Jesus, Freedom, and Power
The Gospel vision of human dignity, private property, voluntary charity and the limits of the state
15 chapters · 80 pages · EPUB & PDF
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Christians on both sides of the argument over taxes and the poor quote the same Gospels, accurately. This book asks the texts a different question: what becomes of a gift, or of a person’s goods, once force replaces consent?
The book finds one answer, that what is taken was never given, and you can follow it from the Gospels to the Spanish theologians who argued over silver, prices and the king’s coins.
In Jerusalem the believers held everything in common, yet Peter told Ananias the land had been his before the sale and the money his after it; the offense was the lie. Paul urged the Corinthians toward equality between churches but gave no command. In 1609, after the crown stripped the silver from Castile’s small coins and restamped them at double their face value, Juan de Mariana called it a hidden tax taken without consent, and was arrested.
The book proposes no tax rate. It quotes Luke’s demand to renounce everything and Aquinas on the man in extreme need who takes what he must to survive. What you keep is a question for any reform: what does it do when the people it means to help say no?
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