Lessons in Writing: The Palaeolgraphy of the Bible

The teacher you would do anything for as an elementary school kid...

My apologies. I had gotten sidetracked on several projects in preparation of the winter season soon upon us here in West Michigan. I took off about three weeks to work through 400 sq yds of woodchips (about 16 full dump truck loads) which I had dumped by loggers working behind us clearing off a tract of land. Once collected, with the help of my 93 year old neighbor and his tractor, he would spread it out as I raked it in, across an acre+ of land due to water erosion around the ponds, driveway, yards, and fields. After this I went to the local farmer's elevator to buy roadside grass mix for its hardiness to then spread across the woodchips previously laid in and to plant native plantings into the chip distributions to strengthen it against water runoff. 

While doing this I also weeded out all unwanted weeds and non-native growths around the property. Since buying this tract of land a few years ago my goal has been to restore it to its wildness and to create an urbane kind of preservation where man and beast might live together. It was a timeful expenditure which left my older body sore and aching nearly every day. As an ex-amateur athlete, it felt good to work with my hands-and-back and to feel the pain coursing again through my body. Pain is not always evil, many times it can be good or serve as a warning to strengthen a part of it. In addition, I just needed to close up the outdoor areas with the change in colder weather rapidly descending, visit our grown children, manage various committee affairs, and so on. This is my so-called non-eventful life in the Covid-19 era living out in the country near a frenetic metropolis, itself in the throes of chaos, change, and livelihoods.

Today I'd like to introduce the subject of paleology/palaeology, which is the study of antiquities (adj. var., paleologist, palaeologist, n. — paleologic, palaeologic, paleological, palaeological) and its subset paleography, which is the study of ancient manuscripts:

Wikipedia - Palaeography (not to be confused with Palaeogeography) - Paleaeography (UK) or paleography (US; ultimately from Greek: παλαιός, palaiós, "old", and γράφειν, gráphein, "to write") is the study of ancient and historical handwriting (that is to say, of the forms and processes of writing; not the textual content of documents). Included in the discipline is the practice of deciphering, reading, and dating historical manuscripts,[2] and the cultural context of writing, including the methods with which writing and books were produced, and the history of scriptoria.[3]

The discipline is one of the auxiliary sciences of history. It is important for understanding, authenticating, and dating ancient texts. However, it generally cannot be used to pinpoint dates with high precision.

Application

Palaeography can be an essential skill for historians and philologists, as it tackles two main difficulties. First, since the style of a single alphabet in each given language has evolved constantly, it is necessary to know how to decipher its individual characters as they existed in various eras. Second, scribes often used many abbreviations, usually so as to write more quickly and sometimes to save space, so the specialist-palaeographer must know how to interpret them. Knowledge of individual letter-forms, ligatures, punctuation, and abbrevia-tions enables the palaeographer to read and understand the text. The palaeographer must know, first, the language of the text (that is, one must become expert in the relevant earlier forms of these languages); and second, the historical usages of various styles of handwriting, common writing customs, and scribal or notarial abbreviations. Philological knowledge of the language, vocabulary, and grammar generally used at a given time or place can help palaeographers identify ancient or more recent forgeries versus authentic documents.

Knowledge of writing materials is also essential to the study of handwriting and to the identification of the periods in which a document or manuscript may have been produced.[4] An important goal may be to assign the text a date and a place of origin: this is why the palaeographer must take into account the style and formation of the manuscript and the handwriting used in it.[5]

Document dating

Palaeography can be used to provide information about the date at which a document was written. However, "paleography is a last resort for dating" and, "for book hands, a period of 50 years is the least acceptable spread of time"[6][7] with it being suggested that "the 'rule of thumb' should probably be to avoid dating a hand more precisely than a range of at least seventy or eighty years".[7] In a 2005 e-mail addendum to his 1996 "The Paleographical Dating of P-46" paper Bruce W. Griffin stated "Until more rigorous methodologies are developed, it is difficult to construct a 95% confidence interval for NT  [New Testament] manuscripts without allowing a century for an assigned date."[8] William M Schniedewind went even further in the abstract to his 2005 paper "Problems of Paleographic Dating of Inscriptions" and stated that "The so-called science of paleography often relies on circular reasoning because there is insufficient data to draw precise conclusion about dating. Scholars also tend to oversimplify diachronic development, assuming models of simplicity rather than complexity".[9]

The Wikipedia article goes on to give a practical introduction to the science and study of ancient documents by chronological age and geographical region. Reading through it will prepare one for viewing the accompanying technical videos I have placed below regarding the subject of the formal and cursive writing of Greek texts. None of this is difficult to comprehend. It's simply something many have not thought about or studied from a paleographical viewpoint. New words, different subject topics, and newer technical aides. All in all its pretty cool.

Much like the study of our own handwriting from its earliest remonstrances through grade school, college, and into middle age and beyond, so to with ancient documents. My earliest memories were of formally writing in capital letters between a top and bottom ledger line. After the capitals of the alphabet were learned then I graduated to learning how to write in lower-case letters using four lines: the middle top for extending the "b, f, h, k, l" and so on; and the middle bottom for extending the "g, j, p, q" and so on.

