Religion and Economy in a Time of Uncertainty
by Markus Vinzent

Religion and Economy have more in common as people commonly assume, although the interfaces between the various disciplines dealing with either religion or economy seem rare – there are economists and scholars in business studies that are interested in particular religious phenomena, most often with spirituality and the workplace, already more rarely they look at the impact of religions and cultures on topics like finance, organisations, management and entrepreneurship; and, of course, there are students of religion and theology that are interested in business studies in the broader sense, especially, how to run a business in a specifically oriented, say for example Muslim, Christian, especially Evangelical environment.
Not often, however, partly because of the disciplinary compartementalisation and distance between the academic entities are religion and economy looked at together. In this respect, it is a pleasure to see an Urban Theology Forum being dedicated to “Spaces of Religion and Economy in a Time of Uncertainty”.
When I was first asked by Martin Stringer to contribute to this topic, it was possibly born out of my double interest in bringing the two spaces closer together, religion and economics. What is this double interest? The one is existential, the other reflexive, two approaches which in themselves already bridge the supposed gap between the two spaces, as practical life, daily experience, money, mortgage, school fees and work to provide those, but also simple and bare being and its concrete, historical and timely expressions, the daily routine and the highlights of the week and the years are not only important, but core to both, religion and economics.
Both spaces, religion and economy, are build on the basis of and having as one of their constitutive frameworks existential experience, culture, if you like the daily or the ordinary. On the other side, both, the study of religion and economics, are essentially a reflexion of these raw data, ask for a meta-reflexive, if not a meta-meta-reflexive or even meta-physical stage of reflection, meta-physical here in the Aristotelean sense, that can lead to almost, but never to pure theoretical science like mathematics or philosophy, and that is where religious studies and theology like economics and business studies jointly differentiate themselves from purely theoretical disciplines, at least theoretical in the modern sense. These disciplines, maybe the others as well – but I don’t dare to make a judgement on them – bare the stamp of the day, with the imprint of currency and monarch or deity.
These two sides of a coin, or the double-edge of religion, the integrated nature of religious studies/theology and economics/business studies, I learned two-fold, in a practical way and in theoretical reflexions of the experiences that I made on this way.
Let me, therefore, first give you a short insight into the more practical side of religion, economics and business where I was and am involved in, and from where I am drawing my day to day experiences.
I did start my Christian experience as a youngster in a catholic apprenticeship youth movement of Germany, the so-called Kolpingwerk, a foundation of Adolf Kolping who was one of the early catholic priests who engaged actively in working with and providing living and training space for the un-rooted travelling young apprentices who had to move from master to master, from town to town in the industrial revolution of the 19th c. Having had soon leadership tasks, I was also involved in training both, young apprentices and youth leaders. And it was an enriching experience that I first also looked at topics that reflected work related subjects when I started reading philosophy and theology at University – I remember a dissertation on the nature of the Sabbath as a work free day, or another on the economic and cultural relation between Egypt, Palestine and Turkey in the years 3000 to 2000 BC, while my first assignment in philosophy was Feuerbach and his essence of Christianity. Don’t let me jump too quickly to my reflexion of work – although, I have to admit, right from the beginning, the meta-level of rationality attracted me and gave me as much pleasure, if not at times more, than the practical youth work that I had done in the past. To stay with my work experience, I have rarely, if at all, been a full time academic, but always got jobs which, on the one side, helped me to at least partly finance my life, on the other to gain knowledge and experience which fed into my University studies, as I had already done as a student when I worked night shifts in an engineering company (Hager), because these were paid better and less demanding. I remember my first, lonely job at the University Library to sort thousands of dissertations and get them in the right order on the shelves, a job that I picked up even before the University courses started. Then, in the first week of University, I was given a life-changing chance: one of my older mates, a PhD student in Old Testament studies, decided to leave the University – and, shortly before, his supervisor, Professor Rudolf Mosis, had been elected VC of the University. This left the scheduled Hebrew intensive spring course without assistant to the Professor for Old Testament who himself had only very limited time because of his new VC job. Having heard of the mad PhD sorter, Professor Mosis asked me whether I would like to assist him in teaching Hebrew to my own fellow first year undergraduates six months later. He offered me a fine salary – fine at least for an unskilled worker to learn what he had to learn later anyway – namely for acquiring the necessary knowledge in Hebrew from scratch. This was my introduction into academia, the chance of a job opportunity which determined my further career, of course with some further unexpected turns and detours. For the next years I was learning and teaching Hebrew, assisting and effectively running the course and the follow up seminars. Then, before leaving for a year abroad in Paris to study Philosophy and Judaism, I was asked by the friend of the OT Professor, Reinhard Huebner, the Professor for Patristics, to deepen my knowledge in Greek and the Early Church, for, on my return, joining him as research assistant, my second, now even better paid academic position. In addition, during the entire University time as a student, I was working during the holidays as tour guide combining leasure, earning very good money and showing study groups around the Mediterranean those places which