First, I am sincerely thankful to God that there is a scholar like Jonathan Burnside teaching Biblical law in a British university! And Jonathan’s essay on Biblical law is an excellent starting point for Christian discussion. Especially from points one through five, the only thing I can say is “Amen”!

The problem comes with point number six, the matter of Biblical law and public life. This matter is extremely complex in itself. Since I am sure I do not understand Jonathan’s position adequately — he has written more than I have been able to read on a very broad subject — my comments are tentative and suggestive. But since this is a conversation, converse I must.

I want to begin with a matter that does not come up directly in Jonathan’s initial essay, but does appear in Roy Gane’s contribution: pluralism. If I understand Roy correctly, he takes the fact of religious pluralism as a given, something we presumably must be content to live with. On the contrary, Jesus command to disciple the nations is a command for world conquest through the Gospel. Literally, Jesus commanded “disciple (verb) the nations.” He also outlined exactly what it means to disciple the nations in two steps: 1) Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit; 2) teach them to observe all that He commanded. He added a promise: “I am with you” — a covenant promise repeated frequently in the Old Testament. The promise means that the One to whom “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been granted will surely enable His disciples to accomplish the task they have been given. In Jonathan’s words: “So if we do not act on that and seek to apply this (ie. Biblical law) into every area of life, including public life, we are conceding there is a part of the world over which Christ does not exercise dominion. . . We are heavenly colonists and our job is to bring the life and rule of heaven to bear on earth. We are to do our best to order our civic life so that it matches the way things are done in heaven – “on earth as it is in heaven,” as Jesus Himself taught.” Pluralism is a problem not a presupposition. Of course, I agree with Roy that what Jesus envisions is the growth of the Gospel through preaching and godly living, not by the imposition of government force.

The “Progressive Moral Wisdom” approach to law that Roy outlines in his book, Old Testament Law for Christians (pp. 197 ff.), has much to commend it. The very simple methodology I suggest here is similar.

  1. Understand specific statutes and commands in the context of the Mosaic system as it should have been ideally practiced in the days of Joshua, after Israel entered the land. This takes into account the fact that under various covenants there were different laws. The times from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to David, from David to Ezra, and from Ezra to Christ were covenantally distinct. A full understanding of Biblical Torah must take these distinctions into account,[i] not to mention the radical disjunction brought about by the New Covenant.[ii]
  2. It is only after we have gained a relatively sophisticated appreciation for Torah and its vision of a godly society in the Old Testament eras that we can translate Torah’s teaching into our new covenant situation. Though some commandments and statutes are relatively easy to understand and apply in our day, much more effort is required to envision a godly Christian society and its institutions. Since peoples have different histories and languages, there would naturally be some differences in different parts of the world, but there would be much more in common. We need to articulate our vision for a Torah-informed Christian society. We need to discuss and seek to formulate what we believe the ideal Christian society should be — the society Jesus spoke of in the Great Commission.
  3. We also, need to analyze our present cultural situation in terms of the Torah — and the rest of the Bible — to know exactly where we are. This will vary from society to society and, of course, also from age to age. But the Torah is a light with which we are to see and understand who we are individually and socially. Using the Torah as a lens through which to view and judge the world in which we live is part of our vocation.
  4. Beginning with an adequate understanding of Torah, we can articulate a vision of where we intend to go and analyze where we are now. Then, the next step is to develop strategies and tactics to get from where we are and work toward where we ought to be. This may be the most difficult aspect. Given the fact that our situations are constantly changing, this would be an ongoing effort, constantly evolving. But it is essential to realizing the Great Commission and honoring the authority of our Savior.

There is much to commend in Jonathan’s book, God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible. It is one of the most detailed, scholarly, and well-written books on Biblical law that one can find. Of course, there are a number of places in which I was not persuaded by Jonathan’s Biblical exposition, but perhaps the most basic complaint I would make is that he seems to jump to quickly from statutes, commands, and rules in the Old Testament to principles of modern application. Something like the procedure above is important, I think.

In this essay, however, I cannot address the following four specific issues in terms of the methodology outlined above — which would require a book, not a short essay. The four specific issues I wish to bring to our discussion are: 1) abortion; 2) crime and punishment; 3) the environment; 4) freedom.

