On Partisanship: The View across the Barricades
At this stage, it is important to comment on partisanship. It has already been asserted that neoclassicism is partisan, in that it favours the few over the many.[17] This assertion directly contradicts the claims that neoclassicism benefits everyone and favours no one.[18] However, in actuality, the neoclassical vision coincides precisely with the interests of large multinationals and turns the wealthy into the super-rich, and the working class into the disposable poor.[19] Herein one discovers an economic order premised upon looting, full of winners and losers, victors and victims.[20] To this, neoclassicists often respond with some variant of the ‘trickle-down’ argument, but this is essentially giving the poor (i.e. the ‘losers’) the option of trading one form of misery for another.[21] Consequently, one quickly learns that the partisanship of neoclassicism results in “[the] freedom of the powerful to rob, and [the] freedom of the dispossessed to live in misery.”[22]
However, it is essential to realize that Christianity is also partisan – but in the opposite direction. Neoclassicism favours the rich while plundering the poor, but Christianity advances God’s ‘preferential option for the poor’.[23] Consequently, Christians and neoclassicists end up opposed to one another. Here one must realize that partisanship and objectivity are not rivals but allies, because, as Terry Eagleton notes, “true judiciousness means taking sides.”[24] Christians side with the poor and against those who oppress them, precisely because the poor suffer unjustly. For this reason, Christians must abandon the myth that, in order to maintain one’s perspective, one should not take sides.[25] Maintaining perspective means taking sides.
This, then, has implications for the methodology employed by those Christians who seek to write in response to neoclassicism today. First of all, it is important to recall, and dialogue with, the witness of Christians who have come together and written from such partisan places.[26] Secondly, this means that Christians should also listen to other subversive voices – to revolutionaries, (post-)Marxists, and others who end up on the “same side of the barricades.”[27] For, as Eagleton notes: “Marxist ideas have stubbornly outlived Marxist political practice… We do not dismiss, say, feminist criticism just because patriarchy has not yet been dislodged. On the contrary, it is all the more reason to embrace it.”[28] Thirdly, it means that Christians should write from a place of embodied partisanship. A Christian theology that responds to neoclassicism must follow from action, it must be “critical reflection on Christian praxis.”[29]
Therefore, because Christians hold contradictory allegiances to those held by neoclassicists, one should expect Christians to offer another way of structuring life together, a way that opposes the fascist-imperialist structures imposed by neoclassicism.
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[17] That such partisanship is often overlooked in public discourse should come as no surprise once one comes to understand that all the (significant) communication media are owned by the same oligarchies that benefit from the partisanship of the system; cf. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon Books, 2002), xi, 298-303; Noam Chomsky, Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies (Boston: South End Press, 1989), 8.
[18] Cf. Hayek, xi-xiv, 262; Friedman, 5-6.
[19] Cf. Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 66, 101, 534. This point has also been explored by many others; cf. Chomsky, Profit Over People, 34; Jon Sobrino, Where is God? Earthquake, Terrorism, Barbarity, and Hope, trans. by Margaret Wilde (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 99; Jim Wallis, The Call to Conversion: Recovering the Gospel for These Times (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 45-46; Gustavo Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, trans. by Sister Caridad Inda and John Eagleson (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1973), 84; Barber, 28; William Cavanaugh, “The Unfreedom of the Free Market,” in Wealth, Poverty & Human Destiny, ed. Doug Bandow and David L. Schindler (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2003), 103-28. Accessed 3 November 2007. Online: www.jesusradicals.com/library/cavanaugh/unfreedom.pdf.
[20] On an economics of looting, cf. Wallis, 42. This is especially evident in the recent Bush administration wherein those in power refused to divest stock holdings that were directly impacted by their roles in office (an illegal act): Rumsfeld kept his shares in Gilead Science, Cheney, his shares in Halliburton (while his wife held shares in Lockheed-Martin), Perle, his shares in Trireme Partners, Baker his shares in Carlyle Group and Baker Botts, Schulz, his shares in Brechtel (Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 377-84). Some would take this to be evidence of a State-imposed imperialism, but it is better understood as evidence of the neoclassical conquest of the State.
[21] For example, multinationals have argued that sweatshops in the two-thirds world provide women and children the opportunity to escape from prostitution – often considered the only other job alternative. Of course, working long hours within a sweatshop, and breaking one’s own body for less than a living wage, is hardly a true alternative – it is simply another form of misery and prostitution. It should be noted that this argument emerged with capitalism itself, as Adam Smith argued that it would be a ‘philanthropic gesture’ to allow poor children to work in factories (cf. Heilbroner, 45).
[22] Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, Our Word is our Weapon: Selected Writings, ed. By Juana Ponce de Leon (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2001), 65.
[23] A point first made by Latin American liberation theologians, and now widely accepted within global Christianity. Cf. Jurgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Affirmation, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), xii, 75; The Way of Jesus Christ: Christology in Messianic Dimensions, trans. by Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993), 101-102.
[24] After Theory (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 137; cf. 131-37.
