What might seem like the simplest problem in the world — just forgive the debts, man, how hard can it be? — turns out to have massive complications. These complications are not offered as an argument for doing nothing, but rather as an argument for taking the time to get it right. There are a number of them, and so we have to work through them carefully.
The next complication is the ground or rationale for doing this. In The Millennium Myth, N.T. Wright grounds the obligation to forgive Third World debts in the law of the Jubilee. Not only are there complications here, but there are two fundamental layers of complication.
The first is that the law of God is for the people of God. Wright is very good at connecting what he is calling for to the resurrection of Jesus, but there is a subtlety here. The First World should not forgive the debts of the Third World because Wright believes in the resurrection. If this is a true moral duty, then they must come to it because they have embraced the resurrection of Jesus, and all the ramifications of it. Zacchaeus came to Christ first, and then he gave away half his wealth. If that important step is skipped, we will have nothing but twisted distortions of what Christendom ought to be. We were told to disciple the nations, baptizing them, and then teaching them to obey all the Christ commanded. If we go straight to applications without foundational gospel, the result will necessarily be suffocating legalism. This is nothing other than a variation of my earlier point about how this will be pagan empire being extended by other means. If Christ were involved as He ought to be, and we were self-consciously trying to follow Him in this, it would be hard enough to keep our motives pure. But if believers badger unbelievers into doing something that looks Christian from fifty yards, if you squint, the next generation will be trying to do exactly what this generation is trying to do, which is the problem of fixing the chaos caused by good deeds in the previous generation.
For a century or so, we have had no shortage of bishops and assorted clerics — they come in crates of twenty-four — telling the U.S. Government to do this, stop that, or feed the other. But we need to stop telling nations, including ours, that they can be justified by works. If you give it all away, and don’t have love, it profits nothing.
The second layer of complication is this — let us assume that the Western world has come to Christ, and is eagerly trying to figure out how to apply the ancient law of Jubilee to contemporary problems. Is Wright saying this is a simple problem? As much as I rejoice to see theonomy affirmed in principle, as Wright does, he needs to take a lesson from the recons of the eighties. Applications and translations of God’s case laws are not that simple, and you have to have a better principle for application than “let’s apply all the Old Testament laws that make leftists happy,” while diligently ignoring all the Old Testament laws that “make right-wingers smile ominously.” That seems inadequnate somehow.
In the requirements of the Jubilee, agricultural land was inalienable — could never be sold permanently. Do we want to apply that part too? No planting of crops every seven years — that part too? It did not apply to property within cities (Lev. 25:29-30). Does Wright want that exclusion also? If so, why? If not, why not? Excuse me, the exclusion was for property within walled cities. Does that make a difference?
What does Wright think about the Old Testament laws concerning slavery, crop rotation, clam chowder, mixed fabrics, the death penalty, war, polygamy, and so on? I am not throwing this up as an argument against applying Old Testament law to public policy today — I heartily believe we ought to do that (thoughtfully), and King Alfred is one of my heroes. This conviction of mine is actually one of the reasons why I appreciate so much of what Wright has written. But anybody who wants to stroll right in, quote a few trendy verses, and make intractable situations suddenly a breeze, is seriously kidding himself. You cannot apply any part of the Old Testament to public policy without a willingness to field actual questions about “this other passage over here.”
If Wright wants to pick and choose his passages on the basis of soft leftism, then he is picking and choosing, which is hermeneutically indefensible. But if he puts the whole enchilada on his plate, as the recons did — even if he makes every acknowledgement of the new created order ushered in by Christ — he will be dismissed as just one more Ezekiel One Tooth from the American hill country. And I don’t think he wants that.