I did study in my OT and Early Church courses. In the Arab countries I quickly learned to build up a profitable business where margins were increased by sharing them with the right team – the clients first, who profited from my profit, as well as the bus driver, the souvenir shop keeper, the church warden, the monks in the monasteries, the restaurant bosses, the event organisers, the local guides, the taxi organisations and the hotel owners. Despite my intensive assistantship in Patristics, at the end of my University course, I decided for going into practical parish work – and, indeed, worked for 7 years as chaplain, teacher and pastor in all sorts of cities, schools, prisons, homes, buried hundreds of people, baptised less, married quite a few and accompanied several at their death beds. In addition, given that I was responsible for a vast area of a newly build university town without infrastructure, I raised the funds, rented space to start two kindergarten with a growing number of members of staff, purchased a piece of land, planned and built a 16m Deutsch Mark community centre and church. At the same time during these seven years, I wrote my PhD in Patristics part time and attended research seminars 300 miles away. The minutes in the morning, during the day and in the nights, when I sat at my desk and wrote what seemed so remote from my day-job, I always experienced as a direct meditation and reflection of what concerned me during the day, while during the day, I had better ideas how to tackle theoretical, grammatical or theological problems than most of the time when I was sitting in front of my computer. With the submission of my PhD, however, I took the decision to intensify my academic studies. Hence, I got myself a three day part-time job as a bookseller in Munich’s busiest bookshop (Huggendubel), where I not only became my best client, but learned the next phase of how to run a business. I met right the opposite of what I was used from the church organisation – pure entrepreneurship. From day one, I was given one shelf in this shop, which I had full responsibility for, buying and choosing the stock (from the areas medicine, psychology, religion, esotericism), presenting and selling. Of course, the combination of sex and the bible sold best – and I soon was offered much more space. In addition, I concentrated my tour guide job to the most profitable place in the world of tourism, namely Lourdes in Southern France, the wonderful place of miracles. In parallel, I started consulting the tour company for which I had worked for years. Consultancy, I learned, was like learning Hebrew – you earned money by learning from those who paid you. With the beginning of the internet time, I worked myself into this field by consulting entrepreneurs. And soon became myself involved, build up a software company, sold it early enough before the dotcom bubble burst in 2001, created new ventures, together with various blue chip companies, bought and sold – lost money, earned money, and gained, what I felt more important, experience and knowledge. Parallel to this, I had finished my second PhD, the German Habilitation, got various jobs, King’s College in Cambridge, Berlin Academy of Science, and finally a Professorship in Germany. Because of my business experience, I was quickly promoted to the Headship of the institute, which, again, paved my way to the headship of the department in Birmingham. One of the main attractions to the VC, here, was my practical business background, an endeavour which he and his successor actively supported through all the past years. And, indeed, these past years were not only very fruitful academically with a number of single authored monographs, projects asf, but also as a fundraiser and entrepreneur. While I was able to raise around £2m for the University, I build up various businesses in various sectors (IT, Media, Waste and Energy), the latest a project development company for which I raised and raise funds in the City of over £240m, some of it already agreed, some agreed in principle, a useful exercise where, again, I learned while acting. People in the City quite often are surprised when it comes to my academic profession, but soon they realise the proximity of theological and philosophical reflexion and economic reasoning.
Where are the overlaps? In my academic output, I did start in my PhD writing from a Post-Structural perspective on an outcast and marginalised theologian, a lay-teacher who was excluded from the main church, and almost lost in the fading memory of history, Asterius of Cappadocia – a teacher of the hated Arians, or Eusebians as they were sometime called. But I did not simply write a monograph about him, I restored his memory on the basis of a text critical edition of the surviving fragments of his work. This combination between creating a basis first, itself resting on language, grammatical rules and textual studies – sounded old-fashioned and subjugated to the dictate of postwar modernity in an academic environment which was dominated by Postmodernism, although, as I quickly discovered, an outgoing Postmodernism. The question tortured me – what was emerging after Postmodernism? Uncertainty was a hallmark of Postmodernism, willingly build into any programme, project, be it literature, architecture – peaked by its counter-part event with pleasure, and its political complementary openness. Post-colonialism indicated to me a first overcoming of Postmodernism, the Nobel-prize in economics given to John Nash, John C. Harsanyi and Reinhard Selten for “their pioneering analysis of equilibria in the theory of non-cooperative games” provided the re-assurance from the business side that Postmodernism was coming to an end, or at least was about to transform itself. While Postmodernism had broken the walls not only between East and West, but equally between the disciplines, had reduced the grand narratives to small epochs, game theory in economics breached into religion, religion into economics and opened the space for non-disciplinary approaches. As early as 1985 the Journal of Economic Theory (36, 195-213), for example, published a paper by R. J. Aumann and M. Maschler on “Game Theoretic Analysis of a Bankruptcy Problem from the Talmud”. And monographs were re-discovered like the one by Francis Ysidro Edgeworth on “Methematical Psychics: An Essay on the Application of Mathematics to the Moral Sciences,” an approach that has found a worthy follower in the nobel-prize candidate’s 2vols work by Ken Binmore, “Game Theory and the Social Contract,” vol 1, and “Just Playing,” vol 2, 1998.