[25] As Walter Brueggemann notes, it is the powers-that-be that benefit from those who “understand both sides” (The Prophetic Imagination [Minneapolis: Fortress, 1978], 24-25). Consequently, it is for this reason that Donald A. Hay’s advice that “Christians should be particularly circumspect in their policy prescriptions, and cheerfully tolerant of other Christians who take different lines” is so misguided (Economics Today: A Christian Critique [Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1989], 312; emphasis added).
[26] One thinks, for example, of the witness that came out of an illegal ‘Confessing Church’ Seminary at Finkenwalde, Germany, during WWII – Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Life Together, trans. by John W. Doberstein (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1954). A second example would be the writings of the liberation theologians, and a third example would be the writings that came out of the Sojourners community in Washington, D.C. – Wallis’ Call to Conversion.
[27] The reference is to a comment made by Zizek on the relationship between Christians and Marxists (The Fragile Absolute, 2). Moltmann’s comments on Ernst Bloch, a Marxist atheist, are significant in this regard. He writes: “God’s defenders are not necessarily closer to God than God’s accusers. It is not Job’s theological friends who are justified, but Job himself. In the Psalms, protest and jubilation ring out in the same voice. Wherever in history [that] combination ceased to work, the theologians would learn as much about God from atheists as the atheists could perhaps learn from the theologians” (Ernst Bloch, Man on His Own: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, with an introduction by Jurgen Moltmann, trans. by E. B. Ashton (New York: Herder and Herder, 1971), 28.
[28] Marxism and Literary Criticism, Routledge Classics (New York: Routledge, 1976), viii-ix. Of course, as noted above, this does not mean that Christians should wholeheartedly accept the Marxist agenda.
[29] This is the definition of liberation theology’s methodology (Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, 11-13; cf. On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent, trans. by Matthew J. O’Connell [Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987], 103).
November 2007
The Church and Capitalism: Part I-I.1
[Over the next little while I'll be posting a series of entries on 'The Church and Capitalism', which is a paper that I have been working on for quite some time. I'll repeat a few of the points I made in my earlier series on 'Christianity and Capitalism' but I trust that there is much greater detail, and much that is new, in this series.]
I. The Confrontation
I.1 — Neoclassicism and the Triumph of Capitalism-as-Fascism
Whither Capitalism?
In 1776, Adam Smith gave birth to the modern science of economics by predicting that the liberation of the market from various forms of state control would lead us into the best of all possible worlds.[1] In 1848, Karl Marx challenged Smith and predicted that capitalism would be overthrown in the inexorable rise of socialism.[2] Since then, there have been endless competing prophecies about where capitalism is leading our life together. However, from the vantage point of the early twenty-first century, we can see that what has arisen is the global dominance of neoclassicism.[3] What, then, are we to make of the various predictions about capitalism?
To begin with, it is clear that capitalism has not developed into the utopia foreseen by Smith. Rather, we now live in a time when inequality, famine, and economic oppression affect more people around the world than ever before.[4] Consequently, it is necessary to emphasise that Smith’s vision was, in fact, utopian (in the worst sense of that word). Smith’s vision promised us that which could not be attained by the means provided.[5]
Secondly, the triumph of neoclassicism has made it clear that capitalism does not lead to socialism, as predicted by traditional Marxists and others.[6] In fact, we have seen exactly the opposite occurrence: the majority of socialist nations have converted to capitalism, and even so-called ‘communist’ nations, like China, espouse what is, by and large, a neoclassical form of economics. Why has this happened? There are a number of reasons for this (not the least being the greater military power of the capitalist nations, who were able to destroy many socialist governments in their infancies), but the primary reason for this was that socialism was too closely wed to capitalism. Slavoj Zizek makes this argument:
Marxian communism, this notion of a society of pure unleashed productivity outside the frame of capital, was a fantasy inherent to capitalism itself… ‘Socialism’ failed because it was ultimately a subspecies of capitalism, an ideological attempt to ‘have one’s cake and eat it’, to break out of capitalism while retaining its key ingredients.[7]
Socialism represents a failed utopianism, precisely because it simply continues the utopianism of capitalism (i.e. instead of arguing that capitalism leads us directly to utopia, it argues that capitalism leads us indirectly, through socialism, to utopia).
Thirdly, others who have predicted that capitalism will lead us to anarchy have also been mistaken.[8] Certainly, capitalism has lead to the fracturing of most social bodies, but the result has not been chaos. Rather, within neoclassicism we have seen the birth of massive oligarchies that hold power over an increasingly fractured public.
