-granted authority to kill another person. The case law of Exodus 22:2 allows a householder to kill a burglar if the owner catches him while the intruder is breaking in. The intruder has no legitimate reason to be inside the house. The resident has a legitimate role as a defender of his household's boundaries. God has delegated this authority to him. The occupant cannot know for sure why the invader has entered his home without permission, so he is allowed by God's law to assume the worst: the invader is a potential murderer. He can lawfully be killed by the person who resides there. The mere transgression of the home's boundary is sufficient to remove the protection of God's civil law from the invader. If caught by the homeowner and threatened with a weapon to prevent his flight before the police arrive, the invader is not protected by God's law from execution should he attack the homeowner. Those lawfully inside the house are protected by God's law; therefore, the invader is not. The thief may be struck while breaking in. If he attempts to flee, the resident is not supposed to kill him, for he is no longer breaking in. But the benefit of the doubt is always with the defender. This execution of an illegal invader is not an act of personal vengeance; rather, it is an act that defends a lawful boundary. The defender acts in the name of the State and is authorized by the State because no policeman is available to enforce the law.

Exodus 22 is discussed here.

God says in Exodus 22 if you kill an intruder during the day, it is a capital crime. You were to be executed in the Old Covenant. How does North find a "delegation" of authority here?

How many defenders of the Second Amendment and the idea of defense of self and of home would agree with North's claim that one who uses force against an invader of one's home does so "in the name of the State?" Did Abraham defend Lot "in the name of the State?" Which State? 

By implication, this case law establishes the judicial plea of self-defense. The person who is given cause to believe that an assailant is ready to kill him is entitled to kill the assailant. The civil government is required by God to investigate the reasons for any killing of a human being.(15) The judges must examine the evidence in order to determine whether a murder trial should be held.(16) The person who faces a life-threatening assault must decide which risk is greatest: 1) death from the assailant if no action is taken; 2) death from the assailant in a failed self-defense; 3) death from the State for murder of the assailant. There is a slogan used by American defenders of their Constitutional right to own and use guns.(17) "I would rather be tried by twelve than carried by six." When a person is faced with a life-threatening attack, a jury in his future is preferable to pallbearers.

"Entitled" is a strange word to use in the case of killing a human being. It reflects the majority interpretation of Exodus 22, which requires the execution of one who kills an intruder during the day, but is used to justify and even applaud the one who does such a prohibited killing.

God frequently gave Moses laws which condescended to the immaturity and faithlessness of Israel.

Little thought seems to be given to the model of Christ and the teaching of the Apostles (1 Peter 2:21). Little thought seems to be given to the value of human life vis-a-vis the value of one's possessions.

The plea of self-defense is in fact a plea of the right to defend oneself as an authorized agent of the State. Self-defense is not an autonomous act of violence. It is not an act of vengeance. It is a boundary defense.

What is clearly prohibited is vengeance by the victim after the suspect has fled from the scene of the crime. In such a case, there can be no claim of self-defense if the suspect dies as a result of the attack. The victim faces no life-threatening attack. His response is therefore limited to bringing a lawsuit. He may lawfully seek out the civil magistrate as a public avenger, but he is not allowed to impose vengeance unilaterally.(18)

The Kinsman-Redeemer

This restriction did not apply in the Mosaic economy to a family's blood-avenger (kinsman-redeemer). The nearest male relative was empowered by law to execute anyone suspected of having murdered his relative, even if the death was an accident (Deut. 19). In this unique instance, the kinsman-redeemer became a lawful agent of the tribal civil government. On the one hand, Deuteronomy 19 delegated to the nearest male kinsman the State's authority to impose vengeance, i.e., to the person most likely to have the emotional incentive to impose it. On the other hand, it placed judicial boundaries around the spread of clan vengeance in the following ways. First, only one person could lawfully perform this act of vengeance. Second, he could not pursue his target into a city of refuge. Third, if cleared by the judges of such a city of refuge, the suspect could return home in safety at the death of the high priest. Fourth, if the suspect was caught and executed by the blood-avenger before he reached the city, the dead man's family could not lawfully seek vengeance against the blood-avenger. By implication, it was not legal for the fleeing person to kill the blood-avenger in self-defense, any more than he was authorized to kill a civil magistrate. Of course, the fleeing person might prefer to be "tried by twelve rather than carried by six." He might subsequently claim that he did not know the pursuer was in fact the dead person's blood-avenger. But in a small, face-to-face community, this excuse would not have carried much weight.(19)

If it is not legal for a manslaughterer to kill the blood-avenger, why is it legal for him to flee the blood-avenger?

God's law places boundaries around men's lives. The State may lawfully deprive a person of his life if the person is convicted of a capital crime, but otherwise he is to be protected. The law is an innocent person's defensive shield because the law is the State's offensive weapon against boundary violators.

Why What Monopoly?

The State possesses a monopoly of vengeance and violence, although in some instances the individual acts as an agent of the State in defending himself and those under his authority. What is the rationale for the creation of such a monopoly? First, to limit the number of people seeking violent vengeance, i.e., boundary violators. These State-"anointed" agents can be identified. The agent has the authority to announce himself as an agent of the State. He is usually marked in some way: uniform, badge, or credentials.(20) It is illegal for anyone not so authorized (oath-bound) to wear or bear such marks of authority. The authority to act in an official capacity as God's minister of vengeance is circumscribed by God's law. This limits the number of instances in which violence becomes likely. The goal of any monopoly is to reduce the quantity supplied of some scarce economic resource. In this case, the item to be limited is violence.

