Skepticism within Religion: A Prescription for Epistemological Humility

We tend to separate religion from skepticism, and we associate science with evidence even though of religion and science, only science is open to revision. Kierkegaard remarked that there is something absurd about religious belief, and yet a religionist should believe, and even without any evidence to back up the absurd. In fact, in the early-modern period in the West, religious belief was often assumed to have a higher epistemological status than philosophy and science even though the latter two are supported by the strictures of reason and the support of empirical evidence, respectively. I submit that it is precisely to the extent that religious beliefs are held to be certain that we should be modest about them in terms of what we can know. According to Peter Adamson, religions were once very open to skepticism, whereas the Aristotelian philosophers were certain of their epistemological certainty. Considering that varied assumptions have been applied by philosophers to their craft, they should be weary of their own claims of having achieved epistemological certainty. I contend that religionists should get back to being more tolerant of, and even invite skepticism, even within their own minds. Being humbly aware of falling short, both as an individual and as a species, of grasping true religious knowledge as it is, undeluded by our own limitations (e.g., opinions), is rarely the case as religionists make declarations as if with epistemological certainty.

In a talk, Peter Adamson asked, why does God allow us to be so ignorant? Why does God make us subject to error? It must be for some reason, Descartes thought. The problem of ignorance is akin to the problem of evil. Is the former just a sub-case of the latter? They may be the same problem. I submit that even if the two problems are related or relatable as being similar, the hatred that is endemic to evil is absent from ignorance. Stated on a more secular basis, ignorance does not necessarily come with, or spring from a bad attitude.

Nevertheless, Adamson viewed ignorance in religious terms. To Augustine, ignorance is due to free-will amid original sin. Also, the limited nature of creation is why knowledge is limited, hence ignorance exists. A religious basis exists for ignorance in terms of people tending to latch on to just some knowledge. Augustine’s Free Choice of the Will does not insist on grace because Augustine had not yet encountered Palagianism. In the text, Augustine is in dialogue with Evodius, a convert to Christianity. Adam and Eve were created in a state “between wisdom and foolishness.” In our fallen state, we are “born into ignorance, difficulty, and mortality.” “Evil is turning away eternal things, . . . and instead pursuing temporal things, which are perceived by means of the body.” Also, when desires rule over the mind, “the mind is dragged by inordinate desire into ruin and poverty . . .” This characterizes infants, according to Augustine. In short, ignorance, which is synonymous with foolishness, exists due to free-will in the state of original sin. But why then are Adam and Eve ignorant? To Augustine, this is like complaining about the world because it is not as good as heaven. Descartes wrote, “it is in the nature of a finite intellect to lack understanding of many things, and it is in the nature of a created intellect to be finite.” God certainly is not obligated to do more, and we are able to obtain knowledge. According to Adamson, Stoics and neo-Platonists, including Plotinus, have contended that individual evils are part of a good whole. According to Leibniz, the best of all possible worlds reflects this philosophy. The upshot is that human ignorance is just part of the best of all possible worlds that God could create, so we should not blame God for our own ignorance. I contend that it is important even when looking at scripture in a revealed religion to keep in mind that human ignorance is not exempted on our end. Therefore, humility in making religious claims, as if declarations, could greatly reduce the typical impious air of infallibility on our end. Even if revelation does in fact come from an intelligent being that transcends the limits of human cognition, perception, and emotion, such news must travel through our fallible atmosphere before we can make sense of the distinctively religious truth.

It follows that religious accounting for human ignorance is not exhausted by one religion, or at least that in humility human epistemology should be open to alternative accounts. Even if one religion holds a monopoly on truth, the truth of this truth is not contained within our purview. Accordingly, in his talk, Peter Adamson discussed the religious account of Jainism, which is native to South Asia, with respect to ignorance. Umasvati (4^th to 5^th century), for example, author of the Tattvartha Sutra, was a Jain, so he was not a Brahmanic thinker. On the topic of the human self, Jain thought is that the Brahmanic and Buddhist philosophies are in part right and in part wrong. The Jains claim that there is an eternal, changing self. Liberation means freedom from the cycle of samsara and comes through “enlightened worldview, knowledge, and conduct,” so one is not trapped in a one-sided view. Being non-violent, Jains didn’t want to disagree too strenuously with others, but this explanation doesn’t fit with the polemics in some Jain texts. Also, the Jains criticize a person having one-sided knowledge. In addition to assertability, there is the notion of unassertability. Omniscience refers to knowledge of all substances in all their modes, past present, and future.” The path to knowledge is about elimination of karmic bondage. Growth in knowledge involves the steady falling away of one-sided thinking. Seeing the world from every perspective rather than from only one is thus to be sought.  Delusion is at the root of ignorance, and is associated with having a one-sided view; both are associated with karmic bondage, which keeps a person from liberation.

