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In his Introduction to Capital, Karl Marx offered an observation that may seem trite:

Exchange-value appears first of all as the quantitate relation, the proportion in which use-values of one kind exchange for use-values of another kind. This relation changes constantly with time and place. Hence exchange-value appears to be something  accidental and purely relative. Consequently an intrinsic value, i.e. an exchange-value that is inseparably connected with the commodity, inherent in it, seems a contradiction in terms (K Marx Kapital I:49-50).

Herein Marx speaks to a common misunderstanding about value. For, even though it has formed the centerpiece of neoclassical economic theory since 1868 (at the latest), value is still poorly understood even by some economists.

That misunderstanding arises from the two-fold character of the commodity, including the labor commodity, which, on the one hand is what it appears to be, however culturally, socially, or historically embedded. It is some thing. And we value every thing for the qualities it enjoys — again, however culturally or historically inflected — that satisfy some need. So, for example, the value a relic has for me is found in the actual hair, bone, skin, fabric of the relic, which are themselves embedded in a culture and along a historical path in which such things are valued. In capitalist societies, things are also related to one another by a common, shared, universal element — value — that each thing bears not because of the specific, individual qualities any thing enjoys, but on account of what they all share socially.

The social character of value has led many people to conclude that value is arbitrary or conventional. The value of any thing is wherever aggregate supply and aggregate demand intersect. Constrain supply holding demand constant and the value of any good will increase. Expand supply holding demand constant and the value of any good will decrease. Or, culturally, expose enough of the public to a wildly popular movie — for example, the Matrix — and then watch how fashion choices marginally shift. This could suggest that value is totally arbitrary or conventional.

Value is specially confusing when we consider how it is shaped by automation. Obviously investors will only automate when the marginal returns they anticipate from automation exceed the marginal returns they derive from manual or semi-manual forms of production. In the real world, where millions of commodities compete for total aggregate income, few commodities enjoy the capacity when automated to shift total demand. There are, of course, exceptions. Because petrol is generally considered among the least elastic commodities, when fuel prices rise, consumers are inclined to spend less on other, more elastic goods. In theory, however, we can easily appreciate the conditions under which automation might actually lead to an aggregate decline in marginal returns.

Take a factory that relies upon human labor. Employees at the factory are compensated for their labor with a wage, a portion of which they spend on goods, perhaps the goods that they help manufacture. Assuming for the moment a closed system, where aggregate supply exactly equals aggregate demand and where the total value of all goods produced equals the wages consumers are ready to spend on these goods, any decline in wages is matched by an equal decline in the value of the goods for sale. So, for example, if the total of all goods is an apple and the sum total of income is $1, which the consumer has earned picking apples, automation of apple picking must consider who will purchase the apple once the apple picker is made redundant. If total income in this market is reduced to $0, then the value of the apple cannot be greater than $0.

Now, however, let us suppose that we add another manufacture — maintenance of automated apple picking machines, which farmers hire at a wage greater than the manual apple pickers. If apples nevertheless remain the only good for sale, at $1, I will still not automate, since I must still compensate my technician at least $1 if he is to purchase my apple. But let us suppose that automation decreases the cost of picking each apple by 50%. Now if I compensate my technician at $1, his wage remains identical; and yet its marginal value, relative to apples, is now 100% greater since he can purchase two apples with it. Automation has doubled the quantity of goods, holding value constant. Efficiency has doubled utility or use value. Measured in dollars, we still have x dollars worth of apples equals x dollars in total wages; but, x dollars in wages now equals two apples.

In the real world, where hundreds of millions of goods are consumed, and where investors must decide whether or not to automate a process, investors are deeply interested in aggregate demand. Should innovation give rise to a decline in aggregate economic growth, then investors will want to know whether and by how much a marginal decline in aggregate demand will place downward pressure on their marginal returns. We saw in 2006 how a dramatic decline in aggregate value placed the jobs of millions of manufacturing workers in danger. For investors, the question was not whether Ted, Susan, and their family could meet their mortgage payment or pay for Jimmy’s anti-epilepsy medication; the question was the bite declining wages would take out of aggregate consumption for all goods.

The misunderstanding is . . . understandable. We want value to reside in things, which is precisely how classical economists such as Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and Thomas Malthus understood value. Whether they were calibrating the value of things to labor time (A Smith) or to the relative value of the things out of which other things were composed (T Malthus) or, even, straining toward a new, more dynamic expression of value (D Ricardo), classical economists wanted value to reside in things.
Neoclassical economic theory, from this vantage point, appears incoherent. For it measures value according to its market value — value is whatever a good or service or idea commands on the market. This market value is its objective value.

To further complicate matters, market value is always hedged in, constrained and channeled by a bewildering variety of factors that we can summarize by law, custom, regulation, and habit. So, for example, a private investor who enjoys access to a lawmaker might make it advantageous for that lawmaker to pass a regulation that increases demand for his good while decreasing the demand for his competitor’s good; or a reliquary might claim a monopoly over the sale of candles and deny common candles access to its sanctuary. These constraints are literally innumerable and yet clearly they shape the values of goods traded even in the most liberal of markets.

It may appear a giant leap, but the question of value and its significance reappears every time we appear on the verge or even in the middle of an efficiency-rich technological innovation. This is because, in the short run, marginal efficiency is measured by the cost entailed in producing any good over the quantity of goods produced at that cost. In the short run, private investors will only replace human labor with technology when the cost of that technology per unit produced is less than the cost of the labor it displaces. The result, on its face, is a drop in the value of the labor relative to the technology, which are marginally identical — identical at the margins.

Notice that were marginal demand for a good reduced by an equal or greater amount than the efficiencies generated by the new technology, the value of that technology would not be greater than the human labor it replaces. So, for example, did adopting a technology reduce employment and wages sufficiently to shift demand for that good downward beyond its marginal utility, an investor would still not adopt the technology. Only if the marginal cost were sufficiently reduced to also lower the price of that good and increase demand up to the margin (expanding profits by expanding the demand for goods that bear a lower price), only in this case would investors adopt the technology.

But also notice that significantly lowering the price of a good through technological innovation (in a competitive market) also reduces the marginal profits that might be won from that good; this, in turn, would trigger a realignment of capital investments toward goods with a larger profit margin. So, for example, if automobile manufacturers cannot make sufficient marginal returns because innovation has lowered the price they can command for a good, investors will redirect their capital to niche markets that enjoy higher marginal returns.

Finally notice that this shift in the indifference curve can also be effected by changes in law, regulation, custom, taxation, and so on. So, for example, when Congress deregulated financial markets in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, it obviously increased the attractiveness of financial instruments. The same overall effect was achieved, however, by dramatically lowering taxation on wealth. In both cases, we can observe a shift away from manufacturing and towards capital goods.
Obviously, we could expand these examples indefinitely. But my point is that these basic principles have been well known at least since the 1860s and have not really been in dispute, at least since the 1930s. Value does not reside in things. Regulatory, legal, social, political, regulatory and cultural forms shape and shift value.

