Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire

With a presidential election looming and the most substantive policy debate (to the extent that there is one) being on the topic of jobs and the economy, turning to this text seemed appropriate. In addition, a reader had recommended William T. Cavanaugh to me in the comment section of my review of Introducing Radical Orthodoxy, so I was eager to read some of his work.

If one of the main characteristics of those authors and thinkers who fall within the stream of Radical Orthodoxy is re-thinking traditionally 'secular' realms of thought and practice according to explicitly Christian premises, language, and categories, then this text is a quintessential example of that sort of disposition and method. In considering the field of economics, Cavanaugh lays out parameters for Christians to approach a just economic life that doesn't aim to overthrow or oppose the reigning global capitalist order -- something he thinks is not actually possible anyway -- but which seeks to seize on its legitimacy and respond to it in a transformative way.

Cavanaugh is often perspicacious in his musings on the nature of capitalism and consumerism. He rightly recognizes that the capitalist definition of economic freedom is defined purely negatively: it is the lack of illegitimate coercion or force in the economic realm. While the Christian definition of freedom is ends-dependent; true freedom is understood with reference to the telos of human nature. Freedom isn't the arbitrary, unmolested exercise of will, as it is defined in capitalism, but freedom is found in choosing rightly. Because Cavanaugh doesn't think progressivism offers a real alternative to capitalism, he only really engages with capitalism and one of its most staunch defenders: Milton Friedman. This is the only spot where Cavanaugh stumbles a bit. At times he correctly recognizes that the Christian understanding of freedom, as positively defined, isn't necessarily at odds with the capitalist understanding -- as defined by Friedman -- but is rather a more specific and demanding sort of freedom that can exist underneath and within the capitalist order (though it's obviously destined to transplant it in the eschaton). But then he will turn around and act as if there is some inherent conflict, when there really isn't. That aside, his observations as to the distinct types of freedom are important and thoughtful.

Another example of penetrating insight is Cavanaugh's recognition that the consumerism of our culture is not marked by attachment to things, but by detachment to them. We don't buy things to satisfy particular desires and then rest content in those things, rather we buy things and once we acquire them, start to shop for something else. It is shopping, not the actual buying, that drives us. We desire to desire to desire, and of course the desires of our heart are never more than momentarily satiated by obtaining material possessions.

Cavanaugh goes on to say that detachment from material possessions is an aspect of the Christian life as well, though consumerism is a perversion of it. The Christian model for what a redeemed, healthy mode of consumption ought to be is found in the Eucharist. We consume and in so doing are consumed by God; we consume the bread so that we might become bread for others. And Cavanaugh gives concrete examples of what this might look like, as lived out in the realm of economics; different sorts of business models, nontraditional charitable activities, etc.

In the section on the 'global and the local', Cavanaugh evaluates the process known as 'globalization', in the context of the ancient philosophical problem of 'the one and the many'. Turning to the doctrine of the Incarnation, Cavanaugh convincingly argues that it is only in Christ that this problem can be solved, as Christ is the 'concrete universal'. Drawing heavily on the thought of Hans Ur von Balthasar, Cavanaugh believes that the Church's catholicity is the living out of this reality of the nature of Christ. The church is catholic -- whole and complete -- in each particular, local church, with Christ as its head. So in the Incarnation, in Christ, the particular, the concrete is redeemed and taken up into the life of the Trinity. The Many need not dissolve into the One, and the One need not disperse out into the Many, but Christ's work infuses the particular with the infinite, without the infinite ceasing to be infinite. And this reality for God is the reality for the Church, which becomes a model for how the Church can engage and affect the economic realities it inhabits, specifically in a time of 'globalization'.