The re-introduction of economics in the contemporary discourse, was reflected by the re-emergence of religions in the wake of the September 11, 2001. Postmodernity seemed to have undergone the most serious transformation. What I call Re-modernity, I soon found globally discussed as Second Modernity. Was the time of uncertainty, of pleasure, of pick and mix, of non-definition and deconstructivism been replaced by new certainties, rigour, choice and rules, religions, power and money? Were the Clinton postmodern era of friendly excuses replaced by the brutal and aggressive moves of the Bushs back into the modern or even pre-modern colonial era? Or was the latter just the spring-board for a post-colonial Obama politics? Did the economic postmodern free market plunged into pre-war recession as did the secularised society went to war with its friends and foes, or are we working towards a Re-modern framework of economics and religions?
What markes the differences in understanding of uncertainty in Modernity, Post-modernity and Re-modernity, in terms of philosophy, religion and economics? Times of certainty, of a divided world into East and West, North and South, the clear cut divide between Religions and Secularism, between Islam, Christianity, Judaism and all other religions or Weltanschauungen including Atheisms and Agnosticism, as we have learned during Postmodernity and Post-colonialism, is going. Anything goes, was one of those catch phrases of Postmodernity. These divides did not disappear, and, as we know from Post-colonialism, will not entirely disappear, but will resurface in different looks. The Re-modern experience teaches in all fields, religion and economics, and especially after the banking and economic crisis, the credit crunch, that uncertainty will not be overcome by certainty. Re-modernity cannot bring back the modern era of certainty, where countries remained well off, while other corners in the world suffered, where a religion had its own territory, while others had to await the colonial missionaries, where money could be saved as in Walt Disney’s Scrooge’s Money bin, defended by the Scottish immigrant who had made his fortune by rightly exploiting others. Neither does Re-modernity seem to continue dis-regarding or neglecting the fundamental structures and divides in society, between classes and races. On the contrary, we become aware of new and emerging divides as soon as others are disappearing, between immigrants and immigrants, between religious and religious, between middle class and middle class, between those who have access and make profit from knowledge, and those wandering in the dark, between those who have broadband, and others who do not know how to use a remote control, between generations and within generations. Re-modernity is characterised by both modern certainty and postmodern uncertainty, strict religious, philosophical, logical and social rules, as rugby is different from soccer, not only by the internal rules, but also by the cultural way, fans are interacting with each other.
While I was working on re-assessing our own transitions, I was reading it against and with transitions and mutations in history. From the beginnings of my studies, I was fascinated by the antonymies and paradoxalities that the interaction and interwavings between monotheistic societies and political societies with a broad range of religions and cults did create, how religions as well as societies and their educational and economic systems evolved, changed, faded and re-surfaced in new clothes, and how strong and enormously powerful systems, take the Greek city states, take the unified kingdom of Alexander the Great, take the Egyptian Nile-empire of the pharaos, take Crete, take Rome, take Ireland, or spiritual movements like the various cult systems, the Iro-Scottish monastries, the Cistercians, the Hanse did emerge and disappeared, at least most of them – to be transformed into others. A case in point of this research, that explicitly highlighted the intertwined relation between economics and religion, action and contemplation, experience and thinking were a number of thinkers, all encompassing the life driven Aristotle and his master of contemplation, Plato – philosophers, theologians and scholars of economics that engaged with this paradox, to name just the most important ones in history: Plotinus, Apolinarius of Laodicea, Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Hoelderlin, Heidegger, Derrida.
Let me just pick one of those today, the one with whom I am engaged most at present, Meister Eckhart. And let me give you just one example, how Eckhart was able to overcome the divide of action and contemplation, economics and religion by making uncertainty over and against time a key concept of his thinking.
Of course, we are entering a different world – the highly explosive Middle Ages in the aftermath of the nine Crusades after 80 years of battle, suffering and death, occupation and diffamation – but also dissemination, dislocation, recognition, translation and exploration. Through the fights and from the missionary endeavours emerged the seeds of humanism – an almost, at least in the Latin West, an almost entirely forgotten Greek world was re-discovered, natural sciences, medical, astronomical, philosophical, mathematical, logical knowledge was found again – all in the light and in the framework of a prism-like Islam, an omnipresent Judaism and an enormously diverse Christianity. Eckhart lives and teaches, does his research in the centre of the new world, at the new centre of studies in Cologne, twice if not three times at the University of Paris. Only Thomas of Aquinas before him has anybody held the chair of Theology at Paris twice. At the same time, the church’s suspicion against the new knowledge, the beginnings of humanism, was immense, at times deadly violent. In the years between Eckhart’s stays in Paris, he left in 1302 and came back in 1311, the greatest layperson philosopher, the female Margerite Poiret was condemned by the University of Paris, and burned on the basis of their and the church’s verdict. Why? Because she advocated a spiritualised life of action – not too much different of what Eckhart himself taught, before and after her death.
