Ep. 103: Without the State, It’ll Be Anarchy!! And That’s a Good Thing, Actually

[00:00:00] Jacob Winograd: Biblical anarchy. Anarchy. Don’t you know that anarchy means chaos? I mean, what don’t. Have you ever heard of Romans 13? I mean, just God is not a God of lawlessness. And obviously, I mean the best way to order society because humans are sinners and they’re fallen and they’re depraved, and they scheme and they’re evil.

And the only way to have society operate to correct for how sinful people are is to put those sinful people in charge of us. Is that right?

[00:00:36] Narrator: If Christ is king, how should the Christian consider the kingdoms of this world? What does the Bible teach us about human authority and what it means to love our neighbors and our enemies before we render unto Caesar?

What is Caesar’s? Let’s know what it means to render unto God. What is God’s? This is the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, the modern, prophetic voice against war and.

[00:01:07] Jacob Winograd: Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Biblical Anarchy Podcast. I’m your host, Jacob Winograd. So for today’s episode, I’m going to actually be replaying a episode from the Libertarian Christians podcast, where I made an appearance several months ago. Cody Cook interviewed me about my episode 89, which I was very, I put a lot of work into, which was my, what is Biblical Anarchy?

Redux was sort of a updated edition of my original, what is Biblical Anarchy? Pilot episode? Episode one, when I started this podcast with the Libertarian Christian Institute. So, we go through a lot of, not just what I covered in that episode, but Cody raised some interesting questions and objections and as I kind of alluded to in the intro, just kind of like just.

Really talking about what anarchy really means. So I thought it was a good interview that Cody did and good conversation that we had. And it just gets at some of the theory and the technical, nitty gritty of what Biblical anarchy is. And so I thought that I would replay that for you in case some of you hear on this side, haven’t listened to it.

But I would encourage everyone to, of course, who listens to me, to listen to our flagship podcast, the Libertarian Christians podcast. I do make quite a few appearances over there. And then check out all of our podcasts at the Christians for Liberty network. We have Alex Bernardo with the Protestant Libertarian Podcast.

Of course, we have Greg and Carrie over at Reformed Libertarians. And although they don’t release quite as often they’ve been more active recently. And then of course we do have podcasts, which aren’t active anymore, but there’s a whole archive that you can go listen to, including Mike Meharry on God Arky, good News, bad News.

And then two podcasts that Norm usually does, the Faith Seeking Freedom Podcast, and then the Faith Ventures podcast, which are very interesting as well. So that’s all I have for you guys first as far as introduction to here. So I’ll go ahead and switch over to, by the way, you’re gonna get shellshocked ’cause you’re gonna see me from the past with glasses and a full beard.

So just be ready for that. Talk to you on the flip side.

[00:03:11] Cody Cook: All right. Welcome to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute. I’m your host Cody Cook, and my guest is Jacob Win grad LCI, colleague and host of the Biblical Anarchy Podcast. If you’ve been paying attention to Libertarian Christian Institute you’re already familiar with Jacob.

So j Jacob, thanks for taking the time to be with.

[00:03:33] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, no, thanks for having me. It’s I’m on the LCI YouTube channel a lot, but I actually haven’t been on the Libertarian Kristen podcast formerly in a hot minute. So, it’s good to be back and yeah, back with you now as one of the new guess co-host or I don’t know what your official, how you and Doug are titling yourself now that you’re sharing duties.

[00:03:52] Cody Cook: Yeah. C we’re Consubstantial No, it’s, we’re co-host and two High Pastis and one who sees, does

[00:03:59] Jacob Winograd: Cody proceed from the LCP and

[00:04:04] Cody Cook: okay. So, some will get that. I apologize for those who don’t. So this month you released an episode of the Biblical Anarchy podcast called What is Biblical Anarchy? Redux. And so it, this was essentially like you going back to your first episode where you kind of are introducing the whole biblical anarchy thing and kind of how you’re approaching it, what your methodology is, and what the history is, what the terms mean.

So what made you wanna revisit this pod this topic? I mean, d does I mean, do Biblical and anarchy still mean the same thing that they did when you started the podcast? Has the meaning shifted in those terms, or did you switch to a Catholic Bible where now there’s more to take into consideration?

What happened there?

[00:04:41] Jacob Winograd: Now, much to the chagrin of my surprisingly large amount of Catholic audience no, I have not reunited with the Church of Rome. Unfortunately for some people no. I mean, I decided I’d been thinking about it for a while and I guess the decision was mostly because it’s been a couple years since I started the podcast with LCI and I just have a different audience now.

I’ve refined some of my arguments. I’ve added more arguments to kind of like my overall case through doing several different debates and just. Learning, you’re always reading and kind of refining your ideas. And so I thought it was a good, we’re kind of over the two year mark and I thought it’d be a good idea to and al also because the original episode’s audio only and now we do video here at lci.

So I said, all these reasons combined the good time is any to kind of revisit the pilot episode. Update it, give it a fresh coat of paint, add some new bells and whistles to it, and relaunch it for the for the people who maybe haven’t gone back and seen the first episode.

And that way the kind of like premise of the show is just further up the podcast feed and not like people have to scroll the whole way back down to the bottom.

[00:05:47] Cody Cook: Yeah. So you, you’re worried essentially that that you are getting Nixon, that people who could just hear you would not be as persuaded by those as those who could actually see your beautiful face and to see how, just how wonderful you made the pre, how wonderful you looked to [00:06:00] making the presentation.

Is that about the size of it?

[00:06:02] Jacob Winograd: Well, I mean, everyone knows that the longer your beard, the more sound your theological takes are. And I’ve put a lot of time into this bushy mess that’s on the bottom of my face. And so I figured that people are gonna take it three times more seriously now than they did the first time I released it.

[00:06:20] Cody Cook: Yeah I think I, I mean I, maybe it’s 6 0 1, have it as the other, but I would say the longer your beard is, the bigger your beard is, the more reformed you are because I would most wesleyans tend to avoid those big beards. So,

[00:06:30] Jacob Winograd: but you repeat yourself.

[00:06:31] Cody Cook: Yeah, I had, I repeat myself. Alright. So you define anarchy as self ownership, which, sounds good.

But I do have two maybe kind of questions, potential pushback maybe from an anarchist perspective. Do you think that early, like left anarchists, like Joseph Prude would agree with that definition? Would they understand anarchism that way? And then from a Christian perspective, doesn’t God own us?

I mean, how does self ownership fit into the, to these schemas?

[00:06:55] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, no, those are good questions. So, I would say prude doesn’t obviously use the term self ownership, but his writings do align with that concept. In what is property, he emphasizes that individuals have a right to the products of their own labor.

