Iron Ink

“The nominalists believed that universals are produced by the mind, by reason and will, and therefore can be revised by reason and will, but that at the same time, they inhere in the particulars that they characterize, and can therefore be tested by those particulars. Extreme nominalism would deny that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts,’ but a more moderate nominalism, such as that of Abelard, asserts that the whole is in the parts, holding them together, so that the parts taken in isolation from one another (rather than as parts) are not so great as the parts taken in relation to one another. Thus the parts are not, strictly speaking, derived from the whole (deduction), nor is the whole, strictly speaking, derived from the parts (induction), but rather the whole is the parts interacting w/ one another. Therefore nominalism such as Abelard’s was congenial to the systematizing and synthesizing of law; for in law there can be no separation of the whole and the parts, the general and the particular, the form and the substance, the ends and the means, as is inherent in realist philosophies.”

Harold Berman
Law & Revolution – The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition – pg. 142

What is true in law, to wit, that there can be no separation of the whole and the parts, is true in Christian theology even more so. More than that, I would contend that this is the nature of reality. Reality can not be separated into whole and parts as if the parts can be looked at apart from the whole or as if the whole can be seen without the parts. Much of the disintegration in the West today stems from the fact that our thinking has become so compartmentalized. We are a people who think we can understand parts without wholes and think we have wholes when we have a few parts. We seldom think systemically any more.

We have lost the ability to think organically as is described in the quote above and the reason we have lost the ability to think in terms of webs of meaning is because we have given up on the notion on the idea that a unifying principle exists that can cause us to think organically thus finding meaning in webs of inter-related truth. There was a time when the West did think this way and they thought this way because they understood that Jesus Christ serving in His Three offices as Prophet, Priest, and King, was the necessary integrating point that held all truth together. This is why for centuries people could say that “Theology was the Queen of the Sciences.” It was this conviction of the Lordship of Christ that put the “uni” in University and lent the conviction that learning may have diverse portals of entry but it could remain integrated because the Lord Jesus Christ was the the one that brought unity to the diversity. It was the conviction that Christ ruled over an ordered world that gave Westerners, for centuries, the confidence to believe that parts and wholes could not be understood apart from or in contradiction to one another.

And as an aside, while Berman credits Abelard here for his moderated nominalism we need to remember that Peter was a bit of a villain in Church history for the way he turned Augustine’s dictum of “faith seeking understanding” on its head.

A few months ago we had a rousing discussion here on the subject of usury. Yesterday, in my reading I stumbled upon the subject once again in Harold Berman’s, “Law & Revolution; The Formation of the Western Legal Tradition.” In this section Berman is dealing with how canon law in the Medieval Church formed and affected contract law.

“By further elaboration, the doctrine of just price was developed as an overriding principle for testing the validity of any contract.

The problem of course, was to determine what is just. Both the Romanists and the canonists started w/ the principle that normally the just price is the common estimate, that is, the market price. It was not considered to be a fixed price: it varied according to diversity of time and place. Where, as in the case of land, it may be difficult to establish a market price, the just price might be determined by consideration of the income from it or by examining sales made of places existing nearby or, if all else failed, by asking the opinion of men who have special acquaintance w/ local prices….

The canonists were also concerned, however, w/ another aspect of sale than the just price, namely, the excess profit derived by one of the parties. Profit making in itself – contrary to what has been said by modern writers – was not condemned by the canon law of the twelfth century. To buy cheap and sell dear was considered to be proper in many types of situations….But even when there was no improvement, as when a merchant bought good for the purpose of reselling them at a profit, the canonists said that this profit was entirely proper, provided that the motive was not greed but the desire to maintain himself and his dependents. What was condemned by canon law was ’shameful’ profit (turpe lucrum, ‘filthy lucre’), and this was identified w/ avaricious business practices…. thus for the canonists the doctrine of just price became in essence, both a rule of unconscionability, directed against oppressive transactions, and a rule of unfair competition, directed against the breach of market norms.

As such, it paralleled another doctrine of the canon law, the prohibition against usury. Usury was denounced in the Old and New Testaments and had been denounced in the church from early times. However the definition of usury was never entirely clear and it kept changing. Sometimes it seemed to refer to any profit derived from the lending of money, no matter what the purpose or form. In agrarian societies, where tillers of the soil must survive hungry periods prior to the harvesting and sale of crops, those who engage in lending money at interest are apt to be both needed and hated, both wanted and condemned. In Western Europe in the ninth, tenth, and early eleventh centuries (before the great revival of commerce), when borrowing was almost always for consumption rather than production or investment, the church had proclaimed many blanket prohibitions against the sin of usury. In the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries, however, the economic situation began to change drastically. Henceforth money was needed also for financing fairly large-scale economic enterprises. It was also needed for financing fairly large-scale military enterprises of the church itself. At the same time, as John Noonan has pointed out, ‘many churches and monasteries were heavily endowed and under a constant pressure to find suitable investments for their funds. The monasteries were, indeed, the chief lenders to the nobles departing on the Crusades. The purchase of annuities by churches and pious institutions was on a very large scale… The Papacy itself often had large idle sums on deposit in banks.’