As I've said, Cavanaugh makes these connections -- which I'm somewhat glossing over -- explicit in tangible examples. It isn't all abstraction, and when it is, it's abstraction about concrete, physical realities. One of the examples of an outworking of his premises are supporting certain sorts of local farms, where the relationship between production and consumption is at least a more intimate one, where a communal relationship among parties can develop, rather than the way globalized capitalism tends to set production off in some far corner of the world where workers can be exploited. Another example are business models which themselves incorporate an ethic of gift by having employee ownership, or a certain percent of profits going directly to charitable causes in the community. None of this undermines capitalism and can take place within it, but it also frees those engaged in these mini-markets from some of the more harsh, inescapable realities of the pure self-interest of the global market.

Though Milton Friedman might note that, in decreasing the market for extremely cheap labor in foreign countries, for example, you take away some of the poor-paying jobs those people are glad to have, perhaps making their poor quality of life even worse. There are always trade-offs, and the solutions Cavanaugh offers often have hidden costs. But, to be fair, his examples are not intended to be an exhaustive explication of everything that would need to happen to bring economic justice to the world.

The book is written in a highly readable fashion at a popular level. Cavanaugh seamlessly transitions from appropriating the Trinitarian theology of Balthasar and contrasting Augustine with Milton Friedman, to contemporary implications and pop-culture illustrations and references. The result is an illuminating investigation of what it means -- and what it should mean -- to be a Christian 'consumer' in the modern world of economics.

Introducing Radical Orthodoxy

After having read a book, some essays, and watched some lectures by John Milbank, the project of Radical Orthodoxy piqued my interest. Many aspects of Milbank's thought resonated with my own inclinations, but I also knew that the project of RO was bigger than Milbank (though he is the most prominent of RO's figures) and that having read only one of his books -- and one that was only half his, The Monstrosity of Christ -- the fundamentals of his thought were still somewhat obscure to me. With Milbank's manifesto Theology and Social Theory being a bit too pricey for Kindle, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy by James K.A. Smith seemed a perfect place to turn.

Smith and the RO authors themselves -- John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, and Graham Ward primarily -- seem to eschew the use of "school" or "movement" in describing RO, instead opting for phrases such as "ecumenical agenda" or "ecumenical program". Smith, quoting Pickstock, says that RO "is not a system, method, or formula but a 'hermeneutic disposition and style of metaphysical vision.'" So what makes up this agenda, this disposition, this vision?

Smith does a magnificent job outlining all of the contours of theory and thought that give shape to RO, so I won't try to completely distill that work here. I will touch on some of the major cornerstones of RO that most struck me.

One aspect of the movement (I'll use this term for lack of a better single word) that is most enticing and striking to me is its unapologetic "apologetics". Or rather, the manner in which it rejects apologetics -- especially "classical apologetics" -- which it sees as a fundamental compromise with modernity, as classical apologetics operates within a certain apostate framework of thought that has a foundation of secular premises. This concedes too much ground to the secular (which is itself a fragile fiction of sorts). No matter how grand or profound a defense for the faith you can build up from within this apostate framework, conceding the 'rules of the game' to anyone other than Christ is idolatry.

And that is what we do when we compromise with modernity or postmodernity (which RO, along with, for instance, David Bentley Hart, holds to be a sort of hyper-modernity), so RO instead seeks to "stop doing theory according to 'the rudiments of this world rather than according to Christ.'" This, it should be noted, is not to reject all of the 'fruits of modernity', or to be 'anti-modern', or to deny the valid aspects of the postmodern turn in philosophy, only to re-narrate everything according to Christ and reclaiming that which properly belongs to him.

This foundational idea blossoms in many ways. To name a few: it entails rejecting the Enlightenment sundering of faith from reason as illegitimate; it means denying the validity of modern politics (secular, liberal democracy), the epistemology that undergirds it (autonomous reason) and denouncing it as a product of an apostate ontology (the univocity of being, traced back to Scotus); it means opposing -- or at least rehabilitating -- many dualisms, such as that erected between nature and grace.

Once the received wisdom of modernity is shown to hinge at various points on essentially arbitrary and apostate movements of thought, the cosmos are free to be re-narrated according to the form of Christ. Though this sort of phrases the truth of things in reverse; God's creation as creation and our participation in it is prior to any apostasy, however, living in a modern or postmodern culture, one must contend with the reigning metanarrative and show that it is merely one metanarrative among possibilities and in no way necessary. Postmodernity wouldn't object to recognizing modernity and Christianity as competing metanarratives, and so RO doesn't fully reject its insights on this count.

