At 06:15 PM 1/14/01 -0800, Tom Walker wrote:

>Noblesse oblige would be too charitable. I forwarded some remarks on
>Bush's "compassionate conservatism" guru, Marvin Olasky under the subject
>title "Gospel according to Marvin". Below is a sample of the economic
>wisdom of Olasky's mentor on economic ethics, E. Calvin Beisner (I kid
>you not):

[My God! (oops, sorry, fundamentalists! : ) ).  Where in the _world_ did
this Beisner get his degree from?  Barefoot Bible College in Lynchem,
Arkahoma?
And is he an economist or a preacher or theologian by training?]


>
>   Economics and the Image of God in Man 
>   

[Part of essay snipped in the interests of brevity]  
   
>   "Then God said, `Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our
>   likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the
>   birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over
>   every creeping thing that creeps on the earth'" (Genesis 1:26). Before
>   we've seen anything of the holiness of God, before we read anything of
>   the spiritual aspect of man (Genesis 2:7), we learn that God made man
>   in His image. And what was that image? The image of an intelligent,
>   creative, productive worker.
>   

Gee, sounds not terribly far from the picture of humanity in Marx's _Paris
Manuscripts_.  Maybe God is more of a socialist than the Rev here thinks.

>   Here also is the fundamental reason why contemporary fears of resource
>   depletion and environmental disaster are unjustified. The Malthusian
>   theory that underlies them is precisely opposite this Christian view
>   of man. Malthusianism sees man as primarily a consumer, not a
>   producer; it thus, like socialism, views people as brute beasts,
>   unable to produce more than they consume without direction from above
>   (which is why environmentalism and socialism readily go hand in hand
>   and environmentalism may turn out to be the last best hope of
>   socialists to gain control over the world's economies).
>   

Definitely not an economist.  No economist could possibly be guilty of such
crass ignorance.  Or is he an economist after all?


>   But these are not the only criteria. A moral economy must look also at
>   the moral quality of work. In Christian ethics, two virtues stand
>   supreme: justice or righteousness, and love or grace. The moral
>   economy will take both of these into account. It will not reward
>   injustice or hate, but it will reward justice and grace.
>   
>   There are, of course, many expressions of both justice and love. Love
>   expresses itself chiefly in service to others, especially
>   self-sacrificial service (Christ "loved me and gave Himself for me,"
>   Galatians 2:20). It is not enough that I do something brilliant or
>   difficult or time consuming; I should not be rewarded unless what I do
>   benefits others. And the chief practical indicator of that is their
>   willingness to pay for it in the marketplace.
>   
>   This does not mean, of course, that Christianity supports complete
>   laissez-faire. Murder, Inc. has no place in the moral economy, and the
>   Christian world view requires the legal exclusion of such enterprises
>   (Romans 13:1--7).

Gee, now what sorts of enterprises does the Rev have in mind?  Abortion
clinics perhaps?  

 The freedom of the market is not licentiousness
>   (compare Romans 6) but freedom from tyranny and freedom to choose
>   among options permissible according to God's moral law, best
>   summarized in the Ten Commandments. 


I see--so enterprises that allow us to choose, for example, to poison
ourselves through tobacco would not be permissible.  Right Rev?


It is the freedom expressed in the
>   market's showing, by the price mechanism, what services people want,
>   and what prices they are willing to pay for them.

Huh?  How in hell did the price mechanism sneak in there?  Don't 'member it
mentioned in Romans.

 T>   Coupled with love is justice, which, if we look carefully at what we
>   find in Scripture, means rendering impartially and proportionately to
>   everyone his due in accord with the right standard of God's moral law.
>   Commutative justice requires the honest exchange of value for value;


So the atoning work of Jesus, which none of us deserve according to
mainstream Christian theology, is inconsistent with commutative justice,
right Rev?


>   distributive justice institutionalizes commutative justice on the wide
>   scale, ensuring that those too weak to defend their rights are not
>   victimized by the stronger (and thus it is not the distribution of
>   wealth or any other good but justice itself). And so justice
>   necessitates different rewards for different actions. Economic
>   policies designed to equalize economic condition are therefore
>   inherently unjust.
>


Just like policies designed to equalize the spiritual condition of
humanity, like the atoning work of Christ, right Rev?

Holy frijoles!  Every time I think the far right can't get any worse, they
prove me wrong!

I thought the natural scientists had it bad, with the fundamentalists
telling them they should use the Bible as the source of their theories of
the origin of species.  Now the fundamentalists are drawing a bead on
social science, it seems.  

What do you think?  Maybe some of us atheists should reserve our quarters
in John Ashcroft's Gulag for fundamentalists early?

I'm making light of it, but the "creeping irrationalism" represented by the
likes of the thinking in this essay really frightens me.


--
Jeffrey L. Beatty
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
The Ohio State University
2140 Derby Hall
154 North Oval Mall
Columbus, Ohio 43210

(o) 614/292-2880
(h) 614/688-0567

Email:  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
______________________________________________________   
If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest
common denominator of human achievement-- President Jimmy Carter

Reply via email to