The wisdom of Jesus Christ -
the summit of the scientific society
Editorial FAITH Magazine by Tim Finigan
There are two basic questions posed by the scientific society - the question of science and the question of society. To put it another way, I think that our scientific society first of all raises the question of how we can form a synthesis of science and religion. Is it possible or indeed desirable to do so? Having arrived at a synthesis, what we might say in return about some of the matters which affect the structuring of society? We must look especially at the economic structuring which has such a large bearing on everyday life.
Science and religion
To take the scientific question first. We are not living in Victorian times. It is a little odd and old-fashioned to hear someone claim with any conviction that science has disproved religion. What we are much more likely to hear is the claim that science and religion are two entirely separate fields. It is as though the door between the laboratory and the Church must be closed so that the whiff of incense does not mingle with the smell of hydrogen sulphide.
The most important consequence of this is the loss of confidence in the objective character of religion. Religion becomes a matter of opinion and choice. The quality of belief is all important and the content is irrelevant. This attitude which seems harmless and polite when applied to the finer points of doctrine can imperceptibly creep until it also applies to matters such as abortion, sexual morality or the very existence of a transcendent God.
The answers to the problem posed by scientific advances are varied in practice but similar in principle. They may be expressed in terms of a liberal Christianity which is tolerant of all faiths and none. They may be in the form of a new age consciousness which seeks to find a cosmic unity through an earth community rooted in non-rational and non-linear ways of thinking. They may be expressed in terms of the average man's agnosticism: there is probably something up there but not such as to interfere with everyday life.
What they have in common as principle is the denial of the transcendent, the denial of the unchangeable divine authority and the denial of the spiritual order as an objective reality distinct from the material world which forms the object of study of the natural scientist.
Questions of society
Before we go on to offer the outline of a Catholic answer to the challenge of such secularism, we can point out briefly where the questions of society will fit in. It is undoubtedly true that there are major problems for Western agnostic society. Fr Nesbitt has already spoken of God as the forgotten environment. It is important to remember that we can also offer answers to the problems which underlie also the practical running of society. that too is part of the domain of Christ and he speaks in the stock exchange and the parliament building as well as in the laboratory. After all, it is foolish to suppose that Jesus Christ has a place in the everyday running of a household but not in the running of a business or a Government. It will be easier to see the lines of an answer to some of these problems when we have laid out the foundations of our understanding of the wisdom of Jesus Christ.
The New Synthesis
The vision of the faith that we offer in the FAITH movement is based first of all on a head on acceptance of the challenge offered by the scientific society. In the time of St Thomas Aquinas, the translation of the works of Aristotle brought into the Mediterranean trading ports led to a revolution of thinking. There were various reactions. One was to dismiss all the new philosophy as dangerous and leading to heresy. This would have closed the door to an enormous advance in theology and in what we would now call science. Another reaction was simply to abandon Christianity as having no bearing on the matter and to take up the new philosophy wholesale. Such was the solution of the Christian averroists who fell away ultimately form the faith. The answer of St Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and the greatest of the scholastics was to form a synthesis.
This would mean the critical acceptance of advances in understanding, using them to shed light on the Christian faith, especially on questions which became controverted as a result of the new thinking. Then through the positive efforts of the thinkers (and many of them were also saints), the whole understanding of the ancient faith could be advanced in accord with the best knowledge of the age while preserving all the essentials of the teaching of Christ which is the definitive revelation of God. In this process, the words of Christ would be fulfilled 'I have many things to tell you but you cannot bear them now but he the Spirit of truth will lead you to the perfect truth.'
A very similar challenge faces us today. There are new currents of thought which are highly influential in society. We cannot reject them as irrelevant to the faith: they deal with the basic questions of the origin of the universe and the nature of man. We cannot simply follow uncritically where every fashion of thought leads or we will be taken out of the fold of the faith having abandoned the teaching of Christ. We need a new synthesis which will offer a new vision of the ancient faith to answer the questions of the day.
