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Join the Libertarian Christian Institute as each week they explore, debate, and analyze the issues that are directly relevant to the intersection of Christianity and liberty. Always thoughtful, frequently controversial, and never boring (trust us), it is our hope and prayer that The Libertarian Christian Podcast serve as a valuable resource to the Church for years to come.
If you'd like to reach out to us and ask a question or submit some feedback, you can reach us at podcast@libertarianchristians.com, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, our website, libertarianchristians.com.
Matt Bellis:
[0:03] Welcome to the show that gets Christians thinking about faith and politics. Get ready to challenge the status quo, expand your imagination, and tackle controversy head-on. Let's stand together at the intersection of faith and freedom. It's time for the Libertarian Christian Podcast.
Cody:
[0:00:22] Yeah yeah i think we're live hey everybody nailed it so jacob's the normally the host of the green room if you're watching this and so he's here but he's not actually going to be hosting this when he's kind of here as our producer as our training wheels because normally he's the one who runs the show here and we don't ever go live without jacob's support so we're actually here primarily to talk to alex bernardo he's got a new book out politics economics and New Testament interpretation. It's actually not out just yet, but it will be out in about four hours and 15 minutes. Is that right? Yeah. Yep. So, um, so yeah.
Jacob:
[0:00:58] So I forgot to make the countdown timer. We're going to go, we're going to go, we're going to be live right until the point the book drops.
Alex:
[0:01:05] I love it.
Jacob:
[0:01:07] I hope Alex has energy drinks.
Alex:
[0:01:09] I have whiskey, so I don't know. But kind of like the opposite, I guess.
Cody:
[0:01:15] Add some Red Bull to it. So this is the book. It's enormous. I think it's the biggest book that LCI has published for sure. And CFL Press has a nice, beautiful little logo on there.
Jacob:
[0:01:24] You need to be careful with your wrist there, because if you bend too far with that book, you might injure yourself.
Cody:
[0:01:31] Well, so, Alex, maybe I'll kind of start. I'll just hit you with a softball question. What is the book about?
Alex:
[0:01:37] Politics, economics, and New Testament. interpretation. Yeah, that's it. You nailed it, Cody. Thanks. I appreciate you half answering that question for me.
Cody:
[0:01:44] All right. Well, we're out of time, so. Yeah.
Alex:
[0:01:47] Guys, thank you so much for tuning in, and I really appreciate it. It's been a great show.
Alex:
[0:01:51] The premise of the book is actually pretty simple. I read a lot of biblical scholarship, and I've been very unsatisfied for a long time with the way that biblical scholars employ modern political and economic concepts in their interpretation. I think that there are a lot of brilliant scholars out there, including scholars that don't agree with me on hardly any issues, but still nevertheless do great historical research. But when they draw moderate conclusions based on their research of the biblical world, they're usually trying to apply those conclusions to political and economic structures. But since they just don't really understand what those structures do and they don't have good definitions for thinking about how those structures ought to work, it creates all kinds of conceptual confusion. And I think that there is, and this is almost a ubiquitous phenomenon in biblical scholarship, this phenomenon where they make very good insights about what the writers of the Bible are actually trying to say. But then when they draw their modern conclusions from that, they wind up coming to conclusions that are the exact opposite of how the biblical writers intended for their works to be applied. And so I wrote this book to kind of address that. Like, what does it look like if we have very clear and consistent definitions of political and economic concepts and then apply that to New Testament interpretation and then critique New Testament scholarship in light of those categories? That's the goal.
Cody:
[0:03:05] Well, so let me ask you a clarifying question here, because it seems to me your critique here is of these sort of modern scholars who are going to read Acts or something, and then they're going to filter it through Marx, and so they're reading these kind of modern categories into the text. But you are arguing that like Paul, for instance, was really thinking in like kind of Misesian praxeology sort of categories, right? So like,
Cody:
[0:03:26] so how does modern libertarian thought illuminate an ancient text in a way that Marx fails to do so?
Alex:
[0:03:33] Yeah, that's a great question. And this is one of the points that I have made repeatedly on my show and that I make repeatedly in the book. The Bible does not teach libertarianism because the Bible was produced 2,000 years plus ago and can't teach any of our modern isms because people in the ancient world didn't think about life in that way. And so all of our modern conceptions of political and economic structures are generated by like the scientific revolution, the enlightenment, the renaissance, the Protestant reformation, like these completely changed the way that people thought about the world and people thought about reality. And the ancients just didn't share those values with us. So to say that there is such a thing as a libertarian reading of the Bible is to misread it by default because libertarianism was not an idea that it could have had back then. But I really came to this conclusion when I started reading libertarian literature about 10 years ago, and this is what Murray Rothbard says very clearly in his book, For a New Liberty and in other places, that the core of libertarian thought is the non-aggression principle. It's the idea that we do not have the right to initiate violent aggression against other people. And I think that at the core of Christian ethics is the idea of cruciformity, that we have to be conformed to the cross, that we should be the ones as Christians who are unwilling to take the path of violence and who.
Alex:
[0:04:42] Will make sacrifices for the betterment of other people, including sacrifices that cost us everything sometimes. And if we're looking at the moral framework of the Bible through the lens of cruciformity, which is, I think, the fundamental ethical principle of the New Testament, that corresponds very neatly to the non-aggression principle and libertarian thought. So again, it's a matter of, I think, if we're going to try to apply these biblical principles in our modern context, and when we do this, we obviously have to take into consideration political and economic structures, the most natural fit is libertarianism.
Cody:
[0:05:16] Of course, cruciformity is a little bit more—I'm saying this backwards, I think. The non-aggression principle is, I don't initiate force, but it's okay for me to respond to force. Cruciformity might actually go in a different direction, leaning in toward being willing to suffer. I think we'll maybe at some point talk about the distinctions there because I agree there's a fundamental overlap there, but I do suspect that Christianity goes a little further.
Alex:
[0:05:39] Yeah, I would totally agree with that. And I think that with libertarianism, it's not an all-encompassing philosophy for every area of life. Libertarianism is a political starting point, right? Like that's the baseline. And then we can build out from that. So for Christians, I think it's beneficial for us and everyone else living in society to all agree that we should not initiate aggression against other people, but that's not Christianity in and of itself. I think that idea comes out of a Christian context and a Christian culture, but that's not enough for Christianity.
Cody:
[0:06:07] Great, good. So one might argue that this book here is really three books. So the first section is essentially on libertarian theory, where you sort of give your priors there and explain how that could be illuminating. The second is on New Testament background. And the third is on political and economic dimensions of the New Testament. That kind of third section is really applying the methodology and kind of reach the conclusion. So you really could promote this book as three books for the price of one. But why did you think that all that background was necessary before you begin
Cody:
[0:06:38] the task of interpretation of kind of looking at Scripture through that lens?
Alex:
[0:06:43] Yeah, because I think one of the problems with the way that modern Christians talk about political and economic concepts is that we just go to the Bible and we're essentially looking for proof text to justify our previously held positions, right? And so one of the fundamental tenets of the field of New Testament scholarship is you have to do very careful historical research, establish your background, establish your methodology, because that's how you're convincing. And I saw this time and time again, not necessarily with biblical scholars, although I do think biblical scholars are in general...
Alex:
[0:07:13] Found wanting when it comes to defining what they mean by certain political and economic terms. They do a very good job of establishing the background and methodology and everything like that, even though I don't think they apply it well in political and economic context. But when it comes to average readers of the Bible or Christian leaders and pastors and speakers and people who are more geared towards a popular audience, they almost never do any of the background work. So they'll come to a passage like Romans 13, or they'll come to a passage like Mark 12, which is the render unto Caesar tradition. And they bring in a world of assumptions with them without ever asking like, well, what are these passages doing within the context of the text that they're found in? Or like, how might these passages work historically? Like when people in antiquity use this language, what do they mean by that? Like how did Paul think about these things based on his Jewish heritage? So these are kind of the historical questions that I think need to be asked before we can even start trying to draw principles out of the text that we then apply in our modern world. And then when it comes to method there, and I know that you guys know this because we've had these conversations before, but.
Alex:
[0:08:14] If you're not aware that we all have a hermeneutical posture towards the text, that we all bring our own interpretive baggage to the text with us when we come, if you're not aware that that phenomenon is happening, then you're just bringing all of your ideas with you into the text. And what winds up happening is you allow all of your modern categories and your modern ideas to completely consume the text and eat it up. So instead of allowing the text to speak to us and challenge us and interrogate us, we just wind up imposing our values on the text. And so I really wanted to make sure that I laid out my methodology so that everyone could see, this is the way I'm reading the Bible. This is how we draw principles from it. Here's what I think about the historical background. And then given all of that, now we can take a look at what the New Testament writers actually say about these contexts and see if there's anything there that we can use.
Jacob:
[0:08:54] Is it, just to be clear, are you saying that this is what we have to do to draw political and economic conclusions or like other parts, like when it comes to the core gospel message and other fundamentals of the faith, I don't think you're saying that we have to become scholars in, you know, ancient Greco-Roman culture in order to understand John 3.16 or something like that, right?
