ZØë EYES

Review of David Van Drunen, A Biblical Case for Natural Law

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 15:22:35 -0500

By John M. Frame

Natural law as a concept in ethics goes back to ancient Greek philosophy, particularly Aristotelian and Stoic. These philosophers believed that there are natural laws, moral principles that can be discovered in nature (particularly human nature) by reason and conscience. Of course, Aristotle and the Stoics were not concerned about the role of Scripture in ethics. But early, medieval, and Reformation Christians, seeking to integrate Greek philosophy with the Bible, asked how natural law and Scripture are related in our ethical decisions. The problem became especially pointed in Protestant theology, which argued not only for the authority of Scripture, but also for the sufficiency of Scripture, or sola scriptura. If Scripture is sufficient for human life (indeed sufficient for God’s own glory[1]), what place remains for natural law?

Van Drunen in this book asks, what does the Bible say about natural law? He assumes the authority of Scripture and seeks to ascertain whether Scripture affirms natural law and what Scripture says about it. Strangely, however, I couldn’t find any discussion in the book of the important question of the sufficiency of Scripture. So far as I can tell, the only reference to sola scriptura in the volume is in the Introduction by Stephen Grabill, who says that the doctrine has been “badly caricatured” (ii). Neither Grabill nor Van Drunen indicates how the doctrine has been caricatured, or how it should be properly understood. This is odd, since Grabill begins by citing negatively the common argument that “sola scriptura and the Roman Catholic teaching on natural law are fundamentally opposed” (i). One would think that at the very least this book would attempt to show how those two doctrines should not be opposed, which is evidently Van Drunen’s view. But so far as I can tell, the book does not do that in any clear way. Van Drunen does discuss biblical examples affirming natural law and incorporating natural law into biblical theology. But these discussions, as we shall see, aggravate the problem rather than resolving it.

Some readers will be surprised to learn that I accept Van Drunen’s argument for the existence of natural law. Our disagreements concern the relation of natural law to Scripture, the two-kingdoms doctrine, and the function of natural law within a biblical ethical epistemology.

Much of Van Drunen’s book is taken up, not with natural law as such, but with the “two kingdoms” view of Christ and culture, which Van Drunen advocates. He thinks that the functions of natural law can be best described within that scheme. I think the two kingdoms doctrine is the weakest part of the book. But I shall discuss that later in the review. For now, I will begin where Van Drunen does.

Natural Law and God’s Image

In the Introduction, Van Drunen defines natural law as

the moral order inscribed in the world and especially in human nature, an order that is known to all people through their natural faculties (especially reason and/or conscience) even apart from supernatural divine revelation that binds morally the whole human race. (1)[2]

“Apart from” is a vague expression. I would reject it if Van Drunen had said that natural law can be rightly used apart from Scripture. But I agree that natural law can be known apart from Scripture. According to Rom. 1 natural law[3] is known by people who do not have access to supernatural revelation.

In Chapter 2, Van Drunen expounds the biblical teaching that God is a righteous king and that human beings, made in God’s image, reflect God’s righteousness. We too are kings (Gen. 1:26), and so we are created with a moral character (Eph. 4:24, Col. 3:10). Van Drunen jumps too quickly, however, from this premise to the conclusion that we have a natural law within ourselves. He says:

Thus, human nature at the beginning was one of righteousness and holiness, of knowledge of God and himself, of a moral commission to rule over creation in a way imitating God’s rule. The image of God carried along with it a natural law, a law inherent to human nature and directing human beings to fulfill their royal commission in righteousness and holiness. (14)

If this means that the image of God in Adam motivated him toward righteousness and holiness, I have no difficulty. But if it means that this image instructed Adam as to what God wanted him to do, I think more argument is needed. And the reference to “natural law” is legitimate only on the second alternative.

In Gen. 1-3, it is clear that Adam’s moral character was not sufficient to tell him God’s will. Adam received direction from supernatural divine words directed to him, telling him his general responsibility to fill and subdue the earth (Gen. 1:28), indicating the sources of his food (verses 29-30), forbidding him to take the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:16-17), convicting him and Eve of sin following the fall (3:9-13) and pronouncing curses, mixed with blessings (3:14-19). In the following narratives, there is a regular pattern of divine words and human responses (in obedience or disobedience).

This is not to deny that human beings gain some knowledge from their created nature. I would not claim that all of Adam’s moral knowledge came from outside himself. For example, God told Adam to be fruitful and multiply. Gen. 1:28 may abbreviate what God actually said to him. But I doubt that God gave him an encyclopedic account of the mechanism of human reproduction. There were certain things that Adam just knew, knowledge that God had created within him and/or enabled him to find out on his own. Similarly, when God commanded Adam to abstain from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Adam presumably understood what tree God was talking about, the difference between fruit and leaves, and what actions constituted “eating.” Adam knew, in other words, how to apply God’s commands to his own specific decisions. At that specific level, his conscience informed him of what acts were righteous or unrighteous.

And certainly Adam understood his own status as the image of God and the dignity connected with it. He understood from the beginning that other human beings should be treated with honor.

My problem, therefore, is not with Van Drunen’s assertion that the human conscience provides us with moral knowledge. It is rather with Van Drunen’s omission of any significant role for God’s supernatural commands informing his conscience.[4] God designed us to gain moral knowledge, not by either supernatural or natural revelation alone, but by an organic combination of the two, in which by reason and conscience we apply God’s supernatural revelation to our lives. Van Drunen entirely ignores the dialogue between God’s speech and man’s response that serves as the essential framework of the biblical story.

Natural Law and the Fall

On page 14, Van Drunen begins to discuss the Fall of Adam and its effects on human moral knowledge. He rightly notes that according to Rom. 1 people suppress their natural knowledge of morality and thus “turn their natural knowledge of moral excellence into vile degeneracy” (15). What can stop this course of corruption? Van Drunen here refers to “the absolute necessity of special, biblical revelation for knowing the way of salvation from sin offered in Christ…”

But he also insists that despite this distortion of our ethical knowledge, natural law still has a legitimate role to play. He seeks to show “that natural law continues to exist in the fallen world; that man still knows it, though in a corrupted fashion; and that it continues to have positive usefulness today” (16). I agree for the most part with his argument here.[5] I agree that fallen people, according to Rom. 1, continue to bear God’s image and that they continue to know the natural law, which removes all excuses for sin (17). And I liked Van Drunen’s argument for the traditional interpretation of Rom. 2:14-15, that it speaks of the continuance of natural law in the hearts of Gentiles, rather than of saving grace in the hearts of Gentile Christians (18-22). The second interpretation is the choice of a number of modern interpreters, but I think Van Drunen is right.

But I think it remarkable that Van Drunen says nothing more in the book about the unbeliever’s suppression of the truth. Certainly that complicates the role of natural law in providing moral knowledge to human beings. If there is a natural law, but man completely suppresses it, then it does not serve as a guide at all. Evidently the suppression is not absolute, because the passage says that natural law serves as an adequate means of removing excuses. So there is a dynamic relation between true understanding and suppression of that truth. To understand the unbeliever’s moral conscience, we must understand not only his exposure to natural law, but also the paradox of his recognizing it while rebelling against it. Van Drunen seems to be entirely unaware of this complication.

Natural Law and the Secular Kingdom

My disagreements with the book become more severe in Chapter 3, “Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms Doctrine.” Van Drunen’s basic position is that natural law is God’s law for “civil” matters, and supernatural revelation is his law for “spiritual” matters. This position, in my judgment, is simply wrong.

Van Drunen’s formulation distinguishes the “civil” kingdom from the “spiritual” kingdom. The civil kingdom

…pertains to temporal, earthly, provisional matters, not matters of ultimate and spiritual importance. For Calvin…, the civil kingdom included matters of politics, law, and cultural life more generally. The ends of the civil kingdom were not salvation and eternal life but a relatively just, peaceful, and orderly existence in the present world in which Christians live as pilgrims away from their heavenly homeland. (24)

The spiritual kingdom

…is also ruled by God, but he rules it not only as creator and sustainer, but also as its redeemer in Christ. This kingdom pertains to things that are of ultimate and spiritual importance…Insofar as this spiritual kingdom has earthly existence, Calvin believed it must be found in the church and not in the state or other temporal institutions. (24)

Van Drunen says,

Although necessarily existing together and having some mutual interaction in this world, these two kingdoms enjoy a great measure of independence so that each can pursue the unique work entrusted to it. (24)

Van Drunen finds this doctrine in some of the church fathers, medieval theologians, Luther and Calvin. The attribution of a two kingdoms doctrine to Calvin is controversial, but I shall not enter the debate here.[6] My purpose is to focus on Van Drunen’s exegetical argument.

The distinction Van Drunen tries to make between “religious” and “civil” (let’s just say “secular”) is problematic on many levels, though many have made this distinction an important feature of their theology. Those who reject biblical inerrancy have often argued that the Bible is authoritative in religious, but not secular matters. The same argument has been made with regard to the sufficiency of Scripture.[7] Others have made a large effort to distinguish in worship between “religious” and “secular” aspects.[8]

But plainly this distinction is a theological construction. The Bible itself never enunciates it. And outside Scripture, the definition of “religion” is somewhat ambiguous. Let us consider some possible uses of the term.[9] The term can refer to truths about God, as when people distinguish the religious from the secular content of the Bible. This usage can be broad or narrow:

(1) Broadly, “religious” may refer to the sphere in which God is at work. But that sphere is universal. Let us keep in mind that God’s lordship over the universe is comprehensive. It is not over one area as opposed to another. Everything is what it is because of its relation to God. So God is sovereign over everything that happens in the world, since he has created all things and “works all things according to his will” (Eph. 1:11). Not only does God forgive human sin, but he directs the course of nature, counts the hairs on our heads, sees the sparrow fall. Heaven is his throne, the earth his footstool (Isa. 66:1).

(2) A narrower understanding of God’s “religious” activities identifies religion with what God does to restore fallen people to fellowship with him. This seems to be what Van Drunen identifies as the religious “realm.”[10] But that sphere, too, is universal. God’s choice of people for salvation begins before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:3-6). And Rom. 8:28 says that “for those who love God all things work together for good.” Salvation is a cosmic event (Rom. 8:19-23, Col. 1:15-20) in which God deals, not only with sin, with Satan, with the evil angels, and with the curse on creation brought about by sin. To be sure, not all people are saved. But everything that happens in nature and history is part of the story of salvation.

(3) “Religion” can also refer to a set of human duties. Broadly, the term can refer to our fundamental obligation to glorify God. But that too is universal. God’s command in Gen. 1:28 is relevant to all of human life. Whether we eat or drink or whatever we do, we should be doing it to the glory of God (1 Cor. 10:31). This broad understanding of human religion corresponds to the universal extent of God’s sovereignty I discussed under (1).

(4) When Van Drunen speaks of human religious duties, he takes them more narrowly than (3). Corresponding somewhat to (2), he takes the term as referring to a certain class of human duties, namely those arising out of our redemption from sin. These would include, I presume, repentance, faith, taking the sacraments, participation in the church, obeying the Great Commission, etc. In Van Drunen’s view, these duties are “religious” as opposed to the duties connected with politics, the arts, science, or general culture. He seems to think these religious duties are only for Christians. But in fact these obligations are universal as well. All people at all times are obligated to believe in Christ and to trust his provision for sin. All people are obligated, therefore, to be Christians. Therefore they are obligated to receive the sacraments, to worship, and to make disciples of all nations. That includes living according to biblical morality. So even on this attempt to define “religion” narrowly, it is impossible to make it less than a universal obligation, or to distinguish some area of human obligation that is not religious. Everyone is obligated to believe in Christ and to love as he loved us (John 13:34-35).

Further, it is evident from Scripture that “religious” issues, even in sense (4), intrude into politics and culture. Evil rulers are people who idolize the state, who build cities to their own glory and not to God’s (Gen. 11:4). The evil cities of Sodom, Gomorrah, Tyre, Sidon, Capernaum and Bethsaida are those that refuse to worship the true God and honor his law.