The existence and transcendence of God
The point to be stressed here is that the natural sciences from their own investigation of the natural world point more strongly to the existence of God than ever before. The laws that are discovered bespeak a unity law within which the other laws of science find their meaning. This unity law of control and direction is an expression of the infinite wisdom of God working according to a purpose from the beginning of the universe to its final consummation in Jesus Christ at the end of time.
Some of the most puzzling conundrums concerning the intelligibility of events and processes at the quantum level and (according to Stephen Hawking and others) at the beginning of the universe can be clarified with reference to the notion of the analogy of being. This means that all that exists participates in being to a greater or lesser degree. Only God is perfect goodness, unity and truth and only God perfectly is. Everything else which tends to become greater is tending to participate more in being and therefore tends to become more good, true, ordered and beautiful.
In human beings this is seen pre-eminently. The phrase we are familiar with is 'let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves'.(Gen 1.26) As we become greater, we become more Godlike. St Paul says 'we grow brighter and brighter as we are turned to the image we reflect' (2 Cor 3.18) The idea of the unity law is that everything in the universe participates in this ascent of being according to the ordered plan of God from the first beginning to the final perfection.
Within this unity law of ordered ascent, mankind is created body and soul as the next step called for in the development of the brain through evolution to a point beyond which no further development would make sense in a purely material environment. We could say that creation reached the limits of its ascent. But the ascent of being is not merely for matter but for the creature to be made to God's image and likeness also in the spiritual soul.
Distinction between material and spiritual
There is an important point here. It is a source of much sadness in the scientific society that the spiritual is not recognised as an order of creation distinct from the material. The reason it is not recognised is probably strategic in most cases. The existence of a spiritual soul would impose obligations and duties that would conflict with the constant seeking of pleasure. It is sad because the obligations and duties arise not from an oppressive dictator but from a Father and Good Shepherd whose emblem he revealed in a recent generation as a heart on fire with love for us. The problem is that you cannot arrive at that point without the humility to pursue the search.
Clear thinking on the existence of the spiritual soul is also necessary if we are to make sense of the plan of God in a world where there is obviously great evil. It is vital to understand the Christian doctrine of original sin if we are to offer any practical solutions to problems of individual morality or social ethics.
I would refer you for a detailed treatment to Fr Nesbitt's excellent pamphlet Evolution and Original Sin and to chapter 13 of Catholicism: A New Synthesis. Basically, we need to be clear in our minds that the present condition of mankind is flawed but not totally corrupted. As a result of the personal sin committed by our first parents at the origin of the race, the whole stock is damaged. This damage is passed on by propagation, not by imitation and it is a wound to our nature. It is quite orthodox in Catholic belief to say that there is this wounding to our nature. We do not have to accept the theory that there were some preternatural gifts which constituted Adam in original innocence and that these were what were lost by sin.
On this perspective, it is possible to view the whole of the unity law coming to its fulfilment in Christ who is always the Saviour of the human race in the sense that he brings to us the fullness of life, health and abundance. Sin does not fundamentally alter God's plan, it means that what should have been a glorious work naturally leading to its fulfilment becomes a work of struggle and crucifixion. But the incarnation is still the centre of the whole universe and the linchpin of its development in the unity law of God.
Consequences for Society
We now need to see the consequences of this new synthesis as it applies to the relations of people in society - in particular in our scientific society. Certain characteristics stand out. There is the increasing unity and interdependence across the globe. Whatever the eventual decision of the various superpowers about Bosnia, it is obvious that it cannot simply be regarded as a local difficulty. The doctrine of not interfering in the internal affairs of other states is increasingly difficult even to state coherently as so much of what goes on within a state has effects outside of it.