So rather than original sin from a Fall, which itself is premised on Creation, Adamson’s account of Jainism is that delusion is part of the unenlightened human condition, wherein we may tend to have one-sided views. Our knowledge and perspectives tend to be one-sided, and we are susceptible to being in bondage to them—even to being deluded that they are wholistic rather than partial. Both Augustine and Umasvati were skeptical concerning the pretensions of human knowledge. In his talk, Adamson added in Francis Bacon’s view, which is that Adam has perfectly functional cognitive faculties, whereas we, the fallen, do not. True knowledge is the province of divinity. I submit that religionists would greatly enhance their own credibility as purveyors of truth that is inherently sourced beyond our reach by humbly keeping in mind their own fallibility even and especially with regard to what is actually religious belief rather than knowledge, for if the content of religion were known, what place would faith have when the human mind enters into the religious domain?

Church Services during the Coronavirus Pandemic: Defying the State as Anti-Christian

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic during the Christian Holy Week in 2020 brought up the contentious relationship between church and state in at least the United States. Some of the American governments banned any in-person worship services even on the festival of Easter, while other governments merely discouraged such gatherings. Most churches had already stopped their weekly services, but a few outliers insisted even on having large gatherings on Easter Sunday. Those clerics tended to view themselves as defending their faith as if in an epic battle against a tyrannical state. I contend that such clerics were over-reacting—acting as if they were fighting a battle in which martyrdom might be required. The sheer entrenchment was excessive. Next, I provide some background on the Christian position on government authority, after which I will look at two cases.

In the Gospel of John (19:11), Jesus says to Pilote, “You would have no authority over Me, unless it had been given you from above.” In the synoptic Gospels, Jesus tells Pharisees and Herodians, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”[1] Jesus recognizes the purview of the state, and thus in following governmental law, yet he considers the only authority bearing on him to be from God. The authority over him comes only from on high because he is the Son of God, and yet he does not take on the Roman authorities by being a political zealot, for instance, even though such a role could be expected from someone with only heavenly authority over him. Yet give to Caesar the things that are his.

Caesar can have Jesus’ body, but not his soul. The latter is what counts to him, so although earthly authorities can take his body, real authority pertains to his soul as it endures after the death of the body. Easter proclaims that even the body, transformed, can survive death. In going to the Upper Room after his resurrection, Jesus walks through a door but is hungry and asks for fish. The nature of the transformed body transcends the limits of human concepts and perception.  Faith thus suggests that civil authorities do not really have power over bodies that survive death. A firm belief in an afterlife thus supports Jesus’ claims on authority. Jesus does not deny Caesar’s authority, but simply regards it as not really mattering.

Paul’s view is in sync. “Every person is to be in subjection to the government authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”[2] Obey the government, for its authority ultimately comes from the only real authority, God. This does not of course imply that government authorities are semi-divine beings, hence the objection can arise as to tyrannical uses of power. Namely, is such power also from God? Clearly not. Henry VIII of England was wrong, which I submit demonstrates just how flawed the doctrine of the divine right of kings is even in theory. Facing a tyrannical use of government authority, Jesus submits his body to Caesar anyway. Jesus is a religious rather than a political reformer, and his task was soteriological (i.e., salvation) rather than to make a political protest. His job is thus not to take on governments.

Therefore, the refusal of many early Christians to sacrifice to Roman deities, albeit from religious motivation, defied Jesus’ preachment to give to Caesar what is Caesar’s. Being forced to sacrifice as a political act in the Roman Empire was based on authority that really doesn’t matter (as only God’s authority matters), so making the sacrifices would not have made those Christians worshippers of idols. So their martyrdoms were unlike that of Jesus, and were not based on his teachings or example. Similarly, the Japanese Christians (and western priests) tortured until they stepped on a metal or stone engraving of Jesus were not renouncing their faith. Woe that such a trifle act could destroy a faith, even if they had stepped on the engravings in free will (which they did not).

