In 1942 Isaac Asimov, in a science fiction story called “Runaround”, introduced three laws that the robots in his stories must obey.  The first law is simply this: “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”  A simplified form is simply: “A robot may not harm a human being.”.

Are these not fictional laws for fictional robots?  Certainly.  Yet, as robotics and the various bio-engineering sciences advance their technologies and create devices with increasing ability to act autonomously and “intelligently”, the ethical debates around such artificially intelligent devices, the ethics of their decision processes and the moral responsibility of their actions are increasingly important.  Asimov’s laws of robotics sometimes come up in such discussions, and the first law seems obviously desirable.  Some robotic systems have powerful mechanisms that can kill or maim a human; such a robotic device must be able to sense a human presence and cease action or avoid action in that area.  Heuristic systems that can “learn” and self-modify their own decision making processes are particularly important in such discussions.  Clearly one of the limiting parameters on a heuristic robot is that it must not learn to harm a human; positive controls must be in place such that it cannot learn such.

A few days ago The New York Times published a story on the long history of cover-ups and prevarications of the cardiac dangers of the diabetes drug Avandia by its maker, GlaxoSmithKline.  There seem to be real questions under discussion about how to interpret drug test data, and sometimes a medical cure may involve an inadvertent harm that, given present technology, is unavoidable (e.g. the side effects of cancer therapy).  Such discussions aside, from the internal memoranda GlaxoSmithKline knew of the problems for years and did their best to conceal their findings.  They acted similarly with their drug Paxil, with its increase in teen suicidal thought and behavior.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/policy/13avandia.html

Might it be too much to require the management of drug companies to adhere to the first law of robotics?  How is it that such a constraint applies categorically to robots and not to humans who, with far greater impact and responsibility, daily make decisions about the products they produce that can indeed harm, or even kill, humans?  After all, if we find such a law desirable and necessary for robots, surely it should a fortiori apply to humans, and above all to those in the healing professions.

In ogni rapporto umano, ogni dinamica interpersonale, facciamo decisioni e formiamo atteggiamenti o che ci portano verso la relazionalità e la solidarietà, o che ci portano verso “O Dio, ti ringrazio che non sono come quello/a lì”.

In every human relationship, in every encounter with another person, we make decisions and develop attitudes that either lead us toward relationship or toward “O God, I thank you that I am not like that person”.

All of my life I have heard it taught that Abraham made a mistake in having Ishmael, that in having a child by Hagar he tried on his own to realize God’s promises, thus creating all sorts of avoidable historical conflict.  At a back-of-the-mind level I have always wondered why no later biblical author gave such a criticism, but in general I accepted the contemporary teaching.

I was quite startled recently in reading the story anew that the text itself gives no indication that Ishmael was in any way a mistake or the result of Abraham making things happen on his own without waiting for God to act.  Reading the story chronologically, considering what Abraham knew at each time and the cultural norms of that day, no such conclusion can be drawn.

In the first covenant scene, God simply promises Abraham that he would have countless descendants; nothing was said at that time that the child would be born by Sarah.  The story then follows with Sarah, remaining childless, giving Hagar to Abraham and Hagar bearing Ishmael.  It was only in a much later reiteration of the promise, after Abraham and Sarah are both beyond childbearing age, that God stated specifically that Sarah would have a child; both of them laughed at that promise, it seemed so impossible.

The conclusion is clear: God had in mind something that Abraham could not have known because it was not previously given to him, and thus on the basis of which he could not act.  In having Ishmael by Hagar, Abraham in no way violated or pushed God’s promise to make it happen on his own.  He acted according to what he knew at the time, and his actions were normal in his time.

I wonder if current teaching doesn’t source at least partly from reading contemporary discomfort back into the text regarding the practice of having children by the slave of one’s wife.  There are at least two sensibilities involved, one regarding slavery, the other regarding an exclusive relationship between man and wife.  The problem is that, whether we like it or not, whether or not it tidily fits our theology or praxis, both practices were normal for that day.

A consistent judgment of Abraham having a child by Hagar would also entail an equally sharp judgment of Jacob’s relationship to Leah and Rachel and their slaves, from which the twelve tribes sourced.  Who today would state that the twelve tribes are the result of a mistake, of Jacob making things happen on his own?  Yet, if Ishmael was a mistake, so were the twelve tribes.

