These questions that Yeshua HaMeshiach (Jesus Christ) posed to the world –– What is God's? and What is Caesar's? (Matthew 22:19-21) –– are essentially questions about jurisdictions. When Yeshua said, "[R]ender to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." (NASB), He was in essence challenging us to figure out what is Caesar's, and what is God's. He was challenging us to figure out the boundary between these two jurisdictions. If God is God, then He created the universe, and He created Caesar, Caesar's government, and Caesar's jurisdiction. So when we draw a distinction between these two jurisdictions, it's a little odd, because, by definition, God owns everything and everyone, and has jurisdiction over everything and everyone. So how can God have jurisdiction over Caesar, while simultaneously allowing Caesar to have a jurisdiction separate and distinct from God's jurisdiction?

To answer this question, it's essential to remember the context in which Yeshua said this. He was talking about a coin, whose image was on the coin, and who was responsible for minting it. If the coin had been a shekel of the temple, it would not have had a rendition of God's image on it, but it would nevertheless have been seen by all present as God's money, money minted by God's people, for the purpose of serving God. But the coin at issue was not a shekel, but a denarius, a Roman coin, minted under the authority of the Roman government, for the sake of serving Rome's jurisdiction.[note] So the questions –– What is God's? and What is Caesar's? –– are really questions aimed at distinguishing the collective jurisdiction of the people dedicated to serving God, from the jurisdiction of Caesar's government. So what's at issue is not God's jurisdiction, but the various jurisdictions of human beings. But what's at issue is even more specific than that.

The Roman government presumed to impose a system of jurisprudence on all peoples who became part of the Roman empire. But this system did not attempt to eliminate local governments and local jurisdictions, but merely to force the local governments to pay tribute to Caesar, and to submit to Roman jurisdiction sufficiently enough to enhance commerce within the empire. The system was federal, similar to the way the States of the united States are federated into a single entity, the united States, but nevertheless retain local jurisdiction.[note] So the issue, What is Caesar's? / What is God's?, is really a question about original jurisdiction within a federal system.

God's people, the people of the temple shekel, were –– and are –– essentially inclined to theocratic forms of government. In contrast, Caesar's government was essentially secular, evidenced by the fact that the Caesars cared far more about worldly money and power than about serving God. So this whole issue –– What is Caesar's? / What is God's? –– is essentially about distinguishing theocratic and secular jurisdictions. —— The ability to distinguish jurisdictions is crucial to human happiness, and foundational to healthy governance. No Christian, no Jew, no American –– no matter how secular or religious –– should be ignorant about jurisdictions. Failure to acknowledge them, and enforce them, is disastrous for both nations and individuals.

Sadly, neither Christian scholars nor Jewish scholars have ever, in the entire history of Judaeo-Christianity, approached Scripture with an unswerving eye towards discerning jurisdictions. No doubt the best theologies are based solidly on Scripture. Of these theologies that are based squarely on Scripture, none speak lucidly about jurisdictions. The best of these theologies take a topical approach to Scripture, and expound the attributes of God, and the basics of human relationships with God, beautifully. But they say little that's reliable about jurisdictions. They say practically nothing reliable about the distinction between the jurisdiction of God's people (and property) and the jurisdiction of Caesar's people (and property). To procure such information from Scripture, it's necessary to take a totally different approach.

In order to answer these questions –– What is Caesar's? / What is God's? –– we have taken a chronological approach to Scripture, with eyes riveted on discerning jurisdictions. We approach Scripture as though it were what it claims to be, a covenant. Like lawyers studying a contract, we start at the beginning, and focus on distinguishing law from fact. In the case of this theology, we distinguish Biblical law from Biblical fact.[note]

After thousands of years of Judaeo-Christian history, why should anyone believe that we have developed a theology that's based securely on Scripture, that answers these God's? / Caesar's? questions? —— Because we follow, for the sake of discerning jurisdictions, a set of interpretational policies that are unique.[note] There are a number of jurisprudential concepts that are naturally inferred when taking this approach to Scripture. In order to apply these concepts to American jurisprudence, we'll review the most prominent of these concepts here.[note] In other words, we'll focus on these concepts and principles that most directly impact the questions, What is Caesar's? / What is God's?. In this review of those principles, we'll call the source theology, the investigation.