Eckhart had developed a very distinct position – or rather a non-position which was based on every possible knowledge he could get hold of and digest, digest to an extent that none of the sources that he used were not melted down to give them a very different form.
With regard to time, for example. One of the former masters, for example, Nicolaus of Strasbourg was interested mainly in Boethius’ characterization of eternity (aeternitas) as “endless” (interminabilis), or as “fully actual,” and as “absolutely simultaneous” (tota simul). Eckhart, instead, was interested in the dynamics expressed by the concept of life (vita). One of the famous examples where one can see the paradoxical nature of his thinking is given in his interpretation of Luke 10,38ff. where he develops the idea of productivity without intention, or the simultaneousy of being a “virgin” and a “wife.”
‘10:38 Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him as a guest. 10:39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he said. 10:40 But Martha was distracted with all the preparations she had to make, so she came up to him and said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work alone? Tell her to help me.” 10:41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, 10:42 but one thing is needed. Mary has chosen the best (a mis-translation of the comparative in the Greek text – where Eckhart is more precise) part; it will not be taken away from her.’
The history of the Mary-Martha comparison in Early and Medieval Christian literature still has to be written, although the main milestones are known. The differentiation between a vita activa and a vita contemplativa was a Christian takeover from the Greco-Roman treasure, which by no means is straightforward and easily explicable. Neither Jesus’ own lifestyle nor that of his immediate followers, and none of the writings from the collection of the canonical New Testament scriptures insinuate the appreciation of this split model. It is scholarly opinion that ‘neither the terminology nor the content behind, namely the duality of two either mutually exclusive or hardly compatible lifestyles, are biblically based.’ However, ‘in the New Testament ... important grounds for a Christian integration of the philosophical models’ with regard to the vita activa and vita contemplativa topic can be found. But it remains a ‘delicate’ problem.
It were Platonic Christian thinkers like Marcion’s of Sinope who forcefully introduced the divide with their ascetic teaching in second century Rome. Not all, but most of them balanced an austere lifestyle against theological tenets such as God being the creator of a good creation, marriage as being at least acceptable or tolerable, vegetarianism not as being the only food option, although scholars readily complain that even in this (moderately) new philosophical climate ‘we find neither the Gospel nor Paul’ any longer. With all variances and despite the various attempts in bringing action and contemplation, body and spirit, society, economics and religion closer together again, the reading of our passage remained straight forward: Mary, the role model of the religious and contemplative life, has chosen the better part, Martha, the example of the person who had to care for the daily work, the living, the nitty gritty was at best at the outskirts of religion, more in the world than in heaven, more tempted by worldy temptations than Mary, the pure, the heavenly, the immaculate. To take just one example out of the history of reception and interpretation of this passage from Luke (including our contemporary New Testament Commentaries), let me introduce Cassian, this monk of the 6th century Italy:
Cassian does not denigrate Martha nor Martha’s works, as he understands them as a sacred service, deriving its quality from the target of her effort, ‘the Lord and his disciples.’ But he sets her and her engagement in opposition to Mary’s ‘spiritual instruction,’ ‘the chief good’ that consists ‘in meditation,’ ‘divine contemplation.’ Compared to this good, all other virtues and works only come second. These can be ‘praiseworthy,’ even ‘rich in fruits,’ but no matter how fruitful they are, they cannot attain to the hight and superior status of contemplation, a contemplation that progresses from ‘reflecting on a few saints’ which would make one follow their actions and services, to considering ‘the beauty and knowledge of God alone.’ Only contemplation can last, as it is free of bodily ministry. Cassian restricts the contemplative life to the hermite, and can even conclude more drastically as in the quote above that ‘caritative works are the opposite of love’ for the divine. As Cuthbert Butler put it: ‘in Cassian ... we find the conception of the contemplative life pushed to the extreme limit.’ Even the monk who lived ‘in a cenobium (community),’ was not able to enter contemplation, it was fully achieveable ‘only in a hermitage.’ However, Cassian remains sceptical of both forms of lives: ‘It is hard to find one who is perfect in both lives, because the anchorite cannot thoroughly acquire the highest form of awareness, i.e., a disregard for and stripping oneself of material things, nor the coenobite purity in contemplation.’