Where does God's Law mention "badges?" Where does God's Law seek to limit the number of people who take vengeance against evildoers (assuming vengeance is good)?

Has the giving of a chartered monopoly of violence to the State decreased or increased violence in the world? If we removed the State's monopoly of legitimized violence and said All violence is wrong, and made this a centerpiece of a virtuous education, would that not decrease violence in the world? Isn't vengeance against evil-doers good, according to North? Why limit it?

James Madison said (Federalist #10) the best way to limit potentially socially-disruptive forces was to factionalize them, to divide the power and unleash them against each other. Wouldn't there be less violence if there were multiple agents of vengeance who had to compete against each other for the voluntary support of the People?

By limiting the amount of lawful violence in a society, the law of God channels violence. Residents in a covenanted nation know what to expect from the State. They can identify the lawful uses and applications of violence, and therefore they can identify the unlawful uses. There are far fewer lawful uses than unlawful uses. Biblical law specifies the boundaries of lawful violence and thereby identifies unlawful violence. It includes some violent acts and therefore excludes all other violent acts.

Religion and Morality vs. The Sword

Service vs. The Sword

It is possible to have a society comprehensively sanctified by the Spirit, submitting to God's Law, forgiving, charitable, self-sacrificing, productive, honest, and completely decentralized: Anarcho-Theocracy. No need for "the State."

It is less costly to specify the legitimate agents of violence than to identify every possible illegitimate agent. By identifying the primary agency of coercion, i.e., the State, biblical law places this institution under greater public scrutiny. By lowering the number of legal public acts, biblical law lowers the cost of publicly scrutinizing the State. More limits are placed around the State as a result of these lower costs of scrutiny. As the agency of violence, the State is feared; a feared agency is likely to be scrutinized more closely by its potential victims. Citizens covenant under God to establish State authority; they monitor the State's activities because of their fear that the State's officers will exceed their lawful boundaries. This is especially true in societies where the State has not become a functional agent of healing. The more acceptable the messianic claims of the State, the less incentive there is for citizens to scrutinize it and limit it. The power to tax is the power to destroy, and the costs of healing must be paid for by higher taxes. The healer State becomes the destroyer State.

Those who look to the State for messianic healing are more likely to scrutinize it: for its failure to heal. Of course their scrutiny will lead to calls for increasing its power, so it can fulfill their selfish desires. Those who do not want a messianic state may question the state less frequently, but they are less likely to support it to begin with. 

This underscores the relative importance of religion and morality in a society, and the relative unimportance of political theories. 

The State is required by God to operate under God-revealed biblical law. This biblical law-order is quite specific. The State must apply sanctions specified by the victims. These sanctions are specific. The State is under judicial limits.(21) It is also governed by written law. These laws are supposed to be understood by citizens, which is why the whole law had to be read to the assembled nation every seventh year (Deut. 31:10-13). Citizens are expected by God to know the boundaries that God has placed around them as individuals and also around the State.

This means that the State's sword is to be used sparingly. It is governed by God's civil law. The State is not authorized by God to impose negative sanctions outside the limits of the law. The law circumscribes the application of the sword. Put another way, the magistrate's use of violence cannot lawfully be extended to areas that have not been authorized by the law, either explicitly or as extensions of a case law or a judicial principle. In short, whatever is not prohibited by law is allowed. This legal principle is derived from God's original command to Adam regarding judicial boundaries placed around a particular tree. Everything else was permitted to Adam; hence, no negative sanctions were threatened in these areas.

There are three general judicial ideals: Trinitarianism, unitarianism, and individualism. The first is covenantal, the second is holistic, and the third is atomistic. Their representative philosophical views are covenantalism, realism, and nominalism. Their representative civil views are theocracy, statism, and anarchism. Their representative economic views are morally bounded capitalism,(22) socialism, and anarcho-capitalism.

Trinitarianism establishes the legitimacy of four judicially circumscribed, oath-bound covenants under God: individual, ecclesiastical, familistic, and civil. Trinitarianism affirms the equal ultimacy of the one and the many: in the Godhead, in history, and in eternity. God is absolutely sovereign; therefore, no single institution is granted final earthly sovereignty.

By establishing limits on the authority of all levels of civil government to tax individuals at a rate equal to or greater than ten percent (the tithe), biblical law prohibits socialism. The State is placed under extreme limits. Socialism -- the government's ownership of, or control over, the means of production -- is an explicitly anti-biblical ideal.

By establishing the civil government as a monopoly institution for imposing vengeance, biblical law prohibits anarchism. The judicial ideal of modern libertarianism is: 1) the lawful imposition of negative sanctions handed down solely by private law courts; 2) the abolition of all compulsory taxation. Anarchism is an explicitly anti-biblical ideal.

In fact, as we have shown, anarchism is commanded by Biblical Law, and "archism" is expressly prohibited.

