Calvin on the Holy Catholic Church

I'm making my way into the fourth and final book of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, entitled, "The External Means or Aids by Which God Invites Us Into the Society of Christ and Holds Us Therein." The first topic in this book is the Church. In this post I'll write some of my thoughts on Chapters I-III.

Calvin's ecclesiology in the Institutes is one of the more interesting topics I've come across, mostly because it's not widely talked about when people refer to "Calvinism." Ecclesiology is interesting to me these days for a variety of reasons. I suppose it has a lot to do with particular experiences I've had in and since college, but I also think it's worth all Christians thinking about. I know it's not the hottest topic at most evangelicals' Bible studies, but it really is one of the central questions of all of Scripture: what defines God's people?

Calvin's doctrine of the Church is so strong that you would think he was Catholic--and in a sense, he was, or at least he thought of himself that way. What he rebelled against was, as is poignantly made clear in Chapter II, the corruption of the Romanist Church. It's important to read Chapter I before Chapter II for two reasons. Firstly, you can't understand just how serious he is about calling the Roman Catholic Church not a church, unless you understand how serious he is about the unity of the Church. Secondly, it will do no good in our time to take all the heated rhetoric of Reformation out of context. What we have in our day all too often is a wealth of criticism without any ability to replace what we're criticizing with a coherent alternative.

Here is Calvin's view of the Church, put simply in Section 1 of Chapter I:

"For what God has joined together, it is not lawful to put asunder" [Mark 10:9 p.], so that, for those to whom he is Father the church may also be Mother.

Make no mistake, Calvin is talking about the visible Church (Sec. 4). In fact, it is quite clear that when Calvin talks about the "invisible" Church, he does not mean the "real" one. In context he is mostly referring to those who are not yet Christians; his primary motivation for bringing up the invisible Church is to remind us that we must also consider ourselves bound to people to whom we don't yet have a formal attachment.

He concedes that not all Christians are true, and that some will be exposed on the day of judgment. But using parables from the Gospel of Matthew such as the wheat and the weeds (Mt. 13:24-30), he argues that it is not only futile but harmful to try to sort out in this life who is a true believer and who is merely a hypocrite. Our loyalty should be to the Church, no matter what sort of moral corruption we might see within it. Thus Calvin spends several sections in Chapter I criticizing those such as the Anabaptists and other separatists who seek a pure Church.

This I find to be an extremely important counter to the American evangelical's constant need for a Church that's more "true." We seem to be more Anabaptist than Reformed in our ecclesiology, at least in practice. Yet it's more of a relativist strain of Anabaptist ecclesiology, wherein "other churches are true churches, too, but this is the church that I personally agree with most." Completely missing is the consideration of the unity of the Church as a whole. And I think to even suggest such a consideration will almost always get you either blank looks or possibly sneers. I've heard people talk about "Reformed Catholicity," but at this point it is structurally impossible for this to be anything more than an abstract idea. I hate to sound so cynical about that, but there simply is no denying the plain facts.

So what is, exactly, the mark of the true Church? Calvin has a pretty succinct answer in Section 9 of Chapter I:

Wherever we see the Word of God purely preached and heard, and the sacraments administered according to Christ's institution, there, it is not to be doubted, a church of God exists.

Calvin says that the moral purity of pastors and members of a congregation cannot annul the benefit of Word and sacrament. As long as these essential elements are there, it doesn't really matter how bad things get; God is at work, and he will be faithful. For Calvin, preaching is not a matter of a preacher coming up with words to say to his congregation. It is about God speaking through a man who has nothing in himself. Likewise, the sacraments don't have any power in themselves, nor are they made effective by those administering them; but are effective by God's grace.

In this context, Calvin defends the decision to break with the Roman Catholic Church in Chapter II. Calvin has not left himself any room to use mild language. If he insists that we must unite ourselves to Church no matter how much corruption there is within it, then he must have a severely compelling argument that the Roman Church is not the Church. Indeed, the word "antichrist" does come up. It's very sad to read this, but it's also easy to be very judgmental from a modern perspective, without understanding the depth of the conflict that led up to this language. I don't feel the need to repeat any of Calvin's invective against the "papists."

There is, however, a silver lining, so to speak. Calvin ends Chapter II with a word of qualification.