    

Then came my first impression of cursive writing which I thought was ugly, quite disorganized, and how I didn't like it. I imagine the ancients went through this same kind of thing when the younger generations came in with their "new-fangled ideas". If the royal formalisms of the day dictated formal capital writings then to transition centuries latter to cursive writing was probably something that just "wasn't done" in royal societies! Thus, the difference between majuscule (caps) and miniscule writing (lower cursive). Human societies have learned to use the tools at hand such as dictating by shorthand - which was all the rage in the first part of the 20th century - then Dictaphones, with steno pools to transcribe the spoken words into typed print, and later document imaging, faxing, etc. The ancients were no less adept even though technology turned at a slower pace back then because of restricted communications between geographic, cultural language, and dominionist boundaries.

At the last, knowing the history and development of an ancient culture’s ideas have assisted future human civilizations to look back on the good, the bad, and the ugly of mankind's achievements. Myself, I've come from a background of fundamental and later, conservative evangelical, biblical training which emphasized the importance of knowing the language, syntax, and grammatical senses of the literary tracts of the bible. It was especially important to not say any more or any less than what the "original" biblical passage did in its day. The trick after that was to determine from comparative literary analysis of other ancient documents extant at the time from other early cultures the passage's sense of meaning and application to its day. Much like our discussions of interpreting the U.S. Constitution in its "originalist and textual" sense so biblical interpretation does so in itself.

Through the past recent years, I've begun to take a different tact on ancient manuscript reading. Using the U.S. Constitution as an example, the document isn't much good if the ideals and the deficiencies of its hoary history cannot be translated into today's contemporary democratic culture of ideals and injustices. If the Constitution is simply a revered dead document with no relevancy to America today it's of no use except to be twisted and politicized out of its original intentions (as we have seen in the recent presidential impeachments by the Republican lawyers and party). If, however, the Constitution is considered as a living document meant to be imminently meaningful to today's masses then we must be able to discuss social inequality and injustice in terms of systemic racism and political partisanship running rampant under the Trump administration.

So too with my feelings towards evangelical biblical interpretation today. I think it important to know the bible's hoary history and linguistics of the day, but it must be imminently translatable to today's weary masses. Weary of war, division, resource theft, personal and communal usuary and abuse, impoverishment, death, and deformation. I decided several years ago when creating Relevancy22 to restore to theology its imminency by concentrating on highlighting our Father-God as a God of supreme love and goodness. To take all I was trained in and to lift it up beyond its current evangelical boundaries to the humanitarian levels of what it means to live in this world today as a Christian of faith sharing a cosmoecological gospel of people and land restoration, redemption, renewal, reformation, and hope.

If we only concentrate on creating formalized doctrinal rules maintaining dogmatic distinctions such as the "literal, historical, grammatical, contextual" interpretive rules I grew up with, then it doesn't allow one to do much thinking outside of the "biblical evangelical box" we've placed ourselves in. For myself, I needed to erase those boundaries, to not think in literal terms but in societal terms of biblical meaning, and to recognize even theology is bounded by its philosophies which governs it century-to-century. I took the pains to remove myself from Calvinism's unhelpfulness and to concentrate on uplifting Weslyean Arminianism to where it is today, rightfully seated in "Open and Relational Theological" discussions platformed on top of Process Philosophy. I use to call this neo-Postmodern Orthodoxy but now its simpler to simply describe it as Process Theology and along with to fit a new process-based Natural Theology around it.

These weren't easy tasks to do when flying solo by myself but over the years but by the guidance of the Spirit of the Lord it became possible to look beyond my historic roots and origins to the promising lands beyond. Remembering, at the same time, to revisit the past, such as today's subject, and to always remember the earlier foundations which might be transcribed into the impressionable and translatable living cultures we live where as contemporary Christians we might speak, share, minister, and evangelize why Jesus is the bedrock of all of life, its philosophies, and the world itself.

Jesus had discovered when growing up how distant his faith had become from the God of His forefather's, who they themselves had once learned - as roving scallywags of God's outreaching love - to be humble become teachable to the Lord's Spirit. We are no different today. Our faiths and our churches have lost sight of the love of God and what His salvific sacrifice meant to the world in terms of hope and promise. We are not to create counter-religious cultures of legislative laws but imbedded cultures of faith ethics, serving, and doing.

That because the future is open and not determined we, with our mighty God, might create a kingdom of heaven on earth without the use of corrupted "civilized" laws. Laws of love unbounded by civil laws "of duty". Spirit laws written on the heart instead of upon the scrolls of religious and civil documents. We follow the Author of our faith and not the idols of religious zealots too corrupted to see the Jesus of their day. We are seekers of God and of humanitarianism. We live by love, eat by love, serve by love. It is that simple. For these things Jesus died and empowered all the world to follow Him that it might be saved to the higher plains of spiritual worldliness in the hallowed halls of the Lord God's creation of solidarity and love.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
October 17, 2020

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Site Resources

University of Oxford, Centre for the Study of Ancient Documents

the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM)

Evangelical Textual Criticism

Files and Information on Early Jewish and Early Christian Copies of Greek Jewish Scriptures

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Sample Illustrations

Juan Hernandez Jr. of Bethel University, St. Paul, MN, presented a paper titled
“Codex Sinaiticus: The Earliest Greek Christian Commentary on John’s Apocalypse?”

