Yes, but equating Christ's actual teachings with Libertarianism is just ludicrous. If he would adhere to any socioeconomic philosophy as it exists in the world today, it would be some form of communalism.

The only thing that the New Testament says with any consistency about money, is that it is at best unnecessary and distracting. At worst, money (that is "the love of money") is the "root of all evil."

Hardly a ringing endorsement of the "keep the gummint out of my pocketbook" point of view.

edit: whoops

[Edited on Aug 02, 2005 by skeptik]

And Jesus did say unto the pedestrians "The sidewalk shall be privately owned."

Which would be true if that's what Christ actually taught. Unfortunately, it isn't. And the fact that it isn't what was taught is one of the major reasons why I am no longer a practising Christian.

What he actually taught was the need to give up everything that is important to you, including family, possessions, ambition, etc. and subvert your will to God (the ultimate Authority). The point of the "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" line was to emphasize that the material world is irrelavent, and that we should submit to earthly power - because it is only earthly, hence irrelavent.

He taught that his followers shouldn't coerce their fellow man, but not that they should resist such coersion from earthly authorities. Hell, he, himself submitted to such authority so far that he let them kill him.

Sounds a whole lot more like Communism than Libertarianism to me.

Anubis/monastrell

There's nothing unique about libertarianism in terms of principles, preservation of consent, and a resistence to coercion.

Christ could very well have been a proto-anarchist.

OK, a proto-anarcho-communistic libertarian.

Or something.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

The cowardly refuge of the Truly Trounced!

Oh my, a tantrum has finally been thrown!

That heavy thud everyone keeps hearing is Ayn Rand doing backflips in her grave.

Oh, so they're one and the same? I thought this guy had a familiarly dogmatic sound to his posts. That certainly explains much.

Also, I love how quickly he backed off the whole 'Christ as Libertarian' angle when it was pointed out that Jesus's message was one of submitting to an ultimate authority, not a message of personal freedom. Heh

I have to say, though, that it must suck for him quite often, being so chained to a socio-political worldview that he has to filter EVERYTHING through it. Poor sod.

Yeah, but it's voluntary submission!

Just like Nike workers in Thailand are being voluntarily exploited!

Now he's vewwy vewwy angwwy wiv me.

Oh, well, as long as it's voluntary, then everything's fine. Capital!

Well yeah, I knew that, and the passage prior to my quote says flat out that they "took counsel how they might entangle him in [his] talk. " And let's face it: everyone, everywhere, hates paying taxes.

...thus heavily implying that the money was Caesar's. And in this context, it's reasonable to assume that by "Caesar," Jesus meant the Roman state, which, yes, did a lot of bad things, but also did good things, like build aqueducts and other such public works.

I don't think that Jesus was literally intending to say that every single coin in the Empire was Caesar's, he was just playing with rhetoric to make the point that money was the currency of the world and should be left to the world, and that people should at the same time pay their spiritual taxes, so to speak, to their god. Anything beyond that is really speculative, and that's really the point I was trying to make in quoting the verse.

But while we're on the subject, taxation is not extortion. It may feel like it most of the time because people don't like parting with money. But in modern America, people are taxed by a government which they elect, and are free to vote for representatives who will tax them less if they so choose. Hell, Americans don't have to pay a cent in taxes if a majority of them don't want to. Of course, your government will have a hard time defending the country if it can't pay its soldiers or buy their weapons. Likewise for all the other benefits that people derive from their government and would scream bloody murder if they were taken away, like public education, roads, a social safety net for those who fall on hard times, retirement insurance, and so on. You can only borrow and/or print/coin so much money before you start doing damage to the economy.

Taxation is an evil, but it's a necessary evil, and it's really not right to compare it to actual extortion, in which money is taken away from people by threatened or actual physical violence and nothing of any value is given to them in return except the safety to which they are rightfully entitled in the forst place.

good post, macaque. i think you hit on most every point, except the one that i wanted to make: it's silly to entangle theological issues into a political discussion. trying to use words reportedly used by christ is drawing far more complexity into the argument than really needs to be there.

Also, none of our modern economic/political systems even existed at the time in question.

Greek-style democracy didn't even exist in Greece any more by that time. Roman "republicanism" died either during Christ's lifetime or shortly afterward. Most countries consisted of ruling elites governing little more than slave populations.

Libertarianism can only exist in a society whose civilians are not under perpetual threat of being killed on a whim. Hell, even the term "citizen" was limited to a select few individuals in what was to become the Roman Empire (one of whom, famously was the apostle Paul). The "right" to own property, or determine one's own course in life not only didn't exist for the vast majority of the people, the concepts would continue to be meaningless for at least another millenium and a half.

Christ couldn't have been teaching such concepts, no one would have had the philosophical foundation in principles to have a clue what he even meant. Read the Gospels again, and see just how much trouble he had getting his own damn 12 disciples to understand what he meant about his "heavenly kingdom" rather than an earthly one.

He most emphatically never encouraged anyone to resist government, or agitate for personal liberties. Rather, he used phrases like "turn the other cheek" and "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."