We invest in technological innovation even when it displaces labor and places downward pressure on wages only when we can see higher returns from that investment. Which brings us to Larry Elliot’s observation:

Robots will create more jobs, but what if these jobs are less good and less well paid than the jobs that automation kills off? Perhaps the weak wage growth of recent years is telling us something, namely that technology is hollowing out the middle class and creating a bifurcated economy in which a small number of very rich people employ armies of poor people to cater for their every whim.

But automation could only achieve this outcome were it not dependent for increasing marginal returns upon the wages of the middle class. At the very least, this means either that demand for a good — however manufactured is inelastic — or that marginal returns are no longer dependent upon middle class wages and consumption. In the first case, automation increases marginal returns because irrespective of their wage, consumers will nevertheless purchase the good. So, for example, even though under conditions of high unemployment (or stagnant wages) necessities such as petrol will consume a higher proportion of an unemployed person’s wealth — increasing its value to them — they will nevertheless consume a higher value of petrol than they did when they were employed (or earned higher wages). Automation may have some effect on value, but only marginally. In the other case, where marginal profits are independent of the wealth of the middle class, the shift in consumer markets tells us less about how a good was produced — automated or manually — than how wealth is distributed. This is less a consequence of automation than regulation.

We can see this relationship most clearly in the World War II and post-World War II labor and consumer markets. High taxation on profits and wealth

 

Stephen Metcalf gets so much right in his long read “Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world” (2017-08-18 The Guardian), that I am tempted to leave well enough alone. The theory supporting neoliberalism can no doubt be described as an idea; and this idea has, as Metcalf argues, had a profound influence on the policies institutions have implemented all around the globe. And he is more than half right to call our attention to the significant role played by Friedrich von Hayek in shaping and then spreading the ideology of neoliberalism, the theoretical scaffolding that supports these policies.

And, yet, repeatedly in his account, Metcalf appears to suggest that it is the idea of neoliberalism — and not the actual practice of capitalism — that has introduced the pain and suffering peculiar to neoliberalism. For those not yet certain they want to wade through Metcalf’s long read, here is my executive summary:

1. the utopian ideal of the free market and the dystopian present are causally related; granting the market universal status bears a close relationship to “our current descent into post-truth and illiberalism.”
2. von Hayek’s Big Idea — that free markets compose free minds capable of grasping the value of free markets, whereas regulated markets constrain minds in ways that obscure reality — marks a departure Enlightenment wisdom and from classic liberalism, even the classic liberalism of his University of Chicago Colleagues Frank Knight and Jacob Viner.
3. When value and price collapse into one another — as they must in von Hayek’s neoliberal ideology — the tautology falsifies any notion of value that might arise outside the sphere of price, i.e., outside the sphere of the market economy.
4. By calibrating “liberty” solely to free markets, neoliberal ideology believes that it has shown (a) that free markets alone give rise to objective value; and (b) that values not grounded in market activity are therefore by definition arbitrary and relative
5. The authoritarian and illiberal dimensions of post-democratic society arise from admitting only to the singular logic of the free market, all other value formations — democracy, diversity, opportunity, health, art, religion — be damned.

“How can the combination of fragments of knowledge existing in different minds,” [Hayek] wrote, “bring about results which, if they were to be brought about deliberately, would require a knowledge on the part of the directing mind which no single person can possess?”

Metcalf summarizes von Hayek’s Big Idea as follows:

It is a grand epistemological claim – that the market is a way of knowing, one that radically exceeds the capacity of any individual mind. Such a market is less a human contrivance, to be manipulated like any other, than a force to be studied and placated. Economics ceases to be a technique – as Keynes believed it to be – for achieving desirable social ends, such as growth or stable money. The only social end is the maintenance of the market itself. In its omniscience, the market constitutes the only legitimate form of knowledge, next to which all other modes of reflection are partial, in both senses of the word: they comprehend only a fragment of a whole and they plead on behalf of a special interest. . . .

It was Hayek who showed us how to get from the hopeless condition of human partiality to the majestic objectivity of science. Hayek’s Big Idea acts as the missing link between our subjective human nature, and nature itself. In so doing, it puts any value that cannot be expressed as a price – as the verdict of a market – on an equally unsure footing, as nothing more than opinion, preference, folklore or superstition.

But what if the value form of capital behaves more or less just as von Hayek describes it? What if it is not an idea, but the actual composition and expansion of the value form that gives rise to a highly specific way of experiencing the Self, the World, and the Other?

Metcalf would like to situate von Hayek’s Big Idea in the 1930s. Why? Here is my suspicion. Let us suppose that von Hayek’s Big Idea could actually be found much, much earlier: let us say in 1868, 1869, or 1870. And, let us suppose that, Metcalf’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding, the rigorous mathematical modeling to which von Hayek believed the contemporary world could be reduced was already well-developed and fully elaborated by the end of the nineteenth century. Would that make a difference? Noted Cambridge historian Eric J Hobsbawm felt that it would.

Up until the revolutions of 1848 and 1849, European liberals had still felt that economic policies were subordinate to political forces; that, for example, republican institutions and values and democratic process could enjoy precedence over private market forces. The haste and ease with which monarchs and armies dispatched the democratic and republican forces of 1848 and 1849 made it clear to everyone that capitalism would not so easily be made subject to political forces. The political despair that followed from the defeats of 1848 and 1849 generated a full decade of unprecedented economic growth across Europe; almost as though the new economic form fed directly upon political despondency. In fact, the process was somewhat more complex. The same concert of Europe that defeated Napoleon also (and far more easily) dispatched the republican and democratic forces of 1848 and 1849. And it was this concert that also recognized the benefits that could be won from recognizing and empowering private entrepreneurs and investors who, until these revolutions, had largely been locked out of the chief positions in their respective state bureaucracies.

In a microcosm, the U.S. Civil War played out the same dynamic that in 1848 and 1849 had swept across Europe. The technologically superior and far better financed United States devastated the technologically backward, agricultural Confederacy, albeit with not the same ease as monarchs put down the uprisings of 1848 and 1849. Yet, where the economy is concerned, the results were the same. The decade following the end of the Civil War saw unprecedented growth.

More importantly for our purposes, after 1865 the world of capital in general, on both sides of the Atlantic, witnessed an acceleration in the integration of laws, regulations, currency exchanges, information, and trade — all of which worked to create one, singular, integrated, comprehensive economic system. That the expansion of this system had an ideological component is doubtless true. But so too was the actual integration of the system into a complex, dynamic integrated whole.