If that is true, then it is impossible to define a “realm” that is exclusively religious or nonreligious. There is one realm, the creation, the realm in which God works all things according to his sovereign will and demands that we serve him in all aspects of our lives.

But let us listen to Van Drunen’s attempt to define a secular realm:

Fundamental to this [two kingdoms--JF] doctrine is that fact that while God, in the progress of redemptive history, would choose out of the world a people of his very own, he has also preserved a common, cultural realm in which those who love him and those who do not must live and work together. It is this common realm, consisting of both believers and unbelievers, that constitutes the civil kingdom. (26)

I agree that God intends for believers and unbelievers to live and work together on the earth until the final judgment. And since unbelievers have no part in the church or the people of God, the area in which believers and unbelievers work together is distinct from the church. God enables this common effort to take place by his “common” or non-saving grace. But Scripture never calls this common area a realm or kingdom, as Van Drunen’s two kingdom view does.

The “area of common grace” exists because part of the human race, after the Fall, refused God’s offer of redemptive grace in Gen. 3:15. After Cain killed his brother Abel, he “went away from the presence of the Lord” (4:16) and created a civilization in his own honor, a city named after his own son (Gen. 4:17). The people in this society fell deeper and deeper into sin (Gen. 4-6). God’s end-verdict was,

…the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. (Gen. 6:5)

The existence of a Cainite society, separate from the people of God (4:26) was an evil. Van Drunen, by calling this society a “realm,” intends to confer some sort of legitimacy on it. But the development of societies in opposition to God is, according to Scripture, profoundly illegitimate.

This is not to say that everything in Cainite culture was bad. God authorized protection of Cain following his murder of Abel (4:15), and that was a good thing. Music (4:21) and metalworking (4:22) are certainly good activities. But these activities should have been done to the glory of God, within the family of God.

Clearly it is wrong to say that God authorizes or approves the development of culture antagonistic to him, or even culture that claims neutrality. There is no neutrality, as Cornelius Van Til constantly emphasized. Everything we do is either for the glory of God or it is not (1 Cor. 10:31). It either comes from the wisdom of God or the wisdom of the world, and these are antagonistic to one another (1 Cor. 1:20-21). Unbelieving culture exists, and it exists by God’s decree and permission, but not by his precept. He does not approve it.

Van Drunen never considers this sort of argument, and this omission greatly weakens his case for the two kingdoms view. He seems to think that natural law is sufficient to generate societies of sweet reasonableness and peace. Scripture’s view is very different.

God’s Covenant with Noah

But we should follow his argument further. He says that the civil realm receives its institutional foundation, in effect, in God’s covenant with Noah (following the flood) in Genesis 9. Van Drunen understands this covenant to be a “covenant of common grace” (27). That is, the covenant is made with the whole human race, indeed every creature, “whether devout or not.” He adds,

Furthermore, Genesis 9 makes it evident that the covenant of common grace regulates temporal, cultural affairs rather than more narrowly religious affairs pertaining to salvation from sin. (27-28)

He concludes,

God has established the civil kingdom in the sinful world, a common realm constituted of all people, whatever their religious commitment, in which temporal affairs of justice, procreation, and cultural development are regulated. These affairs are a common enterprise. (28)

In my view, Van Drunen’s treatment of Gen. 9 (based to be sure on that of Meredith G. Kline) reads far too much into the passage. God’s covenant here is, to be sure, a covenant with all human beings. But at the time, “all human beings” consisted of one family, a believing family, who had embraced God’s promise of deliverance through the ark. There is no specific reference in the passage to unbelievers, or to a secular state, or to “temporal affairs,” or to some system of social organization beyond the family.

Noah’s family was a godly family, every bit as much as was Abraham’s later on. The blessing of preservation given to Noah’s family is a gracious promise, which they received by faith. In Chapter 8:20-22 Noah offers a sacrifice to God, and God’s promise to preserve the earth is a response to the sweet aroma. Was this sacrificial ritual anything other than religious?

Indeed, God’s covenant with Noah is religious through and through, even on the narrowest definitions of “religion.” In the New Testament, the flood is a type of God’s final judgment on sin (Matt. 24:37-39, Heb. 11:7, 1 Pet. 3:20, 2 Pet. 2:5, 3:5-6), and also of the baptism of believers (1 Pet. 3:21). Noah is for us a model of saving faith. By constructing an ark, “he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith” (Heb 11:7). God’s promise to Noah is an encouragement to believers that the apparent delay of Jesus’ return is part of God’s redemptive plan (2 Pet. 3:4-13).

No doubt that as time progresses the promise also benefits nonbelievers. In that sense it is common grace. For that matter, all of God’s covenants bring blessing to the world in general. Believers are the salt of the earth and the light of the world (Matt. 5:13-16). God’s bringing the elect to repentance delays the judgment on the wicked and thereby benefits them (2 Pet. 3:9).

But God’s covenant with Noah is an administration of God’s redemptive grace, religious through and through, just as those with Abraham, Moses, David, and Christ.

God’s Covenant with Abraham

As we have seen, Van Drunen regards God’s covenant with Noah as a covenant of common grace, dealing only with secular or “civil” matters, not spiritual ones. I have tried to show this is an erroneous way of understanding that covenant. Similarly, I think Van Drunen errs when he interprets God’s covenant with Abraham as a covenant dealing only with “religious, redemptive affairs” (29).

He points out that in the Abrahamic covenant, “God ratified his covenant promises with a sacrificial ritual” (29), referring to Gen. 15:12-21. But as I indicated earlier, the same was true in the Noachic covenant (Gen. 8:20-22).

Van Drunen adds that the sign of the Abrahamic covenant, circumcision, “symbolized salvation through the shedding of blood,” presumably in contrast with the rainbow as the sign of the Noachic. But as we saw, the rainbow symbolized the postponement of final judgment until the full number of the elect are brought to repentance. The two signs seem to me to be equally religious.

And Van Drunen stresses that the Abrahamic covenant is particularistic: not dealing with all people, but separating one family from the others. But the promise of 12:3 shows that this separation has a universal purpose, that all families of the earth will be blessed. Van Drunen emphasizes that this blessing is only for believing families, not for all human beings. However (1) Noah’s covenant also brings ultimate blessing only to believers, those who survive the judgment. And (2) as with the Noachic covenant, the Abrahamic brings blessings on unbelievers in the time before the final judgment. This fact is clear in the stories Van Drunen cites about Abraham’s relations with local kings and tribes, and from the principle I noted earlier: that the presence of believers in society brings many benefits to unbelievers.

Van Drunen insists that in those encounters between Abraham and the larger society he is

…religiously separate from the world but culturally engaged with the world. When it came to life in society, the civil kingdom, Abraham lived according to the idea of commonality established in the Noachic covenant of common grace. When it came to his religious life and eternal hope in the spiritual kingdom, Abraham lived according to the idea of particularity established in the covenant of grace. (29-30).

Here Van Drunen takes for granted his earlier interpretation of the Noachic Covenant, which I countered earlier. But even granting that, what does Van Drunen mean by “living according to the idea of commonality established in the Noachic Covenant” as distinguished from “living according to the idea of particularity?” Van Drunen described the Noachic Covenant as “secular” and “civil.” But he did not indicate anything in the Noachic covenant that required a particular way of life. And in fact there is nothing of that sort in the Noachic covenant. Gen. 9 authorizes Noah to eat meat, to punish violence and murder, and to be fruitful and multiply. In my view, these precepts (except possibly the first) antedated the Noachic Covenant. In any case, the covenant does not establish anything like a secular, civil, or “commonality” lifestyle.

Further, it is odd to suggest that the particularity of the Abrahamic covenant is somehow in tension with Abraham’s cooperation with people outside the covenant. Van Drunen knows this, but he seems to think that such cooperation requires a nonreligious covenant principle of some sort. On the contrary, God’s redemptive revelation teaches believers precisely to live at peace with all men (Heb. 12:14) and to recognize the authority of rulers regardless of their religion (Rom. 13:1-7).

God’s Covenant With Israel Under Moses

In the time of the Israelite theocracy, Van Drunen says,

Instead of mingling with unbelieving nations in cultural endeavors, God’s people were now commanded to exterminate the pagans within the nation’s borders (e.g., Deut. 7:1-5). The principle of commonality in cultural matters that was established in the Noachic covenant was set aside here. (30-31)

Certainly there are times in which peaceful cooperation is the rule, and other times in which the antithesis between belief and unbelief comes to the fore. These times, however, are determined by God’s supernatural revelation, not by general “principles” of commonality or antithesis. For one thing, the antithesis between Israel and the Canaanite nations is not simply an antithesis between belief and unbelief. Israel is to exterminate the nations occupying the land, but it is not to exterminate non-Israelite “sojourners” that pass through. Indeed, the law protects sojourners (Ex. 12:49, Lev. 19:33, Num. 9:14). The purpose of the conquest is to remove unbelieving culture, so that it may not tempt Israelites to be unfaithful to God. It is not to kill all individual unbelievers just because they are unbelievers, because they deserve God’s judgment. In that respect, the conquest is not a type of God’s eschatological judgment, though in many other ways it is an apt illustration of it.

So Israel’s conquest of Canaan is not well described as a “setting aside” of a “principle of commonality.” As we have seen, there was no principle of commonality enunciated in the Noachic covenant. And peaceful coexistence with unbelievers is generally characteristic of redemptive covenants, except when God says otherwise.

This observation is relevant to Van Drunen’s larger thesis about natural law. The believer’s relation to unbelievers is ultimately governed by God’s supernatural revelation, not natural law. Natural law is incapable of making the distinctions needed. In this case, it is incapable of telling us that believers should peacefully coexist with unbelievers in situation A, but not in situation B.

So the situations Van Drunen mentions in which David, Solomon, and others coexist with pagan kings and appreciate their cultures do not require a two kingdoms view of things. There is one kingdom, and God our king tells us when, where, how, and how much to participate in pagan culture.

The New Covenant Under Christ

Van Drunen says that under the New Covenant the “principle of commonality” prevails (32-35). Certainly Jesus and the Apostles do not call believers to conquer unbelievers with the sword as Israel conquered Canaan.[11] Rather, they call us to be subject to the rulers the world ( Rom. 13:1) and to respect prevailing customs, except where these entail sin (1 Cor. 10:27-30, etc.). But again, as with previous covenants, the distinctive standards of the new covenant are given by supernatural revelation. They are not the result of some theological extrapolation of general principles such as “religious” vs. “secular.”

Natural Law in the Civil Kingdom

After distinguishing the spiritual from the civil kingdoms, Van Drunen proceeds to argue the role of natural law in each of these spheres. Since I have rejected the spiritual/civil distinction, I will not be able to endorse Van Drunen’s conclusions in these sections.

Van Drunen argues that “in a certain sense, Scripture is not the appropriate moral standard for the civil kingdom” (38). Why? He argues,

Biblical morality is characterized by an indicative-imperative structure. That is, all of its imperatives (moral commands) are proceeded (sic) by and grounded in indicatives (statements of fact), either explicitly or implicitly. The most important indicative that grounds the imperatives in Scripture is that the recipients of Scripture are the covenant people, that is, members of the community of the covenant of grace. (39)

Since membership in the civil kingdom is not limited to believers, the imperatives of Scripture do not bind members of that kingdom. These imperatives are not “directly applicable to non-Christians” (40).

To respond: The indicative-imperative structure is not the only ground of ethics in Scripture, nor the most ultimate one. The ultimate ground is the character of God, in whose image we are made (as Van Drunen indicated on 12-14). We are to be holy as he is holy (Lev. 11:44-45, 1 Pet. 1:15-16, compare Matt. 5:48).

