To Caesar what is his and to God his and to God that which that which is God's

The Pharisees, anxious to entrap Jesus in His speech, sent to him their followers along with the Herodians, who were supporters of Rome, to pose this question:

"Is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not?"

In those days, "tribute" was something different from the income tax paid by our free citizens today. Tribute implied subjugation; it was a contribution exacted of the vanquished by the conqueror. (Rome had conquered Palestine by force of arms.)

Our Lord answered by first exposing the trap prepared by the Pharisees.

"Why do you tempt me, ye hypocrites?"

He then asked them to show him the coin of tribute on which was engraved the profile of Caesar. Then He said to them:

"Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and to God, the things that are God's."

Within bounds

Those who quote this portion of the Sacred Text, usually do so for the purpose of supporting the obligation to pay taxes and other such levies. And they do so with the greatest of eloquence. For the most part, moreover, they stop at the first part of the text that which concerns Caesar. The latter part, concerning God, is usually passed over in silence, so much are these speakers preoccupied with the importance of Caesar today.

What is more, it is unusual to hear these speakers comment on the limitative nature of this first part of the text as shown in the words, "the things that are Caesar's. And those things which are Caesars's are indeed limited, bounded. For Caesar does not possess everything. He has not the right to everything which comes forth from man. If the sense of what our speakers say is to be interpreted rightly, then whatsoever Caesar demands must be accorded to Caesar.

It is also the practice of Caesars to develop a hearty appetite for things without too much thought as to whether or not there might be certain things which are due to those they milk.. Now, as is evident, Caesar is the government. Or rather, the governments, for there are as many Caesars as there are grades in the political structure of a country. In Canada we have municipal Caesars, provincial Caesars and federal Caesars. And from the trend of world politics, it won't be long before we are afflicted with a supranational Caesar with universal jurisdiction, the Caesar to crown the vast pyramid of Caesars.

The result of this hierachy of Caesars, stretching up and up, has been the exacting of more and more, and larger and larger "tributes"; the ears of these Caesars have become more and more distant from the voices of the people, while their sticky fingers reach down into every strata of society, attaching themselves to every bit of revenue, to every gain, squeezing all they can from every economic transaction.

But does something become "of Caesar" by the mere fact that Caesar demands it as his?

The limits of Caesar's power

In a speech delivered in the House of Commons last July 5 during the debate on the Bill of Rights, the lawyer, Noel Dorion, member from Bellechasse (and for some months now a member of the federal cabinet) quoted the reply of Jesus to the Herodians. However, Mr. Dorion was not arguing in favor of taxes. On the contrary, the matter in question at Ottawa that day was the rights of man and not those of Caesar. Mr. Dorion had this very trenchant comment to make.

It is Christ who first really set forth a charter of human liberties, summing it up in these concise and illuminating words which after two thousand years preserve an astonishly modern character: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's.

Would that the member from Bellechasse had developed this thought a little further. But considering the subject of the debate there is no question but that Mr. Dorion wished to say that man, the human person, belongs to God and not to Caesar; that Caesar has not the right to encroach upon that which belongs to God; that Caesar must respect the rights of each citizen, including the right to life, the right to those conditions which will permit the full development of his personality. The rights of Caesar are limited by the prior rights of the human individual.

In a lecture given at Melbourne in 1956, and later reproduced in pamphlet form, Eric Butler, the Australian journalist and Social Crediter, quoted Lord Acton:

"When Christ said: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's, he conferred upon the state a legitimacy which it had never before enjoyed, and he imposed limits which had never before been recognized. Then he was not satisfied to ennunciate the precept, but he forged the weapon to enforce it. To limit the power of the State ceased to be the hope of patient and ineffective philosophies and became the perpetual charge of the universal Church."

