[Continued from Pt. 3]

While it cannot be said that Paul the apostle was a non-expert in theology, it is plain to see that the church at Corinth was saturated with theological non-experts. Yet Paul does not shy away from teaching the Corinthians, and every subsequent Christian who would read his epistles, to logically scrutinize the heretical claim made by some professing Christians that “the dead are not raised.” He does this via demonstration by first reminding the Corinthians that anyone who professes faith in Christ necessarily believes that at least one dead man has been raised to life by God, viz. Jesus Christ. He writes –

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.1

The Corinthians professed faith in the Gospel Paul and the others preached. The content of that Gospel explicitly states that the Lord Jesus Christ died, was buried, rose from the dead on the third day, and appeared to over five hundred witnesses. To believe the Gospel is to believe that one has already been raised from the dead, namely Christ. Paul, therefore, asks the Corinthians –

…if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?2

The apostle places the proclamation of Christ as raised from the dead alongside the proclamation that “there is no resurrection of the dead,” drawing our attention to the fact that the resurrection of Christ disproves the universal negative proposition “There is no resurrection of the dead.” As he goes on to explain –

…if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.3

If there is an exception to the universal proposition, then the universal proposition is not true. Christ has been raised from the dead; therefore, the heretics’ proclamation is demonstrably false.

This would be enough for Paul to make his point, but he continues to draw out the logical consequences of the heretics’ belief that “there is no resurrection of the dead.” He writes –

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

We can translate Paul’s argument from its conversational form into the following –

If “there is no resurrection of the dead,”
then Christ was not raised from the dead.
If Christ was not raised from the dead,
then the Gospel is false.
If the Gospel is false,
then those who believe it are still in their sins.
If believers in the Gospel are still in their sins,
then their faith is in vain.
If faith in the Gospel is in vain,
then preaching the Gospel is in vain.

But Christ has been raised from the dead.
Therefore, none of the above consequences follow.

Note how significant a single proposition is in relation to the entirety of the Christian system. The heretics’ proclamation leads to the destruction of the Christian faith. Inversely, the Christian’s single instance of a resurrection in the Gospel proclamation decimates the heretics’ false proclamation.

Concluding Remarks

As we conclude this series, let us take note of some important truths. Firstly, individual propositions are not insignificant parts of the Christian faith which we can take or leave as we see fit. Every proposition has logical consequences for which we are held accountable. Secondly, therefore, we see from Scripture that if we assent to a proposition, we implicitly assent to what that proposition necessarily implies. Sadly, today there are many who identify this action as “uncharitable,” without realizing what that belief itself implies. In a word, the end result of such thinking is utter blasphemy, as is demonstrable from the following argument –

Anyone who attributes their opponent’s implied beliefs to them is acting uncharitably.
To act uncharitably is to act sinfully.
Therefore, anyone who attributes their opponent’s implied beliefs to them is acting sinfully.
Now, anyone who attributes their opponent’s implied beliefs to them is acting sinfully.
And God attributes his opponent’s implied beliefs to them.
Therefore, God is acting sinfully.

It is true that God alone is omniscient and, therefore, is infallible in any of his declarations that x implies y. However, it is equally true that the blind man of John 9 was not omniscient and yet followed the same pattern of logical scrutiny and subsequent moral criticism practiced by God the Son.

Our contemporary socio-political climate is one in which logic has fallen upon hard times, but that does not mean it is inefficient, or that it is inappropriate for every Christian’s use – whether in apologetic battle or personal meditation of the Word of God and its authoritative statements about the whole of life. We are not experts in every area of life, but we do not need to be in order to address the issues of our day. If we have a basic grasp of the elementary principles of logic, then we are capable of answering others when they ask us “What do you think?”

1 1st Cor 15:1-11.

2 1st Cor 15:12.

3 1st Cor 15:13.

Anyone vaguely familiar with the life of Christ knows that he did not shy away from asking his listeners questions. These questions played a pedagogical function, causing his listeners to reflect on what he had been teaching them. For instance, when he wanted to get his listeners to reflect on God’s care for his sheep, the Lord asked them –

“What do you think?”1

And when he wanted to get his listeners to reflect on who it is that does or not does do the will of God, the Lord Christ asked them –

“What do you think?”2

When he wanted Peter to reflect on what taxing Christ and his disciples implied, Jesus asked him –

“What do you think, Simon?”3

Jesus, knowing the Pharisees’ position on the identity of the Messiah as being merely the son of David, got his listeners to think about what the Scriptures explicitly and implicitly teach about the Son of David by asking them –

“What do you say about the Christ? Whose son is he?”4

And upon receiving their answer, went on to ask –

“How is it then that David, in the Spirit, calls him Lord…?5

“If David calls him Lord, how is he his son?”6

Unlike many people today, Christ encouraged men to think for themselves about what they were being told, as well as about the implications of their words. Although he is to be trusted immediately, without question, Christ nevertheless encouraged men to think about his teaching, to mull it over, and to think about whether or not they were willing to follow him. For instance, in the Gospel of Luke we read –

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.7

Note that thinking is directly tied to not merely decisions respecting the here and now, but to eternity as well. We find Christ doing something similar in John 6, where after he declared that only those who eat his flesh and drink his blood have life in them, asked the disgruntled disciples –

“Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?”8

Christ was getting the disciples to reflect on the nature of their relationship to him. He was getting them to think about the most important information they would ever receive, and to do so without the aid of the experts of their time – viz. the Pharisees.

In the next part of this article series, we will delve into the Scriptures respecting this matter.

[Continued in Pt. 2]

1 Matt 18:12.

2 Matt 21:28.

3 Matt 17:25.

4 Matt 22:41.

5 Matt 22:43.

6 Matt 22:45.

7 Luke 14:25-33. (emphasis added)

8 John 6:61b-62.

“Just Trust the Experts!”

One of the more troubling observable trends in online discussions today is a growing dereliction of duty with respect to critical thinking. It usually takes the form of a fallacious appeal to authority. During the present “pandemic,”1 social media is rife with fallacious reasoning of this kind, where voices of dissent are ridiculed for being “Facebook Doctors,” “Facebook Lawyers,” or “Internet Experts.”2 Along with this derisive name calling, there are typically calls for the dissenter to “trust the experts” or “let the experts do their job.” Belittling any criticism of, for instance, the actions of authorities during a wave of riots, or the claims of medical experts during a “pandemic,” superficially removes the belittler’s responsibility to love God with all of one’s mind, and love his neighbor as himself.