I submit that pastors motivated to defy government orders or guidelines prohibiting religious gatherings, including worship services, during the coronavirus pandemic could not look to Jesus as their role model. “If Caesar says close down, then close down,” might be Jesus’ reply to those pastors. “It doesn’t change anything in your relationship to God.” Besides, Jesus might add that alternatives exist, such as online services, which many churches had gone to before the government guidelines and prohibitions on groups of over so many people meeting in person. It is easy to become excited in fighting for a firmly held belief or faith and to perceive government as attacking, but I submit that setting up such a dynamic says more about the pastor than Christianity.

Kentucky’s chief executive Andy Beshear said on Good Friday, “I think we’re down to seven churches statewide that are thinking about having an in-person service.”  He announced that any “residents attending a mass-gathering—including church services—will be forced to self-quarantine for 14 days.”[3] Acting on behalf of public health in Kentucky, Beshear was hardly attacking the Christian faith. In fact, he was a deacon at his church, and he frequently talked about his own faith while promoting guidelines on physical distancing. “I have never been as sure of anything in my faith as I am in this,” he said, “We must protect each other.”[4] Brotherly and sisterly love, or neighbor love. According to Leibniz, such wise love, manifesting as universal benevolence, is justice. Caritas sapientis seu benevolentia universalis. Such benevolence reaches even strangers, unlike Cicero’s brand of concentric circles of ethical duty.

On the week before the Christian Holy Week, a Florida sheriff arrested Pastor Rodney Brown for continuing to hold in-person worship services at his megachurch in Tampa. Brown claimed that he would not close his church until the End Times begin. In keeping with his theological timeline, he was violating a government order “directing residents to remain at home effective March 27 except for ‘essential services’—including trips to the grocery store, the doctor’s office and the pharmacy.”[5] Attending church was not listed as an essential service. Indeed, Jesus of the Gospels says, “when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret.”[6] So the pastor did not have to put people’s lives at risk in order for them to continue their relations with Jesus. Furthermore, the state’s strong interest in public health during the pandemic justified the government in keeping open only essential services. As Christians could pray in their homes, consistent with the state's stay-at-home order, means that attending church services was not essential to their religious lives. Besides, the Christians would have already believed that they had been saved theologically due to the vicarious, self-emptying sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the Cross. Brown's religious-persecution complex even to the point of contemplating martyrdom by incorrectly viewing it as following Jesus was overdone, perhaps for attention-deriving effect.

Pastor Tony Spell in Louisiana also mistakenly believed that it was necessary for his congregants to worship even at close range in his church in order to get back to Jesus. "I've just got to get to Jesus. . . . Come on America, let's get back to Jesus," Brown said in his church on April 26, 2020 in defiance of the government's stay-at-home order that barred such gatherings and his own house-arrest.[7] Flouting even his own arrest points to a criminal mindset that refuses to recognize, not to mention respect, laws as a constraint. Jesus of the Gospels is a religious reformer, not a criminal zealot seeking to defy the Roman Empire in order to bring it down or at least out of Judea. Give unto Caesar what is his, for he cannot have power over souls. He can, however, has power over bodies, and Jesus does not contest this in the Passion story. Jesus is quite obviously oriented to the after-life, whereas the defying pastors seemed more oriented to this world and particularly in its squabbles. 

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[1] Mark 12:16-17; Luke 20:25; Matthew 22: 21. All passages quotes here are from the King James Bible.

[2] Romans 13:1.

[3] Samuel Chamberlain, “Kentucky Governor Threatens 14-Day Quarantine for Going to Mass Gatherings, including Church Services,” FoxNews.com, April 10, 2020 (accessed April 11, 2020).

[4] Ibid.

[5] Daniel Burke, “Police Arrest Florida Pastor for Holding Church Services Despite Stay-at-Home Order,” CNN.com, March 30, 2020.

[6] Matthew 6:6
[7] Danielle Wallace, "Louisiana Pastor Breaks House Arrest to Hold Sunday Service amid Coronavirus Stay-at-Home Orders," Foxnews.com, April 26, 2020 (accessed same day).

Pope Francis on Youth Unemployment, War, and the Idolatry of Money

It is not often that the global economy’s military-industrial complex is tied to youth unemployment and, moreover, to the idolatry of money. Yet this is precisely the thread woven by the spiritual leader of the Roman Catholic Church. While the pope’s comments risk a certain overreach from the theological to the terrain of international political economy, which proffers its own body of knowledge, it can also be said that having a transcendent referent as one’s focus enables a person to make subtle taken-for-granted assumptions in our economic, social, and political systems transparent. In articulating an economic (and related political) center and giving it a distinctly theological interpretation stemming from the Biblical passage, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also,”[1] the Roman pope provides the world with a way to do political economy from a distinctly religious vantage-point.

“At the center of all economic systems must be man, man and woman,” the pope asserts; “everything else must be in service to this man.[2] In itself, this claim is not religious in nature. Rather, the tone is philosophical, reminiscent perhaps of Kant’s “kingdom of ends” in which morality means respecting rational beings as objective ends in themselves, rather than only using them as means. For Kant, a lack of goodwill, due to pathology, lies behind the lack of adequate respect that would otherwise put people first—hence the need for public legal justice. This is not to say that Kant secularizes the matter completely; any rational creature is an end in itself “by virtue of the autonomy of his freedom he is the subject of the moral law, which is holy.”[3]  Using reason, the rational being is an assigner of value; such a being thus has absolute value (hence deserving to be treated as an end in itself, rather than merely a means to someone else’s agenda). Now a rational being is uniquely free to subject himself to his own law, which, given the necessity that lies in reason itself, binds him.  “The moral law is holy (inviolable),” Kant writes; “the humanity in his person must be holy to him.”[4] For Kant, the humanity is the rational nature, which makes the moral law sacred because reason cannot be bent out of sheer caprice. Put another way, rational beings have absolute value in that we use reason to hold ourselves as if by necessity (though freely) to that which we assign value to.

Pope Francis can be read as substituting love for reason—that men and women are made out of love, and thus inherently to be loved rather than used as mere means. Here we can discern glimpses of Leibniz’s claim that human beings are due love as a matter of justice as per the extent of being or existence that we have, and Augustine’s emphasis on caritas, or human love that can be sublimated to love of God.

Whereas Kant points to pathological self-love as thwarting the respect due beings of love, Pope Francis argues in terms similar to Aquina’s misordered concupiscence—placing a lower good above a higher one. “(W)e have put money at the center, the god of money,” the pope claims. “We have fallen into a sin of idolatry, the idolatry of money.”[5] Where your treasure is, there may be found your heart. In this case, money, which Aristotle calls barren metal, has come to be loved rather than other people, not to mention God, which as Augustine stresses, is love itself. The basic problem, in other words, is warped priorities.

Not surprisingly, greed is not far away, lying behind money as a god at the center of all. “The economy is moved by the ambition of having more.”[6] That ambition is an end in itself, so no amount of money is ever enough. Interestingly, we can distinguish ever-lasting here from the eternal; whereas love cuts through time in having value, greed is of infinite, or unlimited, desire. Value that cuts through time, such as holds with love, gets expunged by the all-consuming god of money. Put in Kantian terms, people are treated as mere means rather than also as ends in themselves.

It is no wonder that the young and old are tossed to the wayside because of their relatively low utility. Regarding youth unemployment, the pope had this to say. “(W)e are discarding an entire generation to maintain an economic system that can’t hold up anymore, a system that to survive must make war, as the great empires have always done.”[7] The system, being designed to funnel money, must be protected, and it is no accident that the people-as-means, or human resources, attribute so easily translates into an economy of war. Rather than being at the center, the human being is reduced to collateral damage, or targeted outright.

Because “a Third World War can’t be done, they make [regional] wars,” the pope explains.[8] This involves the production and sale of weapons, which sorts out “the balance sheets of the idolatrous economies, the great world economies that sacrifice man at the feet of the idol of money.”[9] Here the pope explicitly relates making money an idol of inviolable worth and sacrificing people as if they are worthless. Barren metal, in other words, is put over beings capable of holding themselves to a moral law and of loving themselves and others—even those who would sacrifice them on an altar of gold. Not unexpectedly, an international political economy oriented to sustaining an arms trade divides economies—even sorting them reductively along the lines of weapons production and consumption. The United States is a “superpower,” whereas Africa has value only in as much as it has the wherewithal to purchase weapons and sustain its intestine squabbles.

