Paul and property destruction
Dan has posted his second post regarding violence in the NT, this time focusing on Paul.
Before getting into my (brief) comments about his argument, I need to clarify that I need to modify my stance from my previous post. While I still stand by my readings of the Gospels, in the abstract I can’t really avoid his larger point that, in some cases, it is morally right to violate the legal property rights of others. At least, it seems hard to condemn such actions as peaceful marches or sit-ins, so I need to retract the rigidness of my previous position.
Dan’s post is interesting; there are many things I disagree with (his position on the authorship of the Pauline letters and the concomitant view of NT history that it assumes, his universalist reading of Paul, etc.), but I’m just going to focus on the one argument he made from Acts regarding property destruction.
The argument this time highlights the economic consequences of one of the exorcisms that Paul performed: because he exorcised a powerful possessed woman, those who were profiting from her demonic abilities lost income.
I think a few important moral features of this episode should be highlighted:
1) Paul did not, absolutely speaking, do anything. In the wider scheme of NT theology (I’d say, even within Acts), it’s clear that exorcism only works because Jesus acts through his disciples to cast out these demons. And just looking at what happened, this seems fairly clear: all Paul did was issue a command. But he’s just a human being; obviously something more had to be involved for such incredible effects to come about. But since this is the case, Paul’s act is morally closer to a prayer than anything: he only spoke, and God answered.
2) Paul also did not, strictly speaking, take anyone’s income. The loss of income was a side-effect of the good act he did perform, which was liberating a human being from the power of Satan. Once we are out of the realm of direct actions and into the realm of indirect consequences, partly contingent on the free actions of others, however, morally things become more complicated.
3) In performing this exorcism, Paul was carrying out the NT equivalent of holy war (Dan pointed out some of the NT texts which express this). But holy war was always regulated by different ethics than regular wars: holy wars were aggressive (not defensive) divinely initiated. This is the kind of “War” that exorcism is a part of: it is not regulated by normal just war principles. In the case of spiritual warfare, the church does not need to wait until specific persecution by spiritual powers to go on the offensive; rather, the church has a standing order to demolish every stronghold and every demonic power it can.
4) Further, following on the previous point, such an all-out war against the powers must necessitate economic consequences. The NT theology of the powers, while deeply personal (in that the powers are intelligences, not just ideologies or forces), is also surely systemic: the powers have arranged the socio-political world largely as it is, including all the systemic injustice, evil, and idolatry we see in it. But this means, if God has given us carte blanche to attack such a structure, he has given us permission to do so despite whatever short term economic losses might come about because of success in that war.
However, all of this said, two positive points must be made about Dan’s case:
1) He has clearly shown us a sense in which the church can bring about political and economic change through spiritual means; conversely, this implies that spirituality and politics cannot, in the end, ever be separated in the real world.
2) He has shown us an instance where a private Christian acted rightly and placed the good of a person over the good of others’ property. While this is true, however, we do need to remember the specific moral context and features of this story. This event does not give Christians permission to ignore all property rights en toto. Only relevantly morally analogous situations are proven to be right by this scenario.
In sum: this was an interesting argument, and does need to be included in our moral reasoning somehow, though with careful attention to the specific features of the story. I remain unconvinced, however, that this story legitimates more reckless and destructive acts like firebombing banks or bombing condominium developments.
A few quick thoughts:
(1) I don’t engage in a universalist reading of Paul in that post. I simply point out that parts of his writings “leave the door open” for the universalists to a greater degree than the Jesus stories. (Again, Andrew, I emphasize the need to read carefully — I write carefully and expect the same respect from the reader!)
(2) Saying that Paul didn’t do anything, but arguing that “exorcism only works because Jesus acts through his disciples to cast out these demons” doesn’t get you very far. Then we just get another example of Jesus engaging in the destruction of property.
(3) Sure, Paul’s ultimate objective wasn’t to damage another person’s income. But that’s a pretty banal observation as “liberating a human being from the power of Satan” necessarily required damage to be done to another person’s income in this situation. To argue otherwise is to do away with your own concluding remarks about the integrated nature of the spiritual and the economic.