The problem with the appeal to authority being made is that in many cases, though admittedly not all, the criticism of the authorities in question have to do with the rational coherence of a particular idea, set of ideas, report, or series of reports. Such criticisms do not require one to be an expert on the subject being covered, seeing as in these instances the critics are deriving their data from the experts themselves. Instead, they require one to have an elementary grasp of the laws of logic, a love for the truth, and a detestation of what is false.

Logical lethargy is not a neutral practice, but is sin. As Psalm 1:1-2 declares –

Blessed is the man

who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,

nor stands in the way of sinners,

nor sits in the seat of scoffers;

but his delight is in the law of the Lord,

and on his law he meditates day and night.

The Holy Spirit tells us that the righteous man’s meditation is on God’s Word day and night, thereby implying that there is no time of the day, and no activity during that time, that is to be devoid of thinking, consideration, meditation, rumination, and examination rooted in the Word of God. Consequently, the increasingly popular retort to critics of the experts is not only immoral, but irrational. In this article, we will look at some reasons as to why this is so.

Self-Referential Absurdity

To begin with, if one can only speak about x if he is an expert on it, then this applies to his expertise rule (ER, hereafter) as well. In order for one to speak about the ER, he must be an expert on who qualifies to speak about the ER. If he is not an expert on the ER, then he cannot speak about the ER. If he is not an expert on the ER are we to simply take his word for it that the ER is a legitimate rule we must follow when discussing any subject? By declaring the legitimacy of the ER, and not being an expert himself, he would be violating the ER.

However, if one can only speak about x if he is an expert on x, this is an implicit knowledge claim about the nature of x (viz. x is of such a nature that speaking about it requires expertise). This, in turn, implies that one has to be an expert on x before he can tell others that only experts can speak on that matter. If he is not an expert on x, then he cannot speak about x.

Moreover, if one has to be an expert before he can speak about x, but the process of learning necessarily involves one speaking about x before one is an expert (e.g. forming hypotheses about x, debating former and present hypotheses about x, etc), then he could not ever become an expert on x. In fact, no one could.

If we assume the ER to be true, therefore, we have to draw the conclusion that we cannot ever convey that knowledge to others without being experts ourselves, which is, however, an impossibility. The absurdity of the ER should be plain to see here.

Category Confusion & A Fallacious Appeal to Authority

Assuming that the ER is not fraught with logical difficulties, however, there is yet another problem the belittler faces. If the critic’s argument takes for granted the expertise of the proponents of x, but finds that conclusions about x are not logically justifiable, or that statements about x are self-contradictory, then what is at issue is not the data itself but the logical coherence of the claims being made about x or x’s data. To belittle the critic for not being familiar with all the available data, when he is not making an argument against the reliability of the data presented as, and confirmed by the experts to be, “fact,” is to commit a category error by treating the critic’s argument as one being made against the factuality of the experts’ data. If the critic assumes that what is asserted about x in terms of relevant data is true, but criticizes the experts for their logical incoherence, then what must be challenged is not the critic’s knowledge regarding x but his claim that the experts’ claims are not logically coherent (i.e. they are self-contradictory) or logically justified (i.e. they have been argued for invalidly).

As mentioned at the onset of this article, moreover, the appeal to an expert in this particular case is a fallacious appeal to an expert. The reason for this is that the argument made by the critic does not depend upon his familiarity with the relevant data as a whole, but instead depends upon his familiarity with the elementary principles of sound reasoning. If the critic is wrong, in other words, he must be shown to be wrong with respect to his logical analysis. The question of his expertise in the field of x is completely irrelevant to his argument.

Theological Problems

As we bring this article to a close, we need to draw the reader’s attention to the biggest problem with the ER, namely that it results in a denial of God’s sovereignty and omniscience. That this is the case is clear when we consider that logic is, as Gordon H. Clark puts it, the way that God thinks. The laws of logic are not human constructs; they are eternal truths that stand in judgment over all of our reasoning. Thus, if an expert’s reasoning is exempt from logical scrutiny, then that expert’s reasoning is literally not subject to the rule of God, for the laws of logic are divinely revealed truths that authoritatively judge the thoughts of men as either true or false.3 This necessarily implies the blasphemous idea that there exists a class of persons over whom God cannot exercise epistemic, sovereign rulership – namely, the experts whose findings are, apparently, not subject to logical scrutiny. Put concisely –

If experts are not subject to logical scrutiny, then they are not subject to the Sovereign rule of God. But if the Sovereign rule of God does not extend to a person or group of persons, then it is not Sovereign. Thus, if the experts are not subject to logical scrutiny, this implies that God is not Sovereign.

What is more, the idea that the experts are not subject to logical scrutiny further implies that there is a class of propositions which is excluded from the judgment of the laws of logic. This is a problem because the laws of logic are formally universal in scope; they are universal knowledge claims. But if the laws of logic are formally universal in scope, but are not so materially, then they are false. And if they are false, then God, who has revealed them, is not omniscient. More concisely –

The laws of logic are divinely revealed formally universal knowledge claims. But if there is a class of propositions which cannot be judged by the laws of logic, then that class of propositions is not covered by the laws of logic. This implies that while the laws of logic are formally universal in scope, they are not materially universal in scope; and this renders them false. And if they are divinely revealed universal knowledge claims that are not truly universal, and this renders them false, then God, who revealed them to men, is not omniscient.

The problems here should be evident to the regenerate man or woman. God is Sovereign. He is Omniscient. Thus, any belief that implies he is not is false, and a demonic assault on his character. Now the belief that experts are exempt from logical analysis is one that implies that God is neither Sovereign nor Omniscient; therefore, it must be rejected as false by all Christians.

Concluding Remarks

It is neither prudent, nor loving toward one’s neighbor, nor reverent toward God to abandon logical analysis because one is not an expert on x, whatever x may be. If the experts who are speaking on x are contradicting themselves, or using fallacious arguments to draw conclusions about x, then it is your responsibility, Christian, to acknowledge they are uttering falsehoods. You don’t need to be a scholar to point out that a person is contradicting himself or arguing fallaciously. You are made in the image of God, and you have the mind of Christ. Hear what the experts have to say, grant them the benefit of a doubt when they talk about the data they’ve collected. However, if they contradict themselves, if they use fallacious argumentation to prove a point, or if they claim to be beyond the jurisdiction of logical scrutiny (which is impossible), you have a responsibility to reject their claims on that basis.

