 Thank you, and thank you, Hans and Gürtchen, for your generous hospitality and for inviting me to speak to this illustrious gathering. The title of my speech is Gary North's Covenantalism as a Contribution to Political Economy. Now, many of you will be familiar, at least with some of Gary North's writings. Indeed, quite a few of you will have met him personally, which is something I sadly cannot claim. So I won't spend much time introducing him. He was born in 1942 and died in February this year. Wikipedia writes, and as far as I can see correctly, that he was, quote, an American writer, Austrian school economic historian and leading figure in the Christian Reconstructionist movement. North authored or co-authored over 50 books on topics including Reformed Protestant theology, economics and history. He was an associated scholar of the Mises Institute, end quote. In this half hour, it is my aim to show you how North's Covenantalism can help us analyze a society and identify its weak points. In addition, I will explain why I believe that this Covenantalism points to a way out of the current impasse humanities in. It is admittedly not an easy way. It is not a short way, but at least it is a way. Covenantalism is primarily a theological concept, but as we will see, it is also a universally applicable concept. I will say upfront that I'm not a theologian. However, that may actually have been helpful, I think, when I first encountered North's writings about 20 years ago. Had I been a theologian, I would probably have been a mainstream theologian and would have therefore dismissed him from the start. However, my background is in economics and a few years prior to discovering North, I had discovered and been converted to Austrianism. It was Austrianism that enabled me to recognize, and when reading North, that I was in the presence of the work of a first rate thinker and polymath. I have read maybe 10 or 12 of his books. I followed his current affairs and background articles for many years until he passed away. It was through North's monumental life's work of many volumes of biblical economics that I entered the world of theology. So without further ado, what is covenantalism? According to North, every society is resting on a covenant. It is inescapable. A covenant is a bit like a contract, but with some important differences. Probably the most important fact about a covenant is that it recognizes a sovereign, a final decider. One leading difference between a contract and a covenant can be seen when looking at arbitration. With a contract, in the case of differences of opinion on whether the contract has been broken or not, what is required is an arbitrator or a judge, a third neutral party. A covenant, on the other hand, means that one side of this agreement lays down all the laws and sanctions, after which there is no room for negotiation. There is, however, the possibility to walk away from a covenant. But only, and this is another crucial difference between it and a contract, only if one enters into a covenant with another sovereign, because it is ingrained in our nature. Now, some might argue that they don't recognize any sovereign. In that case, in covenantal terms, this person recognizes himself as the sovereign and enters a covenant with himself. Taken to its full extent, this is rare in real life, as it often leads to behavior that others consider rather pathological, maybe, or and so such kinds of sovereigns usually don't survive for long, at least not in freedom. Others might just withdraw themselves as much as they can from the existing sovereign, or the one that they're living under, and try to live in obscurity. Nevertheless, some people drive this path, but often do not go the full way, and factually, if reluctantly, submit to some kind of other sovereign. So, we are all under some kind of covenant. The next important characteristic is this. No matter who the sovereign is, every covenant has five identical points. This is important because armed with this knowledge, every society can be analyzed effectively and comprehensively along these five points. North didn't discover these five points himself. He writes about their discovery in the introduction to his book, God's Covenants, which, by the way, is the book on which I have mostly based this talk. God's Covenants, out of this, I quote, beginning with the researches of George Mendenhall and in the 1950s, Bible scholars, liberals, and conservatives have come to recognize that the mosaic covenant has a particular structure. It has five points. In 1963, a book by Westminster seminaries, Meredith G. Klein, appeared, Treaty of the Great King. It was a brief commentary on the book of Deuteronomy. That's the fifth book of Moses. Following Mendenhall, Klein divided Deuteronomy into five sections. He then made comparisons of this structure with the Suzerainty Treaties of the Middle East in the second millennium BC. They, too, had the same five-point structure. He concluded that this is evidence that Deuteronomy was written in the second millennium BC and not almost a millennium later in the first millennium, as which liberals had long insisted. End quote. So here is a slideshow showing you the five points of the covenant, please. So beginning with this, these are the five points. Sovereignty, authority, law, sanctions, and succession. Next, please. In social theory terms, according to North, again, sovereignty, hierarchy, authority, ethics, judgment, and kingdom. Next, in economics, in economic terms, he phrased that as questions. Who's in charge here? To whom do I report? What are the rules? What happens to me if I obey or disobey? And does