Arguing that anything taken without contributing labor or capital is akin to theft. And this principle, I think inherently the autonomy of individuals over their own labor and the fruits of their labor. Additionally he has a statement which I I actually rather like I cited in the episode.

He says whoever puts a hand on me to govern me. As a usurper and a tyrant, I declare him my enemy. So I think that kind of definitely echoes the idea of self ownership. He definitely has a resistance to external control over the individual. So even though he is not maybe arguing for the idea in explicit terms, the same way that maybe the more individualist right-leaning anarchists like, rothbard and all them conceive of it, the foundation uses.

Kind of the same principles. And then you also asked about well, doesn’t God own us? And yes, from a Christian perspective, God absolutely does own us. He’s the creator, the sustainer of life, ultimate authority, overall creation. When I talk about self ownership in the context of biblical anarchy, I’m referring to horizontal relationships.

How we interact with one another as human beings. And so self ownership in this sense is about affirming that no one else has a rightful claim over another person’s body or labor or property. And that’s usually done through initiating coercion. So, I’m addressing these horizontal dynamics and re rejecting, unjust human hierarchies while affirming our vertical relationship with God places him as king overall.

And I would say that this distinction, these go together very neatly. We clarify that self ownership does not challenge God’s sovereignty, but emphasizes. That there are limits on different types of human authority over one another. And I think that’s sort of where the mantra, no king but Christ, which has long been associated with the Christian anarchist movement or philosophy, whatever you wanna call it it, it acknowledges Christ’s kingship and its implications.

If Christ is king, then no human has a rightful claim to that type of authority which Christ has.

[00:09:09] Cody Cook: Yeah. So I mean, if Labor gives me a right to ownership as pr Don argues, and I haven’t worked on myself at all, does that mean I no longer own myself?

[00:09:17] Jacob Winograd: Yeah. I guess if you, that’s funny.

Yeah. If you’re lazy and slothful and and not moving towards any, then someone can I can come and I, it’s like you, I discovered a wild Cody cook who, hasn’t done anything in two years, and

[00:09:30] Cody Cook: I can Homestead. That’s the word I was looking for. You can homestead me.

Yeah. Oh, so maybe another way to say, I mean, self ownership. That would be, perhaps most confusing in a theological context would be self responsibility. That you are ultimately held accountable for your actions. So only you can you as a person who makes choices, you’re held accountable for those choices by God.

And so, we could call that self ownership, but maybe another way to think about it is like stewardship, self stewardship. You have been given yourself to Steward and ultimately God is going to decide your fate and what to do with you. But it’s based on what you choose to do with what he’s given you.

[00:10:06] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, I would say it’s more theologically accurate to say self stewardship. Self ownership is sort of, I, I guess kind of a legal conception. And so in the realm of law we. Treat one another and interact with one another in terms of dealing with ownership of the individuals own themselves and they own their property.

But yeah, if you’re taking a more theological perspective on it, it would be stewardship in, in, if you’re like, sort of making a synthesis of the vertical and horizontal dynamic there. So, yeah, it’s a good way to put it.

[00:10:38] Cody Cook: So we kind of hinted this a little bit. This idea that the early anarchists had kind of a negative or complicated relationship to the idea of private property.

I mean, how did they think about property ownership? And with that in mind if we see it differently, is there a sense in which maybe we don’t have a right to claim the word? Or is the word bigger than how maybe some of the early proponents defined it?

[00:10:59] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, no, it’s a very good question.

If you’ve spent any time on old Facebook pages or groups or on x and you encounter the left anarchists today, they often do have a disdain for the the right leaning anarchists, and they’re hashtag or, quote unquote not real not real anarchists, just no, libertarian is a real libertarian.

So I would say the early anarchists had a complicated relationship with property and they did view property. And ownership as sometimes a source of oppression. So Prude had this famous line, property is theft. But his views did later evolve. And I addressed this in the episode.

‘Cause he kind of later became a bit more jaded and thought, well, property is sort of this bulwark against state power. ’cause the more you own and the more you have the ability to control what you own, the less the state has ability to interfere with your life. So the, there’s more nuance there than perhaps some people see on a surface level.

In terms of can we still call our, call ourselves? That [00:12:00] a initial word if the views don’t line up. I liken this to like the development of science. So think about like Newtonian physics compared to like modern physics, right? So like Newtonian physics laid a foundation. But as science progressed the, those concepts were refined to account for new discoveries and inconsistencies with some of the older models and equations.

So the early anarchists. Their fundamental critiques of the state of unjust hierarchy and coercion were pretty much accurate. But I think they missed the mark on property and capitalism because they lacked a fully developed understanding of economics and human action to, to to be fair, there, there is some merit and underlying truth to their critiques of property, the way that rent seeking and the way that markets operate within the status paradigm can lend themselves to constructing artificial hierarchies and sort of like radically imbalanced wealth distributions.

That, that are, they don’t seem fair and they’re really not natural free market outcomes. So their underlying critiques I think are actually worth some consideration. But I know you’re gonna get into this, but like from a Roth Barian perspective, these. We and we add a more sound understanding of economics.

We see that we can separate those injustices or, inefficiencies or wrong. There’s like those outcomes that, that do lend towards coercion, which they called out, aren’t necessarily tied to property and capitalism themselves, but more sort of the status distortion of those things.

[00:13:36] Cody Cook: Yeah. I wish I had pulled this together before we had this conversation, but I wanna say that it was either maybe pone or Buna who had said something to the effect of, maybe once the state was out of the equation, property ownership would not necessarily be a problem. But I think there’s maybe to me coming into the conversation, when I was kind of afresh at it, trying to understand it it seemed to me that they an arco communists, as much as they might not like the idea of private property.

My thought was, well, who’s gonna stop somebody from owning something they, they’re not hurting someone and there’s not like a state or is everybody just gonna get together and take their farm? And is that really anarchism? Yeah. So, okay, so we mentioned Rothbart. So we’re describing the history of anarchist thought maybe we skip some of the figures who are, maybe you might call anarcho centrists guys like Leisinger Spooner who aren’t really quite to the left and aren’t necessarily an ACO capitalist either.

So then we move into 20th century. We’ve got guys like Maria Rothbard. Now we’re talking about something a little bit different, what we call the maybe the right anarchists or the anarchical capitalists. So what, where does he come in and what does he contribute to the conversation?

[00:14:39] Jacob Winograd: Yeah.

Murray Rothbard plays a pretty pivotal role in, sort of the development of what would be like modern anarchism, especially in the West and on the right. And I think he’s someone who really synthesizes, ideas within the libertarian and anarchist banner into a comprehensive, unified framework.

And of course, I’m reformed, so like I’m a that appeals to me, right? Anyone, you could say rothbard’s the first to make like systematic systematic theology of of anarchism in a way where it’s all comprehensive. And he’s the

[00:15:07] Cody Cook: Theodore Beza of anarchism.

[00:15:08] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, exactly.

So, R Rothbard sort of took some influence from guys like you mentioned like Lexander Spooner and also Benjamin Tucker, and even pone who emphasized volunteerism individual sovereignty. Guys like Spooner and Tucker were big on the idea of like individual contracts, voluntary contracts, things like that.

So he’s taking those ideas and at the same time, he’s a student of Ludwig von Mes. He’s. Which is the school of Austrian economics. And so he’s able to sort of bridge through these influences, anarchism and capitalism, which up until this point, are two concepts that were often sort of viewed as incompatible.

And so he drew on the Austrian understanding of human action, grounded in the subjective theory of value marginal utility and individuals acting in their own rational self-interest. And this allowed him to demonstrate how. State, kinda like I alluded to earlier, how state intervention through monopolies central banking, coercion, how these things distort markets, human relationships, and the natural evolution of law of wealth distribution.

And so, Rothbard’s work sort of builds on those initial anarchist critiques of the state as a coercive institution providing then bolstering it with this rigorous economic foundation and critique and creating a unified theory which we know as anarchical capitalism today. And I think it’s a very robust school of thought.

I obviously am more persuaded by Roth Bar and anarchism anarchical capitalism than left or center anarchism. But I do try to be ecumenical with, the more mutualists or market anarchist types like those who don’t like the term. Anti-capitalist or who may be a bit more market skeptical? I think there’s a place for them and I think that we’re on, we’re ultimately united under the same banner.

We just, sometimes have different emphases or different economic views.

[00:17:00] Cody Cook: Well, yeah, I mean, on, on that point, I mean, as I read Rothbard, I feel like there’s so much that I agree with him on, self ownership, property rights, non aggression principle, voluntary relationships.

And this is maybe one area that we’ve talked about before. One area where I struggle with a little bit is that it seems like an arco capitalist really put the accent on private property. That’s kind of their centering principle. To the extent that I think the notion of shared spaces, like a town square roads, parks, rivers is seen as problematic.

Everything should be privately owned in the Roth Barian scheme, whether it’s, a river or an ocean, whatever it should be privately owned. And so, while I understand concerns about the tragedy, the commons that when you have a space that belongs to everyone, it often tends to be taken care of by no one.

It seems that everything being privatized has its own potential downsides. And we could maybe talk about different theoretical concerns that, that could come up with that. But I mean, but that’s why I think even though I’m basically in this kind of anarchical capitalist space, I’m not an anarchical communist.

I tend not to call myself an endcap. I like [00:18:00] anarchists. I think maybe voluntary for me, puts the proper accent on things. But we all, this kind of gets to this whole thing about these different labels, these different words, these which are, and I think really in many cases, just different accents.

And so what are your thoughts on how we use these labels? And maybe another way to say it is, what are your anarchist pronouns?

[00:18:18] Jacob Winograd: My my pronouns are privatize everything. So, so, yeah. I mean, listen, I think you did a good job at asking that question, sort of steel manning the Roth Barian position.

I think the reason, so my preface here is that there, there’s a reason why and caps are so insistent on everything being privately owned. ’cause your objection seems reasonable. Okay on the local level or on whatever, scale, like you tell me, there can’t be any spaces that are shared.

Like we have to have every single square inch of society has to have, it’s either unowned, un homesteaded property or someone has to own it. The reason why. Erco capitalists, especially with the Roth guardian tradition are really insistent on that. Is because, and you sort of alluded to this, that when we don’t have private ownership over things, there tends to be some problems.

When we have every thing that is, homesteaded property clearly accounted for, this actually minimizes conflict in society. It doesn’t eliminate it. Right. But it’s a lot easier to sort of know who who’s allowed to do what with what things, right. When they’re clearly like, that belongs to you.

That belongs to you. Whereas when you have shared spaces, whether that’s a town square or parks, roads, rivers without that, so you have sort of what you alluded to, the tragedy of the commons and. You don’t, so it’s fine until there’s a problem, right? If everyone’s just sort of in the shared space and no one has a dispute, then that works out okay when suddenly there’s a dispute over, how are we going to use this shared space and the resources or property within this shared space?

Well, the way that we usually would solve a conflict over a piece of property is to see who is the owner. But if it’s collectively owned, that does present a problem in terms of. Delineating who’s allowed to use, what piece of property? So I think that there are, however ways of clearing this up within the Roth barium system, there are ways to construct, quote unquote shared property.

It might not be called that, or it might not be the best way to describe it. But it could be functionally that way through voluntary and legal means. For example, a community could create a corporate entity or a co-op structure where individuals hold shares of ownerships. And so then the owner would be, well, this entity owns it and this entity is then owned by all the different shareholders.

And that would come with some kind of contract for dispute resolution, for, clear delineations of what’s allowed to be used, what isn’t allowed to be used, how people are going to use it et cetera. And so that approach, I think, enables. Kind of the heart of what some people want which is this idea of shared spaces.

But while remaining consistent with the principles of private property and minimizing the potential for conflict, I think there’s reasonable concerns that people raise about the risks of privatizing everything. People have concerns over the, could there be possibility of being like landlocked or you’re unable to travel or go somewhere you need to go?

Or certain like exploitation that could happen. I think in general, my response is that in a free market society. Markets are incredibly adaptive and eager to meet the needs wherever there is a demand. So I think transportation access or these sort of shared spaces, if they’re valuable to people, if they’re if someone wants them, then entrepreneurs are going to step in and they’re gonna meet that demand because there’s a profit to be made when you provide a service that people want.

That’s the basis of free markets. Now I’m not saying this process is perfect ’cause it isn’t and sometimes it doesn’t move quick enough. Right. But I guess the question that I often ask, which is. One of many memes that’ll come up probably in the course of this conversation is compared to what, and we have to avoid what I call the nirvana fallacy or the perfect solution fallacy.

This is not a perfect system. There can be instances where perhaps the outcome of the free market principles isn’t our preference or what we want. But compared to the state run systems which are rife with inefficiency and coercion and exploitation, I still think the market-based alternative is gonna be a vast improvement on the status quo.

Nothing’s ever perfect, except of course, the reformed doctrines of grace.