To understand Eckhart’s exegesis in sermon 86, ‘one of the best known homilies,’ one of his ‘gems,’ it has to be set in its original liturgical context as a homily for the feast of St. Martha (27 July), a feast that was newly introduced only in 1277 by the Dominicans. In his interpretation of Luke 10:38-42 Eckhart closely links the New Testament reading to the content of the other liturgical texts of the day. In describing Martha, Eckhart recalls the Old Testament reading that preceded the Gospel text, the pericope Prov 31:10-20, in which the wife is being praised for her active work life, work that not only provides for the living of the household, but work that gives the woman her own income and enables her to create her own space. It is the description of a woman proud of what she does, the strengths that she has and the goods that she is prepared to share with the needy beyond her household: ‘10. Who can find a wife of noble character? For her value is far more than rubies. 11. The heart of her husband has confidence in her, and he has no lack of gain. 12. She brings him good and not evil all the days of her life. 13. She obtains wool and flax, and she is pleased to work with her hands. 14. She is like the merchant ships; she brings her food from afar. 15. She also gets up while it is still night, and provides food for her household and a portion to her female servants. 16. She considers a field and buys it; from her own income she plants a vineyard. 16. She begins her work vigorously, and she strengthens her arms. 18. She knows that her merchandise is good, and her lamp does not go out in the night. 19. Her hands take hold of the distaff, and her hands grasp the spindle. 20. She extends her hand to the poor, and reaches out her hand to the needy.’
In addition, the praise of the ‘mulier fortis’ does not only refer to the Old and New Testament reading, but also to the Communiovers of the mass of the day (‘There is widely grace in your works, the reason for God to have blessed you for eternity’). In addition, the sequence of Epistel reading, Graduale and Allelujavers laid the ground for Eckhart’s structure of man who detaches himself from time (485,8f.). Because he first refers to the Epistel, then continues to describe the work of the ‘mulier fortis’ with reference to the Epistel and Graduale, with the Graduale reading being: ‘For truth, tradition and justice: And he guided you in wonderful way by your right hand / listen daughter and see: and open your ear: because the king longs for your art.’
Eckhart states: ‘I have quoted a passage, first in Latin, which is taken from the Gospel and which means in our language: “Our Lord Jesus Christ entered a citadel and was received by a virgin who was a wife.”’
Already his translation “a virgin who was a wife” hints to the fact that he is not only giving a rather unusual interpretation of this passage from Luke, but that he is indeed consciously inverting an expected interpretation that the passage had received for almost an entire 1300 years period and regularly since then until today.
How can Martha be simultaneously a virgin and a wife. ‘Virgin,’ perhaps because Luke mentions that Jesus has been received by Martha (with the connotation of spiritual conception, as becomes quickly clear from the following passage in Eckhart), and ‘wife,’ because she receives him ‘in her house.’
Eckhart directly takes up this double meaning in his interpretation. Why must Martha be a ‘virgin’ to receive the Lord?
Eckhart: ‘“Virgin” means someone who is free of all alien images, as free in fact as that person was before he or she existed. We might ask how it is possible for someone who has been born and who has reached the age of reason to be as free of images as they were before they existed, even though they know many things, all of which are necessarily images: how then can such a person be free of them?’
Indeed, how can we who are born, have matured, learned all sorts of information, how can we be free of all of that? Eckhart states the paradox – and insinuates that the answer to his question would be negative: such a person, born and mature, ‘who has reached the age of reason’ cannot ‘be free’ of images and of all the impressions of this world, and, as Eckhart will quickly add, neither can he be empty of ‘all those images which are in God himself.’ Not only outer images, but also all these inner images ‘which are in God himself’ – do they not bind us?
Eckhart loves, however, to state the opposite of what one would expect and continues:
‘If I possessed such great intelligence that all the images that anyone had ever conceived, together with all those which are in God himself, existed in my mind, but in such a way that I was free of an ego-attachment to them in what I did or in what I refrained from doing, neither with a “before” or an “after,” but rather I remained free and empty in this present moment for the most precious will of God, constantly ready to fulfil it, then I would be a virgin unburdened by any images, just as certainly as I was before I existed.’
The difference between the eternal existence and the created state of us does not come with our birth, our life, time or any other external impact on us, according to Eckhart, the difference comes with a different perception of all of what we face, the images in the outside world as well as the images which are in God. The difference is being made by the fact whether or not we attach ourselves, our ego, to those images, or whether we are able to ‘refrain from doing’ so, ‘remain free and empty in this present moment,’ hence are detached from all of this, to be empty ‘for the most precious will of God, constantly ready to fulfil it.’ As in two other works of Eckhart, the Talks of Instruction and On the Noble Man, so also in this sermon, already in the first few opening lines, Eckhart hits his core message of ‘detachment’ which runs through his work like a refrain in a song.
To be a virgin has nothing to do with a state of untouchability, cleanliness, asceticism or abstinence. Eckhart can speak of a virgin, even if she is a wife, but a wife who is detached and ‘constantly ready to fulfil’ the will of God. What might this will of God be? We come back to answer this question a bit further down. Eckhart first reinforces that being a virgin
a) has nothing to do with having never been touched or having touched this world and
b) that being a virgin does not mean that one lets go all the daily business or that God is taking this business away: ‘I say further that the fact that someone is a virgin does not take anything away from the works they have done but rather leaves them free and virginal, unhindered with respect to the highest truth, just as Jesus is empty and free and virginal in himself.’
