Only By Grace

Ang unang kabanata ay tungkol sa pagmamay-ari. Sa pamamagitan ng pagtalakay sa paksang ito, nagsimula ang may-akda sa doktrina ng paglikha. Para sa kanya, ang ganitong klase ng panimula ang nagbigay ng kaibahan sa kaniyang pamamaraan kung ihahambing sa pamamaraan ng iba pang mga ekonomista. Sa pamamagitan ng paggigiit sa kahalagahan ng doktrina ng paglikha sa ekonomiya, pinangatuwiranan niya na ang daigdig, tao, mga batas sa ekonomiya, at paglago ng ekonomiya ay hindi lubusang mauunawaan ng hiwalay sa Diyos. Ang doktrina ng paglikha ay nagsilbing batayan sa katotohanan na tanging ang Diyos lamang ang orihinal na may pagmamay-ari sa lahat na malinaw na nakasaad sa Awit 24: 1-2 at maraming iba pang mga talata sa Bibliya. At dahil ang Diyos ang lumikha ng mundo, samakatuwid Siya ang orihinal at ganap na May-ari ng lahat. Ang ideya samakatuwid ng pagmamay-ari ay “theocentric.” Sinasabi nito sa atin na ang pang-ekonomiyang konsepto ng pagmamay-ari sa huli ay isang teolohikal na ideya. Ang ...

The first chapter is all about ownership. By discussing this topic, the author starts with the doctrine of creation. For him, this doctrine separates his approach from all other approaches by other economists. By insisting on the importance of the doctrine of creation to economics, he argues that the universe, man, economic laws, and economic growth are not autonomous. The doctrine of creation establishes the idea of original ownership , which belongs to God alone as explicitly stated in Psalm 24:1–2 and many other biblical passages. And since it is God who created the world, He is therefore the original and absolute Owner of everything. The idea therefore of ownership is basically theocentric. This tells us that the economic concept of ownership is ultimately a theological idea. The concept of ownership cannot be properly understood apart from God as the ultimate Owner of all things. Providence is another corollary doctrine that cannot be separated from the doctrine of creation. Thi...

Reading the Daily Bread for today, the Lord is telling me that waiting is also a time of preparation both in life and in trading. Since this is the case, impatience and impulsive buying and selling of shares have no place.  Turning to Isaiah 42:5-9, the prophet declares that the Creator and Giver of life has called Israel to open the eyes of the blind and to set the prisoners free. What greater blindness there is than not seeing the power of God displayed in creation and the greatness of his love displayed in redemption! What worst prison there is than the bondage in the kingdom of darkness! God entrusted Israel with his righteous decrees and laws and by observing them, she fulfills her calling (Deuteronomy 4:5-8). In the New Testament, we now know that such calling is given to the Body of Christ.     Forgive us Father for our impatience. Father, forgive us also for failing to fulfill the task that you have entrusted to us. Open the eyes of the blind and set the pris...

Consolidating my prayers for the months of March and April, I came up with the following prayer concern for the month of May: Help us live our lives with eternity in mind. Help us to live in love, joy, holiness and power. Let PTSCAS produce excellent, prayerful, joyful, holy, loving, powerful and productive missionaries, preachers, biblical counselors, theological educators, and Christian teachers, even chaplains and caregivers. Help us return to our first love and help us love you Lord for the remaining short and final years of our lives here on earth. Help us shepherd your people in love. Forgive us for taking your love for granted. Thank you that you are our closest Friend, our dearest Confidant, our heavenly Bridegroom. Help us sleep early so that we can wake up early and invest in eternity by spending time with you in communion and intercession. Help us to see the prison bars of our suffering as rubies and gold, as precious stones. Thank you for helping us realize that both the ex...

The real interest rate in the country is minus 2.7% since the current interest rate is at 2% and the inflation rate is 4.7%. With this kind of economic and monetary environment, savers are losers and borrowers are winners . “Revving up economic activity” is the goal why BSP keeps interest rate at the current level. Turning to mises.org for guidance on how to see this kind of environment, I stumbled upon Murray N. Rothbard’s article about The Interest Rate Question . According to him, this is one topic where “financial writers are mired in hopeless confusion.” If this is the case then, “how can we expect the public to make any sense of what is going on?” And then at the middle section of the article, he identified the real cause of lower interest rates. He describes this as “a repeated injection of inflationary bank credit by the Fed (In our case, replace the Fed with BSP).” Such monetary policy will “keep the artificial and unsound economic boom going (in our current situation, “revvi...

No one is above the law, and that includes even the government. If you see a government violating the moral law, what do you think will happen? Will the Supreme Lawgiver keep silent as His law is being trampled by human governments? One example of such violation is now being done by the government of Australia by moving hard left . The policymakers are either blinded by their ideology or they intentionally take for granted the long-term destructive consequences of such tax policy. They are not aware that by violating God’s law on private property, they are actually committing economic suicide. How many governments in the world are following the same course? May God forbid that the Philippine government will choose the same path! 

Continuing my reading of the second chapter of  Thinking. Loving. Doing. A Call to Glorify God with Heart and Mind, I stumbled again with another brilliant insight written by R. Albert Mohler Jr. This time he is sharing about the "three operating conditions of belief in Western civilization" (p. 62). He took this insight from Charles Taylor's book, A Secular Age. According to the book, the three operating conditions of belief are the impossibility of disbelief in God, the possibility of disbelief in God, and the impossibility of belief in God.  The impossibility of disbelief in God characterized the pre-modern era. The word atheist at  that time didn't exist, because it "was not an available category" (ibid.). The existence of God is the underlying assumption of the age though different concepts of God were recognized.   With the advent of the modern era, the operating condition of belief shifted from the impossibility of disbelief to the possibility of di...