Then we can see the development of the global economy alongside the poverty of many often as a direct consequence of policies adopted. In the context of economics, we can also consider the collapse of Marxism in Europe. I think it is important for our generation to understand not simply the evil of Marxism but also the attractiveness of it. Advertisements showing spotty youths pock-marked with syringe marks did not succeed in preventing drug abuse. They failed to account for the attractiveness of drugs to young people. Advertisements about AIDS are an even more dismal failure. They don't take account of the addictive attraction which sexual pleasure has for many people. We should be careful about Marxism. It is not enough to focus our minds on dreadful images of collapsed economies and the denial of human rights. What happens when those same evils continue after the collapse of Marxism? We need to understand what Marxism was trying to do, where it was wrong in principle and what the Christian answer is when faced with the same problems. If we fail to do this, we will pave the way for other failures and perhaps even for a Marxist backlash as capitalism and nationalism lead to atrocities which are made more public on the world stage.
The question of ownership
The key questions is that of ownership. It takes us right back to the heart of Christianity and indeed the modern difficulty can be traced in principle to the nominalism in philosophy which was at the heart of the Protestant Reformation. Many ordinary men and women do not see what principles are at work in controlling their lives and society. They may go unseen but they have the most powerful influence. And it is the duty of the Christian thinker to be there in the eye of progress and change in society so that the principles are right.
The average man or woman in the street today believes in a concept of ownership which in other ages of the Church would have seemed both evil and contemptible - to the average man or woman in the street. Most people, for most of the time would accept that owning something gives you an exclusive right to do what you like with it. That right is of course limited by external factors - I can't play my music too loud or light smoky bonfires in London. Nevertheless, the ownership itself is seen to have no intrinsic duties or obligations. The control of money especially is seen as entirely private.
At a time when the economy in the economic backwater that was England was very much localised, such a view was considered in principle reprehensible. It was considered the duty of a trader to charge a price for his goods that corresponded to some measure of their objective worth and to his need to live. Cornering the market, rising the price simply because of scarcity or demand was abhorred in principle and outlawed in practice. the charging of interest on a loan was always forbidden except where it corresponded to a genuine loss in value or to genuine overheads or expense incurred.
We know, of course that there were lapses in practice. At the small to medium scale, there was almost a kind of collective bargaining among the merchants and bankers to get the most possible out of the Church on the question of raising interest or fixing prices. With such an atmosphere, we should not expect that everyone kept to the letter of the rules. The papacy itself was also a cause of scandal. It maintained many of its works by income derived from sources that would at a local level have been forbidden.
Nevertheless, as R H Tawney pointed out in his lectures on Religion and the rise of capitalism, the fact was that the principles were there. They are no longer. If abuses occurred when there were strong and firmly held principles in place, it is not obvious that they will disappear when we abandon the principles.
Till the earth and care for it
As so often, the first chapters of the book of Genesis provide an embryonic vision of the principle which is at the heart of the matter. In the second creation account, we are told that God placed the man in the garden to till it and to keep it. This man and his wife were made to the image of God. That is the ground of all their rights. They were to till the earth. That is the ground of their rights to claim the value of their labour.
This view of the essential goodness of the human race was the reason for the rights which were conceded to the poor in the middle ages. The society could be vastly improved in practice. To take away the ground of their rights would not pave the way for such improvement in the long term.
The other principle was that of society as a body membered one to another in all its familial relationships . Again there was devastating abuse in practice through the feudal system. Again to abandon the principle of mutual care and mutual membership of the body would cause a greater devastation. Whether we like it or not, whether we recognise it or not, we are membered one to another in society. If we abandon the idea of mutual responsibility and care, the resulting selfishness will work through society by this very same link.
The rise of nominalism spelt the end of this way of looking at the world. To begin with, at the Protestant reformation, the Christian basis of society was held to quite strictly in reaction to abuses. Later, however, the basis of mutual care of individual rights and the right to a share in the produce of labour was eroded until in our own time the measure of rights is utilitarian in conception and the notion of mutual care in society is left to the ravages of pragmatism and popular feeling.