Unitarianism and a One-State World

Unitarianism is more than a theology; it is a covenantal system. It has political implications. It is possible to identify unitarian thinking as a separate judicial tradition, as a rival of federalism, which is a judicial development of Trinitarianism: the equal ultimacy of the one and the many. In the eighth edition of his famous study, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (1915), the English jurist A. V. Dicey wrote of unitarianism as a legal ideal: "Unitarianism, in short, means the concentration of the strength of the state in the hands of one visible sovereign power, be that power Parliament or Czar. Federalism means the distribution of the force of the state among a number of co-ordinate bodies each originating in and controlled by the constitution."(23) He was also correct when he observed: "Federal government means weak government."(24)

Federalism, Dicey concluded, also means the free market economy. "Federalism, as it defines, and therefore limits, the powers of each department of the administration, is unfavourable to the interference or to the activity of government. Hence a federal government can hardly render services to the nation by undertaking for the national benefit functions which may be performed by individuals. This may be a merit of the federal system; it is, however, a merit which does not commend itself to modern democrats, and no more curious instance can be found of the inconsistent currents of popular opinion which may at the same time pervade a nation or a generation than the coincidence in England of a vague admiration for federalism alongside with a far more decided feeling against the doctrines of so-called laissez faire."(25)

Were we to develop unitarianism to its logical conclusion, we would arrive at the modern (and also very ancient) ideal of the one-State world. A unitary, centralized civil government possessing all political authority would replace local, regional, and national civil governments. Between the citizen and the central government no intervening civil authority would be allowed to intrude. This is not simply the ideal of a one-world State, meaning a central civil government serving as a supreme appeals court and arbiter between rival nations. It is the ideal of a single unitary State that governs all men: a one-State world. It is the judicial ideal that motivated the builders of the tower of Babel (Gen. 11).

The issue between "unitarianism" and "Trinitarianism" is a mere distraction. If theft or murder takes place, if my wealth is taxed and used to shoot my son and wife, it doesn't matter whether this has been committed by an agent of a "unitarian" "one-State world" or a "Trinitarian" "one-world State." It is still evil. "The State" is evil.

Anarcho-Capitalism as Regional Warlordism

There have been very few intellectual defenses of this libertarian judicial position.(26) The practical issues associated with the theoretical ideal of private law courts and private police forces are almost as difficult to resolve as the organizational problems of national defense in a society without a national government -- a nation surrounded by hostile national governments, most of which must be presumed to be capable of a military invasion. These issues are, in fact, the very same covenantal issue. The issue is the identification and limitation of the institutional authority to impose negative sanctions against all those who have transgressed certain publicly identifiable boundaries, i.e., invaders.

It is ironic that Gary North is worried about a state-less America being invaded by enemies abroad, when he wrote the foreword to a book entitled The Best Enemies Money Can Buy, written by Antony Sutton, the Hoover Fellow who proved that the Soviet Union would not have lasted more than a few short years without financial, technological and military aid from the U.S. and other western "anti-communist" nations. 

The tax-funded State not infrequently creates "enemies" to justify increasing its own powers to "protect" our borders.

If no single agency has the monopolistic authority to impose negative sanctions, then society must face this crucial question: How can peace be maintained? The free market is voluntaristic. Its negative sanctions are not physical. They involve such actions as refusing to buy a product or complaining publicly about a poor product. But if there is no agency whatsoever that is authorized by the community as a whole to specify and then identify certain acts as violent or fraudulent, then the violence of mankind is removed from publicly agreed-upon, legally sanctioned boundaries. Acts of aggression by sinful men are thereby removed from all civil restraints through the abolition of civil government.

Why must negative sanctions be "authorized by the community as a whole?" Why cannot a store owner -- A Trinitarian, Christian Reconstructionist store owner -- post a sign on his front door saying, "If you commit the following offences, I will impose negative physical sanctions on you" accompanied by appropriate Scripture references and a photo of three big ugly Italian goons? If nobody likes the store owner's attitude, they won't shop there. 

Acts of aggression can be removed from civil restraints and placed under corporate restraints, i.e., restraints imposed by businesses. Why does North trust politicians more than businessmen?

To defend themselves, individuals must then become defensive warriors and avengers. They will voluntarily contract with other men in defensive alliances. If these contractual alliances are not to become civil governments -- monopolies of violence -- they must not exercise territorial sovereignty. This is another way of saying that they cannot mark out areas of territorial sovereignty: the monopoly authority to include and exclude. They are alliances within a territory, competing with other alliances within the same territory. They lose all covenantal status. There is no means of anointing these alliances or their rulers. There is no civil equivalent of the laying on of hands. There is no way to gain non-coercive agreement from non-participants in the contractual alliance regarding which court or system of courts has lawful jurisdiction over non-participants.

There is presently (under the paradigm of "the State") no way to gain non-coercive agreement from non-participants regarding which system of courts has lawful jurisdiction over non-citizens. This is why defenders of one-world global government decry the present "anarchy of nations." See "Our Humanity vs. Their Sovereignty," New York Times Magazine, by Max Frankel, May 2, 1999 (excerpt here) and "The New Liberal Imperialism." These ideas are not new:

From 1945 through the early 1950s, a series of proposals and resolutions openly calling for world government gained increasing support in Congress. In 1950 a Preliminary Draft of a World Constitution was introduced in Congress by Senator Glen Taylor (D-ID). The submitted World Constitution declared that "iniquity and war inseparably spring from the competitive anarchy of the national states; that therefore the age of nations must end."
William F. Jasper, "A Plague of Power," The New American, Vol. 11, No. 07 April 3, 1995

These contractual alliances could take on the character of insurance companies. They might become arbitration societies. They might become gangs. Whatever their legal structure or market positioning, attached to some of these companies will be police forces. Competitive companies in a world without civil sanctions would have to employ appropriate means to enforce sanctions in order to enforce their decisions. 

