Cranmer's Right Hand: A Symbol of the Magisterial Reformation

 This post was originally written to reflect upon the 500th anniversary of the Reformation. It is done through the life and work of Thomas Cranmer, archbishop of Canterbury. He is one of the best lens to view the Reformation through, reflecting its good as well as its sin.

In 1556, Thomas Cranmer was to die as a repentant heretic under the bloody purge of "Evangelicals" in Mary Tudor's short and vicious reign. Cranmer had recanted on almost all of his works as chief reformer and archbishop of England's church. Before he went to the pyre, Cranmer had time to give an execution speech. Marian authorities expected him to warn reformers of their heresy, but instead, Cranmer stood his ground. He was a man who seemed incredibly chameleon, someone who was 'politique' and a survivor. Some have concluded that Cranmer was a toady, flexible in his views, and self-serving; others that he was merely a slow thinker, a timid scholar, an affable man, and someone highly committed to the English crown. The truth is probably a mix of things, but, as he stood on death's door, Cranmer had made up his mind.

Cranmer recanted his recantation, decried the pope as antichrist, and stood up for 'Evangelical' principles. Marian supporters booed and hissed, evangelicals cheered him on. The guards escorted Cranmer to his execution, bound him to wood, and set his pyre ablaze. With the fires already beginning to blaze, the degraded archbishop stretched forth his right hand into the flames. He confessed to the crowd that he had now burnt off the offending hand which had blasphemed in a moment of weakness. Cranmer perhaps seared off his hand with Christ's words in mind that it is better to lose a hand than be thrown into hell. In his last moments, as the inferno consumed him, Cranmer prayed with st. Steven's words that Christ would receive his spirit.

I admire Cranmer because he was one of the few major reformers who died a martyr. And I contend that Cranmer's burnt hand should be taken as a symbol for the Reformation as a whole. Primarily, I refer to the magisterial reformation, the major wings that sought (and gained) the support of the state. Calvin had Geneva, Zwingli had Zurich, Luther had Electoral Saxony, and so on. The support of the magistrate did not mean it was not a bumpy road. Certainly Geneva was an endless headache to Calvin.  However, it did mean that the extant of a reformation depended upon the parameters of a particular magistrate, whether a prince or a city council. It should not be a surprise that Luther's haughty naivete, in a near "better a Turk than a Habsburg", quickly dried up as he relied on the prince to enforce his doctrine. By 1525, Luther turned his vicious pen against the peasants who misunderstood their man, and paid dearly for it.

Cranmer is a man who embodies the strains of the magisterial reformation. On the one hand, Cranmer was a humanist in the best sense of the term, someone who applied his mind to reassessing ancient sources. Ad Fontes was the cry of the Renaissance as well as much of the Reformation. It was in such an environment that Cranmer composed the Book of Common Prayer which would forever mark Anglophone piety. Cranmer's design for the English church's liturgy was one that would give the Bible to the common people in their own language. The lectionary was designed for the purposes of covering the totality of Scripture (so that all might hear, learn, and inwardly digest it). The prayers were soaked in words of patriarchs and prophets, addressing the struggles and joys of holy living and everyday life. Cranmer sought to bring monastic holiness into the day-to-day church, where all parts of life were to be sanctified through prayer and thanksgiving.

On the other hand, Cranmer aided in subjecting English Christians to royal domination. The church became an extension of Henry VIII's sacral kingship. Through his Reformation Parliament, Henry gained not only governance over the Church of England (something maintained by Elizabeth I and all her successors), but headship. This position made Henry a national pope, allowing him to alternate between the Evangelical Ten Articles (1536) and the Roman-conservative Six Articles (1539). Perhaps, one may argue, that without Henry Tudor (and his marital troubles) the English church would never have left the Roman orbit. But the witness of Lollardy is proof that, no matter how small, the truths of the Reformation would have survived without princely support. William Tyndale had drank deep from the Lollards before he became an ally of Martin Luther. Nevertheless, God uses many dishonorable villains despite themselves. On account of its magisterial attachments, the Church of England's history is blackened with persecution of the saints, greed, slavery, sloth, murderous violence, careerism, and partisanship.

And so far I've only referenced England. Lutheran and Reformed hands are stained crimson in an ocean of blood, as much as their Roman Catholic opponents. The many state-churches of Europe played the whore well, drunk on the blood of the saints and the oppressed. 1525, the Peasant's Revolt, is the tragic heart of the Reformation. The intensification of feudal life, developing the expansion of merchant capital, had reached a severe breaking-point. In many cases, the Reformation, rather than resist these social changes, allied itself to them. Christian ethics were once again compromised. Thus, to remember 1517 as some mythic event, where brave Luther stood against all, is to be perverse. Luther was no hero.

And neither was Thomas Cranmer. He wrote well, he promoted beautiful truths, he tried to reform his church to bring the gospel to bear upon the whole of human life. He took up the endless call of semper reformanda, always returning to the ancient truth. But his reform efforts were deeply compromised. The hand that wrote the prayer-book and the glorious articles of religion also penned propaganda for the realm, supporting Henry's tyrant reign. He gained a free hand under Henry's son, but was scared to compromise after Edward's short reign. Cranmer's hand justified horrors as well as proclaiming the gospel of grace through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Cranmer acted better than he knew. The Reformation has as much to offer as to disregard, it is a dead end that possesses seeds of life. It is the burnt hand of the martyr-bishop, full of compromise and courage. It straddles the ambiguity of "tradition": whether to pass on rightly, or to commit treason as a traitor. There is much to rejoice in the Reformation as there is to lament. Christ's church has suffered such contradictions and will continue to, as light and shadow mix in Christ's crucified body. May we learn from such, rejoicing and shuddering at once.

Pursuing Just Price: C.H. Douglas and Guild Socialism

 The following sections are from C.H. Douglas' Economic Democracy (1920; pp. 96-111). Douglas was a royal airman and engineer who became interested in the problems of economy as liberal capitalism tottered during the Great War. He began to theorize alternatives that sought (as the title suggests) a greater role and freedom for the common man. And, as many fellow socialistic travelers realized, democracy was primarily an economic issue (equity) not a political one. Universal access to the vote is useless if there isn't universal access to food, clothes, and medicine (which does not leave you in debt bondage). Douglas traveled throughout the Commonwealth to promote his ideas and establish parliamentary parties.

It's interesting to consider as an alternative to the false either-or binary between statism (whether capitalist or socialist or a hybrid) and libertarian delusions (which lead to private-corporate dominion). On the one hand, Douglas is not a fool and realizes the improvement technology makes to life (economy of scale). On the other, central planning (whether government monopoly or private oligarchy) destroy the fabric of human life through collectivizing. Instead, Douglas contributes to the original concept of "guild socialism", where the local organizations of daily life are coordinated (not dominated) through a central government. The goal is a form of government that produces bounty, protect freedom, and is conducive to the full development of man. It's in this vein that Douglas rejects "medievalism:

Bearing these distinctions in mind it will be recognised that there are two separate lines along which to attack the situation presented by the dissatisfaction of the worker with his conditions of work, and the not less serious discontent of the consumer with the machinery of distribution ; and these may be called mediaevalism and ultra- modernism.

Mediaevalism seems to claim that all mechanical progress is unsound and inherently delusive ; that mankind is by his very constitution compelled, under penalty of decadence, to support himself by unaided skill of hand and eye. In support of its contentions it points to the Golden Age of the fourteenth century in England, for example, when real want was comparatively unknown, and green woods stood and clear rivers ran where the slag- heaps and chemical works of Widnes or Wednesbury now offend the eye and pollute the air. When arts and crafts made industry almost a sacrament, and faulty execution a social and even a legal offence ; when the medium of exchange was the Just Price, and the idea of buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market, if it existed, was classed with usury and punished by heavy penalties.

While appreciating the temptation to compare the two periods to the very great disadvantage of the present, it does not seem possible to agree with the conclusion of the Medievalist that we are in a cul-de- sac from which the only exit is backwards ; and it is proposed to make an endeavour to show that there is a way through, and that we may in time regain the best of the advantages on which the Medievalist rightly sets such store, retaining in addition a command over environment, which he would be the first to recognise as a real advance ; a solution which may be described as Ultra- Modernist.

Douglas agrees with the medievalist that "modernism", and its reduction of life to utilitarian input/output categories (whether marxist, fabian, or liberal) is destructive. And yet the idea of "going back" is out of the question. This fantasy continues to this day, with many reactionary critics attacking "modernism" and all of its peculiarities. Things like the Dreher Option, and revivals of ChesterBelloc Distributism, reflect this valorization of 14th c. England (or "Merry Ol' England"). They revere the small because its a defense of cultural values that the modern seems to run into the ground. Consequently, regimes that deploy this rhetoric but embrace the brutalities of statism tend to win them over. It's not for nothing ChesterBelloc thought highly of Franco. They're attracted to gloss, not substance. They benefit from economies of scale, but wish to "retvrn to tradition" as a form of role-play. They don't grasp the dynamics of capitalism, and thus appeals for Just Price are essentially impotent. And yet the cry for these things reflect the degeneracy of the current system. Hence Douglas appeals to ultra-modernism, or going "through" modernity:

 In order to do this, certain somewhat abstract assumptions are necessary, and it has been the object of the preceding pages to present as far as possible the data on which these assumptions are made. They are as follows : —

(1) The existing difficulties are the  immediate result of a social structure framed to concentrate personal power over other persons, a structure which must take the form of a pyramid. Economics is the material key to this modern riddle of the sphinx because power over food, clothes, and housing is ultimately power over life.

 (2) So long as the structure of Society persists personality simply reacts against it. Personality has nothing to do with the effect of the structure ; it merely governs the response of the individual to conditions he cannot control except by altering the structure.