1. Abortion

Jonathan wrote a 500 page book on God and justice, filled with detailed exegesis of the Bible, historical examples, analysis of the modern condition, and suggestions for Christians to implement Biblical principles in modern society. It is an outstanding achievement, but the fact that Jonathan says nothing about abortion is nothing short of astonishing. There is not greater or more egregious example of social injustice in our day. Those who are by definition and fact the most helpless members of society are being wantonly slaughtered in numbers that boggle the imagination. According to the World Health Organization, about “73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year.”[iii] In other words, this is comparable to terminating more than the entire population of Great Britain in a single year.

Is not this a topic worth discussing in a book about Torah?

2. Crime and Punishment

Jonathan does address many matters related to crime and punishment. I agree with him that prison reform is necessary, but I would add — and perhaps Jonathan would agree — that reform is just a step in the direction of entirely eliminating prisons — which are at least as bad, if not worse, than slavery. However, we live in a world of rampant crime. Organized crime and gangs thrive. The fight against crime cannot be won unless societies are as serious as the criminals, who kill to protect their territories. Jonathan says little about capital punishment in his book, but in Biblical Torah capital punishment is a major topic.[iv] I am not suggesting that we should apply the statutes of Moses’ Torah directly to our modern situation, but I do believe that in Torah there is an underlying presupposition that certain kinds of sin and evil must be met with by extreme force, otherwise they will come to dominate.

Capital punishment for first degree murder seems like an easy start. What other crimes might deserve capital punishment should be considered and discussed. The degree of legal reform required to actually reform and eventually eliminate the prison system is immense and it is doubtful that it can be accomplished apart from the wide success of Gospel ministry. But the goal can be discussed all the same.

3. The Environment

Under this topic, I mention two matters that are vitally related, at least according to Travis N. Rieder, Associate Research Professor at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins: 1) climate change; 2) overpopulation.[v] In God, Justice, and Society, Jonathan gave me the impression that his thinking aligns with this, at least partially, but I may be wrong.

With respect to climate change, Jonathan does not acknowledge that the matter is a debate, not really a consensus or a conclusion. There is, for example, a scholarly work titled: The Environment: Opposing Viewpoints, which includes a chapter by Peter Huber which argues that an environmental crisis does not exist and another by John F. McManus that argues that global warming is not a serious problem. Stephen Moore claims that population growth does not cause environmental problems. In other words, these and related topics are subjects for debate among scholars. These are not issues on which we have conclusions that we can now presuppose in order to decide how Biblical Torah guides us to deal with them.

Jonathan may not have ever heard of The Population Bomb: Population Control or Race to Oblivion, written in 1968 (before Jonathan was born, I assume). I was a college student at the time and Paul Ehrlich’s apocalyptic warning hit the campus with nuclear impact. The end is near: “The battle to feed humanity is over.” He knew that overpopulation was going to kill us and it was already too late. The folly of Ehrlich and his scientific cohorts was manifest in time as the apocalyptic end did not come — much like some Christian would-be-prophets who gave us ever-revised dates on Jesus’ soon return. But the economist Julian Simon argued against the “scientific” view that in fact the planet earth was far more resourceful than Ehrlich and other pessimists presupposed and that human beings were in fact the ultimate resource.[vi] The two made a bet about how the future would unfold which is documented in detail in Paul Sabin’s book, The Bet Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future. Needless to say, Simon won the bet.[vii]

The problem with the climate change movement is that its whole paradigm is a form of scientific soothsaying based upon computer models that can supposedly not only adequately take in sufficient data to be able to understand the earth’s vast ecosystem, but also accurately predict how it will change in the next 50 to 100 years — hubris without limit. Von Hayek’s most devastating critique of socialism was, in the opinion of many, his short book, The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism. Hayek argues that “socialist aims and programmes are factually impossible to achieve or execute; and they also happen, into the bargain as it were, to be logically impossible.”[viii] Something similar could be said about the aims and programs of the climate science soothsayers.

Sadly, Jonathan would have Christians bow the knee to the golden-global-warming-calf and follow the prophets of doom who view the future through partially omniscient computer programs and then devise draconian political programs that would certainly reduce global prosperity, but provide no real help according to Bjorn Lomborg’s book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.

