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Wealth and Poverty: Four Christian Views of Economics
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 26, 2017
I understand why IVP pulled this book after a year of successful selling. North publicly destroyed everyone in it. That wouldn’t work with IVP’s “proto-SJW turn.” Gary North offers the free-market view. William Diehl offers a mostly free-market view, with a little govt thrown in. Art Gish offers the hippie commune. John Gladwin is a Communist.
Aside from North, only Diehl actually shows some knowledge of economics. (And despite Diehl’s antipathy towards the Old Testament, his essay and most of his responses were quite good). All of the responders attacked North on his insistence that the Bible gives a blueprint to stuff like law, politics, and economics. Admittedly, OT law is a hard sell to hippie evangelicals, but North’s comeback is unanswerable: what good does it do to speak of “Christian guidelines” if you don’t fill in the content?
Art Gish’s essay on decentralist economics should be interesting today, given the current Benedict Option fad. It’s the standard “Let’s live in community, man” and “God liberates the poor.” North gives a wise response: “The Bible also does not teach that "God intervenes in history to liberate the oppressed poor" (p. 135). What the Bible does teach is that God intervenes in history to liberate the righteous oppressed, whether rich or poor. Did God liberate the poor who lived in Canaan? No. He had his people exterminate them. There were wicked poor people in Canaan, after all. They lived under the domination of "unrighteous structures," to use a popular phrase. God destroyed both Canaan's oppressed and Canaan's "unrighteous structures" when Joshua and the Israelites invaded the land (163).”
It does no good to say “Let’s look to Jesus” if we divorce Jesus from the Bible he read. Diehl moves in for the finishing blow: but to advocate a nonsystem seems irresponsible. Koinonia, on a global scale, without any blueprint, is a nonsystem. Because it is a nonsystem it can hardly be called a "New Testament economic program." Utopia it is; an economic program it is not” (Diehl 173).
Gladwin’s essay is pure Communism, so no need to refute it here. The book is a let-down. Don’t pay money for it. Read it here.
http://garynorth.com/NorthDebate.pdf
Aside from North, only Diehl actually shows some knowledge of economics. (And despite Diehl’s antipathy towards the Old Testament, his essay and most of his responses were quite good). All of the responders attacked North on his insistence that the Bible gives a blueprint to stuff like law, politics, and economics. Admittedly, OT law is a hard sell to hippie evangelicals, but North’s comeback is unanswerable: what good does it do to speak of “Christian guidelines” if you don’t fill in the content?
Art Gish’s essay on decentralist economics should be interesting today, given the current Benedict Option fad. It’s the standard “Let’s live in community, man” and “God liberates the poor.” North gives a wise response: “The Bible also does not teach that "God intervenes in history to liberate the oppressed poor" (p. 135). What the Bible does teach is that God intervenes in history to liberate the righteous oppressed, whether rich or poor. Did God liberate the poor who lived in Canaan? No. He had his people exterminate them. There were wicked poor people in Canaan, after all. They lived under the domination of "unrighteous structures," to use a popular phrase. God destroyed both Canaan's oppressed and Canaan's "unrighteous structures" when Joshua and the Israelites invaded the land (163).”
It does no good to say “Let’s look to Jesus” if we divorce Jesus from the Bible he read. Diehl moves in for the finishing blow: but to advocate a nonsystem seems irresponsible. Koinonia, on a global scale, without any blueprint, is a nonsystem. Because it is a nonsystem it can hardly be called a "New Testament economic program." Utopia it is; an economic program it is not” (Diehl 173).
Gladwin’s essay is pure Communism, so no need to refute it here. The book is a let-down. Don’t pay money for it. Read it here.
http://garynorth.com/NorthDebate.pdf
January 10, 2022
I do love these counterpoint books that IVP and Zondervan have put out over the years (and now a couple of other publishers have been putting out their own versions of the same, too). These seem to be all the rage these days. I think it was Peter Abelard during the Middle Ages who was one of the first theologians to take multiple views on any given theological/philosophical issue, and then have these different views hash it out. Well, I like the way IVP and Zondervan are going about this, I just wish sometimes that they would find better proponents of the various positions that they are bringing together for a given debate.
This particular book was good in so far as Gary North really did do a bang-up job both defending the free-market capitalist position, while also demolishing the other three views. But it seems like the editor of this volume could have found some better proponents of the other three views. Not to mention, there's no one representing the "Distributist Economic" position. One would think that this view would have gotten a more solid hearing and place at the table in a book like this, but alas, it doth not.
This particular book was good in so far as Gary North really did do a bang-up job both defending the free-market capitalist position, while also demolishing the other three views. But it seems like the editor of this volume could have found some better proponents of the other three views. Not to mention, there's no one representing the "Distributist Economic" position. One would think that this view would have gotten a more solid hearing and place at the table in a book like this, but alas, it doth not.
March 24, 2026
Five stars for Gary's essay and responses, one for everyone else. What good does it do to write a book on Christian economics when you don't even believe the Bible should be the guiding principle? All the other authors lean on vague, loaded statements that really do not interact with Scripture in a proper way at all. It was only North's clarity that made reading this book worthwhile. While he can be an acerbic communicator, I found that he was actually more reserved than some of the other authors in this.
August 11, 2021
A strong showing for Gary North.
April 28, 2013
Gary North pulls no punches in this one...
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews