Toward a Better Worldliness

Ecology, Economy, and the Protestant Tradition

Terra Schwerin Rowe

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781506423333
• eBook ISBN: 9781506422336
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Five hundred years ago the Protestant Reformation inspired profound social, economic, and ecclesial transformations. But impact does the Protestant tradition have today? And what might it have? This volume addresses such questions, focusing on the economic and ecological implications of the Protestant doctrine of grace. In the spirit of ecotheologies resonating with the best of the Reformation tradition, this book develops a fresh reading of Luther's theology of grace and his economic ethics in conversation with current theological and theoretical reflections on concepts of the gift and gifting practices.

2

Inheriting the Free Gift: Economic and Ecological Implications

[I]f capitalism is a religion . . .
it is definitely a mode of Protestant religion.

—John Milbank^[1]

As^[2] Protestant scholars highlight the liberative potential of the reformers’ writings on early capitalist practices, the spirit of Max Weber’s thesis on the unintended economic consequences of Reformation theology reverberates from within the tradition through Moltmann’s Theology of Play. Outlining how generations following the reformers lost track of its pivotal and liberating message, Moltmann emphasizes the “paradoxical” nature of the shift from freedom from works through justification to a capitalist-driven justification by works through labor, accumulation, and achievement.^[3] Yet, what Moltmann identifies as a paradoxical or irrational shift, John Milbank singles out as a rational, indeed inevitable, consequence of a fundamentally flawed theology of grace. As read primarily through the perspectives of Milbank and other theologians identifying with Radical Orthodoxy, gift theory demonstrates that Weber’s thesis only identifies the tip of a religio-economic iceberg. Where Weber focuses on what might be considered more secondary aspects of the Protestant tradition (vocation, for example), gift theory takes the discussion of a link between Protestantism and capitalism directly to the heart of the religious tradition: its doctrine of grace.

Milbank, William Cavanaugh, Stephen Long, and others argue that the reformers helped introduce a new concept of gift through their particular articulation of the doctrine of grace that has become pervasive in modern society. Where previous notions of gift encom-passed a sense of exchange, the reformers excised reciprocity from the doctrine of grace and thus constructed a gift/exchange dualism. According to this reading, the operative dualism then paved the way for concepts foundational for the rise and global success of a profoundly destructive (and heretical) economic system. Global neoliberal capitalism thus emerges as a tragic—yet logical— consequence of the Protestant doctrine of grace.

Ironically, the two portraits—the heroic liberative reformer (highlighted in chapter one) and the inevitably capitalist reformer (outlined by Milbank and others associated with Radical Orthodoxy) —have emerged nearly simultaneously with extremely limited cross-conversation or acknowledgment. Even among the growing number of Protestant scholars engaging gift theory Milbank’s thesis connecting Protestant grace and capitalism is rarely, if ever, highlighted.^[4] In some cases where gift theory is engaged, Protestant theologians and historians proudly and unambiguously wave the banner of the “free gift.” In other cases, Protestant theologians take Milbank’s critique of the free gift seriously, but often without acknowledging the economic stakes. The arguments of Milbank and Radical Orthodoxy are philosophically compelling and—unlike those of Weber—theologically sophisticated. They call for serious engagement from any Protestant scholar concerned about ecological and economic justice.

One of Milbank’s most persuasive arguments is that the Protestant gift/exchange dualism has saturated modern Western society so that it emerges as authoritative even where the dualism’s confessional roots would be rejected. The work of philosopher Jacques Derrida emerges as a key example. With the help of Derrida’s logical rigor, Milbank argues the dualism is finally pushed to its logical conclusion: nihilism. By remaining committed to the purity of the gift without exchange, Derrida ends up demonstrating that the gift itself, although highly desirable, is impossible since even simple recognition of a gift by the donee is a return gift to the donor, rendering the gift an exchange rather than a pure gift.^[5]

This chapter will outline a widespread and uncritical dependence in the Protestant tradition on the characterization of grace as a free, nonreciprocal gift, followed by an articulation of Milbank’s and others’ analysis of the ways the free gift is intimately interconnected to three particular ideological foundations of capitalism: separative indivi-dualism (through a self/other, inside/outside dualism), commodi-fication, and secularism. The chapter will also examine Milbank’s critique of Derrida, outlining the sense in which Derrida’s gift seems to merely interrupt a cycle of exchanges from the outside. Finally, we will examine what Milbank fails to acknowledge: Derrida’s counter-capitalist tendencies in what he calls “general economy.” In reading Milbank and Derrida critically together, we will find that Milbank’s position resonates with a capitalist economy more than he acknowledges and that Derrida’s counter-economy may offer important insights of its own for a Protestant rearticulation of an unconditioned gift not absolutely opposed to exchange.

