7djengo7
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And have you decided just how you will you be answering your prayer to yourself, Pharisee? That is to say, just how do you intend to "help" me, "God"?
What is Money? - Sep 2, 2025
- Thread starter Sherman
- Start date
7djengo7
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Where does Jesus say Caesar owned the coin? Nowhere. Jesus doesn't say Caesar owned the coin. He doesn't even say Caesar owns the image or the superscription on the coin.
Do you think George Washington owns all one-dollar bills that have ever been printed? And, that Abe Lincoln owns all five-dollar bills that have ever been printed? Some of the books of history in my library contain pages imprinted with images of Washington, Lincoln, many other U.S. presidents, and many other historical figures; in the case of one of such books which happens to feature both an image of Washington and and image of Lincoln, which one of those two men is the owner of such a book? Washington or Lincoln? Correct: Neither Washington nor Lincoln owns that book; it's my book; I bought it, therefore I own it. Just the same, I own each and every one-dollar bill in my pocket, and George Washington owns none of them, notwithstanding the fact that each one of them features a portrait of him and printed text of his name.
One self-defeating stupidity of claiming Caesar owned all the coins minted in the Roman Empire is that you now have yourself under a burden to account for why Caesar would ever want to resort to minting debased denarii. Why would he want to lower the silver content of what you claim he owned?
What do you mean? What of God's have you "given back to" Him?
Excellent point!
Not only does the act of debasement contradict the idea that Caesar owned the coins, it exposes the fact that the state had to extract value from its citizens in order to function. That alone proves the coins were not just property but tools of exchange whose value was rooted in public trust and use, and that the value they represented was real (that is, not arbitrarily decided for no objective reason at all). Caesar didn’t need to stretch his own silver; he needed to stretch the silver he could get from others. That makes sense only if the coins were already in circulation as instruments of market value, not personal possessions of the emperor.
In actual fact, any government requires a functioning economy to exist because the government is a near perfect consumer, which is to say that it does not produce anything but only converts the production of its citizens into the machinery of state, including a legislature, infrastructure, a military, the court system, and police force. Such governmental services provide real value, but the state does not produce that value itself; it redirects what others have produced by way of spending the taxes it has collected from those who do produce real value. If there is no economic activity to tax, the government has nothing to pay troops, build roads, or enforce laws. So when Caesar debased the currency, he was not manipulating his own money, he was manipulating the value that others depended on, because the state's survival hinges on extracting real value from real production.
Indeed, if Caesar were smart, he would never have debased the nation's currency because it dilutes the ability of the citizens to create wealth, and by extension, his own ability to collect taxes and thus to finance his government and sustain his own power. This almost parasitic relationship that governments have with a nation's economy is, in fact, the reason why governments get into the business of minting money in the first place. A secure money system is the basis for a thriving economy and, by extension a powerful government. Generations later, when the government begins to debase that currency, they fail to realize (or if they do realize it, they do not seem to care) that they are washing the ground out from under their own foundation.
What is an economy?
An economy is simply the system by which people produce, trade, and consume things of value. It includes the labor, resources, and ingenuity that go into making goods and providing services, along with the exchange of those goods and services in a way that allows needs to be met and wealth to be built. Whether simple or complex, an economy exists wherever human effort is being directed toward creating real value and exchanging that value for the value produced by others.
So, put more simply, men serving one another?
Idolater
"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Thoughtful and provocative question. Broadly speaking, it seems that economy is a catchall for all human activity that doesn't fall under certain other descriptions, such as law enforcement, war, legislating, scientific inquiry, etc. As such economics as a field is a very far-reaching discipline.
The term "serving" seems to not quite fit. It is people profiting from one another, but that isn't the same thing. An economy is about mutual trade, by mutual consent for mutual benefit. If there isn't anything in it for one party, the needs or wants of the other party usually don't, and usually shouldn't, come into it. One party's needs are not a claim check on the resources or production of another.
Do people get their needs met via a functioning economy? Sure, but not because other people are their servants or because of any systemic charity. People get their needs met by paying someone to meet them. It is the need that creates the value of certain products and services. Some might choose to give charitably to people that they see are in need, but that happens as a result of a functioning economy, not as an endemic part of it.
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