This last comparison between human beings who are ‘free and virginal and unhindered with respect to the highest truth’ and Jesus whom Eckhart describes as ‘empty and free and virginal in himself’ leads our preacher to the further conclusion that ‘we too must be virgins if we are to receive the virginal Jesus, since, in the view of the learned, the foundation of union is the meeting of like and like.’ Again it is a basic, Neo-Platonic concept that one can only speak of a union, if like and like come together. That is, why only virgins can receive the virginal Jesus and, the other way round, the virginal Jesus has to choose a virgin to be conceived in her. Transposed into the relation between Jesus and us, it is Eckhart’s view that we have to be of the same nature as Jesus and Jesus of the same nature as us. Although this is already an audacious position, Eckhart tops it by adding another of his exclamation marks: ‘Now take note of this and listen carefully!’ The exclamation mark introduces and makes aware of the following even more courageous statement which stands in stark contradiction to Cassian’s remark that contemplation is more important than active fruitfulness: ‘If we were only ever a virgin, we would produce no fruit. If we are to be fruitful, then we must be a “wife.” “Wife” is the noblest name that can be applied to the soul and it is more excellent than “virgin.”’
We should not forget that Eckhart, the Vicar of Thuringia and Prior of Erfurt, was a celibate monk himself who had a lifetime job in preaching and educating his sisters and brothers in the various monasteries. Here, however, he exposes a theology that put the prevailing moral teaching and hierarchical order of the Catholic Church upside down, and – what must have been equally disturbing for many listeners – not only in the realm of morality, but also touching on that of theology in the strict sense of the word. Eckhart must have known that with this interpretation, he was in contradiction or at least in tension with various texts in the New Testament. Scriptures there clearly stated a preference in being celibate rather than being married (f.e. 1Cor. 7:1.7.33-34). Eckhart clearly felt free to re-interpret Scripture against longstanding traditions, but also differentiated between texts which seemed more reasonable to him and others where he had to reject the conventional explanation and which he interpreted in the light of his own theology. Moreover, he was also prepared to highlight clear shortcomings of the Scriptures by producing logical and theo-logical arguments against them.
To Paul it was quite clear, that marriage with being involved in daily business distracts from the Lord, because the married people are concerned about the things of the world, hence they are divided, whereas the unmarried woman or virgin is only concerned about the things of the Lord, namely to be holy both in body and spirit.
How different Eckhart. He approaches the topic not from the outside with regard to the impact the world and with all its affairs that concern us, but looks from the inside and the power the inside has in the world. To Eckhart, virginity stands for fruitlessness, being a wife for creativity. He clearly prefers us to be ‘wifes,’ not ‘virgins,’ because our task is to be creative and fruitful. ‘”Wife,”’ he summarises, ‘is the noblest name that can be applied to the soul and it is more excellent than “virgin.”’
What does this mean for the our topic of economics and theology? Oikonomia is precisely the description of householding, it is the framework of fundamental principles of the daily business in the private, but also in the public and according to the Greek term even the global business. Oikonomia is, what keeps this world going in a well, kosmos like order. Eckhart wants us to be of a receptive nature, of course, but more important than ‘receptivity’ as ‘virgins,’ ‘far better’ as he says, is ‘that God should be fruitful in us, for only the fruitfulness of the gift shows gratitude for the gift and there the spirit is “wife” in reproductive thankfulness, as it gives birth to Jesus back into the heart of God the Father.’
The latter part is a shortcut of one of Eckhart’s central themes. Incarnation is not primarily a historical fact – this is of no importance to Eckhart – but a theological expression for the core of life. Namely being creative in this world not only as much or in the same way as he thinks of God being creator, but more precisely becoming this creator God through one’s own creativity.
As God created us through Jesus first, according to Eckhart it is us who first give birth to Jesus ‘back into the heart of God the Father.’ While God being born in us is ‘among the most ancient themes in Christian theology,’ Eckhart combines it with us giving birth to Jesus, giving birth to God back to God.