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Helpful Introductory Videos

Clark Bates on the Origin of Greek Minuscule

Clark Bates, Text & Canon Institute Fellow and PhD candidate

at  University of Birmingham, discusses the origin of the

Greek minuscule script, Sept 20, 2020

Joey McCollum on Identifying Textual Clusters

with Non-Negative Matrix Factorization

Joey McCollum of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

presents his research on using non-negative matrix factorization to

identify textual clusters in the Greek New Testament, Sept 24, 2020

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Helpful Textual Resources

Created by Evangelical Textual Criticism Group

http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/p/resources.html

Listed here are resources, book reviews, interviews, links, and other such things that have been collected over the years by the blog editors and contributors. For a huge list of topics covered on the blog, see the topics page. If you see something amiss, let the editors know.

 Resources and Advice

• List of text-critical commentaries
• Index of Variants Discussed in Relation to the CBGM
• Historic editions of the Greek New Testament online
• How to check Patristic citations
• Coptic digital resources
• Where to do a PhD | 10 Tips on Academic Job Hunting
• Theses in NT Textual Criticism
• Greek Lectionaries: An Introduction
• Distribution of NT MSS by Century | More statistics
• Number of Variants in the GNT | Percent in the NA/UBS | Quantifying them in the Apostolos
• Defining the Byzantine Text & the Overall Quality of Byz MSS
• Differences between KJV (1611) and RV (1881)
• The libraries of famous NT text-critics
• Value of the comparative argument; the argument as (ab)used by reasoned eclectics and Dan Wallace’s response | Ehrman’s comparative argument
• Important series in NT textual criticism

 Bibliographies

• Syriac New Testament
• New Testament Textual Criticism
• Scribal Habits
• Greek Lectionaries

 Book Reviews

• Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus
• Charles Horton, The Earliest Gospels
• Lunn on the Ending of Mark
• Robinson and Pierpont, The New Testament in the Original Greek
• Samer Yohanna, The Gospel of Mark in the Syriac Harklean Version
• Tyndale House Greek New Testament
• All posts tagged “Book Reviews”

 Interviews

• Bart Ehrman
• Stanley Porter
• Dan Wallace
• Maurice Robinson (Part 1 and Part 2)
• John Karavidopoulos
• Hugh Houghton (Part 1 and Part 2)
• Charles E. Hill (Part 1 and Part 2)
• Thomas Hudgins
• Paolo Trovato (Part 1 and Part 2)
• All interviews

 Theological Topics

• Apologetics posts
• Do we really want an eclectic Hebrew Bible?
• Significance of Hebrew pointing
• Scripture’s self-attestation and textual criticism
• Evangelicals and the Qur’an
• How important is TC for evangelicals?
• Inerrancy, more inerrancy, inerrancy and TC
• Preservation: Bill Combs discusses; earlier comments; does inspiration require preservation?
• What are we trying to recover?, more of same
• Why didn’t God preserve the autographs?
• The autographs in early Protestant theology
• All posts tagged “theology”

 Downloadable Files

• “Misquoting Manuscripts: The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture Revisited” (Tommy Wasserman)
• Jac Perrin, F13 in John’s Gospel
• Mark 1:1 handout (T Wasserman)
• Dirk Jongkind, Review of Royse, Scribal Habits
• Ivo Tamm, Theologisch-christologische Varianten?
• James Royse, SBL 2008 Book review (response)
• Juan Hernandez, Review of Royse, Scribal Habits
• Phil Payne Critique of “Putting the Distigmai in Their Place”
• Phil Payne on 1 Cor 14_34-35
• Tommy Wasserman, GNT MSS in Sweden (and Jerusalem Colophon)
• Simon Crisp, “Jude as a Rapper”
• J. Harold Greenlee. Full Bibliography

 Links

• Amsterdam NT blog
• Byzantine Greek New Testament (CSPMT)
• Byzantine Paleography
• Center for Study of NT MSS (CSNTM)
• Codex Alexandrinus Images
• Codex Bezae Images
• Codex Ephraimi Rescriptus Images
• Codex Sinaiticus Project
• Codex Vaticanus Images
• Encyclopedia of NT TC
• Evangelical Theological Society
• ITSEE Blog
• Institut für Neutestamentliche Textforschung
• Institute for Biblical Research
• Institute for Textual Scholarship and Electronic Editing
• Interpreting Ancient Manuscripts
• Jim Snapp
• LaParola (compare Greek manuscripts)
• Larry Hurtado’s blog
• NT Gateway, Textual Criticism Links
• New Testament Textual Criticism on Facebook (Carlson, Leonard, and Cate)
• NT Textual Criticism on Facebook (Snapp)
• Pro-Byzantine Textual Commentary (Robinson et al.)
• SBLGNT webpage (Holmes)
• SBLGNT webpage (SBL/Logos - download)
• Stephen Carlson
• TC: A Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism (online)
• Tregelles Greek New Testament
• Tyndale House Edition
• Tyndale House, Cambridge
• Virtual Manuscript Room (Birmingham)
• Virtual Manuscript Room (Münster)
• Virtual Manuscript Room 2.0
• Walters Art Museum MS Images
• Wieland Willker
• Wilbur Pickering

