Theologians From England

"Human experience has pronounced "black magic" a delusion. Its practice is criminal folly: criminal because its objective is evil, folly because the means employed are futile."

"There has been the assumption that men are finite spirits. They are, that is to say, not only animals with a brief terrestrial existence, but in them is an element which comes from, and belongs to, the spiritual world. This world we postulate to be the world of eternal reality, of God; and we assume that in it whatever is of God, the things that are good, beautiful and true, will exist for ever with Him. We have then, to justify our belief that, because such God-like qualities exist in human personality, that personality will survive the destruction of the body."

"Barnes was notorious for delivering what the press called his "guerilla sermons," in which he pointed out the need for the church to be honest in admitting how much of its traditional dogma would have to be abandoned if evolution theory was accepted. Even a progressionist, teleological evolutionism required a reinterpretation of the doctrine of original sin. To begin with, Barnes said little about the actual process of evolution, but he seems to have assumed that it was purposeful and aimed at the production of higher mental states. In 1930, though, he obtained a copy of R. A. Fisher's Genetical Theory of Natural Selection and began a correspondence with Fisher, who had studied under him while a student at Cambridge. Barnes was one of the few clergymen who could actually understand Fisher's mathematics (although even he admitted that it was hard going)... He did not concede that the selection theory offered a complete explanation, and he continued to believe that evolution was intended to produce beings with higher mental and spiritual qualities, but he was now aware that the more simpleminded forms of teleology were unacceptable."

"The astonishing thing about Einstein's equations is that they appear to have come out of nothing."

"The conclusion seems to be irresistible that such laws of nature as the principle of conservation of energy, the principle of conservation of momentum and the law of gravitation are necessary consequences of our modes of measurement. They are, in fact, elaborately disguised identities which could have been predicted a priori by a being of sufficiently powerful analytical insight who fully understood all that is implied in the way we measure space-time intervals."

"The philosophical consequences of the General Theory of Relativity are perhaps more striking than the experimental tests. As Bishop Barnes has reminded us, "The astonishing thing about Einstein's equations is that they appear to have come out of nothing." We have assumed that the laws of nature must be capable of expression in a form which is invariant for all possible transformations of the space-time co-ordinates and also that the geometry of space-time is Riemannian. From this exiguous basis, formulae of gravitation more accurate than those of Newton have been derived. As Barnes points out..."

"Our own attitude to intercourse with "spirits" must be determined not by the authority of great teachers of the 13th or any other century, but by our examination in the light of the best secular knowledge of our time of the revelation of spiritual truth given by Christ."

"The Roman Catholics were already prominent in the debate on abortion in Britain in the 1930s. It is notable, for example, that only two religious groups were keen to give evidence before the Inter-Departmental Committee in Abortion between 1937 and 1939 or sent written statements to the Committee. One was the Modern Churchmen's Union, and in particular its most prominent supporter, though not a member, Ernest William Barnes, the Anglican Bishop of Birmingham, which was concerned to advance the cause of abortion on eugenic grounds, and the other was the Roman Catholics... No representatives of the Protestant Nonconformist Churches took part or made statements (Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee 1939)"

"Although he was trained in mathematics and was not a biblical scholar... Barnes, undertook to write a book about the origins of the Christian religion. Published in 1947, The Rise of Christianity caused a stir because it was so frankly dismissive of traditional Christian dogma, especially the miraculous. In this book, for example, Barnes calls the birth stories "edifying legend." He observes that the roots of the story of the Virgin Birth are "pagan." He questions the dogma of the Logos—the eternal word incarnate in this man, Jesus—set forth in the first chapter of John's Gospel. And he denies the bodily resurrection of Christ. Like Thomas Jefferson, he admires Jesus' character and teaching."

"The only Bishop (Ernest William Barnes...) in the Royal Society appears to have contracted the habit so prevalent among popular scientists of making stupid and unsupported statements... In his book, Scientific Theory and Religion, he tells us that the flatness and fixity of the earth were "taken over into the Christian Creeds." Which creeds? ...he describes as erroneous the "authorized teaching of the Roman Church" regarding the date of creation. What date did the Church authorize? He also refers to the "doctrine of the special creation of the species." There is no such doctrine. Incidentally one of the most eminent of English mathematicians, Professor Whittaker, F.R.S., severely criticizes the mathematical theories that are put forward in this book by Bishop Barnes."