[00:22:37] Cody Cook: Well, so a couple I’ll push back just a little bit only just to kind of, because I think it’s an interesting conversation and we don’t have to solve it today. But but a couple things that sort of occurred to me as I was listening to you talk is that it seemed like when you talked about one potential way to, to solve this problem, and you sort of invoked this idea of the trust.

And what you sort of described was community property. You just used capitalist language to to describe it. And so, I mean, it is, I mean maybe that’s talking about sort of the accent on it or whatever, but I mean, if everybody at the Libertarian Christian Institute decided we were gonna come together and build a town, and we wanted to have public roads in a town square, and we had sort of a contract for how it was gonna be supported voluntarily.

And we had rules for how they were supposed to be used. I mean, that’s just community rules. That’s just community, guidelines or laws that we’re sort of held to. I mean, that’s not really drastically different than what I’m proposing, even if we call it a trust. Right.

[00:23:31] Jacob Winograd: I think the, so it might not be much different.

I, I guess when we’ve talked about this in, talked about this in the past and I’ve been down this road myself and. Once thought there wasn’t a problem with, I guess a quote unquote group property. Again, this is one of those things where sort of like you said, like the, an comms who go private property bad, but then it’s well, without a state who’s gonna stop you?

Right. And to some extent chirp we eliminate the state tomorrow. And then, we all go and we don’t write up [00:24:00] something formal and we just say, Hey, we collectively own this. I mean, no one’s really going to stop us. Right? The issue comes with the more you scale that out, listen within the context of a home of a family, right?

I’m not saying you need to be obnoxious about this, where like you sit down with your wife and go, so listen, whose table is this? Is this your table? Yeah. Is this my table? The one’s toilet is our tables, right? Or the toilet, or like your bed, right? Yeah. So I’m not saying you have to take it to that extreme, right?

Because if you have a conflict over the kitchen table or your living room sofa or something like, I mean. Now, but at the same time, like that can sound ridiculous. But we also know from case studies that sometimes in divorce court, people literally go to the extremes of cutting up their furniture when they are like dividing property and messy divorces.

Right? So the, again, the emphasis here is on avoiding conflict. And when conflict happens, how do we resolve the conflict? And I think I’m really motivated by the expression, prevention is better than cure. If you don’t have things set up ahead of time to have clear delineations of how to resolve conflict , because the ultimate expression of ownership is the ability to exclude, which creates a problem for group ownership.

Because if you all own it. How do you know who can exclude whom from doing what? So when you form it through a trust, when you form it using the the fundamental principles of private ownership as the basis that gives you the same ends. I’m not really against the ends, I’m just saying you have to form them in a way that is less likely to produce problems.

[00:25:35] Cody Cook: Okay. Fair enough. We’ll move on to the next question because I, I think you I’ve explained my concern and you’ve given your response, so, okay. So to justify anarchism from a Christian perspective, so we’re getting out of anarchist theory and application here, and we’re kind of trying to root this in the biblical side now.

So you quote one Samuel eight where Israel demands a king and therefore rejects Yahweh. And so you’re arguing that before this period, kind of in the period of the judges, this was kind of like an anarchist society. And I, I think I, I struggled a little bit with that because. It’s not as if that the pre monarchist Israel was stateless and it wasn’t a voluntary society if they were following the law of Moses, at least because, the law of Moses is certainly not, I mean, if I said let’s build an anarchist society and the first thing we’re gonna do is round up the people who don’t take Levi outta their house on Passover and stone them, you wouldn’t say that was a voluntary society.

And so you, what would you say to a critic who argued that in the period of the judges Israel may have been decentralized, but they weren’t anarchists. And maybe if I can complicate this a little bit, how would you respond if they said that this dis decentralized order is treated in judges as a bad thing, that evil things, that bad things happened because there was no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

And that monarchy sort of solves that problem. Centralization fixes that problem,

[00:26:53] Jacob Winograd: right? So the answer is confident theology. We can go onto the next question. No, I’m just kidding. I had to throw that in there somewhere. That was the best one. So, in all seriousness, I think we need to make some careful distinctions here, and it’s a good question.

While the form of gov, I, I addressed this in the episode, while the form of governance during the judge’s period was decentralized and closer to anarchy, the laws being enforced, of course reflected the theological nature of covenantal Israel under the Mosaic covenant. So this theocratic context was typological and somewhat eschatological or pointing toward eschatological things in nature, pointing ultimately forward to Christ.

And the laws enforced were not strictly based on what would be. Following the non-aggression principle today outside of the Mosaic Covenant, right? ’cause obviously there was laws prescribing, coercion to be used on behavior, which that in and of itself maybe was sinful, but wasn’t acts of aggression. So the enforcement of these laws had a divine purpose specific to Israel’s role in redemptive history, which does set it apart from the kind of governance I am advocating for, as in.

Case for biblical anarchy. That said, my argument from one Samuel eight is primarily focused on the construction and form of governance rather than the specific laws being forced. The demand for a king in one Samuel eight was a rejection of decentralized God centered governance in favor of centralized human authority.

So in my episode, I make a similar distinction by comparing forms of governance like monarchy and democracy. Either form could enforce laws protecting gun rights, for example, or conversely restricting them. Or we can complicate it more and say well, imagine we had a monarchy that upheld the right to, to bear arms and a democracy, which did not uphold the right to bear arms.

And then we’d have to go well. We, you could still make an argument that you like democracy more than monarchy, even though you would say that you don’t like when the democracy had laws that weren’t upholding natural rights by taking away people’s rights to to own certain property and the proceed of being able to defend themselves.

So that’s kind of the, that separation I think is important. We have to be able to do that to make clear analyses and critiques of governments and states looking at the content of the laws and also the structure of governance. So, in conclusion, this question that I think requires us to view governance on a spectrum.

On one end, you have the total state and on the other. Total anarchy. The governance style of Israel during the time of judges is far closer to anarchy than it is to stateism in terms of the form. It was a decentralized system where authority was distributed among tribes, and the judges were raised up as temporary leaders to resolve specific disputes or solve certain crises that, that popped up.

Rather than functioning as like a standing government this decentralized model avoided the dangers of centralization while keeping government localized and limited, [00:30:00] which is the key principle of of biblical anarchy or anarchism arguing for the second part of the question being then, well, what if someone said, fine, it was decentralized and close to anarchy, but that’s a bad thing because the text says, well, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

And it’s, it seems to be sort of like setting you up for the, in the beginning of First Samuel where they ask for a king like, well. First Samuel only doesn’t really celebrate them asking for a king as a solution to this problem. And I think if we even just go, like outside of the text and we just then look at what happens next, all of the problems that plagued Israel during the time of the judges continue after the institution of the monarchy and at best stay the same.

