Looking for the Icon of St. Friedrich
One area of overlap in my personal mixing of economics and faith lies in how to think about theological questions. Friedrich Hayek writes quite persuasively in a number of his works, but especially in The Use of Knowledge in Society, on how markets take the various preferences and knowledge of many individuals and produce a decentralized outcome that is better than any individual could plan on her own. Something of an analogous process seems possible with theology. Let’s assume (I am an economist) that there are 3 ways of answering a theological question or economic question.
Method 1: I make it up. Sitting alone with my choice of reference texts (the Bible, Adam Smith, whatever), I read and allow my own mind to conjure an answer in reaction to the text.
Method 2: Someone else tells me the answer. I phone up an expert (bishop, priest, economist, whomever) and the expert reveals the correct answer.
Neither of these seems satisfactory as a methodology. Self-initiated revelation is unconstrained. Given human nature (fallen, self-interested), it seems like I will soon be developing a theology of self-gratification that isn’t going to deliver any actual spiritual benefit. If I am a church leader I soon create a situation ripe for abuse – special rules, extra money for me and my friends, penance for the rest of you. In the economic sphere, my role as planner (to the extent I can actually enforce my plan on others) leads to more or less the same thing (e.g. Soviet planning and the grand lives of the party elite).
Depending on another human to reveal the truth simply substitutes someone else’s preferences for mine. At least if I am philosopher-king, I am more likely to like the results than if you are.
So, we turn to Method 3: a decentralized, spontaneous order. In the economic sphere we get outcomes that accurately reflect the preferences, resources, and knowledge of all. The market for doctrine comes from relying on the church as a whole to check both the authorities (Method 2) and the individual (Method 1). As Clark Carlton wrote in The Faith: Understanding Orthodox Christianity (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press 1997), p. 176, decisions made on doctrine are made (in Orthodoxy) “on the basis of neither abstract theories nor his own limited, individual experience, but upon the corporate experience of the Church.” My understanding of theological issues is more limited than my understanding of economics, but I believe that many churches can lay claim to something of a similar process, although the weight given to particular actors may be larger or smaller (e.g. the Pope’s role in Catholicism is larger; the individual’s role in many Protestant faiths is larger). (Of course, in theology we have the additional benefit that the Holy Spirit can guide the development of the doctrine. That doesn’t seem definitive, however, since humans end up interpreting the revealed truth and so generally mucking it up as they often do.)
Certainly one of the things about Orthodoxy that hit home with me was the parallels between Hayek’s view of spontaneous orders and the Orthodox view of theological “progress” in which it takes the collective experience of the Church to define the faith. (Surely Fr. M will chime in here and give a more nuanced description of the Orthodox process – I’m clearly working on the “fool” bit perhaps more than is optimal by venturing into theological waters this deep.)
Method 1: I make it up. Sitting alone with my choice of reference texts (the Bible, Adam Smith, whatever), I read and allow my own mind to conjure an answer in reaction to the text.
Method 2: Someone else tells me the answer. I phone up an expert (bishop, priest, economist, whomever) and the expert reveals the correct answer.
Neither of these seems satisfactory as a methodology. Self-initiated revelation is unconstrained. Given human nature (fallen, self-interested), it seems like I will soon be developing a theology of self-gratification that isn’t going to deliver any actual spiritual benefit. If I am a church leader I soon create a situation ripe for abuse – special rules, extra money for me and my friends, penance for the rest of you. In the economic sphere, my role as planner (to the extent I can actually enforce my plan on others) leads to more or less the same thing (e.g. Soviet planning and the grand lives of the party elite).
Depending on another human to reveal the truth simply substitutes someone else’s preferences for mine. At least if I am philosopher-king, I am more likely to like the results than if you are.
So, we turn to Method 3: a decentralized, spontaneous order. In the economic sphere we get outcomes that accurately reflect the preferences, resources, and knowledge of all. The market for doctrine comes from relying on the church as a whole to check both the authorities (Method 2) and the individual (Method 1). As Clark Carlton wrote in The Faith: Understanding Orthodox Christianity (Salisbury, MA: Regina Orthodox Press 1997), p. 176, decisions made on doctrine are made (in Orthodoxy) “on the basis of neither abstract theories nor his own limited, individual experience, but upon the corporate experience of the Church.” My understanding of theological issues is more limited than my understanding of economics, but I believe that many churches can lay claim to something of a similar process, although the weight given to particular actors may be larger or smaller (e.g. the Pope’s role in Catholicism is larger; the individual’s role in many Protestant faiths is larger). (Of course, in theology we have the additional benefit that the Holy Spirit can guide the development of the doctrine. That doesn’t seem definitive, however, since humans end up interpreting the revealed truth and so generally mucking it up as they often do.)
Certainly one of the things about Orthodoxy that hit home with me was the parallels between Hayek’s view of spontaneous orders and the Orthodox view of theological “progress” in which it takes the collective experience of the Church to define the faith. (Surely Fr. M will chime in here and give a more nuanced description of the Orthodox process – I’m clearly working on the “fool” bit perhaps more than is optimal by venturing into theological waters this deep.)
Posted by Andy Morriss on
Friday August 26, 2005 at 4:52pm