Alex:
[0:09:20] Oh, for sure. For sure. I mean, and yeah, and I look at this, I look at this like in a global context, the church is exploding in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. And there are many people in those contexts, kind of like the earliest Christians that can't even read at all. And in some of those communities, they might have like a page of the Bible, or maybe someone wrote like a verse down when someone came in. So they don't have the text like we have it, and God can still work powerfully in those communities. So you absolutely don't have to be a scholar. But if you are going to be a scholar or a Christian leader, and you're going to make very sweeping claims about politics that impact the lives of millions of people, you should do your research and your homework.
Cody:
[0:09:52] Well, so actually though, there's, I don't want to take us too far afield, but I do think this is an interesting question to think about because there's, you know, kind of two ways that one might approach the text. Well, there's more than two, but two, I like to think dichotomously. So one approach sort of says the church has the Bible, right? That God has entrusted to us. So we should be the ones who are interpreting it. Another approach says, well, we can't really understand it without scholarship, without looking at cultural background, without that kind of stuff. And I mean, I do think that some of that scholarship can weigh in on really central issues, too. Like, I think that some of the work, for example, that David DeSilva has done on, you know, honor and patronage and sort of explaining this idea of gift or John Barclay's stuff on the gift. In my opinion, kicks the pants out of what Luther does with it.
Cody:
[0:10:39] But now Luther is also a scholar and an expert, right? And so sometimes these interpretive communities can be led by certain figures or certain traditions. And so I think there's a lot of value, of course, to, I think, trying to read widely to sort of say, well, what are other Christians of other times and places saying? It's not just me that's filled with the Holy Spirit. It's not just my community that's filled with the Holy Spirit. But there's still, there's this value of the community hermeneutic, I think. and also Christian scholarship, right? Because when Paul talks about gifts, we're all bringing something to the table. It doesn't necessarily mean that every one of us is great at interpretation or great at history or great at Greek or Hebrew, right? And so when we are reading the Bible as a community, that includes our scholars, right? And so I think that the problem comes in when we define scholarship in a secular,
Cody:
[0:11:31] Critical, non-confessional way, right? I mean, those people can also notice things about the text and they can bring something in. But ultimately, in my mind, the task of Christian interpretation is doing it from a confessional, faithful place, but that does include our scholars.
Cody:
[0:11:47] Well, maybe I'll – I want to give you a chance to respond to that, but I think I might want to take it somewhere slightly different and then ask you maybe the question. So just talking about interpretive methodology, someone like our Reformed colleague, Greg Bous, would argue that our interpretive methodology for reading scripture should be rooted in a covenant theology framework that, for instance, interprets the Old Testament through the lens of Jesus. But a lot of biblical scholarship, especially from a critical perspective, argues that this approach is anachronistic, that we really should be reading the biblical authors as products of their historical context, rather than being conduits of divine revelation carried along by the Holy Spirit. So, Where do you kind of come down on this? What is the proper way to read scripture?
Alex:
[0:12:33] Yeah, I mean, I don't think that either of those methodologies are necessarily inappropriate. I think that what we get with history is that it provides us with guardrails. In other words, it limits the different possibilities for interpretation. So in other words, so there's a really great example of this was in a commentary that I read for the book, and I talk about it a little bit in my chapter on Romans. And it was Paul Ochtmeyer, he wrote just a very standard Protestant commentary on Romans, but he has a section of that book where he talks about the German Christians, these German theologians who supported the Nazi regime based on Romans 13. And essentially what they said was that, you know, Romans 13 says, submit to the governing authorities, therefore, whatever Hitler tells you to do, you have to go and do that. And I think that if we step back and look at what Paul is trying to accomplish with his community in Romans, especially Romans 12, 19, I think, where he says, if at all possible, live at peace with all men. Like it's obvious based on the historical context itself that Paul can't be saying that, right? Whatever Paul is saying in Romans 13, and Christians have debated that for centuries and will continue to debate it for centuries. I think that those debates are good.
Alex:
[0:13:35] We know that that interpretation is off limits because that doesn't make any sense given the historical context of Romans 13, right? So that would be a good example of that. And I do think that Christians from different traditions have different, like you have a leeway to kind of play around with that. But at the end of the day, if you come up with an interpretation of the Bible that is radically different from the historical, like the possibilities that were generated by the historical context in which it was written, then that's a good indication that that interpretation is not, it's not faithful to the text, right?
Alex:
[0:14:03] And again, this goes back to the kind of point that I was saying is that we all bring, everyone does it. Like this is not something that we avoid simply because we grew up in a particular theological tradition or because we've read a lot of books and think we're really smart or because we're a professional biblical scholar or a theologian or whatever. Every single person brings their own intellectual baggage with them to the Bible when they're reading the text. And the challenge is to try to set that aside to the best of our ability and just allow the Bible to speak to us, right? And I think that has to be, so our hermeneutical starting point, if you want your hermeneutical starting point to be history first or covenant theology first, or, you know, like a Wesleyan emphasis on grace, whatever that might be, as long as we have the space to allow the text to impact us and challenge us and change us. And as you were saying, Cody, as long as we have these conversations about the Bible within the faith community, then I think we're doing the right thing. History just gives us those guardrails that stop us from going off the tracks.
Jacob:
[0:14:53] Can I ask a question or will I throw off your groove?
Cody:
[0:14:57] Go ahead.
Jacob:
[0:14:58] Can you give me an example of a passage or a issue that the historical approach you're describing here is necessary, whereas other approaches would not be sufficient to avoid going off into a, you know, off a guardrail that you think is important? Because the example you brought up of Romans 13, well, I mean, I think it's a valid move to sort of say, like, so you're saying what Hitler was someone that, or, you know, or it's a valid move to say, do you think Paul meant this about, you know, the Roman emperor or Caesar or the authorities that killed Jesus? I mean, can't we also, and this is kind of what I do in my upcoming book, is I kind of go back through the entire Old Testament and just establish the prophetic witness, both before and after Sinai, of God's people, just this pattern of not just blindly following authority of any type, whether that's religious or political. Cool so i see value in the historical argument i just i i always feel that sort of in the way i view all these things right systematic theology biblical scholarship and all that i view the historical stuff as sort of a supplement and i've i have never hit a issue where i feel like it's necessary does that make sense yeah i'm
Alex:
[0:16:24] I guess I'll kind of push back on that a little bit and say that if you are reviewing the way that the writers of the Old Testament handle the problem of empire within the faithful community of God, you're doing history by default because like the Old Testament, that's just primary source material, right? I mean, like Daniel, Esther, Jeremiah, these are works of history. They were written in history. And so you're doing a historical analysis of how Jews would have thought about these political structures. So like.
Alex:
[0:16:47] Even in doing theology, you're doing history. And that's where I feel like you, you, for a Christian, we, we cannot separate anything that we do from theology, right? Like if we believe that we're creating the image and likeness of God and that all of creation testifies to like the goodness of God and the existence of God, then everything we do is theology, including history. So I don't want to, I don't want to bracket those two things off and say that for Christians, we can just do cold, neutral history and have that be completely divorced from our theological commitments. I don't, I don't think that we can. And I think in fact, and this is one of the problems I have with like secular biblical scholarship is that secular biblical scholarship thinks that it's not theological, but it has theological presuppositions too that it brings to the text, right? And even if the theological presupposition is, I don't believe in God, that's still a theology, right? And so I don't think that we can play those two things off of each other. And I think that in reality, history has to illuminate theology and theology has to illuminate history. And again, we would all agree on like, you know, Nicene Orthodoxy, right? Like if you want a litmus test for who belongs in the church and like, what are the boundaries within which we do theology, that's great. And then there's like a lot of room to play around in there too. And we have to do the hard work of trying to think the thoughts of the biblical writers after them within the framework of understanding that we are confessing Christians and that these are the things that we believe. And I think that those two things actually need each other and are mutually reinforcing, if that makes sense.
Jacob:
[0:18:05] Yeah, I think that makes sense enough for me to tend the rails in the range of Cody.
Cody:
[0:18:11] To stand down. Yeah, I mean, there is, I think, sometimes, there's something that perked up my ear, Alex, that you said about if we're understanding Paul or something, to be saying something that a first century Jew wouldn't have said or whatever, then we should be suspicious of that. I partly agree. So, like, you know, sometimes you'll have groups who will come up with some sort of new theological position and they'll try to read it into Paul or read it into Jesus or whatever. But at the same time, the way I think sometimes critical scholars will apply that criteria, or even sometimes heretics. I have a friend who's one who's Pentecostal who says, you know, Jews wouldn't have believed in the Trinity because they were all Unitarians. And it's like, even if God revealed it, they also didn't believe in the incarnation, but you're fine with that. And so I do think sometimes that that can get to become, if we're, if we're starting as you, as you, I think rightly pointed out, theological presuppositions come in. The problem with secular scholarship so often is it's, or even history that, you know, a part of a critical historical perspective is to say, well, we know that miracles aren't part of this, right? So technically, the enterprise of secular history is not to discern what happened in the past. It's to come up with a recreation of what happened in the past without any kind of supernatural component.
