Philip Goodchild on theology and money

Flirting with money

Lysande text från The Other Journal om vår samtids syn på pengar. Ett synsätt som kan sammanfattas med Kierkegaards devis "Pleasure disappoints, possibility never".

"The problem is not that we want too many material things; it’s that we want the possibility of all material things without having to actualize any of them. The problem is that money has become, itself, the object of our desire, despite the fact that money is itself nothing but only a representation of the value of something else. Our desire for money, then, is a desire for flirtation."

"From the perspective of real love or goodness, to add is to subtract, because the moral life requires a commitment to the actual, an acceptance of a given person or action that is not infinitely interchangeable, returnable, or amenable to second-guessing. Actuality is the enemy of possibility. To be married is to give up the potentially infinite possibility of romantic partners, to assist one person is to use up resources that could possibly be used for an infinite variety of goods. The flirtatious aesthete thrives on the additive—the more possibility, the better—while avoiding the subtraction that comes with actualizing particular determinations and commitments: “The infinite possibility is precisely the interesting.”

"To think about and use money rightly, then, is to think about and use it as an instrumental good that is always ordered to an end that is not intrinsic to itself."

Om pengars transcendens

Jag läste nyligen The Politics of Discipleship av Graham Ward. (Rekommenderas varmt!) Ward påminner där om att alla politiska föreställningar vilar på, eller implicerar, någon form av metafysik. Dessa, oftast implicita, föreställningar kan antingen vara goda och fostra mänskligt välstånd och välbefinnande, eller skadliga genom att de förminskar vad det innebär att vara människa.

Ward menar att till exempel globalisering och kapitalism är korrumperade kopior av den kristna berättelsen, som istället för att ta det materiella på allvar enbart försöker att transcendera dem. Frågan som Ward ställer är vilken underliggande antropologi eller metafysik som ligger bakom tidens trender och förhärskande berättelser. För Ward handlar ett kristet lärjungaskap om att kritiskt granska och avslöja dessa underliggande teologiska och metafysiska antaganden.

"The politics of Christian discipleship is about first unmasking the theological and metaphysical sources of current mythologies and revealing the distortions and perversions of their current secularized forms. Then we need to reread and rewrite the Christian tradition back into contemporary culture."[1]

En teolog som tycks ta Wards uppmaning på allvar är Philip Goodchild som nyligen skrivit Theology of Money. I en intressant artikel om sin bok skriver Goodchild:

"Modern economics and politics—and even, to some extent, sociology—are based on the idea of human freedom. And they intend to advise us on the choices that we make. But they are ill-equipped for understanding money because transcendent obligations are put aside from the start, and confined to the sphere of ‘religion’ or ‘superstition.’"

"An implicit agenda of the book is to propose that theology must become a critical engagement with the actual fundamental forces and structures that shape our lives, rather than simply a reflection upon past traditions, or an impotent recommendation of ideals that itself presupposes humanism as the power to realise such ideals. In this respect, a rather tentative proposal for institutional reform of money, banking, credit, and evaluation is part of the new theological agenda."

Det låter väl spännande!? Överst på 2010 års läslista står nu Phillip Goodschilds Theology of Money. Det finns dessutom en intressant diskussion om boken att delta i här!

För fler teologer som nyligen tagit sig an marknaden och ekonomin ur ett teologiskt perspektiv, se D. Stephen Long och William Cavanaugh.

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[1] Graham Ward, The Politics of Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Baker Academics, 2009). s.165