The next highest ground of morality is the creation ordinances that God gave to Adam and Eve before the fall: labor, marriage, Sabbath. These bind people as people, not as members of any redemptive covenant.[12] I believe that the Decalogue is largely a republication of creation ordinances applied to Israel’s situation as they approached the land of promise.

If by “ground” we mean “motivation for ethical behavior,”[13] then Van Drunen is correct to call our attention to God’s redemptive acts as grounding our obedience, e.g., “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God” (Col. 3:1). But there are other motivations. One is simply the fact that God has commanded us to do something, e.g. “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous” (Josh. 1:9). Another (also in Josh. 1:9) is God’s promise to accompany us when we obey: “for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.” Compare Matt. 28:20, where Jesus promises to be with his disciples as they make disciples in all nations.[14]

Are any of these grounds or motivations available to unbelievers? Yes and no. Unbelievers as well as believers ought to appeal to the character of God and to the creation ordinances, because they are human beings. Unbelievers have no right, as unbelievers, to appeal to God’s redemptive acts and presence; but they ought to become believers, so that they can make this appeal. Given that condition, unbelievers as well as believers should make their ethical decisions based on God’s redemptive acts, his commands, and his presence. The whole Bible, in other words, is God’s standard for all people, believers and unbelievers alike. God has not ordained separate ethics for believers and unbelievers. All human beings are subject to the same standard and ought to be motivated in the same way.

Following his discussion of ethical standard and ground, Van Drunen counsels us to limit our expectations for the civil kingdom. He says, “This perspective gives us no reason to expect the attainment of paradise on earth” (40). This is somehow related to the fact (41) that “life in the present world is one of suffering and hardship and that true peace and justice is attained only in the age to come.” Certainly Scripture tells us that believers must endure suffering in this world, and the texts Van Drunen mentions are to the point.

But I don’t quite understand what that has to do with the two kingdom theory, or the nature of the civil kingdom, or natural law, or the ground of ethical obligation. Nobody to my knowledge argues that it is possible to attain paradise on earth.[15] And whether one holds Van Drunen’s view of the two kingdoms, or mine, or some other’s has little to do with the amount of suffering on earth one expects to encounter. I suspect that Van Drunen is importing an eschatological position into the book at this point, amillennialism, for which he has not laid biblical groundwork in the book. In my own view, there is both suffering and blessing for believers in the present world (though no “paradise on earth”). The actual balance between these is best seen in Mark 10:29-31.

Following this parenthesis, Van Drunen presents three biblical ideas that seem to him to indicate an important role for natural law in the civil kingdom. The first is entitled “Things That Should Not Be Done” (42). This refers to the ethical perception of the pagan king Abimelech in his controversy with Abraham in Gen. 20. Abimelech tells Abraham that Abraham has done things that should not be done. Similarly the pagan king in confrontation with Jacob in Gen. 34:7. These pagan kings do not appeal to Scripture texts, but to something like a natural order.

As indicated earlier, I do not question Van Drunen’s assertion that there is such a thing as natural law, that pagans can know important truths apart from Scripture. However, (a) I do think here as earlier that Van Drunen gives too little attention to the possibility that this knowledge is linked to God’s creation ordinances transmitted from generation to generation. But I readily agree that some ethical knowledge may be innate and some is gained from the creation itself (Rom. 1:20). (b) I do not agree that this natural knowledge bears some special relation to a “civil kingdom” that is nonreligious.[16] There is no indication of such a context in Gen. 20 and 34 and certainly not in Rom. 1.

The second idea Van Drunen mentions is “The Fear of God” (45-49). Van Drunen claims that this phrase reveals a nonreligious civil morality. But the phrase itself, in which God’s name appears, raises a large presumption against such an interpretation. Van Drunen admits at points in this discussion that his understanding is tentative. The phrase often occurs in Scripture to indicate “the most sincere and genuine piety,” as Van Drunen admits (46). I don’t doubt that the phrase can be used in other ways and may indicate a more general sense of accountability to God. But certainly it is not a nonreligious or secular expression. Most likely it is based on a tradition passed down from ancestors who were true believers. Van Drunen’s attempt to secularize it is not persuasive at all.

The third principle that Van Drunen ascribes to natural law in the civil kingdom is “a common humanity” (49-54). Here he mentions people outside the redemptive covenants such as Job, who believed that he “could not treat (his servants) in just any way he wished” (50). Van Drunen gives other examples of this principle, but I don’t find in any of them evidence of a civil or nonreligious morality. The passage Van Drunen quotes from Job is this one:

If I have rejected the cause of my manservant or my maidservant, when they brought a complaint against me, what then shall I do when God rises up? When he makes inquiry, what shall I answer him? Did not he who made me in the womb make him? And did not one fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:13-15)

But this moral sentiment is profoundly theistic. To call it nonreligious is to my mind absurd.[17]

It is also strange (and the strangeness pertains to all three of Van Drunen’s examples) that Van Drunen makes no reference to the unbelievers’ suppression of the truth that Paul describes so clearly in Rom. 1:18-32. Van Drunen mentions that earlier in the book (17), but in these discussions of the positive value of natural law he seems to have forgotten it entirely. Surely one can’t give an adequate account of the value of natural law, to say nothing of the nature of our “common humanity,” without any reference to the unbeliever’s suppression of the truth. I would not say that this suppression contradicts everything Van Drunen has said about the positive value of natural law. In Paul’s discussion, the natural law does provide a standard of conduct and leaves people without excuse. The sinner cannot suppress the truth so completely that it has no influence on him. Van Drunen might have developed his view of natural law by analyzing this paradox, the combination of truth and falsity in the sinner’s mentality. That would have been a valuable discussion. Unfortunately he chose instead to ignore the whole issue and to treat natural law as a straightforward, practical revelation about all things secular.

Natural Law in the Spiritual Kingdom

In the last major section of the book, Van Drunen seeks to show how natural law operates within the spiritual kingdom—that is, how it is relevant for believers. In the first section, “Natural Law and the Renewal of the Image of God,” he argues that since redemption renews us in the image of God, and since he has earlier correlated the image of God with natural law, therefore, “The present, earthly existence of the spiritual kingdom cannot be at odds with that good creation and its natural law; it far transcends them” (57). This is formulated rather vaguely. I guess Van Drunen is saying that natural law tells us about the earthly creation we are to transcend through redemption, and that that knowledge is somehow valuable. I’m not sure I understand his point.

In “Biblical Ethics and the Natural World,” Van Drunen mentions analogies between nature and morality, particularly in the wisdom literature. Prov. 26:1 says, “Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, honor is not fitting for a fool” (58). There are other correlations between human and animal behavior, etc. I have no objections to any of this. In fact, I find it amusing and edifying. But I find nothing here to validate Van Drunen’s two kingdom focus. Precisely the same points can be made by people who think there is only one kingdom. These references to nature merely show the vast extent of the single kingdom in which God rules.

Same for “Biblical Ethics and the Ethics of the World,” where Van Drunen mentions implicit and explicit biblical commendations of pagan morality. He mentions, indeed, the possible dependence of biblical laws and wisdom sayings on those from pagan lands. Again, I see nothing here to contest, except that again he ignores the suppression of the truth among these pagan sages. And there is nothing here that verifies Van Drunen’s general theses about the two kingdoms.

It is interesting, though, that when he cites biblical dependence on pagan morality, he contradicts what he said earlier. Recall that on p. 39 he argued that in Scripture the ground of morality is the indicatives of God’s saving acts. There he intended to contrast Scripture with natural law, to show that Scripture is not a proper standard for the civil kingdom. But here he says that Scripture appeals to pagan wisdom, even natural law itself. These appeals are not appeals to God’s redemptive acts. Indeed, they refute the idea that Scripture and natural law are radically different in their grounding and motivations.

Conclusion

To repeat, I am convinced that there is such a thing as natural law. But I am not at all convinced of Van Drunen’s (or anyone else’s) distinction between religious and secular kingdoms, and I do not see any reason to limit the use of Scripture to the religious kingdom as Van Drunen suggests. Scripture is God’s word, and God’s word is the foundation of morality. When we want to draw people, believers or unbelievers, to that foundation, we should be unashamed to refer to Scripture. I grant that there are many cultural forces telling us not to refer to Scripture in the public square. But we should not listen to them. The attempt of Van Drunen and others to convince us not to apply Scripture to civil matters is a failure.[18]

I do not deny the importance of other distinctions that are sometimes related to these. I am not saying, for example, that church and state are identical. The distinction between these is evident: in brief, the church does not bear the sword, and the state does not administer the sacraments. Nor is there any need to turn our cultural activities into churches, as by restricting our art to gospel tracts. But good art will be art that recognizes the comprehensive lordship of Jesus Christ. That doesn’t imply that there are distinctively Christian and non-Christian brush strokes. It does imply that a Christian artist should not be mistaken for a secular nihilist, or Muslim, or new-age Monist. But given these distinctions, we should confess that culture is Jesus’ culture. To paraphrase Kuyper, as Jesus looks at our culture, he will always say, “Mine!!”

But the distinction between church and state, or Christ and culture, cannot be helpfully understood by the two kingdoms scheme. Civil culture and redemption are both under God’s sovereignty, and under the authority of his infallible word.

And natural law itself is profoundly religious. That is perfectly evident from Rom. 1:18-32, arguably the fundamental text on natural law. There, natural law gives a clear knowledge of God—not just morality, certainly not some secular civil morality—but God himself. Natural law clearly reveals God’s own nature and attributes (verse 20). It even leads to a personal knowledge of God: not just knowing facts about him, but knowing him (verse 20). The suppression of natural law leads to idolatry (21-25), perhaps the most religious of all sins. That idolatry leads in turn to sexual (26-27) and every other kind of sin (28-31). To call this morality “secular” or “merely civil” profoundly misses its intent.

As a treatment of natural law itself, apart from the two-kingdoms construction, Van Drunen’s book ignores the most important issues: (a) The unbeliever’s suppression of the truth of natural law, which Van Drunen mentions on p. 17 and then ignores through the rest of the book. He never struggles with the problem of how natural law can function as a practical standard of human life, when people inevitably suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

(b) The difficulty of arguing ethical issues from natural law. People often say that it is difficult to argue ethical issues from Scripture in a society that does not honor Scripture’s authority. But it is even more difficult to argue from natural law. For natural law is not a written text. Even though it is objectively valid, there is no way of gaining public agreement as to what it says as long as we simply exchange opinions about what natural law says. For example, when people argue from natural law that abortion is wrong, they are essentially pitting their intuitions against the intuitions of others (intuitions which, when true, are often suppressed). Often such arguments are naturalistic fallacies, arguments from “is” to “ought:’ e.g., unborn children are genetically unique organisms, therefore we ought not to kill them. Arguments from Scripture are not problematic in this way.

And (c), granted that supernatural revelation is compatible with natural law in a two-kingdoms context, is there any sense in which supernatural revelation, Scripture, is sufficient for God’s glory and for our faith and life? Van Drunen gives us no reason to think that it is.