So who has correctly predicted the movement of capitalism into its neoclassical form? Surprisingly, it was those Marxists, who rejected the fatalistic element of Marxism, who were able to foresee where capitalism was leading us.[9] It was the likes of Bukharin, Lenin, and Trotsky who were able to see that capitalism, if left to its own devices, would develop into a fascist form of imperialism.[10] To be clear: the global conquest accomplished by neoclassicism, with its focus on privitisation, deregulation, and cuts to social spending, is the conquest of the globe by capitalism-as-fascism.[11] It is important to define what is meant by ‘fascism’ here. Traditionally, fascism has been understood as the subordination of individuals, and all other corporate bodies, to the State. What has occurred within neoclassicism, however, is the subordination of individuals, and all corporate bodies, including the State, to the regnant economic powers – the oligarchies, the multinational corporations, and those who serve them (like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund). With this distinction in mind, the other elements of traditional fascism hold for our contemporary experience of capitalism-as-fascism (also referred to as ‘corporatism’): (1) it assaults all forms of collectivity, and all public bodies; (2) it is, therefore, defined by the drive for conquest; (3) it favours the interests of a few over the interests of the many; and (4) it makes the many favour their own repression.[12] The damning proof of this is in the specific examples of the ways in which neoclassicism has played out at ground level in the various countries to which it has been applied.[13]
Furthermore, it is important to realize that the neoclassicism does not appear as a perversion of ‘capitalism proper’; it develops from the root of capitalism itself.[14] Consequently, the question is not ‘where did capitalism go wrong?’ because it was wrong from the very beginning – as George Weissman says: “The germ of fascism is endemic to capitalism”.[15] Therefore, it is a mistake to try to redeem or rectify capitalism. The effort to return to the form of capitalism that preceded neoclassicism is akin to trying to escape Germany in 1945 by returning to Germany in 1934! Here the words of Simone de Beauvoir are quite apropos: “To protest in the name of morality against ‘excesses’ or ‘abuses’ is an error which hints at active complicity. There are no ‘abuses’ or ‘excesses’ here, simply an all-pervasive system.”[16] Consequently, the challenge for Christians is not the pursuit of ‘capitalism with a human face’ or ‘moral capitalism’; rather, the challenge is to move out of capitalism into an altogether different system.
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[1] Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, Vol. 1, ed. R. H. Campbell, A. S. Skinner, and W. B. Todd (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1981), IV.i.11, et passim.
[2] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 1948), 9-21.
[3] The term ‘neoclassicism’ as it is applied throughout this paper is intended to refer to both the theory and the practice of those who are both committed to, and participate within, the structures of the laissez-faire form of capitalism championed by Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman, and the ‘Chicago School’ (cf. Friedrich A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, with an introduction by Milton Friedman [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1994]; and Milton Friedman with Rose D. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom [Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1962]).
[4] Cf. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International, Routledge Classics, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1992), 106.
[5] However, because the neoclassicists continue to promise us this same utopia, further discussion of this point must be deferred until our evaluation of neoclassicism itself. Here, it is worth noting Naomi Klein’s comment that, whereas the Marxists envisioned a “workers’ utopia,” the neoclassicists envision an “entrepreneurs’ utopia” (The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism [Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2007], 60).
[6] A notable other being Joseph Schumpeter (cf. Capitalism, Socialism & Democracy [New York: Harper & Row, 1947]).
[7] The Fragile Absolute – or, why is the Christian legacy worth fighting for? Wo Es War (London: Verso, 2000), 19. Peter Maurin, co-founder of the Catholic Workers’ movement, also makes this point: “The Bolshevist Socialist is the son of the bourgeois capitalist, and the son is too much like his father. All the sins of the father are found in the son” (Easy Essays, illustrated by Fritz Eichenberg [Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1977], 115; cf. 116-17, 174).
[8] Cf. John Gray, False Dawn: The Delusions of Global Capitalism (New York: The New Press, 1998), 207, et passim.
[9] However, it is quite possible that Marx himself abandoned the fatalistic approach later in life. When, shortly before his death, he stated “I am not a Marxist” it is not likely that he was then saying that he was abandoning the struggle on behalf of the proletariat. Rather, it is more likely that he realized that socialism would not necessarily replace capitalism, but would only come by the means of a sustained struggle. If this is the case, then the true legacy of Marx is not his fatalistic theory, but his lifestyle of solidarity and his action on behalf of the proletariat. This, then, goes against Robert L. Heilbroner’s understanding of Marx’s legacy, which by pretending to take Marx seriously, ends up not taking him seriously at all (The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives Times & Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers [New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963], 142).
[10] Cf. Leon Trotsky, Fascism: what it is and how to fight it, with an introduction by George Lavan Weissman (New York: Pathfinder Press, Inc., 1969), 6-7, et passim; Nikolai Bukharin, Imperialism and World Economy, with an introduction by V. I. Lenin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1929), 10, 107-108, 112-15, 140.
[11] The irony here is that it was Hayek’s fear of fascism that prompted him to write The Road to Serfdom in the first place (cf. The Road to Serfdom, 4).
[12] All of these points will be developed in more detail later within this paper. For further comment on neoclassicism as fascism cf. Noam Chomsky, Profit Over People: neoliberalism and global order, with an introduction by Robert W. McChesney (New York: Seven Stories Press, 1999); Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 12, 17, 369; Brian Massumi, A User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1992), 64, 106, 116, 125-26; and, especially, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 1, Anti-Oedipus, trans. by Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. Lane (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983; Capitalism and Schizophrenia, Vol. 2, A Thousand Plateaus, trans. by Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1983).
