The last chapter of Cavanaugh’s book deals with scarcity and abundance. The juxtaposition of the two is set up (as he discusses it) in the contrast between scarcity as the driving force of free market economics, and the abundance of Christ as displayed in the Lord’s Supper.
“The idea of scarcity assures that the normal condition for the communication of goods is through trade: to get something, one must relinquish something else” (p. 91).
In] “the Eucharist . . . the act of consumption is turned inside out, so that the consumer is consumed” (p. 95).
His observations on the Lord’s Table, taken straight up, are quite good. In partaking of the bread and wine, we are partaking of Christ, and
are being taken up into Him . . . along with all others who make up His body. Communion is not an exercise in isolated consumption, but is God’s instrument for knitting His people together. As as pastor, I regularly make the Supper the basis of a plea for Christians to reconcile, or get along, or to surrender the point. Say that two Christians have a collision over a business deal — the fact that they are being knit together in the same body
is of central relevance. And as this is done in congregation after congregation, all over the world, God is in the process of bringing all things together. But as God is doing this, we ought not to run on ahead of Him to start meddling in things that we simply do not understand. The Lord’s Supper does mean that one believer ought not to call another believer a string of nasty names. The Lord’s Supper does
not mean that owners of vineyards have to pay all their workers the same amount (Matt. 20:1-16).
“The consumer’s pursuit of low, low prices at Wal-Mart means low, low wages for the people in Asia who make the products we buy” (p. 94).
So what would happen if American shoppers repented, and only bought things with high, high prices? What would
that do to the folks in Asia? And, for that matter, what would it do to the (comparatively) poor in America, who are counting on Wal-Mart to give them a little breathing space at the end of a month?
When dealing with a business squabble in a local congregation, we all know what repentance would look like. But when dealing with wages on three continents, those who are urging us to fix all the disparities don’t have any idea of the damage that their idea of “repentance” would cause. And veiling the economic fallacies under sound eucharistic theology won’t undo the actual damage done. And when damage is done, it is done to people, remember.
“In the eucharistic economy, by constrast, the gift relativizes the boundaries between what is mine and what is yours by relativizing the boundary between me and you” (p. 97).
I have no trouble with “relativizing” the boundaries between
meum and
tuum, so long as we carefully define our terms. We
are in a body, and the early Christians
did hold possessions in common. We are bound to take care of one another — and open generosity with our property is the lifeblood of
koinonia. But I am extremely reluctant to talk this way before certain economic (and theological) confusions have been removed. A strict boundary is often used as a justification for not giving anything. “It’s mine, and so I don’t have to give it away.” But it also needs to be remembered that a strict sense of ownership is what makes a gift even
possible. I cannot give what is not mine to give.
One additional comment on the idea of scarcity. We began our discussion here with Cavanaugh’s idea that in order to get something, I must relinquish something else. But this leaves out a key element in the concept of free trade. The thing I relinquish is something I value less than the thing I am acquiring. Provided the transaction is not under coercion, I always believe myself to be trading up. In other words, it is as though I gave a guy one hundred dollars in order to get one hundred and twenty dollars. That is not really relinquishment. So a free market is not an approach dependent on scarcity, but rather an approach as assumes differentiation, specialization, and abundance.
One man specializes in making shoes. He gets really good at it, and pretty soon he is neck deep in shoes. But he would rather have fewer shoes and a little more food, as would his wife, and so he trades a pair of shoes to a farmer guy, who was, as it turns out, neck deep in corn. The only way we would say this is dependent on scarcity is because of the artificial scarcity created by vocational specialization. Here I am, typing about economics like crazy, which means that I have a real scarcity of time when it comes to manufacturing my own shoes. Which is entirely fine with me.
