BIBLICAL COVENANTS IN BUSINESS AND THE PROFESSIONS: ZT
BIBLICAL COVENANTS IN BUSINESS AND THE PROFESSIONS:A CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE
Dennis P. McCann
In what follows I intend to offer a Catholic perspective on this common Western legacy of covenantal discourse. I do so not in order to promote Catholicism as such, but in order to assist the dialogue between Chinese scholars and scholars representing the mainstream of the Reformed tradition in the USA. A Catholic perspective may be useful to Chinese scholars if only to show that there are diverse ways of interpreting the social and political implications of covenantal discourse. A Catholic perspective may serve as a reminder that covenantal discourse defines an arena for the exploration of meaningful disagreement as well as overarching consensus. Covenantal discourse, everyone may agree in principle, tends to promote democracy and human rights, but it does not in and of itself warrant any single interpretation of what democracy and human rights are, or how these should be institutionalized in nations with diverse histories and cultures. Catholic and Protestant perspectives on the covenant may overlap on some issues and diverge on others, because a Catholic interpretation of covenantal discourse tends to draw more deeply on the social practices of premodern and preReformation Christianity, and view them more appreciatively. Catholicism’s relationship to modernization, in short, is different from that played out in the history of Reformed Protestantism. Informed by Catholicism’s struggle to maintain its own traditions of spirituality and social practice in the face of modernization pressures that often were perceived as alien and hostile, a Catholic perspective may seem more congenial to those who take seriously China’s own ambivalence about various forms of modernization. Catholic spirituality, particularly as cultivated over the centuries in the traditions of Western monasticism may help illuminate covenantal possibilities that remain indispensable for the development of business and professional ethics. That, at least, is the specific area that I hope to open up for you in the remarks that follow.
My paper proceeds in the following manner. First, I sketch a brief history of the social forms of covenantal community that developed within preReformation Christianity, with particular emphasis on the history of Western monasticism, and offer a few observations on how these covenantal social forms have contributed to premodern Western economic and social development. Second, I offer some remarks on what I take to be their ongoing relevance for the development of business and professional ethics in a covenantal perspective. Finally, I conclude with some very brief remarks on how these resources may make a contribution in China today.
The history of the covenantal social forms of Christianity begins in the New Testament with the church. Church or “Ekklesia” means “those called out,” i.e, a community (or voluntary association) of believers who have been called out from the larger society to be God’s witnesses through their faith and and action. The metaphors used to describe the church include the “Household (oikos) of the faith” which emphasizes both what Christians have in common with other households, i.e., they are organized as “families,” but also what distinguishes them from other households, i.e., they are communities of faith (as ratified through the rite of baptism), and not of kinship or blood. The forms of internal organization of the chuch generated by such metaphors are diverse even in the New Testament, and a single paradigm of church order only developed, if ever, during 3rd and 4th centuries, i.e., with the emergence of the ordained ministries, within the administrative authority of a bishop (episcopos).
Roman Catholics, nevertheless, believe that their own form of church order was directly mandated by Jesus Christ, and that it is warranted in the New Testament, specifically in Jesus’ promises to Simon Peter (Matthew 16:18, John 21:16). The Pope, in short, is the successor of Peter as head of the college of the Twelve Apostles, who are succeeded by the college of bishops remaining in communion with the Pope to this day. The Pope resides in Rome because Peter, it is claimed, was executed in Rome (as was Paul), and so the city’s leadership position in Western (Latin) Christianity is based not on political expediency but on the blood of the martyrs who are entombed there. Protestants generally acknowledge Catholic claims of Peter’s ministry of leadership over the Twelve Apostles, but tend to deny any strict linkage between Peter’s ministry and the Papal structure of church order.
Beyond the patterns of church order emerging from the New Testament, the next major development is the rise of monasticism. This is a very broad movement of Christian reform within the church, perennially attempting to call the church back to faithfulness to Christ. I will define monasticism in its typical Western (Latin) features as a form of voluntary association based on the three-fold vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience (referred to by Catholics as the “evangelical counsels”), that was meant to allow for a more perfect, less distracted following of the Way of Jesus, or imitation of His life. The original impulse for monasticism is the eventual decline of martyrdom and persecution in the early church. As State repression became less intense or at least intermittent, the vowed life involving separation from the ordinary routines of the world became a substitute for martyrdom. (“Martyr,” of course, means “witness,” and the assumption was that Christ’s true witnesses would be persecuted, just as Jesus was crucified.) Monasticism is from a Greek word, “monachos,” that means “solitary” or alone. Originally, the monks were hermits who lived more or less on their own, in order to make a more perfect imitation of Jesus in is own life. The movement from anarchic monasticism to communal monasticism (coenobitic, i.e., sharing a common table or coenobium) was first accomplished by St. Basil in the Greek eastern Roman Empire. The figure who perfected communal monasticism for the Latin West was St. Benedict of Nursia, who developed a monastic Rule that became the template for all subsequent monastic reform movements in the West.