The answer of Marx
In the scheme of Marx there was an important recognition of the right of men to the produce of their labour. Philosophically there was a fatal flaw in the scheme. Marx saw the class war as an evil intrinsically necessary to the ascent of being and society. The dialectic progresses through thesis and antithesis to a synthesis. Therefore the contradiction is necessary to progress. If that is so then in practice the very evils which are decried in the slogans on the wall are themselves necessary if there is to be progress. Theologians who constantly refer to theological progress in the same terms might do well to bear in mind this consequence for their own systems of thought.
Marx did however analyse the evil of the exploitation of labour. Simply to allow the law of the jungle would mean that workers could be exploited. The fruits of their labour would go simply to line the pockets of a few capitalist profiteers. The world is old enough in capitalism to see now that this can happen in practice.
In theory it is not correct simply to decry private ownership and transfer all surplus value to the state to dish out. To own private property is a natural right because it is the individual who is made to the image of God, not the state. The state comes about because of the goodness of individuals, it is not prior in principle or in its claims. This is the basis for the principle in Catholic social teaching of the principle of subsidiarity. This states that a larger body should not carry out those tasks which can be carried out competently by a smaller body.
Furthermore, Marx underestimated the notion of surplus value. This is the value of a man's work over and above the value of a subsistence wage. This surplus value cannot be measured in many cases. What is the surplus value of the labour of Bill Gates? In many less extreme cases, it is right and just to reward the skill of the thinker, the entrepreneur, the capitalist who benefits others by his skill.
Ownership not a univocal right
The ultimate flaw in Capitalism which we can see as Christians is that ownership is not a univocal right. By this I mean that ownership is not simply and solely the province of the person who has the monetary title to a thing. Ownership is an analogous concept. This means that God is first and foremost the owner of all things and we are his stewards. We participate in ownership in different degrees, we do not own outright certain things just because we bought them.
This is the principle on which the traditional British compromise could be made to work. The disgraceful statement 'There is no such thing as society.' would work to the destruction of that principle. It is through the mutual membering that there is one to another in society that we share in different degrees in the ownership of things.
We should also remember that ownership is not simply about having a thing. It is about the control of the lives of others. This again is why ownership is something that admits of differing degrees. Each person has an intrinsic right to justice and decent living. This cannot be taken away because another person 'owns' all the land or, in modern society, the means of communication. Nor can it be taken away because another person owns all the shares in a company. the rights of those affected are intrinsic and cannot be provided or taken away by men. To have a say in how large corporations affect their lives is not something that is given as a purely extrinsic, external thing. The responsibility of ownership is intrinsic to the very ownership itself. Christ the summit
So we do look to Christ the King. He is the foundation of the scientific society in all its complex ramifications. Without Him there will be no limit to the creeping selfishness and destruction which a nominalistic view of ownership will bring. Already we can see the destruction of personal morality. We need to be aware also of the destruction of social morality also. We have held out for so long because of the strength of the underlying principles of the Christian society. there is no reason for them to be there except for Christ the King.
There is no reason for common law except that we have rights deriving from our goodness as created by God. There is no reason for the welfare state except that we share in the stewardship of creation. As we fall further away from Christ as a whole society, it will be more and more necessary for apostles to act as a leaven to remind people once again why it is that society has held up in the west through all the lapses and atrocities of human sin.
There is hope as many in Europe adopt almost explicitly the social teaching of the Catholic Church as the theoretical basis for progress in legislation. It is not well known in England and we need to promote it as a part of a structured overall vision of the Catholic faith. That is what I have tried to do. We need you not only to understand yourselves but to be able to explain it to others and to work for the Kingdom in society. The fastest growing Churches in the West are those who have members who can articulate their faith for themselves. Therefore never be satisfied with understanding alone - be prepared to explain to others and ask questions until you can.
Ask first of all of Christ himself, the shepherd and King as you kneel before him present in the tabernacle. Do not have two separate worlds. Ask him to sanctify and inform the part of society over which you have some influence. Then you will fulfil the injunction in your own way of God to Adam to till the earth and have care for it because you too are made to the image and likeness of God.
This article was given as a lecture to the 1992 Faith Summer Session.