[13] The devastating impact of neoclassicism upon country after country, and the ways in which it operates as fascism, have been documented by Klein in The Shock Doctrine. Significantly, it is not only outsiders who have made this observation but those who have worked within the heart of institutions responsible for spreading neoclassicism have come forward and said the same thing (cf. John Perkins, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man [London: Penguin Books, Ltd., 2004]; and Davison L. Budhoo, Enough is Enough: Dear Mr. Camdessus… Open Letter of Resignation to the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund, foreward by Errol K. McLeod [New York: Horizons Press, 1990]).
[14] Grey’s argument that ‘bad capitalism’ naturally drives out ‘good capitalism’ is helpful in this regard (Grey, 78-87), as are Lenin’s comments on Bukharin’s argument that fascist imperialism is the direct development of a system that relies on continual growth (Bukharin, 10).
[15] In Trotsky, 7. This is where those like John Maynard Keynes, John Kenneth Galbraith, Daniel Bell, and Benjamin R. Barber end up going wrong. Each of them is aware that capitalism can lead to fascism, but each of them does not believe that capitalism necessarily leads to fascism and so, each proposes some form of State, democratic, or civil control that they believe will both save capitalism and save us from capitalism (cf. Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money [New York: Harvest/Harcourt Inc., 1964]; Galbraith, The New Industrial Society [Boston: Mentor, 1967]; Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism [New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1976]; and Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World [New York: Ballantine Books, 1996]).
[16] Quoted by Klein, The Shock Doctrine, 150.
Acknowledging My Failure
If we wait for the ‘right moment’ to start a revolution, this moment will never come — we have to take the risk, and precipitate ourselves into revolutionary attempt, since it is only through a series of ‘premature’ attempts (and their failure) that that (subjective) conditions for the ‘right’ moment are created.
~ Slavoj Zizek, The Puppet and the Dwarf, 133.
Nevertheless, of course, the cruciform Church will fail, and each of us who aspire to cruciformity will also fail — again and again. Even here, however, the cross is the answer. When we fail, we return to the cross, the symbol and means of forgiveness and reconciliation.
~ Michael Gorman, Cruciformity, 400.
The last six months have been quite difficult.
Just over a year ago, four of us came together to explore an alternate way of living, and we began an ‘intentional Christian community’ in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. I was quite thrilled with what happened in the first six months of our journey into life together — we developed a pattern of praying together; some of us started reading in the park as a way of getting know our neighbours; others of us started walking the streets at night, getting to know the working girls; we (occasionally) invited homeless people to sleep on our couches or in our rooms if some of us were away; we celebrated a ‘community dinner’ once a week that was open to friends, co-workers, people living in our neighbourhood, others who were passing through town, and, really, pretty much anybody (those dinners were delightful and we hosted anywhere from five to twenty-five people per week).
But then, about six months ago, everything started falling apart. One of us moved to Honduras to pursue a teaching job there, and nobody ended up coming to join us to fill the empty spot (it was an odd series of events, as multiple people appeared to be close to joining — or even committed to join — but then backed out at the last minute). Also, unresolved tensions and conflicts between community members piled up, and we realised we had invested too much energy early on into engaging ‘missionally’ with the people around us, instead of taking the time to invest in the relationships that needed to exist amongst the community members. So, we scaled back our ‘missional’ activity and began to spend more time with one another. An important step, but one that took us away from the people around us. Then I began to burn-out physically (I had been working full-time overnights shifts for about three years, while also doing my Masters). I was regularly so exhausted that I had no desire to go out into the community around us. Simultaneously, another community member became so involved in various other commitments that that member was hardly present in the house at all. Likewise, the third member began to burn-out emotionally. Consequently, our times of prayer became more sporadic and we lost our routine of praying together. Our community dinners also suffered and we went for about four or five months without hosting a single dinner. Instead, we found ourselves just inviting friends over for dinner or drinks, and we became something of the ‘host house’ for our friends — but not for people in our neighbourhood. Finally, a few weeks ago, we had a big house meeting to address a lot of these things and we started up our community dinner once again. However, the community is still far from what it could be, or even what it used to be.
Now granted, this community was not intended to be a long-term community. It was only supposed to last for about 18 months — although it looks like it will be drawing to a close in a little less time than that. Realistically, without a fourth member, the rent is too expensive for us to be able to stay here much longer, and we still have one member who is burned-out and another who, despite good intentions, has too many other commitments to be able to fully invest in the community here. Consequently, even though I finally got off of my night shifts a few weeks ago and find myself reinvigorated, I am bracing myself to say goodbye to this place and move into some sort of limbo state until my wife and I can figure out where we are going from here. To make matters worse, the people with whom my wife and I had planned to begin a long-term community, ended up backing out on us.
So, as I look back on the time in this community, I can’t help but feel saddened and ashamed. Saddened because we failed to be what we could have been. Ashamed because I think that many assume that we were what we were not. Whenever a person expresses any sort of admiration for what we do, I cannot help but feel like a poser and a hypocrite.
Of course, even in our lowest moments, there were still good things that happened. Even when we were failing to be a community, we were still there for a friend who needed a safe place to be to ‘come down’ after relapsing, and we were still there for another friend who needed a safe place to be after having a ‘bad date’. The shame of our failure becomes bearable when I remember such moments — but it does not change the fact that we have, by and large, failed to embody much of any sort of real alternate way of sharing life together.