this outfit have a future? Then the books of the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, which have these themes, origins, transcendence, representation, hierarchy, laws, boundaries, sanctions, and inheritance, and they correspond. Now, how is this relevant to us? It's relevant, could you leave the last one for a while? Thank you. It is relevant because if we are all under a covenant, we need to ask these questions as listed by North. They are also relevant because North points out that leaving aside the exception of the solitary and unattached sovereign in human societies, there are two basic answers to each one of these questions. And these two are irreconcilable. So to explain that, I will go through the five questions in more detail. First, who is in charge here? This is the question regarding sovereignty, points to origins. Whoever originates something is in charge of it. North points out that two and only two kinds of origins, basic cosmic origins are possible, either purposeful or purposeless. Regarding the origins of the universe, neither answer is provable. They are both presuppositions. They are also irreconcilable. They are known under the terms of purposeful creation and purposeless evolution. So I'm not here to discuss the dichotomy of creation versus evolution. I'm saying that when looking at the ultimate origin, neither are provable. They are, however, unavoidable presuppositions, and we have to choose. And the choice will have consequences for our further outlook. And the majority outlook will shape society. Second, to whom do I report? This is the question regarding authority and hierarchy. Whoever has authority has been given this authority by someone higher up, and ultimately by the sovereign through the covenant. The word hierarchy points to something religious. It comes from the ancient Greek word heros, I hope I pronounced that properly, which means priest. And now I quote North again. Each view claims a hierarchical system of authority. For Christians, the God of the Bible is represented by mankind, and the voice of authority is the Bible. End quote. What he means is that in this theonomic view, mankind has been given authority to rule over nature under the guidance of God's laws, and with the purpose of looking after it and improving it. I continue with a quote from North. For Darwinists, the God of nature, i.e., not the God of the Bible, which is not self-conscious and does not speak, is represented by mankind. So mankind speaks alone and so takes on the function of divinity. No higher court of appeal. End quote. This means the following. Under this view, we humans are personal and conscious and with direction. So we appeared to ourselves as being above nature. In that way, it does not differ from the creation view. Then, however, because of the unavoidability of covenantalism, mankind automatically elevates itself into the otherwise empty position of sovereignty. And now, because the position of sovereignty is irreconcilable with the idea of plurality of opinions and directions, the result of such a view with regard to society is collectivism. In other words, covenantally speaking, Darwinism as a confession of faith, not speaking about the science, the confession of faith, leads to collectivism. Three, what are the rules? I start again with a quote from North. Every covenant is marked by laws. These laws serve as boundaries for thought, word and deed. There are limits beyond which men may not lawfully pass. The archetype is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Some laws are positive, such as the archetype positive law, exercise dominion over the world. Some laws are negative, such as the archetypal negative law do not eat from this tree. But there are always laws. End quote. When God is the sovereign, the laws are from God. According to the Bible, they were given from on high. I think, however, it is more likely that they were discovered in a process not unlike that of the common law. When mankind is the sovereign, there are two ways of conceptualizing lawmaking. They can either be discovered, and that would be the natural law idea, or, and here I quote North again, some legal theorists add that the civil law take on the characteristics of law merely by their formal declaration by certified and legitimate agents of the civil government. These laws are laws only because the state declares them and then enforces them. On this point, there has been a philosophical division, but on the whole says North, the declarationists have won the battle intellectually and surely politically. End quote. The reason I think the declarationists have won is because of the structure of the covenant. Mankind would not be sovereign if he needed to discover laws or needed or admit it to itself, it needed to discover laws. A sovereign wouldn't be a sovereign if he can't make laws. And that's what we are currently doing in this world. So, four, what happens to me if I obey or disobey? This points to judgment and sanctions. Every covenant has them, because without sanctions, laws are not laws, but only suggestions. If there are God-given laws, there are God-given sanctions. And here, North emphasizes something that most Christians don't like to hear. These sanctions pertain not only personally, but societally. Near the end of Deuteronomy, the fifth and last book of Moses, in chapter 28, there is a whole long list of blessings and curses promised by God to his people. In other words, positive and negative sanctions. The blessings for the whole nation are promised if society adheres to God's laws and the curses are promised if they don't. However, the main point here