According to the investigation, all law exists in four overarching categories: (i)eternal law, (ii)natural law, (iii)divine law, and (iv)human law, which is also known as positive law. Eternal law we define as the set of rules created by God, that govern God Himself, all of creation, and all human affairs. Eternal law is the law as God perceives it. By definition, human beings know only a fragment of eternal law, and are ignorant of most of it. Natural law is that aspect of the eternal law that humans, by the light of the moral law written on the heart of every human by virtue of being created in the image of God, combined with the light of reason, are able to perceive.[note] Divine law is that aspect of eternal law communicated to humans through divine revelation, and recorded in what we now accept as our canon of Scripture. Human law is law imposed by human beings upon other human beings. —— This nomenclature –– "eternal law", "natural law", "divine law", and "human law" –– has a long history in Anglo-American jurisprudence, and in Christian history in general. Although these four categories of laws existed in Christendom long before Thomas Aquinas, some authorities claim that they were "Christianized by Aquinas (Summa Theologia, Q90ff, 'Treatise on Law'), who distinguished four levels of law: (1)eternal law, or the law of God; (2)natural law, or what humans by the light of reason can see of the eternal law; (3)divine law, or the law of God as revealed by Scripture; and (4)positive law [(a.k.a. human law)], or existing laws of society. The concept of natural law as the ultimate arbiter of justice was central also to Locke and other exponents of traditional social contract theory.".[note] The concept of natural law especially had a profound impact on the early development of the American republic. It was almost always associated with "traditional social contract theory". Largely contemporaneous to the formative years of the American republic, the social contract was understood to be "The original covenant by which, according to certain philosophers of modern times – Hooker, Hobbes, Althusius, Spinoza, Locke, Pufendorf, etc. – individuals have united and formed the state. … This theory goes back to ancient philosophy and was upheld by medieval thinkers, such as Thomas Aquinas, Marsilius of Padova. Though most of the philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth century realized that no such original compact as the idea of the Social Contract called for, had actually occurred, the idea, nevertheless, served as a criterion to determine whether any act of the government was just or not, i.e., whether the consent of the governed might be assumed (especially Rousseau, Kant). The theory of the Social Contract had a remarkable influence upon the political philosophy of the American colonies.".[note]

Even though this nomenclature is extremely important in Anglo-American jurisprudence, and even though we chose to use it in the investigation, please understand that our definitions of these terms are custom fit to the investigation.[note] It was necessary to customize the definitions of these terms because, for one reason, "for the philosophers of the social contract, like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, human beings, on their own –– that is, without God's help –– reason out the necessity of instituting laws and punishment; human beings, on their own, contract to form societies on the basis of these laws.".[note] We believe that it's a huge mistake to develop a theology that starts by relegating God to insignificance, which is essentially what all these social contract philosophies did.[note] Instead, we chose to take a very close, methodical, thoughtful, and prayerful approach to the Biblical descriptions of the formation of human societies. The conclusions we reach are profoundly different.[note] For the sake of further accentuating the differences between these secular philosophies and the approach to these issues that comes out of the investigation, we call our approach the compact theory of government, rather than social contract, compact theory.