Consequently, as I think about moving on from here (as we plan to do at the end of January/start of February ’08), I do get scared. The idea of moving from here to some sort of apartment (hopefully in this neighbourhood) with just my wife and I, scares me because it holds the potential to be a first step in a trajectory that travels in a very different direction than the way we hope to go. It makes me remember the many voices that have told me that what we hoped to do was a figment of a young and foolish imagination. It makes me worry that those voices were right.
However, there is hope. In our failure, we have learned a great deal about the ways in which a group of people should go about learning to journey together (i.e. we made a lot of mistakes, but such mistakes may prove to be quite useful for future attempts at intentional Christian living). Furthermore, limbo states can be fruitful. The wilderness — the place that intervenes between one’s departure point and one’s destination — although a place of trial and testing, is also a place where one encounters, and is nourished by, God. And so, as I brace myself for the wilderness that is looming on our horizon, I hold onto the hope there there is One who has gone before us, and prepared a way for us, through the dry places and beyond into the land that flows with milk and honey. Milk and honey not just for us, but for all who are hungry, for all who are thirsting, and for all who desperately need a community wherein they can be known as beloved children of God.
Lord, have mercy. On all of us.
Reading Scripture: Scholars, Clergy & Laity
Chris Tilling recently wrote a post in response to my reflections (and the ensuing comments) on the form of hermeneutics espoused by Piper and Co. (cf. http://christilling.de/blog/ctblog.html). It is worth reading what he has to say, and it has prompted me to further explain my approach to reading, understanding, and applying scripture (especially as that reading relates to the laity, as per one of the comments on my original post).
1. Scripture, as a witness to the Word of God that is for all people, should be available to all people.
2. Furthermore, precisely because scripture is a witness to the Word of God, all people should be encouraged to read scripture.
3. Therefore, all Christians — be they scholars, clergy, or laity — should both have access to scripture, and be encouraged to immerse themselves therein.
4. However, scripture also exists as a text, or rather, as a large collection of texts written at various times, by various authors, in various genres, to various audiences, with various purposes in mind.
5. Consequently, we must recognise that scripture, as a whole, is a rather complicated thing and, having made this recognition, we must approach scripture with a great deal of caution.
6. Such caution is also necessary because we ourselves exist within a particular place, time, culture, and moment in history and we have all, to some degree, been conditioned by this context.
7. However, this context is one that is foreign to scripture and so we must be careful that, in our reading of scripture, we do not import foreign concepts, values, paradigms and presuppositions into the text.
8. Indeed, when we become aware of the issues involved in reading, understanding, and applying scripture, may seem so complex that we leave scripture strictly within the hands of the professionals.
9. But this would be a mistake, not only because the scripture is a witness to the Word of God that has been given for all people (see points 1-3), but also because scripture is a witness to other scripture.
10. When I say that scripture is a “witness to other scripture,” I mean that scripture, acting as a witness to the Word of God within a particular text found within the canon, also acts a witness to the Word of God in other texts found within the canon.
11. This means that there is a certain coherence to scripture, a certain storyline that runs from Genesis to Revelation, and certain characters, events, motifs, and injunctions that appear (and develop) throughout the whole.
12. Consequently, by continually relating the parts to one another, and by reading the particular in light of the whole, one is able to comprehend the gist of scripture (even if one does not comprehend every particular or all the details).
13. This understanding could be said to be the understanding that comes from the ‘plain reading’ of scripture.
14. This also reveals that the sort of reading that is required, in order to achieve this sort of understanding, is quite a bit more vigourous and sustained than the type of reading that is practiced by much of the contemporary Christian laity in the West (indeed, it is questionable as to how much of the laity actually reads the scripture with any regularity — although the same critique could, and should, be made of the clergy, and Christian scholars).
15. However, assuming that we actually are reading the scriptures with some regularity, one cannot simply read a chapter per day, or a verse per day (or a random selection of verses found within a daily devotional) and hope to get much that is meaningful or transformative out of scripture (instead, using this method, one will probably discover what one wants to discover, or what one has been culturally-conditioned to discover).
16. Unless, that is, the clergy have provided the sort of foundation that allows such a reading (of, at the very minimum, a chapter per day) to be meaningful.
17. That is to say, the clergy should be the ones providing the laity with the ‘big picture’, with the leitmotifs, and with the paradigm(s) that one finds in scripture. Thus, when I read about Pentecost in my devotions, I should be trained to automatically think of Babel and the call of Abraham, when I read about resurrection I should automatically think of the return from exile, and so on and so forth.
18. Consequently, ‘Sunday School’ (by which I mean the education of both children and adults in church), rather than providing us with a seemingly random sample of stories, should provide us with the story. Thus, when we read one particular part of that story — say the story of the exile of Israel — we will automatically remember earlier parts (the exile of the nations, and the exile imposed upon humanity and the cosmos) and anticipate later parts (the godforsakenness of Jesus on the cross, and to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead coupled with the outpouring of the Spirit).
19. In this way, new light will be shed upon our daily readings of select parts, and our consumption of each bit becomes, in actuality, a re-consumption of the whole. It is precisely this sort of reading that becomes both meaningful and transformative (just as the continual consumption of the body and blood of Christ found in the Eucharist is both meaningful and transformative).