What Lord Acton meant was that the Church of Christ has the duty of seeing to it that Caesar does not overstep the bounds of his rights. This function of the Church was exercised, and acknowledged, in the Christian centuries; and it was responsible for stopping many Caesars - little Caesars, medium size ones and the great ones - from governing as absolute dictators over the people under their jurisdiction. Eric Butler then went on to comment to the effect that Christianity had arrived at the point where not only were the clergy not working to limit the power of the State, but were actively participating in plans for the reform of society which would increase this power. He charges that any enlarging or increasing of the power of the state or of monopolizing groups, regardless of the arguments used to justify them, leads inevitably to the restriction of the development of the individual, through the deprivation or limitation of his liberty.

The human individual before Caesar

Acton and Butler, like Noel Dorion, see in the words of Christ, the limitation of Caesar's power rather than a justification for the imposition of any and every form of taxation. This is evident because they have gone to great pains to quote and to emphasize the whole of the text:

Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.

To Caesar what is Caesar's no more than that and everything does not belong to Caesar.

It was precisely to protect the citizen against the power-hungry Caesar, to make Caesar the guardian of the citizens'rights in principle, at least that, last August 4, our federal parliament unanimously voted the Bill of Rights, incomplete though it is.

In presenting this bill on July 1, Mr. Diefenbaker himself stressed its end: "To maintain and safeguard the liberty of the individual from the governments, even the all-powerful." Why? because the individual, the human person is sovereign to Caesar.

Pope Pius XI said in his encyclical, Divini Redemptoris:

"The human person ought to be placed in the first rank of earthly realities."

That is to say, the human person ranks before every other institution, before any Caesar, regardless of who he may be.

The federal member from Sherbrooke, Maurice Allard, during this same debate on the Bill of Rights, remarked:

"The individual should not become an instrument or the victim of the State, but rather it is the State which, by its legistation, should favor the numerous liberties of man."

Consequently, Caesar has no right to despoil the indivdual, to deprive him of the necessities of life, nor to allow him to be deprived of such. The member from Inverness-Richmond, R. S. MacLellan, is no less categorical in support of this position:

"The individual comes before the State. The only end of government is to guarantee individual liberties."

These declarations by political men lead us to believe that it is not because of ignorance of principles, but rather through lack of their application in legislation that all the Caesars, federal, provincial and municipal, have come to manipulate, all too often, the individual, to push him around, deprive him of what is his, drive him into a state of want, when all the time such Caesars were constituted to fill roles the very opposite of those they play.

Caesar's share

Still, we must render unto Caesar that which is his. Yes, we must give him, not everything he wants or is capable of seizing, but those things which are his.

And what does belong to Caesar? We think that we can define what is his in this fashion: Everything which is necessary to Caesar in order that he may exercise his proper functions.

And it would seem that this definition is implicitly admitted by the government itself, Caesar, when it replies to those who complain of the heavy load of taxation: the more the people demand of the government, the more the government must ask for in order to meet these demands.

This is true. But in order to fulfill its role Caesar should not have recourse to those means which impede or prevent individuals and families from performing their proper functions.

Moreover, Caesar is always subjected to the temptation in order to add to his own importance of laying hold of functions and roles which strictly belong to the domain of families and other organisms sometimes called inferior to it. Such functions are not properly those of Caesar. Again, citizens would have much less need to go running to Caesar if the latter would remove the one great obstacle which he definitely has the power to suppress, that artificial obstacle created by a financial system which is completely out of harmony with the immense potentialities to satisfy all the normal material needs of individuals and families everywhere in the land.

Because Caesar does not correct this great wrong, a redressment which he alone can accomplish, he moves out of the role which is properly his, accumulates other functions, and takes it upon himself to impose heavy, often ruinous obligations upon citizens and families. Thus he becomes the instrument of a financial dictatorship and the oppressor of citizens and families, when in fact, he exists for the sole purpose of protecting the rights of such citizens and families.

The life of the individual does not belong to Caesar but to God. It is a good over which God alone has rights - for not even the individual himself has the right to take his own life or to endanger its welfare, deliberately. And if Caesar, by his exacting demands, threatens the welfare of the individual's life by placing him such conditions that his days are shortened, then Caesar takes hold of that which is not his but belongs to God alone.