CosmoEcological Civlizations - PostCapitalistic Economies & Politics, Part 1c

CosmoEcological Civlizations - PostCapitalistic
Economies & Politics, Part 1c

by R.E. Slater

September 5, 2020

I hope to cover the basics of political/economic ideologies simply using relevant videos and standard Wikipedia articles to help frame out a futuristic look at where a Christian-based political economic might go. Generally I will use the idea of an ecological society for this near-term futuristic vision. I find it attainable, and if done right, reflective of human and environmental justice and equality. This then would also lead us into a some kind of mutually beneficial post-capitalistic paradigm again, reflective of Christian teachings related to God's Love, Jesus' practices and teachings, and the new kingdom ethic summarized on the Sermon on the Mount  in Matthew 5 (see NASB text here)

[The] Sermon on the Mount [is] a biblical collection of religious teachings and ethical sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, as found in Matthew, chapters 5–7. The sermon was addressed to disciples and a large crowd of listeners to guide them in a life of discipline based on a new law of love, even to enemies, as opposed to the old law of retribution. In the Sermon on the Mount are found many of the most familiar Christian homilies and sayings, including the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer (qq.v.). - Encyc Britannica

Part 1 will cover the basics of political economies. Initially I thought to ex-clude "libertarianism" for the simple reason that complex governments are here to stay and will require complex governmental solutions for poly-plural multi-ethnic societies. Libertarianism proposes small governments with less footprint which I find impractical, if not pure fantasy. However, locality (and meta-localities) will drive ecological societies and for this reason, along with the fact that libertarianism is a popular ideology I will lead off with it first after a general introductory video.

Part 2 will cover the basics of cultural philosophies such as modernism et al and where these cultural movements might be taking us. Having spent a large amount of time earlier this year speaking to the fundamentals of the universe using process philosophy the principles therewith will be used to help guide us toward a process-based futurism.

And finally, in Part 3, I will attempt to describe what future ecological civilizations may look like under a whole new kind of political-economic schema.

Soooo, here we go....

Topics to be Covered

Part 1

• Libertarianism
• (Classic, Enlightenment) Liberalism
• (Americanized) Modern Liberalism
• Social Liberalism
• Neo-Conservatism
• Conservatism
• Neo-Liberalism
• Summary 1 - Post-Capitalist Protestant View
• Summary 2 - Post-Capitalist Catholic View

Part 2

• Modernism
• Postmodernism
• Post-Postmodernism
• Hypermodernism
• Transmodernism
• Metamodernism

Part 3

• Post-Capitalism Economies
• CcosmoEcological Civilizations

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SUMMARY 2 -

Post-Capitalist Catholic View

THE PAPAL CONDEMNATION OF CAPITALISM

https://tradistae.com/2020/04/30/condemn-capitalism/

Posted on April 30, 2020 by tradistae in Easy Encyclicals, Easy Essays

In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the Magisterium restates the Church’s condemnation of capitalism: 

She has likewise refused to accept, in the practice of “capitalism,” individualism and the absolute primacy of the law of the marketplace over human labor… regulating [the economy] solely by the law of the marketplace fails social justice, for “there are many human needs which cannot be satisfied by the market.” (CCC 2425)

This teaching is discussed at length in Saint Pope John Paul II’s Encyclical Laborem Exercens. The Pope warns against “a one-sidedly materialistic civilization”, stating that “in every social situation of this type, there is a confusion or even a reversal of the order laid down from the beginning by the words of the Book of Genesis: man is treated as an instrument of production” (§ 7, ⁋ 3). In reality, “work is ‘for man’ and not man ‘for work’” (§ 6, ⁋ 5).

He goes on to define what he means by the fundamental error of “capitalism”: 

Precisely this reversal of order, whatever the programme or name under which it occurs, should rightly be called “capitalism”—in the sense more fully explained below. Everybody knows that capitalism has a definite historical meaning as a system…  But in the light of the analysis of the fundamental reality of the whole economic process—first and foremost of the production structure that work is—it should be recognized that the error of early capitalism can be repeated wherever man is in a way treated on the same level as the whole complex of the material means of production, as an instrument and not in accordance with the true dignity of his work—that is to say, where he is not treated as subject and maker, and for this very reason as the true purpose of the whole process of production. (§ 7, ⁋ 3)

Later, he considers the history of the conflict “in which labour was separated from capital and set up in opposition to it” and states:

It was this practical error that struck a blow first and foremost against human labour, against the working man, and caused the ethically just social reaction [the labor movement] already spoken of above. The same error, which is now part of history, and which was connected with the period of primitive capitalism and liberalism, can nevertheless be repeated… if people’s thinking starts from the same theoretical or practical premises. (§ 13, ⁋ 5)

The Pope affirms that the Church’s teaching “differs from the programme of capitalism practised by liberalism and by the political systems inspired by it” because of how She understands the “right to ownership or property”: 

Christian tradition has never upheld this right as absolute and untouchable. On the contrary, it has always understood this right within the broader context of the right common to all to use the goods of the whole of creation: the right to private property is subordinated to the right to common use, to the fact that goods are meant for everyone. (§ 14, ⁋ 2)

He concludes that “from this point of view the position of ‘rigid’ capitalism continues to remain unacceptable, namely the position that defends the exclusive right to private ownership of the means of production as an untouchable ‘dogma’ of economic life.” (§ 14, ⁋ 6)

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Pope John Paul II Criticized Both Capitalism and Marxism

 Before and During His Pontificate

Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Mar.-Apr. 2007.