Editorial FAITH Magazine by Tim Finigan
There are two basic questions posed by the scientific society - the question of science and the question of society. To put it another way, I think that our scientific society first of all raises the question of how we can form a synthesis of science and religion. Is it possible or indeed desirable to do so? Having arrived at a synthesis, what we might say in return about some of the matters which affect the structuring of society? We must look especially at the economic structuring which has such a large bearing on everyday life.
Science and religion
To take the scientific question first. We are not living in Victorian times. It is a little odd and old-fashioned to hear someone claim with any conviction that science has disproved religion. What we are much more likely to hear is the claim that science and religion are two entirely separate fields. It is as though the door between the laboratory and the Church must be closed so that the whiff of incense does not mingle with the smell of hydrogen sulphide.
The most important consequence of this is the loss of confidence in the objective character of religion. Religion becomes a matter of opinion and choice. The quality of belief is all important and the content is irrelevant. This attitude which seems harmless and polite when applied to the finer points of doctrine can imperceptibly creep until it also applies to matters such as abortion, sexual morality or the very existence of a transcendent God.
The answers to the problem posed by scientific advances are varied in practice but similar in principle. They may be expressed in terms of a liberal Christianity which is tolerant of all faiths and none. They may be in the form of a new age consciousness which seeks to find a cosmic unity through an earth community rooted in non-rational and non-linear ways of thinking. They may be expressed in terms of the average man's agnosticism: there is probably something up there but not such as to interfere with everyday life.
What they have in common as principle is the denial of the transcendent, the denial of the unchangeable divine authority and the denial of the spiritual order as an objective reality distinct from the material world which forms the object of study of the natural scientist.
Questions of society
Before we go on to offer the outline of a Catholic answer to the challenge of such secularism, we can point out briefly where the questions of society will fit in. It is undoubtedly true that there are major problems for Western agnostic society. Fr Nesbitt has already spoken of God as the forgotten environment. It is important to remember that we can also offer answers to the problems which underlie also the practical running of society. that too is part of the domain of Christ and he speaks in the stock exchange and the parliament building as well as in the laboratory. After all, it is foolish to suppose that Jesus Christ has a place in the everyday running of a household but not in the running of a business or a Government. It will be easier to see the lines of an answer to some of these problems when we have laid out the foundations of our understanding of the wisdom of Jesus Christ.
The New Synthesis
The vision of the faith that we offer in the FAITH movement is based first of all on a head on acceptance of the challenge offered by the scientific society. In the time of St Thomas Aquinas, the translation of the works of Aristotle brought into the Mediterranean trading ports led to a revolution of thinking. There were various reactions. One was to dismiss all the new philosophy as dangerous and leading to heresy. This would have closed the door to an enormous advance in theology and in what we would now call science. Another reaction was simply to abandon Christianity as having no bearing on the matter and to take up the new philosophy wholesale. Such was the solution of the Christian averroists who fell away ultimately form the faith. The answer of St Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and the greatest of the scholastics was to form a synthesis.
This would mean the critical acceptance of advances in understanding, using them to shed light on the Christian faith, especially on questions which became controverted as a result of the new thinking. Then through the positive efforts of the thinkers (and many of them were also saints), the whole understanding of the ancient faith could be advanced in accord with the best knowledge of the age while preserving all the essentials of the teaching of Christ which is the definitive revelation of God. In this process, the words of Christ would be fulfilled 'I have many things to tell you but you cannot bear them now but he the Spirit of truth will lead you to the perfect truth.'
A very similar challenge faces us today. There are new currents of thought which are highly influential in society. We cannot reject them as irrelevant to the faith: they deal with the basic questions of the origin of the universe and the nature of man. We cannot simply follow uncritically where every fashion of thought leads or we will be taken out of the fold of the faith having abandoned the teaching of Christ. We need a new synthesis which will offer a new vision of the ancient faith to answer the questions of the day.