Nobel Prize winner Robert E Lucas, Jr. has represented this integration in the following chart:

Professor Lucas did not fabricate the chart. The data is real. Integration into the global economy gives rise to economic growth. And at present, roughly 98 per cent of the earth is, as Metcalf notes, “swallowed.”

This comprehensive economic integration had an interesting side effect. Beginning in the late 1860s, early 1870s, economists such as William Stanley Jevons, Leon Walras, and Alfred Marshall recognized that a world integrated in this way lent itself to rigorous mathematical modeling. That is to say — the actual economic integration did not follow from but preceded the rigorous mathematical modeling. Here is an example from Jevons’ Theory of Political Economy (1871):

It is clear that Economics, if it is to be a science at all, must be a mathematical science. There exists much prejudice against attempts to introduce the methods and language of mathematics into any branch of the moral sciences. Many persons seem to think that the physical sciences form the proper sphere of mathematical method, and that the moral sciences demand some other method – I know not what. My theory of Economics, however, is purely mathematical in character.

If, however, it was comprehensive economic integration, in fact, not in theory, that invited attempts to grasp that integration in a mathematically rigorous manner, then these attempts are no more ideological than, say, Heisenberg’s theoretical physics. But this means that the question we must ask is how well or poorly von Hayek is able to account for the observed phenomena — and not whether the phenomena, in this case a neoliberal world, exists.

And it is here that von Hayek turns metaphysical, even religious. For, in essence, he ascribes the emergence of liberal institutions to the gradual elimination of economic constraint; when the fact is that economic growth has always, at least since the fourteenth century, been predicated upon massive public intervention into private markets. Prior to the fourteenth century von Hayek’s rational, economizing individual is nowhere in evidence. There is not a shred of evidence indicating that human communities naturally lend themselves to rigorous mathematical modeling.

Since this is so, we need to ask how policies, institutions, laws, and regulations might have given rise to the very real human experience that counts our market dominated world as “natural.” Like his spiritual mentor Carl Menger, von Hayek was a rabid atheist. He and Menger both fashioned themselves men of science and progress. Yet, when they came to reflect on the “economizing individual,” no science — not history, not anthropology, not sociology, not even the far more mathematically rigorous modeling of their Cambridge School enemies — could stand in the way of their deeply religious faith in price as the reflection of basic human liberty. On this one point, von Hayek literally self-lobotomized. Why? What was at stake?

At stake, I would argue, was an entire world. The fact that this world was humanly constructed, fabricated, and terribly recent (no earlier than the fourteenth century) does not detract from its substantial reality. The world von Hayek theorized is our world, the real world: integrated, rational, comprehensive, total, singular. But this is not to say that it is the only possible world. We might imagine, for example, as Metcalf imagines, a world where the interests of families, religious communities, nature, art, and learning collide and collude with one another if not in the absence of private economic forces, at least not under their singular weight of their total domination. We could then imagine a form of freedom different from Immanuel Kant’s “absence of material constrain”; a form of freedom more in line with Nobel prize winning economist Amartya Sen’s “conditions that make for freedom”: education, security, housing, health, food, family, friends — which, as Sen notes, is in line not only with traditional Hindu, Buddhist, and Confucian wisdom, but also with the teaching of “western” paragons such as Aristotle.

But — and this is a huge but — this would mark the end of market capitalism; not markets, but market capitalism. And this von Hayek could not imagine.

After he had recovered from his post-1848 hangover — remember, the Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 — Karl Marx took a long, well-deserved sabbatical in London. At the other end of this sabbatical there emerged a work, Capital, that, rather than faulting the new system for what it was not, instead sought to understand what it was. In a phrase, Marx concluded that capitalism was a comprehensive economic system constructed by the social form: value. He defined value as “a self-moving Substance that is Subject” — that is to say, a rational, goal-directed Agent, or, what GWF Hegel thought of as der Geist or Mind.

A close reading of either von Hayek or K Marx is not possible here. Such a reading, however, would quickly show that von Hayek and Marx were actually quite close in their characterizations of capitalism as universal Mind or Spirit. Where they differed is critical. Where von Hayek felt liberated by this comprehensive, all-encompassing quasi-scientific totality, Marx felt that it was the essence of modern human domination; and where von Hayek believed that this form of domination was hard-wired into human ontology, Marx argued that it was peculiar to a historically specific social form: capitalism.

Metcalf’s description of von Hayek’s Big Idea is terribly good. But what if it is not simply an idea?

The application of Hayek’s Big Idea to every aspect of our lives negates what is most distinctive about us. That is, it assigns what is most human about human beings – our minds and our volition – to algorithms and markets, leaving us to mimic, zombie-like, the shrunken idealisations of economic models. Supersizing Hayek’s idea and radically upgrading the price system into a kind of social omniscience means radically downgrading the importance of our individual capacity to reason – our ability to provide and evaluate justifications for our actions and beliefs.

If von Hayek’s Big Idea is simply an idea, then we can combat it with better ideas — judged better by idea consumers, the public. If, however, von Hayek’s Big Idea is itself an expression of an actual social form — the value form of capital — that it seeks to defend, then the idea, while dangerous, is not the real enemy. Policies that deprive us of art, nature, security, health, learning, and love — these policies themselves bring us to value what remains; and what remains is a cold, uninflected indifference curve indicating with pin-point precision each of our market choices which we then mistake for value and for freedom.

 

I am now roughly half way through Lyndal Roper’s Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (2016), and, in the main, appreciate how Dr Roper weaves personal biography, regional history, and broader cultural history together. Nor does Dr Roper steer clear of Luther’s hostility toward “capitalists,” by which Luther meant not private investors but principally bankers and financiers, a point I will touch on below.

Nevertheless, I am troubled by Dr Roper’s failure to more adequately integrate the frame of Luther’s experience with the rapidly changing practical landscape that shaped these experiences. Dr Roper does consider the interests German princes and investors had in limiting the control emperor and Pope exercised over their fate. But she is less eager, or, perhaps, less curious, when it comes to thinking through how the changing economic landscape of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries might have given rise to a rapidly changing experience of the relationship between spirit and flesh. She treats the conflict between Aristotelians and anti-scholastics as though it were entirely independent from the practical isolation of abstract value from its material form of appearance that was one of the principle expressions of the emergent capitalist social form. In fact, the two were intimately — which is to say, causally related.

