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 …
Vanity Fair and Globalization
Cavanaugh’s third chapter, on the global and the local, contains a lot of good discussion of the problem of the one and the many. Keying off the work of Roman Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar, Cavanaugh offers the kind of insights that I am more accustomed to hear from Cornelius Van Til and Rousas Rushdoony. …
Hard-headed and Tender-hearted
Okay, we have seen that merciful intentions do not mean that the results actually are merciful. Being soft-hearted and soft-headed at the same time doesn’t help anybody. But of course — and here comes the point of this post — being hard-headed and hard-hearted is also a spiritual disaster. God calls us to be hard-headed …
Stupidity is not Compassionate
Just a short post to address two things at once. I have wanted to say something about the Wall Street meltdown, and I also needed to address a question raised in my last post on mercy and economics. The bottom line first. Should the taxpayers be bailing out Behemoth Banks, Leviathan Lenders, and Marduk Mortgage? …
Justice Java
William Cavanaugh’s second chapter of Being Consumed, on attachment and detachment, was — with the exception of a page or two — simply outstanding. His critique of consumerism contained some standard elements (but still driven home effectively), as well as some unique insights. For an example of the former, he points out how much contemporary …
Why Does Cavanaugh Believe Jeshurun?
I enjoyed and benefitted from William Cavanaugh’s Theopolitical Imagination, and am now working through his Being Consumed. The subtitle of this second book is “Economics and Christian Desire,” and I believe I really need to post a few installments on it. In my view, Cavanaugh is playing into the new Constantinian error and this is …
The Christian Foundation of Free Markets
Yesterday I recorded a series of short interviews that will be aired on the Moody broadcasting network sometime in the next few weeks. We were talking about the imminent release of Is Christianity Good for the World? and in that context the impact of the Christian faith on culture came up. In the course of …
Envy Looks Uphill
The post before last, I wrote on the institutionalization of envy, and thought I needed to address a reasonable question that may have arisen in the minds of some. In the first post, I made some reference to the situation that might cause this question — I wrote how hard it is for many for …
Real Sacrifice
Let me take, as a fixed point of evangelical orthodoxy, the penal, substitutionary atonement of Christ. Let me also take, as a point of personal privilege, the knowledge that Rene Girard has offered some stunning and cogent observations about human nature, the process of scapegoating, triangular desire, and all the rest of it. How are …
Ananias and Sapphira Must Have Been Liberals
One of the constant refrains that provide the background noise to our contemporary political debates is the idea, oft repeated, that liberals are open-hearted, generous, ready to share, while conservatives are pinched souls, close-fisted, and skinflinty. The problem is that we have a lot of data on this, and the data shows, in remarkably broad …