Ishmael was not a mistake any more than were the twelve tribes.

Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (“Person and Act“) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003).

Wojtyla opens the forth section of the introduction with a startling claim: that one person can reproduce, in an “adequate” if not complete manner, the subjectivity of another person.  While fully admitting that the incommensurability of the other poses certain difficulties, he nonetheless argues this point on the basis of one’s observation of oneself as an integrated subjective/objective, inner/outer whole.  That is, since in observing oneself acting the experience is at once from within and from without, in observing the external act of another it is also possible to adequately recreate the subjectivity of the other.  This claim is foundational to the development of his view of person and of act.

This is essentially a restatement of what he has already said in the second section of the introduction.  There he notes that we can know nothing of the subjectivity of animals, apart from individual cases in which a dog or a horse recognizes its owner from another.  When observing another human that changes.  We simultaneously know ourselves from within and without, as subject and as object; this opens the possibility for partially understanding another human because our perceptions by which the other is given to us pass through the categories and distinctions we have through our experience of ourselves as subject and object.

The second point in the fourth section develops this further along the lines of consciousness.  Again Wojtyla points out that this is not a study of the person as constituted by the consciousness of the perceiver.  Yes, the perception of the other happens through consciousness, but Wojtyla is clear on this point: the reason by which the action of another is a conscious action is not simply because it is constituted as such by the perceiver.  Rather, in the perception of another person something adequate of the person as conscious agent is already given in the experience itself, and it is the phenomenological, intellectual engagement of these perceptions that reveals the acting person.

In chapters I and II of the work proper this relationship between consciousness and the person as actor will be explored.  In so doing the transcendency of the person will emerge through his or her actions, and chapters III and IV will explore a “possibly accurate” analysis of the person as transcendent agent.  Chapters V and VI will examine the complexity of the person not only as revealed as transcendent in the act, but also through its complement of the person as integrated in the act.

The final chapter of the work is entitled simply “Participation”.  Wojtyla notes that most of our efforts go into understanding the external world; relatively little goes into understanding ourselves.  Yet, this understanding of ourselves is critical to how we act and what we accomplish.  Because we are constantly exposed to ourselves as subject/object, we run the great risk of becoming commonplace or accustomed to ourselves.  We must constantly be recalled to marvel at ourselves, because in that we can begin a process of discovery of who we are through questions and responses.  The importance of this seems to sum up in a single sentence, emphasized in the original: “humanity cannot lose its proper place in the world that we ourselves have configured” (“l’uomo non puo perdere il posto che gli è proprio in quel mondo che egli stesso ha configurato”, p. 856). The implication that I draw from this is that unless we understand ourselves and how we act, we stand to lose that place.

I was struck recently by the first of six cutting edge ideas noted in a recent brief posting on a Scientific American RSS feed.  Muhammed Yunus, the Bangladeshi economist who started the now global micro-lending movement, has a new business idea he is pitching to a few global companies: altruistic products.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=walls-to-fall-6-ideas-that-push-the-2009-11-26

Doubtless much can and will be said about this, but I find the idea intriguing and encouraging, at least initially.  In my reading of Adam Smith, the late 18th century Scottish moral philosopher whose ideas are part of the basis of our modern economic system, as an Enlightenment thinker he thought that unseen forces (the “invisible hand”, or “Providence”) within the rational order of the cosmos would balance the selfish actions inherent in individual merchant’s actions, and thus markets, producing the common good despite the lack of intent to do so by market participants.

In so doing Smith basically blessed selfish action: live selfishly, and Providence will balance it out; you don’t need to be your brother’s keeper.  In other words, one need not actively pursue what it means to fulfill the second greatest commandment in order for it to be fulfilled.  How very convenient indeed.

What Smith seemed to fail to foresee were the imbalances introduced into the market by asymmetry in contractual power (as an individual user just try to re-negotiate the license on any large software company’s products) or information asymmetry (those with specialized knowledge of particulars always have an advantage over those without), over time leading to deeply embedded power inequalities and inefficiencies in the market.