The individual person and the family are the creations of God. Caesar may not harm or destroy these works of God. On the contrary, he is under the strictest obligation to protect the interests of these works, to defend them against anyone who might seek to endanger them.

To take from a family the roof which shelters it because it cannot pay taxes is to go against the vital interests of this family. It is to operate against God. Caesar has not got this right. And the similar wrongs and violations of rights which might be mentioned are almost without number!

Meeting Caesar's needs

But still Caesar has certain functions to perform, functions which cannot be given to individuals. There are many services and products which we can get only through Caesar for example, an army to protect the country in case of attack, a police force to protect the citizens against the lawless, the work of building roads and bridges, of maintaining communications between the different parts of the country. Caesar must have the means of maintaining these services and of furnishing these goods to the people.

This much is true. But what does Caesar need in order to furnish them? He needs human resources and material resources. He must be able to employ men and to make use of materials, of the means of power and of the other means of production.

Caesar has need of a share in the productive capacity of the country. And under a democratic regime it is for the elected reprensentatives of the people to determine what part of the country's productive capacity is to be diverted to Caesar's needs.

If we face the facts squarely, there is no difficulty in admitting that Caesar can be allotted a part of the country's production while still leaving an abundance for meeting the normal needs of the individual citizen.

Let us employ the word "tax", not in its narrow sense, but in the sense of "making a contribution". Then it can be said that private needs, like public needs, tax the productive capacity of the country - cause it to contribute to these needs. When I ask for a pair of shoes I tax the capacity of the country to produce shoes. When the provincial Caesar builds a mile of road it taxes the capacity of the country to produce a mile of road. Modern production being what it is, it is most unlikely that the construction of roads is likely to hinder the production of shoes.

It is only when we stop considering the situation in terms of reality and start looking at them in terms of money that we begin running into difficulties and problems. The tax then takes on another aspect and bears down in another place: the pocketbooks of the people. If Caesar taxes my revenue $15 as a contribution for this road then he takes from me the equivalent of a pair of shoes in order to construct this route. But why should this be so since the productive capacity of the country is quite capable of building the road without depriving me of a pair of shoes?

Why? Because the money system falsifies the facts.

But, you will say, Caesar must pay the men he employs. He must pay the producer of materials for what materials he needs and uses. Most assuredly he must. But "to get down to brass tacks", what does he do in effect when he pays, let us say, an engineer $100? He gives this engineer the means of drawing on the country's capacity for production to the extent of $100 in goods and services. Is it necessary, absolutely necessary, in order to give this engineer a share in the country's goods and services, to deprive me of a pair of shoes? Can the productive machinery of the country not supply the needs of the engineer without reducing the production of shoes?

That is the whole question in a nutshell. As long as the productive capacity of the country has not been exhausted there is no need to tax the private class of society in order to support the public sphere.

Now, the productive capacity of the country is far from exhausted when the big problem of the day is precisely to find work for willing hands and operations for the most perfected machinery to perform.

If the means of paying create a problem it is because they are at odds with the means of production. The means for drawing on the productive capacity of the country are certainly much inferior to the actual and potential production of the land.

This lack of the means to pay is something unjustifiable, especially today when the money system is in effect nothing more than a system or figures, or, in a word, accounting. If our monetary accounting does not correspond to our productive capacity this is not the fault of producers nor of those who are in need of the fruits of production. It is the fault of those who control money and financial credit, and who ration out these latter in a miserly fashion completely out of harmony with the immense capacity of the country to produce, a capacity which is nowhere near being fully utilized.

The citizens by themselves cannot directly do anything to correct this complete distortion of realities which has been perpetrated by the existing financial system. But Caesar can do so.

He can do so because he has been given the charge and the authority to watch over the common good. He, Caesar, can ordain that the controlers of the financial system suit the mechanism of finance to the facts and realities of the production system.