If Gary North doesn't like competing arbitration agencies, will he soon turn on competing nation-states and urge a global one-world super-State? If he does, on which Biblical texts will he rely? 

The subtle implication in "Scary Gary's" gloomy anarcho-capitalist scenario is rampant, ubiquitous violence, escalated by depraved capitalists competing for power in a society unbridled by the Bush-Cheney-CFR administration. He wants us to believe that a society which legitimizes vengeance in a monopoly of institutionalized violence with the power to confiscate our wealth experiences less violence than factions of competing institutionalized violence which depend on people like you and me to support them voluntarily for services rendered.

This is clearly "special pleading." In North's world, the State is limited and everyone vigilantly submits. In the anarcho-capitalist world, everyone is depraved and violence is out of control. But if postmillennialism is true, then anarcho-capitalism is also true.

Conservatism as International Warlordism

Warlordism is the ideal for international relations for both the right-wing Enlightenment and right-wing Anabaptism. It assumes that there can never be a way to settle international disputes other than by delay, war, or surrender. The Trinitarian ideal of Christendom -- clearly, an internationalist ideal -- is categorically rejected by both the Enlightenment and Anabaptism. The eighteenth-century's right-wing Enlightenment thinkers denied that there should be a supreme civil court internationally. President Washington's 1796 Farewell Address -- a newspaper article, not a speech -- is the best example of this view of international affairs. Nations are expected to avoid all legal involvement with each other except when they need military help from each other, as in the case of the crucial 1777 French treaty with the English North American colonies. There is no positive ideal of international relations; only a negative one. This outlook is consistent with the right-wing Enlightenment's ideal of autonomous man.

The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political [Washington’s emphasis] connection as possible."
— Washington, Farewell Address (1796)

I deem [one of] the essential principles of our government, and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration,…peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.
— Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (1801) 

Families, businesses, churches, voluntary associations, should all have peaceful international relations based on an obedient faith in Christ and dominion stewardship under God. There is no "Trinitarian" principle of international relations between the administrations of Sam Giancana of Chicago, Santo Trafficante of Tampa, and Carlos Marcello of New Orleans any more than there is a "Trinitarian" principle of international relations between Babylon, Rome and Assyria. All of these empires are to be destroyed, hopefully by the preaching of the Gospel, but by the mighty arm of God if necessary. Political alliances were rightly disdained by Jefferson and Washington, curiously advanced by Gary North.

To the extent that the right-wing Anabaptist tradition has become dominant in Protestant Christianity, there has been an equally strong rejection of the ideal of Christendom, which would include an international system of appeals courts, both civil and ecclesiastical. This outlook parallels the Anabaptists' ideal of the judicially autonomous local congregation.

Why is it the ideal of "Christendom" cannot be a decentralized ideal? What's wrong with Micah's Vine & Fig Tree vision?

Internationally, warlordism is today's world system: the strongest military power gains judicial legitimacy wherever it can extend its will. The territorial warlordism of pre-Communist China, where warlords' domains were separated by dialects, or great rivers, or high mountains, is today replicated internationally. Judicial Trinitarianism is opposed to warlordism, both national and international. But the warlord standard dominates international law.

Because statism is the heresy of this age, men assume that politics is primary. It isn't. Church order is primary. Because Jesus set forth the covenantal ideal of a single worldwide church, there is no escape from the covenantal ideal of a one-world State. Jesus made the ideal of ecclesiastical unity inescapably clear in His prayer of intercession: "That they may all be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me. And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one, even as we are one" (John 17:21-22). Ecclesiastical unity -- a single confession of faith in the Trinitarian God -- is the ideal for eternity; it is also the ideal of history. It is basic to evangelism, Jesus said: "that the world may believe that thou hast sent me."

Why can't Jesus' ideal be fulfilled in a decentralized movement like Promise-Keepers? Why must there be a headquarters in a place like the Vatican? Why must confessional unity come from institutional coercion?

The world has become a warlord society because the church is not institutionally unified by a common legal confession. But it is unified in the sense that the whole church participates in the sacraments of baptism and the Lord's Supper. This covenantal unity cannot be denied in principle; it can only be delayed in history. But if all men are required by God to have a unified confession of faith in order to gain lawful access to God's judicially unified sacraments, then the ideal of a one-world legal order, and therefore also a one-world State, is a corollary. The civil magistrate is also a minister of God (Rom. 13:4).

Because the modern church has rejected postmillennial eschatology, its spokesmen cannot conceive of a confessionally unified international church. They are therefore unable to imagine a confessionally unified international world government. They cannot imagine unity and diversity in one international social order. They have rejected social Trinitarianism.

What kind of "diversity" does a one-world church or one-world state permit?