Luther’s (and apparently also Dr Roper’s) failure to appreciate this connection allows “Two Kingdoms” orthodoxy to appear merely pragmatic rather than phenomenal and therefore pragmatic. It also allows Luther’s sacramental theology — mystery — to be set against Jean Calvin’s symbolic presence. The two, however, are much more intimately related than either orthodox Calvinists or Lutherans care to acknowledge. When it embraced preeminence over earthly power and authority, the Roman Church both consecrated, but also recognized the already sacred character of constrained bodies. Oddly, it was with this doctrine that Luther agreed: Christ’s Body, precisely in its limitation, was to be celebrated. Yet, because his understanding of faith had no body, Luther could not assert the Church’s preeminence over earthly power and authority. To do so suggested, for Luther, a kind of works righteousness; redemption by sinful flesh. The “Freedom of the Christian Man” already presupposed the isolation of abstract value from its material form of appearance; the phenomenal bifurcation of the world into . . . two Kingdoms: the abstract value form (faith) and its material form of appearance (works).

When set in this light, Luther’s doctrine is not altogether different from Calvin’s, except that Calvin does away with the mystery. Or, at least, he feels that he does. By translating the Holy Sacrament into symbol, Calvin invites believers into the Saussurian dreamworld of sign and signified, the fun house of mirrors in which Protestantism feels most comfortable. Ferdinand Saussure was the French linguist who successfully characterized the correspondence of social and linguistic form that would become “structuralism.” In Calvin, all is symbol. The body disappears. For Luther, by contrast, the body itself becomes mysterious. Its translation into sacred presence cannot be explained. Nor should we try to.

But this did not mean that bodies were not sacred. To the contrary: bodies were sacred only when they were not sacred — only when they embraced power and authority not as righteous works deserving of salvation, but only under the law of God, only under the constraint of heaven. In practice, as well as experience — pragmatically and phenomenally — this meant that good government was, by definition, not Christian. That is to say, it exercised no emancipatory power. Bodies do not reveal Christ. They do not contain Christ. They cannot. Except through a via negativa.

The unredeemed, sinful body is redeemed by renouncing its sacred character. Money as money is good. Power as power is good. Authority as authority is good. Not divine, not emancipatory, not redemptive. It is good in its negativity, in absence.

On the one hand, this is the theology of the First Commandment. Nothing, but nothing shall be God: no thing shall be God. And, yet, we only experience this through thingly mediation. Or, we deny even the thingly character of the mediation through which we know this: it is a mystery. Constraint ≠ the Divine. Constraint = Flesh. But flesh is not evil. Therefore, a flesh that is not divine is good. Secular authority rules over the flesh. God rules over the spirit.

This, of course, is wholly consistent with the emerging social form, where abstract value frees itself from its material form of appearance, the merely material commodity. The material commodity is not evil or bad. But it is not sacred. The immaterial value form, which knits all social being together, is cannot be fixed in any of its expressions. It is a mystery. This mystery Jean Calvin merely formalizes.

It might be supposed that, whether in its Lutheran or in its Calvinist forms, this isolation of immaterial value from its material form of appearance advances a fundamental critique of secular power. In fact, it advances a coherent defense of secular power. A gospel that expresses itself in bodies lends itself to judgment and to repentance. But a gospel that transcends bodies is only prohibited from posing as redemptive. Any body that acknowledges its merely earthly, worldly character — the Two Kingdoms — cannot be faulted. It must instead be obeyed. A secular body that submits to divine reprimand, divine constraint, falls within the Kingdom of God. I am authorized to criticize it precisely because it is sacred. A merely secular body is just that: a body.

The celebration of the critique of the body was evident nowhere more clearly than in Martin Luther’s 1522 in coena Domini, which Dr Roper describes as follows:

As a New Year’s prank for 1522, he published a mock version complete with glosses of the bull in coena Domini, issued regularly by the Pope at Easter to condemn heresy. Luther, of course, condemned the “bull-sellers, cardinals, legates, commissaries, under-commissaries, archbishops, bishops, abbots, provosts, deacons, cathedral clergy, priors…and who can list the gang of all these rascals, which the Rhine would hardly be big enough to drown?” Although his adversaries wrongly accused him of having fomented sedition and falsely alleged that he had taught that there was no need to obey secular authority, they were not wrong to scent the potential for social disturbance in Luther’s message.

Yes. Social disturbance. But it is the social disturbance not of God, but of capital.

I like to believe that most of my friends — many of whom are scientists — are not relativists. But then every now and again I hear a phrase — “everyone has a right to his opinion,” “to each his own,” “that’s because you’re a man,” “you’re not a woman, so you can’t know” — that makes me despair. Of course, knowledge is relative. What we know, or think we know, is relative to who we are and where we have been. And, yet, the truth of climate change science is not a matter of perspective. The fact that cigarettes cause cancer is not simply my opinion. Privately funded health care is — objectively — bad for public health. Or, on more neutral turf: the science that allows us to send projectiles into outer space to distant planets is not subject to personal belief; it is not arbitrary.

My family subscribes to National Geographic — you know, the journal owned by Fox News. Perhaps you remember the cover article from a couple of years ago: The War on Science (March 2015).

Science, as we know, is not an outcome; it is a method, the “scientific method.” It does not dictate what we know; but how we know. So, for example, by following the “scientific method,” researchers could, if they wished, explain the physiological response of an individual’s body when the object of their “love” passed by, even if only notionally; it could explain why two individuals who “love” one another met, on a particular campus, in a particular venue; and it could explain why these two individuals encounter friction over specific topics or behaviors. Has the “scientific method” then captured “love”? Well, no. And, yet, a person who relies upon the “scientific method” would no more object to studies of “love” based upon this method than they would object to studies that enable us to send projectiles to distant planets.

I think that this topic is on my mind because it is a kind of “perspectivalism” that stands at the heart of the #FakePresident’s popularity in the heartland. The “culture wars” as a political weapon — the tried and true method of defeating truth when all else has failed — trusts that the enemies of conservatism hold the opinions they do because of who they are: wealthy, educated, privileged. People believe what they believe because of where they have been and who they are. The #FakePresident’s supporters are cultural relativists. Are we?

No. Climate science holds true even if no one recognizes it. Light moves at the same speed through empty space irrespective of whether anyone is there to measure it.

Which is very different than asking the question: what were the circumstances under which we knew this? Which is very different than asking the question: why did we even know that we should inquire into  the conditions of knowledge?

Which is to say that “The War on Science” is a much broader and much deeper war than Fox News lets on. It is not a war only on scientists or researchers or universities. It is a war on scientia, on knowledge. It is gnostic or, if you prefer, Manichean. There is a world of appearance. And there is a world of truth. Truth is not available through the world of appearance.

Two weeks ago I had the odd experience of traveling through time. It was, I believe, 1988 or 1989. I was at the old Natural Science Museum in Golden Gate Park. I had my sleeping bag, my pillow. My wife was there, but she was not my current wife. And there before me was Scoop Nisker, he of KFOG, guiding us through the Winter solstice. Wow! But, now I am at Spirit Rock and the woman next to me is my real wife. But, there in front of me, once again, is Scoop Nisker; only now his name is Wes. But he is telling me two disparate things: (1) the true is not the real; (2) the real is not the true.