Soli Deo Gloria.

1 See Berrien, Hank. “Following Death Percentage Decline, CDC Says We’re On ‘Epidemic Threshold’,” The Daily Wire, July 7, 2020, https://www.dailywire.com/news/amid-percentage-of-deaths-having-declined-cdc-admits-coronavirus-on-verge-of-non-epidemic-status?.

2 For example, see Moe, Kristen. “COVID-19 Conspiracy Theorists Are Victims Of The Dunning-Kruger Effect,” Scary Mommy, April 24, 2020, https://www.scarymommy.com/dunning-kruger-effect/.

3 This is true respecting not merely the content of one’s thoughts (i.e. whether or not a particular proposition is true or false), but the structure of one’s reasoning as well, given that the presentation of an argument in favor of x could be reduced to the proposition – “It is the case that my argument leads to conclusion y about x.” For more on this see, Diaz, Hiram R. “The Truth Value of Valid and Invalid Inferences?,” Involuted Speculations, May 5, 2014, https://involutedgenealogies.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/the-truth-value-of-valid-and-invalid-inferences/.

The so-called corona virus (CV) pandemic has taken the world by storm.  Like many people, this author had never so much as heard the term “corona virus” until about three or four months ago.  But writing now in early May 2020, it seems as if it’s been with us forever. 

One of the barriers to thinking clearly about the CV pandemic and resulting lock down of the economy was the remarkable speed at which it all occurred.  It seemed that one day all was well, and the next that governors across the country were ordering their citizens to “shelter in place.”  It was almost as if the entire nation were sucker punched at once.  One day we were going about our business, working our jobs as we always had, and the next we were working from home or not working at all.  Who could ever have imagined such a thing as recently as the beginning of this year? 

The official narrative is that the virus is an unexpected event, originating in China.  Despite the Chinese leadership’s heroic efforts to contain it, the virus managed to spread throughout all the world.  Here in the US, Anthony Fauci is officially hailed as a hero and governors who locked down their states are thought to have taken bold action to save the nation from an even higher death count than has been reported.  They are heroes.  And the more severely they locked down their states, the more heroic they are.    

Although the rapidity at which the crisis emerged and my unfamiliarity with pandemics made analysis difficult at first, the whole CV pandemic always seemed more than a bit suspect to me.  And the longer it has gone on and the more information that has come out, the more my original suspicions have been confirmed.  Below are thirteen reason why I doubt CV narrative.

1.      Quarantining the healthy: The foolish and unbiblical policy of quarantining the healthy makes it obvious that our policymakers either do not know what they are talking about or have evil intentions.  The Bible does permit governments to quarantine the sick.  This can be seen in Leviticus chapter 13 where we read about the detailed process the priests used to determine if a man had leprosy.  It was only after the priest had declared him leprous that an individual was put outside the camp.  But there was no provision in the Mosaic law to lock up healthy people in their dwellings to prevent the spread of leprosy.  Israel as a nation was never locked down.  Applying quarantines only to the sick is an extension of the biblical view of criminal justice.  The Bible’s approach to criminal justice is one of crime punishment, not crime prevention.  In the Bible, a man was punished only after going through due process and being found guilty. There was no bureaucracy in place to punish the innocent with onerous regulations aimed at preventing crime.  Quarantining the healthy is a form of punishing the innocent and it needs to stop. 

2.      The remarkable attack on religious liberty:  It was just three weeks ago that Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear threatened Christians who attended Easter services in Kentucky with having their license plates recorded by local officials and put in quarantine (house arrest) for fourteen days.  Never has this author seen such an arrogant and sinful stance by an American governor toward Christians whose only “offense” was to obey the Biblical injunction to gather on the first day of the week to worship.    

3.      Soviet-style censorship of free speech:  In addition to the free exercise of religion, the US Constitution guarantees the right of free speech.  Yet the major social media companies have taken it upon themselves to censor content that contradicts the official narrative.  For example, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki stated in a recent CNN interview that “Anything that goes against WHO recommendations [on the CV] would be a violation of our policy and so remove is another really important part of our policy.” Likewise, Facebook says that in light of WHO’s declaring COVID-19 a global public health emergency, it will be, “taking aggressive steps to stop misinformation and harmful content from spreading.” Some will say that this is not a violation of free speech, since these YouTube and Facebook are private companies.  But the line between social media companies and the government is blurry.  For example, law professor Jonathan Turley wrote a post earlier this year titled “The Death of Free Speech: Zuckerberg Asks Governments For Instructions On ‘What Discourse Should Be Allowed.” The Atlantic published an article by Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods that the Hill described as calling for Chinese style censorship of the internet. 

4.      The destruction of economic liberty:  Government officials in the United States have forced businesses to close and put, so far, about 30 million people out of work.  This is the largest spike in unemployment in the history of our nation.  Yet the people that have been responsible for making and implementing and enforcing these policies have themselves remained conspicuously employed.  Anthony Fauci has not lost his job.  Neither has Deborah Birx or any of the dozens of governors who have locked down their states.  These actions have created extreme economic hardship for a significant part of the population, while those who are the cause of the suffering are insulated from the repercussions of their actions. 

5.      Destruction of personal liberty:  It’s shocking just how much many of the CV pandemic peddlers seem to love totalitarianism.   See, for example, Tucker Carlson’s report on Peter Walker, a former employee of the McKinsey consulting firm in China.  One clip shows Carlson raising concerns about China’s oppression of its citizens and Peter Walker responding by saying, “look at the results.”  Extraordinary.  An American business leader responding to China’s oppression of its own citizens by saying, “look at the results.”  Who would have thought we’d ever hear such a thing? The Atlantic ran a story at the end of March saying “Get Used to It:  This Lockdown Won’t Be the Last,” telling Americans that they have a future of multiple lock downs to look forward to.  All for our own good, of course. 

