I am publishing this draft which continues in the discussion of theology and economic, see and with the blogs interest in the work of Kathryn Tanner. Particularly relevant is the paper published in the blog Is Tanner Anglican? which argues that "Christ the Key" makes clear that in the end her theology is incarnational. In her book to which the paper responds, we raise the question if her theology is sufficiently incarnation to deliver an analysis that can provide parochial ministry the ground that it need to preach effectively and to engaged constructively is social action in the current economic circumstances of western life. We are with this draft still looking insights and correction,
Yale University Press
2019
With Gratitude for
Kathryn Tanner and
her Gift of Theology
and
Adam Smith and his Insight
into the Science of Economics
One
must begin with a note of appreciation that Kathryn Tanner not only for her
extensive contribution to theology in general but also in applying it to the
current state of economics. Economics is
usually given a pass, based on a long-standing division of the sciences. We won’t interfere with your science, if you
won’t interfere with ours. Hopefully her work will jar Christianity to set
aside this unholy bargain and make a serious attempt to address the problem
economic behavior. Her latest attempt, Christianity and the New Spirit of
Capitalism has led to a response in a symposium in Modern Theology Volume
35, Issue 1 (January 2019). I would add
to that with a response from a non-academic, parochial base, in other words,
from life in the pastorate.
In her
early work Tanner announced a new agenda for theology, Theories of Culture,
1997. For us who began our ministries in Seventies with Richard Niebuhr’s Christ
and Culture, 1951, as our guide, this was a challenge. Was Niebuhr’s view
of culture and his call for Christianity to be transformative, naïve? But this challenge was also exciting. We who were
active in parish ministry in the Seventies were aware that our impact was limited
and that had been eroded in the course of time. Those of us who eschew
nostalgia saw the possibility of a new platform for a concern.
Since
then, pieces of that prospect have appeared in Tanner’s works, particularly in God’s
Politics, 2022. So, I approached this new title with great expectations as
it seemed that it would be yet another step towards that end. My hope, however,
has been undercut by Tanner’s choice to address this book to a consideration of
“capitalism” and focusing it so heavily on the validity of Max Weber’s classic
thesis in his book “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.” Tanner
argues that his thesis of the Protestant work ethic needs to be rebutted. It is
not news that the “work ethic,” which Weber identifies as the “spirit” of
capitalism was not derived from Protestantism and, that his Capitalism did not
have a “spirit!” that is an internal sustaining life principle. She pursues her
argument by exposing Weber thesis to the present day “finance driven
capitalism.” In this new context the “work ethic” is even more corrosive than
it was in Weber’s industrial capitalism. We agree with this as well. But I wonder
if “new spirit” is actually be taken as an internal sustaining life principle?
Or if Weber’s own criticism of capitalism is given its due.
The
word capitalism only emerged in the socio-political debates of the late 19th
century. There it was used retrospectively to identify the state of a certain
economies, by parties attempting to limit or ascribe privileges and
prerogatives of capital as opposed to other factors in an economy. Capital is a
component in numerous economies dating back a thousand or so year and spread a which
variety political identities. This raises the question of capitalism identifies a formative culture
system either in the pre-industrial world of John Adam, who never used the word
or in the world that Tanner describes as “finance driven capitalism.”
“Capitalism”
is simply an ideology. By identify “Capitalism” as a party of her inquiry, Tanner,
not surprisingly produces a monologue since, sui genera, it is impossible to
engage an ideology in a dialogue! This is a serious limitation since it stands
in the way of Christianity, who she would represent, from entering into
dialogue with the world. Dialogue is for Christianity is not a courtesy, but an
obligation. Faith itself is dialogical, a call followed by a response, making
dialogue constitutional.
The
effect is immediate since each of us is embedded in the world and dialogue is
necessary for our own very personal internal wellbeing. I styled myself in the
Seventies as a worker priest and yet I have fallen into a comfortable pension
made possible by the highly successful Church Pension Fund which has been a
master of finance driven capitalism. You, if you are reading this off the
internet and even more so if you have this lovely volume in hand, printed by
the Yale Press, are likewise embedded in finance driven capitalism that has
made this possible. Indeed, you and I are thankful that the philanthropy of a
19th century capitalist, preserved and expanded by a finance driven
endowment, provides a chair of systematic theology at Yale. In the broader
picture, since each of us is related to others in the world A monologue leaves
a part of ourselves silenced and others outside of ourselves unheard., dialogue
in necessary our own external wellbeing as well. A monologue leaves a part of ourselves
silenced and others outside of ourselves unheard.
The monologue
could have been avoided if the subject was not “capitalism” but was with economic
science which stems from pioneers such John Adams whose “The Wealth of Nations.” It is important to remember that his prior
work was “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” which suggest that it would be
possible to enter a dialogue with him since the existence of “moral sentiments”
was a presupposition of economic behavior. Economic Science continued to
develop with Smith, Ricardo, or Mill and eventually entered the academic world
as disciplined behavioral science and which has blossomed into an array of institutes
and consultants. Among these there is a wide variety of opinions including
those who would not differ greatly from Tanner analysis of “finance driven
capitalism. They should be a target for dialogue not simply for what we might
tell them, but for what they might tell us.