As long as Caesar refuses to address himself to such a reform he remains the servant of this financial dictatorship: he abandons his rightful functions, and the taxes which he exacts in the name of this false system of finance are not due to him. Major Douglas was only too right when he said that modern taxation is legalized robbery. And Caesar has no right or authority to legalize such robbery.

No one denies Caesar the right to tax the production of the country for public needs, always providing he does not appropriate such a share that what is left is insufficient to meet the demands of private needs. But then, we have the government to see to it that this does not happen. Unfortunately, the governments have had their vision limited by the narrow boundaries laid down by the system of finance under which we live.

If the total productive capacity of the country were represented by a financial capacity in the hands of the people, then it would be necessary to prevent the people from depriving Caesar of the share necessary to meet his needs. But the individual and the family must never under any circumstances be deprived of what is needed to meet the most basic needs of life: food, clothing, shelter, heat, medical care, etc. But let us repeat, such is not the case. Not only is the productive capacity of the country not fully utilized, but the citizens of the land, collectively, are incapable of paying for all that the country does produce. The amount of the private, industrial and public debt bears full witness to this.

Mammon

The sum of these debts issuing from production which has been realized, plus the sum total of the privations and hardships caused by non-production, due to a lack of money, represent the sacrifice which has been demanded by the financial dictatorship by Mammon.

Now Mammon is not a legitimate Caesar. We are obliged to give nothing to Mammon since nothing is due to Mammon by his right. Mammon is an intruder, a usurper, a thief, a tyrant.

Yet Mammon has become the supreme sovereign in the world today, superior to Caesar, superior to the most powerful Caesar existing today.

Caesar, for his part, has become the servant of Mammon, the tax gatherer of Mammon.

If Caesar has a right to a share in the production of the country for his needs he also has a very great need to be closely watched. And he must be reprimanded when, in place of filling the role of servant to the public good, he fills the role of lackey to the tyranny of finance.

The great modern disorder which has fixed itself upon society like some malignant cancer, in spite of the marvellous advances in the techniques of production which have made it possible, (were it not for this disorder) to furnish everyone with the basic needs of life, is that everything is regarded and ordered in the light of money, as if it were the one supreme reality. What has happened is that certain private individuals, or groups of private individuals, have been permitted to regulate money, not as an accounting in harmony with realities, but as a means of increasing their own profit and of placing them in a position to exercise despotic rule over their fellow-men.

There was another occasion, not quite so frequently quoted from scripture, on which Jesus came into contact with the world of money - again a matter of taxes: This time it was question, not of tribute to a foreign conqueror, but of a tax imposed by his own nation. The tax gatherer came to Simon Peter and said; "Does not your master pay the didrachmas?" And Jesus said to Peter, "... Go to the sea and cast in a hook, and that fish which shall first come up take; and when thou hast opened its mouth thou shalt find there a stater; take that and give it to them for thee and me."

On this occasion, the money was born of actual production. The government cannot work miracles, but it can ordain that the financial system produce money which will be in conformity with the rate of production, which will be based on production and will mirror the realities of production. Let the capacity of the country to produce be reflected in figures; as a result you will have reflected in figures the means of paying for the two spheres of society - public and private. This will be more in conformity with the common good than abandoning the control of money and credit to the arbitrary high priests of Mammon.

We refuse to bow down before this implacable dictatorship of Mammon. We condemn Caesar for his dereliction of duty. We refuse to recognize a Caesar "stripped of his noble functions"; we refuse to grant him the right to despoil individuals and families to satisfy the greed of Mammon for wealth and power; we refuse to allow him to bow down and conform to the rules and laws which are at the base of the cupidity and erroneousness of Mammon.

Social Crediters work to free men from this dictatorship. They work to free Caesar from his subjugation to this Mammon. For this reason, Crediters are in the front ranks of those who, here on earth, recognize and wish to render, concretely to Caesar what is his, to the person created to the image of God, that which is his, to the family, the primary institution set up by God, what is its, and finally, to God Himself, what is God's.