is, and I quote North, connections exist among general legal principles, case laws, and specific events in history. That's his position. There are these connections. Which means, according to North, if countries fail and collapse, if empires fail and collapse, it's because they didn't adhere to God's laws. Now, what happens if man alone declares the law? Quoting North, man's authority to discover, interpret, declare, and enforce the law, that all laws, puts him in charge of nature, including other men. This means that experts, experts who understand the law and its workings, eventually gain the authority to declare and enforce the law, end quote. And these experts do so, of course, on their own terms, as they do not recognize any authority above them, let alone a sovereign. So North continues, quote, that autonomous man, so man without God, has no one judging him, yet he is not united. So would-be autonomous man becomes would-be autonomous men. The result is a potential war of all against all. This is how Thomas Hobbes Leviathan described mankind's condition prior to the hypothetical social contract, end quote. We thus see that even if Covenantalism is ignored or negated, it emerges through the back door as in a twisted way and with mythical terms, such as the social contract. So five, does this outfit have a future? This points to succession inheritance and kingdom, the end game, the aim above all aims. Every Covenant has this point, to quote North, kingdom is an inescapable concept. It is never a question of kingdom versus no kingdom. It is always a question of whose kingdom, end quote. When Pilate asked Jesus whether he is the king of the Jews, Jesus answers him, my kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews? But now is my kingdom not from hence, this is from John 18, 33 to 36. Here Christians are divided. According to North, most Christians, and I quote, interpret Christ's word in the way that Pilate did, namely, that Jesus's kingdom has no influence on, in the civil affairs of this world. They interpret the words not of this world as not in this world. They deny his kingdom its rightful authority in history, end quote. North thinks this is fundamentally wrong. He explains that by digging deep into the meaning of the ancient Greek words of these verses, and this is how he interprets the words of Jesus uttered by Pilate, quoting North, his kingdom is not of this world, meaning that its origin is not in this world. Nevertheless, Jesus was claiming absolute authority, meaning authority over Rome. His kingdom is not from this world, it is over this world, end quote. That's how North sees it. North concludes that Christ's kingdom is authorized by God to spread wherever sin reigns. He says that this means not just in the hearts of individuals, not just in how families are run, and not just in how churches conduct themselves, it also means it should spread to the way the society is run and how it conducts itself. According to the blessings and the curses in the book of Deuteronomy, this will lead to a stable, just and peaceful order to quote the words of Hans-Hammann Hopper, used in his speech on the superiority of the Ten Commandments over the libertarian non-aggression principle. In contrast, the kingdom of man is based on purposeless origins that can evolve in all sorts of directions and in endless ways. Under such a covenant, there are, to quote North, no unchanging moral principles, for there is no unchanging impersonal external environment, including the world of man. So the kingdom of man is itself evolving, end quote. Therefore, concludes North, in the kingdom of man, there is a constant push for its logical end point, namely a world civil government. Only that kind of kingdom is the truver reflection of collective mankind as the sovereign, and the sovereignty delegated to the experts of law, who will then create laws and sanctions as they see fit. They being just as flawed as all of us will surely lead us into a society that is unstable, unjust and unpeaceful. This means that there are two basic irreconcilable covenants in the world. One of them leads to the establishment of the kingdom of God, the other to the establishment of the kingdom of man. So can we please just remove that, thank you. Now, having explained the five points of the covenant and the two irreconcilable ways of answering them, it is important to emphasize that North was an optimist. He believed that in the long run, the kingdom of God will win out, and it's worth looking at why he thought that. North was a, I'm going to have some difficult words here, post-millennialist, post-millennialist. That means that he believed, A, in the second coming of Christ, and B, that Christ will not return until we humans have established the millennium, meaning the kingdom of God on earth, after which Christ will proceed to judge the living and the dead. Now, of course, libertarians are always on the alert when someone promises something like that, and I'll discuss that with regard to North in a minute. First, I want to contrast his post-millennialism with the two other views of the end times. For one, there are so-called pre-millennialists, they too believe in the second coming of Christ, but crucially they believe that Christ will then, after his arrival, usher in the millennium. So before he arrives, there will be no millennium, and at the end of that millennium, they believe there will be a last battle with Satan, after which Christ will judge the living and the dead. So there's nothing that pre-millennists think there's nothing we can do to create the millennium. It will come at some point when Jesus returns. The third