20. It also means that our reading of scripture should be more sustained than it is. We should read daily, we should read sustained units of the story, and we should read in a way that genuinely engages the text at hand. Such a reading, with the requisite foundation, should make the ‘plain reading’ of scripture clear.
21. This, then, raises the question of the role of biblical scholars (and theologians) as they relate to the reading, understanding, and application of scripture within the church.
22. By and large, the role of the scholar is to inform the clergy (who then inform the laity).
23. By making this assertion, I am not seeking to create a hierarchy, or suggest that the scholar is superior to the priest (or the lay person). The scholar may be the minister of the (written) word, but the clergy member is the minister of the sacraments, and the lay person is a minister of the koinonia of those in Christ.
24. No one — scholar, clergy member, or lay person — is greater than the other, but each has his or her own role, and each should defer to the other in their respective areas of ‘expertise’. That means that, when Christian scholars tell the clergy (and the laity) to interpret a particular passage in a particular way, it is the responsibility of the clergy (and the laity) to do so. Or, conversely, when the clergy (and the laity) tell the Christian scholars that their lives need to reflect the content of their studies, it is the responsibility of the scholars to make the necessary changes.
25. Of course, such thinking relies, to a certain extent, upon a consensus within Christian scholarship. Yet, such a consensus is rarely found.
26. In the absence of consensus, it is the responsibility of both the scholar and the clergy member to inform themselves, as best they can, of the various sides of the argument at hand, before making a decision.
27. When debates get technical, as they often do, the scholar is better equipped for engagement than the clergy member. Therefore, it is the responsibility of the scholar to summarize the various positions, and their strengths and weaknesses, for the clergy member.
28. Therefore, when confronted with a controversial issue, the clergy member, like the scholar, must practice a great deal of patience before presenting a position to the laity and should not succumb to the temptation to give a hasty answer to seemingly urgent questions (hence, the laity must learn to practice patience as well).
29. After all, one cannot simply go with the majority of scholars (majorities are sometimes wrong), nor can one ignore solitary ‘radical’ voices on the fringes of the discussion (such voices are sometimes prophetic), nor can one simply go with the majority of scholars who are affiliated with one’s particular denomination (all denominations are flawed, and hold wrong views on some things), and so negotiating these waters can be extremely difficult.
30. Consequently, in areas that are especially controversial, the best a clergy member can do is to present the range of options to the laity and ask the church, as a congregation, to either: (a) prayerfully and carefully come to a consensus for how they, as a local body, will choose to act (while remaining aware that other local bodies have selected other options); or (b) refuse a consensus and allow for the whole range of options to be visible within one local body.
31. Of course, both (a) and (b) will likely lead to some members leaving the church but a local church cannot make this sort of decision based upon how many members, or which members, choose to stay or leave.
32. In all of this the clergy member, like the scholar, must be careful that he or she is not simply imposing his or her own personal preference upon the church.
33. That said, exercising caution, and recognising the plurality of options available to Christians on some issues, is not the same thing as cheerfully tolerating all positions.
34. Consequently, there are times when Christians must strongly disagree with, and refuse to accept, the positions held by other Christians on some issues (indeed, such disagreements have always been a part of the history of the people of God as the prophetic material in the OT shows us, and the Gospels and the letters of Paul in the NT remind us).
35. However, to refuse to accept a position that is held by another Christian, is not the same thing as refusing to accept that other Christian as a Christian, or as a fellow member of the body of Christ.
36. In extremis, such disagreement may even need to be voiced in the act of excommunication. However, even the act of excommunication does not say that a person is ‘damned’ or has ‘lost their salvation’ or whatever. Rather, it simply asserts that, at the present moment, the excommunicated person’s actions prevent that person from participating in the body and blood of Christ (and it makes no assertion whatsoever about the status that person might attain to after death).
37. Unfortunately, none of this has addressed how one is to discern which issues are the ones that require a person to take this sort of stand… but I have gone on long enough for now.
Pop-Spirituality and the Quest for Self: Just who is becoming like a god?
For those who don't know, there is a fantastic website called postsecret.blogspot.com, run by a fellow named Frank Warren, who had the brilliant idea of asking people to (anonymously) send him postcards that contained secrets — secrets that the senders of the postcards had never told anybody else. The website is updated every Sunday, and today, when I was looking at the new postcards, I was struck by one in particular. It said this:
I am tired of waiting for God to find me. So I'll find myself. I started looking last night.
What struck me was a comment that a reader had posted in response to this postcard. The comment was this:
Once I found myself, I realized God was there all along.
Now, granted, this is all pretty standard pop-spiritual language these days. The whole notion of discovering yourself, and thereby discovering the 'divine spark' (or whatever) that already exists within yourself, is close to being the dominant spirituality in Vancouver.
(Of course, such thinking also has a long history and dates as far back as the pop-spiritual language espoused by the serpent in Genesis 3, when he assures the man and the woman that they will 'be like gods' if they choose to heed his advice. Isn't this contemporary spirituality just another expression of our age-old desire to take the place of God?)