 (3) It follows that general improvement of conditions based on personality is a confusion of ideas. Changed personality will only become effective through changed social structure.

 (4) The pyramidal structure of Society gives environment the maximum control over individuality. The correct objective of any change is to give individuality maximum control over environment.

If these premises are accepted it seems clear that the first and probably most important step is to give the individual control of the necessaries of life on the cheapest terms possible.

In other words, Douglas advocates systematic reforms for the defense of the individual. Systematic problems and personal-individual problems are two different things. Thus, to create a better environment for people to flourish, one needs to change the system. The problem with medievalists, and other romantic reactionaries, is that they focus upon individuals. The solitary rebel against the congealed blob of the factory system, the lone man who returns to nature (or God, which may or may not be the same thing for these romantics). While this position might be enchanting, it really does little for most people. In fact, the masters of mankind support these philosophical trends because they're a steam valve for intelligent malcontents. But for Douglas, any real change means a systematic change because systems or economics control the main substances of life (clothes, food, etc.). Therefore, if one wants a free individual who has control over his own surroundings, then one needs a central system that can produce this result.

What kind of systematic change defends the local and individual? Douglas abhors fabianism and soviet-style collectivization, which does nothing to repair man's enslavement to his environment. In contrast, he advances central control of credit:

What are these terms ? What is the fundamental currency in which the individual does in the last analysis liquidate his debts? A little consideration must make it clear that there can be only one reply ; that the individual only possesses inalienable property of the one description ; potential effort over a definite period of time. If this be admitted, and it is inconceivable that anyone would seriously deny it, it follows that the real unit of the world's currency is effort into time — what we may call the time-energy unit.

Now, time is an easily measurable factor, and although we cannot measure human potential, because we have at present no standard, it is, nevertheless, true that for a given process the number of human time- energy units required for a given output is quite definite, and therefore, the cheapest terms on which the individual can liquidate his debt to nature in respect of food, clothes, and shelter, is clearly dependent on process ; and by getting free of this debt with the minimum expenditure of time- energy units of which his individual supply varies, but is, nevertheless, quite definite at any given time, he clearly is so much the richer in the most real sense in that he can control the use to be made of his remaining stock. But, and it is vital to the whole argument, improved process must be made the servant of this objective, that is to say, a process which is improved must, by the operation of a suitable economic system decrease the time-energy units demanded from the community, or to put the matter another way all improvements in process should be made to pay a dividend to the community.

Before he gets to the solution, Douglas elucidates the problem. The way the capitalist system is organized is the exchange of time/labor for wages. Men need access to basic goods to survive and have a decent life, and thus they're born into a state of debt-bondage (you have needs, and thus you are forced to pay off the debts acquired to simply exist). The goal of government must be, for Douglas, to maximize man's free-time, limiting the level of his debt for survival. If a man is forced to work 7 days-a-week for over 70 hours (as it was in the early 19th c. in Britain), man is no better than a slave. In this sense, slavery must be understood not as an ontic-juridical state, but a sliding scale. The more time one has, the freer one is. If Douglas' Britain was to be a free society, it must involve itself in this problem. But the current solutions (which are the same for us today) are all equally flawed:

There is a disposition on the part of certain idealistic people, and, in particular, in quarters obsessed by the magic of the State idea, to decry the necessity of any organised incentive in industry at all.

They seem to suggest either that the problem is merely one of designing a huge machine of such irresistible power that no incentive is necessary because no resistance is possible, or, alternatively, that the mere creative impulse ought to be sufficient to induce every individual to give of his best without any thought of personal benefit.

In regard to the former idea, it may be said that quite apart from its fundamental objection it is quite impracticable ; and in regard to the latter that it is not yet, nor for a very considerable time, likely to be practicable to satisfy the creative impulse through the same channels as those used for the economic business of the world. Under existing conditions there is much necessary work to be done which cannot fail to be largely of a routine nature, and the provision of an incentive external to the performance of the immediate task seems both practically and morally sound.

First of all, some consideration of the defects of existing incentives is necessary in order to meet the difficulties so exposed.

Broadly, remuneration, or the system by which the amenities of civilisation are placed at the disposal of the individual, is of three varieties ; payment by financial manipulation (profit), payment by time (salaries and time-rate wages), and payment by results (piecework in all its forms), and it should be noticed that only the first of these combines possession of the amenities with opportunities for their fullest use.

Payment by financial manipulation, whether through the agency of profit (other than that earned by personal endeavour), stock manipulation or otherwise, is quite definitely anti-social. It operates to neutralise all progress towards real efficiency by diluting the medium of exchange, and by this process it will quite certainly bring about the downfall of the social order to which it belongs, largely through the operation of the factory economic system already discussed.

Payment by time fails for two practical reasons ; it is based on the operation of the fallacy that the value of a thing bears any relation to the demand for it, and the assumption that money has a fixed value. Because of the first reason it clearly penalises genuine initiative (because there is no demand for the unknown), and because of the second, it fosters aggression. The policy of Trade Unions in regard to time rates of pay has simply been successful to the extent that it has used its organised power for aggressive action ; and while such a policy may be sound and justifiable under existing conditions it clearly offers no promise of social peace.

Payment by results or piecework may be considered as the final effort of an outworn system to justify itself. Superficially, it seems fair and reasonable in almost any of its many forms ; actually, it operates to increase the individual time-energy units expended, while decreasing through diluted currency the exchange value of each time- energy unit, and crediting to the banker and the financier nearly the whole value of increased efficiency. If this contention is questioned, a reference to the much greater purchasing power of labour in the Middle Ages admitted in such books as " The Six Hour Day" must surely confirm it.

In actual practice piecework neither does nor can take into consideration that, just as there is no limit to progress either of method or dexterity, so is there no fundamental relation between money and value as at present understood.

First, Douglas rejects the idealism of communism as ridiculous. Either one builds a giant "machine" system that bends men into obedience or one expects a system where people work to express their creativity. Douglas quite understates the first, which would be nightmarish and the essence of idolatry (basically a machine-god). And the second is simply not practicable because much work in this world is unpleasant but necessary. Romantics may coo about how every job is an output for creativity, but there are many things mankind does (such as handling trash or sewage) which no one who does them would do them unless they had to (or were compensated). To rely upon an ideological fiction of man's creative energies underestimates the ugly banality of many earthly tasks.

However, if man is incentivized, each system currently existing has flaws. There are three options: usurious stock-trading, wages, or pay-per-product. The first is simply immoral and breeds the financial parasitism that is, currently, gutting the modern US. It is not a sustainable form of wealth for anyone, only enriching the few at the expense of the many. The second option creates fundamental antagonisms that tear at society. The problem is that value and labor/time do not correlate. The results are socially deleterious. A factory may see its fortunes flag as its products are worth less and less, and thus need to produce more to make up for losses. But overproduction means more markets, and thus factory owners will support imperialistic wars to force new markets open for these goods. On the other end, decreasing profits may see wages cut, which then harms the lives of the workers. Organized, trade-unions will demand higher wages and benefits. In some cases, reduction may simply be a product of greed, but in other cases, trade-union antagonism threatens to put the entire company under (hence smaller firms are so hostile to unionization). As part of a deal with management, trade-unions (or at least their leadership) may cut a deal to support similarly imperial policies so the wealth moves through the whole. Thus, under the system of wages, instability is the norm. It either threatens to tear apart the fabric of society or it is exported globally.

Finally, the system of individual pay for productivity is superficially attractive but exploitative. Ideally, the worker is encouraged to spend his creative energies in production. In reality, this system prods the worker towards shoddy craftsmanship as he seeks to make more in less time. And if he works very hard, the scale of profit goes into the owner's profit (i.e. if x receives $1 for every widget which makes $10 profit in total, then if x makes $100 dollars from widget production, corporate earns $9,900 in profit). This solution feeds off romantic delusions to further subjugate workers. An alternative to these failed options depends upon the following concepts:

we desire to produce a definite programme of necessaries with a minimum expenditure of time-energy units. We agree that the substitution of human effort by natural forces through the agency of machinery is the clear path to this end ; and we require to co-relate to this a system which will arrange for the equitable distribution of the whole product while, at the same time, providing the most powerful incentive to efficiency possible.

The general answer to this problem may be stated in the four following propositions, which represent an effort to arrive at the Just Price : —

 (1) Natural resources are common property, and the means for their exploitation should also be common property.

 (2) The payment to be made to the worker, no matter what the unit adopted, is the sum necessary to enable him to buy a definite share of ultimate products irrespective of the time taken to produce them.

(3) The payment to be made to the improver of process, including direction, is to be based on the rate of decrease of human time-energy units resulting from the improvement, and is to take the form of an extension of facilities for further improvement in the same or other processes.

(4) Labour is not exchangeable ; product is. No attempt will be made to prove these propositions since their validity rests on equity.

It should be noted particularly that none of these points has any relation to systems of administration, although a recognition of them would radically affect the distribution of personnel in any system of administration.

While the distribution of the product of industry is fundamentally involved, and the inducements to vary the articles produced are clearly modified to a degree which would profoundly alter the industrial situation, no extension of bureaucracy in the accepted sense is implied or induced.

Douglas' vision of guild socialism requires a few radical transformation. First, the system of rent (not so much in land qua home, but land qua resources) must be nationalized. Second, workers do not have to work to survive (but have a guarantee from birth). That doesn't mean people won't work, but the incentive to work is not life or death. Third, inventors/engineers must have their work incentivized by increase productivity, encouraging innovation as their work. And finally, labor should not be economized. Douglas lays these four propositions out, not as "political economy" iron laws but justice. In this way, what Douglas advances (and the goal of any true socialism) is to humanize society. Mankind is not a slave of natural forces, but to have freedom. To live under the dictates of the market is simply to be a slave to nature, no different than pagans who cowered at thunder storms and the roaring ocean. That doesn't mean there aren't problems, but problems that technology has ameliorated or put under human control. Human inventiveness has, for example, put lightning under control; gone are the days where any house could be struck by lightning and burnt to the ground. Instead, the understanding of electricity and the invention of lightning rods has severely diminished this problem to the point of nonexistence.