Vine & Fig Tree is a decentralized postmillennialism, with confessional unity and institutional diversity. 

Without a monopoly agency to impose justice, the differing concepts of justice, coupled with unjust, violent people, would produce a warlord society. Fallen mankind's war of all against all would develop into a series of shifting alliances and conflicts among those individuals who command the most powerful private police forces. No single legal order would dominate a territory.

This is why the Bible is incompatible with all forms of anarchism. The Bible specifies a single legal order as the ideal standard for the whole world. This means that there must be an agency that lawfully possesses a monopoly of violence, biblically speaking. The alternative is the warlord society in which a voluntary alliance may gain temporary power to impose its legal order in a particular territory. It cannot attain legitimacy as the enforcing agent of a single, unified legal order without becoming a civil government.

This does not mean that there is no right of rebellion against tyrants. Biblical law demands a hierarchy of judges (Ex. 18). Lower magistrates have legitimate authority, and they can lawfully lead a rebellion against tyranny, as the case of Jeroboam's God-authorized revolt against Rehoboam's high taxes indicates (I Kings 12). Jeroboam served as God's anointed agent of bringing negative sanctions against the central government's tyranny. What the Bible sets forth as an ideal is a one-world State, but not a one-State world. A one-State world is an illegitimate unitarian ideal and an eschatologically impossible goal. The fifth and final kingdom (Dan. 2:35) is Christ's; no other will ever appear.(27) The Bible requires civil governments at the local, regional, and international level. It specifies a chain of civil appeals courts, each operating in terms of biblical law, and each subject to reversal by a higher civil court. But a supreme civil court indicates a single State: a civil chain of command under a single legal standard, the Bible.

Can all refrigerator manufacturers be Christian? Can they exist under a single legal standard, the Bible? Then why cannot all arbitration agencies exist under a single legal standard, the Bible. Why cannot all defense and security agencies be under a single legal standard, the Bible? Which of the functions of civil government cannot be under a single legal standard, the Bible, and still be decentralized, like refrigerator manufacturers? Why must there be a monopoly?

The movement of history is toward a one-world civil government, either humanist or Christian. This parallels the movement of culture either toward humanism's "global village" or Christendom. It moves toward either a top-down command system or a bottom-up appeals court system. But one thing is sure: it is not moving toward a system of justice based on competing legal orders, despite the flare-ups of tribalism and regionalism as humanism breaks down and messianic religions gain new authority. As the gospel spreads, these rival religions will be replaced. There will be winners and losers in the competition for men's covenantal allegiance, but there will not be any illusion or assertion of judicial neutrality as time goes on. Neutrality is a humanist myth, not a biblical principle. There is no neutrality; hence, a one-world State (but not a one-State world) is a biblical ideal.(28) There can be no authority apart from hierarchy.(29) But Exodus 18 makes it clear that this civil government has layers, each with legitimate authority.

There are several layers of civil government, and in modern Western jurisprudence, several branches within each layer: legislative, executive, and judicial. The delegation of God's unified judicial authority to mankind is always marked by a division of powers, sometimes described as a system of checks and balances.

The existence of a civil covenant, marked by a self-maledictory oath of allegiance, is proof that anarchism is not a biblical ideal. Civil government is a separate jurisdiction from the free market, which is an extension of family government. The State has the God-given authority to settle disputes by force of arms. The free market does not. To argue that it does is to adopt judicial warlordism.(31) While there can be lawful private arbitration organizations, they do not possess the covenantal authority to impose the sword, that is, the right to declare guilt and impose mandatory penal sanctions. On the other hand, the existence of multiple levels of civil authority (Ex. 18) is proof that judicial centralism is not a biblical ideal. The biblical system of civil government is Trinitarian, not unitarian or atomistic.

Is Gary North asserting that non-Trinitarians can never believe in appeals courts? Is he asserting that arbitration agencies cannot form appeals courts, or that businesses cannot agree in advance to submit disputes to an Arbitration Agency A and then to an Appeals Agency B if Agency A cannot resolve the dispute?

There are two theoretical alternatives to social Trinitarianism: social unitarianism and judicial warlordism. The confessional unitarians -- which include Orthodox Jews and orthodox Muslims -- deny the doctrine of the Trinity. Unitarianism does not affirm the equal ultimacy of the one and the many. It affirms the ultimacy of the one. A consistent application of this view of God leads to the ideal of a top-down centralized State.(32) God mandated the tribal land ownership system for Mosaic Israel in order to restrain the development of a unitary State, for Israel's confession was, on the surface, unitarian: "Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD" (Deut. 6:4). Social unitarianism rejects the ideal of a decentralized theocratic order that is unified by a common confession, where the power to tax the individual directly is exclusively local,(33) and the jury system is also local.

So given the number of unitarians who worked against a top-down centralized state and placed checks and balances and courts of appeals in the Constitution, we would have to say they were all unorthodox unitarians? Perhaps postmillennialism will make Anarcho-Theocracy succeed by making all unitarians unorthodox.