"In general, Protestants of that era [late 1930s] did not object to state involvement in reproductive control; indeed, some of the Protestant Churches had originated as extensions of state power in the first place. Many protestants embraced eugenics as part of a broader trend towards acceptance of the secularization of modern societies. ...Many Protestant theologians were outspoken eugenicists, and some even supported eugenic sterilization: in Britain, William Ralph Inge, the dean of St. Paul's and Ernest William Barnes, the Bishop of Birmingham; in Germany, Hans Harmsen... in Romania, Alfred Csallner... Such direct involvement with eugenics demonstrates that a religiously sanctioned programme of human improvement was possible."

"With a view to recalling Clausen's identity, we begin by introducing the generalized Gaussian and Clausenian hypergeometric function defined, in the notations of Leo Pochhammer and Ernest William Barnes... as already pointed out by Barnes, the generalized hypergeometric function pFq originated with Clausen and was studied, among others, by Johannes Karl Thomae, Édouard Jean-Baptiste Goursat, and Pochhammer whose voluminous work on the subject provides a detailed development of the theory."

"Now the leap by which this reasoning lands us in labour as the sole constituent element of value appears to me so surprising that I am prepared to learn that the yet unpublished portions of Das Kapital contain supplementary or elucidatory matter which may set it in a new light. Meanwhile the analysis appears to be given as complete and adequate, so far as it goes, and I can, therefore, only take it as I find it and try to test its validity. But instead of directly confronting it with what seems to be the true analysis of the phenomenon of exchange, I will follow it out a little further, and we shall see that Marx himself introduces a modification into his result (or develops a half-latent implication in it), in such a way as to vitiate the very analysis on which that result is founded, and to lead us, if we work it out, to what I regard as the true solution of the problem."

"It is true also that Marx elsewhere virtually defines value so as to make it essentially dependent upon human labour (p. 81 [43a]). But for all that his analysis is based on the bare fact of exchangeability. This fact alone establishes Verschiedenkeit and Ghichheit, heterogeneity and homogeneity. Any two things which normally exchange for each other, whether products of labour or not, whether they have, or have not, what we choose to call value, must have that "common something" in virtue of which things exchange and can be equated with each other; and all legitimate inferences as to wares which are drawn from the bare fact of exchange must be equally legitimate when applied to other exchangeable things. Now the "common something," which all exchangeable things contain, is neither more nor less than abstract utility, i.e. power of satisfying human desires. The exchanged articles differ from each other in the specific desires which they satisfy, they resemble each other in the degree of satisfaction which they confer. The Verschiedenheit is qualitative, the Gleichheit is quantitative.It cannot be urged that there is no common measure to which we can reduce the satisfaction derived from such different articles as Bibles and brandy, for instance (to take an illustration suggested by Marx), for as a matter of fact we are all of us making such reductions every day. If I am willing to give the same sum of money for a family Bible and for a dozen of brandy, it is because I have reduced the respective satisfactions their possession will afford me to a common measure, and have found them equivalent. In economic phrase, the two things have equal abstract utility for me. In popular (and highly significant) phrase, each of the two things is worth as much to me as the other.Marx is, therefore, wrong in saying that when we pass from that in which the exchangeable wares differ (value in use) to that in which they are identical (value in exchange), we must put their utility out of consideration, leaving only jellies of abstract labour. What we really have to do is to put out of consideration the concrete and specific qualitative utilities in which they differ, leaving only the abstract and general quantitative utility in which they are identical.This formula applies to all exchangeable commodities, whether producible in indefinite quantities, like family Bibles and brandy, or strictly limited in quantity, like the "Raphaels," one of which has just been purchased for the nation. The equation which always holds in the case of a normal exchange is an equation not of labour, but of abstract utility, significantly called worth. … A coat is made specifically useful by the tailor's work, but it is specifically useful (has a value in use) because it protects us. In the same way, it is made valuable by abstractly useful work, but it is valuable because it has abstract utility."

"But neither can anything we desire be got without money, or what money represents, i.e. without the command of exchangeable things. All the things that we so often say "cannot be had for money" we might with equal truth say cannot be had or enjoyed without it. Friendship cannot be had for money, but how often do the things that money commands enable us to form and develop our friendships! … But even "waiting" requires money, if not so much as marrying does. In fact, a man can be neither a saint, nor a lover, nor a poet, unless he has comparatively recently had something to eat. The things that money commands are strictly necessary to the realisation on earth of any programme whatsoever. The range of things, then, that money can command in no case secures any of those experiences or states of consciousness which make up the whole body of ultimately desired things, and yet none of the things that we ultimately desire can be had except on the basis of the things that money can command. Hence nothing that we really want can infallibly be secured by things that can be exchanged, but neither can it under any circumstances be enjoyed without them."

