Originally posted by One Bad Pig
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Originally posted by Joel
Neither does my point founder in the case of state-issued coins/notes. $5 notes are not the property of Abraham Lincoln (or his heirs). The future Harriet Tubman notes won't be the property of Harriet Tubman or her heirs. Neither did any merchants accepting denarii think they were accepting Caesar's property, which would be a crime of knowingly accepting stolen property. Neither would even Caesar be able to spend the coin unless there was the understanding that Caesar, in the exchange, was transferring ownership of the coin to the seller. In the case of U.S. law (just to give another example), notes and coins are not accounted as assets of the government. On the contrary, they are accounted as liabilities of the government. The existence of a dollar in circulation reduces the government's net worth by one dollar. The origin of stamping images on coins arose from firms and governments putting a stamp of certification on bullion, to certify that it is a given quantity and purity of bullion. It's not a mark of ownership but of certification to assure buyers and sellers. A stamp of a trusted private firm worked just as well. Just as a postal service is the government operating a business, government coinage is the government engaging in the bullion/minting business.
And as we said, people legally had to pay the tax regardless of possession of the coin. So the tax was not legally justified by a claim of ownership on the coin. If the tax were justified as a reclaiming of Caesar's property, then it would be a reasonable response to say to the taxman, "That's cool. I don't have any of Caesar's coins. You'll have to look for them somewhere else."
All this seems to be little more than an attempt to muddy the waters in an attempt to make your interpretation look more plausible by contrast.
![shrug](https://theologyweb.com/campus/core/images/smilies/shrug.gif)
What I wrote was an attempt to look at it from multiple different angles that might possibly be used to justify the common interpretation and none of them seem to actually support it. Thus I raised the possibility that the fact that it was also the image of a false god might support the common interpretation, but again, the culpability there could be resolved by simply not possessing a denarius.
So whatever angle I look at it, claiming an implication there seems to be an equivocation. If there is a logically valid implication there that I'm missing, please point it out.
And then I don't see how there is anything controversial about my final paragraph. The questioners asked whether it is lawful. So it follows that either they thought it was unlawful, or they thought Jesus did, or both, or at the very least they thought there was a good chance of Jesus saying it was unlawful.
Pay your taxes, Joel. It's the Christian thing to do.
I do happen to currently think that the most logically satisfying/consistent explanation is that Jesus didn't answer the question. But I don't have certainty. I'm asking for other people's answers to these questions so that I can hopefully come to the truth.
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