Article Link her

by Mark and Louise Zwick

April 1, 2007

"Christian social doctrine: the goods of this world are originally meant for all."

In the accompanying article, (“How an Unknown Text Could Throw Light on John Paul II’s Views on Economics”) Jonathan Luxmoore points out that in the years before Karol Wojtyla became Pope he was not an uncritical advocate of laissez-faire capitalism and that Catholic neoconservatives who have depicted him in this way have been mistaken. Luxmoore did not point out that the funding for the “seminars” on capitalism and Catholic thought taught by neoconservatives at the Lublin university in Poland came from foundations whose money came from oil companies and whose purpose is the furtherance of capitalism (e.g., the Earhart Foundation).

We would like to add that a reading of his writings during his pontificate reveal the same concerns about the many poor under a capitalistic system that he expressed in that early book, Catholic Social Ethics.

In the encyclical Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, the pontiff stated:

“The Church’s social doctrine adopts a critical attitude towards both liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism.”

John Paul II’s opposition to aspects of Marxism and his role in bringing it down are well known. Less well known are his criticisms of capitalism in Sollicitudo and a number of other writings, of the “ all-consuming desire for profit and the thirst for power at any price with the intention of imposing one’s will upon others, which are opposed to the will of God and the good of neighbor.”

In Sollicitudo John Paul II speaks of economic systems which incorporate “structures of sin” that work against the common good.

These structures of sin, he said, are not vague, nameless entities for which no one is responsible. Rather, they “are rooted in personal sin, and thus always linked to the concrete acts of individuals who introduce these structures, consolidate them and make them difficult to remove. And thus they grow stronger, spread, and become the source of other sins, and so influence people’s behavior.”

John Paul II criticized the economic systems that lacked solidarity, lacked the biblical and Catholic vision of the “option or love of preference for the poor,” a phrase coined by Latin American theologians and later refined, which eventually became a key concept of the social teaching of the Church. The phrase appears also in John Paul II’s Centes-imus Annus, Pastores Gregis, Tertio Millennio Adveniente and Ecclesia in America .

The preferential option for the poor is, the Pope said in Sollicitudo , a “special form of primacy in the exercise of Christian charity, to which the whole tradition of the church bears witness. It affects the life of each Christian inasmuch as he or she seeks to imitate the life of Christ, but it applies equally to our social responsibilities and hence to our manner of living, and to the logical decisions to be made concerning the ownership and use of goods .” (42)

The Pope went so far as to compare an economics which emphasized only self-interest to the story of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus in the Gospel:

“Today, given the worldwide dimension which the social question has assumed, this love of preference for the poor, and the decisions which it inspires in us, cannot but embrace the immense multitudes of the hungry, the needy, the homeless, those without medical care and, above all, those without hope of a better future. It is impossible not to take account of the existence of these realities. To ignore them would mean becoming like the “rich man” who pretended not to know the beggar Lazarus lying at his gate (cf. Lk 16:19-31).

In the encyclical Sollicitudo , published twenty years ago, the Pope already pointed out that the way in which international trade between rich countries and poor countries was implemented left the poor ones at such a disadvantage as to be destructive to their economy and whole way of life. He pointed out the injustices of the world monetary and financial system and the debt situation of the poor countries.

In 1987 he already described the reality that was the maquiladora system, or outsourcing in the search for paying the lowest salaries possible, as having all the potential for great injustices. In Laborem Exercens the pontiff had declared that “work, as a human issue, is at the very center of the “social question” (3).

Clearly the search for the lowest possible wages around the world where companies do not pay taxes to help the local economy and organizing workers is not only discouraged, but violently opposed, does not meet his criteria for a just situation for workers. (Casa Juan Diego has received workers for many years who left their countries because they could not support their families on the wages paid by “outsourcing.”)

The Pope asked for a change.

He asked for an economics built on solidarity with everyone around the world, extending a famous saying of Pope Pius XII into the world of solidarity:

“The motto of the pontificate of my esteemed predecessor Pius XII was Opus iustitiae pax, peace as the fruit of justice. Today one could say, with the same exactness and the same power of biblical inspiration (cf. Is 32:17; Jas 3:18): Opus solidaritatis pax , peace as the fruit of solidarity.”

Pope John Paul II used the same words in Sollicitudo and various other speeches and writings that Peter Maurin so often quoted, from the earliest tradition of the Church regarding private property: "The universal destination of goods means that private property is for everybody, not just for those who use it to make their fortune."

“It is necessary to state once more the characteristic principle of Christian social doctrine: the goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right to private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private property, in fact, is under a “social mortgage,” which means that it has an intrinsically social function, based upon and justified precisely by the principle of the universal destination of goods .” (42)

The “social mortgage” the Pope spoke of, as Peter Maurin often said, means that whatever property you have is held in trust for the common good.

These teachings of John Paul II undermine those who encourage cutthroat businesses practices that hurt “the Lord’s poor,” (so often couched in a revision of Adam Smith’s language) to be ameliorated by philanthropy in one’s later life—especially philanthropy that only encourages others to do the same.

In Sollicitudo as in his other writings John Paul II placed these questions in a faith and theological perspective which cannot be viewed as an endorsement of an economics which seeks profit and power above all else: That perspective is the theology of communion.

“One’s neighbor must be loved, even if an enemy, with the same love with which the Lord loves him or her; and for that person’s sake one must be ready for sacrifice, even the ulti-mate one: to lay down one’s life for the brethren (cf. 1 Jn 3: 16).

“One’s neighbor is then not only a human being with his or her own rights and a fundamental equality with everyone else, but becomes the living image of God the Father, redeemed by the blood of Jesus Christ and placed under the permanent action of the Holy Spirit.”

“Beyond human and natural bonds, already so close and strong, there is discerned in the light of faith a new model of the unity of the human race, which must ultimately inspire our solidarity. This supreme model of unity, which is a reflection of the intimate life of God, one God in three persons, is what we Christians mean by the word ‘communion.'”

- Houston Catholic Worker, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, Mar.-Apr. 2007.

CosmoEcological Civlizations - PostCapitalistic Economies & Politics, Part 1b

 

CosmoEcological Civlizations - PostCapitalistic
Economies & Politics, Part 1b

by R.E. Slater

September 5, 2020

I hope to cover the basics of political/economic ideologies simply using relevant videos and standard Wikipedia articles to help frame out a futuristic look at where a Christian-based political economic might go. Generally I will use the idea of an ecological society for this near-term futuristic vision. I find it attainable, and if done right, reflective of human and environmental justice and equality. This then would also lead us into a some kind of mutually beneficial post-capitalistic paradigm again, reflective of Christian teachings related to God's Love, Jesus' practices and teachings, and the new kingdom ethic summarized on the Sermon on the Mount  in Matthew 5 (see NASB text here)

[The] Sermon on the Mount [is] a biblical collection of religious teachings and ethical sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, as found in Matthew, chapters 5–7. The sermon was addressed to disciples and a large crowd of listeners to guide them in a life of discipline based on a new law of love, even to enemies, as opposed to the old law of retribution. In the Sermon on the Mount are found many of the most familiar Christian homilies and sayings, including the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer (qq.v.). - Encyc Britannica

Part 1 will cover the basics of political economies. Initially I thought to ex-clude "libertarianism" for the simple reason that complex governments are here to stay and will require complex governmental solutions for poly-plural multi-ethnic societies. Libertarianism proposes small governments with less footprint which I find impractical, if not pure fantasy. However, locality (and meta-localities) will drive ecological societies and for this reason, along with the fact that libertarianism is a popular ideology I will lead off with it first after a general introductory video.

Part 2 will cover the basics of cultural philosophies such as modernism et al and where these cultural movements might be taking us. Having spent a large amount of time earlier this year speaking to the fundamentals of the universe using process philosophy the principles therewith will be used to help guide us toward a process-based futurism.

And finally, in Part 3, I will attempt to describe what future ecological civilizations may look like under a whole new kind of political-economic schema.

Soooo, here we go....

Topics to be Covered

Part 1

• Libertarianism
• (Classic, Enlightenment) Liberalism
• (Americanized) Modern Liberalism
• Social Liberalism
• Neo-Conservatism
• Conservatism
• Neo-Liberalism
• Summary 1 - Post-Capitalist Protestant View
• Summary 2 - Post-Capitalist Catholic View

Part 2

• Modernism
• Postmodernism
• Post-Postmodernism
• Hypermodernism
• Transmodernism
• Metamodernism

Part 3

• Post-Capitalism Economies
• CcosmoEcological Civilizations

* * * * * * * * *

SUMMARY 1 -

Post-Capitalist Protestant View

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

Whatever Happened to the Common Good?

article link

by Jay McDaniel, Open Horizons

October 1, 2020

Three sins killed it.  Or at least our awareness of it.

1 - ​Meritocracy: It's all about individual upward mobility.

       (as clarified by Michael Sandel in his critique of meritocracy)

2 - Throwaway Culture: It's all about what is convenient or useful.

      (as clarified by Pope Francis in his critique of throwaway culture)

3 - Folk Libertarianism: It's all about me and my right to happiness.

      (​as clarified by Russ Douthat of NY Times)

We don't choose these sins; we are born into them as part of our culture. In this sense they are original sins: that is, inherited sins. Still, our only hope is to grow past them by allowing our hearts to be drawn by deeper, higher, more life-nourishing values, like love and community and justice.