(4) Your two points about “holy war” don’t seem to challenge my position but, in fact, appear to strengthen it. Again, remembering the integrated nature of the spiritual and the economic, I could mention any number of banks that are “strongholds” and exercise a very “demonic” (i.e. death-dealing) influence over people… so I’m not sure why these points aren’t listed amongst the two other “positive points” that you highlights.
Dan:
1) What would you regard as a universalistic reading? I suppose I was inferring that you were understating your point rhetorically, given that the texts you quoted do not contain hypotheticals. It would seem that if you regard the “alls” in those texts as truly universal (which you must do if you think they in fact leave the door open for universalism), then you must regard universalism as taught by Paul, since he includes no “maybe” in those texts. But I admit I didn’t make any such qualifications in my off-hand remark about this. I do know from past discussions, however, that you are a “hopeful” universalist of the variety of Barth and Balthasar, and that you do in fact read Paul this way (you criticized a post of mine on my old blog for reading Romans incorrectly on this front).
2) I’m fine with that. My argument before was that Jesus has rights over persons and property that we do not.
3) Sure, it may be banal.
4) Yes, I agree that in a sense they strengthen your argument. At this point I would suggest that careful reading of my post would show I didn’t list the 4 original points as direct criticisms of you, but just as points of moral significance that needed to be highlighted
.
Re: (2)
But if Jesus “has rights over persons and property that we do not” but then exercises those rights through the actions of his disciples after his ascension (as he does through Paul in this case), that seems to undermine your point.
Not exactly. At least I don’t think so. I grant that Jesus has bestowed some authorities on us (like the right to pray, and the power to cast out demons), but that doesn’t mean he has granted all of his rights to us. But I already agreed that your example from Paul means we can do the same thing in morally similar situations.
I would point out one other issue, regarding my (4): it does seem to me that a direct attack on a bank is in the category of holy war on “flesh and blood”, and not on “spiritual forces”. A piece of property is not a demon/power any more than a human being is (in fact, it seems closer to a human being than a demon). Of course, property is caught up in the systems organized by demonic forces, but so are people, and we are both agreed that our obligation to fight the holy war against the powers does not imply we can fight holy war against flesh and blood, ala the OT (and indeed, the OT holy wars included deliberate destruction of all property as part of its war on the flesh and blood). So I would just reiterate something I said implicitly before: this argument only serves to prove that we can do similar things in morally similar situations to Paul, but one feature of this event is that Paul only spiritually (by means of spiritually authoritative words) acted on a spiritual being (a demon).
Also, I see now that my “however” in the original post was misleading in that it implied more of a contrast than I intended in writing the points. So your misunderstanding was my fault.
I grant that Jesus has bestowed some authorities on us (like the right to pray, and the power to cast out demons), but that doesn’t mean he has granted all of his rights to us.
John might disagree with you. I quote:
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven (John 20.21-23).
That’s one helluva statement, eh? I’m curious how you make it fit your position.
Further, given that you seem to want to read the NT as if all the texts are easily made to fit with all the other texts, I can recall Jesus’ final words in Matthew’s Gospel (“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me…” [Mt 28.18-20]), and I’m not sure if that leaves you with much to go by.
Regarding John’s statement:
1) The statement about forgiveness means that the apostles in some sense determine the boundaries of the church.
2) Their reception of the Spirit means God lives and works within them, partly (apparently) to authorize them to determine the boundaries of the church.
I’m not sure how that’s directly relevant to your argument, though perhaps you have a different interpretation. What do you think it means?
Regarding the preamble to the Great Commission: Jesus does not state that he has given all authority in heaven and on earth to the disciples, so I’m not clear how this supports your view either.
And I still think there’s a real challenge to your argument that if Jesus has the authority to do something, we do: the Gospels and Revelation (arguably, I realize) suggest that Jesus was the ultimate agent behind the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans (insofar as AD 70 was a “coming” of the Son of Man, (or a demonstration thereof, so that in it people will “see” his coming) and that figure alludes to Daniel 7 with its ascension of the Messiah to the throne, the suggestion seems to be that AD 70 is a consequence of his beginning to reign; I think Revelation confirms this reading). But certainly by a pacifist reading (and by the kind of anti-revolutionary reading of Jesus’ teachings I would agree with), we are not permitted to sack cities to bring in the kingdom of God. So you have to agree with my principle in the abstract, it would seem, unless you don’t accept my premise here.