The above is what Douglas means by "ultra-modernism". The term is actually somewhat deceptive because the original "modernity", the synthesis of past (antiquity) and present (modern) towards the future, was oriented towards humanizing. And yet, at the same time, it carried in it the seeds of bondage and enslavement. The science of political-economy began as a means to understand dynamics of trade, war, and politics to run a society more fairly and with more stability (as freedom depends upon a certain level of security). Scientific inventiveness was to make human life more free through greater understanding and control. Of course, these pursuits could be malevolent and dabble into the inhuman and immoral (which was what Shelley's Frankenstein was about). But it was precisely this cross-roads which led towards the dehumanization of modernity. Man (or "modern prometheus" as Shelley saw her character Dr. Frankenstein) wanted to become a machine, submitting humanity under its new inventions and systems. Economies of scale were turned against the workers, who became a race of sub-humans (or merely humans) ground up in the gears of industry. Capitalism was the development of this system into Babylon, literally the "gate of the gods". The new gods of this age (or new demons per Jacques Ellul) remystified the cosmos. The goal of socialism (whether motivated by Christian or secular/atheist republicanism concerns) was to reassert humanity, whose collective telos was to be a race of priest-kings (what being made "the image of God" means in context). For Douglas, many forms of socialism simply continue in this idolatry (or are too utopian to be conceivable).

It was from the above that Douglas advanced the concept of "social credit". Rather than government monopoly over all the mans of production (and thus the abolition of property), Douglas advances government monopoly of credit and distribution. If the government can gain control of the money-supply (which MMT theorists have done a lot to prove, against neoclassical zealots), then it can accomplish the above goals. It can distribute the necessary work for a society to thrive (a factory system not driven by profit and wages). Access to credit can unleash human ingenuity, pursuing innovation to make life more tolerable and human. When shackled to profits, innovation only operates in spurts and sometimes actively harmed (no incentive to innovate if profits are higher in an inefficient system).

Additionally, Douglas' vision opens up the relation between central power and local power that checks aristocracy. Guild socialism does not promote individualism or collectivism, which puts the naked individual-citizen before the god-like powers of the state. Instead, local organizations of human life (the family, the guild, the parish, etc.) allow the fullness of human potential to thrive.  Central power prevents the local from becoming feudal, where increasingly barons will try to control access to the goods of life. The totalizing potential of these local institutions are removed to their betterment. Churches don't become Romanized prince-bishop clerical dominions. Families don't invoke pater potestas, where fathers (or parents in general) have life or death control over their children. Guilds (or places of work) cannot strip someone of the very means of survival. Churches mutate into papacies, families mutate into baronial clans, and guilds can mutate into corporations. The role of central (democratic) government reins in these impulses lest they become oligarchical. And yet, these social organizations are what it means to be human and offer the formative elements that allow free subjects to participate as equals in government. They can't be abolished, as forms of radical republicanism (like Jacobinism or Leninism) often advocates on behalf of the commonwealth-state. And yet the commonwealth can't be allowed to deteriorate into a figurehead, manipulated or held hostage by the forces of oligarchy. It is only public government, the commonwealth, which holds back the masters of mankind.

The only way out is through. Douglas attempted to bring about his political theory throughout various Commonwealth countries to little success. Nevertheless, it remains worthy of consideration for these times. Neoliberal TINA (There Is No Alternative) has become more vulnerable, as the apoliticization and anti-ideolgy (which is really domination by a ruling-class and hyper-ideology) of the 90s has eroded. Identity politics is the irrational ideology that desperately tries to mystify the problems. Guild Socialism (whatever the terms) remains a means to critique this idolatrous valorization of the inhuman (the Market and Consumption). Social credit is not only rational (contra medievalism), but just.

Free-Trade is anti-Christian: Remembering the Saintly Richard Oastler

 Richard Oastler was one of the most impressive and godly men of the 19th c., known to friend and foe as "the Factory King". In short, Oastler was a committed old Tory (supporting political power of the monarchy and the Church's institutional powers within English society), but became radicalized when he saw the depredations in the English factory system. Seeing men, women, and children worked near to death, in a state of squalor and ignorance, Oastler began a crusade to limit the time industrialists could compel workers to labor, as well banning the employment of children. He initiated a fusion of Tories and Radicals, who opposed both the liberal oligarchy of the Whigs, as well as the soft peddled liberalism of Peel's neo-tory "Conservative" party. 

Oastler's life was full of failure. His reforms were consistently blocked. He was defeated in two runs for Parliament (due to the enfranchisement of £10 households; which blocked many working people, but brought in many middling sorts, many of whom were indifferent to reforms). His efforts, at one point, strained his relationship with his employer (Oastler ran a town's property on behalf of a gentleman owner), which saw him eventually tossed into debtors' jail for a few years (Oastler had entangled his own finances with the town, spending his own to fix up properties). Oastler had a strained relationship with some Radicals, and had trouble with the Chartists. Nevertheless, Radicals embraced this evangelical Tory, whose love for his fellow man won him consistent admiration. He would not relent until working conditions were improved (which they, in mild ways, were, but never to what he advocated). His motto was: the Altar, the Throne, and the Cottage. He believed that the historical features of English  society were sufficient to provide a decent life for all.

A key element here, worthy of reflection, is his contempt for "political economy" as the ideological fad of liberalism. Disgusted with Malthusian planning, Ricardian economic calculation, and the reduction of life into a utilitarian spread of limited resources, Oastler questioned an account of life that seemed to benefit its apologists. Is it not odd that the industrialists and their financiers reaped the rewards of this system, while the masses choked out an existence under the black clouds of Satanic mills? While one may appreciate the insight of an analytical assessment of "political economy", the ideological trick is to substitute analysis (is) for action (ought). Liberal Whigs were quite vocal in proclaiming that such is the world and any interference was to bring about anarchy. A precursor to social darwinism, it was better to let life take its course, the weak perishing and the strong thriving. It was this way that nature would be unhindered and Britain would sustain its global power. Factory owners appealed to this rationale as to why 9 year olds had to work 60-70 hours (or more) a day. To slow down, to tinker with nature, was to court disaster.

The insanity of this view is still with us. Many Christians buy into these demonic doctrines, seduced with libertarian views of the world. A crude kind of social darwinist logic (manifest in bootstrap justification for treating the poor as lazy and weak-minded degenerates) still pervades many churches. The Cold War logic continues, justifying free-trade as the godly way in opposition to Soviet communism. It's insane how this trick was pulled off, but few are confronted with the vanity and wickedness of their opinions. They would have supported the new Poor Laws (which Oastler hated), replacing free alms with government factories that destroyed families and trapped men/women/children in the most grotesque form of wage slavery (contemporaries called these government factories "bastilles"). But per the logic of "political economy", such was the way of the world and these working people deserved their fate.

Richard Oastler (a saintly man) is worthy of remembrance (c.f. Hebrews 12:1). Out of Christian conviction, he strove to make his nation a better place for those under the grinding wield of liberal political economy. He did not advocate theocracy, but called Christians to act as Christians, under the appointed monarch and within the holy church. Unfortunately, the lure of the Beast, the wine of Babylon that the Whore communes with the kings of men, is strong. Mammon is a voracious dragon, a competing loyalty locked in mortal combat with fidelity to Christ (c.f. Matt. 6:24). 

To conclude, below is a record of a conversation Oastler had with Thomas Chalmers over the 10 hour bill. Chalmers is well known among some evangelicals for his devotional works, but he was also a committed liberal. Ignorant of what he supported, Oastler set him straight (and according to the biography, Oastler converted him to the cause of factory reform). It's a stirring conversation, if nothing else.

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"I see, [Thomas Chalmers] said, "this Bill is contrary to the principles of Free Trade"

"Decidedly," Oastler replied. "If Free Trade be right, the Ten Hours' Bill is wrong"

"I am a Free Trader, and cannot support any measure that is opposed to it," Chalmers rejoined.

"That is very strange," Oastler said. "I thought you were a Christian".

"And so I am"

"What!" exclaimed Oastler, "a Christian and a Free Trader? You surprise me."

"How so?" Chalmers asked.

"Why, Dr. Chalmers, it was from you I learned that Free Trade was anti-Christian. When a youth I read your Astronomical Lectures, and in one of them you treated on responsibility of the rich..."

"What has that to do with Free Trade?" the divine interrupted.

"Everything," said Oastler.

"There you taught that God would require of every man a true account of the use of his wealth; that if it had not been used in accordance with His laws, you said, the punishment on the offender would be most dreadful. Now the doctrine of the Free-trader is, that no law is given-no responsibility is incurred! That wealth cannot (when its owner is seeking for its increase) be misapplied. That Christianity does not concern itself with the modes adapted to increase Capital! That even the most covetous and cruel person cannot err, so long as his aim is his own aggrandisement. That then he must, of necessity, be a benefactor to society. The Free-trader, therefore, laughs at the idea of Christian laws interfering with him. He rejects the interposition of the Almighty; he is an independent agent. He cannot be a Christian. Every Christian believes that man has fallen from perfection, that he is selfish, covetous, and that he needs the unerring teaching of the Almighty. The Christian must require that all human law shall be founded on the laws revealed in the Word of Truth - 'Do unto others as you would they should do unto you'; not 'Take advantage of another's poverty or ignorance, forcing or coaxing him to sell cheap; and when he is a buyer, using the same means to make him buy dear'...not 'get money any how, even at the cost of limb and life to those employed in his aggrandisement'; for 'love worketh no ill to its neighbour.'