The Christian way of telling the future is through God’s covenants and commands, not through various forms of divination (Deuteronomy 18:15ff.). Since God created the world and commanded man to fill it — a goal that will not be attained any time soon — then we should assume that it is part of our duty to have children — not to limit families to one child[ix] and certainly not to impose government regulations on procreation. What we should conclude from the Genesis command is that God created the world to sustain a human population far greater than the present, not that we need to reduce human population to fit our present ability to provide.[x]

4. Freedom

God gave Israel the Torah after rescuing them from slavery in Egypt. The Torah was to guide them in the way of love, which is also the way of freedom. The way of love and the way of freedom are fundamentally interwoven. I cannot develop the argument here, but welfare is part of this. Julian Simon predicted that population growth would not lead to the destruction of resources, but to greater prosperity. What seems perhaps like a paradox has been demonstrated historically, but the element of freedom is essential to the formula.

University of Chicago professor of economics, Deirdre McCloskey “explains how property rights and economic freedom has resulted in a dramatic explosion in overall wealth.”[xi] McCloskey writes: “Since 1800 the ability of humans to feed and clothe and educate themselves, even as the number of humans increased by an astonishing factor of seven, has risen, per human, by an even more astonishing factor of ten. Do the math, then, of total production. We humans now produce and consume seventy—7 × 10—times more goods and services worldwide than in 1800. Some people view this figure with alarm and speak of environmental degradation. But the news is mainly good. With seventy times more production, no wonder we can cultivate new economies of scale and reap their benefits through free trade. And no wonder we can harness the ingenuity of the larger population to get better antibiotics and better automobiles. No wonder we can clean up the air and the water, and turn forests into nature preserves.”[xii]

Of course, the full truth is that poverty cannot be overcome by free trade, even though world poverty was radically reduced in the decades before the recent pandemic. The fundamental causes of world poverty and oppression are four demonically false religions: 1) Hinduism; 2) Communism/socialism; 3) Islam; 4) Modern Enlightenment Paganism.[xiii] Of course, that means the fundamental cause is unbelief in the One True God. Only faith in Christ and loving obedience to His commandments can set men free and bring global peace and prosperity: “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

I look forward to reading more of Jonathan’s work on Biblical law, as well as giving due attention to Roy’s massive tome and James Bejon’s interesting work on Biblical narratives.


Ralph Smith is pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.


[i] See James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989). I should also point out that Jonathan does not seem to have an adequate grasp of Biblical symbolism, something for which Jordan’s book would helpful.

[ii] See Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016).

[iii] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion WHO also estimates that about 45% of all abortions are unsafe. From the perspective of the unborn child, I would estimate that 100% of all abortions are unsafe.

[iv] It is worthy of note that Torah prescribes that there can be no capital punishment without multiple witnesses. This law presupposes two important aspects of Biblical Torah: the accused 1) is innocent until proven guilty and 2) must have a fair and open trial. Laws about the avenger of blood must somehow be put into this framework.

[v] Travis Rieder, Toward a Small Family Ethic: How Overpopulation and Climate Change are Affecting the Morality of Procreation (Springer, 2016).

[vi] The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

[vii] Marian L. Tupy, “Julian Simon Was Right: A Half‐ Century of Population Growth, Increasing Prosperity, and Falling Commodity Prices” CATO Institute, February 16, 2018 • Economic Development Bulletin No. 29 https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-simon-was-right-half-century-population-growth-increasing

[viii] See: Sven Rydenfelt, A Pattern for Failure : Socialist Economies in Crisis (New York: Harcourt, 1984). Present day socialist in the United States urge us to follow the same pattern for failure, but to try harder. Like the famous social critic Chris Rock says, “There is no rehab for stupidity.”

[ix] Sarah Conly, One Child: Do We Have a Right to More? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

[x] Julian Simon, ed. The Resourceful Earth (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1984).

[xi] https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/what-caused-the-economic-boom-of-wealth/

[xii] Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

[xiii] See: Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Norton, 1966).

Next Conversation

First, I am sincerely thankful to God that there is a scholar like Jonathan Burnside teaching Biblical law in a British university! And Jonathan’s essay on Biblical law is an excellent starting point for Christian discussion. Especially from points one through five, the only thing I can say is “Amen”!