"Social reformers and legislators will never be economists, and they will always work on economic theory of one kind or another. They will quote and apply such dicta as they can assimilate, and such acknowledged principles as seem to serve their turn. Let us suppose there were a recognised body of economic doctrine the truth and relevancy of which perpetually revealed itself to all who looked below the surface, which taught men what to expect and how to analyse their experience; which insisted at every turn on the illuminating relation between our conduct in life and our conduct in business; which drove the analysis of our daily administration of our individual resources deeper, and thereby dissipated the mist that hangs about our economic relations, and concentrated attention upon the uniting and all-penetrating principles of our study. Economics might even then be no more than a feeble barrier against passion, and might afford but a feeble light to guide honest enthusiasm, but it would exert a steady and a cumulative pressure, making for the truth. While the experts worked on severer methods than ever, popularisers would be found to drive homely illustrations and analogies into the general consciousness; and the roughly understood dicta bandied about in the name of Political Economy would at any rate stand in some relation to truth and to experience, instead of being, as they too often are at present, a mere armoury of consecrated paradoxes that cannot be understood because they are not true, that every one uses as weapons while no one grasps them as principles."

"If we engraft the current meaning of the word "economy" (the avoiding of waste) upon its etymological meaning (the administration of a household), we shall arrive at "the administration of the affairs and resources of a household in such a manner as to avoid waste and secure efficiency" as our conception of "Economy." "Political" Economy would, by analogy, indicate the administration, in the like manner, of the affairs and resources of a State, regarded as an extended household or community, and regulated by a central authority; and the study of Political Economy would be the study of the principles on which the resources of a community should be so regulated and administered as to secure the communal ends without waste."

"Somehow the discussion got around to Gary Becker, and I opined that Gary was also quite a good economist. However, Cordemí began to shake his head in a doleful manner, and I sensed, first, that he did not approve of Becker and, second, that I was losing his respect because of my own good opinion of Becker. Then Cordemí said that Becker’s problem was his lack of originality. This was really a surprise—many people object to Gary because he is outrageous, not because he is unoriginal. Then Cordemí dropped his bombshell: all of Becker’s ideas are in Philip Wicksteed’s book, The Common Sense of Political Economy.After this revelation, I was pretty eager to get home to consult my copy of The Common Sense, which I owned but had not studied. When I read the book, I discovered quickly what Cordemí was referring to. Wicksteed urged his fellow economists to apply economics broadly to a variety of social interactions, not just to usual business matters. However, as far as I could tell, he had not gone anywhere with this idea. Therefore, Gary’s originality seemed to be intact. Nevertheless, I filed away this incident and figured I could use it against Gary at some future time.[…] I figured that I needed to create something of a psychological edge, and I arranged for my younger son, Josh (then eight years old), to be on the tennis court prior to the big match. He was set up to be reading the Common Sense of Political Economy. I figured that Gary would ask Josh what he was reading, and I told Josh to report the author and title and then say, “I understand that you got all your ideas from this fellow.”[…] Gary quickly responded, “Oh, yes, I copied all his work.”"

"In a proto-Austrian manner, Donisthorpe also distinguished between directly useful and indirectly useful goods, and showed how the latter had varying degrees of remoteness from the pleasure-giving stage of goods; in short, Donisthorpe engaged in a sophisticated analysis of the time-structure of production. He also had a pioneering analysis of the influence of substitutes and complements ('co-elements') upon values. While Donisthorpe's discussion of demand curves (i.e. schedules), supply, and price was interesting but hopelessly confused (e.g. he denied that an increased desire of consumers for a product would raise their demand for the product), he did present a remarkably clear foreshadowing of Philip Wicksteed's insight of four decades later that witholding the stock of a product by suppliers really amounts to the suppliers' 'reservation demand' for that product."

"One of the unhappy casualties of World War I, it seems, was the old-fashioned treatise on economic "principles." … Since the brilliant burst that gave us the works of Wicksteed (1910), Taussig (1911), and Fetter (1915), this type of treatise has disappeared from economic thought, and economics has become appallingly fragmented, dissociated to such a degree that there hardly is an economics any more; instead, we find myriad bits and pieces of uncoordinated analysis."

"PHILIP HENRY WICKSTEED, the author of the Common Sense of Political Economy and the other works collected in these volumes, was one of the most remarkable intellectual figures of the half-century which has just past. He was a leading member of the Unitarian ministry. He was one of the foremost mediæval scholars of his time. He was an economist of international reputation. He was a savant who made contributions of permanent value to highly technical branches of knowledge. He was a teacher who, without vulgarisation, succeeded in making intelligible to many the main significance of the various fields of learning in which he moved. There can be few men who have so successfully combined such a wide range of intellectual pursuits with such conspicuous excellence in each of them."