However, when we categorically deny to the papists the title of the church, we do not for this reason impugn the existence of churches among them. Rather, we are only contending about the true and lawful constitution of the church, required in the communion not only of the sacraments (which are the signs of profession) but also especially of doctrine.

The section following these words nevertheless ends on a critical note, showing that whatever Calvin was willing to concede to the "papists," he was still wholly convinced that Roman Catholicism was utterly devoid of the true marks of the Church.

Chapter III is not quite as interesting to me, and I suppose I won't get into it tonight since I'd rather not write for much longer. This chapter talks about the ordination of church officers, a rather dry subject for most of us (including me). It all felt familiar to me, since it is more or less what Presbyterians follow to this day.

Calvin does make some interesting remarks about why God chooses to speak through men, rather than just speak directly. I'm a little bit troubled by the argument, but I can also see how it has some force. Here's the comment that interests me:

If he spoke from heaven, it would not be surprising if his sacred oracles were to be reverently received without delay by the ears and minds of all. For who would not dread the presence of his power? Who would not be stricken down at the sight of such great majesty? Who would not be confounded at such boundless splendor? But when a puny man risen from the dust speaks in God's name, at this point we best evidence our piety and obedience toward God if we show ourselves teachable toward his minister, although he excels us in nothing.

This is certainly a good attitude to have toward preachers--they excel us in nothing. But the implication that God is not interested in making his will immediately received by all is troubling. I'm troubled by the idea of God testing people by obscuring his own message.

One more general comment about Calvin's ecclesiology. While I do appreciate his high appreciation for the unity and necessity of the Church, I also think his view is too instrumental. That is, he views the Church solely as a "means of grace," i.e. some tool God uses to make us more righteous. Is there not a sense in which God created the Church simply because that's what he loves? The question I'm asking is this: is the Church merely an umbrella for all the individuals who come to believe in Christ, or is it an entity in itself, with its own life and meaning in God's eyes? When I read that the Church is the Bride of Christ, or even his own Body, I am convinced that the Church has a more fundamental role in God's eyes than just being a tool for helping believers on the path to eternal life. I don't see Calvin specifically disagreeing with this, but he also fails to address it, which is disappointing.

Beauty for Truth's Sake - a review

If I could pick my top five topics to think about on a regular basis, three of them would be faith and reason, education, and, of course, mathematics. Thus Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education seemed like a perfect book for me to read and contemplate in my spare time. In it Stratford Caldecott offers something of a "manifesto" summarizing a view of education which sees the classical Western Liberal Arts tradition as a means of integrating faith and reason, art and science.

There is much to appreciate about the book. The beginning is quite strong, displaying a clear sense of what has gone wrong in modern education on the philosophical level. The opening lines read,

"In the modern world, thanks to the rise of modern science and the decline of religious cosmology, the arts and sciences have been separated and divorced. Faith and reason often appear to be opposed, and we have lost any clear sense of who we are and where we are going."

Why is this a problem? I think Caldecott sums it up nicely when he says,

"The purpose of an education is not merely to communicate information, let alone current scientific opinion, nor to train future workers and managers. It is to teach the ability to think, discriminate, speak, and write, and, along with this, the ability to perceive the inner, connecting principles, the intrinsic relations, the logoi, of creation...

As the title of the book suggests, one of the key integration points between these seemingly disparate areas of knowledge is beauty. "Everything," Caldecott says, "is true, good, and beautiful in some degree or in some respect.... Beauty is the radiance of the true and the good, and it is what attracts us to both." In particular--and this is part of what I found intriguing about the book--mathematics is a key to understanding how the classical tradition sought to "perceive the inner, connecting principles" of the universe.

"Theology, therefore, has an important place in the integration of the arts and sciences. Equally important, however, is a symbolic approach to number and shape--that is, the awareness that mathematics has a qualitative, as distinct from a purely quantitative, dimension."

Caldecott spends a couple of chapters in the middle of the book illustrating that qualitative dimension of mathematics, using examples from the ancient Pythagoreans, numerology from the Bible, and various other musings on the relationships between numbers, shapes, and the world around us. It is a rather delightful survey, ranging from the Tetractys to the five Platonic solids to the golden ratio. It really is a shame, in my opinion, that modern mathematical education leaves very little room for this kind of appreciation of mathematical objects.