Or in many cases, I think are then exaggerated, made worse, made more perpetual. Now, instead of one tribe falling into idolatry, the entire nation is led into idolatry by a king. So, I, the way I like to put it is this way because again, anarchy is not a utopian system. Doesn’t say it’s gonna solve the problems of human sin or anything like that.

Rather, I like to say that, anarchy is the worst form of government other than all the other forms. Kinda like the people that, the thing people say about capitalism, right? It’s the worst, it’s the worst economic system other than all the other ones, right? So anarchy is not a guarantee of utopia, it’s just an recognition that the introduction of monopoly governance does not make anything better.

[00:31:30] Cody Cook: Yeah. So I mean, in kinda response to your first point there I guess maybe that in the judge’s period we, we’d call that like a I guess almost like a states rights, the kind of a Pap Buchanan sort of Paleo con type thing. The, but the second part I think I’m inclined, I think you have a something of a strong answer there.

But there is something going on in the text in judges where they say that people did what was right in their own eyes. Because there was no king. And so there is a connection, and I think you’re right, that things don’t necessarily get better on the whole once you introduce the king. In fact, what you sort of have is a system may, maybe on some level, they’re not saying the king is going to fix it, but maybe they’re describing the type of disorder that you’re going to have.

So when you have, well, that’s

[00:32:12] Jacob Winograd: why I agree that the, that we do need a king. It’s just we don’t need a fully human king. What we need is a perfect king. We need a king like what Deuteronomy 17 describes. Unfortunately, no King, not David, not Solomon, none of them are able to actually. Be the king that we need, right?

Maybe they’re the king. We deserve to invoke a Batman reference. But they’re not the king we need. The king we need is ultimately all, they all the failed kings, the entire mosaic, covenant, Israel point forward to the true king who comes that we do need, which is Jesus. But then the kingdom he establishes is not a earthly political kingdom to deal with sin, but rather it’s an eternal spiritual kingdom that is able to save us from our sin.

So, and then while we are living, waiting in expectation for the final combination of that kingdom, we do have prescriptions for governance today, but they’re no longer supposed to be as they’re prescribed in terms of the the law prescribed in the mosaic covenant. But we can derive. I think logical entailments about the form and structure of governance from sort of looking at these Old Testament narratives and sort of the principles at play there, which is that Jesus, the true king is the only remedy to sin.

And the state is un is ill-equipped for handling sin. And I think that if, I don’t wanna jump the gun too much. There are arguments. I’m not arguing for no government at all or no governance at all. I do think there’s a role for that, but it’s, its role is extremely narrow. In focus and scope.

It’s not meant to be a solution to the problem of what judges points out is a true problem that everyone does what’s right in their own eyes. They are acting because of a consequence of the fall. They’re sort of possessed by their own sinful nature. And that’s a problem that continues to be something we face with today.

We just know that. The state that human kings outside of Christ are not able to actually solve that problem. So it’s tough ’cause we have to examine these texts through multiple lenses. The primary lens, I think should always be the sort of fulfillment and a his historic redemptive hermeneutic.

And in so far as those are primary, the primary lesson of all of this is pointing to our need for Christ. But there are kinda like secondary lessons of of, theological truth we can derive and then also philosophical truth we can derive as well.

[00:34:36] Cody Cook: Well, and I agree with what you said about it invoking Jesus’ king.

I, I think my, my, my only pushback is, before we get into the meta narrative I think we have to sort of understand what’s going on in each piece and then sort of place it within that larger context. And I think to maybe say, I think something you, you kind of maybe talked about a little bit or hinted that at least.

May, maybe one way to kind of understand, to kind of put into conversation what’s going on in First Samuel eight where we’re getting the king is described as sort of a bad thing, and then judges, which seems to perhaps imply that it would be better to have a king. Is that if we sort of understand maybe what judges are saying is not actually that it would be better to have a king, but that there’s a certain kind of sin that happens when you have a king and a certain kind of sin that happens when you don’t have a king.

And that what’s going on in judges is you have periods and places and different segments of the population who are all doing what was right in their own eyes. Some are fulfilling the Torah, some are not fulfilling the Torah because it’s all sort of, decentralized. But then once you have a king, if you have a relatively good king.

Then the, the country as a whole is relatively good, meaning like loyal to Yahweh. But once you have a disloyal king, he sort of sets the tone for what’s going to happen below him. And so then the whole nation becomes implicit in sin. Whereas in the judge’s period, it wasn’t quite that way.

Each sort of segment of society, different tribes or different cities were kind of, or even [00:36:00] individuals maybe were sort of more responsible for themselves. And it wasn’t necessarily the whole country’s sin. Is, I mean, is that a potential potentially good reading of what’s going on here?

[00:36:09] Jacob Winograd: I mean, I think it is. I just think that, and the reason, and I think I’m making the same analysis you are, but maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit. ’cause I think that is sort of what’s getting set up. But I think just once you zoom out and like you run through the entire history of First Samuel, second Samuel, first Kings, second kings, you see that even the best kings really kind of fall short of doing what you say that would be good for them to do, which is to lead the country well.

And if you have a good king, then it’s still not perfect, but it’s like better because everyone’s kind of being led in a more positive direction. And even the quote unquote good kings like David Solomon for a time maybe a couple others they really do mostly fall short. And even when they have periods of time where they lead people in a positive direction.

It’s and we see this today even with Democratic republics, right? Like we might have for a small time, a an administration that does some marginal good, but it’s so easy then for the next administration to come and not only on do all that, but then make it worse. And so we have to be able to sort of, I think again, these are secondary in a sense lessons and entailments, but they’re important ones to kind of look at it and go, alright, if we’re going to try to find the least bad form of governance we for us to live under now in this sort of church age that we live in, then while we’re waiting for the Aston for Christ’s return, like looking, at least looking back at biblical history, and I’d argue also world history seems like the bigger the state the more potential there is for major catastrophe, whereas at least when the state is smaller and I’d argue just.

Abolish the state entirely. It doesn’t mean that there’s not still problems to deal with, but it seems like there, there are more solutions on hand I would argue for, to mitigate those problems. And even a good state is only good for so long, right? I mean, we live here in America. We can look back at our country’s founding and maybe look at times where the government did some good things for periods of time.

But it’s but once you introduce that monopoly, it’s I mean, you can’t ensure it’s always gonna be a good person or good administration at the top. And that’s sort of the problem.

[00:38:20] Cody Cook: No, that, that’s a fair point. And I want to note for people who are listening it as a host, I’m s generally supposed to be gracious about pushback very much.