"Wicksteed's first contribution to theoretical Economics was an application of the Jevonian analysis to the criticism of the Marxian theory of value—an article on Das Kapital which appeared in the socialist journal, To-Day, in October, 1884. The article is not merely a criticism; it is an independent exposition of the new theory which carries it further forward and, on more than one point, adds important new corollaries, The Labour Theory is shown to be false. The cases which it appears to explain are explained more convincingly as special instances of a more comprehensive theory. … It was the first scientific criticism of Marx's theory—written years before Böhm-Bawerk's or Pareto's—and in some respects it remains the most decisive. The argument is developed with the ease and certainty of a man who is completely sure of himself, not because of any self-deception or premature synthesis, but because he has mastered the essential material. Mr. George Bernard Shaw, at that time a Marxian Socialist, made a controversial reply; but as Mr. Shaw, who, as he has subsequently related,1 was eventually persuaded by Wicksteed that he was wrong, would be the first to admit, the significance of his reply lay not so much in what it itself contained, but rather in the fact that it elicited further elucidations of Jevons.2 It is, perhaps, worth noting that Wicksteed's rejoinder contains one of the earliest recognitions of the relative nature of the concepts invoked by the utility theory of value."

"No statement about God is simply, literally true. God is far more than can be measured, described, defined in ordinary language, or pinned down to any particular happening."

"Rev. Dr. Linzey suggests, like St. Francis, that human beings should act not as the master species, but as the servant species. Christ came as a humble servant and called us to love and serve one another and not to harm anyone. Linzey suggests that the Gospel call to service includes selfless service and justice not only to the poor and oppressed, but to all creation, including animals. In this, we become more Christlike."

"Far too often, Christians have accepted the common secular view that we are the masters of animals, their rulers or owners — utterly forgetting that the dominion promised to humanity is a deputized dominion, in which we are to stand before creation as God's vice-regents, putting into effect not our own egotistical wants but God's own law of love and mercy. And yet, when one begins to challenge our despotic treatment of animals — whether killing for sport, the ruthless export trade, or (to take the latest example) the quite obscene slaughter of thousands of seals for their penises, to be sold as aphrodisiacs in Europe and Asia — again and again, one has to face this humanistic dogma: If it benefits humanity, it must be right."

"After all, animal rightists have not invented the vision of the wolf lying down with the lamb in Isaiah 11:6, or the universal command to be vegetarian in Genesis 1:29, or indeed the vision of the earth in a state of childbirth awaiting its deliverance from suffering in Romans 8: in these, and in other ways, animal rightists can claim to be rediscovering and reactualizing visionary elements already present within the Western religious tradition."

"The groundbreaking work of Andrew Linzey has established animals as beings essential to the theological agenda."

"The biblical case for vegetarianism does not rest on the view that killing may never be allowable in the eyes of God, rather on the view that killing is always a grave matter. When we have to kill to live we may do so, but when we do not, we should live otherwise. It is vital to appreciate the force of this argument. In past ages many – including undoubtedly the biblical writers themselves – have thought that killing for food was essential in order to live. But … we now know that – at least for those now living in the rich West – it is perfectly possible to sustain a healthy diet without any recourse to flesh products. … Those individuals who opt for vegetarianism can do so in the knowledge that they are living closer to the biblical ideal of peaceableness than their carnivorous contemporaries. The point should not be minimized. In many ways it is difficult to know how we can live more peaceably in a world striven by violence and greed and consumerism. Individuals often feel powerless in the face of great social forces beyond even democratic control. To opt for a vegetarian life-style is to take one practical step towards living in peace with the rest of creation. One step towards reducing the rate of institutionalized killing in the world today."

"God's nature is love, and since God loves creation, it follows that what is genuinely given and purposed by that love must acquire some right in relation to the Creator."

"Creation exists for its Creator. Years of anthropocentrism have almost completely obscured this simple but fundamental point. What follows from this is that animals should not be seen simply as means to human ends. The key to grasping this theology is the abandoning of the common but deeply erroneous view that animals exist in a wholly instrumental relationship to human beings."

"The power of God is redefined in Jesus as practical costly service extending to those who are beyond the normal boundaries of human concern: the diseased, the poor, the oppressed, the outcast. If humans are to claim a lordship over creation, then it can only be a lordship of service. There can be no lordship without service. According to the theological doctrine of animal rights, then, humans are to be the servant species — the species given power, opportunity, and privilege to give themselves, nay sacrifice themselves, for the weaker, suffering creatures."

