David French’s Hermeneutical Contortionism

The most irksome aspect of French’s discourse at the 2023 Barnes Symposium was the hermeneutical contortion of the meaning of Micah 4:4. (“And each man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, with no one to frighten him.”) This is not only a consequence of my pedant scrupulosity. It is also because Protestant Evangelicals prove absolutely worthless in terms of supplying prudent economic counsel although the God of Scriptures speaks to such matters.

I love what the pseudonymous writer, Scott Alexander, said about Classical liberalism. He said it's like an alien technology engineered to avoid Civil War. It contradicts our human nature because we have a Will To Power. And what liberalism does is it checks that will to power to allow other people to live.

And I think of another verse from Micah that really puts this in context. And interestingly enough, this is one of George Washington's favorite verses. He used it almost 50 times in his writing, most famously when he wrote to the Hebrew Congregation of Rhode Island. And this is an incredibly persecuted religious minority. Anti-Semitism is an ancient hatred. And ancient hatred. In this incredibly persecuted religious minority is turning to the new president of a new Republic, asking where do we fit in this land.

And we know Washington had flaws. We know that. But this was not one of them. In his response to the Hebrew Congregation of Rhode Island he quoted Micah 4:4. “Every man shall live under his own Vine and his own fig tree, and no one shall make him afraid.” And I think that is a beautiful vision of pluralism.¹

David French claims that Micah 4:4 constitutes a “beautiful vision of pluralism.” What a most odd interpretation, considering that the Hebrews’ founding covenant was expressly purposed to create a “Good Terrestrial Society”² with a constrained scope of acceptable beliefs and mores. The Torah is full of admonitions warning Hebrews against emulating the corruptive practices and influences of the Canaanite peoples who remained resident therein, including against intermarriage.

Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, because they will turn your sons away from following Me to serve other gods. Then the anger of the LORD will burn against you, and He will swiftly destroy you.³

Micah’s prophetic ideal operated within a different covenantal purpose than French’s pluralistic revisionism. Then again, Cyrus the Great’s mention in the Book of Isaiah has been cited to apply to Donald Trump. The Bible has been waxed to exalt communism or libertarian capitalism, or promote celibacy as the highest estate or, alternatively, justify same sex relations.

French’s innovative contortionism is just par for the course. I had previously encountered another article for The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society which claimed that these biblical passages were more concerned with environmental care.

BUT WHY BOTHER READING THE BIBLE IF ONE IS JUST GOING TO FABRICATE ITS MEANING INTO WHATEVER IS IN CONFORMITY WITH ONE’S OWN PRE-EXISTING PREDELICTIONS AND AGENDAS?

French’s interpretation would likewise be a curiousity to George Washington, who was a member of a clique which held that the right to vote should be contingent on owning property in a nation with boundless property to be owned (if one ignores the natives). This notion was based upon on the not-so-unreasonable premise that only those who have a real stake in the nation shall act more politically responsible as they have something to lose. Moreover, owning property usually meant that one was the owner of one’s own means of production. Even urban households were usually the locale of economic activity in Washington’s day.

As archconservative Charles Murray rightly contends (Coming Apart, 2012), the ownership of one’s own means of production is likely to breed better character. An owner, for instance, can better perceive and trace the natural consequences of his/her actions and understands notion of tradeoffs.

Free Market Economy Versus Neoliberal Capitalism

Micah’s prophetic vision was not a new economic ideal. This economic ideal was almost reached during Solomon’s day.⁴ Even the Assyrians, as they approached Jerusalem under King Hezekiah, knew of this Hebrew socioeconomic distinctive.⁵

The widespread distribution of the means of production was the express and primary telos of the Year of Jubilee law, brilliantly facilitating the justice of ends, defined as social balance, without violating the justice of means, defined as due process.⁶

BUT THIS IS NOT NEOLIBERAL CAPITALISM! There exists a subtle, but substantive, philosophical and practical difference between capitalism and a free market economics. Capitalism naturally is the most efficient variant of an ancient dynamic wherein, over time, fewer a fewer individuals have practicable ownership and control over the means of production. In the present day context, it results in post-industrial feudalism (Joel Kotkin, The Coming of Neo-Feudalism, 2020).

Woe to you who add house to house and join field to field until no place is left and you live alone in the land. I heard the LORD of Hosts declare: “Surely many houses will become desolate, great mansions left unoccupied. For ten acres of vineyard will yield but a bath of wine, and a homer of seed only an ephah of grain.”⁷

The core biblical analysis of economic disparity starts with this root cause of the concentration of the means of production. A just periodic redistribution of the means of production, if scrupulously and steadfastly maintained, mitigates against that societal dynamic towards extreme disparities of wealth, which invariably overflow onto civic inequalities and two-tier justice, class-based schism, the rise of demagogues, civic tumult and conflagration, autocracy, and the culling of the existing elites and their apologetic clerisy, more or less in that order.

History confirms the economic consequences of this concentration of yeoman farms into large villa estates in the late Roman Empire. A bounty of historical documents and archeological artifacts attest to the depletion of the soils and reduction of agricultural production starting from the late second century CE in the Roman Empire, more so in the Western half than the East, indirectly due to this concentration, (although a fuller explanation of the dynamics may be necessary).

Moreover, the elimination of the yeoman citizen-soldier plebeian farmer, largely through the exploitative patrician rapine during the second and first centuries BCE, eventually created a permanent “bread and circuses” underclass, the folks who would later become the core constituency of populist demagogues in the latter days of the Roman Republic and a perpetual threat to social order thereafter.

Moreover, as the socioeconomic status and state of the commons in the Roman Empire became denigrated, the commons cared dedicated little about the continued survival and welfare of the state.

Indeed, it is a consistent pattern and indicator throughout history, from late 3^rd millennia BCE Ebla to the present day, that dissipating regimes and societies nearing their demise deploy large numbers of mercenaries in response to the unwillingness of its subjects to dedicate and sacrifice for a state that no longer is seen as serving their interests.

Moreover, under the Mosaic Covenant, an intrusive economic policy was instituted, and deemed necessary, in order to facilitate the maintenance of this socioeconomic goal. This framework would, however, be violated and ultimately made void, through rapine and vice.

Do not take advantage of each other, but fear your God; for I am the LORD your God.

 – Leviticus 25:17

As it pertains to this world, the economic program of the God of Scriptures is that of a free-market economy. The ideal is that each household, excepting a caste of clerisy, is to be the owner of their own means of production, to have dominion over their own small corner in the world, not to be laborers for someone other and the other’s vision in a by-your-leave precarious economic existence.

This differs from the neoliberal capitalism by which economic barbarians are permitted within the decaying husks of civilization, to which they contribute, to exploit their neighbours. It also differs from the progressive sop of distributing the fruits of the means of production, which lends to indolence, a drain and drag upon state coffers, and justified resentment by those who continue to produce.

Establishment Evangelicals in America, like David French, in praising the morality of capitalism (i.e., Arthur C. Brooks and Peter Wehner, Wealth and Justice, 2010), are as much the enemies of the God of Scriptures, and of the good terrestrial society, as Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. For the concentration of the economic means of production serves as one of many root causes of the end of free civic polities as well as host of other social evils.

1. David French, “Christian Nationalism and the New Right: The 2023 Barnes Symposium,” UofSC College of Arts and Sciences, April 20, 2023, min. 1:06:12–1:07:28, lightly edited.

2. Deuteronomy 4:5-8

3. Deuteronomy 7:3–4. Cf. Exodus 34:15–16.

4. 1 Kings 4:25

5. Isaiah 36:16

6. Leviticus 25:1-17

7. Isaiah 5:8–10