But I’m not sure how worthwhile these questions are, given that I’ve agreed in the abstract that sometimes property violations are morally right. I even thought of an example myself the other day: the Hebrew midwives response to Pharaoh, among other things, was a justified property violation, insofar as the Pharaoh claimed property rights over all the Hebrews and they defied him. (At least, it seems to confirm the possible rightness of such actions in the abstract.) Probably the discussion could move on to more productive avenues at this point…
If you don’t like my AD 70 argument, another might be: Christians are commanded in the NT not to lord it over one another, but Jesus is indeed our Lord and so rules over us rightly.
1) The statement about forgiveness means that the apostles in some sense determine the boundaries of the church.
2) Their reception of the Spirit means God lives and works within them, partly (apparently) to authorize them to determine the boundaries of the church.
I definitely did not expect this answer. It’s so far away from anything that can be found in the actual text, and I’m unaccustomed to reading such heavily theologically overcoded exegesis that I just didn’t anticipate it. There is no way that the limitations you impose (i.e. this is about church boundaries) defensible based upon John’s text.
Isn’t this a parallel to the Synoptic texts regarding binding and loosing? Here’s what Yoder taught me about those:
A. Two aspects of meaning. There are clearly two dimensions to the meaning of these verbs;
(1) Forgiveness: to “bind” is to withhold fellowship, to “loose” is to forgive. This is supported by the parallel texts in Luke 17:3 (based in turn on Lev. 19:17; note the other elements in Luke 17:14 that are also parallel to Matt. 18:14 and 18:21-22) and in John 20:25 [I submit this is obviously a typo, and that Yoder was referring to John 20:23, which you quoted, as v. 25 has absolutely nothing to do with this topic--AF]. It is supported as well by the other portions of Matthew 18 (10-14, the hundredth sheep; 21-22, seventy times seven; 23-35, the umerciful servant).
(2) Moral discernment: To “bind” is to enjoin, to forbid or make obligatory; to “loose” is to leave free, to permit… .
This was the current, precise technical meaning that the terms “bind” and “loose” (i.e., their Aramaic equivalents) probably had in the language of the rabbis of Jesus’ time. Moral teaching and decision making in Judaism took the form of rulings by the rabbis on problem cases brought to them, either “binding” or “loosing” depending on how they saw the Law applying to each case. (John Howard Yoder, “Binding and Loosing”, in my version as a reprint in The Royal Priesthood 327-328.)
So, I’m not sure where you see the problem with my view here. Yoder clearly thinks this passage is about the same binding and loosing themes, and explains that “binding” and “loosing” had the meaning in Jesus’ Jewish context of granting or withholding fellowship, which is the same thing as determining the boundaries of the church. I only assume that Jesus’ mentioning this aspect of the disciples duties immediately after telling them to receive the Holy Spirit was intended to connect their duty with this indwelling of God, or in other words, to promise that the Spirit would “bind in heaven” what they bound on earth.
So, if I have an overcoded reading, it’s one that’s overcoded by Jesus’ rabbinic context and one of the greatest Anabaptist pacifist theologians in the history of the church
The only way in which I can imagine you didn’t expect my reading is in that I applied it directly to the apostles. But in the text itself it’s actually only directed to those who were in the upper room with Jesus, not the whole church. It is true that in other texts this is applied to the whole church, but I think the NT documents bear out that the apostles (12 and Paul, and a handful of others) had a unique authority over the church. Perhaps it’s that you are questioning.
However, I don’t see how any of this is relevant to the overall point; even if it does apply to the whole church (which, again, is not in the text you mentioned), that doesn’t imply that Jesus has granted all of his authority to the church. Again, to reiterate my previous question: isn’t it true that Jesus is Lord over the church in a way that we are forbidden to attempt to be? Can we start making commands of people that must be obeyed simply because we say so?