Let me briefly outline the structure of the book, to show how these ideas are expressed as a whole. The Introduction states the problem as I have, and offers three guiding principles. The first is, "The way we educate is the way we pass on or transform our culture.... The fragmentation of education... is a denial of ultimate meaning. Contemporary education therefore tends to the elimination of meaning...." The second is, "The "re-enchantment" of education would open our eyes to the meaning and beauty of the cosmos." The third is, "The cosmos is liturgical by its very nature." In this way Caldecott makes it clear from the start that education can never find true integration without a religious foundation. This raises interesting practical questions, but this book doesn't deal with them.

Chapter 1 sets about calling us to return to an idea of education as a means of becoming "truly free, fully human." Caldecott wants us to see that education is not just about what is useful. It is, in the great Socratic tradition, about gaining knowledge of "the forms, or the highest causes," which one can only attain "through the systematic ordering of the soul." In Chapter 2, he shows us that this path requires awakening the "poetic imagination," the ability to find "within the self something that corresponds to the object, thus leaping over the barrier between self and other." Thus symbolism comes to play a key role throughout the remainder of the book. Chapters 3, 4, and 5 essentially serve to illustrate the "poetic imagination" at work throughout the Western tradition. I've already mentioned the mathematical objects; there are also a number of excursions into theology, as well as music, architecture, ecology, and astronomy. Throughout these chapters one gets the sense that while Caldecott may not be advocating a return to a medieval understanding of the cosmos, he certainly seems to have an affinity for it. Chapter 6 argues quite strikingly for that third principle mentioned in the introduction, that "the cosmos is liturgical by its very nature." He thus argues that any real education must involve elements that are at least implicitly religious.

The conclusion is perhaps the most explicitly religious, in fact explicitly Catholic, part of the whole "manifesto." He says, "As we have seen, the Liberal Arts were intended to conduce to freedom of mind, and they were developed and nourished by the Catholic Church." He then explains that the modern conception of freedom is deprived of a certain fullness that is granted by the Christian (Catholic) view.

"The best way to put this might be that the Christian conception of freedom is larger and fuller than the modern conception, for it includes both vertical and horizontal dimensions. The horizontal dimension encompasses the world we see directly, and the vertical allows for degrees of being and value, invisible realms, formal causality, and so on. ...

In the traditional "three-dimensional" world, the self was encouraged to collect itself together in a point, in order to attach itself to a vertical axis, a spiritual "path." ... Modernity, on the other hand, rejects the existence of the vertical altogether, or the very possibility of thinking in terms of up and down. ...

In a flatter universe, freedom had to be reconceived as entirely a matter of movement within the horizontal plane. I am assumed to be "freer" the more places I can go to, the more things I can choose on the supermarket shelf, the more people I can have relationships with. And that is why the Church claims today to be in the business of liberating human freedom, by making known the beauty of truth in its fullness.

Now that I've summarized the book, let me get into my complaints. I agree with Caldecott that the fragmentation of knowledge is symptomatic of some deep problems. I also agree with the basic idea of seeking beauty in the universe, and that the pursuit of knowledge is, at its core, about love. But I would challenge some of the assumptions of his "Christian Platonism."

Before I do that, though, let me make some slightly more superficial comments. I have to say, and I think many readers would agree with me, there were many times during the reading of this book when I thought "Re-enchantment of Education" simply meant redecorating the universe with medieval superstitions. Certainly Caldecott was aware of this as he was writing, which is why he made the occasional remark that he is not trying to undo the Enlightenment or go back to the Middle Ages. Yet these remarks have little force behind them; he doesn't seem to have anything good to say about the Enlightenment in any meaningful sense.

On a related note, Caldecott relies so heavily on his own Catholic tradition that it is difficult for readers outside that tradition to understand the appeal of his illustrations. For instance, he mentions more than once how cosmically significant it was for Christian that there are seven days in a week and seven sacraments. Well, suppose there aren't seven sacraments... Does that mean the universe is less enchanted with meaning? In one part of Chapter 4 he wanders off into a discussion about the filioque controversy, a subject which is thoroughly uninteresting to many of us. Even more importantly, such controversies aren't settled by geometric arguments, and Caldecott's references to the relationship between mathematics and theology are more likely to offend believers of different theological persuasions than they are to enlighten anybody.