"Commentators — even, and especially, Christian ones — frequently lapse into a kind of moral parochialism when it comes to discussions about animals, as if God only cared for one of the millions of species in the created world. This, in turn, has led to a practical form of idolatry. By "idolatry" I mean here the deification of the human species by regarding human beings as the sole, main, or even exclusive concern of God the Creator."

"There is a tendency these days towards treating every aspect of religion, including the theologies of the different religions, under the single, all-embracing heading of 'religious studies'. This creates a fundamental problem for theologians in any particular religious tradition."

"I argue that such disciplines must be related to theology in its primary meaning, if their presence in a single 'theological' faculty is to be defended. But I do not suggest that theology is for believers only. I discuss the question, in what sense it is possible for atheists to be theologians, and suggest a way of thinking of theology as consisting of serious, open questions, well worth studying for their own sake in the university, with all the critical and scholarly tools available there. Theology, then, is neither a closed, in-group activity for believers, nor just an intriguing aspect of the history of religions."

"... [I]t is our being bad brothers and sisters that leads us to be bad fathers and mothers, not our having bad fathers and mothers that has made us bad brothers and sisters."

"Now, here is Jesus' point: he is not only the culmination of the project, but the project itself, God made brother, offering us to become siblings, but vulnerable to fratricide."

"Sin is resistance, in the name of God, to the creative work of God which seeks to include us all."

"Sin ceases to be a defect which excludes, and comes to be participation in the mechanism of exclusion."

"The problem is that this 'being identified with the victim' can come to be used as an arm with which to club others. The victims become the group of the 'righteous just' in order to exclude the poor Pharisees, who are never in short supply as the butts of easy mockery."

"In a world where nobody understood the viewpoint of the victim, we would all be right to side with the victim. But we live in a world where almost nobody 'comes out' as a Pharisee or a hypocrite, and it seems to me that the way to moral learning proceeds in that direction."

"In fact, for those who feel themselves excluded, or treated as defective, by the reigning social and moral order, it is of incalculable importance to discover that this feeling of being excluded or defective has nothing to do with God. It is purely a social mechanism, and God rather wants to include us and carry us to a fullness of life which will probably cause scandal to the partisans of the reigning order."

"What is new is that this sort of belonging to a group defined by an inherited paternity is shown to be an idolatrous belonging, and by idolatrous, understand a belonging demanding sacrifice. Jesus appears in the midst of such a group and, by showing up its structure for what it is, provokes it into tightening its group frontiers, into acting ever more obviously according to sacrificial type. And the threatening, destabilising element in Jesus' teaching and mode of acting out is that he refuses to concede any divine element at all to inherited group belonging."

"It is in this wrestling that Jacob 'prevails with God', and realises that he has seen God face to face. He has overcome not God but his own rivalry. After this mysterious struggle he was able to recognise his wrongdoing and look his brother Esau in the face. Thus he was able to learn to live in peace with his brother—and become Israel, a community of brethren."

"The structure of our desire, which precedes our consciousness, is murderous. That desire ensures that our cultural constructs, our language and our knowledge are radically inflected by the lie which fails to recognise this, fails to see God in humans who are 'other', or ourselves in our victims, which is to say the same thing."

"Being good can never do without the effort to learn, step by step, and in real circumstances of life, how to separate religious and moral words from an expelling mechanism, one which demands human sacrifice, so as to make of them words of mercy which absolve, which loose, which allow creation to be brought to completion."

"God has not the slightest difficulty in bringing to a fullness of creation the person who is in some way incomplete and recognises this. The problem is with those who think that they are complete, and that creation is, at least in their case, finished."

"Any profound damage or hurt which we may well have received at the hands of the guardians of our infancy and childhood are particular instances of the package of bad fraternity which precedes those guardians, and which they, just like us, have not overcome fully enough."

"There is no wicked and numinous paternal 'they'. There are only brothers and sisters like ourselves: fragile receivers and mete-ers out of ambivalent and often fratricidal fraternity."

"Elijah, when he entered into rivalry with the prophets of Baal became one of them, because God is not to be found in such circuses, nor in the murders which go along with them. At the end of his undeceiving, Elijah is more Yahwist, more atheist, less of a shaman, less of a sacrificer, because God is not like the gods, not even so as to show himself superior to them."

"All human paternity comes internally structured by fratricide and, as paternity, is incapable of truth, because it will always be protecting itself against the 'other'."