The existence and transcendence of God
The point to be stressed here is that the natural sciences from their own investigation of the natural world point more strongly to the existence of God than ever before. The laws that are discovered bespeak a unity law within which the other laws of science find their meaning. This unity law of control and direction is an expression of the infinite wisdom of God working according to a purpose from the beginning of the universe to its final consummation in Jesus Christ at the end of time.
Some of the most puzzling conundrums concerning the intelligibility of events and processes at the quantum level and (according to Stephen Hawking and others) at the beginning of the universe can be clarified with reference to the notion of the analogy of being. This means that all that exists participates in being to a greater or lesser degree. Only God is perfect goodness, unity and truth and only God perfectly is. Everything else which tends to become greater is tending to participate more in being and therefore tends to become more good, true, ordered and beautiful.
In human beings this is seen pre-eminently. The phrase we are familiar with is 'let us make man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves'.(Gen 1.26) As we become greater, we become more Godlike. St Paul says 'we grow brighter and brighter as we are turned to the image we reflect' (2 Cor 3.18) The idea of the unity law is that everything in the universe participates in this ascent of being according to the ordered plan of God from the first beginning to the final perfection.
Within this unity law of ordered ascent, mankind is created body and soul as the next step called for in the development of the brain through evolution to a point beyond which no further development would make sense in a purely material environment. We could say that creation reached the limits of its ascent. But the ascent of being is not merely for matter but for the creature to be made to God's image and likeness also in the spiritual soul.
Distinction between material and spiritual
There is an important point here. It is a source of much sadness in the scientific society that the spiritual is not recognised as an order of creation distinct from the material. The reason it is not recognised is probably strategic in most cases. The existence of a spiritual soul would impose obligations and duties that would conflict with the constant seeking of pleasure. It is sad because the obligations and duties arise not from an oppressive dictator but from a Father and Good Shepherd whose emblem he revealed in a recent generation as a heart on fire with love for us. The problem is that you cannot arrive at that point without the humility to pursue the search.
Clear thinking on the existence of the spiritual soul is also necessary if we are to make sense of the plan of God in a world where there is obviously great evil. It is vital to understand the Christian doctrine of original sin if we are to offer any practical solutions to problems of individual morality or social ethics.
I would refer you for a detailed treatment to Fr Nesbitt's excellent pamphlet Evolution and Original Sin and to chapter 13 of Catholicism: A New Synthesis. Basically, we need to be clear in our minds that the present condition of mankind is flawed but not totally corrupted. As a result of the personal sin committed by our first parents at the origin of the race, the whole stock is damaged. This damage is passed on by propagation, not by imitation and it is a wound to our nature. It is quite orthodox in Catholic belief to say that there is this wounding to our nature. We do not have to accept the theory that there were some preternatural gifts which constituted Adam in original innocence and that these were what were lost by sin.
On this perspective, it is possible to view the whole of the unity law coming to its fulfilment in Christ who is always the Saviour of the human race in the sense that he brings to us the fullness of life, health and abundance. Sin does not fundamentally alter God's plan, it means that what should have been a glorious work naturally leading to its fulfilment becomes a work of struggle and crucifixion. But the incarnation is still the centre of the whole universe and the linchpin of its development in the unity law of God.
Consequences for Society
We now need to see the consequences of this new synthesis as it applies to the relations of people in society - in particular in our scientific society. Certain characteristics stand out. There is the increasing unity and interdependence across the globe. Whatever the eventual decision of the various superpowers about Bosnia, it is obvious that it cannot simply be regarded as a local difficulty. The doctrine of not interfering in the internal affairs of other states is increasingly difficult even to state coherently as so much of what goes on within a state has effects outside of it.