Judicial warlordism, in contrast, rejects the ideal of a central civil government. It offers a theory of truncated courts: no lawful court of appeal above the person of the warlord unless the warlord consents to it. In judicial warlordism, there is only temporary power for imposing order in the case of disputes; there is no legitimate central authority. One form of theoretical warlordism (anarcho-capitalism) ends the appeals system with the most militarily powerful individual or with the court of the most powerful private police force in a system of private, competing courts. In the version of truncated courts known as nationalism, appeals end with a national civil court. Both of these truncated judicial systems are associated with the right-wing Enlightenment model. These are polytheistic judicial models: many laws, many gods. Rushdoony writes: "The premise of polytheism is that we live in a multiverse, not a universe, that a variety of law-orders and hence lords exist, and that man cannot therefore be under one law except by virtue of imperialism."(34)

Biblical law, being universal in scope, is not polytheistic. It is also not imperialistic. The top-down judicial order of imperialism is Satan's perverse imitation of God's kingdom. Both systems are comprehensive in their claims, but they are structured differently. God's kingdom is a bottom-up system of appeals courts based on binding covenantal oaths. But the biblical system of appeals courts cannot be limited, for the universalism of God's mandatory covenantal oaths cannot be limited. There is no zone of neutrality, no place of refuge outside the jurisdiction of God.

Judicial Trinitarianism proposes the ideal of Christendom. Because it envisions the extension of God's universal kingdom in history, it affirms a confessionally unified pair of appeals systems -- ecclesiastical and civil -- that transcends national borders. Judicial Trinitarianism is necessarily internationalist because the kingdom of God transcends political borders.(35) Modern Christianity, being antinomian, rejects the ideal of this international kingdom. The churches deny the possibility of internationalism because they deny the universality of God's law. Modern Christianity is politically polytheistic.(36) Rushdoony is correct: "To hold, as the churches do, Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Lutheran, Calvinist, and all others virtually, that the law was good for Israel, but that Christians and the church are under grace without law, or under some higher, newer law, is implicit polytheism."(37) This antinomian outlook turns over judicial authority to polytheistic humanist kingdoms as surely as the pacifism of the Mennonite sects causes them to turn over the law-making power, police power, and military authority to others. Thus, modern Christians hail as biblically valid the truncated court systems of modern nationalism. They reject the ideal of Christendom on two accounts: its commitment to universal Christian legal standards and its denial of humanistic nationalism as anything more than a temporary stopgap measure analogous to the scattering at the Tower of Babel. They do not regard Babel's scattering as God's curse on covenant-breakers' confession of autonomy: to make themselves a name. Rather, they see judicial Babel as inherent in the human condition, even if all men were to covenant with God.

Pacifism does not "turn over" institutionalized violence to anyone. It denies the moral legitimacy of such violence. Pacifists do not support institutionalized violence, do not vote for institutionalized violence, and would not patronize businesses that advertise the sale of violence in a Free Market. If postmillennialism is true, and pacifism is Biblical, then postmillennialism implies Anarcho-Theocracy.

If Menonites "turn over" violence to others, then God promises to destroy those who receive that violence and employ it, leaving Menonites to rule the world and live peacefully and securely under their Vine & Fig Tree. 

Nevertheless, the creation of such a supreme judicial civil court must not precede the creation of a supreme ecclesiastical court. The church is the model for the State, not the State for the church. The church continues into eternity; the State does not (Rev. 21; 22). No agency will then be needed to impose civil sanctions: no sin! Conclusion: to begin to create a supreme civil world court before creating the covenantal foundation of a free world society -- Christendom -- is to attempt the creation of a secular one-world order. It represents a return to Babel.

The inherently international ideal of Christendom is denied by right-wing judicial Anabaptists, but they cannot escape the theoretical problem of social order. Traditionally, they have appealed to civil judicial neutrality -- the ideal of either Stoic or Newtonian natural law -- in their attempts to deny the ideal of Christendom. They become like the Amish, the archetypal right-wing Anabaptists: trapped in the humanists' judicial order as it moves toward either the one-State world or judicial warlordism. To put it in terms familiar to those living in the 1990's, they find themselves moving toward either the humanists' New World Order or Balkanization.

Vengeance is God's, but He delegates limited authority to the civil government to impose negative sanctions against law-breakers. The Bible establishes a judicial ideal: the supply of vengeance must be placed under the restraint of Bible-revealed law. This is accomplished biblically by making the State the sole lawful supplier.(38) In the case of negative physical sanctions, except for parental punishing of children, the State is to be the sole supplier of the service.(39)

Biblical law establishes a monopoly of vengeance. The economic function of a monopoly is to reduce the quantity of output of some good or service. The "service" in this case is potentially negative for society: vengeance. There is some socially optimum quantity of this service, but because of the tendency toward autonomy and lawlessness among men, the unrestrained free market would create an oversupply.

The State is required by God to protect private property. The State must honor God-established property rights, i.e., legal immunities -- boundaries -- against invasion. Stewards over property are to have their rights protected by threat of violence by the State against invaders. Property rights are human rights.

Somebody takes my property. I VOTE for "the State" (a monopoly) to apply negative sanctions to the thief. This is good, says North. 

By limiting the number of authorized agents of vengeance, society limits the spread of violence. This also places the State under public scrutiny. The more limited the State, the less it has to be scrutinized.