6.      Money printing by the Federal Reserve:  In response to the economic shut down, the Federal Reserve (the Fed) has engaged in a surge of money printing the likes of which have never been seen before.  According to this chart from the St. Louis Fed, the Fed’s balance sheet has increased by about $2.4 trillion just since February 19.  When we say that the Fed’s balance sheet has increased by $2.4 trillion, this is just a polite way of saying that the Fed has created $2.4 trillion out of nothing in the space of a little over two months.  To put that in perspective, it took the Fed about a century to create $3 trillion dollars.  That they’ve managed to do nearly that in just over two months without anyone saying much about it is remarkable to say the least.  And don’t for a minute thing the Fed’s done.  According to the very mainstream Marketwatch, the Fed could grow its balance sheet to $10 trillion by early 2021.  This unprecedented increase in the supply of money coupled with an unprecedented decrease in economic output will result in more dollars chasing fewer goods, implying unprecedented consumer price inflation.  Put in Biblical terms, this is theft.  And not only theft, but theft on a scale that is hard to comprehend.  Yet we’re told by elite propaganda outlets such as the New York Times that the expanding debt, which is made possible by the Fed’s expanding its balance sheet, is a good thing.   In truth, such policies by the Fed are both sinful and destructive of our nation.  That massive debt expansion and money printing are sold to the American people by their leaders as positively necessary for dealing the CV pandemic is good reason to suspect the entire narrative is bogus.

7.      The strange involvement of Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases with the Wuhan Institute of Virology:  According to the New York Post, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infection Diseases (NIAID) gave $7.4 million to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the lab from which the CV supposedly was released.  The New York Post article dated 4/20/2020 goes on to state that the National Institute of Health, which oversees NIAID, just shut off funding to the lab the prior week.  The financial connection between Fauci’s NIAID and the Wuhan lab is, to say the least, interesting.  Perhaps more information is forthcoming on this issue.

8.      Anthony Fauci’s Jesuit connections:  It’s remarkable how often one finds Jesuits, or men trained by the Jesuits, at the center of important events.  Jay Powell, the current Chairman of the Federal Reserve, went to law school at Jesuit Georgetown University.  Recently appointed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh attended high school at Georgetown Preparatory School, a Jesuit boys college prep school. As of the summer of 2018, Kavanaugh was a volunteer tutor and served on the board of Washington Jesuit Academy.  This bring us to Dr. Anthony Fauci.  As Berean Beacon reports, Anthony Fauci attended Jesuit schools from Our Lady of Guadalupe Grammar School in Brooklyn all the way up through his undergraduate degree from College of the Holy Cross.  Says Berean Beacon, “Today, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a position he has held since 1984.  This Jesuit trained deep state operative has been intimately involved in public affairs and policy for the past six presidential administrations.  And now the world stands at the precipice of forced vaccination at the hands of a conglomerate of church, state and science so falsely called.”  

9.      Bill Gates: The more one learns about Bill Gates, the more suspect he becomes.  The Microsoft billionaire has inserted himself in the response to the pandemic to a degree that is truly remarkable and, therefore, his actions require scrutiny.  What do we find when we look into Gates?  He’s a vaccine nut.  As a recent article by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Children’s Health Defense website tells us, “Vaccines, for Bill Gates, are a strategic philanthropy that feed his many vaccine-related businesses (including Microsoft’s ambition to control a global vaccination ID enterprise) and give him dictatorial control of global health policy.  This has prompted some people to say that Bill Gates wants to microchip you, which various fact checking websites have had a field day refuting.  But not so fast. As this report from Target Liberty tells us, Bill Gates doesn’t want to microchip you, he just wants to give you a digital tattoo to prove you’ve had all your shots.  Well, that makes me feel so much better! 

10.  Quarantining the Healthy:  The Bible teaches that there is a place for quarantining individuals who have dangerous diseases.  But if you read what the Scriptures say about quarantining, it is all about isolating the sick, not locking down the healthy.  Yet we’re told by all right-thinking people that to be safe, we must lock healthy individuals in their homes.  This inversion of the Biblical principles of quarantining is prima facie evidence that those who are running the response to CV are at best confused in their thinking.  Another possibility is that they are actively malevolent and intend to use the CV pandemic to attack Americans’ civil rights. 

11.  Worldwide, synchronized media hype:  It’s been fascinating to see the worldwide media hype surrounding the CV pandemic.  Commenting on this phenomenon during a recent interview on the Ron Paul Liberty Report, Denis Rancourt made the point that this hype appeared to be “coordinated.”   He went on to say, “I believe that there is a network that does influence the main editors of the main papers in the great number of countries and then that sets the scene so the word is given out when they want something like this [the CV hype] to just flood the mainstream media.”    

12.  Empty hospitals:  We were told that hospitals across the country would be swamped beyond capacity, but that seems not to have been the case.  In fact, far from being at overcapacity, many hospitals are laying off doctors and nurses due to lack of business.  The Washington Post, for example, reported on April 9, 2020 that “Cash-starved hospitals and doctor groups cut staff amid pandemic.”  That certainly isn’t what we were led to believe would be happening.  Military.com reports that a Seattle field hospital set up in that city closed after three days during which it saw not one single patient.  Reuters ran a story on May 1 with the headline “Little-used Navy hospital ship Comfort leaves New York after treating COVID-19 patients.” Of course, pubic officials never will admit that they were wrong. Their strategy will be to say that it was their lock down and enforcement of social distancing that accounted for the much lower than anticipated incidence of COVID-19.  But their attacks on liberty and the destructive spending by Congress and money printing by the Fed, all which evils were necessitated by the lock down, strongly suggest that their approach was not the correct one.  

13.  Suspect attribution of cause of death:  The Guardian ran a story on April 15 with the headline “New York City coronavirus death toll jumps past 10,000 in revised count.”  As it turns out, the NYC added 3,778 people to the death toll who weren’t tested but were presumed to have died of the disease.  That seems more like guesswork than anything else.  Just last week, Project Veritas ran a story saying that funeral directors in NYC were indicating that COVID-19 death statistics were being padded by falsely attributing cause of death the COVID-19.

What shall we make of all this?  It seems to me that there are two main possibilities.  First, our leaders – by leaders I’m referring not only to political leaders but to thought and business leaders as well – are simply confused.  They really do think that cracking down on free speech, locking healthy people in their homes, forcibly closing business, putting tens of millions of people out of work and having the Fed print oceans of bogus money really is the best way to deal with the CV.  Second, they know the whole lock down social distancing thing is absurd and are simply doing this as a way of conditioning people to even more stringent lock downs and social controls in the future, perhaps culminating in some sort of world government dystopian tyranny of the sort one reads about in the book of Revelation. In my opinion, the latter is a more likely scenario than the former.