It is a fundamental confusion in the first place to chalk this up as a violation of another person’s property rights. The person who profited off of the woman’s trouble was not in any way violated, stolen from, etc., through Paul’s action. I don’t mean that Paul did nothing directly to the man; I mean that the complete end result, indirect effects INCLUDED, did not constitute a violation of his property. We do not own a particular profit margin, or a particular asking price for the products we sell. We own the thing itself, but we are not entitled to receive any particular compensation for it. We might WANT to sell our widgets for 100 dollars a piece, and we might have successfully found buyers at that price before, but if today all we can get for them is 50 dollars, then that is not a violation of property rights.
If we cure cancer and the average life expentancy rises to 90 years, then undertakers will take a hit in their long-term prospects. Some will undoubtedly go under. This will be no fun for them, but it won’t be wrong or any kind of moral problem. It would make no sense to say that curing cancer “violated” the property rights of undertakers who couldn’t stay in business after the cure was discovered and propagated. The entire question is a bad set-up (“Is it ok to choose good over people’s property rights?”)
If all people were suddenly completely uninterested in eating food from McDonald’s, then McDonald’s would find that it could not give its food away, its profits would evaporate and turn to severe losses, and the entire corporation would (before long) go bankrupt. All of this would be no fun for the people at McDonald’s, but it would be perfectly legitimate and no violation of anyone’s property would have taken place.
Xon,
Your widgets analogy doesn’t work. What Paul does is damage the previously existing exchange-value of the slave. Further, the example of the undertakers and McDonald’s also do not work because you are missing the fundamental way in which slaves were legally (and usually morally and ontologically) considered property, not people, within Graeco-Roman society. A more appropriate analogy would be to think of a person who owns a car and makes his money by driving tourists around. Imagine, then, somebody coming in and doing something to that car so that it could no longer be used for this purpose. Oh dear, right?
Additionally, it is worth pointing at the the authorities basically agree with the property-owners. They punish Paul accordingly (the mob actually isn’t wrong when they say that Paul and Silas are advocating customs “unlawful for Romans to practice” — if others wanted to treat slaves in the same way, the economic system of the Empire, and the Empire itself, could end up collapsing).
Dan,
I think Xon does have a point here. The current market price of an object is not something an owner owns when he owns a piece of property, and that’s because the market’s price is just the subjective valuations of the property by others (but property owners don’t own their customers or their values). At least, it seems that way to me at the moment…
Though, my point here would be avoided if I recognized that you meant not that Paul damaged the property value, but the thing that gave it that property value…
Dan,
As a more general point, I get the feeling that part of our disagreement might come down to what kind of economic disparity between rich and poor we consider morally acceptable. At this point I’m not sure if you consider any at all acceptable, which would ipso facto make any person or organization whose actions assume the contrary part of the death dealing system.
On the other hand, I don’t think complete economic equality is a requirement of moral justice, though I think the elimination of some absolute forms of poverty (starvation, nakedness, lack of shelter, along with other direct violations of people’s rights, like kidnapping and trafficking) are so required. If I’m right about your views, we are going to have very different views of what kind of people and institutions are relevantly analogous to the slave owners here, and probably the most interesting discussion should be directed to that front, if and when you’d like to engage in it.
I think that some disparity is fine. Some people, after all, are quite happy to live with very little or nothing (ascetics, monastics, those who choose to be transient or homeless for moral reasons, and so on).
OK. That means, at least, that we are not as far apart philosophically as I thought.
I suppose then the question becomes: how do we determine when disparity is a result of injustice? The reasoning you gave for your answer here might suggest you only think disparity is permissible if the relatively poor wouldn’t wish to have the goods of others. Did you mean to suggest that?
I guess the obvious first answer would be if the disparity is a result of direct coercive expropriation by the powerful of the weak. Do you think there are other possible answers? I suppose another case where the wealthy would be morally obligated to act would be when the poor are so by no fault of their own; however I’m not sure at the moment how that would be relevant to our broader discussion here.
I don’t know where to with this line of discussion at this point; I need to think about it some more. Feel free to comment on what you think the crux of the disagreement might be…