Book Briefs: October 7, 1983

Capitalism: For Good Or Evil?

Evangelicals agree that Christians have a duty to love and care for the poor, the downtrodden, and the oppressed. However, there is widespread debate within the evangelical community over the proper means to this end. Liberals and conservatives alike claim moral and rational superiority for their methodologies. In recent years, the tide seems to have shifted toward the political Left.

The leftist bias of the National Council of Churches and several mainline Protestant churches has long been suspected and was recently documented by Reader’s Digest and CBS’s “60 Minutes.”

The proportion of evangelicals who are willing to endorse left-wing political and economic programs has been growing. What is the catalyst turning traditionally conservative and moderate Christians toward the Left? According to Ronald Nash, the Left has captured the attention of evangelicals under false pretenses. Deftly utilizing Christian rhetoric, the Left has made serious inroads into the evangelical community under the rubric of “social justice,” an ill-defined term that entails a “large, powerful and paternalistic state.”

In classical political thought, justice implied harmony and balance.

For Plato, a properly ordered soul was a just soul ¡similarly, a properly ordered state was a just state. In such a regime, every person did the work that he was best suited for, thus maximizing his contribution to the city-state. Reward was given according to merit, and each received what he deserved. Equality prevailed among equals, and inequality reigned among unequals.

Aristotle went even further and introduced the concepts of universal justice (justice as virtue) and particular justice (justice as fairness).

According to Nash, justice has been torn from its classical and biblical bearings and has been narrowly redefined as social justice, which simply translates into economic and social leveling. Nash ably attacks this distorted modern notion of justice and the socialist economic program that it entails. We seem to have forgotten that in biblical and classical literature, justice serves “several functions ranging from its use as a synonym for righteousness to more particular usages in which people receive their due in commercial, remedial and distributive situations.”

Concerned Christians not only must have a proper understanding of justice but must also be informed about political and economic affairs. Nash writes, “If a Christian wishes to make pronouncements on complex social, economic and political issues, he also has a duty to become informed about those issues.” Good intentions are not sufficient; only sound economic principles are capable of truly aiding the indigent.

Capitalism is often accused of being in opposition to Jesus’ message and mission. “Capitalism is supposed to be unchristian because it is supposedly a system that gives a predominant place to greed and other unchristian values. On the other hand, socialism is thought to encourage basic Christian values.…” It is refreshing to see an evangelical scholar join the ranks of those arguing on behalf of free-market capitalism. Recently, such scholars as George Gilder (Wealth and Poverty) and Michael Novak (The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism) have attempted to redeem capitalism and demonstrate that it is the most moral, effective, and equitable means of providing economic prosperity for mankind. This book circulates that message to the evangelical community.

Nash shows that “capitalism is not inherently immoral.” All economic systems are amoral, only people are moral or immoral. He argues that more attention should be paid to the positive moral contributions fostered by capitalism. He concedes that capitalism can be used for immoral ends, but he asserts that socialism “contains far more potential for evil.”

He also maintains that free-market capitalism is the most rational means of aiding the poor. It has succeeded in providing mankind with a higher standard of living than any other system ever devised. Socialist systems have proven to do more harm than good due to the fact “that before society can have enough to distribute among the needy, a sufficient quantity of goods must be produced. By focusing all their attention on who gets what, defenders of the welfare state promote policies that severely restrict production.”

He concludes that “no Christian need be ashamed to count himself a defender of capitalism.” To do otherwise means to support an inferior economic system that harms the poor and thus runs counter to our Christian duty. “The belief that the welfare state is an indispensable means to social justice is a myth whose time has passed.”

A note of caution to the unwary reader: One should not attempt to equate biblical and classical notions of justice. Admittedly, there are points of similarity, but to assume that they are synonymous without substantiating argument is troublesome. Nash often stresses the classical notion of justice at the expense of a biblical notion. Perhaps a carefully defined biblical notion of justice was beyond the scope of this book, but it is nonetheless necessary if one is to evaluate adequately modern notions of justice.

This short volume provides us with a well-argued polemic against leftist political rhetoric while it praises the merits of a free market system. It is a book that liberals must refute to maintain credibility, and a book that conservatives would be wise to study carefully if they desire better to articulate and defend their position.

Social Justice and the Christian Church, by Ronald Nash (Mott Media; 1983). Reviewed by David L. Weeks, assistant professor of political science, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, California.