    The Christian will never forget [he continued], the Free-trader will never remember, that the head and the eye must never be permitted to invade the rights of the hands and the feet. The Christian knows that Society is one compact body, each individual member being dependent on the rest, each requiring the protection of all. The Free-trader, on the contrary, persuades himself that each member is a separate piece of independence, an isolated self." (in Cecil Driver, Tory Radical, 468-469)

Believe All Things: An Ode to the Hermeneutic of Trust

I recently listened to a debate (here and here) between Dr. Richard Bauckham and Dr. Bart Ehrman on whether the Gospels were eyewitness accounts and, if so, whether they were reliable. Bauckham had written a whole (and revolutionary) tome on the question, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, and answers in the affirmative on both counts. Ehrman, his advocatus diaboli and something of an ex-evangelical bugbear, answers both in the negative. Listening to the debate, it's incredibly frustrating how obnoxious Ehrman is in offering sheer negativity. The problem isn't that Ehrman is a skeptical agnostic or something, but that his hermeneutic for reading ancient texts is trash.

In other words, all Ehrman could ever do is offer infinitely deferred skepticism. Bauckham offered a very reasonable reconstruction about exactly we got the texts we have today, why they survive while others (like the gnostic gospels) in the main did not. Ehrman can really on waive his hands and unleash waves of shoulder-shrugging. Unlike Bauckham, who takes up the historical task of explaining why what came about came about, Ehrman defaults into nearly Nietzschean irrationalism, as if the gospels that survived were due to simply power-struggles between different Christian traditions and communities. And thus Ehrman has no explanation for anything, only taking shots at efforts to intelligibly reconstruct the historical timeline. One example is when Ehrman not only casts doubt on the traditional names of the gospels, but on them having any names whatsoever. Exasperated, Bauckham rebuts: "well they had to call them something! gospel a,b,c, or 1,2,3, something". Ehrman takes irrationalism to a new level: the obvious human need to categorize documents is rejected because we don't "know" and so can't say anything. Ehrman's kind of history is the kind that shuts the door on all historical enquiry as fundamentally unknowable, unintelligible, and worthless. He's a Reddit atheist with a PhD and teaching post.

Ehrman takes the critical posture, sniping from his tower, because he's got nothing. In contrast, Bauckham's opus not only blew apart Bultmannian form-criticism, but restores the historic value of the Gospels as texts. While such may not seem strictly theological (it's not), I would argue Christianity operates along this axis. God makes Himself available in historically verifiable, even contestable, ways. As St. Paul says, in regards to the crucifixion and resurrection: these things did not happen in a corner (c.f. Acts 26:26). Of course, the historic circumstances in themselves do not automatically render a theological judgement. Yet the theological judgement itself depends upon these historical circumstances. As the Apostle wrote: if Christ did not rise from the dead your faith is in vain (1 Cor 15:14).

In contrast, Ehrman stumbles over himself in his inability. He concedes Bauckham is right about form-criticism, but he can't justify his own account of faceless people and communities playing telephone with the stories of Jesus. Ehrman presumes the bearers of these stories (not a few who suffered for them) simply mixed and matched these accounts as they repeated them. Ehrman presumes an anthropology of ahistoricism and oral history as fanciful and loose with details. Bauckham counters that such an approach is not the case, giving examples of tribal people who discriminate between stories that require strict detail and stories that allow more creative play in retelling. Ehrman offers uncertainty and a universalize ambiguity about "premodern" people, whereas Bauckham presses in historical specificity in defining the actions of people. Again, the point is Bauckham aims for intelligibility and Ehrman for obscurity. The different results aren't only because Bauckham is a Christian and Ehrman is not, but they have fundamentally different approaches to texts. Ehrman's skepticism leads him to the irrationality of unlimited skepticism of Nieztscheanism, the hermeneutic of suspicion. Bauckham (as a trained historian) offers a hermeneutic of trust.

The hermeneutic of suspicion is an acidic approach to source reliability. Every primary document we pick up we should scan for biases, agendas, blind spots, neurotic fixation/avoidance, etc. History is reduced to a power-play (Nietzsche/Foucault), crude material interests (bastardization of Marx), or psychological fixations (Freud). This hermeneutic interrogates every text as a creative lie that needs to be reconstructed from the bottom up. I don't deny some practical benefits from this approach, but suspicion for its own sake is dangerous. It would be madness to assume that every other person out there is only ever speaking to advance their own interests and everything is a power game. A math teacher writing "2 + 2 = 4" on the board is part of an elaborate psyop to control the masses. Again, suspicion isn't wrong per se, but its wrong as the motor driving all reading. All texts are not secretly about material advance, the triumph of the will, or sexual dysfunction. To assume such is to stop reading and rewrite texts in your own image. Its a fundamentally destructive and solipsistic hermeneutic if applied everywhere.


In contrast, a hermeneutic of trust doesn't eject suspicion, but grounds it upon broken faith. In other words, you only become suspicious of someone when you've caught them in a lie, and you begin to wonder what other lies they told. This approach counsels patience: sometimes an error is an honest mistake, sometimes a seeming error is actually the truth but requires additional reflection to see it. The only way to find these things out is to follow a text according to its own narrative and logic. Its only once you understand a text on its own terms (including its historical context) that you can then gently probe it for flaws, errors, or deceptions. To do otherwise is to read the text according to an artificial mold of someone else's design. A historic hermeneutic requires one to situate a text, but one can't do that if one's already reading the text according to an automatic suspicion that everything is (always) about power, sex, or wealth. To pursue a text this way is to become a hermeneutical inquisitor: beat the text into a form that conforms your own suspicions. Its not only horrible history (making history fundamentally unintelligible or mirroring the contemporary moment we find ourselves in). Its literary terrorism.

Suspicion is only, reasonably, warranted when the trust between author and reader is broken. But this breaking of trust presumes trust. And to have trust requires a developed relationship with the text. Such requires time and effort. Nietzschean genealogy and skepticism, in contrast, allows the reader to be lazy. Its quite sad that many literary scholars are essentially illiterate (meaning they're historically ignorant), incapable of reading the texts they proffer to teach. What they're interested in is not understanding, but manufacturing propaganda. However, at the very least, they're aware of what they're doing. I think most literary scholars recognize they are operating with a hermeneutic (even if its something stupid like queerness or blackness, or some other contrived individualistic bullshit). The problem is that their hermeneutic has no attachment to the texts as texts, as created manifestations of intelligence. Instead, like thieving monsters, they ransack the texts looking for the bits and pieces that advance their argument. Ironically, for as much as these academics like to tout being radical, such is only the mirror image of a Whiggish hermeneutic of "the classics". Shakespeare, for example, is reduced to a "timeless" classic that confirms modern (usually classically liberal) American values. The New Testament paved the way to "rational religion", which confirms capitalism and bourgeois ethics. Nietzsche was a reactionary within this same mold, and hence it makes sense that genealogy simply turned liberal progress on its head. But in both cases (even if latter is more self-aware) the historicity is obviated and the text is silenced on its own terms.

The point of the hermeneutic of trust is not to advance a radical historicism (as if history has no meaning and every event can be made unintelligible through infinite complexity). Rather, the point is that any metaphysic, metanarrative, or theological understanding of time must pass through historic specificity. Despite the bastardization of both Hegel and Marx, it was this point they tried to advance through their critical approach. It was through this specificity that one approached visions of the universal. For a Christian, the same is necessary: one discovers Jesus of Nazareth as none other than the Logos made flesh. I'm not saying such is inherently dialectical, but it is only through historic specificity (understanding the literary conventions in the Gospels) that one understands the point made. In the Christian case, the universal is unveiled through an appearance (not necessarily through contradiction, though that's not completely wrong). Nevertheless, attention to texts (listening to them, pouring over them, contextualizing them, engaging in dialogue with them, etc.) is a necessary element to understanding them. The alternative is to be a rapist like Nietzsche.

The Relic Trap: 'Don Verdean' and the Spectacle of Certainty

The black comedy Don Verdean is about a biblical "archaeologist" who ends up tumbling down the rabbit hole of fraud, fame, greed, faith, media spectacle, and self-delusion. The titular character (Verdean) is a popular apologetic self-proclaimed archaeologist. His claim to fame was "discovering" the scissors Deliah used to cut off Samson's hair. From this find, Verdean gets renown, embarking on several speaking tours and a book deal. He is a consummate folksy anti-academic, self-publishing without ties to a university. Verdean touts his humble inability as a sign of God's providence in revealing these historic proofs. However, as the film begins, his fame is slipping as he has not found any new artifacts as of late.  Verdean is a folksy anti-academic. He self-publishes, has no ties with any universities, and touts his own humble inability as the tool of God's unveiling of historical proofs. He relies on two disreputable Israeli contractors to find things that are biblical "artifacts".

However, Verdean gets sucked into a new campaign for new artifacts to boost a flagging "ministry". The pastor is locked in competition with a rival pastor, with competing "conversion" stories to whip up support (near-death drunk ex-fornicator vs. ex-satanist). The former is a typical folksy, fire-and-brumstone, Baptist type, while the latter runs anti-occult discernment ministry. Both are goofy caricatures, with ridiculous lines (e.g. the Baptist type talks about feeling Satan farting in his brain when he's under stress). But these pastors typify carnival atmosphere as these religious businesses compete for souls and tithes. The Baptist type has enlisted Verdean (with a healthy donation) to find new artifacts for his church. Relying on two disreputable Israeli contractors (which was how he found the scissors), Verdean embarks on a new quests for the ever hungry Baptist ministry.