By taking a chronological approach to Genesis –– with an emphasis on distinguishing Biblical law from Biblical fact[note] –– it's obvious that human contracts existed before any positive law was prescribed by God. Prior to the existence of human contracts, there were Covenants between God and human beings. These early Covenants define terms that exist between God and humans, but they do NOT prescribe positive law that humans impose on other humans. Immediately after the flood, God made His third and last global Covenant. By global, we mean that the Covenant applies to all humans for all subsequent time. In this third Covenant, God makes His first prescription of positive law. This prescription pertains to the shedding of human blood (Genesis 9:6). The investigation concludes that the Genesis 9:6 bloodshed is largely equivalent to what in traditional Anglo-American jurisprudence is known as a delict. A delict is essentially a situation in which there is a dead, damaged, or injured human being, and another human being is deemed culpable. So within the first nine chapters of Genesis, the investigation finds two jurisprudential concepts that are evident to some degree in all human societies, no matter how primitive or technologically advanced: contracts and delicts. Likewise, the investigation discovers the same two overarching sources of legal action that exist in traditional Anglo-American jurisprudence: (i)actions ex contractu (out of a contract) and (ii)actions ex delicto (out of a delict). So we find, providentially, a large amount of harmony between Scripture and traditional Anglo-American jurisprudence with respect to the origins of judiciable disputes between humans: They derive overwhelmingly from delicts and contracts.[note]

A careful examination of the first three Covenants in Genesis shows that these Covenants build chronologically on one-another. In other words, the Edenic Covenant (Genesis 1-2) is like a constitution, and the Adamic Covenant (Genesis 3) is like a set of amendments to the constitution, and the Noachian Covenant (Genesis 9) is like another set of amendments to the constitution. Since Scripture itself claims to be a covenant, we conclude that this pattern continues from Genesis 1 through Revelation 22. But there is an extremely serious caveat that must be heeded in making this conclusion. The caveat is that all Covenants (sets of amendments) after Genesis 9 are local, meaning that positive law prescribed in subsequent sets of amendments pertains to specific subsets of humanity, not to all of humanity. The first three Covenants are global, meaning that they apply to all subsequent humanity.

When we discovered in the investigation that contracts existed prior to any prescription of positive law by God, we found that every society is essentially a web of agreements and contracts. We found it convenient to call any society based exclusively on a web of agreements and contracts, an ecclesiastical society. We found it convenient to call the web of agreements and contracts an ecclesiastical compact. We also found it convenient to call a society dedicated purely to enforcement against delicts a jural society. Likewise, we found it convenient to call the agreements that necessarily underpin the jural society a jural compact. But of course most societies contain both (i)a web of agreements and contracts (i.e., an ecclesiastical compact), and (ii)some element of retribution and/or restitution demanded against perpetrators of delicts (i.e., a jural compact). Because most societies have both, we found it convenient to claim that societies that combine the jural and the ecclesiastical are united into a social compact.[note]

As mentioned, the set of amendments found in the Noachian Covenant have the first appearance of God-prescribed positive law. This positive law pertains to actions ex delicto. It pertains to all of humanity. It does NOT pertain to actions ex contractu. Shortly after the Noachian Covenant, humanity was split up into a multitude of nations and languages, and spread around the planet. From that day to this, according to our understanding of the Bible, every society is mandated by God to enforce against delicts. But the way that this is done, and the contracts and agreements that constitute the rest of the social compact, is wide open according to Biblically prescribed positive law. In fact, it's obvious that most societies are oblivious to their need to enforce wisely against delicts, because most societies do not adequately respect human rights, which –– according to a reliable reading of Scripture –– are based on the fact that every human being is created in the image of God.

The Abrahamic Covenant is the first of the local Covenants. It is a set of amendments to the pre-existing Covenants, but it pertains only to parties to the Abrahamic Covenant. The same essential arrangement pertains to both of the subsequent blood Covenants, what the investigation calls the Mosaic and the Messianic. Each of these three local Covenants –– from the perspective of global jurisprudence –– is an effort at reminding all other social compacts that all people are created in the image of God, and therefore deserve protection against delicts.

There are numerous other jurisprudential concepts and principles that derive from the investigation, that are applicable to 21^st century America. In this theological inventory of American jurisprudence, we will examine the organic documents and constitutional law of the united States, in the light of these concepts and principles. Since it would be overwhelmingly cumbersome to cover all of these concepts and principles in this short review of the investigation, we've put the relevant terminology into the Glossary, along with a set of Maxims of the Global Covenant. By the time we finish this inventory, the reader should have a firm grip on the distinction between What is God's? and What is Caesar's?. —— In passing, we should also mention that if you wonder about the significance of the typographical conventions used in this inventory, see Typo.