The problem comes with point number six, the matter of Biblical law and public life. This matter is extremely complex in itself. Since I am sure I do not understand Jonathan’s position adequately — he has written more than I have been able to read on a very broad subject — my comments are tentative and suggestive. But since this is a conversation, converse I must.

I want to begin with a matter that does not come up directly in Jonathan’s initial essay, but does appear in Roy Gane’s contribution: pluralism. If I understand Roy correctly, he takes the fact of religious pluralism as a given, something we presumably must be content to live with. On the contrary, Jesus command to disciple the nations is a command for world conquest through the Gospel. Literally, Jesus commanded “disciple (verb) the nations.” He also outlined exactly what it means to disciple the nations in two steps: 1) Baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit; 2) teach them to observe all that He commanded. He added a promise: “I am with you” — a covenant promise repeated frequently in the Old Testament. The promise means that the One to whom “all authority in heaven and on earth” has been granted will surely enable His disciples to accomplish the task they have been given. In Jonathan’s words: “So if we do not act on that and seek to apply this (ie. Biblical law) into every area of life, including public life, we are conceding there is a part of the world over which Christ does not exercise dominion. . . We are heavenly colonists and our job is to bring the life and rule of heaven to bear on earth. We are to do our best to order our civic life so that it matches the way things are done in heaven – “on earth as it is in heaven,” as Jesus Himself taught.” Pluralism is a problem not a presupposition. Of course, I agree with Roy that what Jesus envisions is the growth of the Gospel through preaching and godly living, not by the imposition of government force.

The “Progressive Moral Wisdom” approach to law that Roy outlines in his book, Old Testament Law for Christians (pp. 197 ff.), has much to commend it. The very simple methodology I suggest here is similar.

  1. Understand specific statutes and commands in the context of the Mosaic system as it should have been ideally practiced in the days of Joshua, after Israel entered the land. This takes into account the fact that under various covenants there were different laws. The times from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to Moses, from Moses to David, from David to Ezra, and from Ezra to Christ were covenantally distinct. A full understanding of Biblical Torah must take these distinctions into account,[i] not to mention the radical disjunction brought about by the New Covenant.[ii]
  2. It is only after we have gained a relatively sophisticated appreciation for Torah and its vision of a godly society in the Old Testament eras that we can translate Torah’s teaching into our new covenant situation. Though some commandments and statutes are relatively easy to understand and apply in our day, much more effort is required to envision a godly Christian society and its institutions. Since peoples have different histories and languages, there would naturally be some differences in different parts of the world, but there would be much more in common. We need to articulate our vision for a Torah-informed Christian society. We need to discuss and seek to formulate what we believe the ideal Christian society should be — the society Jesus spoke of in the Great Commission.
  3. We also, need to analyze our present cultural situation in terms of the Torah — and the rest of the Bible — to know exactly where we are. This will vary from society to society and, of course, also from age to age. But the Torah is a light with which we are to see and understand who we are individually and socially. Using the Torah as a lens through which to view and judge the world in which we live is part of our vocation.
  4. Beginning with an adequate understanding of Torah, we can articulate a vision of where we intend to go and analyze where we are now. Then, the next step is to develop strategies and tactics to get from where we are and work toward where we ought to be. This may be the most difficult aspect. Given the fact that our situations are constantly changing, this would be an ongoing effort, constantly evolving. But it is essential to realizing the Great Commission and honoring the authority of our Savior.

There is much to commend in Jonathan’s book, God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible. It is one of the most detailed, scholarly, and well-written books on Biblical law that one can find. Of course, there are a number of places in which I was not persuaded by Jonathan’s Biblical exposition, but perhaps the most basic complaint I would make is that he seems to jump to quickly from statutes, commands, and rules in the Old Testament to principles of modern application. Something like the procedure above is important, I think.

In this essay, however, I cannot address the following four specific issues in terms of the methodology outlined above — which would require a book, not a short essay. The four specific issues I wish to bring to our discussion are: 1) abortion; 2) crime and punishment; 3) the environment; 4) freedom.