Then we can see the development of the global economy alongside the poverty of many often as a direct consequence of policies adopted. In the context of economics, we can also consider the collapse of Marxism in Europe. I think it is important for our generation to understand not simply the evil of Marxism but also the attractiveness of it. Advertisements showing spotty youths pock-marked with syringe marks did not succeed in preventing drug abuse. They failed to account for the attractiveness of drugs to young people. Advertisements about AIDS are an even more dismal failure. They don't take account of the addictive attraction which sexual pleasure has for many people. We should be careful about Marxism. It is not enough to focus our minds on dreadful images of collapsed economies and the denial of human rights. What happens when those same evils continue after the collapse of Marxism? We need to understand what Marxism was trying to do, where it was wrong in principle and what the Christian answer is when faced with the same problems. If we fail to do this, we will pave the way for other failures and perhaps even for a Marxist backlash as capitalism and nationalism lead to atrocities which are made more public on the world stage.
The question of ownership
The key questions is that of ownership. It takes us right back to the heart of Christianity and indeed the modern difficulty can be traced in principle to the nominalism in philosophy which was at the heart of the Protestant Reformation. Many ordinary men and women do not see what principles are at work in controlling their lives and society. They may go unseen but they have the most powerful influence. And it is the duty of the Christian thinker to be there in the eye of progress and change in society so that the principles are right.
The average man or woman in the street today believes in a concept of ownership which in other ages of the Church would have seemed both evil and contemptible - to the average man or woman in the street. Most people, for most of the time would accept that owning something gives you an exclusive right to do what you like with it. That right is of course limited by external factors - I can't play my music too loud or light smoky bonfires in London. Nevertheless, the ownership itself is seen to have no intrinsic duties or obligations. The control of money especially is seen as entirely private.
At a time when the economy in the economic backwater that was England was very much localised, such a view was considered in principle reprehensible. It was considered the duty of a trader to charge a price for his goods that corresponded to some measure of their objective worth and to his need to live. Cornering the market, rising the price simply because of scarcity or demand was abhorred in principle and outlawed in practice. the charging of interest on a loan was always forbidden except where it corresponded to a genuine loss in value or to genuine overheads or expense incurred.
We know, of course that there were lapses in practice. At the small to medium scale, there was almost a kind of collective bargaining among the merchants and bankers to get the most possible out of the Church on the question of raising interest or fixing prices. With such an atmosphere, we should not expect that everyone kept to the letter of the rules. The papacy itself was also a cause of scandal. It maintained many of its works by income derived from sources that would at a local level have been forbidden.
Nevertheless, as R H Tawney pointed out in his lectures on Religion and the rise of capitalism, the fact was that the principles were there. They are no longer. If abuses occurred when there were strong and firmly held principles in place, it is not obvious that they will disappear when we abandon the principles.
Till the earth and care for it
As so often, the first chapters of the book of Genesis provide an embryonic vision of the principle which is at the heart of the matter. In the second creation account, we are told that God placed the man in the garden to till it and to keep it. This man and his wife were made to the image of God. That is the ground of all their rights. They were to till the earth. That is the ground of their rights to claim the value of their labour.
This view of the essential goodness of the human race was the reason for the rights which were conceded to the poor in the middle ages. The society could be vastly improved in practice. To take away the ground of their rights would not pave the way for such improvement in the long term.
The other principle was that of society as a body membered one to another in all its familial relationships . Again there was devastating abuse in practice through the feudal system. Again to abandon the principle of mutual care and mutual membership of the body would cause a greater devastation. Whether we like it or not, whether we recognise it or not, we are membered one to another in society. If we abandon the idea of mutual responsibility and care, the resulting selfishness will work through society by this very same link.
The rise of nominalism spelt the end of this way of looking at the world. To begin with, at the Protestant reformation, the Christian basis of society was held to quite strictly in reaction to abuses. Later, however, the basis of mutual care of individual rights and the right to a share in the produce of labour was eroded until in our own time the measure of rights is utilitarian in conception and the notion of mutual care in society is left to the ravages of pragmatism and popular feeling.