But we’re friends and we argue all the time. So this is you people are kind of getting a little, a window. We’re just doing

[00:38:31] Jacob Winograd: this on a podcast instead of over signal chat at. Awesome. So

[00:38:35] Cody Cook: That’s right. So I’m just, I just, I just wanna make sure people know I’m, it’s because we feel comfortable with each other that we can do this.

And as a general rule, if somebody’s listening to this and maybe a potential future guest I’m probably not going to completely come at you. Okay. So, moving into the new test a little bit more so this is kind of connected to a point that we’ve, we actually, it is, I guess connected to a point we’ve debated before on Christian pacifism.

So you, in your reading of Romans 12 through 13, you argue that Christians aren’t called to be pacifists because, while Christians you say, like Romans 12, it says, Christians should and shouldn’t seek revenge or respond to evil with more evil. But you kind of bring us into Romans 13 at least.

This is kind of my, my as I kind of heard your conver, what I’ve heard you saying, maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong, you feel like when it talks about civil governance wielding the sword against wrongdoers, that we can, as Christians can kind of put ourselves in that position. And I think this is one of your where we would, I believe, disagree if I’m getting you right, because as I read Romans 12 through 13, I think Paul was actually setting up a pretty important contrast here by repeating words and ideas.

So in particular this word revenge which in, in, in and he, sorry, Greek, it’s and. Christians are told to not seek revenge. We’re told to not seek ecto because vengeance, same root word, it’s ectasis in in where it shows up here because vengeance belongs to God and he uses the magistrate as an avenger, ec d ticus.

And so you see that Paul sort of uses variance of this words that he’s kind of, I think, creating sort of a path. And the path is we don’t seek revenge, we leave it to God. One of the ways God seeks vengeance against the evil doer is through the magistrate. And so it’s this vengeance which the state or the government or whoever you want to talk about it.

Performs and that Paul actually calls evil. Paul says that kind of vengeance is actually evil. It’s something Christians shouldn’t do. He exhorts Christians to not participate in that vengeance, right? So, and instead if our enemy’s hungry, we feed him, we don’t put on a cop uniform and shoot him.

So doesn’t Romans 12 through 13 actually constitute a positive argument for Christian separation from all government violence and maybe even for Christian pacifism? Or am I actually, am I mishearing you? Because it seemed like you were sort of saying, Christians who are told in Romans 12 to not seek vengeance are actually told to seek vengeance as magistrates in Romans 13.

[00:41:02] Jacob Winograd: See, the real reason I decided to redo this episode is because now that you are co-hosting the Libertarian Christians podcast, I view this as like a incursion of Anabaptist pacifism. There you go. On LCI and I have to fight back.

[00:41:15] Cody Cook: It’s a it’s a pacifist takeover there. We’re not sitting takeover.

[00:41:18] Jacob Winograd: Yeah. I mean this, at that book cover with those violent Anabaptist peace bombs that you’re throwing and all. Yeah. So, so yeah, there’s a lot there. This would almost be like Yeah. Delving back into the pacifist debate and I so let’s examine these Greek words, which I’m not even gonna try to pronounce as well as you did.

EDKO and ti cases. So, these are key to understanding, I think Paul’s argument in Romans 12 and 13. And this is one of those things where not that I am an expert on Greek, but like I know enough to know how stupid I am. Right. So when you’re like, there’s so many words that and concepts in terms that don’t translate well from language to language and language.

Right. Because like in [00:42:00] English we have sometimes clear delineations for concepts in terms that in other language is, it’s like they’ll have one word or two words that kind of mean 10 different things. Yeah. And you have to be really careful about the context that they’re brought up in to sort of understand how it’s being used.

Yeah. I mean, I mean, I think you would I guess agree with me in a general sense that there are scholars on your side of this and scholars on my side of this in terms of like how they’re looking at the Greek. But just to give it my best pass of what I think it’s saying I think that it’s making a distinction between revenge, like in the seeking of personal revenge.

Revenge, and. More broadly speaking, the pursuit of justice and vengeance. So in Romans 1219 Paul. Says, never avenge yourselves. So scholars like NT Wright, or you have church fathers like Chris Osto have interpreted this as a prohibition against personal revenge. Not a prohibition against the concept of like justice or civil justice itself.

Paul is acknowledging evil as real, and he’s urging us to trust in God’s judgment to deal with that evil. And I think this is more on like a meta level, right? We’re not gonna be able. To, and we’re not actually called to apply sort of perfect godly justice or ultimate justice upon people for their sin.

And that’s why it says like vengeance is mine alone. Like when people sin, they are s sin against us. But ultimately the gravest part of their sin is that their sinning against God, and it is God’s prerogative to either judge that cent or to extend mercy for those who are in Christ. Then I think Romans 13 is sort of following up with that and saying, well, okay, like evil is a real thing and God’s not saying that while we live here on earth, we’re to live in sort of a.

A disordered society where you don’t have any response to evil actions that actually propose a, like a problem for society like violence and the breaching of contract and a breach of civil justice ultimately. And so Romans 13 is in, like following up the end of Romans 12 to describe how civil governance serves God’s plan to approximate justice in the present age with the magistrate acting as God’s servant.

This is, again, something that Chris Osti makes a slight appeal to. NT Wright also makes a pretty strong case for this in his Paul, I think it’s the, his which volume? I think it’s Paul for everyone, and it’s the one on Romans. So I’m trying to make a, an effort to not cite reformed theologians, so I don’t get the you’re just,

[00:44:35] Narrator: well, no reform

[00:44:36] Jacob Winograd: people.

No.

[00:44:37] Cody Cook: And I wouldn’t say that. I mean, I think what I would say, I think. Is that there are two readings that you could bring in here. One is an anarchist reading and one is a status reading. And so I wouldn’t say that you’re, ’cause you could quote, NC Wright, you could quote ti, you could quote Augustine, you could quote aspersion for all I Care if is the guess The question is it a status reading or is it an anarchist reading?

And I think, I guess I, I don’t wanna make this whole thing about an argument between us because I just think it’s an interesting thing to talk about, but it seems to me, well, I think, sorry, go ahead.

[00:45:07] Jacob Winograd: Well, so, so are you saying that my interpretation is more of a status interpretation and that the only anarchist reading is the pacifist one?

[00:45:15] Cody Cook: I think it’s the most logical reading. So if if Paul says, don’t seek, oh, sorry. Paul says God says, don’t seek revenge. Leave to revenge. To me, one of the ways which I as God can seek vengeance is to use the state. But you are, remember you don’t do that. You’re over here. It is like a, at least a separation is kind of anarchist reading that there, that God uses the state or civil government or whatever you wanna call it to punish evil doers.

