Wow, I feel like I just had an intensive educational experience! This was a gift, thank you for all the pictures of Venice! My favorites were the Pre-Raphaelite/Guinevere-lookalike maidens, and the shots of the city that look like Canaletto paintings. 😊
Every time I recite a penitential psalm, I shudder in awe that Christ, a sinless man, somehow inspired it. I don't profess to understand how that happened but I'm glad it did.
Alastair, re: your comment on the Theopolis conversation -- Namely:
"The contrast with the work of the woman who earns a salary working for a corporation is not chiefly to be found in the location of their respective work, but in their ownership of their work: the Proverbs 31 woman is building up her own household and community, securing the commonweal of her family and neighbourhood."
I find most Christian theorizing about such things to borrow much more from the stoicheion, than from the bible. I've frankly never understood much of our trad-Christian commentary on this issue.
But your tie-in to the household economy of the conspicuous woman patrons of the church prompts a fresh insight I've never contemplated before.
The labor of a woman in a corporation doesn't represent an atomization of the household economy because of anything inherently bad in the corporation; in fact, the rich matrons probably ran their own corporations! They would have undoubtedly had indentured servants whose roles were analagous to the modern woman working in the corporation.
If we borrow the stoicheon's view, then the rich matrons would have been guilty of subjecting their woman servants (and men) to the same atomization we often hear about. But that can't be.
What's really going on, I think, is this: indentured servitude is a form of slavery (using the term not in the pejorative, but biblical sense). And the scriptures call us to gain our freedom if we can.
That has many facets, but one particular facet is this: Christian vocation in its most mature and robust incarnation, is ideally entrepreneurial, rather than employee-oriented.
Not because this confers some higher level of spirituality, but because it entails a higher demand of servanthood, as well as a higher willingness to take risk. And what is the kingdom of God about, other than risk-taking? Entrusting the future to a loving God, rather than shrinking back and asking Caesar to provide guarantees, at the expense of a neighbor's pocketbook?
A business owner has to train, motivate, discipline, and exercise a duty of care to their employees, all the while being laser focused on the needs of who they are ultimately serving-the customer. They are literally serving every single person they encounter!
A woman who runs her own corporation is doing every one of those good things you list:
Taking ownership of her work
building up her own household and community
Securing the commonweal of her family and neighbourhood
I should say at the outset that, although much of this sort of thing can be developed from Scripture, should you want to do so, it is far more appropriate to do so in conversation with a far broader range of interlocutors, which treat these matters in considerably more depth and detail.
The idea that the kingdom of God is about 'risk-taking' seems highly misleading to me. Business may involve risks, but the modern risk-based and profit, progress, and growth-maximizing economy is novel in many respects. And so much of it rests upon a willingness to jeopardize core social goods for financial and other gains (think, for instance, of the reckless way society approaches AI and its potential impacts on human labour and dignity). If anything, one could argue that the biblical vision of not worrying about the future tends to encourage less speculative economic and business activity, a wariness of radically disruptive technologies, and a greater focus on the goods of a subsistence society.
There are certainly some businesses that have the character that you describe. However, the vast majority alienate people from ownership of capital and their labour and its fruits. And the character of the business as a rooted household or part of a community is extremely weak. Biblical ideals such as every man beneath his own vine and fig tree—the widespread distribution of the means of production—are hard to realize in such a context.
In an economy in which affluent female patrons of the church undoubtedly had indentured servants, how do you reckon they would have afforded their servants their own vines and fig trees?
We definitely shouldn't be idealizing such an economy. That said, the economic realities could be rather more complex. Many slaves would have owned productive capital. Others would be freed at a later point and have increasing independence, perhaps as a client of their former master or mistress. More generally, though, the concentration of capital in the hands of a few is a way such an economy fell short.
We are accustomed to modernity and western arrangements where indentured servitude has been largely replaced by employment-at-will wage earning. Still, we see multitudes of wage earners not disciplined enough to save, or to avoid consumer debt. This is a character issue, the failure of spiritual formation.
The master in the parable of the talents distributed his capital very unequally, as he seemed to know his servant's characters and capabilities. Are you seeing some kind of workaround to this issue, which I perceive to be sadly chronic--although, we might pray, diminishing hopefully, as the kingdom grows?
Agreed on inequality. What sort of metric are you using to define "extreme" concentration? I'm struggling to see much of a difference between the concept of inequality, versus that of concentration. Maybe an illustration would help me.
We know for sure that fraud and oppression in the marketplace produces some of these results, whether they be called inequality, or concentration. The aforementioned rulers picking winners and losers, for example, such as in the cartelization of certain businesses at the hands of government.
Our economies are certainly rife with a perverse and subsidized form of risk-taking which incurs moral hazard and results in effects which you have described. This is because our laws are rigged for the magistrate to pick winners and losers (cronyism). If the laws were biblical, and magistrates were punished for putting their thumbs on the scale as they have ever since mercantilism became the dominant form of politics (actually, I don't see historical evidence that it has ever been minimal), then the risk taking would be the simple, venturing type of faith which the bible describes.
That's what I'm describing in my depiction of the family business.
Further thoughts on risk taking, in order to distinguish what I'm talking about from perverse forms of risk taking:
The Hebrews refusing to go into Canaan is an archetypical risk aversion. Despite God's assurances of success, only two individuals in the host were eager to take the risk!
And later, church members selling properties in Jerusalem before the destruction of the temple: this was also informed risk taking (they knew the properties would be destroyed). Unlike the Hebrews, they did not shrink back. And their love of the needy compelled them as well. Their faith and obedience had been much more perfect in Christ than that of the Hebrews.
We tend to overspiritualize all these, but these are fundamentally economic and political dynamics.
Well, if I'm going to say farewell to meat, I'd definitely like to go out in such a cosplay bang first. That was fun.
Wow, I feel like I just had an intensive educational experience! This was a gift, thank you for all the pictures of Venice! My favorites were the Pre-Raphaelite/Guinevere-lookalike maidens, and the shots of the city that look like Canaletto paintings. 😊
Good catch! That party's theme was Pre-Raphaelites; I think it was the Saturday party.
It was lovely to see you both in Cambridge at Tyndale House—a happy meeting I hope will often be repeated!
Every time I recite a penitential psalm, I shudder in awe that Christ, a sinless man, somehow inspired it. I don't profess to understand how that happened but I'm glad it did.
Alastair, re: your comment on the Theopolis conversation -- Namely:
"The contrast with the work of the woman who earns a salary working for a corporation is not chiefly to be found in the location of their respective work, but in their ownership of their work: the Proverbs 31 woman is building up her own household and community, securing the commonweal of her family and neighbourhood."
I find most Christian theorizing about such things to borrow much more from the stoicheion, than from the bible. I've frankly never understood much of our trad-Christian commentary on this issue.
But your tie-in to the household economy of the conspicuous woman patrons of the church prompts a fresh insight I've never contemplated before.
The labor of a woman in a corporation doesn't represent an atomization of the household economy because of anything inherently bad in the corporation; in fact, the rich matrons probably ran their own corporations! They would have undoubtedly had indentured servants whose roles were analagous to the modern woman working in the corporation.
If we borrow the stoicheon's view, then the rich matrons would have been guilty of subjecting their woman servants (and men) to the same atomization we often hear about. But that can't be.
What's really going on, I think, is this: indentured servitude is a form of slavery (using the term not in the pejorative, but biblical sense). And the scriptures call us to gain our freedom if we can.
That has many facets, but one particular facet is this: Christian vocation in its most mature and robust incarnation, is ideally entrepreneurial, rather than employee-oriented.
Not because this confers some higher level of spirituality, but because it entails a higher demand of servanthood, as well as a higher willingness to take risk. And what is the kingdom of God about, other than risk-taking? Entrusting the future to a loving God, rather than shrinking back and asking Caesar to provide guarantees, at the expense of a neighbor's pocketbook?