Once held up as a coming cacophony of diversity “like a polyhedron, all united but each preserving its particularity, its wealth, its identity,” globalization has become impoverished, “a sphere in which all points are equidistant from the center” whose sheer gravity “takes away the wealth of diversity of thought and therefore the wealth of a dialogue between peoples.”[10] That is to say, the reductionistic, weapons-oriented organizing principle of the global military-industrial complex saps globalization of its many differences, essentially nullifying this sort of wealth in favor of a more banal form in which the dark hole of a bank vault functions as a god with a suffocating embrace.

Beware the military industrial complex. U.S. President Eisenhower delivered this starkly public warning as he embraced some free speech in his farewell address in 1960. It is dangerous to have so much financial and related political interest lined up on the side of war. This is hardly unknown, yet we tolerate it because the interests of capital have beguiled us into supposing that they have labor’s back. In other words, we have been made to fear the onslaught of mass unemployment that would ensue from a structural realignment off the weapons trade. 

In his interview in 2014, Pope Francis takes a more subtler look at what is really at stake. Whereas historically religion and then morality operated as viable constraints on the profit motive, the god of money seems to have a relatively free hand as of the early twenty-first century at least; correspondingly, people are secondary, and thus expendable, in the system designed and inhabited by the same. Money has come to be regarded as an absolute, with the worth of persons being defined exclusively according to its measure. Put another way, the unit of measurement has become an end in itself—inviolable, and thus an idol—while the measurers—the assigners of value—have come to accept their place as mere means, or human resources. 

Living in the “system”— an artifice entirely changeable even in its basic contours—many people just assume that the constantly-felt subterranean, subtly existential instability or uncertainty is a necessary part of life. Life means being expendable. Life means that money rules. From a transcendental referent point, a spiritual person can see the world differently—atypically—and thus make transparent our systems’ basic premises. Once recognized, they can be changed; the changers can take back their innate power to set the priorities for the systems, whether they are social, economic, or political in nature, and to see to it that the designs are in sync with those priorities. Where our treasures are, there too are our gods.

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[1] Luke 12:34; Matthew 6:21. Not being in Mark, the source is likely the book of Q (which stands for Quelle, or “source” in German), a book of Jesus sayings hypothesized to have been a source used by the writers of Luke and Matthew.

[2] “Full Text of Pope Francis’ Interview with ‘La Vanguardia,” Patheos, June 13, 2014.

[3] Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788)

[4] Ibid.

[5] “Full Text of Pope Francis’ Interview with ‘La Vanguardia,” Patheos, June 13, 2014.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

Big Money in a Big Church: Thieves Hit Osteen’s Megachurch

Joel Osteen’s “megachurch,” also known as Lakewood Church, adheres to the Prosperity Gospel, which maintains that God rewards true believers with material wealth in addition to heavenly salvation. Implications from this theological perspective put the congregation and the leadership in a sticky position following the theft of $600,000 from the church. In the following essay, I intend to apply Christian principles to Christianity. How well Christianity makes out may give us some indication of the religion’s future, for a house divided cannot stand—at least for long after the inertia has run out.

The Prosperity Gospel is grounded in the Jewish Scriptures, wherein God repeatedly promises wealth to those of the chosen people who keep faith rather than lapse in maintaining the covenant. Yahweh being the “Possessor of heaven and earth,” the world is God’s property.[1] Human possessions are therefore gifts from God. Proverb 10 promises, “The blessing of the LORD brings wealth, without painful toil for it.”[2] Rather than becoming the absolute owner of the gifted property, the Hebrew is meant to act as God’s steward.[3] That is, God retains the basic or foundational ownership right in His property. Moreover, the property relations embody a relation between Israel and God in which the Israelites owe obedience and service as stewards in exchange for a right to Jehovah’s blessings, which include riches.[4] 

Although the notion of stewardship took root in historical Christian thought, the Prosperity Gospel sprung up in the late twentieth century in the theological approach that privileges the Biblical criterion of “literal meaning” as first advocated in Moody’s 1904 Fundamentals of the Christian Faith. One of the fundamentals is a belief in Jesus Christ. The Prosperity Gospel makes this belief the basis of God’s material rewards. Because the Christian with true belief is “saved” whereas a Jew (as well as Israel collectively) can break the covenant, the conditionality of the wealth once bestowed to those having true belief is muted if not applicable. If my interpretation is correct, then the conditionality in the Prosperity Gospel applies only until the person is “saved”; thereafter, the promise of wealth is unhinged at least in part from the notion of responsibility applied to use.