Chapter 4 ends with a paragraph that begins, "Speculations like those I have mentioned in this chapter will appear forced to many." Believe me, they did. I found circles and lines to be wholly inappropriate for trying to visually represent the Trinity. I found the comparison between Jesus and the line perpendicularly connecting a point on a circle to a given diameter also rather "forced." And the ratio between this line in the "golden circle" and the circumference, why, it's miraculously just over 7! The amount in excess of 7 which we find in this ratio is, of all things, what Caldecott thinks might correspond to that "tiny and indispensable human contribution needed if heaven is truly to descend to earth." In other words, heaven divided by earth = 7 (God's number) + some tiny human contribution = pi * ((2 * phi) - 1) = 7.02481473...

It is worth noting here that the number of man's symbolic contribution in this calculation is irrational. All this to say, one has to be very careful before going off to find the logoi of creation. This search can easily degenerate into such absurd arguments as "there are seven sacraments because there are seven days in a week." It might be postmodern of me, but different cultural perspectives really are worth keeping in mind as we examine the connections underlying things in the world. For instance, the octave interval in music might very well have a special relationship with the number "eight" in the West, where eight might have special theological meaning (on the eighth day Christ rose again) or other kinds of meaning. But, lest we forget, this association is based on Western musical scales. Other cultures have more varied intervals, and therefore the association doesn't work. That's often how it goes with Platonism. You think you've found the form of which all the world is a reflection, but then you realize it's just your own perspective being forced on the world around you.

Now I am starting to get into my deeper qualms with Caldecott's assumptions. Consider this third vertical dimension of human experience, which he proposes in his conclusion. It is as if he says we ascend to heaven through the illumination of education (the right kind of education, anyway). This is indeed a very Platonic way of viewing things, but not a very Christian one. In the gospels, wisdom is given to ordinary people. It is all about grace, not enlightenment through systematic human effort. As I have already suggested, there is no guarantee that such systematic efforts would lead one closer to heaven. Human beings have difficulty seeing the difference between the beauty inherent in the universe and their own prejudices based on cultural conditioning.

Another point I would make is that this Platonic notion that Ideas are ultimate reality (the "thoughts of God," for a Christian Platonist), and all else is reflective of these pure Ideas, is in some sense to deny the goodness of creation. Creation has its own reality that is not a mere shadow of something else. I'm sure this point has been made plenty of times by people much more theologically astute than I, but from my own perspective it is important to recognize that every single thing you see and feel has its own existence. Yes, it is all made of the same basic stuff--i.e. matter and energy governed by universal laws of physics. But to have the underlying principles is not to have the thing itself. The world is not translucent. I don't agree with this idea of looking at the world as if the only thing that makes it good is being a channel through which to see something else.

In terms of application I think this point can be rather significant. As in I don't think it's necessary or fruitful to link every scientific discovery to some theological precept. I don't think mathematical objects have some inherent mystical meaning. In terms of mathematics education, I do think it would be helpful for people to be taught that mathematics is more about inner relationships than it is about formal operations, which can have nothing to do with reality. Far from vindicating Platonism, however, I think this just points for the need for human beings to be connected to things. Caldecott gets it right when he talks about the "poetic imagination," at least insofar as he describes human beings as inherently connected to creation. But I think he gets it wrong when he posits a realm of pure Ideas which have some higher reality than the world of tangible experience.

The last thing I'll point out is that Caldecott seems, in spite of himself, to miss the strong distinction between Platonic idealism and Christian realism. Related to Platonism is, I think, a tendency to try to escape realism. If the most important thing is to ascend to the Forms, then it becomes less important to actually deal with the gritty details of the real. I submit that this is a theological weakness in Caldecott's understanding. He spends some time in first chapter talking about "Beauty on the Cross." There is, paradoxically, a great deal of beauty on the Cross of Christ, but the other side of that paradox must always be remembered. The crucifixion was a gruesome, grotesque thing. The Incarnation itself was an "emptying" of Christ to the point of humble obedience.