Folk Libertarianism

"The first thing you see is that some failures in the American response are less about the president’s specific faults and more about a debilitating pre-existing condition in his coalition — a folk-libertarian hostility to all federal policymaking, a reflexive individualism disconnected from the common good." What I’m calling folk libertarianism (to distinguish it from the more academic sort) is deeply American, not just conservative,

(Russ Douthat, NY Times, What Isn't Trump's Fault, Sept. 12, 2020)

Meritocracy

I do not want the word rubbish to have the last word.  I want the words 'love' and 'community' and 'humility' to have the last word.  And phrases like 'the dignity of each person' and "respect and care for the community of life."  I am inspired by a man in whose footsteps I seek to walk who, some twenty centuries ago, called his own people toward a new way of living based in love. 

​But I do believe that primary obstacle to the kind of world we need -- a network of compassionate communities -- is the culture of merit.  This culture carries a mindset that valorizes something called 'productivity' and thinks of life as a complex of economic transactions.  Those of us who are trapped by this mindset have little sense of the common good.  Its ideal is 'the self-made individual' who 'plays by the rules' and 'climbs a ladder of upward mobility' in order to become a 'success.'   Liberals no less than conservatives, and sometimes more than conservatives, can valorize this ideal in their appeals to a level playing field.  Their assumption is that, if the playing field is level (which it never is) people can 'rise' on the basis of their merits.  The problem lies in thinking that 'merit' is and should be the proper organizing principle for our lives.  Such is, as the philosopher Michael Sandel puts it, The Tyranny of Merit: What's Become of the Common Good.

The tyranny of merit | Michael Sandel

Throwaway Culture

An excerpt from Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured Nation Pope presenting Pope Francis' critique of a Throwaway Culture that treats everything as something to be bought, sold, or used and that considers people irrelevant and disposable if unproductive.

​

"Throwaway Culture Pope Francis uses “throwaway culture” to name the opposite of what the CLE [consistent ethic of life] seeks to affirm. This culture fosters “a mentality in which everything has a price, everything can be bought, everything is negotiable. This way of thinking has room only for a select few, while it discards all those who are unproductive.”

It reduces everything—including people—into mere things whose worth consists only in being bought, sold, or used, and which are then discarded when their market value has been exhausted. Human beings have inherent, irreducible value, but when a throwaway culture finds them inconvenient it deems them “inefficient” or “burdensome” and they are ignored, rejected, or even disposed of.

The pope responds to such a culture by defending the universal dignity of every person without exception. By upholding the “internal consistency” of such dignity across a host of different issues, Francis undermines the throwaway culture. In reducing the person to a mere product in a marketplace—one that can be used and then thrown away—our culture makes what philosophers call a category mistake. Persons are ends in themselves, with inherent and irreducible value, and must never be put into the category of things that can be merely discarded as so much trash. The most serious and obvious example of reducing a person’s inherent value to that of a mere thing is their being violently discarded and killed. Christians especially are called to resist this violence because Jesus commanded them to do so. Throughout his life he took pains to call out deadly violence and instructed his followers to “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12).

​Pope Francis resists a throwaway culture that employs violent and (often) state-sponsored practices like war, genocide, terrorism, and the death penalty. But he also argues that this same violent culture includes practices like abortion (which discards a child as inconvenient and euthanasia (which treats the elderly like “baggage” to be discarded. Francis also has concern for what violence does to the perpetrator. In his address to Congress, for instance, he said that when we are repeatedly violent we become a “prisoner” who is “trapped” by our own violent habits. We ourselves become murderers and tyrants, Francis warns, when we imitate their violent practices 

But the CLE is concerned not only with explicit violence such as killing, but also violence within the structure of our societies. In Amoris laetitia Francis echoes John Paul II in saying that the dignity of the person “has an inherent social dimension.” That is, respecting life cannot be about simply resisting the aggressive violence of throwaway culture, but also the violence within its social structures. Francis insists that the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” applies clearly to our culture’s “economy of exclusion.” In the pope’s view, “Such an economy kills. The exclusion with which Francis is concerned need not be conscious exploitation and oppression. It can be unconscious practices that lead to certain people becoming “outcasts” or “leftovers.” The pope uses particularly harsh language in condemning theories of economic growth that ignore or discard human beings if they are deemed a net drag on such growth. The homeless person who dies of exposure; the child without adequate health care who dies of an easily-treatable disease; island-dwelling peoples threatened by climate change.

What Francis calls “a globalization of indifference” considers such people as mere afterthoughts. The dignity of these vulnerable people is inconvenient for those who benefit from a global consumerist culture, so we ignore the poor and marginalized, gradually becoming “deadened” to their cries. The love of money (something Francis calls “the dung of the devil”) supplants the primacy of the human person, and the logic of consumerism exercises dominion over us and our culture.

Those thrown away in the process do not matter. A primary value in throwaway culture is maintaining a consumerist lifestyle, but to cease caring about who is being discarded, most of us must find a way to no longer acknowledge their inherent dignity. Instead of language that affirms and highlights the value of every human being, throwaway culture requires language that deadens our capacity for moral concern toward those who most need it. Rehumanize International, a CLE activist group, has researched how this works (both historically and today) with different populations including racial minorities, the elderly and disabled, prenatal children, immigrants and refugees, enemy combatants, and incarcerated inmates. Patterns develop whereby these populations have been or are named as non-persons, sub-humans, defective humans, parasites, and objects, things, or products."