Eckhart’s theology amounts to an economic cycle of the human being on his or her way to God which ends or starts at the convergence of God and creatures. And it is a theological cycle in which the fertile life of God’s very nature glows in itself but radiates and shines beyond, resulting in the Trinity, God, the Father, the conception and birth of his son, and the return of his son into the heart of the Father. In addition, it is also a cosmological cycle by which the multitude has always existed in God, within his ground, and where at the end, the beginning is being born again in us giving birth to the Son back into the Fathers heart, as Caputo marvellously captures it: ‘From the unity of the divine ground the Trinity of Persons wells up. From the soul’s unity with the divine ground the whole life of the Trinity reproduces itself in the soul so that the soul can be engendered as that Son and indeed give birth to Him again. The unity with the Godhead is the ground and foundation of the birth of the Son. But the birth of the Son makes the virgin a wife; it makes the wasteland fruitful. Unity with the Godhead is more radical than the birth of the Son; unity with the Son is more personal and loving than unity with the Godhead. Unity with the Godhead is the basis of the mystical union; the birth of the Son is its completion.’ And Oliver Davies notes the essentiality of God’s fertility: ‘There are passages in which Eckhart appears to place the unity of God above his plurality, or at least to make his “oneness” prior to his “threeness.” Underlying such passages is Eckhart’s belief that names and concepts belong essentially to the realm of created things: they denote specific and localized being. Among such concepts Eckhart includes “threeness” but not “oneness.” (Sermon 30) But this tendency to prioritize God as One at the cost of God as Three must be set against another, which is also strongly present in Eckhart’s thought: the belief that God is essentially fertile. God the Father constantly gives Birth to God the Son. In other words, God is always dynamic and he always reproduces himself within the Trinity and within the human individual. Eckhart stresses that this generative function of God is not incidental to his nature but is his very essence.’
Without going into the question of the spirit and without dealing with the rest of this sermon that explains even more lucidly the unity of God and man in the ground of the soul, let us just notice this parallel structure, and move on to a second sermon that Eckhart gave on Luke 10:38:
‘St Luke writes in his gospel that our Lord entered a small town where he was received by a woman called Martha. She had a sister, whose name was Mary. Mary sat at the feet of our Lord and listened to his words, while Martha moved about and waited on our Lord.’
So far Eckhart’s rendering of this scriptural passage. He, then starts to compare Mary and Martha and first describes his view of Mary: ‘Now there are three things which caused Mary to sit at the feet of our Lord. The first was that the goodness of God had seized her soul. The second was an inexpressible desire: she was filled with longing, but did not know what for. She was filled with desire, but did not know why. The third thing was the sweet consolation and the bliss which came to her from the eternal word which flowed from the mouth of Christ.’
Mary – that is the human being who is longing, for what? God, the Lord, Christ – or something else? Eckhart explicitly says: Mary does not know what she is longing for.
What about Martha? Eckhart continues: ‘There were three things too which caused Martha to move about and to serve her beloved Christ. The first was her maturity and the ground of her being which she had trained to the greatest extent and which, she believed, qualified her best of all to undertake these tasks. The second was wise understanding which knew how to perform those works perfectly that love commands. And the third was the particular honour of her precious guest.’
Martha is described as the mature woman. ‘The ground of her being’ had been ‘trained to the greatest extent and which, she believed, qualified her best of all to undertake these tasks.’
In what follows, Eckhart expounds why he thinks Martha has gone further than Mary without leaving Mary behind – ‘Martha is not the opposite of Mary, viz., action without contemplation, but the perfection towards which Mary should strive, viz., a life of action that flows out of contemplation’ .
‘Pay attention’ Eckhart continues, ‘(Martha) saw that Mary was bathed in joy, her soul filled with pleasure. Martha knew Mary better than Mary knew Martha, for she had already lived long and well, and it is life that gives the best knowledge. Better than joy or light, life knows everything that we can strive for in this life except God, and in a certain sense it does so more purely than even the light of eternity can.’
Let us begin with the easier, the first part of this quote. According to Eckhart, Martha understood that Mary ‘was bathed in joy her soul filled with pleasure.’ Martha, as described by Eckhart, has already ‘lived long and well,’ hence has lived through all of this, as ‘it is life that gives the best knowledge.’ Her life experience has taught her the knowledge of assessment. Martha reflects Mary’s journey, which is part of her own journey, her knowledge and assessment are at the same time self-knowledge and self-assessment. Having gone through this life experience and being put into a stage of self-reflection, of course Martha knows ‘Mary better than Mary knew Martha,’ as Martha had lived what Mary is only about to experience, while Mary has not yet reached Martha’s stage. It is this staged design of experience that allows Eckhart to conceptualise that ‘better than joy or light, life knows everything that we can strive for in this life except God, and in a certain sense it does so more purely than even the light of eternity can.’ It is a radical theology of life, of experience of the daily, contrasted with a purely religious and contemplative life.
In Eckhart, religion and belief are just half of the life-journey. Sitting at the feet of the Lord, as Mary does, being bathed in joy and the soul filled with pleasure, is not the peak, nor the best way of learning the lessons of God. If we are to strive in this life, than it is not God, religion, spiritual endeavours, philosophy or theology, but life itself that can teach us more about God than any presence of the Lord can do. More provocatively then, Eckhart adds, that ‘even the light of eternity’ cannot teach us what life can. And he explains this further: ‘The eternal light teaches us to know ourselves as well as God, and not ourselves without God.’