It is important that we as Christians remember this, so that we, like Christ, can enter into the world as it actually is, and not as a mere reflection of perfect Ideas. True education demands a certain realism. We cannot gloss over the details. We must be willing to face the world as a complicated, often frustrating place. We're not going to be able to transcend uncertainty and confusion. Even Christ himself prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Father, if it is your will, save me from this hour." And on the cross he cried out, "My God, why have you forsaken me?" How much less will we be able to transcend the uncertainty of this life? Caldecott criticizes the postmoderns for doubting the human ability to obtain truth, but to a certain extent the postmoderns are right. It is not necessary to believe that truth is "relative" to have a healthy skepticism about the human ability to possess truth. We have to be realistic about ourselves, and about the world we live in. And instead of trying to transcend this world, we ought to follow Christ's example; he stepped down from his position of transcendence, that he might enter into this world--not, I believe, to show us the way out of this world, but to begin to transform it.

Caldecott is right about the most important thing: it all comes down to love. It is difficult to know what direction love should take us. While I don't agree with the direction Caldecott proposes, I think he is right to give us an alternative to our current approach to education. We do live in a beautiful universe, and it would be a waste to treat it in the purely utilitarian way that students are encouraged to now. Perhaps there is a better approach, one that relies not so much on enchantment as on the love of the universe for what it really is.

Paul Krugman says something rational

In a New York Times article this week, Paul Krugman actually said something libertarian economists can completely agree with:

What will Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, say in his big speech Friday in Jackson Hole, Wyo.? Will he hint at new steps to boost the economy? Stay tuned.

But we can safely predict what he and other officials will say about where we are right now: that the economy is continuing to recover, albeit more slowly than they would like. Unfortunately, that’s not true: this isn’t a recovery, in any sense that matters. And policy makers should be doing everything they can to change that fact.

Then he goes and says the Fed should buy more debt, the government should spend more money on stimulus, blah blah blah. But at least he ends with the right sentiment, sort of: "It’s time to admit that what we have now isn’t a recovery, and do whatever we can to change that situation."

Of course, the real task is to make real growth possible, not, as Krugman would have it, to play god with the economy.

Just a little piece left to us?

I have nearly finished Beauty for Truth's Sake by Stratford Caldecott, and I intend to review it in the next few days. But since I've been blogging a lot on Calvin, one particular passage has been gnawing at me. It has nothing to do with the main argument of the book, but nevertheless Caldecott takes the trouble to spell it out with some force, so I feel the urge to respond.

He makes the following statement with regard to human effort and divine grace:

As St. Paul says: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church" (Col. 1:24, my emphasis [that is, Caldecott's]). This sentence has often been taken by theologians to refer to our cooperation with God in our own salvation and deification.... As the Catholic Catechism puts it: "God grants his creatures not only their existence, but also the dignity of acting on their own, of being causes and principles for each other, and thus of cooperating in the accomplishment of his plan." It is represented in the Catholic Mass by the drop of water with which the priest slightly dilutes the cup of wine that is about to become the blood of Christ. This is the tiny and indispensable human contribution needed if heaven is truly to descend to earth, and earth finally to be integrated with the everlasting Trinity.

This passage, as it contributes nothing to the argument of the book, might as well have been put there entirely to irritate Calvinists. I note, with some irony, that the very next sentence reads, "Speculations like those I have mentioned in this chapter will appear forced to many."

All that aside, I wanted to make a serious point about this line of reasoning, as I find it very common not only in Catholic thinking but in most non-Reformed Christian thought. God's grace plays a huge role, but the contribution of man gets just a drop--that oh so precious drop appears to make all the difference in the world. Why can't the Calvinist just acknowledge that one drop? Why must he strip human beings of every contribution to God's work of grace?

Before I answer the question, why don't we press the question further? Why do Calvinists even get out of bed every morning? For heaven's sake, why did Calvin strain himself to death (literally, I think) working as a clergyman in the newly Reformed Church? If he didn't even believe one drop of contribution was left to man, why did he appear to put in so much effort? Many who consider these questions conclude that the Calvinist must simply be irrational, or strangely obsessed.

But now let me hint at an answer. It is telling that Catholic teaching leaves here only a drop of human contribution. If it were more than that, this would sound like an affront to God's grace, and would violate so many passages of Scripture that seem so clear on God's grace being preeminent. So man, it is thought, must out of humility be content with his little drop for which he can claim credit.