What’S Wrong With Darwinism?

What do the emerging information/service-based economy, experimentation in recombinant genetics, fundamentalist attacks on evolution, the boom in electronic games, and the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead have in common?

According to Jeremy Rifkin’s latest book, Algeny, published this spring, a lot. Each is a sign either of the decay of the old Darwinian cosmology or of the growth of the algenic one replacing it.

The reason the human race is currently despoiling the environment, tolerating hazardous working conditions, and finding meaning in acquiring things is because of Darwinism, asserts Rifkin—who now heads a Washington lobby, the Foundation on Economic Trends. Darwinism enables industrial man to celebrate the survival of the fittest, to expend massive efforts to “perfect” nature, and to believe that such strivings are necessary if society is to progress and the economy is to grow.

Rifkin, a student activist in the sixties, questions these Darwinian assumptions on both intellectual and practical grounds. A brilliant writer, he is convincing as he uses the best and latest scientific sources. But the problem with the death of any world view is the need for an invention of an acceptable alternative. Although society is still in the process of doing this, Rifkin tries his hand anyway.

What does Rifkin see around him, around us, that will provide an alternative to an evolutionary cosmology?

Algeny is a word Rifkin borrows from Joshua Lederburg, the Nobel laureate biologist and president of the research-dedicated Rockefeller University. It is the concept he uses to order the objects he sees on the horizon. A play on the word alchemy, the medieval attempt to change base metals to gold, “Algeny means to change the essence of a living thing by transforming it [genetically] from one state to another” (p. 17).

Read Rifkin for a lucid analysis of the dilemma that faces mankind in conjoining bioengineering and computer technologies. Read Rifkin for a scratching critique of the shortcomings of Darwinism written graphically in laymen’s language. But turn to life in the Spirit based on the Word of God for the dynamism and the guidance to strive toward a humanly possible future.

Algeny, by Jeremy Rifkin (Viking Press, 1983; 293 pp.). Reviewed by George W. Jones, director, religious programs, Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana.

The Last Self-Help Book

What a relief in an age of narcissistic introspection to find a book that pokes fun at an entire culture preoccupied with the “self.” With sardonic wit and philosophical miscellany, novelist Walker Percy challenges the Zeitgeist of our age in his second work of nonfiction, Lost in the Cosmos. The Roman Catholic author subtitles his volume “The Last Self-help Book.” The designation is ironic because Percy seriously questions whether we can ever know ourselves and is critical of the very attempt to try.

To buttress his skepticism of the Socratic dictum, “Know Thyself,” the author asks the reader why there are “sixteen schools of psychotherapy with sixteen theories of the personality and its disorders and that patients treated in one school seem to do as well or as badly as patients treated in any other—while there is only one generally accepted theory of the cause and cure of pneumococcal pneumonia and only one generally accepted theory of the orbits of the planets and the gravitational attraction of our galaxy …” (p. 6). Percy’s point is that as the workings of the universe are understood more completely, cosmological myths and religious belief systems (such as Christianity) that guarantee the identity of the self lose their credence. The twentieth-century result is that “the self becomes a space-bound ghost which roams the very cosmos it understands perfectly” (p. 13).

The author adopts a very loose and constantly changing genre to show us that we are taking ourselves too seriously. The book consists of a mock self-help quiz. Percy poses 20 questions with didactic overtones intending, perhaps, to prod the reader to theistic answers. Along the way he couples the cultural cynicism of Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., with the Christian world view of Flannery O’Connor and Malcolm Muggeridge. Lost in the Cosmos contains essays, science fiction, one-liners, charts, a script for “The Last Donahue Show,” and letters to “Dear Abby.” Percy uses these tools to critique everything our culture has to offer. The final product is a provocative look at a generation that in the end can only say, I am, therefore I am. Speaking as a modern-day writer of Ecclesiastes, the author offers not the last self-help book but the first polemic intended to crush thoroughly the Enlightenment notion of the autonomous self.

Undoubtedly the book has more significance than value. Percy’s musings will probably end up being humorous despair for the avant-garde instead of a primer for the Christian faith. While the author does not actually suggest that man can make sense of life in the cosmos through faith in God, he leaves the reader with virtually no alternative.

Lost in the Cosmos, by Walker Percy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 262 pp.; $14.95). Reviewed by Reed Jolley, pastor, Santa Barbara Community Church, Santa Barbara, California.

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