The State establishes a hierarchical system of appeals courts (Ex. 18). This system parallels the ecclesiastical court of appeals. The church is the model for society, not the State. When the church rejects the covenantal ideal of an international, hierarchical system of appeals courts, both ecclesiastical and civil, it necessarily adopts a rival judicial model: tribalism, regionalism, or nationalism. The biblical goal is world government under God's law, fort both church and State. But until the church establishes this in practice, the quest for world civil government under common world law is messianic and a threat to freedom. There must be a common confession among men before there can be a lawful appeals court, and only one confession is valid: Trinitarianism.

Summary

The State cannot lawfully seek to judge the human heart or mind apart from visible, measurable evidence.

Holding a grudge is not a crime.

The State cannot lawfully seek to make people love each other.

Personal acts of vengeance -- assault, battery, theft, murder -- are crimes.

The focus of this civil law is therefore personal: acts of personal vengeance.

The State holds a lawful monopoly of vengeance.

Civil vengeance must be preceded by a public declaration of guilt.

The imputation of guilt is always a covenantal act.

The State is to create boundaries around violence.

The State imposes negative sanctions that penalize those who violate these boundaries.

The State is not a valid source of positive sanctions, for these impose negative sanctions on those who must pay.

The State is supposed to create legal immunities -- boundaries -- around private property.

This protects those who own property, i.e., have the right to include and exclude within a boundary.

Property rights are human rights.

Property rights are not absolute; priestly rights overlap.

Individuals do have the right to use force to defend themselves and their families within certain boundaries, legal and physical (home).

This is not vengeance; it is an act of boundary defense.

The one seeming exception in Mosaic Israel was the kinsman-redeemer: a civil officer of the tribe.

By monopolizing violence, the State restricts its supply and channels it.

The State is feared and therefore is monitored by those under whose sovereignty it has been created: citizens.

Whatever is not prohibited by civil law is allowed by civil law.

The three judicial ideals are Trinitarianism, unitarianism, and individualism.

Trinitarianism denies final sovereignty in history to any institution.

Unitarianism favors the creation of a one-State world.

Individualism favors a world of exclusively private courts.

Individualism leads to warlordism: regional (anarchism) and international (conservatism).

The Trinitarian ideal is internationalist: one God, one kingdom, one law-order, but multiple covenantal authorities.

Private contracts are not sufficient to resolve all disputes: no lawfully enforceable sanctions.

The church is the model for unity, not the State.

The quest for world civil government prior to world ecclesiastical government is premature and illegitimate.

The quest for world ecclesiastical government is a judicial imperative (John 17:21-23).

Footnotes:

1. This is why all polygraph or "lie detector" exams must be submitted to voluntarily. A civil court cannot lawfully use the results of a compulsory lie detector examination as evidence against an individual, nor may any civil court use a person's refusal to submit to such a test as evidence against him. The same principle applies to the use of hypnotism.

2. The family is not an agency of vengeance. It is an agency of justice only within the boundaries of a covenanted household.

3. Ray R. Sutton, That You May Prosper: Dominion By Covenant (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1987), ch. 12. Second edition: 1992.

4. The major exception seems to be highways. In the Mosaic Covenant, a few highways were compulsory as physical avenues to justice for those guilty of accidental manslaughter (Deut. 19:3). There were no doubt positive economic side-effects of these roads, but their function was judicial, not economic. With the New Covenant's annulment of the law of the kinsman-redeemer, State-financed highways can be defended biblically only by implication: the provision of less expensive access to legal centers.

State-funded roadways have negative effects as well as positive. What is virtually never discussed publicly is the major economic reason why there is such pollution-creating urbanization today: the existence of huge, taxpayer-financed highway systems leading into cities and criss-crossing through cities. The largest of these highways are called "freeways" in California. They are not free.

5. This is why the office of kinsman-redeemer must have been a civil office. See the subsection below: "The Kinsman-Redeemer."

6. Jean Sigmann, 1848: The Romantic and Democratic Revolutions in Europe (New York: Harper & Row, 1979); Frank Eyck (ed.), The Revolutions of 1848-49 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1972).

7. Frédéric Bastiat, "The State" (Sept. 25, 1848), in Bastiat, Selected Essays on Political Economy, edited by George B. de Huszar (Princeton, New Jersey: Van Nostrand, 1964), p. 146. This book has been reprinted by the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, New York.

8. James L. Payne, The Culture of Spending: Why Congress Lives Beyond Our Means (San Francisco: ICS Press, 1991), p. 51.

9. R. J. Rushdoony, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Nutley, New Jersey: Craig Press, 1973), p. 504.

10. Gary North, Trespassing for Dear Life: What About Operation Rescue? (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1989).

11. It can print fiat money, which is a form of taxation: compulsory wealth redistribution from those who gain access to the fiat money before prices rise, from those who gain access to money later in the process. The State can also borrow, but this only transfers wealth from lenders to the State. The State can gain access to credit only by promising to repay the lenders. This means that it must impose taxes (including the inflation tax) later.

12. This means that neither the church nor the State can lawfully tax capital, meaning property. This also means that the State cannot lawfully tax church property. Property, biblically speaking, is tax-immune -- not just the church's, but all wealth-producing assets. The fruit may be taxed, not the tree.

13. This is not a denial of the State's legitimate role in public health: defense against contagious diseases. See Chapter 14, footnote 37.