Quickly, Verdean gets in over his head, faking  artifacts. The first is "discovering" Lot's wife (which is a human shaped pillar of rock), though she doesn't quite look like a she (having both breast-like mounds and a lower bulge). Verdean pivots (inventing a new biblical theory that Lot's wife was a hermaphrodite) to save himself. But the pressure continues and Verdean finds himself caught fabricating Goliath's skull (grave digging the skull of a 20th c. Israeli wrestler with gigantism). Discovered by his confrere (Boaz, a shady and greedy Israeli), Verdean is forced to ramp up his archaeology business. Boaz now wants equal partnership and a ticket to America. He is the stereotypical 3rd world fantasy of American life (specifically: a Pontiac, a homemaker stripper wife, and Levi jeans). After several hijinks of increasingly criminal nature (kidnapping, bribery, theft), Verdean fakes a caper with a Chinese millionaire who wanted to find the grail. But this whole spiraling fraud was set-up by the discernment ministry. In a bid to undercut their competitor, they entrap Verdean (only to be caught in his own net, as this scheme required the pastor to steal money from his own ministry to finance it). The end result is that Verdean, Boaz, and (presumably) the discernment ministry pastor all end up in jail.

The film is a parody of middle American religion, with its bible fraud to prove the truth of Christianity in an increasingly secular world. While not a criticism of Christianity per se, or simply trashing simple country folk, the movie does draw out the desire of many to believe in carnival shows to spice up their life. As the Baptist pastor makes it clear to Verdean: the faith is in danger, church attendance is decreasing, and people are looking for certainty in an increasingly confusing world. A desire to believe drives the designs of this ministry forward (which, an obvious subtext, means the financial survival of the pastor and his gaudy wife). The pressure not only involves inventive theology (e.g. Lot's wife is a hermaphrodite), but increasingly bold-faced lies. Verdean doesn't want to get in on the con, but he believes peoples' faith (and his own well-being) depend upon a little deception and flare (he not only steals Goliath's skull, but digs it in a location, and has his devoted assistant "find" it after some prodding). Verdean is not alone in participating in this scam, as the "conversion" stories, the carnival-like atmosphere of unveiling, and the spooky anti-occult theatrics all add in the creation of mystifying entertainment. It even leads to more mundane, and disturbed, forms of fraud: Verdean is willing to pimp his assistant to Boaz (who wants her as his wife). But the frauds also depend upon cultural assumptions. When searching for the holy grail (which is buried in the south-west), Verdean takes his client (who turns out to be a plant) through an Indiana Jones-esque journey. Hiring an Indian to fire blanks, having Boaz get "wounded" (a fake blood pouch) from a gunshot and miraculously healed by the grail (which foams up as a chemical reaction), all of it depends upon Hollywood expectations. Pop-culture invades reality, as Verdean and Boaz expect these events to make the treasure hunt credible. However, the joke is that everyone's faking it: Verdean and Boaz get suckered by the fake Chinese businessmen because the idea that eccentric billionaires paying them for their services seemed plausible to them. It's commentary on how fantasy has taken over our expectations of life.

Such is the phenomenon of the spectacle in hyper-drive. Fantastical stories reach out into real world actions, driving them forward and determining an individual's sense of common sense and credibility. Even professional hucksters, like Verdean and Boaz, get taken in because of their own warped fantasies. In a more mundane fashion, Boaz' fantasy of the American dream leads him to expect an easy seduction of Verdean's unknowingly pimped out assistant. She is tricked into a date because she believes Boaz is close to coming to Christ. Everyone is deceived according to assumed tropes, most of which derive from stories, movies, and fictive carnival performances (Evangelical church services). The movie is pretty silly, but the punchline is clear: we will see and believe not only what we want to see and believe, but what we expect to see and believe. Unlike The Prestige (a better movie, I think), there's no ambiguity about the real and the fantastical. Instead, the simple mundane elements of life (money and recognition) are mystified by all participants, even the con-men. The spectacle of artifacts (not unlike medieval spectacles of relics) is a spectacle of certainty, a public demonstration of proof from an expert.

While the movie focuses on middle America evangelicalism, this same phenomenon is common among internet traditionalists. One can find e-converts to Catholicism or Orthodoxy waxing on about the need to possess an "ancient" or "premodern" mentality. They coo about supposed eucharistic miracles or oozing icons. As Rod Dreher noted in his article about "weird Christianity": he is quite comfortable kissing the (supposed) skulls of saints. But these aesthetics reflect his own cultural contingency (and his reactionary disgust with his own campy, Bible-Belt, evangelicalism): he will kiss the skull, but can't get himself to raise his hand for a praiseband liturgy. Nevertheless, its a similar willingness to indulge a kind of fantasy: a tactile holiness made up of scripted experience. As an Orthodox acquataince one stated: when it comes to all the traditions and hagiographies of the Orthodox church, one must believe everything. It is only this "premodern" (which, as the scarequotes should give away, is role-playing fantasy concept) disposition that can save the world from secular reductionism. The reality is that this sort of thing is simply set-up to get conned. Performative holiness (whether with robes, candles, and reliquaries, or with praisebands, mood lighting, and artifacts) is quite easily a trap for the deceived.

And its fundamentally dishonest. Ancient people weren't credulous dupes (at least, not all of them; not anymore than modern contemporaries are today). Such is the case even for early Christians (who did not "believe everything"). Some found popular practices to be foolish, if not perversely blasphemous. Egyptian Christians, like Athanasius, saw the budding cult of relics as a throwback to popular worship of the dead. Hostile to these practices, Athanasius wanted the dead to stay buried, not turned into popular fetishes. Reflecting this position, Shenoute (a 5th c. influential monastic leader) condemned this tactile obsession as foolish and wicked:

Those who adore [martyrs] in some holy place built in their name worship demons, not God. Those who trust that healing comes to them, or goods, in a place that they built over some skeletons without knowing whose they are … are no different from those who adored the calves of Jeroboam set up in Samaria … Who among those who fear God will not say, “Woe to those who say, ‘I saw a light in the holy place that was built over some bones of a skeleton in the church, and I was eased of my illness after I slept there.’” (quoted in, Robert Wiśniewski, The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics, 2018)

Not pulling his punches, Shenoute equates this practice with a vulgar relapse into paganism. Worship of the true God is replaced with an idol. But, as his fictive quote suggests, the drive towards this form of religion is due to longing and experience. The man sleeping in the tomb almost certainly didn't do it by accident. Rather, he slept there hoping for good results (and got them). Secularity also engages in similar spectacles of certainty. Science is often turned into a cult, a quasi-miraculous religion which can give us certainty. There are many pop-science shows about how "Science" (capital-S) can teach absolute doctrines about politics, economics, the mores of sexual attraction, even ethics. Additionally, pop-science babblers (ranging from Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris to Michiu Kaku and Neil deGrasse Tyson) promote their high-wire claims about social policies and politics from "Science", as if the scientific method was a credo. Bill Nye's recent mature show performed spectacles of certainty, as he put on a show of doing a few experiments, coupled with interviews and authoritative teaching about various social questions (homosexuality, environmentalism, drug use, etc.). The experiment is part of a carnival-like show, shoring up liberalism against its critics (and failings). Bill Nye is really no different from real life Don Verdeans (a has-been selling a mystified show as knowledge of reality). And these are no different from ancient or medieval fetishes of bones, tombs, and "high places" (sacred groves that Israel's prophets condemned).

For a Christian (according to scripture), God's work is manifest through rational history. Prophets demonstrate wonders through authoritatively-delegated power, not through wizardry. The difference may seem overly subtle (and self-serving). However, the miracle does not involve substances. Things do not possess innate traits or transmogrify (in some sort of thaumaturgic or alchemical metastasis). Instead, God as Creator simply acts. Unlike our words, God's Word acts with power. Social rites may transform a simple band of metal into a wedding-ring (now possessing greater symbolic significance to whatver may befall it). Ground is hallowed (literally, set apart) for a grave site, a place of worship, or the seat of government. In God's usage, these ritual actions can transform reality. But the elements in these rites have no inherent power. God commands Moses to build a bronze serpent to heal those who suffered the divine wrath of venomous snake bites. Yet this bronze serpent later becomes part of a derivative cult (venerated as an image of Nachash, a snake god or God in the form of a snake). The righteous king Josiah melts it down as part of his purging idolatry from the land. It is God who possesses these powers, not things or people (who only exhibit them through delegation). It is faith/faithfulness that drives the Christian, not certainty. It is personal knowledge of character, not impersonal knowledge of patterns and rules. However, as Don Verdean lampoons, Christians all too often mix these up (justifying their deeds as part of God's providential oversight). Christianity (at its truest) does not fetishize the common elements of the world. Rather they, as fellow creatures, participate in the life-giving communion between Creator and creation, Artist and art. As bread and wine communicates the life giving friendship (flesh) and forgiveness (blood) of Christ, so too does the Christian's life reflect divine nature: to bless the righteous and unrighteous, to shower the virtues on the just and unjust.

The spectacle of certainty is a great temptation for all of mankind. Its the root of much idolatry, as well as credulous superstition. It breeds stupidity and commotidization, as fetishes, idols, icons, relics, artifacts, etc. become marketed receptacles for the divine. The rational and living God is traded for cosmic forces that the talented carnival barker mediates to the gawking mob of consumers. This approach not only applies to images, but words. Popular phenomena, like the prayer of Jabez, is sold like a magical incantation (not unlike premodern charms, enchantments, and the names of several divinities or spirits). This idiocy is possible for the theist and the atheist, the faithful and the secular. If one does not take heed, he will end up as one of marionettes (controlled by lust, fear, and fantasy) in Don Verdean.