group of Christians are the amillennialists. They believe in the second coming of Christ, but not that there will be any kind of this worldly millennium, either before or after the coming of Christ. Or rather, they think the millennium is just a symbolic term for the time between the first and second coming of Christ. And here's the important thing. The expectations of pre-millennialists and amillennialists lead politically to pessimism and apathy. While Christians want to be good people and good neighbors, they don't believe that such Christians, I think when these are such Christians, they want to be good people and good neighbors, they don't believe that anything they could do could shake the world towards something better. Some even believe that in this world, Satan will inevitably win, and only Jesus with his second coming will sort out the bad guys in the end. Contrast this with an attitude that comes with that of proposed millennialists. They see it as their God-given task to improve the world. Or rather, they see it that if they personally adhere to God's laws, they or their heirs will be rewarded in this world and given more responsibility over worldly things. That is how they understand the parable of the talents, which I recommend you read. So their actions will improve the world. And when it is sufficiently improved, Jesus will return and judge the righteous and the unrighteous, the living and the dead. This is a huge incentive to not only be a good person and a good neighbor, but also to leave the world a better or more godly place at the end of one's life as far as one can do that in the power that one has. Now, the important caveat. If one isn't careful, post-millennial thinking can easily lead to wanting to use force, and above all, government monopoly force, why not the ring of power in an attempt to hasten the coming of the kingdom of God. Murray Rothbard vividly described the deeds of the Anabaptists of Munster. They were an early example of misdirected post-millennialism. Communism and wokeism are their modern heirs. They are both a kind of post-millennialism minus God. But on close examination, those early Anabaptists were also post-millennialists without minus God, even though they proclaimed to be believers, because with their murdering and thieving and whoring, they were certainly not adhering to God's commandments. That is what North emphasizes. A proper adherence to God's commandments will gradually, gradually and progressively, though, move us towards the kingdom of God on earth. Also, he emphasizes that this doesn't mean a return to paradise, because according to the Bible, we humans won't be able to abolish death. Death will be the last enemy to be defeated, writes Paul in the first letter to the Corinthians. To conclude, North's contribution to political economy reveals a clear connection between Darwinism as an ideology and collectivism. The latter needs the former as a quasi-religious foundation. It is uncomfortable reading for many Christians, but also for non-Christians. For Christians, it leads to them to be to the conclusion that it is not enough to be just good neighbors. They are also called to strive to increase the kingdom of God in this world. For non-Christians, it is uncomfortable because it compels them, as Ein Rand would say, to check their premises and concede that they need to allow for the possibility of a purposeful origin of the universe if they ever want to hope to keep their liberty. Now, I personally think there is a lot of truth in what North says in this regard. In his lecture, an lecture he gave at the Mises Institute in 2013, which is available on YouTube, called How Come We Are So Rich? He offered something akin to historical evidence. He said that early in the 17th century Netherlands, there was a shift in attitude towards entrepreneurship, innovation, and personal wealth derived from innovation and entrepreneurship. So North offered two reasons for this change in minds. One, ethics, a transformation of what constitutes good and evil. For the first time, within the preaching of the Protestants, and especially the Calvinists, there was a shift of view, and that was that personal wealth was legitimate. A blessing from God for adhering to his laws. Second, a shift in the view of the future. A new optimism about what the kingdom of God can do in the midst of history. That there can be a compound expansion and growth of liberty, power, and influence in a society that is faithful to the ethics preached by the preachers. Now, these Dutch were Calvinists, and their view spread from the Netherlands to the Calvinists in Britain. After the Civil War there, there came the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which ushered in what North calls a secularized version of Cromwell's Calvinism. North admits that he can't finally prove the next statement, so more research is needed. However, he firmly believes that this, above all else, drove the Industrial Revolution. In other words, the material blessings we enjoy today are the result of a widespread adherence to God's laws in the past. They are the result of the Dutch, British, and then American ancestors 300 years ago, widespread adherence and submission to God's covenant, and a rejection of the kingdom of man. In other words, in order to prevent further moves towards collectivism, in particular a global collectivism, we need to spread God's words and do our best to adhere to it. This will not only improve personal and spiritual well-being and freedom, but also create a society on a path of increasing wealth and prosperity. And this is the end of my talk. Thank you for your attention.