[1] Westminster Confession of Faith, 1.6.
[2] I believe the last clause, “that binds morally…” is intended to describe the moral order = natural law, rather than its nearest antecedent (“supernatural divine revelation”). I think that to make this clear Van Drunen should have put a comma after “revelation.” Or, better, he should have put a period after “revelation,” then written “This moral order binds…”
[3] I usually prefer to speak of ”natural revelation” rather than “natural law,” to avoid some of the problematics I shall discuss in this review. But I agree that natural revelation contains moral content (as, e.g., in Rom. 1:32), so the phrase “natural law” can be used appropriately. I will use it in this review to accommodate Van Drunen’s terminology.
[4] In a footnote on 14, he does qualify his account by saying that this natural law does not give “exhaustive moral guidance.” But the lacuna in natural law is not filled by supernatural revelation. It is rather filled by human freedom: “It is probably best to say that natural law provides a general framework in which the moral life should be lived, but that royal image-bearers have a significant degree of freedom within that framework to exercise dominion over the earth in ways appropriate in different contexts.” I agree with Van Drunen that God’s law (whether supernatural or natural) allows such scope for free choice. Not every action is commanded or prohibited. But I still have found nothing in Van Drunen’s account about the place of supernatural revelation in the life of our unfallen first parents.
[5] I disagree with his view that Gen. 9:6 is concerned with “a system of civil justice” (16). But that issue will come up more appropriately at a later point.
[6] For some who have taken issue with Van Drunen here, see Jason Lief, “Is Neo-Calvinism Calvinist? A Neo-Calvinist Engagement of Calvin’s ‘Two Kingdoms’ Doctrine,” Pro Rege 27.3 (Mar., 2009), 1-12. Van Drunen has also argued the very implausible position that Abraham Kuyper held a two kingdoms view, in “Abraham Kuyper and the Reformed Natural Law and Two Kingdoms Tradition.” Calvin Theological Journal 42 (2007): 283-307. But to the contrary see Timothy P. Palmer, “The Two-Kingdom Doctrine: A Comparative Study of Martin Luther and Abraham Kuyper,” Pro Rege 27.3 (Mar., 2009), 13-25.
[7] I have responded to this view of the sufficiency of Scripture in my Doctrine of the Christian Life (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2008), 156-75.
[8] In Reformed discussions over the “regulative principle of worship,” this is the distinction between “elements” (religious) and “circumstances” (nonreligious). But on this see ibid., 464-481, especially 472-3.
[9] I ignore the use of “religion” by Karl Barth and some others, to designate human self-righteousness. I think that is a misuse of a perfectly good word.

[10] So far as I can tell, Van Drunen never defines the religious, or the secular either, though he does attempt to define the religious and secular realms in a rough sort of way. But his failure to define religious and secular makes his definitions of the respective realms problematic. In attributing definitions to him here, I am extrapolating inductively from what he says about the realms.
[11] There is a spiritual warfare, though, and that is not merely a metaphor. See, e.g., Eph. 6:10-20.
[12] I cannot take time to discuss this in detail, but I am perplexed that Van Drunen’s book says nothing about the creation ordinances. For one thing, much of what we call “natural law” may well be based on oral and written transmission of creation ordinances to all nations, in which case natural law is the product of supernatural revelation. Van Drunen should have addressed this possibility, as a challenge to his own understanding of natural law. In any case, the existence of creation ordinances reinforces the picture I have presented, that God never intended us to make moral decisions apart from his spoken words to us.
[13] Van Drunen should have clarified the meaning of the term ground, since he gives such weight to the idea.
[14] For more on ethical grounds and motivations, see Doctrine of the Christian Life, 19-37, 131-382.
[15] Postmillennialists believe that believers over many years can bring about a widely-dispersed saving knowledge of God together with some measure of earthly prosperity. But even they generally distinguish that prosperity from that of Heaven and from the New Heavens and New Earth.
[16] The phrase “some special relation” indicates my unclarity as to just how Van Drunen understands their relation to a “civil kingdom” in these passages.
[17] Further, there is no indication here that Job gained this moral insight from nature rather than from a tradition of supernatural revelation.

[18] There may, to be sure, be times and places where reference to Scripture texts is rhetorically counterproductive. It may even be desirable at those times to make use of arguments commonly associated with natural law. But we must be clear that whatever our rhetoric, our purpose must be to bring nothing less than the standards of Scripture to bear on society.

Dodson 2010 Easter Egg Hunt

Mon, 5 Apr 2010 18:14:47 -0500

Every year for the last four years, we have hosted an Easter egg hunt. Why? Because Dallas needs another event where little ones run around after candy-filled plastic eggs? No. Definitely not. Nothing wrong with kids chasing after candy, we just wanted something different.

Most of the egg-hunts have little or nothing to do with honoring the Lord our Savior Jesus Christ. It has been my wife’s great conviction that we as Christians should do things even better than the world, inviting the World to “taste and see that the LORD is good.” It is our prayer that that is what people took away from our event.

Jody did a great job. The LORD was honored! 9,000 eggs and a couple of hundred kids, along with a Gospel message from Kyle Queal and music from David Ball made for a great afternoon. And that doesn’t count the food and refreshments.

God is good, all the time. He loves us, and hopefully that love was pictured in a small way by a plethora of eggs for the children, and fellowship for the adults.

Staging in the garage. A lot of supplies for 300+ people

A bounty of treats

Who gave THIS guy a microphone?

David Ball plays and sings for the crowd

Kyle Queal encouraged everyone, telling us that God pursues us the way the kids go after the eggs.

Hunter Whitney gives final instructions before the hunt begins!

The Hunt for Pink Eggtober:

The Mexican Riviera

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:15:20 -0500

It is raining here. But this is what it looks like back home:

Here is the Fairmont Mayakoba, just north of Playa Del Carmen (south of Cancun) in the state of Quinta Roo, Mexico. The Yucatan peninsula. We got here last Wednesday (March 17th).

Yesterday, while at one of the many pools, we ran into a mom and her young daughter from Lake Highlands in the Dallas area. They were nice, but evidently the young girl has whooping cough. Every five seconds was punctuated by a croupy bark that eventually you got used to.

The trip has made me realize what a “vacation” my home is. Jody really makes a wonderful home that I come to every night.

My you

Romans 13:1 and Principles for Government

Thu, 18 Mar 2010 21:39:08 -0500

THE TEXT: “Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 13:1).
21 PRINCIPLES: 1: Civil government and rule is a blessing from God, and not a necessary evil. “The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God. And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning without clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain” (2 Sam. 23:3-4). We are not anarchists.

2: God establishes a righteous throne with majesty. “It is an abomination to kings to commit wickedness: for the throne is established by righteousness” (Prov. 16:12). “And the LORD magnified Solomon exceedingly in the sight of all Israel, and bestowed upon him such royal majesty as had not been on any king before him in Israel” (1 Chron. 25:29; Dan. 4:36).
3: The law of God is the soul of a good ruler. “Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens” (Ex. 18:21). Rulers who don't fear God will try to be God.
4: God requires true humility of His rulers. “That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel” (Dt. 17:20).
5: Our basic demeanor toward civil rulers should be one of honor. “Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king” (1 Pet. 2:17). What the kings of the earth bring into the New Jerusalem is not a sham or a pretence (Rev. 21:24).
6: Tyrants love moral corruption, and hate virtuous men. As Chesterton once put it, free love is the first and most obvious bribe to offer a slave. Tyrants therefore love public entertainments and private vices because they love an enervated people. “But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught Balac to cast a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed unto idols, and to commit fornication” (Rev. 2:14). Porn is therefore politics, and reveals your true political allegiances.
7: Absolute perfection in our rulers is not the point. “Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me” (Ps. 51:11). David had forfeited his throne, as Saul had, and he knew it. When Saul's dynasty fell, it was because the Spirit had departed from him. But God in His mercy allowed David to remain as the king, despite this gross imperfection. And it is said of a number of kings that they were good, like Asa, but that they did not remove the high places (1 Kings 15:14). In Scripture, a king can get a B minus and still be a good and godly king.
8: Tyranny is a judgment from God for the sins of the people. “And he said, This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: He will take . . .” (1 Sam. 8:11). But remember that the God who sends tyrants to chastise us may also send a deliverer to save us.
9: Every manner of civil government is under the authority of God. God rules in His own name, and princes rule by derivation. Civil rulers are the lieutenants of God. Here in Romans 13, the word for deacons is used of them several times (Rom. 13:4). The ruler is therefore an appointed, delegated, and deputized servant.
10: Civil disobedience is required when matters of worship and the gospel are concerned. “But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up” (Dan. 3:18). “Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
11: Civil disobedience is lawful in other areas as well. David honored Saul (1 Sam. 24:5), but did not turn himself in (1 Sam. 24:22). Neither did Peter turn himself in (Acts 12:11), or Paul for that matter (2 Cor. 11:32-33). Examples could be multiplied.
12: Civil government is covenantal, and has a double covenantal nature. It involves God, the magistrate, and the people (2 Chron. 23: 16).
13: No human authority, civil magistrates included, can be absolute. God alone has absolute authority; man’s authority is always limited and bounded. This is what Nebuchadnezzar confessed—when his sanity returned (Dan. 4:35).
14: Not everything that is legal is lawful (Rev. 13:17).
15: Faithful believers will often be accused of lawlessness and treason. Ahab was the troubler of Israel, and so that is what he accused Elijah of being (1 Kings 18:17). But the cause of the trouble is the problem; the solution is not the problem (2 Chron. 23:13).
16: The Bible teaches the principle of the “consent of the governed.” Rehoboam was elected to be king (1 Kings 12:1), and he was no anomaly.
17: The lot of the people and the character of their rulers is linked together. “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” (Prov. 29:2).
18: Resistance of tyranny is not the same thing as resistance of the established civil order. Jehoida defended the throne by removing someone from it (2 Chron. 23:11).
19: Lesser magistrates obeyed Jehoida, and they were right to do so (2 Chron. 23:1-3).
20. We must care what company our rulers keep. Panders, whores, flatterers and “other mushrooms of the court” are to be despised. “Take away the wicked from before the king, and his throne shall be established in righteousness” (Prov. 25:5).
21: And last, Christian history matters. Included in our definition of “the powers that be” (Rom. 13:1) must be things like: the Constitution, the will of the people, the lesser magistrates, and the balances of powers.
Doug Wilson

Leno Takes It on the Chin

Fri, 5 Feb 2010 09:28:23 -0600

But he’s more sinned-against than sinning.
BY Jonathan V. Last
February 8, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 20