The Whole Host of Heaven: John Donne and the Political Economy of Heaven

David Nicholls (1936-1996; an Anglo-Catholic Anglican priest, historian) sought to reconstruct Christian political theology through the ages. Besides a long career as a historian of Haiti, Nicholls' major project was intended to be a trilogy (sadly, he died before he finished it) about the relationship between views of God and views of government, working backwards from the 20th c. He sought to correlate political doctrines to theological doctrines, showing mutual influence and conceptual overlap (without trying to establish causation). Theology is never done in a vacuum and thought does not operate according to neat, artificial, categories. When sovereignty was fragmented or rejected, God was reduced to a committee member or a plurality of democratic forces. When sovereignty was strongly asserted, as in the early modern prince or the modern dictator, then God's absolute and withering aloneness prevailed. Nevertheless, Nicholls is sensitive to exceptions that prove the rule. He argues "puritans" (a hostile category he is somewhat weak in defining) had an unrelenting, near tyrannical, view of God, and yet pursued a limited monarch bound by the aristocracy, parliament, and ancient constitution. I think he got "the puritans" wrong, but that actually works in his favor (its less of an exception than he thinks).

Anyway, Nicholls continued this project in an article appendix: "the Political Theology of John Donne". Nicholls is keen to point out John Donne's rich trinitarian theology that paralleled his concerns for the earthly realm. Donne was a poet, a courtier, and (after much self-struggle) a priest. He was of that generation of Elizabethan and Jacobean churchmen who prized England's unique reformation heritage. The decision to defend a reformation settlement forged during her brother's earlier reign, the English Reformed reflected earlier emphases from the Reformation. Only the unlearned or propagandist will argue the Church of England was a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism. While closer, it's not quite right to say it was a compromised between Lutheranism or the Reformed either. Rather, the Church of England solidified the irenic (and far more humanistic) Reformed positions of men like Bucer, Vermigli, and Cranmer as normative.

However, continental changes (particularly in Geneva) offered a differently developed set of Reformed doctrines. Calvin's work became increasingly reified, along with a whole host of other theologians, as the confessional age dawned. Some in the Church of England wanted more reform, linking up with brethren in Scotland (particularly Knox's followers) and on the Continent. Other were weary of further changes, but were willing friends to Reformed elsewhere (despite what later presbyterians argued, Calvin was never, in principle, opposed to bishops). The English reformation tended to preserve both the drive to systematize the doctrines of the Reformation with its earlier humanistic drive (focused not only on scripture, but patristics). As systematic theology dominated the continent, English divines became the stupor mundi (wonder of the world) for their patristic scholarship. This applied even to puritans (it was James Ussher, archbishop of Armagh, who determined the authentic letters of Ignatius of Antioch). Donne was among churchmen like Lancelot Andrewes, who sought to balanced their Reformed position with a historically inclined hermeneutic of ad fontes when it came to scripture and patristic sources.

It was this theology that fueled his account of both the divine and the earthly. For Donne, the Father, Son, and Spirit ruled as one, a plurality in unity. The Father is the generator of Son and Spirit, but God is one. The Father ruled through His Word (Logos, or Reason; Word also traditionally identified with biblical Wisdom), and thus God's rule was never arbitrary. Yet even as the tri-unity God ruled, His unity in plurality spilled out into the wider creation. The heavenly court was aflutter with the wings of angels and the prayers of saints. Thus, John Donne argues:

"not only an onely God in heaven; but a Father, a Son and a Holy Ghost in that God; which are names of a plurality, and sociable relations, conversable notions. There is not only one angel, a Gabriel; but to thee all angels cry aloud; and cherubim and seraphim are plural terminations; many cherubs, many seraphs in heaven. There is not only one monarchal apostle, a Peter, but the glorious company of the apostles praise thee"

Just as heaven, Donne believed the church was a plurality in unity as well. Constituted by various dioceses and bishops, in various countries and of various tongues, Christ Jesus ruled as monarch through His various councilors (bishops, priests, etc.). Living saints and faithful departed populated this unified body of many parts, along with the whole host of angels. Donne resisted the urge among some to "depopulate [God's] country and leave him without subjects", defending the "ministry and protection of angels" and "the prayers of the saints in heaven for us". The correlary was both theological and political. Just as Donne saw those who would reduce God's throne to an arbitrary (a Logos-less God) despot, who ruled alone eternally alone, so too did Donne oppose royal absolutism. As courtier, and sometime flattered, Donne saw himself as a royal advisor: princes should not rule outside of their court, parliament, and the support of the common people. Such was not to diminish royal sovereignty, but to situate government in public institutions. Monarchs should rule while seated among councilors, and through delegated authority. As God ruled in Heaven, so kings should rule on earth.

It was in this vein that Donne opposed (his native) Roman Catholicism. He rejected the cult of saints, whose advocates "changed the kingdom of heaven into an oligarchy". While Donne revered Mary as the Mother-of-God, he attacked the popular Roman doctrine that Mary was mediatrix. She did not run a heavenly court of mercy, softening her Son's just wrath. Such was to turn wholesome piety into vulgar idolatry. As Donne stated: "howsoever subtle men may distil out of them a wholesome sense, yet vulgarly and ordinarily they beget a belief, or at least a blind practice, derogatory to the majesty and monarchy of God". In other words,

"Jehovah is the name of the whole Trinity, and there are no more, no queen-mother in heaven, no councillors in heaven in commission with the Trinity"

Donne offers an earlier, oft untaken road, among the Reformed, who often depopulated Heaven. Later Protestants, in an effort to rebut charges of superstition from Deists, made increasing moves towards a quasi-Deism. Newtonian mechanistic philosophy made realms of angels to appear mythological and quaint. And if these spirits did exist, they certainly had no influence over earthly affairs. Biblical prohibitions about necromancy or praying to spirits were interpreted as prohibitions on the childish and stupid. There was no real spiritual darkness that could be tapped through these occult practices. And yet, these efforts to "disenchant" the world (trying to cut Deist empirical positivism off at the path) drained some of the cosmic vitality from Reformed Christianity. The cheery optimism of naive common-sense and a-historic rationality made the bloody pages of the Bible appear outmoded. Nature was not spooky, but naked and apparent to all who mustered the energy to look. And yet, even as these stupid views flourished among the mildly educated, scientists, philosophers, and poets recognized the problem in such views. Sometimes it degenerated into irrational mysticism (hence the vitalist movement in the 19th and 20th centuries), but it could also mesh well with historical inquiry to understand the real (which was what Hegel's project was about). The point is that even the common-sense realism, positivism, and naive empiricism quickly showed its own inability to account for itself. The criticisms of the Deists were, in the main, empty.

My point here is not to return to an uncritical numinous philosophy, imagining fantastical creatures for every bump in the dark. And yet, there's still much that is unknown in the world. Is it impossible for malevolent, incorporeal, intelligences to exist? Science Fiction doesn't think so, as evil AIs manifest in apocalyptic stories like Terminator, I-Robot, The Matrix, etc. Again, the point isn't to mystify. However, I think the work of Walter Wink and William Stringfellow is useful here. Christian demonology, while ontic, does not require ghouls and ghosts and other spooky phenomena. Instead, they are systematic phenomena, organizing social principles. Neoliberalism can be recognized as a particular organizing force/system for private government and market idolatry, it is also a spiritual darkness. It is what St. Paul referred to as "powers and principalities" and "spiritual darkness" that reigns in the heavenlies. The dynamics of power in this world is why the Apostle can refer to the devil as "the god of this age" and ruler of the air. Similarly, organizing social phenomena that orients people towards justice, perhaps despite themselves, may be the touch of angels. God does not abandon this world, and even pagan peoples were aided by God's servants (despite their wickedness, perversion, and idolatry). Nevertheless, the heavens are populated with these powers (though, as in scripture, rational and empirically describable, even if not controllable).

Similarly, Nicholls' project should be taken seriously. The Lord's prayer instructs that one prays "your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven". The prayer is eschatological, a hearkening to the future. But expectations of that future will form what justice looks like, even as a glimmer, in the present. It does not mean that, like Donne, one becomes a courtier and advisor, but it shapes how one assesses one regime from another. Donne's theological program, like his political program, is worthy of reflection.

A Fragment on Canon, Authority, and Hermeneutics

The following is a comment I left in various arguments with e-Orthodox over the issue of 'sola scriptura'. I was challenged on how I could defend 'sola scriptura' when one can see divergent canon lists in the early church. The punch-line is: if you can't rely on scripture, you must rely on *the* church to know what scripture is! Since Protestants (in the main) don't have any claim on the historic church, in terms of strictly organizational continuity, then they can't sustain the norm of scripture. QED.

But this argument depends upon a shell-game. Orthodoxy depends upon the "mind of the church" to establish truth from fiction, true councils from false councils, doctors from heresiarchs (that this concept is highly slippery and gels with 19th c. Romantic irrationalism is another story). But no patristic source has a single shred of doubt about the scripture. Every father is quite consistent in pointing to "scripture" as a stable body of texts. They never once say they are discerning what the scriptures are, but are simply receiving the truth as it had been handed down. Where there was doubt, with Origen and Jerome, these are exceptions that prove the rule: they are quite aware that they're in the minority and show deference to what had always been the case. The patristics saw "the Church" in continuity with Israel, not a novel body: the faithful people of God persisting through the different dispensations of God's revelation (however that is particularly understood). From Adam through Israel to Christ, the Church existed through time. And so here's the shell-game: the "mind of the fathers" is to replace the fundamental instability of canonical scripture, and yet the near unanimity among fathers shows that scripture is a clearly known category. Thus, to defeat sola scriptura you depend upon a line of argument that calls into question the veracity of the fathers upon which you offer your alternative. My interlocutors couldn't understand this point (unaware of the sand they built their arguments on) and I was asked: how did I make sense of these things? I wrote the following:

"First of all, it has to be noted that the word 'canon' meant more specifically something read in church. As far as I understand it, the Greek church still doesn't read Revelation, whereas the Russians do. It doesn't mean they don't think it's scripture. Therefore, when the council of Carthage professes the deuterocanon as part of the OT, it has more to do with whether it can be read in church or not. On that definition, some Anglicans and Lutherans consider deuterocanon books to be canonical since they're still read.  