What sounds at first reading rather dark, becomes clear in the light of what has been said before. If the eternal light teaches us less than life, then ‘to know ourselves as well as God’ is less instructive in our journey than ‘to know ourselves without God.’ There are hardly clearer statements possible about the radical nature of Eckhart’s theology, or shall we say a-theology, than this. We learn that our maturity equates to what has been called ‘atheism’ or the ‘death of God.’ Instead of knowing ourselves as well as God, intrinsically linked to joy and blessedness, we have to face the reality of the ordinary life, where we get ‘to know ourselves without God.’
Why, one might ask, do we have to forget about God in order to mature in our life and attain insights which otherwise are out of reach? And why is life teaching us more than even the light of eternity can do? Eckhart continues in his explanation of this highly unusual tenet and reveals the informative character of nakedness: ‘When life sees only itself, then the distinction between what is the same and what is different emerges more clearly.’ Looking at Mary and Jesus this statement seems easy to understand. Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus and full of joy and pleasure is so close to the Lord that she is unable to realise the difference between herself and the Lord and to acknowledge the state she is in. Her union with the Lord is not reflected. Martha, on the contrary, sees herself without the Lord. Eckhart points to the negative example (!) of Paul who ‘in his ecstatic vision … saw God and himself in a spiritual manner in God,’ hence was like Mary in such a naive and unreflected union with God, that ‘he could not clearly distinguish one virtue from another there, which was a consequence of the fact that he had not practised them in his own life.’
We have to reflect on this harsh statement of Eckhart about Paul. As with Mary and Martha, Eckhart accepts only his productive life after the ecstatic experience of the apostle who, had he remained in the momentous relationship between him and God, he had never become what he is. Not the momentous apocalyptic vision of the divine, the light of eternity, made him the mature apostle, but he had no other way of becoming the role model for Christians than maturity and practise of virtues as ‘the masters … (who) achieved such great knowledge through the practice of virtues that they perceived every virtue more clearly than Paul or any other saint did in their first ecstasy.’ Even more – taken back to our topic. Economics cannot be judged by theologians, unless theologians are also working in the economy. One can even not discover the virtues, nor the pitfalls in economy, if one has not exposed oneself to them. Knowledge is based on experiencing the differences, on going beyond theology and in embracing the challenge of business. Moreover, and this is indeed even more important, theology is only theology, if it leads to going beyond theology, if it leads to a-theology, if it moves the believer who is filled with all that he has in the realm of religion, out of this pleasant place and into the land of differences.
One has to pause when reading statements like this of Eckhart, especially if one compares the two thousand year tradition of Christian reading of New Testament texts, their high appreciation of Paul’s insight into the divine and the depth of his theology, and the century long rivalry between Christian asceticism and practical knowledge. In Eckhart, the dispute boils down to the simple reality of knowledge that is not only practiced through virtues, but to a theology that is only theology as economy.
That we do not simply have to do with a dissolving of theology into economy, but with a real unity, becomes clear from the further discussion in Eckhart, an argument that also criticises an economy that has lost its ability to differentiate, to be mature and to make out the virtues, because it only circles around itself, and has not got the critical instance which is core to theology.
When Luke reports: ‘Christ answered Martha by saying: “Martha, Martha, you are worried, you are concerned with many things. Mary has chosen the better part which shall never be taken from her.” (Luke 10:41-42), Eckhart’s interpretation of the Gospel text takes Mary’s ‘better part’ literally. She has not chosen something bad, she has chosen the ‘better part,’ which implies to Eckhart that she has not chosen the best part that is left for Martha.
After a short digression, Eckhart adds: ‘Martha represents not simply the active life that is opposed to the contemplative one, but rather their union:’ To Eckhart Martha represents us to be “in the midst of things, but things are not in you.” This is the key phrase that is the economic counter-part of the correction that Eckhart set for theology. As soon as economy is in people, it replaces their real self. They are money driven, but not self-driven. They are dependent, and no longer free. They might be free of the divine, but they are dependent on his creation. Both creates immaturity and imbalance. Instead, it is the task not of theology, but of life, to move man into ‘the midst of things’ in such way that ‘things are not in people.’ Hence, we face a close mutual relationship between economy and theology. Has then, theology not a better outreach to virtues, not the moral yard against which to benchmark economy?
We are brought back to the beginning – the time of uncertainty. To Eckhart, certainty is the presence of the Lord, certainty is the possession of things, money, wealth asf. Certainties, to him, are signs of immaturity. Who has matured has left the time of certainties, has left the times altogether, and has moved into the ‘land of uncertainties,’ a catch word that he adopts from Augustine. Both realms, that of religion and that of the world are lands full of uncertainties, the reflection of which, expressed in theology and economics, necessarily lead to accept a state of non-knowing: not knowing the divine, and the depths of life – not knowing the future, nor the depths of inter-relationships of creatures. At best, what theology and economics can do is approximation, getting closer not to results, but moving away from those and getting closer to open questions, the open space and where one is prepared to be exposed. There is no advantage of being a theologian, nor a businessman, there is even no advantage in being both – as the question become only more complex.