Tag: Theonomy

A perfect storm of converging crises

The dictionary defines a perfect storm as an “unusual combination of events or things that produce an unusually bad or powerful result.” The latter, as I see it, is life as we’ve become accustomed to enjoying it.

Four years ago, I stated my grounds and posed a question to a writer who thinks Christian Reconstruction or Theonomy meets the level of our times:

The argument . . . is over hermeneutics and confessional commitments that flow from one’s interpretation of Scripture. Do libertarians wish to have that conversation? That would be more than fine with me. I’ll need bullet-proof exegesis, however, to believe that Christians are charged, as Dominion theology teaches, with overthrowing Satan’s dominion of this world with its sex-trafficking, drug cartels, arms dealers, blood diamond trade, supervised as they are by pathological warlords; the totalitarian ethnostate of Communist China; radical Islam whose agents are sprinkled the world over; pandemics exploited by globalists and their medicrat tools; the virtually total loss of privacy at the hands of the Deep State, Big Pharma, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence; the trillions of dollars in unpayable debt and the hyperinflation that must follow central banking as the night the day—just to name some of the enormities that blight our planet.

In that post, I didn’t refer to this concatenation as a “perfect storm of crises,” but since then I’ve used this meteorological metaphor when considering our parlous estate.[1] It has come to mean any situation where a highly improbable concurrent of circumstances leads to an event of unusual magnitude or severity. I’d like to know where it falters, if it does.

The “event of unusual magnitude or severity” I refer to is the total collapse of the good of order—civilization, what’s left of it—on which any regular enjoyment of goods of consumption depends. Continue reading “A perfect storm of converging crises”

Dominion Theology: Salvation or Snare for Liberty?

The following review of Robert Grözinger, Why Libertarianism Needs Christianity to Succeed (Kindle eBook, April 7, 2020) was published on Amazon today.—AGF

Only in this post, not in the Amazon review or anywhere else it was published, I clarified my statement of Scripture’s status as divinely inspired (θεόπνευστος, theopneustos). The writings, not the human authors as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit, are “God-breathed.” —AGF, February 19, 2024

This provocative essay derives from a talk given to the Libertarian Alliance in London late last summer. German economist and translator Robert Grözinger (Jesus, der Kapitalist: Das christliche Herz der Marktwirtschaft, Munich, 2012) argues that libertarianism, which traditionally prides itself on its alleged independence from philosophical frameworks, cannot succeed without one that gives meaning to liberty-seeking itself. Arguments for, say, the superiority of free to hampered markets don’t compensate libertarianism for its lack of an adequate framework of meaning or worldview. Libertarians should identify theirs and persuade others on its terms if they want libertarianism to be more than an intellectual hobby. For if libertarianism’s attitude toward ultimate-meaning frameworks remains as laissez-faire as its politics, its attractiveness will remain limited. Grözinger believes Christianity best meets that need.

Robert Grözinger

Grözinger believes that most people—regular folks, not nerds who read themselves into and out of ideologies—are not libertarian for this reason: they seek meaning as much as (if not more than) economic well-being. Intellectual conviction that in a libertarian society everyone will be, on the whole, materially better off than in any alternative arrangement is not enough to seal the deal. For the masses, liberty may be a great good, especially when they’re deprived of it, but not necessarily life’s chief good around which all others revolve. If one wishes to attain and retain other great goods, the libertarian argues, one cannot neglect liberty. Liberty doesn’t defend itself, so people must learn to make it an object of thought and protection. Grözinger amplifies this insight: theoretically self-conscious defenders of liberty must, no less self-consciously, ground their defense in a worldview that embraces many values, not just one.

In his short book Grözinger packs in enough topics to fill an interdisciplinary graduate seminar in politics and religion; I’ll have to pass over how he draws upon Jordan Peterson, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Friedrich Hayek and focus on the writer who answers Grözinger’s question to his satisfaction: Reformed historian and theonomist Gary North. Of the several scholars whose work Grözinger draws upon, North is the only one who’s also a professing Christian—and one with whom many (if not most) other Christians disagree. Continue reading “Dominion Theology: Salvation or Snare for Liberty?”