Note: This article spotlights the work of Brent Waters, who has been named an individual faculty partner in the Oikonomia Network. It is an excerpt from his recent landmark book, Just Capitalism: A Christian Ethic of Economic Globalization.
The thesis of this chapter is simple and straightforward: humans flourish as individuals and as members of associations that constitute civil society. Therefore, markets and states should be ordered in ways that promote, or at the very least permit, individuals to form and freely participate in associations that collectively sustain a robust civil society. The principal reason why human flourishing occurs within these predominantly noncommercial and nonpolitical associations is because they are not predicated primarily on either exchange or coercion, but on koinonia – or communication…
Communication has come to mean sending, receiving, transmitting and exchanging information or news…Communication, however, has a much richer and more interesting pedigree. It is derived from the Latin communicare, which means “to share.” The word also has a Greek antecedent – koinonia – that, according to Oliver O’Donovan, can be variously translated as “community,” “communion” or “communicate.” For O’Donovan, communication is not merely a descriptive term but ascribes the basic form of social life…A communication is neither a one-way conferral nor a mutual exchange. The object being communicated becomes an “ours” without the parties relinquishing their respective claims. The primary purpose of communicating shared objects is to ground human equality in a specific social nexus, because in relation to God as ultimate creator or origin of these objects, no individual can be the foundation of a communication…
Consequently, reciprocity (as opposed to bestowal, exchange or coercion) encapsulates how koinonia as the basic form of social life is enacted. Reciprocity entails various acts located between unidirectional giving or receiving, roughly equivalent exchange, and exerting or threatening coercion. Moreover, such reciprocal relationships are predicated on an ontological equality among the parties, though often expressed in asymmetrical ways…In short, human associations based on reciprocity cannot be sustained exclusively on benefaction, exchange or coercion.
Civil society comprises differentiated spheres of communication that share “enkaptic relations.” An enkaptic relation requires each sphere to have an internal order that is pertinent to the goods its members are communicating, and they also interact, overlap and are dependent on other differentiated spheres. A family, for example, communicates a wide range of emotional and physical goods, but it also depends on such other external and overlapping spheres as schools, health care facilities and the workplace in order to communicate its internal goods…
O’Donovan uses two critical concepts in explicating a differentiated civil society. The first concept is that of a people. Civil society is not simply an assortment of autonomous individuals, but the outcome of beliefs, customs and associations, of a particular people over time. A people hold in common a perception of a binding good or goods that together they pursue or should pursue. This imaginative construct is not capricious, because it stems from a binding and enduring cultural tradition…
The second concept is that of a locale or place. Territory and borders are decisive features of a people. Goods are communicated at particular places, and boundaries are necessary to differentiate the “you” and the “I” that become a “we.” In short, the physicality of a place is required if goods are to be communicated – a family needs a house in which to reside; material goods and services are produced in a specific location. More expansively, place encompasses the totality of differing communications in which the social spheres cohere in a given locale…
O’Donovan draws on the work of Johannes Althusius who depicts civil society as an affiliation of associations and enkaptic social spheres rather than an alliance of autonomous individuals. This affiliative alignment embodies an inherently social human nature. People cannot live a genuinely human life in isolation from each other, for God has determined that it is not good for any human to be alone. Adam and Eve are together stewards of the garden that God planted. God did not, however, distribute the gifts or goods of creation evenly among human creatures.
As a result, both labor and cooperation are needed to maintain Eden’s fecundity…Given this uneven distribution of gifts, labor and commercial exchanges – markets, if you will – are required for communicating the goods of God’s creation. Since humans are “symbiotic” creatures, the chief task of the state is to support the “purpose of establishing, cultivating and conserving social life,” to the end of sustaining “holy, just, comfortable and happy symbiosis, a life lacking nothing either useful or necessary.” [Quoting Althusius]…
The church is the premier social sphere in which the goods of creation are communicated. The church, therefore, may offer an example of a communicative association that is potentially well suited for meeting the challenges posed by globalization, and perhaps even thriving in a world in which global markets and the emerging market-state are ascendant.
First, the church, through its common life, worship and ministry, is a community centered almost exclusively on reciprocity. The church is not an association based on exchange. One cannot buy the mercy and grace of God nor purchase the forgiveness of those one has wronged…The church is not an association based on coercion. It cannot force people to be baptized or receive the sacrament, and although it may discipline its members…it cannot incarcerate or seize the property of individual Christians…The church is not an association based on charity…The church’s internal life is not centered around unidirectional giving and receiving. Christians do not gather on Sunday morning to only give or receive, but to communicate the good of fellowship that they share together.
Second, the church, through both its theological organizational principles and historical experience, suggests some helpful ways for negotiating the volatility of competitive global markets and diffidence of emerging market-states. In many respects, the church is a unique form of human association. It is a “gathering community,” whose members are drawn from every race and nation. It is an association that cuts across and negates divisive social and political divisions, for unity in and obedience to Christ also entails equality in Christ. The church, then, is an association of second-births rather than first-births, because no one is born into the church, but rather baptized into its koinonia…
The church is also universal, but not homogenous. Although the church is unified in Christ, the expression of its unity is not uniform. Drawing its members from every race and nation does not entail negating their respective particularities and peculiarities. In and through its koinonia, the church is a community of variegated unity, communicating a shared faith in pluriform ways…
In contrast, the state fosters a homogeneous universality. Citizens are more easily and efficiently governed when they share uniform convictions and practices…Markets also tend to encourage universality and homogeneity. The efficient production and consumption of goods and services requires both an economy of scale and uniformity of function…
Both states and markets tend to promote their respective universality and homogeneity as encompassing forms of human association. The danger is that both proffer a partial and misleading understanding of the universal that leads to a destructive goal of creating, paradoxically, homogenous individuals…
The church satisfies this healthy longing for universal association; hence its emphasis on being catholic. Yet unlike the state and markets, its universality is not achieved at the cost of homogeneity…In communicating its inherent goods, the church protects and strengthens both the freedom of individual believers and the unity of the community…
Additionally, the church has endured for over two millennia as a communicative association. Consequently, it has a rich storehouse of practical experience, both good and bad, upon which to draw in light of changing economic and political circumstances…
In regard to the topic of this book, the preceding discussion suggests two important questions: (1) Can the church, as a communicative association, provide some suggestive ways for how other human associations, and more broadly civil society, might resist the universalizing and homogenizing tendencies of markets and the state? (2) Can the church, as a communicative association, provide some suggestive ways for how other human associations, and more broadly civil society, might flourish within the context of a globally integrated economy and emerging market-state?
Citations have been omitted.
Excerpted from Just Capitalism: A Christian Ethic of Economic Globalization. © 2016 Brent Waters. Used by permission of Westminster John Knox Press. All rights reserved.
Brent Waters, Jerre and Mary Joy Stead Professor of Christian Social Ethics, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
