How a Biblical Agrarian Social Order Supports the Biblical Family


Introduction

The late James Montgomery Boice used to say that we must attempt to think “Christianly” about every thing.  It has been my endeavor for many years to integrate all of my thinking on every subject, beginning from a biblical basis.  It is my belief that the Bible has much to teach us about other things besides personal salvation.  The Bible contains not only the true religion, but the true history of the world, the perfect law of righteousness for men and nations; and implied in these things, a Divine design for culture.  It is that general subject that I wish to address tonight.  This is not meant as a manifesto, or a call to action, so much as an exploratory study – a dish of “food for thought”, if you will.  I want to contribute to the common understanding of what we are ultimately trying to do – what is our corporate responsibility in the long-term.   Keep this in mind, as I am going to say some things tonight that you may not have heard before, that you may think strange.  Now you know what I am trying to do.

 

God's Machines and Man's

We moderns love our machines.  Like Pygmalion, we adore the works of our hands, and ascribe to them godlike virtues.  But our machines are as far inferior to the machines God built – the cosmos, plants, animals, and man – as our thoughts are beneath his.  Technological man vaunts his superiority over his agrarian forefathers by pointing to the sophistication of modern machines.   But are we really their superiors?  Is the agrarian life now beneath our dignity, as so many suppose?  Which is the nobler occupation –
the cultivation of God's living machines, or the manufacture and operation of man's inanimate ones?

Who is wiser: 

One man spends his whole life acquiring knowledge that can never become obsolete, and skills that will always be needed; knowledge and skills that directly tend to his benefit, and that make him as self-sufficient as any man can be.  More importantly, the knowledge he has is of God's creation, which was made to reveal the glory of the Creator.  By this knowledge he gains humility, learns patience, experiences wonder and awe – all in the course of productive, healthful, and satisfying work.  He passes this knowledge on to his sons; along with the land, the homestead, and many of the same tools that his father passed on to him.

Another man spends much of his life incurring debt to acquire knowledge that will surely become obsolete, and skills that may not be needed next year; the acquiring of which exhausts him, and the use of which makes him completely dependent on a chaotic impersonal system.  He rarely sees God's creation, and has no time to think about it – he is always in a hurry.  He often cries out to God in the miserable emptiness of his soul; but he does not really expect an answer.  His business is to learn the ways of man – God is irrelevant to the world of making of money, in fact, a hindrance.  His “work” is unhealthful and dissatisfying.  His labor produces nothing of actual worth to humankind: he is a parasite, a middleman, who profits by placing himself in the middle of the long road from the producer to the consumer.  Half the reward of his labor will be taxed away before he even sees it, and after paying the rent, and all the other service charges for living imposed by the system, he may have some to waste on the debilitating amusements that consume his pleasure-starved mind.  He has no place where he belongs; he changes jobs and homes every five years.  He has no lasting friendships – even his marriage did not last (How could it?  He is clueless about relationships, and thinks of them in purely functional terms.)  His sons – if he has any – do not care about what he knows.  They insist upon finding out about the world for themselves and refuse any guidance.  He will leave this world, and few will long remember that he was ever here – fewer, be grateful for his contribution – even fewer, revere his memory.


The first man's life is chiefly concerned with God's machines; the second, with man's.  Both of them live by receiving input from their respective environments, and making the required responses.  Both of them are shaped intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, by constant interaction with their environments.  They become what they serve.  God's machines make men; man's make drones and zombies.   They inherit the benefits and the burdens of the very different worlds in which they live.  God's machines enrich; man's degrade and impoverish.
 

 


Two Opposing Social Systems

In the following essay, the terms “technological society” and  “biblical agrarian society” are used with reference to two mutually-exclusive systems of social organization.  In brief, the term, “technological society”, borrowed from Stephen B. Clark, means a society in which technology is dominant, and its demands have either destroyed or re-shaped all the traditional institutions and relationships of society.

It is not against technology per se, nor against high technology in particular, that this paper is written; but rather against the domination of social order by technology – to the exclusion of every consideration of humanity, of ethics, and most of all, of the claims and purposes of mankind's Creator – which we increasingly see today.

“Biblical agrarian society” is my name for the society developed under God by our father Adam for the glory of God and the benefit of the human family: the traditional socio-economic structure found in the Bible.  To illustrate, let us consider the case of Abraham.




An Example: the Tribe of Abraham

The Bible tells us that “Abram was very rich in cattle, in silver, and in gold”(Genesis 13:2).  How did Abraham become rich?  It was not through trade.  It was not through usury, extortion, or robbery.  It was through cattle-raising.  By wisely managing his flocks and his herds, he made them grow.  This supported a growing number of servants, who with their families were regarded as his property.  To this he would later add a large family of his own.  All these were trained and educated by Abraham, so that they became a stable, loyal, and profitable workforce.  These were provided for by Abraham, who was in turn their protector and their judge in the case of disputes.  In practical terms, Abraham was the king of a nation.  He was a servant-ruler, using his authority to organize and direct the workforce in the use of their labor and common resources.

The flocks and herds supplied the nation with meat, milk, wool and hide – all valuable and real goods.  Besides these, Abraham used his organized workforce to dig wells, thus making water available to all who would pass through that country.  No doubt he gathered wood, flax, metals and minerals, and other natural resources, as he had occasion, making them into useful products.

Most of these products were used, but the excess could be traded for goods that were not produced by Abraham's people.  Thus he became wealthy in all kinds of goods, and in hard money as well.  He did this with labor and wise management, by producing, acquiring, and distributing the basic necessities of life, thus adding to the aggregate wealth of his whole nation, to the common benefit of every family in it. 

And because he demanded of his own people that they deal justly with each other and with those outside, the prosperity of his nation did not come at the expense of others.  As a result, the aggregate wealth of the whole of humanity was increased.  This is how it's supposed to work!

Biblical agrarianism survived in some parts of the world into the twentieth century, but is now virtually extinct.  It has been almost wholly supplanted by technological society, or plutocracy.  Even the poor nations of the world, that enjoy few of the benefits of technology, have been deprived of the comfort and satisfaction, the riches of meaning and meaningful long-term relationships provided by the traditional way of life.
 


The Economics of the Large Family

Fertility is a blessing from God – not only fertile fields and fertile livestock, but the fertile womb.  Large families are the biblical ideal. Children in a free agrarian society are useful as workers and producers in the self-supporting homestead.  They are the key to the future prosperity of the family, and the providers of support for their aged and invalid family members.

Large families, however, are impossible for most people to support in the technological society.  The technological society has a money economy, and as such has made the home a place of consumption, rather than production.  Because it usually requires a money-earning workplace outside the home, children cannot meaningfully participate in the support of the family.  They are made an economic liability, rather than an asset.  Hence, there is a collision of the biblical family ideal with a fundamental feature of technological society.

And because technological society is militaristic, and maintains a standing army, it must induce or else force large numbers of young men to either delay marriage, or to defraud their wives for months or years while they go overseas to serve the economic interests of technological society all over the world. 




Social Order and the Eighth Commandment

Sexual restraint is another prominent feature of the biblical familial ethic.  This was achieved in biblical times by a system of social institutions and customs designed to promote a culture of modesty, chastity, and generally responsible behavior.   Children were intensively trained in the law of God from early childhood.  The goal was to inculcate a sense of responsibility to God, the community, the family and oneself, so that the child would achieve maturity of character as soon as practical.  Boys who were emotionally and morally men already at the onset of puberty were well-equipped to  handle the temptations intrinsic in physical maturity.

Among the other provisions of biblical agrarian culture for sexual restraint was the system for making marriages – a biblical institution little understood today, even by Christians.  Ordinarily, it was the parents who chose a mate for their child.  The evaluation of prospective spouses was considered a task for the experienced and wise, and marriage was too important to be determined by mere sexual attraction.

In keeping with this was a standard of uncompromised modesty for the women. Biblical society protected women from becoming mere sex-objects to men by concealing their beauty.  At the same time, by this measure, men were protected from undue sexual stimulation, and thus assisted in the maintenance of their purity.

By the age of twenty, a young Hebrew male was expected to be settled in his vocation and married.  Hebrew maidens could be married as soon as they reached physical maturity.  There was to be no prolonged period of sexual vulnerability, with all the desires of a married person, but no legitimate outlet!

There was a general segregation of the sexes, according to their roles.  Men and women did not usually work together – even in the home.   When they were mingled, as in the marketplace, strict rules of propriety provided substantial protection against temptation.

Coupled with these wise institutions was a law that made adultery a capital offense, and generally punished sexual sins with rigor, making prostitution virtually impossible.

Further, as Edersheim and others have pointed out, there was a universal sobriety that shunned idleness and empty amusements.  Israel had no theaters, racetracks, bars, or casinos to exploit the weaknesses of men.

