It is always helpful
to look at the part in light of the whole, and I find that Albert
Wolters (Redeemer University College in Ancaster, Ontario) in his book
Creation Regained gives
students of politics an excellent view of the theological big picture
in which to understand politics, culture and all of life. For this
reason, I assign it at the beginning of my Introduction to Politics
course.
Wolters
describes what he calls the “creation law,” what one might otherwise
call natural law. The Lord made the world, by its very structure, to
work in certain ways, whether physically, morally, psychologically,
economically, etc. He explains this on pp. 13-20, followed by his
account of the creation mandate in relation to it. On p.27, he defines
it as, “the totality of God’s sovereign activity toward the created
cosmos.” On p.62, he says that “ignoring the law of creation is
impossible.” If you set government policy based on bad economics, i.e.
policies based on false economic principles, i.e. principles that do
not correspond to the way God has created the world to operate, they
will be counterproductive and bring unhappy results. They won’t “work.”
The question for the Evangelical left and right is: what is the
creation law in the various spheres of dispute?
The left accuses
the right of bowing to secular conservative notions that are not found
in the Bible. But by common grace, non-Christians are able to discern
these creation laws, often better than Christians can. The question is:
have they discerned accurately? The left tends to focus only on the
moral law (which they may or may not have right) and understand that as
the exhaustive expression of God’s will. Thus, they determine their
economics, for example, based entirely on the moral principles that
they cull from the Bible. But of course the laws inherent in God’s
creation, whether moral, political, economic or chemical, are fully
consistent with one another. God is not incoherent. He speaks with one
voice. So if their moral theology entails an impoverishing and
politically enslaving economic theory, it is a good indication that
their moral reading of the Bible is defective.
For example,
Wolters writes, “Any theory that somehow sanctions the existence of
evil in God’s good creation fails to do justice to sin’s fundamentally
outrageous and blasphemous character” (pp. 58-59). An Evangelical on
the political left would point out that the free market economic system
(“capitalism”) employs and legitimizes selfishness, and thus is ungodly
and inherently sinful. But lo, it works! It not only makes a few people
rich, but it raises the tide and lifts all boats. In fact, the rising
tide of prosperity in free market American lifts boats all over the
world!
So how do we square the
dependence on sinful selfish gain with the evident correspondence of
economic liberty with natural principles in God’s created order? The
answer, I think, is in examining the moral premise more closely. What
our hypothetical leftist called sinful selfishness is actually just
reasonable self-concern. My desire to prosper is not inherently sinful.
My desire to get the best product for the lowest price is not
inherently sinful. These things can take sinful forms, but that does
not entail an indictment of the system itself which like all things, in
order to function properly, needs to be set within the broader context
of a charitable Christian society.
-- D. C. Innes