The message was like a splash of cold water. Suddenly I understood the thin but deep cultural connection between right and left in the United States; but also the fundamental difference between, say, the US and Canada or Germany or Italy.

It’s all relative isn’t it? Or is it?

Does anyone remember the “Goofus and Gallant” page from old Highlights? You know, in the left frame Goofus illustrates how not to behave; in the right frame Gallant illustrates proper etiquette.

I can’t help but think that in a galaxy far far away at the edge of our universe, the alien equivalent of Highlights simply reprints the #FakePresident’s tweets in the left frame, while displaying good alien conduct in the right.

Take this morning’s rant.

One can just see Goofus chasing after the “quitters” who refuse to eliminate healthcare for millions of citizens. In the right frame is Gallant, praising Congress members for not caving into bullying.

But I am also remembering an older layer of Goofus and Gallant. Thucydides reports how, in the Summer of 430 BCE “with their land devastated for the second time, and under the double burden of plague and war, the Athenians suffered a change of mind” about the policies of their ruler, Pericles. “They now began to blame Pericles for persuading them to war and held him responsible for the disasters that had befallen them” (Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 2.59).

Like Goofus, Pericles turns the tables on the Athenians. Their sons, brothers, and husbands are returning in body bags. Criminal neglect of Athenian health and infrastructure have spread the plague. But, instead of comforting the Athenians, Pericles ridicules them:

I was expecting this anger of yours against me (I can understand its causes), and I have called this assembly in order to refresh your memory and to suggest that you are wrong to criticize me or to give in to your present troubles (Thuc. 2.60).

Remember? You are the obstructionists who for the past seven years have vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

Certainly if all else is well and people have the choice of war or peace, it is great folly to go to war. But if, as was the case, the stark choice is either to submit and endure instant subjection to others or to face the risks and win through, the greater blame lies in shirking the danger rather than standing up to it. For my own part, I remain the same and my position does not shift. It is you who are changing. What has happened is that your conviction when you were unharmed has turned to regret now that trouble is on you, and in your weakened state of morale that argument of mine now seems to you mistaken: the pain has already made itself felt by every individual, but the benefit for all of us is not yet clearly seen (Thuc. 2.61).

When it was a matter of fanning hatred against a black President in order to win votes, you were all on board. Now that you are called upon to deprive millions of citizens of affordable healthcare, you are shirking your responsibility. Quitters.

The enemy have attacked, as they were always going to do on your refusal to submit; we were prepared for all else, but not for the additional affliction of this plague, the only present circumstance which could not have been foreseen. I know that my increased unpopularity is largely due to the plague: but this is unfair, unless you will also give me the credit for any unexpected success (Thuc. 2.64).

“My increased unpopularity is due to the fake news reporting the CBO’s fake numbers — the plague of media; but, wait, look at those job numbers!”

Quitters. Astonishingly, however, Thucydides then reports: “The universal anger at Pericles among the Athenians did not subside until they had punished him with a fine. Not long afterwards, as is characteristic of crowd behaviour, they elected him general once more and entrusted all their affairs to his management” (Thuc. 2.65).

Why? Because Goofus and Gallant no more changed anyone’s mind than did Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War. Deprived of the means of understanding their fate, the Athenians — as is characteristic of crowd behaviour — dutifully tuned into Fox News every evening and reelected the leader responsible for their pain, destruction, and suffering.

And, yet, the lesson was not entirely lost. Two millennia later, when Federalists lined up to defend their new Constitution, they universally condemned this so-called “father of Democracy,” this demagogue, this bully. He is Goofus, not Gallant. Parents: he is the left hand bad example; not the right hand good example.

Some folks you just know are Christian by looking at them. They look Christian. Perhaps I look Christian. That’s a huge problem because the stigmata of Christian faith defy surface signals such as race, gender, ethnicity, language, dress, gender preference, or nationality. The stigmata — the signs — of Christian faith are relational. We should not be able to tell whether an individual is Christian by that individual’s outward appearance or language. And, yet, we all routinely make that call. I, for example, assume that urban African Americans are either Baptist, African Methodist Episcopal, or Church of God; and just as routinely I assume that, when a European American’s dialect betrays her or him as a “southerner,” she or he must be Southern Baptist or some more conservative strain of evangelical. Stereotypes are short-cuts. But, just as with mushrooms, looks can be deceiving.

In the first century, if you were a Christian and resided in the eastern Mediterranean, chances are that you were born into a Jewish family; but, if you were among Saint Paul’s converts in Corinth, Galatia, Philippi, Thessaloniki, or Colossi, there was an equal chance you might be a pagan convert. Appearance, language, and custom would, in this case, be of little help. As late as the 80s and 90s CE, the Apostle John’s communities are still pondering the question: how will you recognize another Christian?

The children of God and the children of the devil are revealed in this way: all who do not do what is right are not from God, nor are those who do not love their brothers and sisters (1 John 3:10).

Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death (1 John 3:13-14).

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sisterb in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action. (1 John 3:17-18).

By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments (1 John 5:2).

But then we try to translate this “love” into a surface appearance. If you love God, then you will oppose taxes on wealth. If you love God, you will hate men who love men and women who love women. If you love God, you will hate . . .

I am thinking about the stigmata of Christian faith today because I know, in less than a month, that I will once again be thrown into the arena of Fall Semester with an entirely new group of Junior and Senior Economics majors. My mostly Asian and Eastern Mediterranean students will be confused. I look like a Christian. But the sound coming from the speakers in the lecture hall is (I haven’t decided) Radiohead, alt-J, Drake, FKA twigs, who knows. I look like a Christian — white, European American, short hair, in my 60s, but . . .

And, then, over the course of the semester we will conduct a deep reading of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus, GWF Hegel, Karl Marx, Carl Menger, and a long list of others, tracing in their economic models the unfolding of a world that is patently not Christian, not religious, not ethical, and not loving. “He must not be a Christian.”

Stigmata. Because were I a “Christian,” I would simply tell them what the Bible says about obeying governing powers, about avoiding works righteousness, and about the “Jesus prayer.” Instead I am inviting them to master rigorous mathematical modeling of an increasingly integrated, comprehensive economic world. “He must not be a Christian.” “Did you notice how passionately he taught Marx?”

The stigmata of the Christian faith are relational.

Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the  king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me” (Matt. 26:34-40).

The world thinks that the Christian faith is something superficial — a language, a sexual preference, a nationality, a race. The world thinks that the Christian faith can be read off the surface of a person’s life — their clothing, the music they listen to. And, yet, if these are the stigmata of Christian faith, then it is just as superficial as it seems.