Once the 'playing field of thought' is leveled, RO believes a robust liturgical, sacramental, and participatory narration of the cosmos according to Christ will stand apart -- not by being secured as truth by way of autonomous reason operating on first principles -- but as narrative, and one that doesn't suffer the same contradictions or antinomies as the metanarrative of modernity or postmodernity. This requires an alternative epistemology (illumination) grounded in an alternative ontology (participation), and this is partially accomplished by retrieving pre-modern sources -- Plato,Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, Aquinas etc. -- and exploring the ways in which the historical development of thought fits with this vision. Simultaneously, the movement engages with postmodern thinkers -- Derrida, Deleuze, Foulcalt -- acknowledging what they get right and noting where there is a convergence of sensibility, while still reading them according to their own distinctly Christian vision. This is not to forfeit truth, but to forfeit truth as being reducible to modern epistemology or to any ontology of immanence.

The most significant point of departure from the modern and postmodern is at the most basic level of ontology. While postmoderns necessarily read the immanent as violence, and therefore inscribe violence into  being, RO's ontology is one of an original peace, as revealed in the Trinity. Because God contains difference in himself and is a harmonious One, and because creation is God's good work in which he reveals Himself, the nature of difference must not be of violence but of peace. This fundamental observation re-orders everything.

RO envisions a form of post-secular thought -- rooted in a participatory metaphysics and an epistemology of illumination -- in which it isn't just philosophy that is the 'handmaiden of theology', but that all theoretical disciplines, in a sense, are. The fact that it was ever otherwise, as a matter of history, is only a result of fallenness and of the course of the development of thought turning from its proper telos. Hence, RO seeks to create a post-secular realm where architectural theory is shaped and formed according to theology, where literature and the arts are, where economics is, where philosophy is. This is different from bringing Christian sensibilities to these disciplines and looking to 'baptize' them -- as if the disciplines were autonomous realms not belonging to Christ -- but re-thinking them at the root, according to the form of Christ, Trinity, and a participatory understanding of humanity's role in creation.

All of RO's thought and its conclusions are arrived at and given shape by the radical truth of the incarnation, along with the attendant doctrine of the Trinity. Because of creation's initial goodness, and because of Christ's incarnation and rescue of creation from fallenness, RO is free to affirm the goodness of materiality and view human participation in the divine by way of this truth. Which means affirming the liturgical and the sacramental as the primary means of grace. In modern and postmodern thought, where the immanent is all, the immanent is ironically revealed to be in the end nothing. RO argues that it is only when the immanent is suspended from the transcendent that the immanent can be affirmed.

Another dualism that RO rejects is that between fact and value, or between the empirical and the aesthetic. Because truth isn't the 'positive ground' that modernity sought, it is free to be synthetic, and therefore the realm of the aesthetic can be affirmed as not only one avenue to truth, but it becomes the primary vehicle of illumination and knowledge. This re-affirms the significance of the arts and images (in addition to other things) as God's good tools, rather than demoting them to the realm of entertainment or false idols. This understanding of the aesthetic informs the conclusion that narrative, in all its unconquerable particularities, is the mode of revelation that contains God's truth.

While much more could be said, I'll leave that to the book itself which I highly recommend. Smith traces the shape of RO in a highly readable manner and with many felicitous expressions, while also allowing those readers who want to, to delve deeper via extensive end notes. While my primary interest was in RO itself, Smith also wishes to bring RO into dialogue with the Dutch Reformed tradition -- specifically Kuyper and Dooyeweerd -- and to locate resonances and areas where one can offer correctives to the other. For my interest in the material this was mostly superfluous, but it didn't detract from the read any. Introducing Radical Orthodoxy is an enlightening, engaging précis on a movement that is charting a course for Christian post-secular thought in a modern/postmodern culture.