So it is it’s not anyway, so I think what’s the guy’s name who wrote the book on civil government? David Lipscomb, that he talked about how Yeah. Civil argument. Yeah. Civil government is essentially not really a positive thing. It’s actually sort of a negative thing because it punishes, it doesn’t really do good to people.

It just does evil to evil people. And that does good in kind of the meta sense, right? So the reason,

[00:45:59] Jacob Winograd: so, so yeah I’m very familiar with this argument. One of my good friends Stephen Rose of the Anarchical Christian Podcast, that’s been his reading of Romans 12 and Romans 13, and he’s not even a strict pacifist, although he.

I call ’em a functional one. So I understand that. I think there, there’s consistency there to a degree, but where I push back on it is that I think that it’s sort of equivocating the responding with an attempt to right a wrong, with the wrong itself. To put it other way, I don’t think that it’s equal, that I don’t think that pursuing justice or making victims whole, right?

Things like that are equivalent with the evil that made them not whole in the first place. And that’s kind of where it’s the that way of reading these texts doesn’t make sense to me. Because I think what Romans 12 is saying is, listen if if you break my car, right, like you come and key my car, you smash in my windows, you write some insults about.

Calvin on there and whatnot and things like that. And then I go to your car and slash the tires and well, that, that’s repaying evil for evil, right? I’m returning like with but if you do all that stuff to my car and then I take you to court, right? Like I’m pursuing justice.

I’m I’m looking for civil justice, right? And even in an anarchist legal framework, right there would be like there’d be some kind of penalty inflicted upon you for the damage you did to my car, and you’d be. Forced in a sense to to, yeah. To pay some kind of remedy to that. I don’t think that’s that’s not repaying evil for evil, you know what I mean?

And now that maybe that’s different for like property and maybe that you think that doesn’t extend to, okay, now it’s if you attack me and I am seeking justice for that gets into a whole bunch of other weeds in terms of if self-defense is def allowed or not, and what kind of force we’re allowed to use the stuff we covered in our debate.

And then I, but then I would still apply the same principle [00:48:00] that there is a difference between me responding to your evil with I’m gonna get you back and me responding to your evil with I’m going to stop the evil and seek justice to be done. And I think the key is to not, to do your best, not to take it into your own hands.

That’s why I view civil governance as like a, it is a godly, ordained sphere and role. And so my reading does line up with maybe the more status reading, other than I just think that the status reading is done by people who I think read the text, right. And just make the false equivalency between the state and civil governance.

And don’t realize you can have one without the other,

[00:48:38] Cody Cook: And I do definitely agree with you there. I don’t think Paul is telling you what kind of government should exist. He’s just saying that there should be some kind of form of civil governance that does this that I think maybe a couple points of pushback and then I’ll let you respond to them.

We’ll move on. ’cause we don’t wanna do the whole thing on this is I think twofold. So Paul says, don’t overcome evil, don’t be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. So Paul seems to think that whatever it is that you’re returning. So even though I understand the logic of kind of, well, I’m making it right, there is a sense in which Paul is equating those two things.

The initial act of aggression and the response of aggression. The other part is Romans 13 doesn’t talk about making reparations at all. It talks about how the magistrate goes around with a sword and lemme see here. They’ll receive con and those who who whom they go after receive condemnation that they actually have something to fear because the magistrate bears the sword as a minister of God, an avenger to bring wrath on the one who practices evil.

So if we’re sort of saying, well, it would be wrong for me to return violence for violence on a personal level, well, Paul is saying that the state actually, or whatever you wanna call it, does return violence against violence. But he says Christians shouldn’t do that, which I do think that there’s at least a.

There’s some logic to separating Christians from the state based on Romans 12 and 13.

[00:49:54] Jacob Winograd: But I still think, if I think that in order for us to be able to agree on sort of like the libertarian premise that the initiation of violence is where the crime is committed. It still seems to me that there would be a logical fallacy or contradiction there to equate the initiation of force with the non initiation of force.

And that I think is my fundamental critique of that position because it seems to equate them, I don’t think that’s what Paul is trying to say. If Paul had said in more clear terms, listen, do not respond to evil even with an attempt to defend yourself or, but he says, don’t respond to evil with evil.

That means that, you would respond with the same. Now listen, force is the same as force, I guess, but initiatory force isn’t the same as responsive force. So that, that, I think that’s why I don’t read it the way your wiel wi that you’re reading it ultimately. And I just think then when you go to Romans 13 I think I, I just don’t like lipsky’s reading there ’cause he tries to square like the line that to me is really crucial is that he is God’s minister or servant for your good.

And he tries to solve that by saying, well listen, God uses evil kingdoms and men all the time to accomplish things for your good. Right. And sometimes even the bad things that happen to you are for your good. But I think that’s to really like. To me, that’s just a lot of steps to get around the plane reading of the text, which are describing the civil magistrate in this sense as actually being a force for good, not a force for evil that God is able to then subvert and use for eventually good purposes.

That just seems to me to be a little bit more of a of a workaround. And I do tend to try to, and I’m not saying I never do this with maybe other texts write, but I do. ’cause there are some texts that maybe you have to be careful about not doing a plain reading of just the surface level, but there needs to be a good reason to be like, Hey, this is why we can’t have the plain reading of the surface level.

And in this case, I don’t see that. I think the way that I’m reading Romans 12 into 13 makes sense. Don’t seek revenge. Rather understand that there is God, a godly, ordained office for pursuing approximate justice. Right? It’s not perfect justice, but it at least order society in a way that minimizes and restrain human evil.

While we understand that true justice can only be achieved by ultimately by God, and we also think that God is a thank, we’re thankful for the fact that God is a merciful God and doesn’t just exact justice upon us all, but that has chosen to extend mercy to many of us. And Christ has taken upon himself the punishment for for sin, for many.

[00:52:40] Cody Cook: W Well, I’ll ask one more question about Romans through team, but it’s I’m putting outta the hot seat and we’re leaving the, what we have been talking about behind and moving into something else. So, so I agree with you that taxation is theft. But Paul seems to argue that Christians ought to do it anyway.

And you seem, I think and at least to me, you seem like you had nitpick at Paul’s exhortation to pay taxes to whom they are due. By suggesting that stolen Monty money isn’t actually due at all. And there’s some logic to that, but I guess I’m not sure if that’s really what Paul had in mind.