So, once again, this Fall, I will step out into the great lecture hall of Economics 105, History of Economic Thought, and I will test how closely my students are reading me. Is he a Christian? He looks like a Christian. He doesn’t listen to Christian music. He doesn’t sound like a Christian. He can’t be a Christian. Is he a Christian?

Ok. I admit it. I receive the #FakePresident’s tweets. Most of them, of course, are so outrageous as not to deserve comment. But at 12:21 today, EST, he combined blasphemy with treason:

Astonishingly, the #FakePresident was not immediately consumed in a ball of fire. I guess that will come later.

First the blasphemy. Republics do not worship any god. Worship is how religious practitioners respond to divine grace. Republics are grounded in res publica, literally “the wealth we hold in common.” In his tweet, the #FakePresident is, in effect, presiding over a national liturgy: “We worship God.” Which is to say, on behalf of the political entity — the nation and its people — over which he is legally the President, he is calling us to worship: “We worship God.” But (1) the #FakePresident enjoys no apostolic authority to call us to worship; (2) the #FakePresident cannot invite worship from an entity — a Republic and its citizens — which, by definition, is incapable of worship; and (3) we must therefore infer either that the god to which the #FakePresident is calling us to worship is not God, but the Evil One, or that the service  over which he is presiding is not sacred, but secular, or both. In either case he is guilty of blasphemy.

But, let us assume that, like all of his tweets, this tweet too is simply a public relations stunt; using the name of God in vain. In that case, every religious leader everywhere, from the most conservative to the most liberal, should feel obligated to reprimand the #FakePresident for his blasphemous conduct. Of course, since he would never place himself under diocesan discipline, no bishop is obligated to officially rebuke this reprobate. And, yet, I am sure God would welcome a sharp rebuke from any and all bishops of this blasphemer-in-chief.

But, of course, the #FakePresident’s tweet is also treasonous; not, of course, were the United States a divine monarchy and the President a divinely appointed monarch. We readily expect and attend to words uttered by Her Majesty, Queen of England. But the United States is a Republic. The nearest, therefore, it comes to religion is attested to in Romans, chapters 1, 2, and 13, where the Apostle Paul summarizes popular first century Stoic teaching on natural religion. When the author of the Declaration of Independence (a deist) and the framers of the US Constitution (Unitarians, Deists, and Anglicans, with a smattering of Presbyterians and Congregationalists) invoke “nature and nature’s God” they have nothing more in mind than the Apostle Paul’s summary. So what contains that summary?

It contains not one iota of scripture, for “they show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, to which their own conscience also bears witness” (Rom. 2:15). While baptized Christians find God in Christ, a different standard holds for others: “For what can be know about God is plain to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he made” (Rom. 2:19-20). But, far from emancipating those who have this “natural” knowledge of God, this knowledge is sufficient only to condemn them (Rom. 2:20).

As for the #FakePresident’s government, here is what first century popular Stoicism teaches:

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities; for there is no authority except from God, and those authorities that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists authority resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you wish to have no fear of the authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive its approval; for it is God’s servant for your good. But if you do what is wrong, you should be afraid, for the authority does not bear the sword in vain! It is the servant of God to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only because of wrath but also because of conscience. For the same reason you also pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, busy with this very thing. Pay to all what is due them — taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due (Rom. 13:1-7).

First, to which governing authorities is the Apostle referring to in his letter to the Romans? Yes. He is referring to Nero and to Nero’s bureaucracy. He is referring to Government, big “G,” in spades. He is referring to the pagan temples that Nero supports. He is referring to the imperial armies garrisoned across Afroeurasia. He is referring to the blood-thirsty Roman practice of completely eliminating any community that mounts resistance to Roman rule. Government, big “G.” Obey it.

Nevertheless, within the context of Stoic statecraft, the Apostle’s counsel made some sense. Creation is a tightly-woven fabric of threads — some precious, some common, but all necessary in the composition of the whole. All beings fit within this whole, from the dust beneath our feet to lower animals, to slaves, women, children, and men (the heads of households), and then those who govern many households, ascending upward to the highest celestial beings, and finally to Being itself: to God. In popular Stoic cosmology, it was incumbent upon every subordinate being to accurately identify and fulfill its purpose within the whole. Government, big “G,” is good. Nero is good. Notwithstanding the fact that he murdered his own mother, Nero is a servant of God within this popular Stoic scheme. Notwithstanding the fact that taxes are spent oppressing the Jews and supporting temple prostitution, secular Roman law is good.

Later, of course, after the collapse of Rome, Christian interpreters less familiar with popular Stoicism misrepresented Saint Paul’s counsel as though it referred to “Christian magistrates.” In 60 CE? Christian magistrates? I don’t think so. Saint Paul was referring to the full secular, pagan Roman bureaucracy.

Were Christians supposed to “worship” Nero? Of course not. But, even Saint Paul recognized that Nero’s whole legitimacy was grounded not in the Gospel, but in natural law. Paul will have other things to say about Roman imperial governance when he addresses the matter from the vantage point of the Gospel.

Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucifi ed the Lord of glory (1 Cor. 2:6-8).

Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet (1 Cor. 15:24-25).

So, yes. According to the Apostle, big “G” government will be destroyed at the end of the age. But, until that point Christians are obligated to obey not their “Christian magistrates,” but their secular, pagan rulers who govern not according to Scripture, but according to the “law written on their hearts,” in accordance to “natural law.”

This was the Deist faith of the framers of the US Constitution. This was the faith of Thomas Jefferson, author of the completely naturalized and secularized “Jefferson Bible.”

When the #FakePresident presides over his nationalist mass; when he ingenuously invites us to violate the Apostle’s counsel in Romans 13 and invites us, just as ingenuously, to violate our baptismal vows in 1 Corinthians 1-2; and, finally, when he invites us to commit treason against our Republic, he is worthy of a three-fold rebuke by every Church authority: every pastor, priest, bishop, and cardinal.

“Rule over naturally free men is different from rule over natural slaves; rule in a household is monarchical, since very house has one ruler; the rule of statesmen is rule over free and equal persons.”

Aristotle, Politics, 1255b18-20

When the framers of the 1787 US Constitution met in Philadelphia, Attorney General Jeff Sessions was there; Donald Trump was not. Mr Sessions was there in the person of southern slave-holders, who, like Aristotle, understood that the privileges enjoyed by citizens rest upon the labor of other members of their household (their oikonomike [οἰκονομική]), the slaves or workers (doulon [δούλων]). Only because others worked did southern gentlemen farmers enjoy the wealth, leisure, education, security and good health to spend their summer among their equals (ison [ἴσων]) writing a constitution. Their aim in Philadelphia was to keep it that way. And, there, in a nutshell, is Jeff Sessions, who has spent much of his adult, law-making life making sure that workers in general, and African American workers in particular, did not enjoy equal status with free and equal white men.