Jacob:
[0:19:30] And we know it has to be that way because we know miracles can't happen. So these things that are, yeah, it's completely circular.
Cody:
[0:19:36] Yeah, so yeah, but I think we're on the same page on that. But I just kind of wanted to maybe clarify that a little bit.
Cody:
[0:19:43] Maybe thinking a little bit more in terms of you know, you're concerned about what secular scholar or modern scholarship rather is reading into the text. Can you give an example or two of modern scholars misreading the text through like Marxist or statist eyes?
Alex:
[0:19:57] Yeah, absolutely. Well, and again, just to set the stage to answer this question, I think that, this is an academic or like an institutional problem that a lot of people don't realize that there is in academia, not a firewall, but there's definitely a distinction between biblical studies on the one hand and theology on the other. Those are two separate disciplines, two separate schools. And while good theologians interact with biblical scholarship and good biblical scholars interact with theologians, in academia, those are two separate disciplines and they're often very antagonistic towards each other. I don't think a lot of people realize that distinction. And so one of the things that I was trying to do in my book is that there have been, there's been a lot of great libertarian work that has been done in the theology space, but that doesn't really engage with the biblical scholarship as much. And I wanted my work to address the questions that are being asked in biblical scholarship particularly. So I'm not, not dealing with systematics in the same way that some other works are. So again, just to put that marker down that this is self-conscious, and I talk about this a little bit in the introduction of my book, this is self-consciously interacting with the discipline of biblical scholarship. But the argument that I make, and this is based, I mean, on obviously a number of like modern thinkers, but Friedrich Hayek's book, The Counter-Revolution of Science in particular, does such a great job of highlighting this.
Alex:
[0:21:07] In the modern world, and I say are in terms of the Western world, our political and economic starting point is what I've labeled in the book authoritarian socialism. So it's the idea that violence is sometimes necessary to impose our subjective wills upon all society. And then socialism being in the way that like Hoppe and Mises and Rothbard would describe it, the institutionalization of aggression against person and property, right? That that's what socialism means. And even when scholars would say that they believe that state intervention is necessary, in the pursuit of justice or whatever it might be, they're still relying on the arbitrary use of force against other people based on their subjective preferences. That I think is a huge problem. And so in the book, I talk about scholars like Halber Moxneys and N.T. Wright is a big one, and then Richard Horsley in particular, who they've all kind of, to different degrees, because they don't all have the same beliefs about policy. I guess Horsley and Moxley, Moxneys probably does.
Alex:
[0:22:00] They would all agree that in order for the world to function, you have to have a certain degree of authoritarian socialism. Now, they wouldn't phrase it that way, but that's what it is. And from a libertarian perspective, we can identify and analyze that because they're advocating at heart for violence to be done against peaceful people who don't agree with them, right? And so N.T. Wright is a great example of someone who will go to the New Testament and he'll draw all the right conclusions. Okay, so Jesus is the ascended Messiah ruling over all creation right now, and the end of the age has been brought into the present. We're living in a time of inaugurated eschatology. The church is the family of Abraham. We're exclusive. We're set apart. Our pattern for ethics and living has to be the cross of Christ. Like that is the foundation. And then they'll take all of that, bring it into the modern world and say things like, well, what we really need is a one world police state to enforce peace and justice on all the planet. And we as libertarians understand that that doesn't work. And it actually requires an incredible amount of violence and theft in order to make that happen. So that's a good example of N.T. Wright seeing something real in history and in the text of the Bible, but because he doesn't have an adequate definition of these political and economic concepts, he makes all the wrong applications and winds up actually cutting against the grain of the text.
Cody:
[0:23:08] Yeah, Christian nationalism with half the calories.
Alex:
[0:23:12] Yeah, for sure. Well, and just if I can give one more example real quick, it is a very frustrating book for libertarians to read. But Richard Horsley has, and he's done a lot of great historical work, but his theological applications are always terrible. But he has a book called You Shall Not Bow Down or We Shall Not Bow Down or whatever. It's basically a quote-unquote Christian critique of capitalism. The problem is he never defines capitalism. and literally every single problem that he identifies in the modern world is a problem of capitalism, including like the Federal Reserve and the International Monetary Fund. Like obviously government-created institutions fall under that category of capitalism for him. And so again, he just doesn't have a definition for these terms and never bothers to try to define it. And that kind of loosely playing with these political and economic concepts
Alex:
[0:23:54] is characteristic of New Testament scholarship, unfortunately.
Jacob:
[0:23:57] Well, I mean, wouldn't even just like... I feel like there's something there where you could even say to someone like an N.T. Wright, where like, this entire conversation, like, unless you're suggesting that we have to have the same political views of Paul and the writers of the New Testament, then like,
Jacob:
[0:24:20] There is something necessary in what we're all trying to do here. I think we were trying to do in this book, which is like, we have to have a more sophisticated view of understanding the political, how the outworking of Christian principles interplay with political authority and economic systems. It's not just like a simple proof text of like, you know, cherry picking passages and then saying like, you know, Romans 13 says submit to authority. So therefore, you know, yeah, one world government that makes everything perfectly fair. And I mean, they're just, yeah, I mean, to me, that seems kind of self, I guess some of these things seem self-evident to me from the text. But I guess there is also this, like, within the text, there is this sort of historical observation that can be made. I mean, heck, there's not even consistency in the political structures of ancient Israel, right? So, I mean, you can make, not to the expense of the primary point of all those texts, which is pointing to Christ, but you can make like secondary observations and inferences about the varying political structures we see within the Bible and be like, well, did these lead people closer to God or further away from God? Right. Restrain sin or did they allow sin to abound right so that you know i think those are you know useful things to supplement kind of what you're saying
Alex:
[0:25:46] Yeah for sure i completely agree with that well and and that's just like it's like one of the one of the ironies like michael gorman, wrote one of the greatest books i've ever read in my life cruciformity had such a huge impact like on my spirituality and on my walk with christ and just on the way that i treat other people and his basic argument is that like our fundamental starting point for the way we interact with every single human being has to be the cross. If we're not willing to make sacrifices for others, and if we're not willing to pursue what's in their best interest, then we're not really following in the path of Jesus. And I totally agree with that. And then he says at the end of his book, a cruciform faith is a faith that challenges all assumptions. Everything is up for grabs because the cross has to define our entire reality. But then he will go on to say that we're living in democracy and democracy has to be preserved without even asking the fundamental questions, well, why does democracy have to be preserved? Like, why do we care about this? Like, what is democracy? How does democracy actually work? Like, do we actually have democracy or do we just say that? And it's the same thing like, Cody, you know this because you wrote a critique of their book or a review of their book, but like even Michael Byrd and N.T. Wright's book falls in this category too. The Fight the Powers, is that the name of their book? Or that was your book, wasn't it?
Cody:
[0:26:55] Oh, that's my book. There's just the Paul, Jesus and the Powers.
Alex:
[0:26:59] Jesus and the Powers, that's it. Okay. So even in their book, the problem that they identify is that democracy is crumbling and democracy has to be preserved. But it's like, this is a modern political ideal, whether or not we actually believe in it is one thing or the other. But it's like, they just assume that the world that we have right now is the one that should exist instead of thinking about other possibilities. And actually think that the Bible gives us further horizons for thinking about how we can relate to each other.
Cody:
[0:27:23] Yeah, incidentally, the review I wrote, I also have an academia.org or .com or whatever it is, and it tells me sometimes when people are reading it. And unless it keeps repeating it, which is possible, it looks like Stephen Wolfe has read it a few times.
Cody:
[0:27:38] Christian Nationalist. I'd love to have a conversation with him about what he's getting from it. So I do want to ask you, you brought up cruciformity. You do have a lecture, Politics and Economics of Cruciformity, that you're going to be giving at the Christians for Liberty conference Saturday, October 17th. Tickets are available at libertarianchristians.com. And if you want to go right there, you can go, you can add slash conference, but you'll be able to find it from the front page. And Jacob, I'm also going to see you there.
Jacob:
[0:28:04] Yes, yes, I will be there.
Cody:
[0:28:07] And he also helped us to secure another guest that we've just added on, a speaker, Spike Cohen, which is going to be fantastic. Love to see him. Also, Jim Babka, who I love to talk to, Jeremy Todd, who I've gotten to meet and talked to a couple of times, and somebody who I haven't met, Randy England, who is Alex and I's co-author on an upcoming book, which should be out January, I think. Oh, gosh, can't remember the title that Doug finally settled on. But it's basically like a four views on kind of libertarianism from a Christian perspective. And so Alex writes the, the Wesleyan perspective, I write the Anabaptists, Greg and Carrie write the reformed one.
Jacob:
[0:28:43] Yeah. That's not allowed. That's not allowed.