Under these circumstances, the canon lawyers began to systematize for the first time the law of usury. They started w/ the broad, general concept of an earlier time – the sin of usury consists in lending money for profit. Gratian defined it as ‘whatever is demanded beyond the principal,’ and stated that the usurer, like the thief, was bound to restore what he has taken in excess of the loan. Moreover, canon law in the twelfth century extended the doctrine of usury to the sale of goods on credit where the price charged is higher than that charged for a cash sale. At the same time, however, a large number of different types of financing operations and credit devices – for profit – were declared to be nonusurious. Where the borrower was an enemy, a vassal, or an unjust possessor, interest might be charged. Where interest was compensation for a loss incurred through lending, it might be charged; also an agreement was valid that the borrower would pay a financial penalty if he failed to return the loan at the agreed time. In addition, a lender holding a pledge might deduct from its revenues his expenses in caring for it. Eventually, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, it was held that a higher price might be charged for a credit sale than for a cash sale where the lender, as a result of making the loan, suffers a loss or is deprived of a profit that he would otherwise have made. Indeed, the canonists first used the Roman word ‘interest’ (interesse) to mean a lawful charge for the loan of money, as distinguished from the sin of usury.

In addition, canon law recognized the validity of a wide variety of commercial contracts that began to flourish in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, under which risk money was advanced for the sake of a profit. These included joint ventures in the form oa partnership, the so called census (which was an obligation to pay an annual return from income-producing property), and the sale of debts by a creditor to a third party discount. Finally, the Roman ‘deposit’ was transformed into a loan of money for investment, with an optional rate of interest.

The canon law of usury thus developed as a system of exceptions to the prohibition against usury. Like the doctrine of just price, the doctrine of usury was a flexible rule both against unconscionability and against unfair competition. John Gilchrist is unquestionably right in his judgment that the principles of the canon law provided an important foundation for the rapid expansion of commercial and financial activities in western Europe in the twelfth century….

This quote suggests that Calvin was not that much of an innovator on the issue of usury as he is often accused of being. It also suggests that canon law was seeking to find a golden mean between rapacious interest and the necessity for copious amounts of money having reason to invest in risky commercial enterprises.

Anyway… I just thought the background was interesting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HX06TnsKnEI&feature=player_embedded

Congressman Ron Paul takes Congressman Paul Kanjorski to school. Kanjorski, The Keynesian Congressman, actually says in this 15 minute discussion w/ Ron Paul that, thanks to the Central Bank we haven’t had a financial crisis in 75 years.

If you are a complete novice to this discussion you might not profit from it quite as much as you would if you know a little about the terrain they are covering

“Wherefore we detest the Anabaptists and other seditious people, and in general all those who reject the higher powers and magistrates, and would subvert justice, introduce community of goods, and confound that decency and good order, which God hath established among men.”

Belgic Confession Of Faith
Last Sentence – Article 36

By this statement that is put in bold relief I fail to see how it is possible that people who embrace the Belgic Confession of Faith as their Christian confession could support any form of socialism which is nothing but the introduction of community of goods in the social order. If it truly is the case that Reformed people detest the Anabaptist and other seditious people then how can Reformed people support almost all Democrats and nearly all Republicans? Both major political party’s today, in their majoritarian expression, are socialist and so pursue the introduction of the community of goods. The Bush regime did so with their prescription drug legislation and the Obama regime is doing so with its death care legislation. Christians supporting, through their vote, for either one of these major political parties, or at least for any candidate of these major political parties who acts consistent with their Party’s recent history is a anti-confessional act that betrays Article 36 of the Belgic Confession of Faith.

I am confessional, therefore I detest seditious people (including other nominal Christians) who reject the higher power of the U.S. Constitution, and who would thus subvert justice, and who would introduce socialism (introduce community of goods) and who do confound the decency and good order which God hat established among men.

Please, someone tell me how they can confess the Belgic Confession of faith and support our current two party system?

A World begins when its symbolism is born
Its trajectory contained at its metaphorical morn
Wordsmiths create, by hammer and tong
The vision to be taken up in minstrel song
Logic and Poetry together conspire
To build a metaphysical temple with epistemological choir
It prospers and flowers as its symbolic design
Is structured correspondent to the playwright divine

Peoples then inhabit the metaphor’s age
Each taking their turn on the generational stage
Learning their lives through what their images mean
From Birth to Death and all in-between
Their self-understanding they know intuitively well
By living inside their metaphor cell
The wheel only turns to bring strange meaning inside
When the gatekeeper elite commit metaphor-cide

A world ends when its metaphor has died
An age becomes an age all beside
When sensuous poets in their pride invent
Emblems for the souls content
That speak the meanings men will never know
But man-imagined images can show:
It perishes when those images, though seen,
No longer mean