Joel Osteen's megachurch during a weekend service. A substantial amount of money is doubtless collected even just from one such service. 

This rationale may explain Osteen’s reaction on March 10, 2014 to the theft of $600,000 on the previous day from that weekend’s collections. According to a statement, church administrators were “heartbroken to learn . . . that funds were stolen” and relieved that the funds had been fully insured and thus would be replaced.[5] Tellingly, the administrators added that they were working nonetheless to get back the stolen funds. This orientation involves more than a quite understandable desire for justice—albeit public legal justice rather than the sort of justice that Augustine “Christianized” from Plato and Leibniz, the co-inventor of calculus, developed: love as universal benevolence. Whereas the dominant justice in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is in line with Shylock’s banking scales being restored to balance (e.g., an eye for an eye, or a pound of flesh for late repayment of a loan), justice that has love as charity due to everyone (i.e., neighbor-love as justly owed) is in line with Jesus’s new commandment to love one another unconditionally.[vi]

I submit that taking up the Prosperity Gospel points a Christian to the Old Testament notion of justice as well; the promise being extended to earthly wealth implies that those people who are motivated to quality would also be oriented to getting the wealth back rather than losing even more. Such people would tend to concur with the predilection of the administrators at Lakewood Church to get the funds back even though insurance covers the loss.

Every human perspective is limited, given how we are “hard wired.” So a focus on getting stolen money back and seeing that the culprits pay both literally and in suffering the pain of punishment comes not without an opportunity cost (i.e., the benefits of alternative perspectives that are given up for lack of sight in their directions). In the case of the Prosperity Gospel and the related inclination to view justice as its public legal variety, Christians can slight or even violate Jesus’s dicta in Luke 6:28-30 (NIV) without being aware of the hypocrisy.  Let’s unpack the verse as per the Lakewood case.

The preceding verse has Jesus saying, “bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.” As a theft mistreats the owner(s) of the stolen goods—at the very least in not respecting the property rights—Jesus can be read here as proclaiming even the thieves of church funds as blessed. From such a basis the justice of loving the culprits (i.e., they being owed love nonetheless) can readily be grasped. Indeed, Jesus sees to it that the love is operational as benevolence even to one’s enemies (including those who steal from one’s property). First, Jesus gives the general principle: “whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also.” Anyone who has had their residence broken into would doubtless agree that discovering the theft can feel like a slap on the face. Once while studying at Yale, I returned from martial-arts (self-defense) training at the gym to find my apartment ransacked. I felt like someone had slapped me on my face. To be sure, the irony of returning from a self-defense class mitigated the sting somewhat.

As though tailor-made for Lakewood’s administrators and ministers, Jesus makes his imperative concrete. Whoever “takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either.” If stealing qualifies as taking away, then the officials at Lakewood Church should have put out a statement offering still more money to the thieves. Lest by some convoluted logic an administrator agree to extend the church’s charity program to the thieves even as he or she tries to get the stolen funds back, Jesus provides no such relieve. “Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.” While the church officials’ announced intent to get the funds back is strategically in line with keeping insurance premiums down (car owners are doubtless very familiar with this game), it flies in the face of Jesus’s demand not to demand back that which someone has taken away.

Moreover, while the intent is in line with public legal justice, Jesus’s notion of justice as “Give to everyone who asks of you,” or universal benevolence, is quite other. In the seventeenth century, Leibniz labeled the latter theory of justice as caritas naturalis seu benevolentia universalis. Natural love is sublimated from garden-variety lust (eros) to Plato’s love of the eternal moral verities “Christianized” by Augustine as God as the Highest Good, and yet unlike Plato’s intellectual love the human love directed heavenly is expressed as love of one’s neighbor (anyone). Achieving this sort of justice is one of the primary costs of adopting the Prosperity Gospel and (relatedly) Shylock’s notion of public legal justice as akin to demanding a pound of flesh.

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1. Charles R. Smith, The Bible Doctrine of Wealth and Work. London (1924): Epworth Press, p. 23; Genesis 14:19,22.

2. Prov. 10:22.

3. Smith, The Bible Doctrine, p. 25.

4. Ibid., pp. 26, 55.

5. KHOU.com, “Osteen’s Lakewood Church Suffers Theft of Over $600,000 Shocking Texas Megachurch,” The Huffington Post, March 11, 2014.

6. John 13:34.