14. How can the church be an agency of healing if its only God-mandated income is the tithe? Isn't its dependent condition analogous to the State's dependence on taxes? Doesn't the church also have only two hands: a gentle one and a rough one? This analysis overlooks the positive aspect of the church's covenantal sanctions: the sacraments. Only the church can lawfully confer the sacraments on its members. In contrast, the State is not a means of special grace. It is an agency that administers common grace only to the extent that it confines itself to punishing evil acts.

15. The passage that establishes this requirement is Deuteronomy 21:1-9, which requires a special sacrifice when a body is found outside a city, and the elders cannot discover who committed the crime.

16. In common law, this authority to decide to hold a trial belongs to the grand jury, which hands down an indictment. Then the trial is held.

17. This is the Second Amendment of the Constitution: part of the original Bill of Rights. More than any other Constitutional guarantee, this one is under assault by the State in late-twentieth-century America. It was imposed on the Federal government in the 1790's because citizens had achieved parity of weaponry with the State. They were determined to keep this parity, which they recognized as the means of enforcing boundaries on the State. Parity in weaponry was the technical basis of the advent of modern democracy. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 34-35. Quigley was an expert in the history of warfare and weaponry and their relation to politics.

18. Some legal codes authorize people to pursue a criminal who is fleeing from the scene of a crime. This is the doctrine of citizen's arrest. Civil government may lawfully authorize such a practice. This law in effect makes the citizen a deputy of the State. If the suspect is injured by the citizen-arrester under such circumstances, the citizen would be at legal risk if the suspect is not subsequently convicted for the crime in question.

19. The New Covenant annulled the office of earthly high priest, which was central to the office of kinsman-redeemer (Num. 35:28). The New Testament therefore annulled the family as an agency empowered by the State to bring this negative physical sanction. It also annulled the geographical monopoly of certain tribes over specified regions in Israel. The laws governing the blood-avenger/kinsman-redeemer are no longer in force. This includes the laws of the levirate marriage (Deut. 25:5-10).

20. His vehicle may be similarly marked. Drivers of State-authorized vehicles alone have the right to use flashing red lights and sirens.

21. Gary North, Tools of Dominion: The Case Laws of Exodus (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1990), ch. 7.

22. Free exchange and free pricing of anything except morally prohibited acts or commodities, e.g., prostitution, pornography, and the use of addictive drugs in quantities that distort perception enough to produce actions that endanger the individual's life or the lives of those around him.

23. A. V. Dicey, Introduction to the Study of the Law of the Constitution (8th ed.; Indianapolis, Indiana: LibertyClassics, [1915] 1982), p. 87.

24. Ibid., p. 97.

25. Ibid., pp. 98-99.

26. The most detailed exposition is Bruce L. Benson, The Enterprise of Law: Justice Without the State (San Francisco: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, 1990).

27. This is why any prophecy of a future one-State world, or a future one-world humanist State, is a false prophecy.

28. Gary North, Healer of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for International Relations (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987), ch. 3.

29. Even the equality of being within the three persons of the Trinity is qualified by the theological doctrine of the economical Trinity: hierarchy with respect to function.

30. Gary DeMar, Ruler of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for Government (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).

31. To argue that no one has the right to impose physical sanctions is to adopt utopian pacifism. It is to reject the idea of God's negative sanctions in history through representative agents. If actually legislated, pacifism would lead to tyranny by Satan's representatives in history: evildoers (Rom. 13:1-7).

Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! Every member would be obliged in conscience, to temperance, frugality, and industry; to justice, kindness, and charity towards his fellow men; and to piety, love, and reverence toward Almighty God... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.
John Adams (1735-1826), (L.H. Butterfield, ed., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard Press, 1961), Vol. III, p. 9. [February 22, 1756]

First let's purge the world of the idea that God affirmatively wants there to be a centralized cadre of men who have the monopolistic right to use violence to confiscate wealth and take vengeance on their enemies, and in any other way to overcome their frustrations. Then we purge the world of the idea that schools should never teach children that God says not to kill and not to steal. Then we'll see how "utopian pacifism" (the Free Market) (God, actually)protects the world against tyranny by Satan's representatives. 

32. This may be why Jews continually embrace the State, to their long-term disadvantage. On this political tradition, see Benjamin Ginsberg, The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State (University of Chicago Press, 1993). While there are a few free market economists who are also Orthodox Jews, they generally do their technical economic analyses as secular economists, not as Orthodox Jews.

33. The Articles of Confederation (1781-1788) served as the national constitution of the United States. It restricted tax collection by the national government to assessments made on the states, with the state legislatures actually collecting these taxes (Article VIII).

34. Rushdoony, Institutes, p. 17.

35. Gary North, Healer of the Nations: Biblical Blueprints for International Relations (Ft. Worth, Texas: Dominion Press, 1987).

36. Gary North, Political Polytheism: The Myth of Pluralism (Tyler, Texas: Institute for Christian Economics, 1989).

37. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law, p. 18.

38. In the Old Testament, the kinsman-redeemer was lawfully authorized to act as the State's agent.

39. Personal self-defense should be interpreted as an act of State. The State delegates to the individual the authority to impose this sanction in unique circumstances. It is analogous to "citizen's arrest."

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