Scripture too had a bit of a fuzzy definition, but not in an arbitrary or amorphous sense. The typical method for counting the books of scripture followed a kind of literary metaphor: usually 22 (because of 22 letters in the Hebrew "alphabet"), but sometimes 24 (the number of letters in the Greek alphabet). Whether it was Josephus or Athanasius, there was not even a flash of uncertainty about the books. And so I would actually go as far as to argue that there wasn't any disagreements about scripture, but there was flexibility on what was to be read in church lectionaries and a kid of descending holiness of scripture. Hence, when rabbis debated at the so-called "council of Yamnia", it wasn't whether Esther or Song of Songs were scripture or not, but whether "they stained the hands", whether they had the same level of holiness as the rest. But these were, I think, minority positions mostly concerned with the content (Esther, without Greek additions, doesn't mention God at all and is somewhat scandalous, and Song of Songs is, superficially, erotic royal poetry) when stacked up against something more clearly central like the Torah or the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel.  

Christians accepted, in general (with exceptions like Marcion that prove the rule), the original uncontested list of the 39 books of the Protestant canon with some slippage (like whether Baruch is an appendix to Jeremiah or something else). They also accepted as scripture the 7 books of the deuterocanon. But again, scripture can (and did) have fuzzy boundaries. There's no evidence that these additional books were considered part of the 22, and yet they still have weight (being quoted as scripture by Christians).  

Now when we get to 16th c. debates, the question of scripture had taken on a more exacting sense. Most of the reformers (with the major exception being Luther) were humanists and most humanists (roman and reformed) were concerned with questions of textual purity. Valla discovered the donation of Constantine was a fraud by textual analysis. Erasmus wanted to cut the Comma Johannem out as an interpolation. There had been, for centuries, a fuzzy boundary and openness about the deuterocanon as scripture properly. But the Reformation resulted in a line being drawn in the sand. When Luther imperiously wrote dismissive intros to James, Hebrews, and Revelation, it wasn't that he was removing them from the Bible (the line about "throwing little Jimmy in the fire" is, as far as I know, a mistaken anecdote referring to a statue, not the letter) but classing them down into a subsidiary holiness, placing them as deuterocanon. Pretty much every other reformer rejected this move simply because it was a rejection of the church's reception history. 

 In short: I think all the fathers basically agreed with what scripture was, but differed on how it was applied to church life. The canon lists are actually somewhat deceptive because they read back our modern anxieties. And again, as I've said repeatedly through this thread, there are differences between Protestants and Orthodox on the question of how various authorities relate to one another. But the epistemological crisis of the interpreting individual is not solved, but hidden. Prior to Orthodox apologists sounding like Roman Catholics (which is a really stupid move imo), there wasn't this radical skepticism about the contents of scripture."

The debate over 'sola scriptura' between Protestants and Roman Catholics has degenerated into an epistemological battle. Either an infallible scripture becomes the foundation or an infallible magisterium (crowned with, or solely consisting of, the ex cathedra statements of the pope) becomes the foundation. In the 17th c. this reached a crisis mode. Reformed scholastics, like John Owen, defended the vowel markings on later Hebrew texts as infallible. Roman Catholics, in turn, dipped into Pyrrhonian skepticism to undermine historical/textual resourcing (rejecting Renaissance humanism and their historically grounded hermeneutics). Instead, a magisterial divine fiat was the only way to possess epistemic certainty. It went nuts, reflecting the extreme blood letting of the 17th c. confessional wars (French Wars of Religion, 30 Years War, English Civil Wars, 80 Years War).

Yet I think this epistemological shift is a critical error. It depends upon the Rationalist epistemology of foundationalism, where some set of self-derived (and undisputed) axioms becomes the bedrock to build entire systems of knowledge upon. Both Rome and the Reformed shuddered when the alternatives of Nature and Reason were offered, originally from within their own ranks. It was a moderated civil religion that could stop the killing, but then produced its own cult and its own bloody war (e.g. the Terror was, in part, a theological war from Robbespierre's Cult of the Supreme Being against both entrenched, refractory, Catholics and atheists like Herbert). 

An alternative was always possible. British enlightenment figures like Berkeley knew the positivism of some of his fellow philosophers (viz. Locke, Newton, Hobbes) was something of a fraud, but he didn't reject the project to stabilize society. Various Germans (like Kant, Hamann, Herder) played a similar role on the Continent, not rejecting the Enlightenment in toto, but its false pretensions. The goal was a civil society grounded in a way that was true, but also common. Christendom was dead, but false appeals to universal reason needed to be tempered, lest it collapse into a new civil religion that then has to war against its own sets of infidels. Such set the stage for various alternatives, some better and others worse.

Yet, despite this history of European theological strife, 'sola scriptura' did not originate as an epistemological doctrine. Rather, it was a claim about the highest court of authority. It wasn't about the magisterium or the pope qua teaching/judging institutions, but their very grounds. It asked how the church could justify the pope, cardinals, various monastic orders and practices, when faced with scripture. The original debate devolved into epistemology when no one argument could simply offer a complete rout of the other, requiring stronger medicine to stabilize civil affairs. Protestants needed scripture to offer no epistemic doubt and Roman Catholics needed to offer a justification for the magisterium on its own terms. Christendom then collapsed in on itself. But the dust has settled and there's no need to relive these crises. Christians don't need to be captive to the logics of a monolithic social policy and, instead, return to the original question of authority.

I think the above solution works. I am not claiming it is historically perfect, but it matches all the historic data available and is relatively faithful to the subsidiary witness of tradition. The scriptures are in fact a stable body in terms of authority, and centuries of church authorities testify to this fact. Now, it may be true Protestants don't give due weight to other forms of authority, or rank them in the right way. But that's a question of contemporary practice, not historical fact. R.C. Sproul's "infallible scripture and fallible canon" ought to be rejected as a-canonical and hermeneutically shallow. The canon is authoritative because it has been what's received, testified from the very beginning. That's what all the fathers understood.

Life-giving Precepts: Lactantius and Justice in the Commonwealth

Lactantius is an interesting ante-Nicaean authority. He straddles the beginning of an era that began to transform the social ethos of the Christian church. I reject the Anabaptistic "Fall of the Church" narrative because of its lack of historicity, but that doesn't mean there wasn't a change. Although the Waldensian claim that Peter Waldo was the bishop who fled the corrupt court of Sylvester and Constantine is false, it doesn't mean there wasn't truth behind it. That critique had more to do with attacking the Donation of Constantine and the underpinnings of papal-imperial alliance of western Europe. But it also is significant for trying to note and suss out changes over the centuries.

I would argue Constantine is a far more ambivalent figure than most sides are willing to grant. I don't think he represents the dawning of a new age except in retrospect, and I think that's pushing it. The 4th c. is far more tenuous, with Arian and apostate emperors taking the throne successively. There was still pretty substantial criticism of the fusion between church and empire from Hilary of Poitiers and Athanasius of Alexandria, even as there was still dust in the air about what all of this meant. And as recent scholars have noted, Lactantius is perhaps the first major figure to really wrestle with this new ambiguity.

Lactantius was a courtier and he wrote his Divine Institutes as an attempt to be a Christian Seneca. He wanted to offer a Christian vision of things to the tetarch-augustus Constantine  (he wasn't even the emperor at this point). The narratives are so ingrained that it's hard to unwind, but at this point Constantine had not substantially favored the church. Constantine was not baptized until a much later date. Constantine still dabbled (until the end of his life) with his father's sun worship. It's never quite clear when, or if, Constantine ever disaggregated the imperial monotheism (or at least henotheism) of Sol Invictus from Christianity. Thus, we ought to tread carefully and not be too quick tempered with our understanding. Constantine's (and Licinius') Edict of Milan is basically a state-sanctioned monotheism, allowing all people to do as they wish (with specific reference to the Christians). It is in fact one of the greatest statements of official toleration from antiquity. Perhaps we have Lactantius' influence to thank for its production.

Unlike Eusebius (who was not such a fawner as many have thought him to be, but far more clever), Lactantius didn't see the "conversion" of the empire. He didn't even see Constantine execute his son Crispus, whom Lactantius had been tutoring.  Recent scholarship (Digeser's A Threat to Public Piety) has suggested that the last major persecution under Diocletian resulted from polemics from court neo-Platonists who jockeyed for power. Lactantius followed a tradition that sought Christianity as the true philosophy and thus was in competition among the various "schools" as the way of life. This didn't relate to an imperial cult or a state religion, but it did mean someone like Lactantius made sense in this stage of antiquity. A wealthy and educated Christian was concerned that the state didn't infringe upon justice, including the state murder of the innocent, offering his philosophic take. It wasn't about "establishing" a religion, at least not yet.

The early 4th c. was far more ambiguous, bishops weren't handing the keys of the church over to the emperor, even as they were highly appreciative that a ruler came who seemed to care for justice. Despite Constantine's megalomania at times, he was rather just as far as Roman emperors go. Again, Lactantius' ministrations may be thanked as one of the source of this moral compass. The fact that Constantine was never baptized until his deathbed shows, still, that he refrained from being a Christian until he laid down the purple (something Eusebius is clear about in his account of the emperor's baptism).