A business owner has to train, motivate, discipline, and exercise a duty of care to their employees, all the while being laser focused on the needs of who they are ultimately serving-the customer. They are literally serving every single person they encounter!
A woman who runs her own corporation is doing every one of those good things you list:
Taking ownership of her work
building up her own household and community
Securing the commonweal of her family and neighbourhood
I should say at the outset that, although much of this sort of thing can be developed from Scripture, should you want to do so, it is far more appropriate to do so in conversation with a far broader range of interlocutors, which treat these matters in considerably more depth and detail.
The idea that the kingdom of God is about 'risk-taking' seems highly misleading to me. Business may involve risks, but the modern risk-based and profit, progress, and growth-maximizing economy is novel in many respects. And so much of it rests upon a willingness to jeopardize core social goods for financial and other gains (think, for instance, of the reckless way society approaches AI and its potential impacts on human labour and dignity). If anything, one could argue that the biblical vision of not worrying about the future tends to encourage less speculative economic and business activity, a wariness of radically disruptive technologies, and a greater focus on the goods of a subsistence society.
There are certainly some businesses that have the character that you describe. However, the vast majority alienate people from ownership of capital and their labour and its fruits. And the character of the business as a rooted household or part of a community is extremely weak. Biblical ideals such as every man beneath his own vine and fig tree—the widespread distribution of the means of production—are hard to realize in such a context.
In an economy in which affluent female patrons of the church undoubtedly had indentured servants, how do you reckon they would have afforded their servants their own vines and fig trees?
We definitely shouldn't be idealizing such an economy. That said, the economic realities could be rather more complex. Many slaves would have owned productive capital. Others would be freed at a later point and have increasing independence, perhaps as a client of their former master or mistress. More generally, though, the concentration of capital in the hands of a few is a way such an economy fell short.
We are accustomed to modernity and western arrangements where indentured servitude has been largely replaced by employment-at-will wage earning. Still, we see multitudes of wage earners not disciplined enough to save, or to avoid consumer debt. This is a character issue, the failure of spiritual formation.
The master in the parable of the talents distributed his capital very unequally, as he seemed to know his servant's characters and capabilities. Are you seeing some kind of workaround to this issue, which I perceive to be sadly chronic--although, we might pray, diminishing hopefully, as the kingdom grows?
Inequality of capital really is not a problem per se, and is not the same thing as the extreme concentration of capital.
Agreed on inequality. What sort of metric are you using to define "extreme" concentration? I'm struggling to see much of a difference between the concept of inequality, versus that of concentration. Maybe an illustration would help me.
We know for sure that fraud and oppression in the marketplace produces some of these results, whether they be called inequality, or concentration. The aforementioned rulers picking winners and losers, for example, such as in the cartelization of certain businesses at the hands of government.
Our economies are certainly rife with a perverse and subsidized form of risk-taking which incurs moral hazard and results in effects which you have described. This is because our laws are rigged for the magistrate to pick winners and losers (cronyism). If the laws were biblical, and magistrates were punished for putting their thumbs on the scale as they have ever since mercantilism became the dominant form of politics (actually, I don't see historical evidence that it has ever been minimal), then the risk taking would be the simple, venturing type of faith which the bible describes.
That's what I'm describing in my depiction of the family business.
Further thoughts on risk taking, in order to distinguish what I'm talking about from perverse forms of risk taking:
The Hebrews refusing to go into Canaan is an archetypical risk aversion. Despite God's assurances of success, only two individuals in the host were eager to take the risk!
And later, church members selling properties in Jerusalem before the destruction of the temple: this was also informed risk taking (they knew the properties would be destroyed). Unlike the Hebrews, they did not shrink back. And their love of the needy compelled them as well. Their faith and obedience had been much more perfect in Christ than that of the Hebrews.
We tend to overspiritualize all these, but these are fundamentally economic and political dynamics.