This is not to say that all politicians, business leaders, journalists and academics who support the lock downs are aware of some great master plan.  But the remarkable amount of worldwide coordination going on suggests that there is some organizing agent behind the scenes.  It is possible that I could be wrong about this.  It is my opinion.  You may have a different view. Perhaps additional study will make things clearer.  But whether the lock downs and attacks on personal liberty and economic freedom just happen to have the appearance of coordination, or whether there is, in fact, a conspiracy to take away our liberties and our property, it is imperative for Christians to stand up and speak out, rebuking from the Word of God those who would encroach on our Constitution and our freedom. 

It may sound strange to some to think that the Bible can be used to fight for freedom.  But in truth, it is the Bible and the Bible alone, the sword of the Spirit as Paul calls it, that is our only sure weapon in in our fight against tyranny.            

“But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.  For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble.”

-          Jeremiah 44:17

In his book Logic, Gordon Clark noted a number of informal logical fallacies.  On page 17, he mentioned, among others, a fallacy called in Latin post hoc ergo propter hoc, or as we would say it in English, “after this, therefore because of this.” This logical error, hereafter the post hoc fallacy, involves asserting that, because event B took place after event A, that A is what caused B. 

Now it’s true that there can be a cause and effect relationship between an earlier event and a late event.  In Jeremiah 44, the prophet, speaking for God, states, “You have seen all the calamity that I have brought on Jerusalem…because of their wickedness which they have committed to provoke Me to anger.”  God makes it entirely clear in this passage that the prior disobedience of the people of Judah was the cause of his bringing judgment on Jerusalem.  We don’t have to guess at why the Babylonians leveled Jerusalem and burned the temple in 586 BC, God tells us explicitly both the cause and the effect. 

Later in chapter 44, we get the reaction from the people to whom Jeremiah was prophesying.  As it turned out, they didn’t much care for his sermon. Part of their response to Jeremiah was a classic case of post hoc fallacy.  See if you can spot it.

But we will certainly do whatever has gone out of our own mouth, to burn incense to the queen of heaven and pour out drink offerings to her, as we have done, we and our fathers, our kings and our princes, in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.  For then we had plenty of food, were well-off, and saw no trouble. But since we stopped burning incense to the queen of heaven and pouring out drink offering to her, we have lacked everything and have been consumed by the sword and by famine (Jeremiah 44:17-18).

Did I say, see if you can spot it?  Reading this passage further, it seems to me that there are two post hoc fallacies to be found.  In the first place, the people argue that their burning incense and pouring out drink offerings were the cause of their prosperity when they were in the land, when, in fact, it was God’s grace that provided for them.  Second, they attributed their current state of exile to their worshipping the queen of heaven, when, in fact, the cause of their exile was God’s punishing them for their disobedience.  

I bring up the preceding Biblical example of post hoc fallacy to introduce the main point of this post, which is to refute the linkage, put forward by mainstream financial reporters, the outbreak of the Corona virus in China is reason for the recent stock market sell off and spike in the price of gold. 

Stocks Down, Gold Up – Obviously, It’s Coronavirus!

A quick look at two headlines from Friday on CNBC will give you a good sense of just how hard the mainstream financial media is pushing the coronavirus-as-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it meme.

In the first place, CNBC wants you to believe that Friday’s, and the week’s, stock selloff was due to coronavirus.  “Dow drops more than 200 points, posts losing week as coronavirus fears resurface,” was how they put it.  Similar headlines could be found earlier in the week as well.  Now some may argue, “the headline doesn’t explicitly say, “Coronavirus causes 200-point drop in the stock market. It merely says that stocks went down as coronavirus fears went up.”  Technically, that’s true.  CNBC doesn’t make an explicit causal link between coronavirus and stocks going down.  But the intent, in my opinion, of headlines of this sort is to plant the seed in the reader’s mind that there is a cause and effect relationship at work.  Just read through the article to see what I mean.

On the same day as the headline above, CNBC ran another headline, this one reading, “Gold surges 1.5% on growing coronavirus concerns.”  Not only does coronavirus have the ability to drive down stocks, but it can cause gold to spike as well. 

In both cases, sinking stock and rising gold, CNBC is asking its readers to accept coronavirus as the cause.    First came coronavirus, then stocks went down and gold went up.  Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.

Now, am I saying that coronavirus could have no effect on stocks or gold?  After all, it appears that the illness has caused significant economic disruption in the world’s second largest economy.  Could not such a disruption cause stocks to go down and at the same time cause gold – gold is considered a “risk off” asset, one that does well when “risk on” assets such as stocks are doing poorly – to go up? Yes, it could.   

But while coronavirus could cause stocks to go down and gold to go up, it is not, in my view, the primary reason for these events.

To illustrate what I mean, consider that case of an overly indebted man who has a personal financial crisis due to an unexpected car repair bill.  The man has been living beyond his means for years, but has successfully shuffled his debts around, staying just one step ahead of bankruptcy.  Now ask yourself, was the unexpected car repair the reason this fellow suddenly found himself in financial dire straits, or was it the years of profligate living?  I would argue that it was the years of profligacy that were the real cause.  The unexpected car repair bill was just the thing the happened to expose the underlying problem, one that had been building for a long time before his car suddenly had mechanical problems.

In like fashion, the West’s financial system has been deteriorating for years, while at the same time stocks are hitting record highs and safety assets such as gold and silver are, comparatively speaking, performing very poorly.  In the opinion of this author, this is an artificial situation.  Stocks, in fact, should be much lower, while gold and silver should be much higher.  A better explanation for the current stock market troubles and breakout in the gold price is required. 

 It’s the Fed! It’s the Fed! It’s the Fed!

I mentioned above that the current valuation of the stock market is artificial, that is to say, it is not based on market forces.  Stocks aren’t the only asset in a bubble, either.  At the same time, we have a stock market bubble, we also have a bond market bubble and a housing bubble.  There are so many assets in bubble territory – by bubble, I simply mean the assets in question are overvalued - that some financial observers are calling it the “everything bubble.” 

In the late 90’s we had the tech bubble.  Any stocks with .com in their name immediately shot up to stratospheric valuations, only to come crashing down in 2000.  In the 00’s, we had the housing bubble, when real estate zoomed up in value, only to tank in 2008 during the financial crisis.  In fact, the 2008 crisis was closely related to the popping of the housing bubble.     Now we have the everything bubble, with stocks, bonds and real estate all at record valuations. 