1. Abortion

Jonathan wrote a 500 page book on God and justice, filled with detailed exegesis of the Bible, historical examples, analysis of the modern condition, and suggestions for Christians to implement Biblical principles in modern society. It is an outstanding achievement, but the fact that Jonathan says nothing about abortion is nothing short of astonishing. There is not greater or more egregious example of social injustice in our day. Those who are by definition and fact the most helpless members of society are being wantonly slaughtered in numbers that boggle the imagination. According to the World Health Organization, about “73 million induced abortions take place worldwide each year.”[iii] In other words, this is comparable to terminating more than the entire population of Great Britain in a single year.

Is not this a topic worth discussing in a book about Torah?

2. Crime and Punishment

Jonathan does address many matters related to crime and punishment. I agree with him that prison reform is necessary, but I would add — and perhaps Jonathan would agree — that reform is just a step in the direction of entirely eliminating prisons — which are at least as bad, if not worse, than slavery. However, we live in a world of rampant crime. Organized crime and gangs thrive. The fight against crime cannot be won unless societies are as serious as the criminals, who kill to protect their territories. Jonathan says little about capital punishment in his book, but in Biblical Torah capital punishment is a major topic.[iv] I am not suggesting that we should apply the statutes of Moses’ Torah directly to our modern situation, but I do believe that in Torah there is an underlying presupposition that certain kinds of sin and evil must be met with by extreme force, otherwise they will come to dominate.

Capital punishment for first degree murder seems like an easy start. What other crimes might deserve capital punishment should be considered and discussed. The degree of legal reform required to actually reform and eventually eliminate the prison system is immense and it is doubtful that it can be accomplished apart from the wide success of Gospel ministry. But the goal can be discussed all the same.

3. The Environment

Under this topic, I mention two matters that are vitally related, at least according to Travis N. Rieder, Associate Research Professor at the Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins: 1) climate change; 2) overpopulation.[v] In God, Justice, and Society, Jonathan gave me the impression that his thinking aligns with this, at least partially, but I may be wrong.

With respect to climate change, Jonathan does not acknowledge that the matter is a debate, not really a consensus or a conclusion. There is, for example, a scholarly work titled: The Environment: Opposing Viewpoints, which includes a chapter by Peter Huber which argues that an environmental crisis does not exist and another by John F. McManus that argues that global warming is not a serious problem. Stephen Moore claims that population growth does not cause environmental problems. In other words, these and related topics are subjects for debate among scholars. These are not issues on which we have conclusions that we can now presuppose in order to decide how Biblical Torah guides us to deal with them.

Jonathan may not have ever heard of The Population Bomb: Population Control or Race to Oblivion, written in 1968 (before Jonathan was born, I assume). I was a college student at the time and Paul Ehrlich’s apocalyptic warning hit the campus with nuclear impact. The end is near: “The battle to feed humanity is over.” He knew that overpopulation was going to kill us and it was already too late. The folly of Ehrlich and his scientific cohorts was manifest in time as the apocalyptic end did not come — much like some Christian would-be-prophets who gave us ever-revised dates on Jesus’ soon return. But the economist Julian Simon argued against the “scientific” view that in fact the planet earth was far more resourceful than Ehrlich and other pessimists presupposed and that human beings were in fact the ultimate resource.[vi] The two made a bet about how the future would unfold which is documented in detail in Paul Sabin’s book, The Bet Paul Ehrlich, Julian Simon, and Our Gamble over Earth’s Future. Needless to say, Simon won the bet.[vii]

The problem with the climate change movement is that its whole paradigm is a form of scientific soothsaying based upon computer models that can supposedly not only adequately take in sufficient data to be able to understand the earth’s vast ecosystem, but also accurately predict how it will change in the next 50 to 100 years — hubris without limit. Von Hayek’s most devastating critique of socialism was, in the opinion of many, his short book, The Fatal Conceit: the Errors of Socialism. Hayek argues that “socialist aims and programmes are factually impossible to achieve or execute; and they also happen, into the bargain as it were, to be logically impossible.”[viii] Something similar could be said about the aims and programs of the climate science soothsayers.

Sadly, Jonathan would have Christians bow the knee to the golden-global-warming-calf and follow the prophets of doom who view the future through partially omniscient computer programs and then devise draconian political programs that would certainly reduce global prosperity, but provide no real help according to Bjorn Lomborg’s book, False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.