The answer of Marx
In the scheme of Marx there was an important recognition of the right of men to the produce of their labour. Philosophically there was a fatal flaw in the scheme. Marx saw the class war as an evil intrinsically necessary to the ascent of being and society. The dialectic progresses through thesis and antithesis to a synthesis. Therefore the contradiction is necessary to progress. If that is so then in practice the very evils which are decried in the slogans on the wall are themselves necessary if there is to be progress. Theologians who constantly refer to theological progress in the same terms might do well to bear in mind this consequence for their own systems of thought.
Marx did however analyse the evil of the exploitation of labour. Simply to allow the law of the jungle would mean that workers could be exploited. The fruits of their labour would go simply to line the pockets of a few capitalist profiteers. The world is old enough in capitalism to see now that this can happen in practice.
In theory it is not correct simply to decry private ownership and transfer all surplus value to the state to dish out. To own private property is a natural right because it is the individual who is made to the image of God, not the state. The state comes about because of the goodness of individuals, it is not prior in principle or in its claims. This is the basis for the principle in Catholic social teaching of the principle of subsidiarity. This states that a larger body should not carry out those tasks which can be carried out competently by a smaller body.
Furthermore, Marx underestimated the notion of surplus value. This is the value of a man's work over and above the value of a subsistence wage. This surplus value cannot be measured in many cases. What is the surplus value of the labour of Bill Gates? In many less extreme cases, it is right and just to reward the skill of the thinker, the entrepreneur, the capitalist who benefits others by his skill.
Ownership not a univocal right
The ultimate flaw in Capitalism which we can see as Christians is that ownership is not a univocal right. By this I mean that ownership is not simply and solely the province of the person who has the monetary title to a thing. Ownership is an analogous concept. This means that God is first and foremost the owner of all things and we are his stewards. We participate in ownership in different degrees, we do not own outright certain things just because we bought them.
This is the principle on which the traditional British compromise could be made to work. The disgraceful statement 'There is no such thing as society.' would work to the destruction of that principle. It is through the mutual membering that there is one to another in society that we share in different degrees in the ownership of things.
We should also remember that ownership is not simply about having a thing. It is about the control of the lives of others. This again is why ownership is something that admits of differing degrees. Each person has an intrinsic right to justice and decent living. This cannot be taken away because another person 'owns' all the land or, in modern society, the means of communication. Nor can it be taken away because another person owns all the shares in a company. the rights of those affected are intrinsic and cannot be provided or taken away by men. To have a say in how large corporations affect their lives is not something that is given as a purely extrinsic, external thing. The responsibility of ownership is intrinsic to the very ownership itself. Christ the summit
So we do look to Christ the King. He is the foundation of the scientific society in all its complex ramifications. Without Him there will be no limit to the creeping selfishness and destruction which a nominalistic view of ownership will bring. Already we can see the destruction of personal morality. We need to be aware also of the destruction of social morality also. We have held out for so long because of the strength of the underlying principles of the Christian society. there is no reason for them to be there except for Christ the King.
There is no reason for common law except that we have rights deriving from our goodness as created by God. There is no reason for the welfare state except that we share in the stewardship of creation. As we fall further away from Christ as a whole society, it will be more and more necessary for apostles to act as a leaven to remind people once again why it is that society has held up in the west through all the lapses and atrocities of human sin.
There is hope as many in Europe adopt almost explicitly the social teaching of the Catholic Church as the theoretical basis for progress in legislation. It is not well known in England and we need to promote it as a part of a structured overall vision of the Catholic faith. That is what I have tried to do. We need you not only to understand yourselves but to be able to explain it to others and to work for the Kingdom in society. The fastest growing Churches in the West are those who have members who can articulate their faith for themselves. Therefore never be satisfied with understanding alone - be prepared to explain to others and ask questions until you can.
Ask first of all of Christ himself, the shepherd and King as you kneel before him present in the tabernacle. Do not have two separate worlds. Ask him to sanctify and inform the part of society over which you have some influence. Then you will fulfil the injunction in your own way of God to Adam to till the earth and have care for it because you too are made to the image and likeness of God.
This article was given as a lecture to the 1992 Faith Summer Session.