So how is it possible to have so many markets in bubble territory?  The root cause of the everything bubble is the same as that of the .com and housing bubbles – it’s the Fed. 

Ever since the 2008 crises, the Fed, together with the Plunge Protection Team (PPT) and the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF), has used its enormous power and influence, not only to prop up favored markets, but to suppress those out of favor.  It has done this through money printing – quantitative easing, or QE – market manipulation – some of the Fed’s manipulations are overt, such as cutting interest rates, while some of them are covert and speculative; for example, a recent headline in ZeroHedge reported that then Fed Chairman Janet Yellen said in 2017 that the Fed “might be able to help the U.S. economy in a future downturn if it could buy stocks and corporate bonds”; what are the odds this is already going on in secret? -  and good old fashioned propaganda. 

So what’s the problem with market rigging?  There are several, one of the most pernicious of which is this:  Once you start rigging, you can’t stop.  Market rigging, you see, is a lot like telling a lie.  Just as you can’t tell only one lie, so too you can’t just rig one market.  Rather, you have to rig all markets. 

If you want to create the (false) perception that the economy is doing great, you have to push up stocks and housing.  The most effective way to push up stocks and housing is to artificially support the bond market.  The Fed, by purchasing bonds through QE, artificially raises the price of bonds, which has the effect of artificially lowering bond yields.  When bond yields are held down, this pushes cash into the stock market where it can find a better return than it can in the bond market.  Lowering bond yields also lowers the interest rate of home loans, making it easier for people to borrow more money to buy a house.  More money flowing into the housing market means higher housing prices. 

At the bottom of all this is Fed money printing.  If the Fed did not have the ability to create money out of nothing and then to use that newly created (counterfeited) money to purchase US Treasuries (and quite possibly other assets), stocks, bonds and real estate would all be much lower.

But as was mentioned above, once the Fed started on its program of market manipulation – the Fed’s market manipulation began in earnest with the 2008 crisis, but it had been going on for at least 20 years before that – it found it could not stop. 

Market rigging, you see, is a bit like having the proverbial tiger by the tail - Once you grab it, you can’t let go or you get eaten.  Likewise, once the Fed started rigging markets, it found it couldn’t stop.    

This is not for lack of trying.  Beginning in December 2015, the Fed started to inch up interest rates up from 0%.  This program went on through December 2018, at which point the markets crashed.  This prompted Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to convene an emergency meeting of the PPT  on December 24, 2018.  Remarkably, when markets reopened the day after Christmas, the Dow shot up a record 1,100 points.  But if you think this was the PPT’s doing, you’re a conspiracy theorist. 

Almost immediately after the December 2018 market crash, Fed Chairman Jay Powell announced the reversal of the Fed’s policy of raising interest rates as well as an end to its Quantitative Tightening (QT) program of selling long dated US Treasuries.

Today the Fed once again is in full QE mode and, very likely, will be lowering interest rates in March.

As Proverbs tells us, “Treasures of wickedness profit nothing,” and, “Wealth gained by dishonesty will be diminished.”  In like fashion, while all the Fed’s machinations so far have been successful at propping up stocks and housing, these artificially inflated markets are very unstable and susceptible to crashing.  All it takes is for some unexpected event, a virus outbreak for example, to undo them. 

It’s not the cornovirus that’s the cause of our current bout of financial instability, it’s the Fed.

 Gold and Silver Suppressed

As mentioned above there are any number of financial assets that are now in bubble territory.  But two that decidedly are not are gold and especially silver. This is not an accident.  Just as the powers-that-shouldn’t be artificially inflate the value of favored assets, so too do they suppress the value of assets they don’t like, precious metals.  Gregory Mannarino, a trader and YouTuber whose work I follow, refers to these monetary metals as being in an “inverse bubble.”  That is to say, he believes their value is being artificially held down, and by the same people who seek to artificially inflate stocks, bonds and real estate. 

But just as artificially inflated bubbles in stocks, bonds and real estate are unstable, so too are inverse bubbles in gold and silver. 

Rather than seeing gold going up due to coronavirus, a more likely explanation is that the rise in gold is due to Fed money printing.  Gold started a major bull run as priced in US dollars around the end of May 2019, long before anyone had even heard of coronavirus.  Not only was this in response to the Fed’s actions to that point, but many observers think the smart money anticipated the Fed’s bailout of the banks via its program of supporting the Repo Market, which began in September and  is still ongoing.  

So Why Are They Pushing the Coronavirus Meme? 

If it’s true what I’ve said, that the problems in the stock market and the rise in gold are due, not to the coronavirus, but to the activities of the Fed, why is the media pushing the coronavirus meme? 

The answer:  The mainstream media’s main job is not to inform you, but to misinform you.

You see, fellow deplorables, we’re not supposed to know the secrets of the high priests at the Fed.  They are our betters.  They are our masters.  Our job, like ordinary Roman Catholics before the Reformation, is to accept what our masters at the Fed and in the media say, with implicit faith.  That is to say, our job is to take what they tell us at face value and never, ever ask uncomfortable questions. 

The masters of the universe have an unspoken rule: Whenever there’s an economic problem, a fall guy is needed.  The Fed must never be blamed.

Back in the 70’s there was a terrible bout of inflation that was the result of President Nixon pulling the plug on the Bretton Woods accord in 1971.  Even as a young boy, I remember hearing all the excuses for rising prices.  It was the oil sheiks of OPEC.  It was frost in the orange groves in Florida.  It was droughts, hurricanes and hailstorms. 

Anything but the truth, Fed money printing.

Think about that famous scene in the Wizard of Oz, where Toto goes and pulls back the curtain hiding the “Wizard” in his control booth.  “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,” bellows the Wizard, trying desperately to keep Dorothy and friends from discovering that the Wizards was no Wizard at all, but just a man with a lot of special effects at hand.

That’s exactly the way we’re treated. 

And it doesn’t matter what your political persuasion is, either.

You could be the bluest of blue Bernie Bros who hangs on every word Rachel Maddow speaks.  Watch her program for years if you will.  Listen to all of Bernie’s stump speeches several times over.  You’ll hear them talk about income and wealth inequality, but you’ll never once hear them pin it on the real culprit, the Fed.