However, I was struck with a particular thought tonight as a few things came together with some clarity. Essentially, my proposition is this:
That which promises us that we will discover the divine within ourselves, is that which hides from us our bondage to other gods.
Let me try to explain what I mean by this by providing some context for this thought. A few years ago, I began to ask myself this question: “who, today, is being worshiped by the members of our society?” For awhile, struck by the dominance of this 'the divine is within me' discourse, I thought that we were worshiping ourselves. As society has becoming increasingly fractured, as the 'rugged individual' has increasingly become the model to emulate, I began to think that we had all become gods in our own eyes and were, thus, actively involved in worshiping ourselves.
I have since grown suspicious of this analysis, and believe that it does not go deep enough.
You see, although society has become fractured, and although the individual appears to have been elevated to sovereignty, there are other Powers at work that are actively involved in fostering the division of society into isolated individuals. Isolated individuals can be told that they are sovereign but, precisely because they are isolated, they are also unable to create any sort of significant change. Consequently, even though society has been fractured, one is able to see a great deal of conformity around key issues — issues of values, of priorities, and of goals. Why is it that, in a society where the individual is supposed to be sovereign, where we are supposed to be fractured from one another, everybody ends up looking and acting almost exactly like everybody else? Because the individual is not sovereign. Because we are not fractured. Granted, we are fractured from one another (from our 'neighbours'), but we are all, one and all, united in our bondage and subservience to Powers greater than ourselves. Indeed, it is these Powers that spread the ideology of finding the divine within ourselves. “Look,” they tell us, “the divine is within you!” and in this way they hide the fact that they have become like gods over us.
(Wasn't this exactly the objective of the Serpent in Genesis, who is later revealed as the Dragon in Revelation? 'You will be like gods,' the Serpent said, but really his goal was to become like a god over the man and the woman. Hence, we see the same thing occurring in the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. The Satan promises to make Jesus like a god ruling over the earth… if only Jesus will bow down and worship him!)
So who, or what, are these Powers? They are the Powers that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 6.12 when he writes:
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
These are the Powers inherent to the form of free market capitalism that has come to embrace all areas of our life together. Stated in an overly simplistic manner, in the borrowed words of Walter Brueggemann, these are the Powers of “therapeutic, technological, consumer militarism.” The truth is we by acting, by consuming, and by living in the way that we do, we are not serving ourselves. No matter how much 'fun' we have along the way, and no matter how much we 'discover' about ourselves, we are actually destroying ourselves (and one another) as we serve someone (or something) that has become like a god over us.
October Books
Good grief, another month come and gone and I’m still buried in a paper that I am writing for a seminar on “Christianity and Capitalism” (it’s a little worrisome that I just finished typing up an 8 page bibliography [I always type my bibliographies first] for a paper that is only supposed to be 20 pages… I might be in trouble).
Anyway, on with my woefully inadequate reviews (hey, at least I’m actually doing reviews this month!):
1. Faith & Wealth: A History of Early Christian Ideas on the Origin, Significance, and Use of Money by Justo L. Gonzalez.
This is a damn good book, and one that is extremely relevant for those of us who have the ‘privilege’ of living within the context of a well-advanced form of global capitalism. Gonzalez traces the writings of the New Testament authors, and the Church Fathers, up until the fourth century, and what he finds is impressive. The issue of wealth was one that was addressed regularly (i.e. Christian reflections on economics need to go back to this period, and not simply begin with the Reformers, like Calvin — who, by the way, broke tradition with all the Church Fathers when he permitted people to lend at interest). What is especially impressive is the way in which Gonzalez shows that the early Christian attitude to property was basically the attitude of the Church described in Acts 2 & 4. Christians were said to hold all things in common with one another and, apart from the bare necessities, they were to sell everything superfluous and give the money to the poor (deserving or not!). I found this book to be very convicting, and I highly recommend it to everybody.
2. Easy Essays by Peter Maurin.
Peter Maurin, along with Dorothy Day, was a co-founder of the Catholic Workers’ Movement (although Day become more of the spokesperson, the impetus and vision were largely Maurin’s). Collected here are a number of his essays, published in short, very readable lines, intended for the working man or woman. It makes for quick reading, but Maurin writes with wit (he refers to Utilitarians as Futilitarians — oh snap!) and his focus on combining cult, culture, and agriculture in communities where the worker learns how to be a scholar and the scholar learns how to be a worker provides much food for thought (especially for those Christian academics who are interested in pursuing intentional community living today).
3. The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures by Jean Baudrillard.
This book was so good, and so full of content, that it is hard to know how to describe it in a few sentences. Essentially, Baudrillard argues that, within the consumer society, signs and images have replaced reality because consumption is increasingly driven by the desire for status and distinction from one’s neighbour, instead of the desire to meet basic needs. Consequently, the consumer society is defined by its deep and “radical” alienation from reality and by its insatiable desires. As he makes this argument, Baudrillard engages in some fascinating studes of consumption, growth, personalization, mass-media, the body, time, solicitude, and affluence. Of course, I’m basically murdering this book in this review, as it is probably the best work of philosophy that I have read this year. I would likely make this required reading for any who are studying capitalism (along with the Gonzalez book, and the Klein book I mention below).
4. Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning and the New International by Jacques Derrida.
You know, I’m really beginning to wonder if Derrida is really worth the time it takes me to figure out what the hell he is talking about (an especially frustrating process given that, when I finally do figure out what he’s talking about, the content of what he is saying can usually be massively reduced and stated in much simpler language without much harm being done to anybody). This book was a bit of his shout-out to Marxism, after Marxism had (supposedly) been defeated with the collapse of the USSR (because, you know, he didn’t want to talk about Marx before that, lest he was identified with the wrong kind of Marxism and ended up *gasp* being misunderstood — which really seems to be Derrida’s problem: he’s so afraid of being misunderstood that he spends so much time hedging what he is saying that it takes for-freakin’-ever to understand him!). Anyway, apart from two chapters, one on the underside of capitalism and the atrocities it has wrought, and one on Fukuyama and the neo-evangelists of capitalism, I hardly connected with this piece. I wouldn’t recommend it, and I think it’ll be awhile before I think about reading Derrida again.
5. Fascism: what it is and how to fight it by Leon Trotsky.
You know, I imagine that the USSR would have been a very different place if Trotsky had beat out Stalin but, as with any power structure, it seems like the ‘bad guys’ always win (whether that is exemplified in communism in Russia or democracy in America). Regardless, I think that, given the option of choosing how to die, being killed by an ice-pick to the head while living in exile in Mexico would be pretty high on my list. But I’m getting off topic… this book (hardly a book, more like an encyclical) is a combination of selections on fascism pulled from Trotsky’s oeuvre. It was interesting as an historical piece (i.e. especially interesting is his analysis of the rise of fascism in Germany and the way in which he is able to foresee some of the dire consequences before they occur) but I didn’t find it to be all that helpful in exploring the topic of fascism itself. It has, however, whet my appetite for Trotsky and I’m discovering that his books are hard to find.
6. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein.
This very well might end up being the best book I’ve read this year. That is to say, I think that everybody should read this book. Klein engages in a decimating examination of neoclassical economics (i.e. the dominant form of contemporary capitalism) as it has arisen to a state of global dominance. In country after country, from Chile, to Poland to China, to the United States and Iraq, she demonstrates the horrendous human cost of imposing the ‘free market’ ideology that was perpetrated by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School (or, as I like to call them, the MFers). If this book doesn’t make you reconsider your attachments to Western culture, then I think we’re pretty much screwed.
7. Economics Today: A Christian Critique by Donald A. Hay.
Speaking of being screwed, if I really believed that Hay accurately represented the Christian approach to economics, then there is a good chance I’d convert to a violent form of socialism. Hays approach to Scripture, theology, and hermeneutics is shallow and borders on the absurd (when, for example, he quotes Jesus’ reference to divorce being allowed in the OT due to ‘hardness of heart’, as an authoritative text for the pursuit of capitalism as a necessary ‘second best’ option, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry). Not surprisingly, at the end of the day, Hay just ends up proposing a form of economics that looks almost identical to contemporary capitalism — except that everybody is just a little nicer to everybody else. Whoop-dee-doo.
8. Jihad vs. McWorld: How Globalism and Tribalism are Reshaping the World by Benjamin R. Barber.
This book was alright, I suppose. Maybe it’s hard to give it a fair shake after reading Klein’s tour de force. Essentially, Barber argues that both globalisation and violent forms of resistance are opposed to democracy and actually mutually support one another. Hence, the more of globalisation we see, the more of ‘jihad’ we will see, and the less democracy we will have. I think it’s a good point, but I think Barber’s solution (recover the values of civil society as they were first proposed by liberalism in the 18th century) is flawed and too dependent upon the what William Cavanaugh calls ‘the myth of the State as saviour’ (although, in this case, it is a democratic civil society, which is somehow vaguely differentiated from that state, that ends up saving us).
9. Selling Olga: Stories of Human Trafficking and Resistance by Louisa Waugh.
I was a little disappointed in this book. It had its strong points — highlighting trafficking that occurred in migrant workers outside of the sex trade, linking human trafficking to globalisation, and avoiding condescending or romanticised ‘victim’ language in relation to women who are trafficked — but, by and large, it seemed like the book was a document about somebody learning how to write a book about trafficking. It touches upon many of the same issues raised in Victor Malarek’s book (The Natashas) but I think Malarek deals with those issues in more detail. Both books, however, provide a number of handy references to documents that have been released on this issue, and to organisations involved in fighting human trafficking so it is a helpful resource in that regard.
10. The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje.
I enjoy Ondaatje’s voice quite a lot — he reminds me of Timothy Findley (when Findley is at his best) in his ability to write prose that sounds like poetry. Unfortunately, I’m not all that gripped by his content so this story about desert exploration, WWII, a pilot covered in burns, a Canadian nurse, an East Indian sapper, and an Italian thief (sounds like it should be good, right?) didn’t end up griping me all that much. I don’t know what it is, but I can’t really seem to get into Canadian literature (apart from the odd book, like The Wars by Timothy Findley — which is exceptional).