"YOU describe my book as a 'secular warning against idolatry',
and I accept that. And that may suggest that the differences
between secular and religious views may be more fluid than we
sometimes think."
The public debate on What Money Can't Buy by Michael
Sandel (Allen Lane, 2012), arranged by St Paul's Institute, with
JustShare, the LSE, and Penguin Books, was memorable for several
reasons: an audience of nearly 2000, including many students and
many who said they had not been in St Paul's Cathedral before; an
attentive atmosphere; some well-aimed questions; and, above all,
Professor Sandel's brilliance as a teacher, and his insistence
that philosophy be public - that philosophy helps us to think
about the great issues of the day (News, 1
June; Features,
15 June; Books, 22
June).
But, as far as I was concerned, the key moment was Professor
Sandel's affirmative and at the same time questioning response to
my suggestion that his book was a "secular warning against
idolatry".
By "idolatry", I meant the way in which money had moved from
being an instrument of exchange into a dominant force in nearly
every aspect of life, demanding submission and arousing emotions
of both irresistible attraction and fear.
Having accepted the description, Professor Sandel went on to
suggest that if it was right, we should re- examine some of our
assumptions about how secular and religious viewpoints differ.
THIS seemed like an invitation - deeply relevant to our thinking
about money, but about many other things, too. "The secular": this
age - with its disciplines of science, the humanities, social
sciences, and economics, among others - seeks to understand the
world (as the Latin tag quoted by Dietrich Bonhoeffer has it)
etsi Deus non daretur - as though God were not a
given.
Understanding the world in that way, Bonhoeffer asserted, was
something that faith in God required of us. Understanding the world
as though God were not a given can teach you a great deal about the
world - we all know that. But Professor Sandel's response suggests
that understanding the world in that way, through the eyes of
disciplines that do not start with God as a given, may also teach
you more than you expect about God and faith in God.
More than that, his response also suggests that disciplines that
do start with God as a given - for instance, Christian theology -
might be able to teach things about the secular world that it
cannot teach itself. Such are the fertile possibilities that emerge
when we recognise that "the differences between secular and
religious views may be more fluid than we sometimes think."
The hour-and-a-half spent with Professor Sandel may therefore be
an invitation to contemplate our world, and especially its current
financial turbulence, in a way that exploits the possibilities of a
genuine two-way traffic of thought. It is not just a matter of
finding out "what the Christian gospel has to say" to the world of
finance and the uncontrolled marketisation of our lives, but what
we learn about God and God's purpose for the world by examining
those aspects of our life through the secular disciplines of our
time.
Professor Sandel's comment should then be taken up not just with
the relief that comes with sensing opportunities for
re-establishing Christianity as having relevance to the public
issues of our time, but with the excitement of exploring faith
itself, and rediscovering it for ourselves within the
public square, with its triumphs and disasters, its knowledge and
uncertainties.
It is not a coincidence that such an invitation to a more mutual
journey of discovery occurred within a discussion about the place
of money in our world; for money is no bad place to start on that
exploration. The crisis around money - debt, the euro, the world's
banking systems - is at the top of politicians' and financiers'
agendas. They deploy every ounce of skill they can muster, and draw
in every expert they can find.
In the process, they rediscover forgotten wisdom, and ancient
virtues such as prudence and restraint, as well as ingenuity and
vision. They even discover, if not, solutions then at least ways
forward. To put it at its most hopeful, they refresh the memory of
those of us who call ourselves people of faith that it is the
universe, and not just believers, that a loving Creator made, who
longed for its good and surrounded it with guidance and
commandments that were for its lasting advantage.
So ethics is increasingly a concern not just of the religious,
but of many people seeking a more durable framework for our
economic life. The Churches have not (and this should be a matter
of regret) engaged with the demanding disciplines of economics and
social science in a way that would have made a long-standing
Christian ethical tradition more accessible to those at the sharp
end of decision-making: no wonder that so many of the
finance-sector professionals surveyed by St Paul's Institute said
that they did not think the City needed to attend to the guidance
of the Church (Comment,
4 November).
YET the invitation to us is not that we should place our trust
in the secular on its own terms. Looking at money and what has
happened to it as an example of potential and actual idolatry
brings to the table other insights than those that unaided secular
disciplines can provide.
By speaking of idolatry, we lay bare the fact that money has
become a rival to true faith, a serious competitor against God for
people's loyalty. So we bring to bear the whole theological
tradition of prophecy against idols - of martyrs who died rather
than misdirect their worship, and, above all, an account of the
serious consequences of allowing that which is made by human beings
to command their total subservience.
A secular warning against idolatry takes us a long way, but it
also displays what we need, beyond secular thought, to counter the
pervasive tendency of human beings to idolise what they have made,
and to fall victim to good instruments that run out of control.
That is why the Doctrine Commission devoted a chapter of its
report Being Human (CHP, 2003) to money as a profound
influence on human life. It is why the St Paul's Institute is
determined to continue its engagement with the City; and it is why
Christian people should see the fluid boundary between sacred and
secular views as an exciting invitation to an arena where God is to
be found.
The Rt Revd Dr Peter Selby is a former Bishop of Worcester.
He is a member of the Interim Directing Team of St Paul's
Institute