I am one of the authors of the bitcoin overture recently considered by the PCA’s General Assembly. Though I hoped it would pass, I was not surprised that it was answered in the negative. In this article, I hope to provide some perspective on bitcoin and why I think it should be given serious consideration by Christians and churches when it comes to the stewardship of financial resources.
In the early 20th century, Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck pointed out that the creation mandate of Genesis 1:27–28 is not only an important aspect of bearing God’s image but also something that would take a very long time to fulfill. In this sense, God’s image is something that “unfolds.”
“Just as God did not reveal himself all at once at the creation, but continues and expands that revelation from day to day and from age to age, so also the image of God is not a static entity but extends and unfolds itself in the forms of space and time,” he wrote in “Reformed Dogmatics.”
As humanity expands its dominion through various physical, cultural, and social realms, God displays his image more and more. In “The Wonderful Works of God,” Bavinck points out that exercising this kind of image-manifesting dominion is not limited to traditional vocations “such as hunting and fishing, agriculture and stock raising,” but even includes recent vocations and technologies that were unknown to ancient agrarians such as “trade and commerce, finance and credit, the exploitation of mines and mountains, and science and art.”
One of the most important things for modern people to learn in our productivity-obsessed world is that new does not necessarily mean good, and powerful does not necessarily mean wise.
Still, Bavinck has a point: Christians should not necessarily write off some technological or cultural development merely because it is new. From the very beginning, God has been unveiling his inexhaustibly glorious character by empowering his human image-bearers to exercise dominion in new ways and in new directions.
Bitcoin and Debasement
One of the most ancient and important human technologies is money. Like wearing glasses, money is so central to daily life that we can almost forget that it is a technology. Money is often defined as something that people commonly use to store wealth, measure value, and/or trade with each other. (Fans of theologian John Frame’s tri-perspectivalism might understand money’s three functions as existential (wealth), normative (measurement), and situational (trade).) Outside of very small communities built around barter, money and its three functions are central to human work and societies.
When money works well (and people receive it humbly), human relationships are stronger. But because money is so fundamental to society, when it works poorly (and people wield it proudly), human relationships suffer, including their relationships to the Creator. Along with warnings about sex and power, Scripture issues many exhortations to treat money wisely and warnings about treating it idolatrously.
Money has gone through various developments in its history. People naturally gravitate toward some forms of money over others because they better fulfill one or all of its functions: beads instead of shells, silver instead of copper, or, in the early 1920s, loaves of bread instead of hyperinflated German marks.
A decade before war, debt, and hyperinflation devastated interwar Germany, Bavinck pointed out that financial innovations such as banking and capitalism are genuine ways that humans have learned to better exercise dominion as God’s image-bearers, even with all the spiritual and social pitfalls that come with them.
A recent financial innovation is the invention of bitcoin. While relatively new to the human story, bitcoin seeks to solve an ancient and pervasive problem: monetary debasement. Originally, debasing money meant that someone discreetly mixed a common or “base” metal into coins that most people still believed to be pure. This was already happening with Roman coinage in Jesus’ day and accelerated until the Roman Empire collapsed a few hundred years later.
Debasement—whether done physically or, now, with the stroke of a keyboard—hinders the three functions of money. It makes it difficult for people to save for the future (storing wealth), compare prices (measuring value), and work with and for each other (trade). Scripture condemns debasement, most obviously under its prohibition of false balances and unjust weights because in the ancient world, money was literally weighed in the marketplace (Proverbs 11:1, Leviticus 19:35-36).
In 1958, the economist Ludwig von Mises gave a series of lectures in Argentina after the country had been ruined by monetary debasement. Forty years earlier, it had been one of the world’s wealthiest countries. Von Mises reminded his hearers that monetary debasement is a policy, not a natural force or an act of God. He pointed out that while governments pursue it with good intentions (and the blessing of most contemporary economic thought), debasement is ultimately and widely destructive.
Debasement is especially destructive to savers, the poor, and others who are not well-connected to political and financial institutions. It also encourages unsustainable debt, excessive consumption, and dangerous risk-taking.
Bitcoin and the Digital Revolution
Bitcoin was created by the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto in 2009 after others had spent decades attempting to create a secure digital form of money. When he released it as a public and open set of code, he specifically pointed to what was happening at the time: massive bailouts for failing banks, largely via newly printed money.
Nakamoto pointed out that throughout human history, those with the power to create money have inevitably abused it. Those sharing Augustine and Calvin’s grim insights into human sin should not be surprised. Nakamoto sought to create a digital form of money that would be truly decentralized: no institution or person – no matter how much bitcoin they owned – could change its “rules.”
Built on the same kind of encryption that secures the world’s banks and nuclear weapons, the bitcoin code’s most important “rule” is that it has a fixed supply: it is “printed” at a predictable and decreasing rate. Unlike most of the other blockchain/cryptocurrency projects today, bitcoin is both decentralized (no board, tycoon, or government can increase its supply or prevent its use) and limited (there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin in existence).
We are used to digital goods that are plentiful and easy to copy, such as PDFs, photos, emails. Some have pointed out that bitcoin should be considered the invention of “digital scarcity.”
Bitcoin and the Church
In the wake of unprecedented money printing following the COVID-19 pandemic, churches and ministries are feeling the pain of debasement. As congregants face increased living and business expenses, they struggle to give generously to the church’s work. This makes it increasingly difficult for churches to fund ministries, buy and maintain buildings, and keep their promises to pay their pastors enough to keep them “free from worldly cares and avocations,” as the Book of Church Order puts it.
While monetary debasement may be well-intentioned and beneficial to some well-connected people and institutions, it has made it very difficult for most people and institutions through history to fulfill the duty that Westminster Larger Catechism Question 141 places under the eighth commandment: to “procure, preserve, and further the wealth and outward estate of others, as well as our own.”
Because of its track record of security and simplicity, the bitcoin network has continued to see worldwide growth, much as the internet and cellphones did in the 1990s and 2000s. Seeing the value of “digital gold” as a means of protecting themselves from inflation and debasement, more and more companies and even nations (including the federal government and some U.S. states) have put at least some long-term savings into bitcoin.
Even some very traditional financial institutions (such as BlackRock and Fidelity) recommend owning bitcoin in small quantities, though these institutions stress that buyers understand the cryptocurrency’s volatility.
Though I certainly would love to see individuals and churches include bitcoin as one component of their savings, I am not suggesting that it is wise for every church in every financial situation.
Apart from how its fixed supply helps protect savings against debasement, bitcoin has other uses that should interest the PCA. For example, because bitcoin is decentralized, it can be sent to anyone, such as persecuted Christians or churches severed from or monitored by their country’s financial system.
Much like the internet and smartphones, bitcoin can be confusing, abused, and idolized. But like those technologies, bitcoin is an increasingly important part of our world, and one that could help churches and ministries mitigate the effects of the debasement that are outside their control. And by mitigating debasement, bitcoin could undergird the church’s mission to preach the gospel and make disciples.
Bavinck argued that part of the wonder of God creating humanity in his image is that our creation mandate is something that unfolds through millennia with new and (sometimes) even better ways of reflecting God’s character and glory to others and back to himself. With money, one of the most important (and potentially pernicious) inventions in human history, we should consider why our money today is so broken.
As Jesus told us in his parable of the dishonest steward, he expects his disciples to be prudent in the wealth of this world – even with all its pitfalls – since we are those graciously chosen to inherit the true wealth of the world to come.
Tim Fox is a teaching elder in South Texas Presbytery and leads the Magnalia Foundation, equipping churches to understand and use bitcoin.