The Calvinist, on the other hand, leaves nothing to himself, but in this way he paradoxically takes on everything. Consider a few quotes from St. Paul:

"But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them--though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." (1 Cor. 15:10)

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me." (Gal. 2:19-20)

"I can do all things through him who strengthens me." (Phil. 4:13)

Paul is not talking about adding his drop of water. No, he can accomplish all things, he can work harder than any of them, even to the point of being crucified with Christ. Yet not one of these things happens apart from God himself. It is only because Paul is united with Christ that he is able to accomplish so much.

So it is by embracing the most profound humility that one actually obtains the greatest empowerment. The Calvinist sees himself as nothing, but therefore gets to see all of the good that he does as nothing less than divine. And this is perhaps the most incredibly presumptuous, most absurdly arrogant thing a man could possibly think about himself--that his actions are actually the works of God--unless that is exactly what God promises to be true.

Union with God cannot be separated from the Calvinist's view of grace. The Christian must be a total paradox--capable of nothing but capable of everything, wretched and human yet sanctified and clothed with divinity. The joy of Calvinism is that one can not only worship God as sovereign and transcendent, but actually participate in his transcendent life. (Otherwise how could he possibly conceive of prayer as so vital?)

No little drops for the Calvinist. One might say it's all or nothing, but that would be a misunderstanding. For the Calvinist, it's all and nothing.

Homebuyer tax credit didn't benefit homebuyers?

At least one analysis of the homebuyer tax credit calls it a total scam:

The Realtors backed it… the home builders backed it… the mortgage bankers backed it… virtually anyone with an financial interest in residential real estate transactions backed the Homebuyer Tax Credit (and it’s expanded extension) and now that the program is finally complete and a whole host of indicators (NAHB builder sentiment, pending home sales, existing home sales, home prices, etc.) suggest that the its effects were at best temporary, we can see fairly clearly that this policy was a scam of epic proportions benefiting few and costing many.

Here's what you get for trusting the government to make things cheaper:

Many of the homes purchased with the credit have already declined in value in excess of the credit’s maximum $8000 benefit (i.e. a mere 2.5% decline on a $350,000 home) leaving many unwitting home “buyers” in the cruel predicament of sinking in a quicksand of asset price deflation for simply having jumped for a slight nibble of the government’s meager tax carrot.

Well if the actual homebuyers didn't benefit from this, why would the government enact such a policy? Surely someone must have benefited. Oh, that's right. I could have told you right from the beginning:

Realtors, home builders and mortgage bankers…. some of the most notable culprits of the housing bubble years… all walk away cleanly skimming the proceeds coming from the transactions of an estimated 2 million temporarily stimulated home purchases.

It should come as no surprise that these were the very same industry groups that worked tirelessly lobbying to enact this failed policy… it was a simple exchange… your tax dollars to their wallets.

No, it really shouldn't come as a surprise. This reminds me of two things I learned from Adam Smith: 1) business people tend to know their own interests better than the general public knows their own interests, and 2) business people are also very good at convincing the government that their interests are actually in line with public interests, when this is in fact not the case. Not much has changed in the two and a half centuries since Smith.

There's one other fundamental principle that I remember from Wealth of Nations which is relevant here. The amount of profit that a producer requires is not determined by consumer demand. Consumer demand only determines the price at which he is able to sell. If he is unable to sell at a price that will get him sufficient profit, he'll just have to do something else. On average, this is a normal part of a fluid economy that should not be looked down on. There is nothing wrong with giving up a certain venture when it becomes irrational to keep holding on. However, what often happens is that the government will provide subsidies, for instance a homebuyer tax credit, which allows producers to sell at a higher price and thus make their required profit. This encourages them to continue in what would otherwise be considered irrational economic activity.

The problem is that when it comes to public interest, we somehow see certain goods (such as houses) as having some sort of absolute value. Everyone just has to have one! And people accuse capitalists of being materialistic. The reality is that every good has only relative value. It's only valuable if it's valuable to you. We all know this in our own daily lives. For instance, I would never pay as much for coffee as my brother, or my uncle. This is not a character flaw in either party. But now suppose that in this troubled economy, I were forced to pay my brother so that he could keep buying coffee...

That's pretty much the state of things in this country. And who wins? No, the buyers don't win. The people who stand to gain a profit are the sellers.