Cody:
[0:28:46] We'll see after you read the book,
Alex:
[0:28:46] Jacob. I thought Greg and Carrie had the Pentecostal contribution. That was the one I thought they were.
Jacob:
[0:28:52] Oh, good grief.
Cody:
[0:28:54] And, they did, they did seem to be speaking in tongues to rest of it. I'm just kidding. but you reform reform people i like technical terms the marine england writes the catholic perspective and i thought did a fantastic job as well so anyway enough of those plugs i'll actually do one more we're of course talking about alex's book
Alex:
[0:29:12] Yeah economics right.
Cody:
[0:29:13] A new testament interpretation available tomorrow if you're watching the slide okay so let's talk a little bit about um romans 13 i remember a protestant a protestant libertarian podcast episode where you said you weren't totally satisfied with any of the libertarian readings of romans 13 you'd come across, including mine, which I thought was crazy. Did you finally solve the Romans 13 conundrum in time for this book to hit the presses, or do you still just have some inklings of ideas about how to approach it?
Alex:
[0:29:41] Yeah, again, like I said, I don't really look at Romans 13 as a problem to be solved. I think that a lot of this has to do with kind of going back to what Jacob was saying earlier about that even if we don't have all of the answers to all of these questions in the text, they still have to have an impact on us, right? And so Romans 13 is a text that I should go to to learn from and to be challenged by that. And I think that that's a good starting point and a good approach to Romans 13. So in the book, I do devote an entire chapter to Romans and my very long expository section, which is like 500 pages long, I start with Matthew and go all the way through Revelation. And the only time I changed the order is Romans only because I wanted to put that at the end of my section on Paul and his letters, because I felt like once readers have a good grasp on Paul, and how he thought and what his other beliefs were, that gives you a way into Romans 13 that you don't just get if you open it up trying to find very easy answers about modern political and economic questions. And so when it comes to Romans 13, and I know this is something I've, Cody, you and I were on our way to and from Acton. I think we debated for like six hours up there and six hours back or whatever. And it was honestly delightful, just a wonderful time. But that was one thing we talked about is how I don't necessarily have an institutional reading of Romans 13 first.
Alex:
[0:30:50] Because I do think that when it comes to the writings of the New Testament, we have to, like the primary question we should always be asking is not what does this text mean, but how does this text function? Like, what is this text designed to do? Because once we've established what a text is designed to do in its context, then we can start drawing those conclusions about the meaning of the text. So it's very clear to me that Paul isn't just dropping a systematic theology of government into the middle of his letter to Rome, right? Like it's there for a purpose. And it's in a longer subsection of Romans, which begins with Romans 12, 1 and 2, where Paul talks about being renewed and having your mind transformed so that you can offer your body as a spiritual sacrifice to God. And then he gives lots of practical applications for the Romans as to how they can live at peace with those that are around them. How do you actually do that in practice, which includes submitting to the government authorities, paying your taxes, so on and so forth. And then if you zoom out and look at the wider context of Romans, it's very clear that like the body of Paul's argument in Romans chapter one and Romans chapter 15 ends with an affirmation of the Davidic messiahship of Jesus. He rules over all creation. It comes to a climax in Romans chapter eight. It's the philosophical presupposition of his Adam Christ typology in Romans chapter five. Like the fact that Jesus is the devil.
Alex:
[0:32:07] Crucified, resurrected, and ascended Messiah over all creation hangs over the entire text. And Romans 13 doesn't eliminate that. And then also the fact that Paul spends much of the letter working out what it means to be a part of the family of Abraham. This is the crescendo in Romans 4. And then all of those who have the spirit of God are his sons in Romans 8. And then the question of, and I'm not going to get into any of the theological details here because there are areas that people disagree in this, but the identity of the church is clearly at the forefront of Romans 9 through 11, whatever you make to that. And I will say this too, just as a side note, I tried my hardest to make this book as ecumenical as possible. So I don't get into a lot of controversial theological issues, which might be unsatisfying for some people, but I try to stay as middle of the road orthodox. If you're Protestant of any variety, Catholic, orthodox, you could read this book and get something out of it. But I think that when we come to Romans 13, we have to keep all of that in mind, as well as Paul's Jewish background and kind of going back to what you were saying, Jacob. How is it that Jews in the Old Testament deal with the problem of empire? Because Paul is obviously very familiar with the scriptures and he does a lot of things that the writers of the Old Testament do there. And then just asking some questions about Romans 13 itself.
Alex:
[0:33:13] Well, what would a Jew like Paul mean when he says submit to authorities? What would he mean when he says that the governing authorities are instituted by God? What does he mean when he says that the leaders are there for good or to reward good and punish evil? Like these are all kind of basic questions that we have to ask. And none of them necessarily lead to, we need a massive authoritarian surveillance state that monitors everyone's behavior and confiscates and redistributes all of their wealth. And so, you know, I kind of build this argument up and work with what I think Paul is doing with that text in the context of Romans. And I think we just have to keep those larger questions in mind. It's not just a matter of, well, what does Paul say about government? Because it's not really what he's trying to get at there. What he's trying to get at is how do Christians live faithfully in light of the coming of the messianic age?
Cody:
[0:33:59] Oh Sorry, my mouse was working there for a second. Well, so, yeah, I mean, it's kind of funny that you did that with Paul's, with Romans, because I have a similar book where I'm kind of going through the, it's not out yet, that I'm going through what the New Testament authors have to say about the reason why Jesus had to die. And I put Paul at the very end, because I think we always start with Paul. And I'm always interested in seeing what's the larger context that Paul, you know, so we can kind of build that first and then sort of say, okay, now what does Paul do with it?
Alex:
[0:34:26] Yeah.
Cody:
[0:34:27] But yeah, sometimes that's a problem. we'll start with a problem passage in Paul or a passage that we think we know what he's saying and then, you know.
Jacob:
[0:34:34] Well, I think there is something to, it's kind of like that Thomas Edison saying, I didn't need to figure out one way to invent the light bulb. I invent, he was like, what was it, like a three? I forget the exact number. Hundreds of ways not to make it. And sometimes I feel like part of the Romans 13 answer is to first start out by just mapping out. Like, okay, let's just start by saying we're agnostic. We don't know what it means. Let's cross out all the things we know it's not, right? And there is some validity to kind of starting out by doing that, which the yeah, I think the historical method can kind of supplement that process of of doing that both within and without, you know, both within the biblical context and even to just import a little bit of, you know, reason into the equation as well, which is fine to do.
Cody:
[0:35:23] Yeah. Well, I should tell you what, I think I realized I, my laptop is dying faster. I thought it was Jacob. Do you mind covering, asking, talking to Alex for a couple of minutes on the cover, a couple of questions. Maybe we'll have to grab that.
Jacob:
[0:35:34] Yeah. The question you read me just said, so Alex, I just realized that Jacob has been right about covenant theology. all along, all along. So, no.
Alex:
[0:35:42] That's a crazy admission, Cody. Who knew you'd bring that up in a conversation about Romans 13? What a timely, what a timely happen.
Cody:
[0:35:51] That being said, I still don't understand it, but I do agree with it. And that's all that matters.
Alex:
[0:35:56] Right.
Cody:
[0:35:58] All right, I'll be right back.
Jacob:
[0:35:59] So, one of the questions Cody had is that you've mentioned having some second thoughts about the notion that the New Testament is meant to be an anti-imperial document. For instance, we often hear from the school, from that school, the notion that the statement Jesus is Lord inherently implies Caesar is not. Which, by the way, in my upcoming book, I literally have, that's like two of my chapters. I have a chapter called Jesus is Lord, followed up by a chapter, Caesar is not. So, I'm actually interested if you're skeptical to any degree on... You know, that kind of premise A, premise B sort of conclusion we're making there. You know, how did your research doing this book help to sort of clarify your thoughts? And where do you land on that? You know, is the New Testament an anti-empire set of documents?
Alex:
[0:36:50] Yeah, it's a really great and complicated historical question. And so I want to say the outset that I agree with the statement that you made that Jesus is Lord, therefore Caesar is not. And I think that that is one that the writers of the New Testament would affirm. But the question is whether or not the New Testament, and again, we shouldn't probably speak of the New Testament as an entity in and of itself. It's a collection of 27 works. I think we have to do this on a case-by-case basis. Yeah, right.
Jacob:
[0:37:14] I was correcting Cody's question.
Alex:
[0:37:16] Yeah, for sure.
Jacob:
[0:37:17] Is the anti-empire document? I was like, well, it's documents.
Alex:
[0:37:21] Right, yes. Like, Revelation is, without a doubt, an anti-imperial document.