Donald Trump was not in Philadelphia in 1787. That is because the 45th President (and those like him) were on the record opposed to republican values and institutions. In their view, the public sphere (politike [πολιτική]) was entirely illegitimate: a boondoggle. For the public sphere entailed the seizure of private wealth for the sake of institutions legally bound to serve the public good. It is illegitimate because only the monarchical rule of private enterprise is wholly legitimate — i.e., legal because based on private property. Because the 45th President is fundamentally opposed to public authority, he — along with Tom Paine, Sam Adams, Patrick Henry, and others — were locked out of the Philadelphia convention. For, as Aristotle noted, “rule in a household” — in a private enterprise — is monarchical, since every “household” — every business — “has only one ruler.” Thus the 45th’s anger. He is the boss. He is the “monarch” of this private enterprise. And one of his doulon, one of his slaves, has gone rogue on him.

But, what is worse is that the 45th President cannot understand how his own Attorney General gained admission into the Convention while he, the President, was left outside. How could this be?

To be sure, the Attorney General is a slave owner. With Aristotle, he believes that only those who enjoy wealth, education, health, security, and leisure should be allowed, with their equals, to rule. And with Aristotle, he believes that those who are “natural slaves” — those who, for whatever reason, do not enjoy these qualities — should be relegated to work on behalf of those who do. Fair is fair. Where he differs from his President is that, for whatever reason, the Attorney General believes in a public sphere governed by the rule of law — racist law, misogynist law, plutocratic law, but law nonetheless. His President, by contrast, knows only the law of the private household, the oikonomia, private enterprise, where the manager (the despotes or despot) rules monarchically.

This conflict between the 45th and the AG cannot end well; not because Jeff Sessions is a fine upstanding slaveholder and the 45th a pitiful anti-Federalist. It cannot end well because the AG and all of his well-intentioned slave-owning allies created their own nemesis: the 45th.

Rule of law? You must be joking! “L’Etat? L’Etat, c’est moi.” Very few in 1787 fully appreciated the full nature of this aggressive cancer. Among those who did was Gouverneur Morris, delegate from New York, who on August 8 intoned:

I never would concur in upholding domestic slavery. It is a nefarious institution. It is the curse of heaven on the states where it prevails. . . . Upon what principle is it that the slaves shall be computed in the representation? Are they men? Then make them citizens, and had them vote. Are they property? Why, then, is no other property included? . . . The admission of slaves into the representation, when fairly explained, comes to this, — that the inhabitant of Georgia and South Carolina, who goes to the coast of Africa, and, in defiance of the most sacred laws of humanity, tears away his fellow-creatures from their dearest connections, and damns them to the most cruel bondage, shall have more votes, in a government instituted for the protection of the rights of mankind, than the citizen of Pennsylvania or New Jersey, who views, with a laudable horror, so nefarious a practice.  Domestic slavery is the most prominent feature in the aristocratic countenance of the proposed Constitution. The vassalage of the poor has ever been the favorite offspring of aristocracy. And what is the proposed compensation to the Northern States, for a sacrifice of every principle of right, of every impulse of humanity? They are to bind themselves to march their militia for the defence of the Southern States, for their defence against those very slaves of whom they complain. They must supply vessels and seamen, in case of foreign attack. The legislature will have indefinite power to tax them by excises, and duties on imports, both of which will fall heavier on them than on the southern inhabitants; for the bohea tea used by a northern freeman will pay more tax than the whole consumption of the miserable slave, which consists of nothing more than his physical subsistence and the rag that covers his nakedness. On the other side, the Southern States are not to be restrained from importing fresh supplies of wretched Africans, at once to increase the danger of attack and the difficulty of defence; nay, they are to be encouraged to it, by an assurance of having their votes in the national government increased in proportion; and are, at the same time, to have their exports and their slaves exempt from all contributions for the public service. Let it not be said that direct taxation is to be proportioned to representation. It is idle to suppose that the general government can stretch its hand directly into the pockets of the people, scattered over so vast a country. They can only do it through the medium of exports, imports, and excises. For what, then, are all the sacrifices to be made? I would sooner submit myself to a tax for paying for all the negroes in the United States, than saddle posterity with such a Constitution (Elliott’s Debates, Volume 5, Wednesday, August 8, 1787).

In the end, the Attorney General won. He got his slavery, according to law.

The irony is that Jeff Sessions is now in battle against those excluded from the floor of the Philadelphia convention. Those who reject republicanism entirely are now in power. Ironically, the slave-owning AG is the mud sill for the rule of law.

He will lose. The anti-federalists and anti-republicans are now in power. They hate the 1787 Constitution. It is their nemesis. But, the even greater irony is that Jeff and his good-old-boys — McConnell and Ryan — did not know (did they?) that this 45th would be their undoing.

A few days ago my patristics professor reported on social media that she had just left a service where she had “heard a pitch perfect ‘Arian’/’Pelagian’ sermon by an elderly liberal pastor at the local country church (Jesus was sent to be perfect and you must be too). I haven’t felt that crushing despair in decades, but was so impressed by his consistency.”

My professor’s report reminded me of any number of conversations I have had recently with institutional heads and administrators searching for ways to streamline instruction for holy orders. “All seminarians need not be scholars.” “All seminaries need not focus on scholarship.” So true. And, yet, in order for this to hold true, clergy not called to scholarship need to listen to the spirit speaking through those who are. This is the clear implication of Saint Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth, where, in three tightly argued sections (1 Cor. 12-14), the Apostle urges members of the community of faith to rely upon the gifts exercised by others.

If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. They eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving greater honor to the inferior members, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice with it (1 Cor. 12:14-26).

As seminaries pare back their curricula, which parts of the body should administrators eliminate? Which parts are “less honorable”; “less respectable”? Of which parts have we no need?

When community members called to holy orders step up to the pulpit (or, more commonly, when they step to the front of the nave), we rely upon them to exercise their office; to bring the Word of God to the community. I am led to believe that this calling cannot be confused with displaying rhetorical skill or eloquence; though both of these are doubtless helpful. Rather, in our (Anglican) tradition, I am led to believe that this gift and calling bears some relationship, on the one hand, to the liturgy and, on the other hand, to the specific texts that follow in the course of the liturgical calendar. The liturgy, as found in the Book of Common Prayer, aims to unite every parish with every other parish around the globe, but also to bring each parish into communion with all parishes throughout time and space. Through the liturgy we not only announce, but embody, one holy catholic and apostolic Church — the communion of saints throughout all time. It is only within this catholic context that we come to the offices of any specific service. Why?