After
setting the stage in chapter 1, Tanner devotes three chapters to the
demonstration that finance driven capitalism is incompatible with
Christianity. In them, Tanner lays out a
sharp and insightful analysis of the effects of a finance driven capitalism and
then juxtaposes the with a similarly insightful analysis of the values of
Christianity. Christianity’s interface with the world is inevitably framed by
the relationship between time and eternity. It follows that economics
(politics, sociology and other behavioral sciences as well) presents a concerned
with the way its relates with the past, present and future.
The
first of these is study of the past, titled “Chained the Past,” which leaves
doubt as to where her assessment of the effects of finance driven capitalism will
have on the past. She argues that individuals
are driven into debt, and thus they become enchained to the past. A quick survey of contemporary life would seem
to support this. One of the more damming examples is the extent of educational
debt. Enterprise needs educated
employees to function but are given a free pass. The cost of education on
secondary level is borne by the individual, largely by means of college loans. This is taken by Tanner to be a value of
finance driven capitalism and hence it is not to be dismissed as an unintended
consequence or as something with which finance driven capitalism might be
concerned as well. The Christian values
on contrary are aimed at “liberation from the past. Tanner evokes the doctrine
of conversion to justify this claim. From this point of view “The past is
problematized” (50) which is the say it is both to be affirmed and to be
repudiated. In the realm of an individual this is delineated by distinguishing
the difference between an essential self and a sinful self.” How this translates into economic behavior is
unclear. If economic behavior is simply sinful it would seem to lead to a
Manichean understanding of the world, and redemption is an escape. If it is
not, as it is well established, then work must have something to do with the
essential self, not merely as behavior but as meaning, the latter of which is
subject to redemption.
This
raises the question of in what way history is subject to redemption, and it is
striking how largely ahistorical Tanner’s analysis is. In this book, it is
confined largely to Weber and with that a brief account of monasticism which is
relevant to the question of the Protestant understanding of work.
Protestantism, she points out, did not create a different set of ends. The
enjoyment of the spiritual life was the same as that of the monastic world. The
value of work was equally negative. The
difference she argues is that in the monastic world others worked so that a few
could enjoy the refinement of a spiritual life, while in the Protestant world
that the spiritual life was now longer reserved for the few, but was meant for
the many.
This
historical cameo overlooks the fact that the original Benedictine foundations
were not hierarchical but consist of 12 monks bound to the land and committed
to work, opus, which was divided between the choir opus Dei and the
field. Indeed, Weber thesis is an insufficient proxy for a long line of
dialogues through which Christianity engaged in dialogue with the principals of
economic science, Maurice, Gore and Temple of the Anglican tradition and Reum
Novarum in the Roman Tradition, to mention a few.
Particularly,
on the part of Anglicans, the foundation for that dialogue was the
incarnation. These Anglicans were
conscious of the fact that a soteriological approach which had dominated
western Christian beginning with the Middle Ages and continuing in the
Reformation Age was not adequate to do justice to the nature of history or
work. Incarnation, they argued, made it possible to lift out history and work
that which relates to the essential self which Christianity valued and to enter
into the history and work input morality and energy which the world valued.
Where Tanner stands in relation to this is unclear. The center of her
systematic, “Christ the Key” suggests that she lies in this tradition. But for
some reason it is not clear in “Christianity and the Spirit of the New
Capitalism” in which she seems to depend on grace as non-competitive presence
which in the end is too abstract for the task.
The
second of these chapters, “Total Commitment,” has to do with the present. Tanner
contends that finance driven capitalism demands “total commitment” and that as
a consequence “workers themselves are to want nothing more than what the
corporations ask of them; their own desires are to be brought into complete
compliance with finance dominated corporate interests, in order to increase
productivity.” (64) While it is possible that employees feel that they are
being asked to make a total commitment, especially in the upper levels of
white-collar employment, it is unlikely that a corporation actually asks it,
though it might be tempted to make use of it. One is tempted to remind
corporate business that it is not in their long term interest to do so and
quite likely one will find some agreement on the part of the corporate business.
The
third chapter which takes on the future is titled “Another World.” Tanner begins, as we are now use to,
analyzing “finance driven capitalism.”
She begins by argue that its approach lead to a “collapsing the present and future into one
another.” (135) Finance driven capitalism argues that the future will not be
any than different than what we can imagine it to be in the present. Hence it
is possible to relieve any angst one might have for the future with rational
behavior. “Finance driven capitalism” is aware, however, that this not easy for
there are discontinuities in economic outcomes.