Big business vs. free markets

Charles Johnson writing for the Freeman says,

British Petroleum, as a corporation, exists because governments created it – with a monopoly concession from the Shah of Iran to a company owned by the government of the United Kingdom. Like all other Big Oil companies, BP extracts the oil it sells mainly from government-controlled land and sea, through monopoly concessions, bureaucratic bidding processes, and politically granted leases. It uses government protection, liability caps, and escrow funds to insulate their business from paying the economic and social costs of their actions. In a freed market BP’s concentrated wealth and reckless business model would not exist.

Being in favor of free markets does not make you an advocate for big business. In many respects, it makes you just the opposite.

It's nice to see someone debunking the ever-present media insistence that pure capitalism caused the oil spill, and now we need the government to save us.

Unity in Truth

For just as the body is one and has many memberrs, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. (1 Cor. 12:12)

Can there be unity among Christians? There are always attempts being made to do so. In our day people very much appreciate dialogue, and there is a lot of hunger, especially among young Christians, to see divisions decrease. Yet there are always a significant number of people who say (and reasonably so, at least on the face of it) that "we can have unity as long as we unite around truth." After all, it would be silly to unite solely around the fact that we're willing to call ourselves "Christians." We'd have unity, but we'd have very little to show for it.

And yet, all those passionate seekers of truth, despite the best of intentions, always seem to end up splitting Christianity into smaller and smaller pieces. Why is this? There may be many reasons, but I have come to suspect that it largely boils down to a misunderstanding of what truth is, and how we get it.

Postmodernism has brought with it the now widespread idea that truth is relative to both cultures and individuals. The assumptions we hold are conditioned by our experiences and by the society we live in; therefore there really is no "absolute truth." Christians (at least of a more conservative bent) tend to emphatically reject this assumption, insisting that truth is one, and that it is absolute. This is ironic for a group of people who run around proclaiming so many conflicting "truths." Uniting around the belief that there exists only one capital-T Truth is as vacuous as uniting around a mere label, such as "Christian."

The question is, what do Christians have with which to replace postmodern claims about truth? Can we deal with postmodern critiques without merely dismissing them? It would not be wise to neglect the insight that our assumptions are indeed culturally conditioned, and that a lot of the truths we cling to are largely wrapped up in personal experience. Ignoring these insights does not make them go away. It is not much better to casually admit, "True, our beliefs are largely culturally conditioned, but that doesn't mean there isn't absolute truth out there to be found." We ought to have some positive evidence that there really is Truth to be found, and that we're not wasting our time in search of it because we wish it to be there.

How have we misunderstood truth? In my opinion, postmodern claims about truth are irrefutable, provided we assume truth is something to be grasped individually. This understanding of truth is so fixed in our minds that I suspect it would take ages to pry it out. Yet what I believe to be closer to reality is that truth is grasped corporately. It might even be necessary to say something as radical as truth is not a "thing" to be grasped at all, but it is more like a state in which all the parts of a whole are properly ordered.

What leads me to this idea? Ironically, I would start with how individuals learn. One incredible modern insight is that the mind is, essentially, a corporate entity. The brain is composed of billions of cells, each of which sticks to its own individual tasks. Thus learning, even for a single human being, is a corporate activity. Propositions are not grasped by any one neuron. Human understanding is a product of all the parts of the brain being in proper cooperation with each other.

This proper cooperation is exactly what Paul is describing in 1 Corinthians 12. He describes many different tasks that we are given in the church, yet all of these separate tasks are part of the functioning of the one body of Christ. What if we applied this to our understanding of truth?

We already intuitively sense that our pursuit of knowledge benefits from diversity. We see how beneficial it is to discuss things collectively, so that flaws in our reasoning might be exposed and different voices might give us needed perspective. But all this gives us is a struggle to find the right balance between open-mindedness and strong resolve. This is because we still believe that knowledge is fundamentally something to be grasped individually. Hence the struggle is to find the best strategy for getting truth for oneself: open-mindedness might help bring a person closer to truth, while being resolute in one's opinions might protect it from outside threats.

What if this struggle is fundamentally misguided? Individual neurons in the brain do not individually struggle to understand propositions. That is the task of the brain as a whole. In the same way, I suspect that the Truth we are after is of a higher order than each of us as individuals. None of us can grasp it. I am not saying that none of us are smart enough. I am suggesting that it is necessarily impossible, like individual neurons trying to learn calculus, or individual muscle cells trying to play basketball. The Truth is not within our grasp because we are not supposed to grasp it individually, but collectively. This is why the church is a body, and not merely a set of individuals.