Alex:
[0:37:25] I don't think that we get that with the letters of Paul to the same degree that we do with Revelation. And essentially where I came down on this, and this is one of those scholarly questions that prompted me to write this book, is that very famously in evangelical circles, N.T. Wright wrote an article like 25 years ago, I think called that like Jesus is Lord, or no, it's called Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire or something like that. And he basically made the anti-empirical argument that Paul was an implicit critic of Rome, that Paul, he has Romans 13, but he embeds within Romans 13 all of these statements about how Rome is going to be undone. And so he's very antagonistic towards empire. And then there are a lot of other scholars, some within, well, that became a very popular stream of interpretation for a long time, both within evangelical scholarship and outside of evangelical scholarship too. And I think what really started to... Open up some of the cracks in that narrative for me was going back to what we were talking about earlier, seeing how these scholars would apply this anti-imperial reading to the modern world as, well, we're going to critique the conservatives or the Republicans, right? So that's what, so like Paul's anti-imperial gospel is really just a critique of right-wingers that they don't like.
Alex:
[0:38:40] There's never any sort of critique of the left wing or of empire as like an, as actually exists. It's only the people that they don't like controlling the empire that they have a problem with, right? So on the face of it, I knew that there was something wrong with that. And over the last couple of years, there have been some scholars that have published some really good works questioning that paradigm. And I've had several of them on my show. The first was Christoph Heilig. He has a really great book on this where he does say that Paul is anti-imperial. But instead of going with the N.T. Wright subtext approach...
Alex:
[0:39:07] He makes the very obvious point that Paul is not afraid of anyone, and he's a very brash guy. And there are places like 2 Corinthians 2.14, where Paul uses the imagery of a Roman triumph. And he says, well, Paul is just pretty open about his critique of the Roman Empire. And I think he made some good points about that. So maybe the subtext argument doesn't make sense. But then you have scholars like Najib Haddad and Clint Burnett that have come on and done some other good historical research that have shown that the arguments that people were making in favor of the subtextual reading of Paul's critique of Rome are actually not there. The literary characteristics that you would expect in a subtext reading just don't exist in Paul. Burnett has this really excellent book where he talks about how the worship of the Roman emperors was not monolithic within the Roman Empire. Obviously, they don't have the same technology that we had today. It's very difficult for the capital city to micromanage what happens in the empire. And oftentimes, homage that was given to the Romans was left up to local customs. So there were certainly places that would worship the emperor as a god, but that's not necessarily true of all the cities that Paul visited. And I think in his book, he looks at like epigraphic and numismatic evidence. So like he looks at inscriptions and coins from Philippi, Corinth, and there's one other one, I'm blanking on it right now. And essentially what he demonstrates there is that like the anti-imperial rhetoric that Paul was assumingly using to counter the imperial imagery that was in these cities.
Alex:
[0:40:34] Couldn't actually work in its historical context because these cities don't have any evidence that people like worship the emperors in the way that N.T. Wright and other scholars suggested they would. And so I think the Najee Padaab really gets to the heart of this where he says that like there's this profound sense in which the early Christians believed that their Messiah had already come and that they were living at the end of history. Therefore, they were transcending the political order, right? That they were above all of that. Now, they started to live in a world Whereas Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2, 6 through 8, the rulers of this age are passing away. But the church just has a bigger game to play than dealing with petty politics. And I really do happen to agree with that mentality. And then Peter Oakes is another scholar who's done a lot of research on this, who's kind of ambiguous on the anti-imperialism of much of the New Testament.
Alex:
[0:41:22] He says that just like in the Old Testament, just like in Jeremiah 29, 7, Daniel and Esther, the writers of the New Testament just kind of live in the tension between the age to come and the old age, right? We're living in the inaugurated eschaton, and we just kind of have to sit with the fact that God is in the process of reclaiming all of creation for himself, but these old political structures still exist, and we just kind of have to live with that tension. And I think that for most of the writers of the New Testament, that's kind of where they sit. We have to figure out a way to navigate the reality while also pointing towards the truth. Now, when it comes to Revelation, Revelation very clearly predicts, in Revelation 17 through 20, the downfall of Babylon, which is just another cipher for Rome. So Revelation is absolutely an anti-imperial text, but I just don't think that Paul and the writers of the gospel are as antagonistic about empire as scholars have thought that they were. And I think the reason why a lot of those scholars made those arguments in the first place is so they can say, ha, look, Paul really hates empire. So we're going to use this against you Republicans when you do things that we don't like. And a lot of it, that's really just what it comes down to.
Cody:
[0:42:24] Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah. So rather than following Paul through consistently, if he is making those kinds of arguments, you think it would lead sort of toward libertarianism or anarchism?
Alex:
[0:42:33] Yes.
Cody:
[0:42:34] But they just sort of say, well, you know, as long as we're voting Democrat, it's all right.
Alex:
[0:42:38] Because that was what it did for me. Like I read those guys and I was like, well, then, yeah, I don't think we should trust any of these people that are in charge. And then I read what they said about contemporary political issues. And it was just don't trust the Republicans. The Democrats are fine.
Cody:
[0:42:50] You may have kind of answered this question, but I was going to ask you, what does it mean from a New Testament frame of mind that Jesus is King? As I was listening to you talk about kind of navigating that tension, on the one hand, they're looking forward to the end of that whole system. On the other hand, it hasn't happened yet. And so largely the answer seems to be, well, you just try to keep your head down and not get noticed. There's also times where they're pushing back. Paul is kind of known for this, especially in Acts, where he sort of says, well, hold on a second here. I'm supposed to have these rights as a Roman citizen. Why are they not being respected? And the the kind of distinction that i've made is like an anarchism one versus anarchism two or christian anarchism i guess like a a christian anarchism that's separatist versus a christian anarchism that is um activists right the activist christian anarchism says you know let's end this whole bad system and get rid of everything the separatist christian anarchism just says well christ is my only king right so whatever you want to do i'm just i just don't care i'm not that's not what I'm, that's not what I'm about. And so, I mean, what do you think from, from a new Testament frame of mind that does mean that Jesus is King?
Alex:
[0:43:54] Yeah. And that's a great, that's another great question. And again, this is where I feel like, you know, and I know you guys would agree with me on this too, but I'm a Christian before I'm a libertarian. And so following Jesus matters more to me than like winning political debates and political arguments. Right. And we do have to very close.
Jacob:
[0:44:07] No, I'm sorry.
Alex:
[0:44:08] Yeah, right. Yeah, and so, and I do think that following Jesus has to be our starting point as Christians and wherever that leads us, that's where we have to go. And it's very, very clear from the, in all 27 works of the New Testament, that there's a universal affirmation that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah that was promised in the Old Testament and that he is by virtue of his death, resurrection and ascension currently ruling over all of creation. This is the throne room vision in Revelation four and five. It's Ephesians chapter one. You have that vision of the exaltation in Romans eight. You have the Christ hymn in Philippians two. You have Matthew 28, where Jesus has already been given all authority on heaven and earth. You have the dispensing of the spirit in Acts 1.8. So this is all over the New Testament. It is, as Joshua Jipp says in a great book, the messianic theology of Jesus is the presupposition for all New Testament theology, right? Like we believe that Jesus is King.
Alex:
[0:44:59] The question is, what kind of king is he? Now, if you look at a passage like Matthew chapter 10, where he's having to talk to his disciples about what it means to be in power, two of his disciples ask him, well, can we sit at your right and your left when you come in glory? And what they're asking him is, we know you're going to Jerusalem and you're going to establish the kingdom of God here and now. So we want to sit on your right and left. And Jesus says, well, you don't understand what you're talking about. What it really means to sit on my left and right. And what it really means to follow me is that you have to sacrifice for other people. Like you have to love me for the son of man came not to serve, but to give his life is a ransom for many, right? And so I think that again, if we're following the teachings of Jesus, if Jesus is the king of our lives, this is something that is.
Alex:
[0:45:37] It's objectively true that Jesus is ruling over all creation, but his rule is exercised through us who follow in the cruciform footsteps of the Messiah. So there is no following Jesus without the cross. Like we want the victory, we want the resurrection, we want the vindication, but we don't want to do that without the crucifixion. And so for Christians, what it means to make Jesus the king of our lives. And I don't even wanna speak about this in individualistic terms because the writers of the Bible never really do that. It's always about Jesus being king of the creation and king over his church. And we as individuals are incorporated into that. But what it means for us as a church to make Jesus our king is to follow him wherever that goes.
Alex:
[0:46:12] And when it comes to the powers and authority of our day, it's our responsibility. I think that Peter and Paul do such a great job of this in Acts, not to say we need to reform and change all the systems, but we're going to start with the proclamation of the kingdom of God. And we're going to be a witness that this crucified Messiah is the real true king of the world. And how are we going to witness to that? We're going to do so by the way that we live. Like people are going to look at us and they're going to see something different and they're going to see that there's a different king in charge. Because you look at the witness in Acts, not only are Peter and Paul not revolutionaries. Now, Peter winds up getting in a lot of trouble with the Sanhedrin and that's his, those are his primary antagonists. But like when you get to the second half of Acts.