You could be the reddest of red staters, owning multiple MAGA hats and never missing a minute of Sean Hannity.  Yet you’ll never once hear him talk about the role the Fed plays in creating price inflation and how its policies have caused stagnant wages and reduced living standards for the very people Donald Trump claims to represent, ordinary working Americans.    

Even if you’re a middle of the roader and stick to mainstream network news, it’s the same sorry state of affairs.  Watch the evening news for decades on end if you will, but you’ll never learn a thing about how the Fed creates money from nothing and hands it out to its friends and how you pay for it.

These omissions are not by accident.  They are by design. 

The powers that shouldn’t be are quite happy that people are ignorant of the games the Fed plays and they want to make sure people stay that way.

Flooding the airwaves with false explanations of financial market activity is how they keep people in the dark. 

It’s not the coronavirus.  It’s the money printing.

It’s the Fed.     

It’s the Fed.

It’s the Fed.

All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean:  he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be.

-          Leviticus 13:46

"We haven't faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years - we are at war. In the time of war, we must make sacrifices, and I thank all of our Ohio citizens for what they are doing and what they aren't doing. You are making a huge difference, and this difference will save lives," said Governor DeWine. "Right now, we are in a crucial time in this battle. What we do now will slow this invader so that our healthcare system will have time to treat those who have contracted COVID-19 and also have time to treat those who have other medical problems. Time is of the essence." Thus reads the announcement on the Ohio.gov website where the state’s Stay At Home Order is also listed. 

Clearly, Governor DeWine takes the coronavirus [the Ohio.gov website calls it COVID-19] outbreak very seriously.  Note the repeated use of military terminology in the quote above.  We are told that “We haven’t faced an enemy like we are facing today in 102 years” [apparently, this is a reference to the 1918 outbreak of the Spanish Flu]…“we are at war”…“In time of war”…”we are in a crucial time in this battle”…”What we do now will slow this invader.”

With all this military terminology, one wonders when the Governor plans to institute a draft.  Then on second thought, in a way, he already has.  As the website notes, beginning March 23, 2020 at 11:59 p.m. Ohioans are under a Stay At Home Order.  This order is effective until 11:59 p.m. on April 6, 2020 “unless the order is rescinded or modified.”  This order applies to everyone, and as of this writing on March 29, no recension or modification of this order has been announced.  So in a way, all Ohioans already have been drafted into the Governor’s war. 

One question that seems not to have been asked in the wake of Governor DeWine’s announcement is, on what authority does he give this order?  Reading through the order, one finds that it contains provisions that shutter a not insignificant portion of the businesses within the state.  What is the legal basis for the Governor’s order?

One possible answer is that Ohio has adopted some form of “Medical Martial Law” legislation that was propagated in the wake of the Swine Flu pandemic in 2009.  Researcher James Corbett produced a video back in 2009 related to the Swine Flu pandemic which he titled Medical Martial Law and which dealt with the legislative response that followed the outbreak of that pandemic.  In his video, Corbett states that something called “The Model State Emergency Health Powers Act” was drafted by the Center for Law and the Public’s Health at Georgetown University (Jesuits) and Johns Hopkins University.  According to the website of The Centers for Law & the Public’s Health, the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act (MSEHPA) “grants public health powers to state and local public health authorities to ensure a strong, effective, and timely planning, prevention, and response mechanisms to public health emergencies (including bioterrorism) while also respecting individual rights.” 

The website boasts that forty-four states have adopted MSEHPA in whole or in part, but, curiously, Ohio is not listed among them.  Neither was I able to find anything on other websites linking MSEHPA to Ohio.  That being the case, this model legislation, as dangerous as it is, apparently is not the basis for the Governor’s actions.

According to the language in the Order itself, the basis for the Order is R.C. [Revised Code] 3701.13 which allows the Director of the Ohio Department of Health to “make special orders…for preventing the spread of contagious or infectious diseases.”  

That said, although he doesn’t come out and say it directly, Governor DeWine and Dr. Amy Acton (Ohio’s Director of Health) seem eager for the public to see the Stay At Home Order as some form of Medical Martial Law.  This can be seen from the Governor’s own words, laden as they are with military terminology.        

Are Quarantines Biblical?

As Christians, we must always ask ourselves “What do the Scriptures say?” when thinking through the circumstances we come across in our lives.  This includes the words and actions of civil magistrates.  In this case, let us start by asking this question, are quarantines biblical? 

The short answer to this question is, yes, they are.  We know this from the Law of Moses which details procedures for placing in quarantine those diagnosed with certain illnesses or those who have become ceremonially unclean for some reason.  There are many such passages in the Old Testament Law.  Here is one example:

And the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron saying, “When a man has on the skin of his body a swelling, a scab, or a bright spot, and it becomes on the skin of his body like a leprous sore, then he shall be brought to Aaron the priest or to one of his sons the priests. The priest shall examine the sore on the skin of the body; and if the hair on the sore has turned white, and the sore appears to be deeper than the skin of his body, it is a leprous sore. Then the priest shall examine him, and pronounce him unclean. But if the bright spot is white on the skin of his body, and does not appear to be deeper than the skin, and its hair has not turned white, then the priest shall isolate the one who has the sore seven days. And the priest shall examine him on the seventh day; and indeed if the sore appears to be as it was, and the sore has not spread on the skin, then the priest shall isolate him another seven days. Then the priest shall examine him again on the seventh day; and indeed if the sore has faded, and the sore has not spread on the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him clean; it is only a scab, and he shall wash his clothes and be clean. But if the scab should at all spread over the skin, after he has been seen by the priest for his cleansing, he shall be seen by the priest again. And if the priest sees that the scab has indeed spread on the skin, then the priest shall pronounce him unclean. It is leprosy” (Leviticus 13:1-8).

Individuals who were unclean were pronounced unclean by the priest and were required to dwell outside the camp.

“Now the leper on whom the sore is, his clothes shall be torn and his head bare; and he shall cover his mustache, and cry, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’ He shall be unclean.  All the days he has the sore he shall be unclean.  He is unclean, and he shall dwell alone; his dwelling shall be outside the camp” (Leviticus 13:45-46).

It’s worth noting that Jesus himself gave implied support to the Levitical quarantine laws in the account of his healing the ten lepers in Samaria.  Luke tells us in 17:11-19 that, upon being implored by ten lepers to heal them, Jesus told them to go and show themselves to the priests, which was in accordance with the laws concerning leprosy set forth in Leviticus chapter 13. 