All of these constituent parts of the culture of sexual responsibility worked together as a system – a social order – that was consistent with itself.  It could only work while all the parts remained in place.  And it could only work in a functioning community – among families that shared these customs and values, and worked together to enforce the standards and laws.

 


Technological Society: Anti-Marriage and Anti-Family

Technological society, on the other hand, has other priorities than promoting the happiness of men and women and the well-being of the family by supporting the sanctity of marriage.  Sex sells, and that's what technological society is about.  Young men and women from Christian families are not doing measurably better in the area of sexual restraint today than the unchurched.  And no wonder!  They no longer receive intensive spiritual training in the home or the church.  They are subjected to a constant assault on their virtue in the world at large, with which they have constant, intimate contact.  And they face unrelenting economic pressure to delay marriage far beyond the age of sexual maturity, until at least their late twenties, in order to prolong their formal education.

This last deserves notice.  Because the criterion of efficiency demands an ever-increasing standardization and specialization, intensive, formal vocational training becomes ever more necessary.  Since the establishment schools do such a poor job of preparing children for higher education, the first years of college are often wasted in teaching literacy and basic learning skills.  Accordingly, the average number of years spent in school, along with the cost of schooling, will most likely only continue to increase.

Technological society needs the family only until it can figure out a workable – and that means affordable – alternative to produce the slaves it needs.  Its technocrats would like to be able to clone workers, determining their personal qualities beforehand according to the work they will be called to do, and producing each type in just the right numbers.   But that is beyond their skill at the moment.  Robots show some promise of replacing humans in some areas; but they are too expensive for general use, since each one must be individually manufactured, as they cannot reproduce.  So the family must be tolerated for the present, although most of its functions have been transferred to other institutions.

The biggest problem with the family is that it is a system of personal relationships.  It is a unit whose members tend to take a special interest in each other, to be loyal to each other, to provide for each other.  Ideally, in a technological society, each person must have only one loyalty – to his own temporal interests.  That way, he can be precisely controlled without resorting to force.  He will infallibly pursue what he perceives to be in his best interests, and that perception will be infallibly predetermined by the technocrats who control the schools and the mass media.

Personal relationships have no place in a technological world, for they impair functional efficiency.  For the technocrats to be satisfied, eventually, the tattered remnants of the family will have to go.

When a deadly virus invades a population, it often destroys itself quickly; for once its host population is killed off, it must itself die.  The technocratic nations of the world must find a way to return to sanity soon, or they will perish.  No one defies God and gets away with it.

The time will come when God will build again all that has been destroyed; and when the great world-wide revival comes, we can be sure that biblical agrarianism will come into its own again.  Is it not prophesied?  “... And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks”(Isaiah 2:4).  May the Lord hasten the day!

 

Howard Douglas King

Revised November 29, 2014

 

A Critique of Plowing in Hope, by David Bruce Hegeman

 
With the growing interest in a biblical theology of culture have come two irreconcilable theories.  The one salient fact with which all must deal is that Biblical culture was agrarian -- and ours is not.  There are only two alternative explanations of this fact.

Modernists (in the broad sense -- I am not talking about theological liberals only, but anti-traditionalists of every stripe) explain this basic fact by ignoring the well-documented history of greed and the lust for power that shaped our modern world, and by claiming that the biblical agrarian culture was inferior to our own.  They hold to a form of cultural evolution which assumes (but never proves) that the culture of the technological society is intrinsically superior to biblical agrarian culture.  This seems self-evident to them, I think, because they share many or most of its ultimate values.

Biblical Agrarians, on the other hand, claim that our technological society is apostate and culturally degenerate, and that redemptive history will move us toward the goal of a restoration and perfection of the original decentralized agrarian social order, in which godly culture will flourish.  These two theories are diametrically opposed.

Yet, a book from Doug Wilson's publishing house, Canon Press, called Plowing in Hope: Toward a Biblical Theology of Culture, by David Bruce Hegeman seeks to reconcile the two.  This is a useful book, for it gathers together most of the data of Scripture that must be systematized in order to answer the question, "What is the biblical concept of culture?"  It makes the fatal mistake, however of attempting to steer a middle course between the two opposite theories.  This is appealing to those who want the best of both worlds, but it cannot be done with intellectual integrity.  And Hegeman clearly wants what he sees as the best of both worlds.  He wants the technology of the industrialized world without the pollution, the vice, the waste, the corruption, the warfare, the destruction of life that has always gone hand in hand with it.  He wants a predominately urban civilization without the agglomeration of wealth and power that have always motivated it.  He wants the beauty of a garden and the peace of the rural countryside without the mass of men living by subsistence farming.  This is nothing but confusion.