Alex:
[0:46:52] Paul actually becomes very friendly with a lot of Roman officials. Now, this is the same Jew that believes that these Roman officials are working for an empire that God is already in the process of destroying. And he believes that they're like accessories to pagan imperialism. But Paul's fundamental posture towards them is not, you're wrong and stupid and here's why. It's, I'm gonna show you what Jesus is like. And sometimes they get close to believing and Paul says, yeah, just keep on going a little bit further. Like he's encouraging them to see that what he is telling them is true. And I think that that's such a good example for the church today. I think that that's our fundamental approach. Now, Cody, you did talk about Acts 16 a little bit and the incident in Philippi. And I have a section in this on my book. And I call what Paul does there, leveraged citizenship. And this is where Paul says at many points in his letters, 1 Corinthians 9 is a great example of this, that he does all things for the gospel. The gospel is the core of everything that Paul does. And in all of the ways that he talks and in all of the ways that he acts, he wants to reveal the gospel to the world. That is everything for him. And he's willing to do whatever it takes for the gospel to be revealed. So Paul goes to Philippi in Acts 16, and he's like illegally apprehended by the Roman authorities and beaten.
Alex:
[0:48:00] Now Paul's a Roman citizen, so they can't beat Paul without a trial because he's a citizen, right? Now, what Paul does the next morning is he understands that since he was publicly beaten and in the ancient world, they don't look at imprisoned religious figures as heroes. They look at them as criminals with suspicion. So Paul understands that for all of the new believers in Philippi that are watching what happened to him, that might call his gospel into question because it's like Paul's honor in his gospel has been called into account because he was beaten by the Roman authorities and thrown in jail. And in the ancient world, that was a signal that somebody was a fraud, right? And he doesn't want anyone in Philippi thinking that. So what he does is he leverages his citizenship against the Philippian authorities and says, no, I'm actually not.
Alex:
[0:48:41] Like when they come and realize what they did, he says, I'm a Roman citizen. You had no right to beat me. They asked Paul to quietly leave the city and he makes them parade him out of the city and then stop at Lydia's house further. So that's a very good example too for everyone that wants to read Romans 13 in absolute terms. Paul did not obey the authorities in that particular instance, right? He very clearly disobeyed them, but that was because his gospel was on the line and he was worried about the public perception of the gospel. So what Paul does is he leverages his citizenship in that particular instance in order to make sure that the honor of the gospel is restored and that the Philippians understand that Paul did nothing wrong and they shouldn't be worried about him or his message. And I think that we have to kind of sit in that tension and that's a tension that, going back to what you were saying earlier, Jacob, Paul inherited from his Jewish tradition. It's Jeremiah 29, seven, seek the welfare of the city. And then for the rest of Jeremiah, Jeremiah does nothing but prophesy about how the Babylonians are going to be wiped off the face of the planet, right? And so Paul can just sit in that tension and live with it because that's just the way that the people of God have to live in a fallen world.
Jacob:
[0:49:40] Well, and I feel like there's something, that tension is something that I don't think many Christians in the West have ever considered that there should be a tension there. You did an episode that I remember watching and making clips for a while back with Her first name was Carmen. I forget her last name. Joy Imes. Joy Imes, yeah. And she had that bit where she was talking about, like, you know, in the Lord's Prayer, when you're saying, like, your kingdom come, your will be done, that, like, she connected, like, you're basically praying for, like, the end of America, in a sense, which is, you know, kind of made for a really good, edgy, thought-provoking clip. But also, like, there's something there where it's like, if someone hears that and their first reflex is, and they're like being defensive of like America or Americanism or et cetera, then it's kind of like, well, to me, you're telling on yourself as far as like, where are your priorities as a Christian? Now, don't get me wrong. Like the motives matter, right? Someone chanting death to America while burning an American flag.
Alex:
[0:50:45] Right.
Jacob:
[0:50:46] Like, yeah. Now, like, do I think that person should, like, go to jail or lose their human rights or anything? No. Do I think I have a lot in common with that person? Also, probably not. I mean, we might agree on some political points, but we probably have really contradictory worldviews. But yeah, I grew up very much pushed away out of the very conservative upbringing I lived in because it did not seem like they pursued the kingdom first. Right. And they sought to resolve any potential tension there could be by making Christianity subservient to American ideals and to American empire. And there's probably this, you've studied the scholarship more than me, but there are probably scholars on both sides who are basically, at certain times, depending on who is in power, they could get confused for sounding like libertarians. Because they could be trying to make a Christian case against empire or a Christian case against centralized control, but they really just mean it for, you know, one side or the other. And sometimes it's kind of like, well, like you're both right and you're just
Jacob:
[0:52:01] both inconsistent is the problem.
Alex:
[0:52:05] Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think too, you know, and I'll be real personal with you guys about this too because this is one of the motivating factors for the book. But coming out of COVID, I'm a public school teacher, so I saw up close and personal just how callous our government officials were to these kids. And I can't read what happened during COVID in the public schools as anything more than systematic child abuse on a scale that we've never witnessed before in American history. And so I was really bitter about that for a couple of years afterwards, and it kind of ate at my soul because I was just like, oh, we have to get back at the people that did this. But like, when you, even though, when you try to pursue justice through worldly means, which I think a lot of Christians that are in our camp.
Alex:
[0:52:45] Do, it eats at your soul because you wind up losing sight of like the cruciform nature of all of this. And you wind up, at least for me, it made me very, very like proud. Like, oh, I have all the right ideas. Therefore I have the right to go out and tell these people how wrong they are. And that didn't actually make a difference. You know, like that didn't actually change anything. And what's always been much more effective is when I just try to live like Jesus. Like that's what actually changes people's hearts. It's not like how hard I can hit someone with the political philosophy. It's not how hard I can tell someone how wrong they are. It's just like trying to live out the Sermon on the Mount, like blessed are the peacemakers, or like what Paul says in Romans 12, like if at all possible, live at peace with all men. And I think that it's very easy for Christians on the left, right, and libertarians too, to get sucked into the way that we do political discourse in the United States, which is all just about like trying to take someone down and prove that they're stupid and prove that they're wrong and show how smart we are, that we actually lose sight of the bigger picture, which is that we have to be a witness to the world. And if we lose sight of that, then it doesn't really matter if we win the political game because we've lost our identity as a church.
Alex:
[0:53:47] And I really got the sense as I did all of this research for the book that the writers of the New Testament would have always placed ethics first. Well, and again, even going back to like the idea of the cross, and this is in the Christ hymn and Philippians 2, you don't get the resurrection and ascension unless you get the incarnation and the crucifixion. And so like for us as a church, we just have to get comfortable with the fact that we are going to lose sometimes or we're going to lose most of the time. And that's just the way it is. And when we lose, we're following the pattern of the Messiah. And we know that God's going to vindicate it all in the end. But our witness in the present is what really matters in life.
Alex:
[0:54:21] Being right about politics is not going to change the world. Loving your neighbor is going to change them. You know, like feeding the hungry, you know, providing medicine for the sick. These are the things that actually change the world. And I think that when we start from that perspective, not that we throw away our libertarian principles, because we are right about that for sure. But if we start with how do we live out the kingdom first, then I think the rest is going to follow.
Jacob:
[0:54:43] Well, so it's funny you bring up that like we might have to lose down, like lose sometimes. And that there's a famous line from John MacArthur that like we lose down here and a lot of Christian nationalists have made that like their, they've made John MacArthur their punching child for one of the like, like there's a lot of things I can get from John MacArthur that I could write essays criticizing. You picked the one thing that he probably had like the best point out of any of the things he said. Like I don't know that, I don't even know that I agree with it. Like in all of the entailments he might have meant it. But I definitely think that if you're super offended by that statement, that again, I'm just like, why? Why are you offended? Like, if we lose down here for the glory of Christ winning in the end, like, why did that Why does that bother you? Yeah. Right?
Alex:
[0:55:35] Sorry, go ahead. Oh, no, just real quick. And I think this is a huge problem with progressive Christianity too, because they have the exact same mentality that we are going to like, we believe in justice. We know what's right. We know what's going to bring, you know, goodness and happiness and joy or whatever. And so we're just going to use the state to impose it on everyone by force because we know better than you. And while this has done nothing but lead to disaster and death and despair all over the planet for the last 150 years, like the progressive Christians are sure that they're in the right and that they have the right to impose that on us instead of just saying, well, you know, sometimes we're going to lose. Like we're not always going to get what we want and we don't have the right to use violence to try to acquire it.
Jacob:
[0:56:10] Or just sometimes like we can't fix everything down here because like that's kind of half the point of the gospel is that we can't fix everything down here.
Cody:
[0:56:19] Well, and this is a thing too, where I mean, you know, I think I'd made a comment once that, you know, in some ways I'm a leftist at heart because I care about the things they care about. Not all the things, but some of the things. You know, but, but at the end of the day, the, the approach is, it's the wrong answer, right? The way they want to fix it. I mean, you know, I think for the, you know, we don't, you know, the anti we don't, or the anti we lose down here crowd of the Christian nationalists is largely just coming from a place of kind of false masculinity and sort of aggression. Whereas on the left, at least they they're doing it because they care about
Cody:
[0:56:51] other people, but it's still the wrong way to do it. Um, but the, I want to just, as we're getting kind of closely wrapping up, I do want to pin you down a little bit on the cruciformity stuff. And, you know, your example about, you know, why is it that Paul was leveraging his citizenship? And you point out, it's not actually for himself. You know, someone might say, well, you know, we, you know, it's okay to insist on your own rights. But as you're kind of pointing out, that might not actually be what Paul's doing there.