America’s safest comedian, Jay Leno, is now Public Enemy No. 1. Just after New Year’s Day, NBC became entangled in a Mexican standoff with Leno, the former host of the Tonight Show, and Conan O’Brien, the then-host of the Tonight Show. And lots of people took sides against Leno. Protestors assembled outside the NBC studios at 30 Rockefeller Center chanting slogans such as “Leno kills puppies!” Aaron Barnhart, the TV critic for the Kansas City Star, wrote that Leno was “a two-faced, hypocritical, unfunny lying jerk.” The New York Observer likened him to Gollum. In the Wall Street Journal, Joe Queenan compared Leno to Hitler. David Letterman took shots at Leno on CBS. So did Jimmy Kimmel on ABC. Even Leno’s NBC colleagues on Saturday Night Live went after him.
Leno’s crime was agreeing to return as host of the Tonight Show. It’s odd that a case of corporate succession planning would animate such a spectacle. But in any event, the protestors, TV writers, and comics have it all wrong: The person to blame for Conan O’Brien leaving the Tonight Show is Conan O’Brien.
This slow-motion train wreck began in April 2004 when NBC renewed Leno’s contract. After Johnny Carson left the show in 1992, there had been a fight to replace him. NBC chose Leno, and the defeated David Letterman left for CBS, where he set up a competing franchise. Letterman beat Leno in the ratings at first, but by 1995, Leno had retooled Tonight and turned it into a juggernaut. By the time he re-upped his contract in 2004, he had beaten Letterman for nine consecutive years.
Five months later, it was time for O’Brien’s contract to be renegotiated. O’Brien was host of Late Night, the show that followed Tonight and, like Leno’s, owned its time-slot. But O’Brien was no longer content to host Late Night—he wanted Leno’s job. According to a Variety report at the time, O’Brien “made it clear to NBC execs that there were opportunities elsewhere” and that he would leave the network if they did not give him Leno’s show.
NBC didn’t want to lose O’Brien, but also didn’t want Leno to take his successful show elsewhere. So programming chief Jeff Zucker tried to strike a compromise: He signed a deal with O’Brien guaranteeing that he would take over as host of the Tonight Show in 2009. As part of the deal, O’Brien was guaranteed to remain as host of Tonight for at least two years or he would be entitled to a payout of $60 million.
The news was a surprise. Leno was only 54, and his show still dominated the ratings, pulling in 5.5 million viewers a night. He didn’t want to leave Tonight, but he didn’t have very many options. He asked to be released from his contract, but NBC refused. The network wanted him out of the time slot, but didn’t want him to go elsewhere and set up a competing show. The executives in charge figured that they had time to come up with a way to square the circle.
And Leno kept delivering for NBC. He was a good corporate soldier and brought O’Brien onto his show. Leno smiled and said all the right things. By 2006, his ratings were up slightly, to 5.7 million viewers, widening his lead over Letterman (who had just 4.2 million viewers) and crushing Jimmy Kimmel (whose show brought in only 1.6 million viewers). To get a sense of how important Leno was to NBC, consider this: 2006 was a down year in late-night advertising sales, yet Leno’s Tonight took in $250 million that year, clearing a net of $160 million, 15 percent of the network’s total profits.
Zucker still hadn’t figured out what to do with Leno and still refused to let him out of his contract, claiming that he wanted to keep him at NBC “for life.” But a strange idea was being floated: Perhaps the network could simply move Leno’s show to primetime.
It wasn’t the first time the network had toyed with the notion of a prime time talk show. In 1981, they had discussed the idea with Carson. Three years ago they had approached Oprah Winfrey about doing one, too. In December 2008, NBC announced that the Jay Leno Show would air 5 nights a week, 46 weeks a year, at 10 p.m. It would be substantially the same show as Tonight, only 90 minutes earlier. Leno’s new contract was, in relative terms, modest. He didn’t want full ownership of the show, for instance. But it did stipulate that, if the Jay Leno Show was taken off the air before two years had passed, Leno would be owed $80 million. To anyone paying attention, this was a declaration that while the network was willing to experiment and give in to O’Brien’s demands, if push came to shove, they would return to Leno (and save $20 million by buying out O’Brien).
Leno left Tonight in May 2009; O’Brien took over the next month. His ratings were strong initially. He held onto the lead over Letterman for several weeks. But then his numbers began to drop. By August, Letterman was beating him handily, with 3.41 million viewers to O’Brien’s 2.47 million. (Before he stepped down, Leno’s 2009 average had been 4.4 million viewers.) During the summer, it got so bad that O’Brien was even losing to Letterman repeats.
The next month, Leno’s primetime show launched. It was a debacle. Leno’s ratings in primetime started out low and trended downward. Having such a poorly performing show at 10 p.m. crippled the 11 p.m. newscasts of NBC’s local affiliates. And O’Brien’s ratings at 11:30 remained stagnant.
In November, Letterman beat O’Brien with 3.88 million viewers to 2.33 million viewers. By contrast, in November 2008, Leno had won the slot for NBC with 4.76 million viewers to Letterman’s 3.95 million. As Jeff Gaspin, NBC’s head of television programming, glumly put it, “If you look at the ratings in households, NBC is down 14 percent, while Conan is down 49 percent. In adults 18-49, NBC was down 16 percent but Tonight was down 23 percent.” O’Brien’s tenure was an unmitigated disaster for what had been an intensely profitable arm of the network.
Leno’s 10 p.m. ratings were so bad, moreover, that a third of the local affiliates were threatening to preempt his show. NBC had to make a change. They could fire Leno, pay him $80 million, and hope that O’Brien managed to find an audience. (Which, you’ll remember, he failed to do even before Leno’s primetime bomb was on the air.) Or they could fire O’Brien, pay him $60 million, and hand the Tonight Show back to the guy who dominated the time slot for 14 years. Quite sensibly, NBC chose Leno.
The network’s opening move was to cancel Leno’s primetime show. During the first week of January, they announced that the Jay Leno Show would be pared down and moved back to 11:35, meaning that O’Brien’s Tonight Show would be bumped to 12:05. This gambit wasn’t intended as a compromise—it was an attempt to prod O’Brien into quitting, so he wouldn’t be owed his $60 million.
But O’Brien wasn’t going to let NBC off cheap: His contract specified that he was entitled to the payout if he was no longer hosting a program called the Tonight Show and he was willing to litigate the disagreement. A few days later, NBC and O’Brien reached a settlement: He would leave Tonight with $32 million for himself and $12 million in payments to his cast and crew. More important, O’Brien would be free to work on a competing show in September 2010. The one stipulation NBC foisted on O’Brien was a “no disparagement” clause, which prevents him from publicly speaking ill of the network (and Leno) until September 2010. But then NBC generously chose not to invoke the clause until after O’Brien had left Tonight, meaning that for two weeks, he used their airwaves for self-pitying jokes such as, “I just want to say to the kids out there watching: You can do anything you want in life. Unless Jay Leno wants to do it, too.”
All in all, it was a much better deal than NBC had been willing to grant Leno when they took the Tonight Show away from him in the first place.
In any rational reading of the events, Leno is not the villain. At worst, he is guilty of working to hold on to a job he did very well. It was O’Brien who demanded he be given someone else’s job. It was O’Brien who failed to perform once he was sitting in the big chair. It was O’Brien who whined publicly when NBC changed its mind. And it’s O’Brien who walks away from failure with an enormous pot of gold.
In the end, Conan O’Brien’s partisans don’t seem to care much about any of that. They’re more concerned about making sure the world knows how sophisticated they are and that NBC went the Middle America route. Yet if everyone who claimed to adore Conan O’Brien during the last few weeks had actually watched his program, he’d still be hosting the Tonight Show.
Jonathan V. Last is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

Obama’s Broken Promises

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:52:13 -0500

From The Telegraph (UK)
Here is the top 10 list of most glaring examples of Mr Obama falling short in key areas he trumpeted during his campaign.
1.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama said he would "not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days". But the "sunlight before signing" promise has already fallen by the wayside with Mr Obama signing three major bills without public scrutiny.
2.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama repeatedly said he would negotiate health care reform in televised sessions broadcast on C-SPAN, the public service network. Instead, he his approach has been no different from his predecessors, holding talks behind closed doors at the White House and Congress.
3.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama solemnly pledged that "no political appointees in an Obama-Biden administration will be permitted to work on regulations or contracts directly and substantially related to their prior employer for two years". In practice, Mr Obama has granted several waivers to this rule, allowing lobbyists to serve in the top reaches of his administration.
4.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama said he would end income tax for the elderly making less than $50,000 per year, thereby eliminating taxes for seven million of them. This has not been part of his economic stimulus bill, his first budget outline or any legislation proposed by the White House.
5.PROMISE STALLED. On taking office, Mr Obama announced with great fanfare that the Guantanamo Bay prison camp would be closed within a year of his inauguration on January 20th. Defence officials now concede that this self-imposed deadline will not be met.
6.PROMISE SIDELINED. Mr Obama promised to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy that prohibits openly gay personnel from serving in the United States armed forces. Despite reiterating the pledge this weekend, Mr Obama shows no signs of taking concrete action on the issue.
7.PROMISE BROKEN. Mr Obama said that in 2009 and 2010 "existing businesses will receive a $3,000 refundable tax credit for each additional full-time employee hired". Democrats on Capitol Hill opposed this and Mr Obama has quietly abandoned the proposal, omitting it from his list of requirements for draft legislation.
8.PROMISE BROKEN. During the campaign, Mr Obama promised that "as President I will recognise the Armenian genocide" carried out by the Ottoman Empire after 1915. Once in office, he travelled to Turkey and made no mention of genocide. In a statement in April on the memorial day for the genocide he spoke of the "heavy weight" of history and the "terrible events " of the period but failed the use the g-word.
9.PROMISE SIDELINED. As a candidate, Mr Obama highlighted his support for abortion rights, stating he would back this up "by passing the Freedom of Choice Act as president". At a press conference marking his first 100 days, Mr Obama said this was "not my highest legislative priority" and that it was important to "focus on those areas that we can agree on".
10. PROMISE SIDELINED. Mr Obama promised to end warrantless wiretaps on the domestic communications of Americans and to "update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to provide greater oversight and accountability". So far, he has taken no action.

Kenyan-Born

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 09:08:55 -0500

At least the Kenyans think Obama was born there. This is a web archive pulled straight from the Nairobi paper.

 

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Sunday, June 27, 2004

Kenyan-born Obama all set for US Senate

Kenyan-born US Senate hopeful, Barrack Obama, appeared set to take over the Illinois Senate seat after his main rival, Jack Ryan, dropped out of the race on Friday night amid a furor over lurid sex club allegations.
The allegations that horrified fellow Republicans and caused his once-promising candidacy to implode in four short days have given Obama a clear lead as Republicans struggled to fetch an alternative.
Ryan’s campaign began to crumble on Monday following the release of embarrassing records from his divorce. In the records, his ex-wife, Boston Public actress Jeri Ryan, said her former husband took her to kinky sex clubs in Paris, New York and New Orleans.
Barrack Obama
"It’s clear to me that a vigorous debate on the issues most likely could not take place if I remain in the race," Ryan, 44, said in a statement. "What would take place, rather, is a brutal, scorched-earth campaign – the kind of campaign that has turned off so many voters, the kind of politics I refuse to play."
Although Ryan disputed the allegations, saying he and his wife went to one ‘avant-garde’ club in Paris and left because they felt uncomfortable, lashed out at the media and said it was "truly outrageous" that the Chicago Tribune got a judge to unseal the records.
The Republican choice will become an instant underdog in the campaign for the seat of retiring Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald, since Obama held a wide lead even before the scandal broke.
"I feel for him actually," Obama told a Chicago TV station. "What he’s gone through over the last three days I think is something you wouldn’t wish on anybody."
The Republican state committee must now choose a replacement for Ryan, who had won in the primaries against seven contenders. Its task is complicated by the fact that Obama holds a comfortable lead in the polls and is widely regarded as a rising Democratic star.
The chairwoman of the Illinois Republican Party, Judy Topinka, said at a news conference, after Ryan withdrew, that Republicans would probably take several weeks to settle on a new candidate.
"Obviously, this is a bad week for our party and our state," she said.
As recently as Thursday, spokesmen for the Ryan campaign still insisted that Ryan would remain in the race. Ryan had defended himself saying, "There’s no breaking of any laws. There’s no breaking of any marriage laws. There’s no breaking of the Ten Commandments anywhere."

—AP

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Mark Horne: A Biblical View of Immigration

Tue, 6 Oct 2009 11:08:54 -0500

Let me say it again: I hate anti-immigration and “buy America” rhetoric

Awhile back I was driving more and therefore listening to the radio more. Most of this post was written at that time and you could say it is sponsored by the nice gentleman so full of economic fallacies selling American cars in St. Louis who advertises heavily on the radio.
Immigration: Opposing politicians who tolerate or promote illegal aliens is understandable. Lawlessness is a problem, and I’m not too upset about other people being upset about it. Then again, I remember watching a movie in the seventies that expected me to cheer for a family that made it out of East Germany on a home-made hot air balloon. So breaking the law to cross the border to find prosperity (presumably this family’s quest wasn’t for West German welfare support) was not always so hard to sympathize with.
People come here and work for a living. Feeling threatened by this is to turn the entire nation into one giant labor union is shameful. I hear people actually and seriously comparing people who come here to find jobs to military invaders who need to be stopped by our own military. I hate border fascism.
More importantly, sinful as I am, I love God’s law.
Six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day you shall rest; that your ox and your donkey may have rest, and the son of your servant woman, and the alien, may be refreshed (Exodus 23.12).
And I charged your judges at that time, “Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him” (Deuteronomy 1.16).
When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God (Leviticus 19.33, 34).
If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you (Leviticus 25.35).
For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the LORD. One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you (Numbers 15.15, 16).
There is a problem when immigrants swamp “public” goods without paying for them. But that is only a little bit worse than natives swamping “public” goods. Public goods need to be privatized. If welfare is seriously a reason some come to the US, then it serves us right for inventing such parasitic programs. Frankly, virtually anyone you see who doesn’t work came from someone who at some point did work. Someone had to teach a next generation to stop imitating the previous generation. While I don’t deny there is personal guilt involved, it is not at the level that anyone has a right to characterize people as “lazy” or “freeloaders” or worse.
Unquestionably, unfunded mandates from Congress are becoming an unbearable burden to border states. Personally, I think all illegal aliens should be given some cash and put on a bus for New England. That might provide some more realistic policy. There ain’t know such thing as a free lunch. But the frustrations these problems cause should not be blamed on poor people trying to make a living.
From what I have read, characterizations of immigrants as pursuing free goodies are overblown. People come here to work, and in doing so, even illegal aliens pay some taxes. Of course, it is horrible that people who are wealthier and who can’t afford to live an “undocumented” life are unable to get into the country while other poor laborers get through, but the answer is to open our borders, not blame those who are worst off for trying to better themselves.
And then there is the plea and alleged moral imperative to “buy American.” How am I supposed to be patriotic about a country that produces such bad products or produces them in such an inefficient manner that they have to plead on the basis of race or soil or shared suffering under the same federal apparatus as a basis for choosing those products? If you are selling you are supposed to be selling something I need or that you can make me want and prefer to what others offer. Any real custom of choosing on the basis of nationalism simply allows industries that aren’t as good as their foreign competitors to continue to be second-rate. They should improve or close down so that investors and workers can find other industries where we can be superior to others.
It is amazing that people complain about our trade deficit and then say that it mandates protectionism. Protectionism redistributes wealth from those who sell products in the international market to those who sell in the domestic market. It guarantees that our trade deficits will only grow. How can somone whose domestic expenses go up compete in an international market where there is no way to fix prices or get protection from competitors? The more we make the cost of living higher the US the less we are able to produce anything at an attractive price point abroad.
We’ve numbed ourselves to this basic reality because of the international money game. Since dollars are the reserve currency of the world, there is an incentive for every other country to produce real goods to get our printed cash. It has been an awesome racket for while it could last. People slave long hours to make our flatscreen TVs while we consume goods and blame free trade for our manufacturing base going overseas. But there is no free market without sound money–i.e. money is a real commodity, not a paper with a mark on it. Our magic has run out and the world is waking up from the Federal Reserve’s enchantment.
Better adjust. We’re about to learn the real world limitations on the imaginary concept of “superpower.”

Taxes, Depression, and Our Current Troubles

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 08:52:48 -0500

Tariffs, rising state and federal taxes, and currency devaluation ruined the 1930s, and they could do the same today. From the Wall Street Journal

By ARTHUR B. LAFFER
The 1930s has become the sole object lesson for today's monetary policy. Over the past 12 months, the Federal Reserve has increased the monetary base (bank reserves plus currency in circulation) by well over 100%. While currency in circulation has grown slightly, there's been an impressive 17-fold increase in bank reserves. The federal-funds target rate now stands at an all-time low range of zero to 25 basis points, with the 91-day Treasury bill yield equally low. All this has been done to avoid a liquidity crisis and a repeat of the mistakes that led to the Great Depression.
Even with this huge increase in the monetary base, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has reiterated his goal not to repeat the mistakes made back in the 1930s by tightening credit too soon, which he says would send the economy back into recession. The strong correlation between soaring unemployment and falling consumer prices in the early 1930s leads Mr. Bernanke to conclude that tight money caused both. To prevent a double dip, super easy monetary policy is the key.

While Fed policy was undoubtedly important, it was not the primary cause of the Great Depression or the economy's relapse in 1937. The Smoot-Hawley tariff of June 1930 was the catalyst that got the whole process going. It was the largest single increase in taxes on trade during peacetime and precipitated massive retaliation by foreign governments on U.S. products. Huge federal and state tax increases in 1932 followed the initial decline in the economy thus doubling down on the impact of Smoot-Hawley. There were additional large tax increases in 1936 and 1937 that were the proximate cause of the economy's relapse in 1937.
In 1930-31, during the Hoover administration and in the midst of an economic collapse, there was a very slight increase in tax rates on personal income at both the lowest and highest brackets. The corporate tax rate was also slightly increased to 12% from 11%. But beginning in 1932 the lowest personal income tax rate was raised to 4% from less than one-half of 1% while the highest rate was raised to 63% from 25%. (That's not a misprint!) The corporate rate was raised to 13.75% from 12%. All sorts of Federal excise taxes too numerous to list were raised as well. The highest inheritance tax rate was also raised in 1932 to 45% from 20% and the gift tax was reinstituted with the highest rate set at 33.5%.
But the tax hikes didn't stop there. In 1934, during the Roosevelt administration, the highest estate tax rate was raised to 60% from 45% and raised again to 70% in 1935. The highest gift tax rate was raised to 45% in 1934 from 33.5% in 1933 and raised again to 52.5% in 1935. The highest corporate tax rate was raised to 15% in 1936 with a surtax on undistributed profits up to 27%. In 1936 the highest personal income tax rate was raised yet again to 79% from 63%—a stifling 216% increase in four years. Finally, in 1937 a 1% employer and a 1% employee tax was placed on all wages up to $3,000.
Because of the number of states and their diversity I'm going to aggregate all state and local taxes and express them as a percentage of GDP. This measure of state tax policy truly understates the state and local tax contribution to the tragedy we call the Great Depression, but I'm sure the reader will get the picture. In 1929, state and local taxes were 7.2% of GDP and then rose to 8.5%, 9.7% and 12.3% for the years 1930, '31 and '32 respectively.
The damage caused by high taxation during the Great Depression is the real lesson we should learn. A government simply cannot tax a country into prosperity. If there were one warning I'd give to all who will listen, it is that U.S. federal and state tax policies are on an economic crash trajectory today just as they were in the 1930s. Net legislated state-tax increases as a percentage of previous year tax receipts are at 3.1%, their highest level since 1991; the Bush tax cuts are set to expire in 2011; and additional taxes to pay for health-care and the proposed cap-and-trade scheme are on the horizon.
In addition to all of these tax issues, the U.S. in the early 1930s was on a gold standard where paper currency was legally convertible into gold. Both circulated in the economy as money. At the outset of the Great Depression people distrusted banks but trusted paper currency and gold. They withdrew deposits from banks, which because of a fractional reserve system caused a drop in the money supply in spite of a rising monetary base. The Fed really had little power to control either bank reserves or interest rates.
The increase in the demand for paper currency and gold not only had a quantity effect on the money supply but it also put upward pressure on the price of gold, which meant that dollar prices of all goods and services had to fall for the relative price of gold to rise. The deflation of the early 1930s was not caused by tight money. It was the result of panic purchases of fixed-dollar priced gold. From the end of 1929 until early 1933 the Consumer Price Index fell by 27%.
By mid-1932 there were public fears of a change in the gold-dollar relationship. In their classic text, "A Monetary History of the United States," economists Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz wrote, "Fears of devaluation were widespread and the public's preference for gold was unmistakable." Panic ensued and there was a rush to buy gold.
In early 1933, the federal government (not the Federal Reserve) declared a bank holiday prohibiting banks from paying out gold or dealing in foreign exchange. An executive order made it illegal for anyone to "hoard" gold and forced everyone to turn in their gold and gold certificates to the government at an exchange value of $20.67 per ounce of gold in return for paper currency and bank deposits. All gold clauses in contracts private and public were declared null and void and by the end of January 1934 the price of gold, most of which had been confiscated by the government, was raised to $35 per ounce. In other words, in less than one year the government confiscated as much gold as it could at $20.67 an ounce and then devalued the dollar in terms of gold by almost 60%. That's one helluva tax.
The 1933-34 devaluation of the dollar caused the money supply to grow by over 60% from April 1933 to March 1937, and over that same period the monetary base grew by over 35% and adjusted reserves grew by about 100%. Monetary policy was about as easy as it could get. The consumer price index from early 1933 through mid-1937 rose by about 15% in spite of double-digit unemployment. And that's the story.
The lessons here are pretty straightforward. Inflation can and did occur during a depression, and that inflation was strictly a monetary phenomenon.
My hope is that the people who are running our economy do look to the Great Depression as an object lesson. My fear is that they will misinterpret the evidence and attribute high unemployment and the initial decline in prices to tight money, while increasing taxes to combat budget deficits.
Mr. Laffer is the chairman of Laffer Associates and co-author of "The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy—If We Let It Happen" (Threshold, 2008).

Do We Impact the Culture, or Does it Impact Us?

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 09:52:08 -0500

Triangles Don’t Have Outliers
Topic: Sex and Culture
In a previous thread Jane Dunsworth asked the question when it comes to all questions of "reading culture." How do you tell the difference between some manifestation of lowlife culture and that same thing (apparently) adopted and carried out by someone whose respectability is beyond question? Hmmm? The problem is the same regardless of how much time has elapsed, or whether any has.
Let me cram a bunch of examples into one paragraph in order to prove to everyone that I at least appreciate the problem. When I was a wee bairn, use of the phrase that sucks was the kind of thing that would get you slapped by your grandmother, and then you would be grounded for three months. After that, they would turn you over to the federal authorities to be shipped off to Guantanamo. Now I hear Christians using the phrase with an almost blissful and childlike innocence. In the Victorian era, a modest skirt that ended just above the knee would have been an outrage on the public weal, and could well have had all the males of your Victorian acquaintance barking at the moon. When I was in the Navy in the seventies, I was stationed in Groton, CN and recall a conversation with a grand dame of the old school who had been a girl in the New England Edwardian period. She told me about the lace coverings that they used to have for piano and table legs so that those bare naked limbs would not stumble the brothers into lascivious thoughts. That's just sick and twisted, but no doubt some conservative in that era (named Wilson perhaps?) thought that relaxation of such standards was the first step down the road to ruination. Sir Philip Sidney wore a collared ruff that would get an 8th grader (at a Christian school near you) sent to the office for impudence and disrespect. And so it goes.
Now after long experience with this "what are we coming to?" kind of thing, we think that anybody who complains about any kind of fashion shift (as in, my complaints about tattoos and metallic finery for the nose) is necessarily making the mistake of absolutizing the standards of the culture immediately antecedent to the proposed change, is guilty of various forms of imperialistic legalism, and has just enough brains to make a jay bird fly crooked.
First, the fact that we have a bunch of difficult judgment calls to make doesn't let us off the hook. We, and the Christians who lived through all the various examples I cited (and multitudes of other examples), still have to make them. You are a parent in the fifties, and you either discipline your kids for saying that sucks or you don't. You either let your daughter go to the dance dressed "like that" or you don't. You either have bare nekkid piano legs or you don't, or perhaps you forego buying a piano to avoid temptation altogether.
Moreover, if you are a Christian who is seeking to live biblically, you recognize that you have to make a bunch of decisions like this based on biblical requirements that positively require such judgment calls. Young men are required to be "sober-minded" (Tit. 2:6), and young women are called to "shamefacedness and sobriety" (1 Tim. 2:6). We want to be "grave" and "temperate" when we grow older (Tit. 2:2), which means aspiring to that when we are younger. Christians are not to be "worldly" (1 John 2:15). Now noplace in the Bible are you going to find a simple checklist for these things, or a 1-2-3 litmus test. You have to decide.
Now when you decide, part of that decision will be on the basis of your reading of the cultural behavior of hundreds of thousands of other people. And you find that it is just as easy for a teenager to argue with your determination that this or that is "worldly" as that it is "not ladylike." But at the same time, not deciding is not an option -- not to decide is to decide.
In going into this, I want to assume two things -- first, a thorough acquaintance with Scripture and the symbolism of Scripture, and second, a basic cultural literacy -- you know what the culture itself is saying about x, y, or z, and you know what that is before the evangelicals fire up their copy cat knock-off industry. With those two assumptions, there is one remaining principle that has to be mastered before you start getting yourself into real trouble. So what is it?
Basically it is this -- generalizations are lawful. Whether we are talking about Pharisees, Republicans, or teenaged boys, generalizations are lawful and necessary. And those who respond to such generalizations by producing one counterexample (that got its feelings hurt by what you said) are demonstrating nothing so much as their own American individualism -- the view that everything of this nature must be decided on a case-by-case basis. If you ever group people together and say something about the group generally that one member of that group in fact disavows, you are guilty of "discrimination." For those just joining us, that's supposed to be bad. But the person making this charge is only doing so because he is intellectually lazy, and he is lazy because he is a Cretan (Tit. 1:12). An island full of bums. If somebody, nobody in particular, contradicts the wholesome words of the gospel, Paul knows all about that guy (1 Tim. 6:4-5). He goes into astonishing detail about a person whose name he does not even have to know. And anybody who wants to refute Paul by finding one guy who doesn't consent to wholesome words, but who at the same time does not dote on words of strife, or who does not think that gain is godliness -- such an objector doesn't know how human language works. Probably a slow belly too.
An insistence that no statement can be made about such things except on a case-by-case basis, and then only if you have weighed the motives of that person's heart, is a tactic that has paralyzed and silenced many critics -- and this is a shame, because we live in a time that could use a whole lot more critics. Not only do we need critics, we need an army of critics, all of whom paint with a broad brush. Shoot, give them rollers.
Suppose after a day at the beach I conclude that America is rapidly turning into Papua New Guinea -- tribal tattoos everywhere. Just a matter of time before chewing betel nut is all the rage in our high schools, the better to achieve that fetching "red teeth" look. Suppose that just yesterday I heard young William arguing with his uptight mom, wanting to know where the Bible says you can't put a bone through your nose. I would point to the inevitability of just such pagan cultural expressions because culture is religion externalized. In response to this, am I going to be even slowed down if you introduce me to the sweetest Christian woman ever, a faithful wife and mother of three, a godly church goer, and one who sports a dainty buttercup tattoo on her ankle? And she got it just last month, as a Christian? I am sure I would be very happy to meet her, and moreover I will grant everything you say about her. No doubt she is a better Christian than I. But how can I grant this without abandoning my earlier jeremiad, and my unfortunate tendency to launch jeremiads? And fulminations? Because I am not all P are Qing, and I am not all triangles are three-siding. Cultures travel in herds, and herds always have outliers. Triangles don't have outliers.
Posted by Douglas Wilson - 9/15/2009

One Law for the Believer and the Stranger

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:17:57 -0500

With regard to Brian McLaren’s decision to participate in Ramadan, I would like to share a few thoughts:

First, God does not take kindly to syncretism. He is JEALOUS. But our response, somewhat surprisingly for separatist evangelicals, is not detachment. It is engagement without participation in any form of cultic activity. Don’t bring “strange fire” before the Lord, even if on censers.

We are to treat the stranger well. Love him. Offer the lovingkindness and grace of Yahweh revealed in Jesus to him. But do so in a way that entices him to see that Yahweh is Lord.

Some thoughts by God which show that we are kind to the stranger but God's Law applies to him, not the other way around. And know that God’s Law was a pedagogue to teach immature Israel (and now the immature Christian) how to press on in sanctification.

Exodus 12:49 (Show Exodus 12)
There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”
Leviticus 16:29 (Show Leviticus 16)
“And it shall be a statute to you forever that in the seventh month, on the tenth day of the month, you shall afflict yourselves[1] and shall do no work, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you.
17:8 “And you shall say to them, Any one of the house of Israel, or of the strangers who sojourn among them, who b offers a burnt offering or sacrifice 9 and c does not bring it to the entrance of the tent of meeting to offer it to the Lord, w that man shall be cut off from his people.
Leviticus 18:26 (Show Leviticus 18)
But you shall keep my statutes and my rules and do none of these abominations, either the native or the stranger who sojourns among you
Leviticus 20:2 (Show Leviticus 20)
“Say to the people of Israel, Any one of the people of Israel or of the strangers who sojourn in Israel who gives any of his children to Molech shall surely be put to death. The people of the land shall stone him with stones.
Leviticus 25:35 (Show Leviticus 25)
“If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you.
Numbers 9:14 (Show Numbers 9) And if a stranger sojourns among you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, according to the statute of the Passover and according to its rule, so shall he do. You shall have one statute, both for the sojourner and for the native.”
Numbers 15:14 (Show Numbers 15) And if a stranger is sojourning with you, or anyone is living permanently among you, and he wishes to offer a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord, he shall do as you do.
Numbers 15:15 (Show Numbers 15) For the assembly, there shall be one statute for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you, a statute forever throughout your generations. You and the sojourner shall be alike before the Lord.
Numbers 15:16 (Show Numbers 15) One law and one rule shall be for you and for the stranger who sojourns with you.”
Numbers 15:26 (Show Numbers 15) And all the congregation of the people of Israel shall be forgiven, and the strangerwho sojourns among them, because the whole population was involved in the mistake.
Numbers 15:29 (Show Numbers 15) You shall have one law for him who does anything unintentionally, for him who is native among the people of Israel and for the stranger who sojourns among them.
Numbers 19:10 (Show Numbers 19) And the one who gathers the ashes of the heifer shall wash his clothes and be unclean until evening. And this shall be a perpetual statute for the people of Israel, and for the stranger who sojourns among them.
Numbers 35:15 (Show Numbers 35) These six cities shall be for refuge for the people of Israel, and for the stranger and for the sojourner among them, that anyone who kills any person without intent may flee there.

Fisher On Our Unpaid Obligations

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 08:23:34 -0500

Storms on the Horizon

Remarks before the Commonwealth Club of California
San Francisco, California
May 28, 2008

Thank you, Bruce [Ericson]. I am honored to be here this evening and am grateful for the invitation to speak to the Commonwealth Club of California.

Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, two of Ben Bernanke’s linear ancestors as chairmen of the Federal Reserve, have been in the news quite a bit lately. Yet, we rarely hear about William McChesney Martin, a magnificent public servant who was Fed chairman during five presidencies and to this day holds the record for the longest tenure: 19 years.

Chairman Martin had a way with words. And he had a twinkle in his eye. It was Bill Martin who wisely and succinctly defined the Federal Reserve as having the unenviable task “to take away the punchbowl just as the party gets going.” He did himself one up when he received the Alfalfa Club’s nomination for the presidency of the United States. I suspect many here tonight have been to the annual Alfalfa dinner. It is one of the great institutions in Washington, D.C. Once a year, it holds a dinner devoted solely to poking fun at the political pretensions of the day. Tongue firmly in cheek, the club nominates a candidate to run for the presidency on the Alfalfa Party ticket. Of course, none of them ever win. Nominees are thenceforth known for evermore as members of the Stassen Society, named for Harold Stassen, who ran for president nine times and lost every time, then ran a tenth time on the Alfalfa ticket and lost again. The motto of the group is Veni, Vidi, Defici—“I came, I saw, I lost.”

Bill Martin was nominated to run and lose on the Alfalfa Party ticket in 1966, while serving as Fed chairman during Lyndon Johnson’s term. In his acceptance speech,[1] he announced that, given his proclivities as a central banker, he would take his cues from the German philosopher Goethe, “who said that people could endure anything except continual prosperity.” Therefore, Martin declared, he would adopt a platform proclaiming that as a president he planned to “make life endurable again by stamping out prosperity.”

“I shall conduct the administration of the country,” he said, “exactly as I have so successfully conducted the affairs of the Federal Reserve. To that end, I shall assemble the best brains that can be found…ask their advice on all matters…and completely confound them by following all their conflicting counsel.”

It is true, Bruce, that as you said in your introduction, I am one of the 17 people who participate in Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) deliberations and provide Ben Bernanke with “conflicting counsel” as the committee cobbles together a monetary policy that seeks to promote America’s economic prosperity, Goethe to the contrary. But tonight I speak for neither the committee, nor the chairman, nor any of the other good people that serve the Federal Reserve System. I speak solely in my own capacity. I want to speak to you tonight about an economic problem that we must soon confront or else risk losing our primacy as the world’s most powerful and dynamic economy.

Forty-three years ago this Sunday, Bill Martin delivered a commencement address to Columbia University that was far more sober than his Alfalfa Club speech. The opening lines of that Columbia address [2] were as follows: “When economic prospects are at their brightest, the dangers of complacency and recklessness are greatest. As our prosperity proceeds on its record-breaking path, it behooves every one of us to scan the horizon of our national and international economy for danger signals so as to be ready for any storm.”

Today, our fellow citizens and financial markets are paying the price for falling victim to the complacency and recklessness Martin warned against. Few scanned the horizon for trouble brewing as we proceeded along a path of unparalleled prosperity fueled by an unsustainable housing bubble and unbridled credit markets. Armchair or Monday morning quarterbacks will long debate whether the Fed could have/should have/would have taken away the punchbowl that lubricated that blowout party. I have given my opinion on that matter elsewhere and won’t go near that subject tonight. What counts now is what we have done more recently and where we go from here. Whatever the sins of omission or commission committed by our predecessors, the Bernanke FOMC’s objective is to use a new set of tools to calm the tempest in the credit markets to get them back to functioning in a more orderly fashion. We trust that the various term credit facilities we have recently introduced are helping restore confidence while the credit markets undertake self-corrective initiatives and lawmakers consider new regulatory schemes.

I am also not going to engage in a discussion of present monetary policy tonight, except to say that if inflationary developments and, more important, inflation expectations, continue to worsen, I would expect a change of course in monetary policy to occur sooner rather than later, even in the face of an anemic economic scenario. Inflation is the most insidious enemy of capitalism. No central banker can countenance it, not least the men and women of the Federal Reserve.

Tonight, I want to talk about a different matter. In keeping with Bill Martin’s advice, I have been scanning the horizon for danger signals even as we continue working to recover from the recent turmoil. In the distance, I see a frightful storm brewing in the form of untethered government debt. I choose the words—“frightful storm”—deliberately to avoid hyperbole. Unless we take steps to deal with it, the long-term fiscal situation of the federal government will be unimaginably more devastating to our economic prosperity than the subprime debacle and the recent debauching of credit markets that we are now working so hard to correct.

You might wonder why a central banker would be concerned with fiscal matters. Fiscal policy is, after all, the responsibility of the Congress, not the Federal Reserve. Congress, and Congress alone, has the power to tax and spend. From this monetary policymaker’s point of view, though, deficits matter for what we do at the Fed. There are many reasons why. Economists have found that structural deficits raise long-run interest rates, complicating the Fed’s dual mandate to develop a monetary policy that promotes sustainable, noninflationary growth. The even more disturbing dark and dirty secret about deficits—especially when they careen out of control—is that they create political pressure on central bankers to adopt looser monetary policy down the road. I will return to that shortly. First, let me give you the unvarnished facts of our nation’s fiscal predicament.

Eight years ago, our federal budget, crafted by a Democratic president and enacted by a Republican Congress, produced a fiscal surplus of $236 billion, the first surplus in almost 40 years and the highest nominal-dollar surplus in American history. While the Fed is scrupulously nonpartisan and nonpolitical, I mention this to emphasize that the deficit/debt issue knows no party and can be solved only by both parties working together. For a brief time, with surpluses projected into the future as far as the eye could see, economists and policymakers alike began to contemplate a bucolic future in which interest payments would form an ever-declining share of federal outlays, a future where Treasury bonds and debt-ceiling legislation would become dusty relics of a long-forgotten past. The Fed even had concerns about how open market operations would be conducted in a marketplace short of Treasury debt.

That utopian scenario did not last for long. Over the next seven years, federal spending grew at a 6.2 percent nominal annual rate while receipts grew at only 3.5 percent. Of course, certain areas of government, like national defense, had to spend more in the wake of 9/11. But nondefense discretionary spending actually rose 6.4 percent annually during this timeframe, outpacing the growth in total expenditures. Deficits soon returned, reaching an expected $410 billion for 2008—a $600 billion swing from where we were just eight years ago. This $410 billion estimate, by the way, was made before the recently passed farm bill and supplemental defense appropriation and without considering a proposed patch for the Alternative Minimum Tax—all measures that will lead to a further ballooning of government deficits.