The False Assumption of Cultural Evolution

One of the contributions to modern thought made by the philosophers of the enlightenment is the inevitability of progress.  Another is cultural relativism.  These are the two ingredients of the theory of cultural evolution.  It is a curious thing to see a Christian who says that he deplores the influence of the Enlightenment employing its premises to argue against distinctively Christian ideas; but that is just what we see in this book.  Whereas the Bible teaches that mankind began in a state of perfection, fell from it, and is now being progressively restored to that original perfection, Enlightenment thinkers say that man began as a brute, and is struggling upward out of chaos into order.  What the final perfection of man (if there can be such a thing on evolutionary premises) will be, no one can know.  We couldn't understand it if we did know.   For it has no precedent in history.

By contrast, the Bible shows us just what we are to become, at least what the sanctification that takes place in this life has as its goal and standard.  The plan is God's righteous law, and the living fulfilment of the law is Jesus Christ the righteous.   Perfection is not something that has never yet been realized.  The world as created was perfect.  The original happiness of mankind was perfect.  The Law of the Lord is perfect.  Jesus Christ is its perfect embodiment.  The restoration of the original perfection is the goal of history.

But Hegeman's idea of culture is evolutionary.  The perfection he envisages for the world is something wholly new, and undefined.  While the practical utility of traditional agrarian economics and politics are on record in Scripture and in history; the socio-economic basis and political structure of Hegeman's conception remains a matter of speculation.  Many agrarian societies have functioned well (making allowances for human sin) for thousands of years.  No alternative has ever succeeded in producing an environment more wholesome and congenial to human beings.

The technological society is a murderous one.  Never has man caused the death of man on such a massive scale as in the last century, when technological advancement was accelerating as never before.  Massive wars fought with horrible new weapons, persecutions, genocides, repressions, abortions, murders, and man-made health hazards have accounted for the deaths of tens of millions. We can only expect the number of killings to continue upward, as we continue to move ever farther from the godly way of life from which we have long ago departed.

 



Confusion about Cultural Progress: Eden and the New Jerusalem

Hegeman makes the assumption that culture advances from the primitive, represented by the garden of Eden, toward something which he describes as a "garden/city".  He sees the city as the ultimate goal toward which human progress must strive."  The proof of this he finds in the fact that "the Bible begins in a garden and ends in a city." (p.31)

My first objection to this construction of the Biblical data is that Scripture makes the clearest distinction between the uncultivated earth that Adam and his progeny were to subdue and the garden that God planted with His own hands!  The garden, then, does not represent the primitive, the undeveloped, the uncultured -- but exactly the opposite!  Eden was the pinnacle of perfection!  It was no doubt designed to inspire Adam and Eve with a vision for the creative potential of the rest of the earth that lay outside.  Adam was not told to develop the garden, but simply to "keep" it.  How could he expect to improve on God's workmanship?  It was the uninhabited lands that he was to cultivate and reclaim, and he would have done so in the light of what had been shown him in the aesthetic perfection of the garden of God.

Furthermore, the author has missed the fact that, while "the garden" was a literal garden in a literal landscape; the New Jerusalem is a symbolic representation of the eschatological church: a spiritual entity, rather than a literal city.  I may say without fear of contradiction that this one fact invalidates his entire paradigm.  There is no indication anywhere in Scripture that the final state of the redeemed is to be shut up in a giant cube for all eternity.  Everything about the description John gives of his final vision is against any literalistic interpretation.  Hence it is ludicrous to conclude, as he does, from the description of the city, that there will be architectural structures similar to our modern buildings in the eternal state.  There are definite indications in the text that the New Jerusalem is rather intended to picture a restored paradise than a "city" as we moderns understand the term.

 

What is a City?

A further error lies in the unreflecting equation of the word, "city" in Scripture with the modern city.  First, the largest biblical "city" was no more than a town by modern standards, and most were merely villages.  There was no biblical city that could compare with the vast, sprawling putrescences of our day.   The population of any ancient city could be measured by thousands, rather than millions.   But the vast difference in scale is not the only difference.  These small villages and towns reflected a traditional agrarian culture, rather than an urban one.