 

Camosy, Charles Christopher. Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consistent Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People (pp. 31-32). New City Press. Kindle Edition.

John Cobb on Pope Francis 

Fortunately, in 2015, Pope Francis offered the world in “Laudato Si” a holistic and unified way ahead.  He called it “integral ecology.”  It recognizes that all parts of the system of life are interdependent with one another and with the inanimate world.  Also, humans are an important part of this integrated system.  We humans have been disrupting the whole process, but we still have the ability to adopt a constructive role.

“Laudato Si” deals at once with the problems of the ocean, the land, and the atmosphere, and, also, of human society.  Francis’ encyclical is at once Roman Catholic teaching, general Christian teaching, and universal human teaching.  If humanity would orient its education and research, its economics and its politics, its agriculture, and its human culture, by the wisdom of this encyclical, hope for the future could be greatly expanded.

I have been struck not only by the remarkable connection between this pope and Francis of Assissi, but also by the parallels with Jesus of Nazareth.  It is widely recognized that Jesus’ message was the coming of the Basileia Theou, which for reasons explained in this text, I translate as “divine Commonwealth”. I believe that Jesus saw what he was proposing, in all its radicality, as the best hope for the salvation of Israel.  He believed the Jewish people could avoid destruction by Rome and expulsion from their land, precisely by being deeply faithful to their prophetic heritage.  He was not successful.  Jerusalem was destroyed, and the Jews were expelled from their country.

​The pope today is proposing a radically different world from the one we now have.  He gives us an account of what would be possible instead of the destruction toward which we are otherwise headed.  In short, what he calls “integral ecology” is today’s “divine Commonwealth.”

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

My friend Don, the Real Estate Developer

My friend Don is a real estate developer.  He sees almost everything as property to be bought and sold in the marketplace.  He thinks making money is what life is all about.  Everything is what he calls a deal.  A deal is an economic transaction,  An exchange. He wants to make an art of it.

I think of life a little differently.  I think everything is a relationship and that 'deals' are a very shallow kind of relationship.  The most valuable relationships are love.  But I'm a little biased here.  A young Jew from Nazareth distorted my perspective.

I once asked Don what the purpose of life is and he said "to be rich and powerful and famous."  I thought he was kidding, but he was serious.  He was taught to think this way by his father but also by his culture.  He grew up ion an environment where everything was about wealth and conspicuous show.  I asked him if he believed in cooperation and forgiveness and helping out others, and he said: "That's for losers." 

Don uses the word "losers" a lot to name people whom he thinks are below him.  He also speaks of some people as "garbage."  Don sees life on the analogy of a battleground where people must compete to be king of the mountain.  He wants to be king.  And he wants the rubbish to be eliminated from the mountain altogether.  He doesn't like to shake hands with people, especially for those whom he finds, in his words, disgusting.  He has a thing for germs. 

I have some friends who think Don is himself rubbish.  Some of them are Christian and know that Jesus taught that we should love our enemies, but this doesn't seem to apply to Don.  One of them said: "But Jesus didn't know Don."  I understand their rancor toward him, but I think it helps to remember that Don himself is a victim of his upbringing and culture. 

The culture is an atmosphere, a set of attitudes and values, into which we are born, and it affects us without our even choosing it.  If 'original sin' is a name for sins we inherit which originate before we are born, these these three are among America's original sins.  They are the idea that (1) everything must be measures by merit, (2) some things are rubbish, and (3) individual happiness, not the common good, is what fulfills human life.

​

These three sins are connected.  You can start with any of them and end up with the others.  For example, if you start with meritocracy, with its sin of taking 'merit' as the organizing principle of life, you end up treating some people as disposable because they are 'unproductive.'  You forget that you depend on the common good and that your deeper calling is to contribute to that good.  You see the world as a collection of objects not a communion of subjects and you see your own life as a series of 'achievements.'

The alternative to these three sins is what Pope Francis calls a 'consistent ethic of life' (see below).  This ethic can be nourished by a sense that life itself is a community and that we find our purpose and delight in playing our humble yet creative role in being part of an adventure greater than ourselves. 

Process thinkers such as John Cobb and Catherine Keller, Bradley Artson and Farhan Shah, Thomas Oord and Patricia Adams Farmer, Zhihe Wang and Meijun Fan -- and so many others -- help us see that an organic worldview can help cultivate this sense.  They call it "open and relational" thinking or "process" thinking. 

In Choosing Life: Ecological Civilization as the World's Best Hope, John Cobb and I develop this process point of view.  We propose that ecological civilization, with its focus on 'creative localization' in compassionate communities, is our best hope.  But we recognize that this hope has little if any chance of being approximated unless, first, we don't acknowledge the three cultural sins.  In the spiritual alphabet developed by Mary Ann and Frederic Brussat of Spirituality and Practice, and often utilized by the Cobb Institute, "S" is for Shadow.  These three sins are among our most pernicious shadows.