I’m not really sure that you can read Paul to say that. Sure. It feels I don’t think Paul’s making a slippery point there. I think he’s saying something straightforward. So, so what, I mean, what do you think is going on here? I, how do you justify that reading of Paul?

[00:53:19] Jacob Winograd: Sure. So again, this is a, this is an instance again where you have to get into like the complication of the of the languages at play, right?

So like we, we don’t exactly have in Greek clear delineations between taxation and tributes and tolls and things like that. And then also the problem that like historical methods of taxation and tributes and the collection of those things don’t really none of this maps on one-to-one with our modern language in context.

So we kind of have to. Approach, like reconcile that discrepancy from the start. Now I’m gonna start with render onto Caesar because I think that’s important to, to lead into this. And the render into Caesar passage, [00:54:00] Jesus is, the response is often misunderstood, I would say, as a unqualified endorsement of paying taxes and of it’s a separation of church and state.

Just give to Caesar, what’s Caesar? Just give to God. What is God’s? However, people kind of miss that. Like the whole point of the question Jesus was asked there, and it says right in the text is that the the Jewish leaders were hoping to entrap Jesus in his own words. The context being that if he was at all.

Going to say that actually, yes, you should pay your taxes because they’re owed. He would’ve they would’ve been happy with that answer because they were hoping he’d either say, yes, pay your taxes, and then he’d be discredited to his Jewish audience who were very like, obviously did not like paying their taxes and were very judgemental towards tax collectors.

Or if he said, don’t pay your taxes, then they could go to the Romans and go, Hey this guy’s saying don’t pay your taxes. He is stirring up civil unrest and arrest him, right? So if Jesus was giving them what he wanted or sorry, if Jesus giving them what they wanted, then the passage wouldn’t end with them walking away astounded by his answer.

So we have to read past that, like simplistic answer. People give rather I think by asking whose image was on the coin and saying render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesars and the, and to God, the things that are Gods Jesus is highlighting a distinction. Between earthly and divine obligations, first and foremost.

And the implication is that we owe our ultimate allegiance and moral responsibility to God. And there’s also some more there in terms of the, in Jesus’ answer to the tax question is a critique not only of Roman authority, but of the Jewish leaders who were actually complicit in exploiting their own people under Roman rule.

So the very question that was posed Jesus was a trap and his response exposes their hypocrisy and shifts the focus on a larger issue of allegiance and emphasizing God’s ultimate claim over people. And I think it’s implicitly a critique on Rome’s overreach as well. But he does it in a way that side skirts getting him in trouble because he’s able to say well, yeah, of course give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, right?

But we do have to ask our ourself like, what is. Owed to Caesar, the same way we would ask is what it, what is owed to, to, to anybody. And I don’t think that you’ll find a biblical teaching anywhere, whether it’s about taxation or anything else that says a, you owe people that which they demand through the initiation of force or the threat of force or coercion, and B, that not only are governments ordained to tax you, but that they can just tax whatever they want and whatever they claim.

That they’re owed is auto automatically fair and just, and you just owe it to them, right? Th those would be pretty far stretches to try to claim. So then with that context in mind, going now back to Romans 13, I think Paul is sort of echoing the same sort of point that Jesus made in render unto Caesar, but in his own words.

So he’s exhorting Christians to pay what is due and he’s applying it in even more. He’s not just doing Caesar to Caesar and God, what is God’s? He goes, pay taxes to whom? Taxes, tribute to whom? Tribute, honor to whom? Honor, respect to whom respect, right. And then follows it up with saying, oh oh, no one anything except to love them.

And I think that’s an important follow. Like people like read Romans one through whatever that verse is, and then forget the refrain of that, which is to, oh, nothing to anyone except to love them. And I think that begs the question then can you love your neighbor? While you’re stealing from them.

And is there any teaching that would say that, well, if I were to go to your house Cody and knock on your door and at gunpoint say, give me 50% of everything you own. ’cause I, I might go build a road with it. I don’t know. The, everyone would be like, no, that’s theft. But if I suddenly put a badge on and say, oh, well I was voted into power, or I’m the son of this person who says he had power does do I suddenly now have a right to do that?

I don’t think that’s the biblical teaching either. So now the heart of your question then is, well what’s Paul saying? I don’t think Paul is actually saying here anything directly about taxation in the same way that I don’t think Jesus was necessarily meaning to directly tackle the issue of taxation.

They’re ultimately aimed at getting us to realize, teaching more broadly about how to love our neighbor. And yes, we should give people what they’re owed, but then we, I think we have to ask those other questions as logical follow-ups to understand the entailment of that teaching. It makes my case me a little bit weaker, and I’d say Paul isn’t necessarily here making my argument.

My argument is my argument. It’s a, I think it’s a logical implication of the text, but nor do I think Paul here or Jesus in Matthew 22, 3, I forget the exact chapter number. And render unto Caesar is I don’t think either of them are saying, oh, just pay your taxes because the government said to.

So we like that. We have to cut it both ways.

[00:59:01] Cody Cook: Okay. Fair enough. I think we’ll wrap it up there because we’re just a little bit over the hour mark. So those who want to hear the full episode that we’ve been discussing where you kind of make these points kind of all together and work on it a little bit.

What I’m trying to say, kinda tease it out in the in the details. Those want to. So first of all, it’s the Biblical Anarchy podcast, and do you know the title of the episode and the episode number for those who want to go find it

[00:59:23] Jacob Winograd: at this point in time? I don’t know the exact title. It’ll probably be What is Biblical Anarchy?

And I might have a tagline after it. It will be episode 89. Okay? So that should be easy enough and you can go find it at biblical anarchy podcast.com. And that gives you links to YouTube, apple, Spotify, wherever you want to go. Watch it.

[00:59:42] Cody Cook: Thank you Jabar. I really appreciate you making the time to talk with us.

[00:59:45] Jacob Winograd: Yeah, thanks for having me. Absolutely. Alright, well, I’ve time traveled back to the future and my beard is gone and my contacts are in, but I’m still the wild bushy haired, crazy eyed anarchist that I was in that interview [01:00:00] you just watched. I hope that you enjoyed it. I hope that it was edifying and educational.

And that’s all we have for you guys for this week. Please make sure you give this video a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel if you haven’t already. Five star reviews on Google. Always help or do Google on Apple and Spotify, wherever you listen to. Always help@biblicalanarchypodcast.com if you wanna support the show.

But that’s all I have. Live at Peace Live for Christ. Take care.

[01:00:25] Narrator: The Biblical Anarchy Podcast is a part of the Christians for Liberty network, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute. If you love this podcast, it helps us reach more with a message of freedom when you rate and review us on your favorite podcast apps and share with others.

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