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He is missing the point completely. As Christians they should know better, through familiarity with Leviticus 25. All the producer countries need to do is to levy a substantial tax on the rental value of all land, including the banana plantations owned by the big companies. Of course the companies will squeal like hell but ultimately there is nothing they can do about it, and they should thank their lucky stars that these governments are not going for outright nationalisation.
Henry
Please expand on Leviticus 25
Richard
Actually, please don’t Henry. From a very quick reading it is a passage that explicitly condones slavery – as long as it is only the heathen who are made into slaves.
I would really not cite this one in any discussions of policy in developing nations.
Manos
I agree: Leviticus has to be read with care.
Equally, it’s hard to ignore. What is required is the ability to differentiate the essence from the culture. I think that possible.
So, Henry?
Richard
Most of Leviticus 25 is about land, how it should be allocated, how it must not be sold in perpetuity and how it should revert at the Jubilee.
A subsidiary point concern usury.
Slavery is not the main point of the chapter but since the matter has been raised, who are we in the 21st Century to criticise? What country in the world does not have wage slavery? At least slave owners were expected to care for their slaves. Our modern wage-slaves are cast aside when not required, or at best, have to rely on state handouts.
These issues come up again in the body of Catholic Social Teaching, which reasserts the underlying principles.
Incidentally, tax
Wretched Windows computer I am borrowing behaves oddly you type one thing and it does another.
Incidentally, tax gets a bad press in the bible, and there is little said about it in Catholic Social Teaching, principally that governments should not over-tax (Rerum Novarum). The Church traditionally supported the use of land rents in kind as the main source of government revenue, as was the practice until the end of the eighteenth century.
@Henry. With respect. If you don’t approve of what you call wage slavery, I reckon you should disapprove of real slavery either. Besides, equating the two is fantastically cynical. I make the average wage in a more or less capitalist state. There has never been any society on earth in which the average slave lived as well as I do. I’m sure there are ways to reconcile your politics and your religion, and I wish you the best of success – but ignoring the facts should not be one such way.
@Richard. I see your point. But, with all respect, how is it possible to believe that the Bible’s teachings on tax are a matter of “essence” whereas its teachings on slavery are a manifestation of “culture”? If anything, I would expect the opposite to be the case: the dignity of the human person, which is created in the image of God, is surely more fundamental than matters of taxation, which would more closely correlate with the social and economic realities of the times.
Manos, when Henry George visited Scotland in the latter half of the 19th century he recorded that the slaves in his country were at least provided with subsistence so that they could work, whilst the wretched people he saw here starved to death frequently and lived in the most appalling conditions.
Richard – thanks for flagging these two vids. I like them.
Tried to follow the link to http://www.christianaid.org/tax but received message it was a ‘bad request’. Seemed a bit ironic really!
Mark
Try http://www.christianaid.org.uk/ActNow/the-big-tax-return/index.aspx
Richard
Strangely enough my girlfriend and I were reading the Bible on the train today – we’re not Christians, we’re just interested – and happened to read chunks of leviticus.
Leviticus 18 was something of a shocker. A man must not have intercourse with another man “God hates that”, etc.
Care is certainly one thing this book of the Bible needs to be read with…
Manos, I don’t know what country you are living in but whatever capitalist country it is, if you think your livelihood is secure you are mistaken.
Slavery was not generally considered unacceptable until the fourteenth century, so it is not reasonable to judge ancient texts by contemporary standards. And the bible’s acceptance of slavery does not invalidate its stance on land rights.
On reflection, if one is going to reject everything in the bible because some of it is dodgy then things like murder must be considered OK.
Henry,
People are capable of morality without a how-to manual. People are capable of incredibly evil things with one, especially if they are convinced it’s the word of God.
Everyone reads what they want to into the Scriptures – emphasising and ignoring as they please. The only thing they gain is citations and vocabulary.
The fact is that people who call themselves “christians” hold widely differing views on almost everything.
You can get round this by saying some of those people are not “real” christians but do we want to go there? We did that in the 16th and 17th centuries and it wasn’t very nice.
The obvious conclusion is that the bible isn’t a how-to manual on morality.
I was listening to radio 4 the other week on the concept of a “just war”. There were 2 Christians chatting about the concept of “rendering unto God what is God’s and unto Caeser what is Caeser’s”. One of the commentators said that this clearly meant that Christians could serve in a secular army. The Other disagreed and said the whole point of the concept is that we should give everythign for God and there will be nothing left for Caeser.
So I think, as Manos says, everyone reads what they wants into the scriptures. From a tax justice perspective I guess the only thing that is relevant (and again, its open to interpretation how it cuts) is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Paul and James, EVERYONE does not read what they want to into the scriptures. That is a Protestant concept. Catholics go by the Church’s interpretation. The bible as we know it is a construction of the Catholic church. Protestants made off with the book and interpret it how they fancy.
Manos, that which is most valued in western society is a Judeo-Christian legacy. We are living on our capital. And like physical capital, it does not last for ever but has to be renewed.
Henry
That is simply rubbish. The bible as we know it is a collection of Jewish scriptures intended to be read in the Jewish, questioning, analytical, sceptical tradition. Catholics read what they want into it, only they delegate the interpretation to the church. Which is about as far from the tradition and intention of the scriptures as it is possible to be.
Henry
I think you meant that Catholics go by the Roman Catholic Church’s interpretation. And I am not sure they do, especially when it comes to contraception and the Roman Catholic teaching is inconvenient. And, the bible was compiled before the schism between orthodox and catholic, so you can’t just appropriate it to the Rome.
But I agree that we are living off spititual capital. How we are to renew or replace that capital, I don’t know. For various reasons (good and bad) the churches have lost their authority.
Of course the bible or at least the OT has a specifically Jewish interpretation and incidentally the Jewish texts were edited in the seventh century and differ from the text from which the Septuagint and Vulgate were made. And the Jewish interpretation of the NT is that is of no worth.
But what is referred to as the Bible is a product of the pre-Schism churches and there is almost complete agreement within the Catholic/Orthodox tradition as to how the texts should be interpreted.