Cody:
[0:57:18] That more often than not, Paul is talking about how we shouldn't insist on our rights. And so, which is, you know, I just was teaching through first and now and on second Corinthians at my church, it comes up again and again. And so there's, you know, stuff about not suing each other in law courts, in secular law courts. And he says, wouldn't it be better just to let yourself be defrauded? Right. And so, you know, so that and the cruciformity discussion and just also just a lot of places in the book that I read that felt very pacifistic to me. Because I think that's part of this emphasis on cruciformity is rather than insisting on my rights, rather than fighting back, I'm willing to suffer. And sometimes I can win through that, and sometimes I just have to let God deal with it.
Cody:
[0:58:00] So, there's a lot in the book that feels very pacifistic and very sort of Anabaptist or whatever, but I happen to know that you're not a pacifist. Right. So, what do you see in the New Testament that you think mitigates against those passages that seem to argue that Christians should be putting away the sword, they shouldn't be ruling over others, they should be carrying their crosses and setting aside their rights?
Alex:
[0:58:20] Yeah, I think because I know where we've, I know we've had this conversation before and I know where you're coming from there. I'm gonna, and again, like I said, I don't do this in the book, but I am gonna make a very Wesleyan move right here and appeal to experience a little bit. I really do think that the fundamental tenet of cruciformity is that we're always others oriented and we're willing to make sacrifices in order to ensure the edification and the benefit of other people, right? And so when it comes to questions that the writers of the New Testament don't directly address, things like, how do you defend children in the event that a man with a gun walks into a nursery with an intent to do harm to them. I think that there are situations where defensive violence is entirely permissible because we're preventing an atrocity from happening. Like we're doing that with the intent of preventing harm to an innocent person. And while that is very, very, like there is a lot of gray area there. I will be completely clear about that. And Christians need to think through that carefully and critically and contextually because it's not just a matter of like someone breaks in your house to steal a TV and therefore you put nine bullets into their chest, right? You know what I'm saying? Like, and I know Christians that like keep guns in every room of their house and it's almost like they want someone to break in so they can shoot them. That's not Christian.
Jacob:
[0:59:29] That's literally a saying. That's literally a saying. They're like, I wish I would.
Alex:
[0:59:33] Yeah, and it's like, that's not good because we don't want to be put in a position where we have to do that. But again, I'm thinking about this through my public school teacher lens or whatever. Our schools are very safe, I will say. That is one thing the government has done a good job of and I know this is going to make A lot of libertarian scringed. Um, but our schools are compared to other organizations pretty safe. Um, but if someone came into the building and the only, with the intent to harm my students and the only way that I could stop them was by using like lethal defensive force, I don't think that would be impermissible, nor do I think it would be a violation of cruciformity. It's not ideal. It's not something that I would celebrate. It's not something that I would want to happen. But I think in that instance, protecting the lives of innocent people is the more cruciform act of those two.
Cody:
[1:00:12] Gotcha. So would you say a pacifism by default, but, but there are rare exceptions or would you not want to say it that way?
Alex:
[1:00:17] I, I, yeah, I would say because, because I think that, well, again, pacifism is one of those words that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, right? I would just say that we have to be, like, we have to be consistently committed to the non-initiation of violence. And I think that that's, that's where we have to be like, we're not going to be the ones that start aggression, you know? Fair enough.
Cody:
[1:00:36] All right. Well, one of these days I'll get y'all to be biblical. So were there any surprises in this research? Did you find some proto-libertarian ideas in the New Testament that you were previously unaware of? You were like, oh my gosh, I didn't catch this in James before, but this really feels kind of libertarian.
Alex:
[1:00:51] Yeah. I will say this. This is something that really jumped out of the text to me. I obviously am Orthodox Christian, so I've always had an appreciation for the ascension of Christ. And I've always realized that's a very important part of the church of political theology, acknowledging that Jesus is the crucified, risen, and ascended and exalted Messiah. I did not realize how pervasive that theme was in the New Testament until I intentionally went through the entire New Testament looking for political and economic themes. And so the ascension of Christ is like an indispensable component of his identity. And it's one that I see the church kind of like marginalizing in a lot of ways.
Alex:
[1:01:29] I think there's a couple of reasons for this, but when it comes to like, let me put it this way. When the writers of the New Testament articulate the Christ experience, it's never just his cross. It's never just his resurrection. It's always life, death, resurrection, ascension. At least that's presupposed throughout the Bible. You can see this in Paul because there are times when Paul will refer to the crucifixion and it's clearly a synecdoche for the entire event of Jesus's life. Or there are places in Philippians chapter, like in Philippians chapter two, where Paul doesn't talk about the resurrection at all. He just goes straight to the ascension, right? So for the writers of the Bible, they think about Jesus in terms of all of these events. And I think that in Christian theology, we, you know, we're obviously people are selfish by nature. We love the idea of the atonement and we love the idea of victory. So it's like the cross and resurrection have, I think, in some ways been the centerpiece of a lot of Christian theological reflection. I think that's one of the reasons why so many Christians buy into the authoritarian socialism model of governance, that's because that leaves out both the life and the ascension of Christ. So like without the life, we don't have the moral example. Like we can't follow Jesus. We don't know what he did and what he said. And without the ascension, we don't have the completion of the enthronement after Jesus's death and resurrection. So you have to have all of that. And so looking at the ways that the writers of the Bible are like constantly using ascension language and their arguments about the authority and the power and the majesty and the dominion of Jesus, that was a real eye opener for me. I knew it was there, but I did not understand how pervasive it was.
Cody:
[1:02:56] Gotcha. Well, I'm going to put this on the screen here because we have a good to see Jacob once again from Andrew. And yeah, Jacob's started a new job. It's been keeping him really busy, but we have been missing him in the green room. And I even said, well, you know, Jacob, you don't have to be here tonight. I know you're a busy guy, but he was here and I really appreciate him being here.
Alex:
[1:03:15] He's a man.
Cody:
[1:03:17] But we love Jacob. We miss him.
Jacob:
[1:03:19] No, I was excited to be here and just participate a little bit. Sometimes it's nice to sit back and listen more than just lead everything all the time. Actually, my job requires me to lead a lot more than I used to.
Jacob:
[1:03:33] So now I'm more content sometimes just to sit back. There's a lot of nuance in all of this. And I was just, I guess, to put a bow in this whole conversation of pacifism versus seeking justice. I mean... It just seems to me that I kind of find myself almost in the middle of you two, where I almost would, like, I don't think pacifism is, like, the default ideology, but I think pacifism is almost the default, should be a default preference of Christians, right? You know what I mean? Like, and it just, it feels to me like if I'm going to err on a side here, right? Like, I don't know, the people who are saying, you know, we shouldn't celebrate violence and we should view it as detestable are probably closer to trying to model Christ than the people who are trying to normalize violence and say, like, society depends upon violence being institutionalized and threatened
Jacob:
[1:04:25] At every point, and violence is the solution to every problem. Listen, I even think there's a lot of complexity in the enforcement of justice where you can be true to say that force might be permissible, but it might not be beneficial in certain instances, right? You know to kind of quote ball there there's probably and and there might be instances where the the right thing to do is self-defense and or or to intervene with force and it might feel like you don't want to but it is like the the i hate to use the term lesser evil because it has such a libertarian connotation to it but like sometimes we don't get a good answer here in this life right there is sometimes not like we that we have to live in this unholy tension of knowing that this is not our home and that things are
Jacob:
[1:05:14] We don't live in the perfected, restored creation yet. If evil still persists in this age, and that points us to that eternal hope that we have in Christ and in his kingdom and in his ascension. So sometimes the best solutions we're going to have are just kind of like weighing two crappy options and two crappy outcomes. And there can be good faith arguments on both sides of those things. But but generally the people who are like gung-ho of like no the correct answer is threaten as many peaceful i mean it's just right and and just i don't know like again i can i can even appreciate a lot more political nuance these days but but it's i can appreciate the political nuance of people who are trying to
Jacob:
[1:06:04] Follow after christ and have different political considerations but but there is something to like pushing and i think part of what is maybe underlying some of what you're talking about in your book alex is just like i don't know i i guess there's part of this that can be seem like we're smuggling libertarianism in but i i feel like it's almost the opposite i feel like somewhere along the line people have smuggled into the bible this sort of assumption that like well people in authority can behave differently than otherwise they're committed to as Christians. And I am in favor of Any and all ways of combating that idea. And so whether we're doing that with what you're doing, the historical approach, I prefer more of a sort of like, I guess, sometimes systematic, you know, biblical approach at times. But, you know, we're and Cody prefers to try this weird, like, modernizing Amish approach. But we're all trying to, I think, you know, we're all trying to get at that same push, right? We're trying to push people to kind of rethink, like, you know, why do the commands that Christ gives us in terms of how we're supposed to live only apply in all these other areas of your life except when it comes to politics and economics?