The ancient walled city of the Bible had the most in common with the modern city.  It was most often a center of apostasy, a base for imperialism, a treasure-house for plundering tyrants, a monument to human pride, vainglory and rebellion against God, akin to the modern city in spirit -- the City of Man.  This city provides no ideal for culture, since it is opposed to biblical culture.  Like Babel, it has been erected in defiance of God's design for a decentralized, agrarian civilization. 

On the other hand, the ideal of the City of God set forth in God's word bears no resemblance to the modern city.  Ancient Jerusalem was a fit type for the eschatological city of God because it was, first, a center of the true religion.  In patriarchal times, it was the realm of Melchizedek, the high priest who was so great in the eyes of God that he was able to bless faithful Abraham.  In David's time, it was the city that God had chosen, to dwell there.  In Solomon's reign, the Temple was constructed, and God Himself approved it.  But it was only a type of that "city that hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God."

Jerusalem means "City of Peace".  It was a castle, a walled fortress, intended to be a place of wealth, of security, of stable order, of community, and of the presence of God.  The New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse represents these ideals under a figure.  The enormous precious and semi-precious stones of the foundations, the pearly gates, the streets of gold -- all suggest virtually unlimited wealth.  The cube-shape and the massive foundations represent perfect stability.  The tremendous wall represents absolute security.  In words reminiscent of  Isaiah's prophecy (54:11), " O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colors, and lay thy foundations with sapphires," John describes the beauty and perfection of the foundations of the city.  What do these precious stones represent?  The doctrine of the apostles (Revelation 21:14).  For the city itself is identified as "the bride, the Lamb's wife"(v. 9,10) .  This can be no other than the church, which is the community of the faithful.  God himself shall dwell there, with His people forever.

The eschatological City of God, thus understood, is an ideal consistent with agrarianism.  During the millennium, a few large centers of spirituality, godly culture, learning, and commerce may develop in the midst of an agricultural civilization composed primarily of thousands of small villages and tens of thousands of farms.   These cities will not at all embody the spirit of the city of man, and they will look nothing like the modern city.  Instead, they will be Christian communities, pointing to the ideal and perfect community of the redeemed in the New Heaven and the New Earth.



What is the Christian Concept of Culture?

I must also call into question the very idea that "culture" in its most important sense consists chiefly in the refinement of such things as artistic sensibility, good taste and manners, acquaintance with literature, and the like.  Even less does it consist in the artifacts of culture.  Christian culture, at least, is the culture of Christianity.  It is chiefly concerned with spiritual development; and with the natural only to the degree that it serves spiritual interests.  Christian piety leads to proper intellectual and aesthetic development.  But “high culture”, in the world's sense of the term, is often accompanied accompanied by the lowest spiritual and moral culture.  The true high culture, therefore, may exist in the humblest of societies; where there is little opportunity for the literary and artistic pursuits of the leisured class.  It is this misconception about what constitutes biblical culture that lies at the root of Hegeman's negative evaluation of biblical agrarian society, and that explains his efforts to justify, in part, the modern world -- in spite of its evident spiritual deficiencies.

Modern man is utterly convinced that life in an agrarian social order must be unbearable; but this only shows how effectively he has been brainwashed by the propaganda of the humanistic elite.  There is no evidence that people in agrarian societies were necessarily more miserable than we are.  It seems clear that the Israelites who lived under Moses' agrarian law-order would have enjoyed more freedom, more contact with nature, a stronger family, richer community life, more satisfying labor, greater fertility, and better health than is usual among us.  For all these things were promised to those who kept the law.  They were the benefits that God designed it to secure!

But we come to the Bible with preconceptions so deeply rooted that we cannot see what is in front of us.  We fail to see that the Adamic, patriarchal social order was not just the best he could figure out; but the fruit of great wisdom, eminently suited to provide the structure needed for mankind's social well-being.  We fail to see that the sin of Babel was precisely the sin of our modern world: the refusal to accept the agricultural calling that man was given by God, and the willful pursuit of security, wealth, and power without regard to our Creator's will.  We fail to see that Abraham was not just a holy man, but a man who was holy because he deliberately left the city to serve God as a sheepherder.  We fail to see that the law of Moses, if fully obeyed, establishes and maintains an agrarian, rather than an urban civilization; that it assumes throughout the rightness of such a civilization; and that its ethic of love for God and man would be impossible to implement without destroying the very foundations of our technological society.



Howard Douglas King, 2004

Revised September 18, 2015