Anyway, the following are sections from Lactantius that I thought were relevant when considering political opinions. In this, Lactantius seemed to remain a Christian who was nevertheless a Roman, trying to aid his countrymen with the truth of justice:

First, Lactantius tries to distinguish eternal justice from the history of Rome and its laws:

But how greatly utility differs from justice the Roman people themselves teach, who, by proclaiming war through the Fecials, and by inflicting injuries according to legal forms, by always desiring and carrying off the property of other, have gained for themselves the possession of the whole world. But these persons think themselves just if they do nothing against their own laws; which may be even ascribed to fear, if they abstain from crimes through dread of present punishment. But let us grant that they do that naturally, or, as the philosopher says, of their own accord, which they are compelled to do by the laws. Will they therefore be just, because they obey the institutions of men, who may themselves have erred, or have been unjust?— as it was with the framers of the twelve tables, who certainly promoted the public advantage according to the condition of the times. Civil law is one thing, which varies everywhere according to customs; but justice is another thing, which God has set forth to all as uniform and simple: and he who is ignorant of God must also be ignorant of justice. (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book V, IX)

This section is pretty interesting in its thoroughgoing critique of the empire. Rome had been engaged in centuries of theft. Yet none of this was "illegal", but that's not relevant. Justice and civil laws are not commensurate. Thus Lactantius can judge his countrymen for crimes, despite the weak appeals to a constitution (a time-bound set of laws that were compromised). It's worth pausing and considering, especially for Americans. National idolatry is quite common, as well as trying to only hold people to time-bound constraints. All of that is fair and true, but obedience to civil laws (in a given time and place) is not the same as justice. Christians should not be blinkered by false equivocation between the two, as if it's all fair as long as the law says so, or you should obey the law even if it makes you commit wickedness. Of course, in christendom (in all of its variations) this confusion usually was the norm. Sacral secularity is just riffing off the same problems, with talk of the Rights of Man, the Constitution, Nature's god, and Founding Fathers. It was critical enlighteners who noted that these projects were also time-bound, and could not claim universality as if they stepped out of time. Hegel tries to solve this problem, but its manifest in Christianity: knowledge of justice is because the law-giving Word takes flesh. And yet the Christian disjunction between ages meant that, while Christians knew true justice, it didn't equate to any particular empire or nation, who could (at best) better approximate it. For Lactantius, it was his role as courtier to make the truth known to his patron. He sought to secure peace in Babylon, even as his eye was ever on the New Jerusalem.

The same concern motivates how Lactantius defines justice. It's one thing to focus on social policies, virtuous actions, and basic civic decency. It's easy, for some, to reduce Christian righteousness to these points and basically scrap the demands of liturgy and doctrine. However, Lactantius has not compromised. Worship and doctrine cannot be separated from either virtue or justice:

But let us suppose it possible that any one, by natural and innate goodness, should gain true virtues, such a man as we have heard that Cimon was at Athens, who both gave alms to the needy, and entertained the poor, and clothed the naked; yet, when that one thing which is of the greatest importance is wanting — the acknowledgment of God — then all those good things are superfluous and empty, so that in pursuing them he has laboured in vain. For all his justice will resemble a human body which has no head, in which, although all the limbs are in their proper position, and figure, and proportion, yet, since that is wanting which is the chief thing of all, it is destitute both of life and of all sensation. Therefore those limbs have only the shape of limbs, but admit of no use, as much so as a head without a body; and he resembles this who is not without the knowledge of God, but yet lives unjustly. For he has that only which is of the greatest importance; but he has it to no purpose, since he is destitute of the virtues, as it were, of limbs.

Therefore, that the body may be alive, and capable of sensation, both the knowledge of God is necessary, as it were the head, and all the virtues, as it were the body. Thus there will exist a perfect and living man; but, however, the whole substance is in the head; and although this cannot exist in the absence of all, it may exist in the absence of some. And it will be an imperfect and faulty animal, but yet it will be alive, as he who knows God and yet sins in some respect. For God pardons sins. And thus it is possible to live without some of the limbs, but it is by no means possible to live without a head. This is the reason why the philosophers, though they may be naturally good, yet have no knowledge and no intelligence. All their learning and virtue is without a head, because they are ignorant of God, who is the Head of virtue and knowledge; and he who is ignorant of Him, though he may see, is blind; though he may hear, is deaf; though he may speak, is dumb. But when he shall know the Creator and Parent of all things, then he will both see, and hear, and speak. For he begins to have a head, in which all the senses are placed, that is, the eyes, and ears, and tongue. For assuredly he sees who has beheld with the eyes of his mind the truth in which God is, or God in whom the truth is; he hears, who imprints on his heart the divine words and life-giving precepts; he speaks, who, in discussing heavenly things, relates the virtue and majesty of the surpassing God. Therefore he is undoubtedly impious who does not acknowledge God; and all his virtues, which he thinks that he has or possesses, are found in that deadly road which belongs altogether to darkness. Wherefore there is no reason why any one should congratulate himself if he has gained these empty virtues, because he is not only wretched who is destitute of present goods, but he must also be foolish, since he undertakes the greatest labours in his life without any purpose. (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book V, IX)

Thus, the Christian is in a far superior place, even as Lactantius focuses on deeds. It's not enough to do good deeds (as in contemporary garbage doctrines like "anonymous Christians" and the fetishization of Gandhi by some). In conjunction with the prior quote, Lactantius is trying to desacralize politics and the state. One can appreciate limited time-bound goods without fooling oneself. Following the law doesn't mean you're just. Doing the right thing doesn't mean you're truly virtuous. Even an Athenian hero like Cimon is ultimately unjust because he's ignorant of why he does his good deeds. He stumbles in the dark and can't discern the truth of actions, the ultimate end which determines their virtue.

If this sounds extreme, consider a murderer who, in his zeal to kill, cut down an even worse murderer. Does that make him a hero? Of course not, his actual intent matters when discerning the justice of things. The fact he killed in ignorance doesn't therefore vindicate his crime. Similarly, handing alms to glorify demons, to gain mastery over people, or win public recognition invalidates the justice of the acts, even if they accomplish real goods. Again, Lactantius isn't an idolator. He doesn't believe Rome is sacred or divinely blessed. It is simply his country and as a Christian (and well-heeled elite) he was trying to keep it from further evil. It's hard not to read later apologies for the "most Christian empire of the Romans" back into someone like Lactantius, but it would be false. As a philosopher, he sought to restrain the worst and encourage the better. It was not an unworthy (even if highly fraught) task.

A final quote may be most relevant for those who sneer at welfare programs. In the following Lactantius takes Cicero to task on the issue of charity:

What does Marcus Tullius say in his books respecting Offices? Does he not also advise that bounty should not be employed at all? For thus he speaks: Bounty, which proceeds from our estate, drains the very source of our liberality; and thus liberality is destroyed by liberality: for the more numerous they are towards whom you practice it, the less you will be able to practice it towards many. And he also says shortly afterwards: But what is more foolish than so to act that you may not be able to continue to do that which you do willingly? This professor of wisdom plainly keeps men back from acts of kindness, and advises them carefully to guard their property, and to preserve their money-chest in safety, rather than to follow justice. And when he perceived that this was inhuman and wicked, soon afterwards, in another chapter, as though moved by repentance, he thus spoke: Sometimes, however, we must exercise bounty in giving: nor is this kind of liberality altogether to be rejected; and we must give from our property to suitable persons when they are in need of assistance. What is the meaning of suitable? Assuredly those who are able to restore and give back the favour. If Cicero were now alive, I should certainly exclaim: Here, here, Marcus Tullius, you have erred from true justice; and you have taken it away by one word, since you measured the offices of piety and humanity by utility. For we must not bestow our bounty on suitable objects, but as much as possible on unsuitable objects. For that will be done with justice, piety, and humanity, which you shall do without the hope of any return!  (Lactantius, Divine Institutes, Book V, XI)

 Lactantius point starts at a personal level, but easily expands to a larger question (remember: he's writing to imperial magistrate Constantine). Cicero, fittingly as a greedy and self-absorbed oligarch working for the senatorial class, wrung his hands. Yes, I'd love to give, but alas, I'd run out. Lactantius sees this complaint as utilitarian trash. The circumspect prudence is to keep safe his own prosperity and wealth. He doesn't want to really pursue the demands of justice because he would rather preserve his overlordship status above the groveling plebs. Of course, the abuse doesn't end there. In order to best serve his wealth, Cicero wants to police who receives the funds. But this again is to twist justice into a self-reliant indulgence. Instead, Cicero (who as a pagan is ignorant of the true God) should have given to all equally in need. But he is unwilling to forego his power of the dole, and instead seeks to remain in control.

However, Lactantius' point extends beyond interpersonal relations. Most Christians could probably get on board with this vision of charity. But remember Constantine's retinue, his palace, is an extension of his person. Lactantius' account of justice isn't simply about people, but extends to the treasury of the Roman state. Here people's hackles would rise: market discipline! how can we get them to work without the stick?!? and all sorts of other capitalist ideological claptrap. Well, what if the commonwealth was oriented to the people. What if riches were dispersed like God disperses the riches of His creation? The sun shines on all, the earth is open to all, the rain falls on all. If someone abuses these good things, do we wag our finger at God? So too would true justice require a distribution of funds for the good of all. This is not about building a welfare state, but sharing the common goods with all citizens/subjects. It's not about dependence, but bounty and blessing. And in it, an organization acts justly. Again, the point is not to Christianize, but to hold true justice apart from historical phenomena of states and laws. Lactantius preserved the eschatological awareness that these times are under the shadow of the future: such will be our judgement, either to eternal life or eternal death.