The postmodern complaint that no one can own the truth seems to be correct. But the conclusion that there is no truth relies on the assumption that we are meant to exist solely as individuals, rather than as a connected whole. Yet in the New Testament, the "new humanity" (Eph. 2:15) is a "body," (1 Cor. 12:12) organically connected to one another, as it were. It is not the destiny of human beings to find truth individually, but only as a body.

So if truth is not something that can be grasped individually, what is it? I have to insist that I don't know, because it is beyond my grasp. Instead, I merely insist that I am connected to a body that, in time, will be "guided into all the truth." (John 16:13)

For Catholics (at least of a conservative persuasion), the interpretation of John 16:13 is that the Church has been kept safe from key doctrinal errors, and that the way to have the Truth is to receive the teaching passed down through the Church. This would appear to be close to what I am saying, but it is in fact radically far off. The job of the body is not to receive the truth and break it down into propositions which can be understood by each individual part of the body. How absurd would it be if the brain broke down ideas so that the fingers and toes could understand them! This is not even necessary, nor is it reasonable. Rather, the body as a whole gains wisdom as each member of the body carries out its function properly.

Thus the function of the church as the "pillar and ground of the truth" (1 Tim. 3:15) is not primarily to write down statements of doctrine to which its members ought to assent. Statements of doctrine are wonderfully useful. I by no means intend to disparage words and propositions. That is how, for millennia, human beings have meaningfully communicated with one another on a level that would not be possible otherwise. I am simply saying that words and propositions are not "the truth," and never will be. No, the task of the church, as I have said, is to be well-ordered, to be healthy, and in this way to collectively possess the truth in a way that surpasses all individual understanding.

Here I have to express my skepticism toward the Protestant treatment of the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. In my mind there are two very different understandings of that doctrine, one of which I can accept, and another which doesn't work, in my opinion. The former is simply that the church does not have authority over Scripture, but must be continually transformed by it; in this sense the Scriptures are "authoritative." This much I can accept.

But there is a second sense in which Sola Scriptura commonly taken, and in that sense the Bible is God's Truth perfectly expressed to man in written form. Regardless of whether or not the words of the Bible are 100% factually accurate, I find it difficult to accept this doctrine of Sola Scriptura on philosophical grounds. Words and propositions do not add up to Truth, and I think this applies as much to the Bible as to anything else. Not that the Bible is just some other book; I wouldn't even suggest such a thing. I just think we have to make a distinction between capital-T Truth and the words of Scripture. Wouldn't every Protestant admit that understanding the words of Scripture is not the same as knowing God? Theologically speaking, wouldn't we rather say that knowing God is closer to what "having the Truth" is about, rather than knowing certain doctrines?

So then I reject these two notions of Truth espoused (at least sometimes) by both Catholics and Protestants--dogma on the one hand and "Sola Scriptura" on the other hand--which are really the same notion, namely that Truth is meant to be consumed individually. Instead, I propose that Truth is meant to be understood by us corporately, by which I mean that we are connected to one another and rightly ordered as a body. Ideally this means all humans. But it is natural to ask, how do we as the church pursue truth under this model?

For one thing, we each do our individual tasks. Each of us has a particular calling, and we ought to fulfill that calling in faith that by doing so we are contributing to the proper functioning of the body. The eye has to have faith that because it does its job, the legs will be able to carry the body where it needs to go. The ear has to have faith that because it does its job, the mind will understand what's being said. We all have to have faith in our individual tasks, because those tasks are all essential parts of a much greater body; and none of us has the right or that capability of overseeing the entire body.

For another thing, we connect to one another. The famous "love chapter" is the central part of Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 12-14, concerning the body and its proper ordering. Love really is the core of the Christian life. We ought to have faith that our collective understanding of the truth comes out of our mutual love for one another. I don't think it really happens in reverse. One does not need to know "the truth" in order to love others. Neither do I think it really helps us love one another when we have pure doctrine. Rather, love is more fundamental. Truth is something that we can have together, but only if we have love keeping us together. If we don't have love, then neither will we have truth. But this requires a different notion of "truth" than what is commonly accepted.

I think I'll end this here. There's a lot more I could say, but I think I will save it for other topics.