There are other examples of quarantines in Scripture, but the citations above are enough to show that quarantines themselves are not in conflict with the Bible’s teachings.

Is Ohio’s Stay At Home Order Biblical?

Although we have shown that quarantines have Biblical support, this does not necessarily mean that all quarantines meet the standards of Scripture.  So let’s ask another question, is Ohio’s stay at home order biblical? 

In the opinion of this author, the answer is no.  Not because quarantines themselves are wrong, but because Ohio’s Stay At Home Order, which is a type of quarantine, applies too broadly.  In an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus, the Governor and Health Director have drafted an order that applies to all individuals regardless of whether they exhibit symptoms of coronavirus or have even been tested for the disease. 

One way of illustrating my point is to look at the Bible’s view of criminal justice.  Ask yourself this question, is the Bible’s stance on criminal justice one of crime punishment or crime prevention?  The correct answer is crime punishment. Although I do not have the reference handy, this point was brought up in a lecture by John Robbins, and my remarks on the Bible’s view of criminal justice are drawn from his comments. 

According to Robbins, the Bible focuses on crime punishment.  In the Law of Moses there are many clear statements concerning the civil law.  There were commandments on what people were to do and not to do as well as civil punishments for those who violated the law.  Worth noting, although all violations of the Law of God were sinful, not all were crimes. Put another way, some sins were also crimes.  The way you can tell the difference is whether there are civil penalties – e.g. restitution in the case of theft, death in cases of murder - attached to them.  Those violations of the law that did not have civil penalties, while sinful, were not crimes. 

But while there were laws set forth for the punishment of crimes in ancient Israel, there was no bureaucratic regulatory body set up to punish the innocent by burdening them with regulations designed to prevent crime.  For example, murder was prohibited in the Ten Commandments but there was no government Sword Control Administration that, in the name of preventing murder, required people to register their swords with the government or prevented people from owning them.

If a man was accused or murder, the Law provided for due process for the accused.  If found guilty, the law also provided for the punishment of the guilty individual.  That was all. 

Israel’s quarantine laws were similar.  To be quarantined, one first had to show himself to a priest for examination.  The Law laid out in great detail the process the priest was to go through, and it was only after all the steps in the process had been followed that a man could be declared unclean and quarantined outside the camp.  There were no general quarantines announced in the name of preventing disease.  Only those who were determined to be infected after the priest had followed due process were quarantined.       

The Dangers of Ignoring Due Process

Due process is a bulwark against arbitrary government.  Going back to the Biblical laws concerning leprosy.  Suppose for a moment that the priestly examination process did not exist or was circumvented.  One can easily see how the leprosy statue could become a political weapon.  All one would have to do to have his enemy put outside the camp would be to accuse him of having leprosy, present him to a priest that was a little shady or on the take, and have him declared unclean.

In like fashion, there are those who today are greatly concerned, this author among them, that giving governments the power to shut down private businesses and essentially put people under house arrest who have never received due process to show that they are ill or are carriers of a communicable disease represents a step toward tyranny.  

Now some may argue that the Governor has no intention of being a tyrant and has only the best motives.  Even so, there is a problem.  Going back to the Biblical example of identifying lepers, even if someone accused his neighbor of having leprosy, not having hated him in times past, and even if the priests were honest and not greedy for a bribe, lack of due process in examining possible lepers would almost certainly result in people being put outside the camp who did not deserve to be so treated.  This would represent a gross injustice to them and possible financial and social ruin for the rest of the family as well. 

Although I do not have estimates of how many people have been put out of work or owners who have had their businesses restricted or closed by the Governor’s Order, the number must be significant.  According to the order,

All places of public amusement, whether   indoors or outdoors, including, but not limited to, locations with amusement rides, carnivals, amusement parks, water parks, aquariums, zoos, museums, arcades, fairs, children's play centers, playgrounds, funplexes, theme parks, bowling alleys, movie and other theaters, concert and music halls, and country clubs or social clubs shall be closed.

Even businesses that are allowed to remain open have had restrictions placed on them.  For example, I had to pay a visit to my local computer store.  Upon arrival, I found on the door of the establishment that the store was prohibited from allowing more than thirty customers in the store at once.  This meant that the store had to pay associates to organize incoming customers in a way that would comply with this order rather than going about their normal duties.  Most likely, the store’s sales are being negatively impacted.  Further, customers were forced to bear the cost of waiting in line and of delays in completing their purchases. 

Now you may argue that this is a minor inconvenience, but multiply this statewide and the cost of complying with this new regulation is probably not small.     

Not Just an Ohio Problem

I have written in some detail about Medical Martial Law as it has been applied in the State of Ohio, because it’s where I live.  Many other states have similar or even more restrictive laws concerning the coronavirus outbreak. 

Just this weekend, President Donald Trump let it be known that he was thinking about imposing a quarantine on the states of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.  Politico reports that the measure would have been “an enforceable quarantine.” While it’s not clear what is meant by “enforceable quarantine,” it appears to mean severely restricting movement in and out of these states.  New York Governor Andrew Cuomo seemed to take it that way, asserting that the idea amounted to a “declaration of war on states.”

Outside the U.S. things aren’t any better.  Several countries in Europe have been locked down as has been Australia.

Closing Thoughts

The focus of this post has been to discuss one aspect of the governmental response to coronavirus that has received little attention from pundits, namely, it is an attempt to answer the question, what do the Scriptures say about quarantines? 

In the opinion of this author, there is a strong case to be made from the Bible that quarantines are permitted.  But this is not to say that all quarantines meet with biblical guidelines.  As the biblical approach to criminal justice is one of crime punishment, not crime prevention, so too the biblical standard for quarantine is disease “punishment” not disease prevention.   As one does not regulate society to prevent crime, thus punishing the innocent, so too one does not quarantine everyone, including the healthy, to prevent the spread of disease.  Just as in biblical criminal justice, punishment is meted out only after due process is given to the accused, so too the biblical approach to quarantine is to isolate only those individuals who have been found to carry the disease.  If it is unjust to punish the innocent along with the guilty, so too is it unjust to quarantine the healthy along with the sick.  Yet governments to a large degree have opted to do just this, quarantine the healthy along with the sick.  This is unjust.