Alex:
[1:07:27] Yeah, I know. And that's such a great point. and it's funny, like before I came here and I had to drop my daughter off at her like musical theater class. And so I go to a library, which I'm sorry, libertarians, I do go to the library, but to do work. And I was outlining- You know.
Jacob:
[1:07:39] The first public school comment and now the library,
Alex:
[1:07:43] I mean- I mean, I'm forced to pay for them. I might as well use them, right? Fair. So, but anyway, so I was at the library outlining the talk I'm going to give at the LCI conference next month. And that's one of the things I was thinking of as I was reading through like 1 John 4 and then Philippians 2 in particular. It's like when Paul says in Philippians 2, 5, that we need to have the mind or the attitude of Christ, he doesn't say, unless you're a politician. So like, if you're a believer, you have to embody the mind of Christ. And then he immediately goes on to talk about the incarnation and the crucifixion. And so it's like, we can't escape that as Christians. And that's one of the things that really frustrates me about political discourse too, on both the left and the right. And I know the left loves to talk about Christian nationalism, but the progressive Christians actually have more real power in American politics. And I think we need to have a conversation about that. But it's just that like, it's the assumption that as Christians, there are carve-outs for political and economic behavior, and there's not. Jesus doesn't give us a carve-out. It's like, if you're going to follow me, I have to pick up your cross, and sometimes you're going to be crucified on it. And that's just the way it goes.
Cody:
[1:08:40] I'll say one quick thing to just kind of put a bow, even though Jacob's already put a bow on it. We'll double bow it. The pastors have things. I understand the weight of those hypotheticals. In my experience, what usually happens is the hypotheticals situations are given to justify violence on the front end. And so I'm open to justifying on the back end. I was in this situation. I did this difficult thing. I've prayed about it with fear and trembling, and I think that I did the best I could and that God is gracious. But what usually happens is these kind of hypothetical situations are brought out to say, oh, we can actually just hand wave away the sermon on the mouth. If I can think of a rare instance where violence would be the best thing to do out of the options available, that means I can actually ignore this all the time. I don't have to be cruciform ever. And so that I find I think to be exactly the wrong approach but So, okay, so hour, 10 minutes, usually we go longer on the green room, but I think I'm going to try to reuse this to promote this on Libertarian Christian podcast as well. So this is about probably the longest we can push that.
Cody:
[1:09:45] So I'm going to ask one more time. When is the book out, Alex?
Alex:
[1:09:48] The book is out. It is 8.57 PM on September 14th. So it will be out in three hours and three minutes on September 15th. And you'll be able to get it at LCI, obviously, but then an Amazon and I think some other booksellers as well.
Cody:
[1:10:00] So if you're not listening to it live,
Alex:
[1:10:01] It's already out. Yes. Right.
Jacob:
[1:10:04] And then make sure we'll plug again before we get off the upcoming Christian, what's the name of the conference? Christian Liberty. That's what I was going to say. For some reason, I felt wrong. Okay, yeah, Christian Liberty Conference. We'll all be there. We didn't get to meet at Freedom Fest, but finally, I'll get to meet the two of you in person.
Cody:
[1:10:19] Yeah, so pretty much everybody's going to be there. Carrie Baldwin, we're going to be missing. She was at Freedom Fest, but we are going to have Greg Bous in her place. We can't actually have them both at the same place at the same time, but we can have one.
Jacob:
[1:10:29] Well, you can't have three reformed Christian libertarians at one spot. I mean, I think that there's some kind of like existential, like universal principle that would prevent that.
Cody:
[1:10:40] It could create some weight that creates black hole.
Jacob:
[1:10:42] Too many people who are just convinced that we're right about everything.
Cody:
[1:10:47] But yes, October 17th. I don't know why I can't memorize the date. I think I'm pretty sure it's the 17th, but I always think I'm wrong.
Jacob:
[1:10:52] Yeah, October 17th. And yes, we did recently get Spike to a recent addition to our lineup. That's going to be a lot of fun. Still at least one, I think, person that we're potentially adding as well. So stay tuned for that.
Cody:
[1:11:04] Yeah, that's right. And we'll have at least a representative from every active Christians for Liberty Network podcast, anything that you get through the Libertarian Christian Institute. So we're going to have Jacob there for Biblical Anarchy. We're going to have Alex there from the Protestant Libertarian podcast. Doug and I are both going to be there for the Libertarian Christian podcast. Norm, who's been doing a lot more stuff with Faith Ventures, he's going to be there. Greg Bouse is going to represent Reformed Libertarians podcast. So if you're interested in what LCI has been doing, you're going to find somebody from everything that we've been doing lately. So,
Cody:
[1:11:34] Yeah, so I'm really excited about it. We're trying to get those ticket sales up so we can have a really great experience. The thing, I think it's going to be great that we're going to have lectures and conversations and kind of round tables and stuff like that. But one of the taglines we've been using is, you can't get this on a podcast. Now, somebody might say, well, I can listen to a conversation between Jacob and Spike Cohen or whatever on a podcast. Well, you can, that's true. But for me, it's the value of being there. And there's value in the primary value that I think is the community aspect. You're here with people that care about these issues as much as you do. You get to talk to them. You get to meet some of these people that you've maybe been seeing online and like what they have to say or like their books. But you also get to meet other people to build these connections. Being a weirdo, you know, someone who's like a libertarian and a Christian or a Christian who's interested in the intellect or apologetics or whatever, you find that you can get kind of lonely because there's just not a lot of people who are interested in these things, not a lot of people you can talk to about them. And so this is an opportunity if you're kind of one of those people that you love this stuff, you have some maybe friends online, but you want to get together and meet some people in person and talk about these things and build those relationships. You know, it's not going to be a big, expensive Freedom Fest thing. We're going to have a blowout wine and cheese. We're going to have lunch. We'll serve you. We'll feed you.
Jacob:
[1:12:50] We have five pieces of bread and five pieces of fish.
Alex:
[1:12:53] We'll see what happens.
Cody:
[1:12:57] So it's going to be nice, but it's not at a five-star hotel or anything like that. Because at the end of the day, first of all, we don't have that kind of money. But what we do have is the opportunity to come together, to meet each other, to have these great conversations. And that's more than enough for me. I've been to some of these inexpensive conferences and get to meet people that care about the issues that I care about. And it's valuable, and it'll build memories that you're going to, I think, appreciate for the rest of your life. I disappeared for a second. Can you hear me or see me?
Alex:
[1:13:27] I can hear you very well. Oh, you're frozen.
Cody:
[1:13:30] There we go. All right. So I'll end it there. Jacob's book. Alex's book, Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation is out pretty much now. You can get it. Go ahead and order it. I guess the Kindle edition will be available in a few hours and you can get that right away. Otherwise, you'll have to wait for the...
Jacob:
[1:13:46] You might have to clear some cash memory on your phone to download it,
Alex:
[1:13:49] But I mean...
Cody:
[1:13:51] It's worth it. And Alex, you have another book that you've co-written with some, you're contributing to at least, that's coming out in January, which is great. So definitely get that, your profile picture for your Amazon account, because right now it's blank. You do have your bio.
Alex:
[1:14:05] I'm going to need so much help with that, Cody. Yeah, I need you to coach me through that. I cannot figure out how to log back into it.
Jacob:
[1:14:11] At least he has his account. I haven't even done that yet, even though you've reminded me at least like half a bazillion times by now to do it.
Cody:
[1:14:18] Well, I love you guys and I want you to be successful. so I want you to use the technology to your benefit.
Jacob:
[1:14:24] But I think IP is fake and gay, so.
Cody:
[1:14:29] And Jacob mentioned his book, which he's finalizing now, so we don't have a date on that, but I'm looking forward to getting that in your guys' hands because I read the first pass-through on that and I can also recommend it. Just like that.
Alex:
[1:14:39] It's very good. Very good. I'm excited for it.
Jacob:
[1:14:42] Awesome. All right.
Cody:
[1:14:43] And that's about it. You want to wrap it up, Jacob?
Jacob:
[1:14:46] Yes. I'm going to click the end stream button now.
Cody:
[1:14:48] Do we have end music or anything like that?
Jacob:
[1:14:50] We don't have end music yet because I'm just too lazy and I haven't made an end music outro yet.
Cody:
[1:14:56] Don't we have the bad thing we can do?
Jacob:
[1:14:59] Maybe? I don't know.
Cody:
[1:15:00] I thought it was still there.
Alex:
[1:15:01] Oh yeah, I thought there was like a...
Jacob:
[1:15:03] Hold on. It's been a hot minute, guys. Been a hot minute. That's the intro. You're talking about... The intro. The old intro. I haven't even planned... Cool. So that's the intro. That's now the outro. Welcome to the Green Room.
Cody:
[1:15:23] See you. Bye.