Mssrs. Arius (256-336) and Pelagius (360-418) were terribly well educated, bright, very good speakers and writers, who enjoyed encyclopedic command of sacred writ. Neither set out to divide the Church or introduce heresy among her ranks. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that their grasp of the faith was consistent with how the communities of faith in which they were baptized and to which they then ministered understood the gospel. They were simply perfecting and passing on what they had heard and understood from those by whom they were taught. What is more, I would be the first to admit that, absent any guidance to the contrary, the Bible lends itself to both an Arian and a Pelagian reading; which is to say, Arius and Pelagius offer us plausible interpretations of sacred writ. Fair enough.

All of which makes perfect sense until we come to the Creed. The Creed reminds us that our relationship to the divine is not only vertical; it is horizontal. Or, if you prefer, the Creed reminds us that we believe in one God Who is not exhausted by the First Article of the Creed, Who is not only “maker of heaven and earth,” but is also “incarnate from the Virgin Mary,” “made human,” “was crucified under Pontius Pilate,” “suffered death and was buried”; and Who is “the giver of life” Who has “spoken through the Prophets.”

This, of course, is the offensive side of our faith. No one is offended when we proclaim God’s perfection. No one is offended when we note human inadequacy. And no one is offended when we suggest that we should strive to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). The offense comes from divine weakness and death.

For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God (1 Cor. 1:18).

Incarnation is offensive in its own right. Yet divine suffering and death make it doubly so. But it gets worse; much worse. For, it would be one thing if, following divine resurrection and ascension, we could then give ourselves over to an immediate, direct, apophatic experience of the divine through a spirit given to each of us, individually, without ever again having to know “Christ from a human point of view” (2 Cor. 5:16).

From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! (2 Cor. 5:16)

All we need to do to see God’s spirit is look at our own spirit. No more flesh required. No more offense.

But, what if we see God only by seeing one another? What if we are the Body of Christ? And, what if we are the Body of Christ not only here and now, but also from Pentecost to the eschaton? In that case, reading God off of my own spirit is not only ill-advised; it is impossible; for the divina locus, in that case, is not — precisely not — in me, but in us; and not in us, here and now, but in us throughout time and space: in us during war and death and suffering and hunger and pain and sorrow. This is where God is.

Thus the offense. Just as Arius imagines that Jesus gradually escapes from/redeems his humanity, winning through his suffering a title he did not originally enjoy (Phil. 2:9-11); so Pelagius imagines that we too can win that same title, having that mind in us that was also in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2:5). The flesh — embodiment — will give way to through suffering to something better, more perfect. The Incarnation was a mere stepping stone, a vehicle, a fast-track, to disincarnation.

If, on the other hand, we must “discern the body” (1 Cor. 12:29); and if discerning the body means something more than meditating upon the Holy Sacrament or, still worse, private self-examination, then attending to the Church catholic is not optional, but necessary. Attention to this universal Body and to the gifts distributed and exercised through the Spirit among its members is not optional: not escaping the Body, not transcending it, but discerning it.

When an individual called to holy orders, in exercise of her or his spiritual gift, clearly articulates a message that violates the Spirit that has been heard in the Church for almost two millennia, it is, at the very least, evidence that this individual needs discipline and further instruction.

I am thankful that when I attended seminary I enjoyed access to a full palate of lectures and seminars taught by highly esteemed scholars, churchwomen and churchmen. I am thankful that I was sufficiently instructed to know when I was at risk of entertaining heretical positions. I am far less certain that such is the case today. Cuts have to be made. Efficiencies need to be realized. Which “weak” or “less desirable” parts will be placed on line, outsourced, or furloughed? Not all who are called to holy orders need to be scholars. So true. And, yet, no seminarian should ever be granted a degree who has not discerned the Body, or who, knowingly or not, is so poorly instructed in the one holy catholic and apostolic Church that belief in it is pure nonsense.

Tomorrow I will board a plane in Oakland and decant into Burbank with hundreds of fellow delegates to the UC AFT State Council Meeting. I am psyched. We have a really hard row to hoe. But I am happy with our statewide delegates and with our leadership.

So, why do I feel so uneasy?

Obviously, much of my disease is related to November 2016. My job would have been somewhat easier were a Democrat nominating the next Supreme Court justice. With a Republican in the White House, the odds of us winning local, regional, and state battles diminished, dramatically.

But I am also diseased because of the weight and composition of our opposition. Our opposition is, predominantly, composed of working families; of women and men who should be joining with us, but who, for a variety of reasons are arrayed against us. They, in turn, are backed by capital that — unlike the capital of Soros or Buffet — is focused like a laser on political candidates and issues; the Kochs finance a vast network of “think-tanks” (I use the term loosely) whose sole purpose is to promote private capital, i.e., whose interests are anti-republican.

What can we say that is new, original, inspiring? What can we do in the face of this corporate-nationalist anti-democratic, anti-republican seizure of power?

I have long argued for a realignment of labor and capital. I think that we are barking up the wrong tree. And I believe we are pursuing the wrong strategies. There is more than enough wealth on the left to completely bury the De Voses and the Kochs. Their wealth, though substantial, is a mere drop in the bucket when compared to the wealth of those survey research places on the left.

What we lack is not wealth, but a coherent vision. What do I mean?

I am not a Leninist. Not by anyone’s measure. Nevertheless I appreciate how the Leninist message captured the imagination of a generation of workers in the 1920s and 1930s who then coalesced around what was essentially a Fordist ideology. Vladimir Ilyich idolized Henry Ford. He dreamed of reproducing the Ford factory all across Russia. In part, he succeeded. Whatever improvement in social conditions Russians enjoyed, they owe to Henry Ford, and to V.I. Lenin.

But that can no longer be — should never have been — the message of labor. The fact is, we have too many workers. Employment is way too high. We need to vastly expand unemployment.

Here is what has happened. Labor in the US — as in the industrialized world more generally — has been hugely efficient. Under normal conditions, these efficiencies would have been shared between labor and investors. This, in fact, is how things have worked (more or less) in Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, and beyond. Working families have been rewarded for their efficiencies with health care, housing, education, end of life security. In the US, by contrast, these efficiencies have been transferred up the income hierarchy to families that have no need for them. Their children are already attending the best schools. Their health plans are the best that private wealth can afford. And so they invest their windfalls in ever more speculative assets in hope of achieving even higher returns on their investment.

But, what if we were to send these efficiencies down the income hierarchy to families that could genuinely use them? In that case, working families would suddenly find themselves with a well-earned windfall. Their daughters and sons would attend universities funded by the efficiencies their hard labor had earned. They would enjoy well-earned retirements. Their investments would blossom.

I am not naive. I do not think that such transfers happen on their own. They happen because of political organization. Yet, I could wish — I do wish — that George and Warren would begin to think more broadly about the future. They are supporting the wrong side. Come over to the bright side.

(Special thanks to Lincoln Cushing for putting a name, title, and date to the woodcut reproduced above.)