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De-Coding Mammon : Money in Need of Redemption

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De-Coding Mammon : Money in Need of Redemption 1 DE-CODING MAMMON : MONEY IN NEED OF REDEMPTION Submitted by Peter John Dominy to the University of Exeter as a thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theology November 2010 This thesis is available for Library use on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I certify that all material in this thesis which is not my own work has been identified and that no material has previously been submitted and approved for the award of a degree by this or any other university. SIGNED...................................................................................... 2 Abstract This thesis is an attempt to understand the suspicion of money implied in Jesus' statement that it is impossible to serve both God and Mammon. I argue on the basis of Scripture, reason and tradition that problems associated with money do not arise simply from the way it is used, but from the nature of money itself. This is argued in three sections. First I consider the history of money and in particular of the commodity theory of money. Second I consider the issues of debt and interest, of central concern in the Christian Scriptures. Finally I consider money through four different lenses: justice, value, desire and power. The argument as a whole leads up to the last of these. As was already suggested by Jacques Ellul fifty years ago, I argue that money must be understood as a cosmic power to which we are all subject and which is in need of redemption. In the second and third sections I make suggestions as to what the redemption of money might look like. I summarise the argument in a final section, 'De-coding Mammon'. 3 Acknowledgements Working as a part-time student, it has taken me nearly seven years to complete this thesis. I would, therefore, like to express my most sincere thanks to Professor Tim Gorringe for his patience over such a long period, for the numerous drafts he has seen, and for all the invaluable advice he has given. I am also deeply indebted to my wife, Janet, and to all my family and friends for their unfailing support and for their willingness to forego my participation in activities in which they might otherwise have expected my involvement during the first years of retirement. I hope the result will prove that it has been worth the cost. 4 List of Contents DE-CODING MAMMON : MONEY IN NEED OF REDEMPTION Introduction 5 SECTION ONE : THE NATURE OF MONEY 19 1. The Origins and Development of Money 20 2. Money as a Commodity 31 SECTION TWO : LENDING AND BORROWING 54 3. Money and Debt 55 4. Money and Interest 72 SECTION THREE : EVALUATING MONEY 106 5. Money and Justice 107 6. Money and Value 153 7. Money and Desire 173 8. Money and Power 193 Conclusions : De-Coding Mammon 219 Bibliography 227 5 INTRODUCTION Origins and Purpose of the Thesis When this study began in 2004, I was interested in the relationship between Christian theology and the whole phenomenon of globalization. Having lived for 15 years in Nigeria and seen something of the vast social and economic changes taking place in that country as a result of its relations with the outside world, many of which seemed to be to the detriment of its people, I was concerned to discover how globalization might be evaluated in Christian theology. This concern was strengthened by living the next 20 years in the UK and observing some of the effects of globalization on British society. As I began the study, however, I became more and more convinced that most of the problems produced by globalization are not in globalization itself but in the nature of money. Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Matthew 6.24, Luke 16.13) – a categorical statement which implies serious doubts about the nature of money – and this whole thesis can be considered as an exploration of why this might be the case. Money is generally regarded as a neutral phenomenon – a person can use it wisely or unwisely, but there is nothing wrong with money in itself. I shall try to argue that Jesus’ warning rests on a perception that money is not neutral, but embodies profound negative values. Even so, I have encountered surprise amongst many friends that money as an institution should be the subject of theological critique. It has been appreciated that theology might have something to say about the love of money, but not that it might have anything to say about money in itself. It is not without significance, perhaps, that the first book to be written explicitly on the theology of money was not written till 2007. 1 Since 2007, however, we have been overtaken by yet another crisis within the 1 The year 2007 saw the publication of Philip Goodchild’s Theology of Money ( SCM Press, London). 6 capitalist system, which arose from a crisis of confidence in money. Suddenly it is being recognized that the roots of the whole monetary system may need to be re- examined, and that there might even be a place for theologians in the debate. My strategy is to examine money in many of its aspects and functions and to argue cumulatively that it functions like one of the ‘powers’ mentioned in Ephesians 6.12. In light of this argument, I claim that the idea that money is to be regarded positively, or else as simply neutral, ‘a medium of exchange’, may be regarded as a deceptive illusion. To highlight this is important in a world where money is regarded positively, both by the general public and by governments, businesses and economists. In particular, this positive attitude is enshrined in, and promoted by, the economic philosophy of Neo-Liberalism, which has become dominant in the Western world over the last 30 years. It is my conviction that it is this positive appraisal of money which has produced many of the problems in contemporary society, both in the West and in the rest of the world, that it was central to the optimism that led to the severe financial crisis which surfaced in 2007, and that (unless repudiated) it will lead to the comprehensive destruction of the environment. To be absolutely precise, the thesis to be argued is that the long-term tradition in Christian theology, from the Old Testament scriptures to the present day, points to the conclusion that money, left to itself, is an instrument with many negative outcomes, and should ultimately be recognized a cosmic power which works against the purposes of God and the well-being of society. A major reason for advancing this thesis is that it is only occasionally that Christian writers have discussed explicitly the nature of money, and only in the last thirty years or so have the negative effects of using money become sufficiently clear to move Christian theologians from their characteristic emphasis on the love of money to a consideration of money itself. For the most part, therefore, I am compelled to explore the implications for the nature of money of writing that doesn’t explicitly tackle it. In recent years, however, there have been some explicit discussions of the subject, and I shall argue these are actually building on a long-term tradition in which money has been viewed with suspicion. 7 It is not my purpose to consider arguments for the usefulness of money or for the good effects that it produces. This has been argued by others and is widely accepted. Indeed, I am not intending to cast doubts on these arguments. My concern is that, in concentrating on the positive effects of the use of money, there has been a tendency to ignore its negative effects. In this respect, we might perhaps compare it with fire, which has many useful effects, but is still very dangerous, and needs to be treated with great care. A crucial difference, however, between fire and money is that money is not created by God, but by selfish human beings, usually those with the greatest power, who have tended to arrange all the rules for its use to suit their own advantage. It is also not the purpose of the thesis to produce specific remedies for the problems created by money in the present-day. In order to avoid the dangers of abstract theorizing, I shall from time to time make suggestions (or refer to the suggestions of others) as to what an economy could be like if money was redeemed and its negative effects removed. At the same time, there are other dangers when a theologian steps into the realm of the economist or the politician. Rather it is the intention of the thesis to alert the Christian community to aspects of its tradition which have been neglected or forgotten, so that those who have the expertise to produce definite proposals for reform may be able to take account of the theology inherent in their tradition. As an illustration of Christian writers who have argued for a more positive attitude to money, we might take Brian Griffiths (Church of England) and Michael Novak (Roman Catholic). What is significant, however, is that they are not writing explicitly about the nature of money, so much as about the value of free markets. What is interesting also is that their Christian convictions do lead them to express a number of caveats. The title of Griffiths’ major work of 1984, The Creation of Wealth , with its deliberate echo of Adam Smith, highlights the claim that the market economy is the chief engine of human progress.
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