Over two centuries selfishly oriented markets have resulted in massive imbalances in the distribution of wealth.  Smith was not worried about that; he was more concerned about the equal distribution of happiness.  In my view his optimistic vision has a very mixed result.  I live in the up side results; by the accident of where I was born, I have had access to education and resources such as capital, a generally favorable political and legal system, health care, etc.  For the poorest of the poor around the world, those without access to the most basic elements of survival, they have very little to no access to these starting points and very little, if any, hope of breaking out of their hand-to-mouth existence.

Will Yunus’s efforts offer some of these people the basics they need to survive and begin to flourish?  I hope so.  My real hope is that those up and down the org charts in those companies who work with Yunus will be genuinely touched by the plight of those they assist with these selfless products and will themselves be changed in the process.  Perhaps others will follow suit, jealous of the attention and good PR the others seem to be receiving; may they be changed as well!  Ecclesiastes 4:4 still accurately describes the business motivations of most.

Along related lines of meta-economics, or the ethical basis on which an economic system is built, I highly recommend my English translations of Italian philosopher of economics Luigino Bruni’s proposal to (re-)introduce agapic thinking into economics, as well as Italian philosopher of law and political science Carlo Lottieri’s analysis of the modernist reduction of the other.

Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (Person and Act) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003)

In the third section of the introduction, Wojtyla discusses two stages in the comprehension of the person, intuition and reduction.

In observing a person acting, at the phenomenal level we gather an innumerable set of facts regarding specific acts by a person.  These facts source both externally from the actions of others and internally from our own acts.  This set of facts is processed by the intellect in a sort of pre-theoretic stage in which a quantitative multiplicity of facts about a particular human are distilled into a qualitative identity of a single person as the source of the actions; this process is an intuitive induction in the Aristotelian sense (see for example http://www.friesian.com/arch.htm).  It is not necessary to first prove that a human is a person and then that what that human does is an act; in each experience the person and the act are both given in some manner.

Wojtyla specifically rejects the later, more analytic, sense of a form of argumentation or reasoning as the generalization of a set of specific cases to other yet unobserved cases (“all the ravens I have ever observed are black, therefore it must be the case that all ravens are black”).

Following the pre-theoretic intuitive induction of a person as the source of a set of (f)acts, we then want to explore that process, examining and explaining more deeply; this move to a theoretical understanding of the person is reduction.  This process is the intellectual analysis of how myriad facts and experiences are reduced to the identity of a single acting person; through deepening this understanding process the person emerges in more clear relief against the background of the variety of observed acts.

Again Wojtyla rejects the understanding that reduction is somehow limiting or diminishing the person as an entity, as can sometimes occur in analytic philosophy.  Rather than reductively diminishing the person through (for example) behaviorist or dispositional tendencies as observed in acts, Wojtyla argues for just the opposite; the acting person emerges even more clearly as a result of these analyses.

Wojtyla notes several things that follow from this approach.  One is that the proposed study of the person by means of acts is grounded in praxis; that is, it is not a study in how to act consciously, rather a study of conscious action itself and how it reveals the person.  Nor is it a study grounded so much in the person as an object as known intersubjectively, partly through our own knowledge of ourselves intrasubjectively.  Further, it is not the derivation of the person by abstracting from observed (f)acts; it is rather a penetration into and beyond the acts to the reality of the person behind them.

The object of the study then is to move from the initial inductive intuition of the person to a full explanation of the same such that the experienced reality corresponds to the theory.  The task is challenged by the incommensurability of the experienced person-act.  We proceed from the basis of our own interior knowledge of ourselves, but the experience of ourselves and of others is beyond complete comprehension.  Wojtyla sees as one of the principals tasks of his study the attempt to come to a correct integration of theory and experience.

Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (Person and Act) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003)

In the second half of the second section of the introduction to Person and Act, Wojtyla considers that the intellectual vision of the person formed in the observation of acts derives not only from the acts themselves, but also from the moral value of those acts.  The acts of a person are different than actions in general in that persons are presupposed to be agents.  The acts of an agent have an intrinsic moral property which cannot be separated from the act without artificially reducing the full dynamic experience of the act.