For that reason, it has invented “derivatives” which are the means of
hedging against future changes. Derivatives, however, simply manipulates who
wins and who loses, profiting as it does so. While this ameliorates the problem
of the future, it fails to remove it. There is, in the end, no calculation
using behavioral data that can provide a forecast of the future which can
remove the angst of life lived out under sway of “fiancé driven capitalism.”
On the
other hand, Tanner maintains that “the future that Christian expect remains as
radically different from the present as it could possibly be, short of not
being a future suitable for human creatures.” (159) The difference defined here
seems to ask the reader to exercise their imagination in a starkly abstract
manner, the only restrain being stopping short of removing from it a suitable
environment for “a human creature.” This formula leaves, at least me, I can’t
speak of the world driven finance capitalism, puzzled. It would be better to say that this future
is to be imagined as much “like the risen Jesus as possible.” This, to be sure,
would not be an easy task to call the secular world to attempt, but it would
not be so puzzling. At the same time let be said it is not an easy task to call
upon Christianity to imagine it! To the extent that it can, however,
Christianity is force to take seriously the value of temporal existence for its
own end. This requires among other
things for Christianity to step out of a monologue and to enter a dialogue with
the secular world and vice versa.
At the end of Tanner’s
three studies of past present and future, presenting the dichotomy of the
worlds of “finance driven capitalism” and Christianity, she asks, “Which
World?” In this new chapter answers the
question in a section titled “A New Christian World.” (198) At this point it is
necessary to raise a question about Tanner choice to use the word “world,” and
whether alternative “worlds” are the proper way of framing the question. In the
language of Biblical Christianity, “world” translates the Greek word kosmos.
For example as in the saying of Jesus, John 17, “They are not of
the world, just as I am not of the world.” and “I do not ask that
you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil
one.” Christians however do not and will not live in a different kosmos,
world. Their true future is incorporation in the risen-one who has entered
eternity, not without taking what is really real out of this world, the kosmos.
If
“Christ is the key” then it is clear that Eternity has something at stake in
time and in human behavior lived in it. This means that it is incumbent upon Christianity
to enter into a dialogue, however, uncomfortable or hostile it might be with
the secular world. This not clear in Tanner’s prescription which suggests that Christian
communities should cultivate: an alternative understandings of value,
alternative rhythms of time, alternative visions of personhood, “ and an
alternative forms of obligation and mutuality. This constitutes a posture which
will cause Christianity to be disturbance or a “disruptive force” in the world.
Yes, speaking from the tactics of the Seventies we did this. Back then we spoke
of marginality and sought life choices which took us out the economic
mainstream. While I have never repented doing so, I recognize that it was a
matter of how we felt about ourselves rather than anything that was registered
in the secular world. We did not, however, let that replace what we saw as an
effort to “transform” culture as was suggested to us by Richard Niebhur “Christ
and Culture.”
Tanner intends to move on
from Richard Niebhur but it does not seem that this posturing will do much if
anything to change the economic order, sadly it may not even trouble it. This leaves the question of how she can speak
of different world without making Christianity into a culture, to be lived
“above” the existing order, in Richard Neibhur’s terms, or worse to somehow brought
down so the existing order to be it, the very poles that Niebuhr rejected.
While I
don’t think Tanner intends this, I need her to explain to me how she intends to
escape this conclusion. I would suggest
that we need to say clearly that there is only one world and that for the
duration of our lives we are part of it.
Posturing seems of little value, a kind of self-serving relief. Agency
within it seems possible by means of a dialogue. While this is not easy or comfortable, I
argue that it is possible if we focus on economic science as a partner and can
listen as well as tell.
It is
true that dialogue with the behavioral sciences has been bleak, but dialogue with
the physical sciences has proved fruitful in resent past. On the one side we
have theologians such as Arthur Peacocke and John Polkinghorne and on other we
have a scientist such as Marcelo Gleiser, astrophysics and recipient of 2019 Templeton
Prize. His books “The Island of
Knowledge” and “The Dawn of the Mindful Universe” are profoundly open for
dialogue. Dialogue with behavioral sciences should not be so much more
difficult, save, of course, for some vested presuppositions about humanity held
by both sides. The beginning can come when the behavioral sciences, as the
physical science already have, recognize that it rest on presupposition, about
which theology might have something to say and when the theological sciences
recognizes that the behavior sciences have some to say to it.
In
conclusion, I would say that “Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism”
succeeds as a monograph that sets aside Weber thesis of a “Protestant Work
Ethic,” but it falls short of providing a much need basis for the homiletic and
agency needs of the parochial church. The promise made in her Theories of
Culture offered the hope that such a dialogue between theology and the
behavioral science could be reopened in the 21st century which would
answer that need. To my knowledge that
remains the best hope. The critique of this response should not be understood
as an attempt to disqualify Tanner, but an encouragement for her, and academic
theology in general, to fill the promise of location the life of Christianity
in contemporary setting.