Important for our purposes is to understand the role of work in Benedict’s new household of the faith. Benedict’s slogan was “Ora et Labora”: “Pray and Work.” Work was an intrinsic part of the spiritual discipline of the community, an opportunity to learn the lessons of humility thought to be essential to the Way of Jesus. The work, like every other aspect of the community, was highly organized and communally accountable. Benedict’s rule explicitly forbids private ownership of either personal possessions or the means of prodution, but both are available for use consisent with the community’s purposes as interpreted by the elected Abbot (“Father”) of the household. Typically, there were monasteries for men and women (separate communities), engaged in works like providing hospice and hospitality for travelers, educating the laity, including the preservation and transmission (during the so-called Dark Ages) of the literary heritage of Hellenistic and Christian antiquity, and the production of the means of existence in sufficient quantity and quality to support the community in its moderately ascetical life-style. Typically monasteries were in remote places, unproductive or uncleared lands that soon became very productive though the organized labors of the monks and their dependents. The surpluses thus produced soon came to be recognized as wealth, a primitive but unintended accumulation of capital that many monks found inappropriate and was the perennial inspiration for subsequent reform movements trying to return to the original purity and simplicity of the monastic evangelical life-style.
The embarrassment regarding accumulated wealth, in retrospect, is one major indication of the difference between the monastic Catholic work ethic and the later “Protestant work ethic.” The economic productivity of the monasteries, and their role as sanctuaries in the unstable and turbulent world of feudalism, prompted pious Catholics to donate their own wealth to them, and tempted some later reformers, e.g., Henry VIII of England, to strip the monasteries of their wealth in order to fund their own programs of nation building. Despite the controversies surrounding monasticism, some Catholic social theorists, e.g., Michael Novak, tend to regard it as an important template for business corporations as they eventually emerged in Western history
Another related covenantal form of social organization was the Medieval guild, which was an organization of skilled producers, e.g., those engaged in professional services or skilled trades, in which their common interests including spiritual concerns were recognized and protected. The guilds combined elements of monasticism (dedication to a common work or trade), with a spirituality and lifestyle more appropriate for lay Christians in Medieval towns and cities. Among other things the guilds functioned as protective associations, in that they set prices for the services of their members, and certified their skills, and regulated their activities, in theory for the sake of the common good, but in reality also for the sake of their own group interest.
Within the broad movement of preReformation monasticism (c. 550 –1550 CE), there was a great diversification of communal forms as the Christian impulse toward reform responded to the challenges of European development, initially with the recovery from the so-called Dark Ages, beginning approximately in the 9th century (Charlemagne). The trend is toward a recovery of urban life, renewal of organized commerce, orderly government, advances in education and science, systematization of learning, and a general flourishing of the arts. Broadly monastic communities can be distinguished by the time and circumstances of their founding, the founders’ specific agenda for Christian spiritual and moral reform, and the innovativeness of their communal organization. Throughout most of this period, until perhaps the 14th century, monasticism was the most creative element in Medieval Christianity. Eventually it lost out to more radical programs of Christian reform as in the Reformation. The reasons for the eclipse of monasticism are complex, but they are less likely to be a result of massive corruption, i.e., monks betraying their vows, than a result of the emergence of a more effective central administration in the Church (the Papacy) which successfully fought to control or, if you will, franchise, religiously motivated social reform. Getting the necessary permissions to innovate was time-consuming and frustrating, and increasingly vulnerable to corruption, not so much because of the monastic reformers, but because of the systematic abuse of power in the Church’s central government.
The Protestant Reformation, in my view, embodies the same deep commitment to evangelically based communal and social reform as did Catholic monasticism. Where they differ is that Catholic monasticism never was able to overcome its complicity in the heritage of Greco-Roman familistic imperialism. It was rarely able to challenge the inherited forms of authority and governance but instead worked to establish voluntary associations dedicated to reform as defined and regulated within the inherited social system. Among other things, this system favored a strict functional separation of “clergy” and “laity,” with the expectation that only the “clergy,” i.e., the monks and other ordained ministers, could be expected to live in perfect imitation of Christ. The Reformation’s restoration of “the priesthood of all believers” is first of all a radical democratization of the Christian spiritual life. “Vocation” is no longer restricted to questions of becoming a monk, or a nun, or a priest. “Covenant” is no longer restricted to marriage for the laity, consecration for the Christian prince, and ordination to the church’s increasingly ritualized ministry.
Max Stackhouse has rightly observed that “sacramentum” is an appropriate Latin translation of “diatheke” or covenant. But sacramentum, as mutual pledge, eventually came to be restricted in Medieval Catholic usage to the seven liturgical rites, by which the pledge of salvation or God’s grace is enacted in the stages and rhythms of the Christian’s personal life: “baptism, confirmation, holy orders, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, and matrimony.” After Vatican II (1962-1965), however, Catholicism underwent a massive internal reform, involving among other things, a breathtaking reappropriation of the Bible and the reconstruction of Biblically oriented theologies and programs for social action. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the USA issued a pastoral letter to address: “Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the US Economy” (1986), which embraces a covenantal theology regard the meaning of all human work, and the direction of Christian social action, that is consistent with the broad lines of ecumenical Protestant social thought and practice. It should be studied carefully for some indication of what is actually possible by way of a Christian agenda for social reform, even in an advanced industrial society, even within an overall regime of “democratic capitalism,” where the Roman Catholic church fully embraces separation of church and state, and seeks to influence the processes of social transformation through the rhetoric of persuasion and the organization of voluntary associations.
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