In keeping with the tradition of rosy scenarios, official budget projections suggest this deficit will be relatively short-lived. They almost always do. According to the official calculus, following a second $400-billion-plus deficit in 2009, the red ink should fall to $160 billion in 2010 and $95 billion in 2011, and then the budget swings to a $48 billion surplus in 2012.

If you do the math, however, you might be forgiven for sensing that these felicitous projections look a tad dodgy. To reach the projected 2012 surplus, outlays are assumed to rise at a 2.4 percent nominal annual rate over the next four years—less than half as fast as they rose the previous seven years. Revenue is assumed to rise at a 6.7 percent nominal annual rate over the next four years—almost double the rate of the past seven years. Using spending and revenue growth rates that have actually prevailed in recent years, the 2012 surplus quickly evaporates and becomes a deficit, potentially of several hundred billion dollars.

Doing deficit math is always a sobering exercise. It becomes an outright painful one when you apply your calculator to the long-run fiscal challenge posed by entitlement programs. Were I not a taciturn central banker, I would say the mathematics of the long-term outlook for entitlements, left unchanged, is nothing short of catastrophic.

Typically, critics ranging from the Concord Coalition to Ross Perot begin by wringing their collective hands over the unfunded liabilities of Social Security. A little history gives you a view as to why. Franklin Roosevelt originally conceived a social security system in which individuals would fund their own retirements through payroll-tax contributions. But Congress quickly realized that such a system could not put much money into the pockets of indigent elderly citizens ravaged by the Great Depression. Instead, a pay-as-you-go funding system was embraced, making each generation’s retirement the responsibility of its children.

Now, fast forward 70 or so years and ask this question: What is the mathematical predicament of Social Security today? Answer: The amount of money the Social Security system would need today to cover all unfunded liabilities from now on—what fiscal economists call the “infinite horizon discounted value” of what has already been promised recipients but has no funding mechanism currently in place—is $13.6 trillion, an amount slightly less than the annual gross domestic product of the United States.

Demographics explain why this is so. Birthrates have fallen dramatically, reducing the worker–retiree ratio and leaving today’s workers pulling a bigger load than the system designers ever envisioned. Life spans have lengthened without a corresponding increase in the retirement age, leaving retirees in a position to receive benefits far longer than the system designers envisioned. Formulae for benefits and cost-of-living adjustments have also contributed to the growth in unfunded liabilities.

The good news is this Social Security shortfall might be manageable. While the issues regarding Social Security reform are complex, it is at least possible to imagine how Congress might find, within a $14 trillion economy, ways to wrestle with a $13 trillion unfunded liability. The bad news is that Social Security is the lesser of our entitlement worries. It is but the tip of the unfunded liability iceberg. The much bigger concern is Medicare, a program established in 1965, the same prosperous year that Bill Martin cautioned his Columbia University audience to be wary of complacency and storms on the horizon.

Medicare was a pay-as-you-go program from the very beginning, despite warnings from some congressional leaders—Wilbur Mills was the most credible of them before he succumbed to the pay-as-you-go wiles of Fanne Foxe, the Argentine Firecracker—who foresaw some of the long-term fiscal issues such a financing system could pose. Unfortunately, they were right.

Please sit tight while I walk you through the math of Medicare. As you may know, the program comes in three parts: Medicare Part A, which covers hospital stays; Medicare B, which covers doctor visits; and Medicare D, the drug benefit that went into effect just 29 months ago. The infinite-horizon present discounted value of the unfunded liability for Medicare A is $34.4 trillion.

The unfunded liability of Medicare B is an additional $34 trillion. The shortfall for Medicare D adds another $17.2 trillion. The total? If you wanted to cover the unfunded liability of all three programs today, you would be stuck with an $85.6 trillion bill. That is more than six times as large as the bill for Social Security. It is more than six times the annual output of the entire U.S. economy.

Why is the Medicare figure so large? There is a mix of reasons, really. In part, it is due to the same birthrate and life-expectancy issues that affect Social Security. In part, it is due to ever-costlier advances in medical technology and the willingness of Medicare to pay for them. And in part, it is due to expanded benefits—the new drug benefit program’s unfunded liability is by itself one-third greater than all of Social Security’s.

Add together the unfunded liabilities from Medicare and Social Security, and it comes to $99.2 trillion over the infinite horizon. Traditional Medicare composes about 69 percent, the new drug benefit roughly 17 percent and Social Security the remaining 14 percent.

I want to remind you that I am only talking about the unfunded portions of Social Security and Medicare. It is what the current payment scheme of Social Security payroll taxes, Medicare payroll taxes, membership fees for Medicare B, copays, deductibles and all other revenue currently channeled to our entitlement system will not cover under current rules. These existing revenue streams must remain in place in perpetuity to handle the “funded” entitlement liabilities. Reduce or eliminate this income and the unfunded liability grows. Increase benefits and the liability grows as well.

Let’s say you and I and Bruce Ericson and every U.S. citizen who is alive today decided to fully address this unfunded liability through lump-sum payments from our own pocketbooks, so that all of us and all future generations could be secure in the knowledge that we and they would receive promised benefits in perpetuity. How much would we have to pay if we split the tab? Again, the math is painful. With a total population of 304 million, from infants to the elderly, the per-person payment to the federal treasury would come to $330,000. This comes to $1.3 million per family of four—over 25 times the average household’s income.

Clearly, once-and-for-all contributions would be an unbearable burden. Alternatively, we could address the entitlement shortfall through policy changes that would affect ourselves and future generations. For example, a permanent 68 percent increase in federal income tax revenue—from individual and corporate taxpayers—would suffice to fully fund our entitlement programs. Or we could instead divert 68 percent of current income-tax revenues from their intended uses to the entitlement system, which would accomplish the same thing.

Suppose we decided to tackle the issue solely on the spending side. It turns out that total discretionary spending in the federal budget, if maintained at its current share of GDP in perpetuity, is 3 percent larger than the entitlement shortfall. So all we would have to do to fully fund our nation’s entitlement programs would be to cut discretionary spending by 97 percent. But hold on. That discretionary spending includes defense and national security, education, the environment and many other areas, not just those controversial
earmarks that make the evening news. All of them would have to be cut—almost eliminated, really—to tackle this problem through discretionary spending.

I hope that gives you some idea of just how large the problem is. And just to drive an important point home, these spending cuts or tax increases would need to be made immediately and maintained in perpetuity to solve the entitlement deficit problem. Discretionary spending would have to be reduced by 97 percent not only for our generation, but for our children and their children and every generation of children to come. And similarly on the taxation side, income tax revenue would have to rise 68 percent and remain that high forever. Remember, though, I said tax revenue, not tax rates. Who knows how much individual and corporate tax rates would have to change to increase revenue by 68 percent?

If these possible solutions to the unfunded-liability problem seem draconian, it’s because they are draconian. But they do serve to give you a sense of the severity of the problem. To be sure, there are ways to lessen the reliance on any single policy and the burden borne by any particular set of citizens. Most proposals to address long-term entitlement debt, for example, rely on a combination of tax increases, benefit reductions and eligibility changes to find the trillions necessary to safeguard the system over the long term.

No combination of tax hikes and spending cuts, though, will change the total burden borne by current and future generations. For the existing unfunded liabilities to be covered in the end, someone must pay $99.2 trillion more or receive $99.2 trillion less than they have been currently promised. This is a cold, hard fact. The decision we must make is whether to shoulder a substantial portion of that burden today or compel future generations to bear its full weight.

Now that you are all thoroughly depressed, let me come back to monetary policy and the Fed.
It is only natural to cast about for a solution—any solution—to avoid the fiscal pain we know is necessary because we succumbed to complacency and put off dealing with this looming fiscal disaster. Throughout history, many nations, when confronted by sizable debts they were unable or unwilling to repay, have seized upon an apparently painless solution to this dilemma: monetization. Just have the monetary authority run cash off the printing presses until the debt is repaid, the story goes, then promise to be responsible from that point on and hope your sins will be forgiven by God and Milton Friedman and everyone else.

We know from centuries of evidence in countless economies, from ancient Rome to today’s Zimbabwe, that running the printing press to pay off today’s bills leads to much worse problems later on. The inflation that results from the flood of money into the economy turns out to be far worse than the fiscal pain those countries hoped to avoid.

Earlier I mentioned the Fed’s dual mandate to manage growth and inflation. In the long run, growth cannot be sustained if markets are undermined by inflation. Stable prices go hand in hand with achieving sustainable economic growth. I have said many, many times that inflation is a sinister beast that, if uncaged, devours savings, erodes consumers’ purchasing power, decimates returns on capital, undermines the reliability of financial accounting, distracts the attention of corporate management, undercuts employment growth and real wages, and debases the currency.
Purging rampant inflation and a debased currency requires administering a harsh medicine. We have been there, and we know the cure that was wrought by the FOMC under Paul Volcker. Even the perception that the Fed is pursuing a cheap-money strategy to accommodate fiscal burdens, should it take root, is a paramount risk to the long-term welfare of the U.S. economy. The Federal Reserve will never let this happen. It is not an option. Ever. Period.

The way we resolve these liabilities—and resolve them we must—will affect our own well-being as well as the prospects of future generations and the global economy. Failing to face up to our responsibility will produce the mother of all financial storms. The warning signals have been flashing for years, but we find it easier to ignore them than to take action. Will we take the painful fiscal steps necessary to prevent the storm by reducing and eventually eliminating our fiscal imbalances? That depends on you.

I mean “you” literally. This situation is of your own creation. When you berate your representatives or senators or presidents for the mess we are in, you are really berating yourself. You elect them. You are the ones who let them get away with burdening your children and grandchildren rather than yourselves with the bill for your entitlement programs.

This issue transcends political affiliation. When George Shultz, one of San Francisco’s greatest Republican public servants, was director of President Nixon’s Office of Management and Budget, he became worried about the amount of money Congress was proposing to spend. After some nights of tossing and turning, he called legendary staffer Sam Cohen into his office. Cohen had a long memory of budget matters and knew every zig and zag of budget history. “Sam,” Shultz asked, “tell me something just between you and me. Is there any difference between Republicans and Democrats when it comes to spending money?” Cohen looked at him, furrowed his brow and, after thinking about it, replied, “Mr. Shultz, there is only one difference: Democrats enjoy it more.”

Yet no one, Democrat or Republican, enjoys placing our children and grandchildren and their children and grandchildren in harm’s way. No one wants to see the frightful storm of unfunded long-term liabilities destroy our economy or threaten the independence and authority of our central bank or tear our currency asunder.

Of late, we have heard many complaints about the weakness of the dollar against the euro and other currencies. It was recently argued in the op-ed pages of the Financial Times [3] that one reason for the demise of the British pound was the need to liquidate England’s
international reserves to pay off the costs of the Great Wars. In the end, the pound, it was essentially argued, was sunk by the kaiser’s army and Hitler’s bombs. Right now, we—you and I—are launching fiscal bombs against ourselves. You have it in your power as the electors of our fiscal authorities to prevent this destruction. Please do so.

About the Author
Richard W. Fisher is president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Notes
The views expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect official positions of the Federal Reserve System.
William McChesney Martin, “Alfalfa Club Dinner Script,” delivered at the Alfalfa Club Dinner, Washington, D.C., Jan. 22, 1966, Box 163, William McChesney Martin Collection, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas.
“Does Monetary History Repeat Itself?” Commencement Day Luncheon of the Alumni Federation of Columbia University, June 1, 1965, New York City.
“The Euro’s Success Could Also Be Its Downfall,” by Harold James, Financial Times, May 18, 2008.