Eco/nomy and Grace

The Lutheran ethical, theological, and historical scholars highlighted in the previous chapter have focused primarily on issues of socioeconomic concern. Awareness is increasing, though, that any economic analysis must also take into account ecological concerns alongside the social since humans are fully interdependent with and embedded in other-than-human creation. However, this shift proves precarious for the Reformation theological tradition. Frequently, the story of the Reformation is told in terms of a protest and prophetic rejection of the overly economized, overly exchangist soteriology of medieval piety. In opposing economies in this way the doctrine of grace claims soteriological space outside exchange. This story easily slides into a general opposition of grace and exchange. Opposing grace to economies and exchange is not nearly as precarious if one only attends to economic concerns. However, embracing ecological concerns complicates the Reformation narrative of grace opposed to exchange since ecological relations prove exchangist at the most basic, sustaining levels of life. Consequently, through an otherwise admirable concern for economic justice, the old antagonism between grace and exchange threatens a resurgence.

Free Gift without Reciprocity or Exchange

Since the publication of The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies in 1924, Mauss’s influence has exceeded the bounds of socio-anthropology, sparking important conversations in theology about divine and human giving practices. Church historian Berndt Hamm’s recent essay describing the Protestant doctrine of grace in terms of Mauss’s gift theory is a prime example. Like Lindberg and Torvend, Hamm describes the unique aspects of Luther’s concept of gift by contrasting it with medieval piety and economic practices. Hamm takes the contrast one step further though, arguing that Luther’s concept of the gift was innovative, unique, and historically unprecedented. He describes Luther’s theology as a “quantum leap” that “developed new criteria for what a gift in its absolute sense really is: a pure giving without the least reciprocal gift, as is only realized in God’s gift of grace.”^[6] For Hamm, this concept of gift was “absolutely never anticipated in the history of religions.”^[7]

In The Gift, Hamm argues, Mauss identifies an ancient and pervasive tendency to assume that every gift deserves and requires a gift in return. Hamm explains that this “primary religious’’ tendency shaped the history of Christianity from its beginnings but came into heightened focus in the Middle Ages.^[8] In this primary religious tendency, both God and creatures are bound to continual relations of debt and obligation to one another. As such, there remains “no such thing as an unconditional gift or grace, no behavior without punishment and no pardon without reparations and atonement.”^[9] For Hamm then, Luther’s concept of gift, which he describes as “free” of exchange and “a pure giving without the least reciprocal gift,” emerged in the world as unprecedented.^[10]

Hamm does not relent in his insistence that Luther and the reformers held steadfastly to the essential character of grace as nonreciprocal, uncooperative, pure, and free-of-exchange. He ensures that his audience understands that this revolutionary concept of gift was not a matter of peripheral significance or one point of reform among others for Luther but remained solidly central in all of his reform work.^[11] This was also true for other key Reformation leaders:

if there was a truth criterion of content for theology and church in the reformation of, say, a Luther, Melanchthon, Zwingli, Bucer, Bugenhagen, Brenz, Bullinger or Calvin . . . then it was the teaching of salvation, under the aegis of a theology of justification, as “pure gift without a gift in return.” At stake in this statement was the very center and entirety of the Evangelical raison d’etre.^[12]

For the reformers, Hamm insists, the gift was nothing if not free and without this unique concept of gift the reformation movement was insignificant.

According to Hamm, the radical nature of Luther’s concept of gift can best be appreciated by seeing that Luther’s understanding of grace was opposed to the two major forms of medieval piety. The first major form of medieval piety that Luther rejected compared relation to God with commercial exchange and explicitly used economic metaphor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Protestant Ghosts and the Spirits of Capitalism: Ecology, Economy, and the Protestant Tradition
• Inheriting the Free Gift: Economic and Ecological Implications
• Ecology of the Gift: The Ecotheologies of Joseph Sittler and Jürgen Moltmann
• The Gift Revisited: Unconditioned and Multilateral
• Communicating Grace
• Toward a “Better Worldliness”
• Bibliography
• Index