The Christian way of telling the future is through God’s covenants and commands, not through various forms of divination (Deuteronomy 18:15ff.). Since God created the world and commanded man to fill it — a goal that will not be attained any time soon — then we should assume that it is part of our duty to have children — not to limit families to one child[ix] and certainly not to impose government regulations on procreation. What we should conclude from the Genesis command is that God created the world to sustain a human population far greater than the present, not that we need to reduce human population to fit our present ability to provide.[x]

4. Freedom

God gave Israel the Torah after rescuing them from slavery in Egypt. The Torah was to guide them in the way of love, which is also the way of freedom. The way of love and the way of freedom are fundamentally interwoven. I cannot develop the argument here, but welfare is part of this. Julian Simon predicted that population growth would not lead to the destruction of resources, but to greater prosperity. What seems perhaps like a paradox has been demonstrated historically, but the element of freedom is essential to the formula.

University of Chicago professor of economics, Deirdre McCloskey “explains how property rights and economic freedom has resulted in a dramatic explosion in overall wealth.”[xi] McCloskey writes: “Since 1800 the ability of humans to feed and clothe and educate themselves, even as the number of humans increased by an astonishing factor of seven, has risen, per human, by an even more astonishing factor of ten. Do the math, then, of total production. We humans now produce and consume seventy—7 × 10—times more goods and services worldwide than in 1800. Some people view this figure with alarm and speak of environmental degradation. But the news is mainly good. With seventy times more production, no wonder we can cultivate new economies of scale and reap their benefits through free trade. And no wonder we can harness the ingenuity of the larger population to get better antibiotics and better automobiles. No wonder we can clean up the air and the water, and turn forests into nature preserves.”[xii]

Of course, the full truth is that poverty cannot be overcome by free trade, even though world poverty was radically reduced in the decades before the recent pandemic. The fundamental causes of world poverty and oppression are four demonically false religions: 1) Hinduism; 2) Communism/socialism; 3) Islam; 4) Modern Enlightenment Paganism.[xiii] Of course, that means the fundamental cause is unbelief in the One True God. Only faith in Christ and loving obedience to His commandments can set men free and bring global peace and prosperity: “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

I look forward to reading more of Jonathan’s work on Biblical law, as well as giving due attention to Roy’s massive tome and James Bejon’s interesting work on Biblical narratives.


Ralph Smith is pastor of Mitaka Evangelical Church.


[i] See James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World (Brentwood, TN: Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989). I should also point out that Jonathan does not seem to have an adequate grasp of Biblical symbolism, something for which Jordan’s book would helpful.

[ii] See Peter J. Leithart, Delivered from the Elements of the World: Atonement, Justification, Mission (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2016).

[iii] https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/abortion WHO also estimates that about 45% of all abortions are unsafe. From the perspective of the unborn child, I would estimate that 100% of all abortions are unsafe.

[iv] It is worthy of note that Torah prescribes that there can be no capital punishment without multiple witnesses. This law presupposes two important aspects of Biblical Torah: the accused 1) is innocent until proven guilty and 2) must have a fair and open trial. Laws about the avenger of blood must somehow be put into this framework.

[v] Travis Rieder, Toward a Small Family Ethic: How Overpopulation and Climate Change are Affecting the Morality of Procreation (Springer, 2016).

[vi] The Ultimate Resource (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981).

[vii] Marian L. Tupy, “Julian Simon Was Right: A Half‐ Century of Population Growth, Increasing Prosperity, and Falling Commodity Prices” CATO Institute, February 16, 2018 • Economic Development Bulletin No. 29 https://www.cato.org/economic-development-bulletin/julian-simon-was-right-half-century-population-growth-increasing

[viii] See: Sven Rydenfelt, A Pattern for Failure : Socialist Economies in Crisis (New York: Harcourt, 1984). Present day socialist in the United States urge us to follow the same pattern for failure, but to try harder. Like the famous social critic Chris Rock says, “There is no rehab for stupidity.”

[ix] Sarah Conly, One Child: Do We Have a Right to More? (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

[x] Julian Simon, ed. The Resourceful Earth (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1984).

[xi] https://www.learnliberty.org/blog/what-caused-the-economic-boom-of-wealth/

[xii] Deirdre N. McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World

[xiii] See: Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Norton, 1966).

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