Our Starting Point:
Theological Riches & Prudential Shortcomings in OST
Theologically there is much to like in both Basis and FLW. The patristic content of both documents and their focus on the human person as created for a life of communion with God and neighbor offers us a treasure trove of theological insight that compliments not only contemporary Catholic social teaching but also free-market thinkers like von Mises and Hayek who eschew quantitative economic research in favor a broadly anthropological approach. The documents also provide a uniquely Orthodox moral foundation for liberal democracy that will appeal to Western Christians.
When we shift our attention from theological anthropology to policy the situation becomes rather different. Both documents embrace moral arguments and thus public policies that confuse policies prescriptions supported (or at least not condemned) by the moral tradition with the tradition itself.
For example, I think the free market is a very good thing. When I look at the empirical evidence, I’m convinced of this even taking into account the practical and moral shortcomings of capitalism. At the same time, while I think a market economy is compatible with the Church’s moral tradition, it is simply not true to say that the tradition requires a market economy.
To illustrate what I mean, think about monastic life.
Private property is a key element of a market economy. In fact, one way of defining capitalism is as an economic system with robust private property rights guaranteed by law. While monasteries played a role in the development of the free market, in its own internal life there is no right to private property in a monastery because monks and nuns take a vow of poverty. Everything the monastery owns is owned in common under the stewardship of the abbot or abbess. Even if they have a say in how the common goods are used, the members of the community own nothing personally. So Orthodox critics of the free market are correct when they point out that the absence of private property is a hallmark of monastic life rooted in the example of the early Church recorded for us in Acts: “Now all who believed were together, and had all things in common, and sold their possessions and goods, and divided them among all, as anyone had need (2:44-45).
To conclude from this, however, that the Gospel demands some form of socialism is as unwarranted as saying it demands a free market economy because the tradition affirms we are created in the image of God. As with monarchy and democracy, both economic models, or maybe better, both ways of exercising our freedom, find at least some support in the tradition. But, again, the tradition doesn’t require the free market or socialism any more than it requires a monarch or elected representatives.
As we will see, in both documents the distinction between what the tradition allows and what it requires is not always clear. This is especially a problem in FLW where the authors confuse what I assume is their policy preferences with the tradition. In several places, they make obligatory what is, at best, acceptable. They likewise forbid what is allowed or at least tolerated. Doing so I think they offer imprudent guidance in terms of public policy and morality.
Basis however has its own shortcomings. Criticizing FLW’s preference for government social programs that carry risks for liberty, doesn’t let Basis off the hook for that document’s shortcomings. Basis too seems to prefer governmental rather than democratic solutions to social problems. But, you might ask, if the moral tradition doesn’t prioritize one political philosophy or economic model over another, why does this matter?
As I said earlier, social teaching is an attempt to offer a response to moral questions that arise with the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment. To overly simplify, the latter especially emphasized the freedom of the individual relative to the coercive authority of the State. It does seem that while both documents embrace this freedom for the Orthodox Church, they are hesitant to endorse this same freedom for the individual in economic matters. Instead, both documents appeal to the government to enact policies that seek to assure a particular outcome. Exploring this disconnect will be a central theme in these posts.