For Wojtyla the morality of the person is existential in nature.  Not only do we come to understand a person through the experience of moral acts, the person him- or herself becomes good or evil through the moral nature of the acts chosen through one’s agency.  Thus the person is found both at the point of departure, i.e. in the experience of a moral act as performed, as well as the end point, i.e. the person that one becomes as a result of a moral act.

Again Wojtyla notes that ethics typically considers moral values per se, in the light of which individual acts are then considered.  Neither is it an anthropological approach that sets out to discover, without valuation, the moral values of a person.  Wojtyla’s study, in difference with ethics, will reverse this to consider how we come to understand something of the person, either of self or other, through acts and their intrinsic morality.  Wojtyla notes that both ethics and anthropology are based on the unity in the experience of human acts and the experience of their morality.  By considering the morality of acts we arrive at a much fuller comprehension of the person than through acts alone; in a fully integrated phenomenology of the person morality cannot be set aside.

In concluding the second section of the introduction, to better define the methodology in this study to contrast the relationship between ethics and anthropology, Wojtyla gives the analogy of factoring common terms in a mathematical equation outside of enclosing parentheses.  In this study ethical considerations will be “placed outside the parentheses” in order to better highlight the unique qualities of the experiences which remain inside the parentheses, now unentangled from ethical considerations per se.  In so doing Wojtyla chooses to set aside essential ethical considerations in favor of essential anthropological considerations, without however altogether ignoring ethical considerations.

Attingendo al saggio del dott. Carlo Lottieri, Dall’ontologia della cosa all’etica dell’altro, vorrei proporre una breve riflessione riguardo una differenza tra Emanuel Lévinas e Karol Wojtyla sul rapporto con l’altro.

Nell’introduzione di «Persona e atto» di Karol Wojtyla (dall’antologia Metafisica della persona, a cura di G. Reale e T. Styczen, Bompiani, Milano 2003) Wojtyla considera come si viene a conoscere qualcosa dell’altro come uomo, come persona.  Nella prima sezione dell’introduzione considera cosa vuol dire «sperimentare l’uomo» ovvero «l’esperienza dell’uomo», e nota che nello sperimentare l’altro si sperimenta pure se stessi.  Cioè, nell’atto conoscitivo dello sperimentare l’altro come uomo, come esteriorità, si sperimenta se stessi simultaneamente sia come interiorità sia come esteriorità.

Per Wotyla allora, nella fenomenologia dell’altro si sperimenta pure se stessi fenomenologicamente, almeno in parte, come «altro». È da questa prospettiva dell’osservatore su di sé, sia come «uomo» che come «altro», che si può capire l’altro come «uomo». È poi da questo punto di vista che si viene ad intendere qualcosa dell’altro come «persona», dagli atti che l’altro compie.  Questa conoscenza deriva da un rapporto intrinsecamente simmetrico con l’altro, simmetrico nel senso che in un certo modo si sperimenta sia l’altro sia se stessi nella stessa maniera.

Mentre consideravo quest’argomento ho pensato al saggio di Lottieri proprio su come Lévinas considera l’altro come trascendente in modo asimmetrico rispetto a se stessi.  L’altro eccede sempre la mia capacità conoscitiva e quindi ci rimane sempre un rapporto asimmetrico (in modo reciproco, s’intende) con l’altro.  Da quando ho letto e tradotto il saggio sono rimasto un po’ perplesso come si possa mai avere un rapporto sociale più o meno uguale con l’altro, se in ogni modo l’altro sempre mi trascende.  Purtroppo non ho ancora avuto il tempo di leggere Lévinas per capire come risolva la domanda.

(In un breve scambio di mail col dott. Lottieri m’ha indicato che in Lévinas l’uguaglianza e la giustizia entrano con il terzo, cioè l’altro dell’altro.  Quindi dai suoi commenti pare che l’uguaglianza sia un rapporto non tanto interpersonale quanto societario.  Qui c’è da approfondire senza dubbio.)

Riflettendo sull’argomento di Wojtyla, mi domando se il suo approccio non preservi qualcosa d’un uguaglianza essenziale del rapporto con l’altro, basato proprio sul modo di sperimentarlo. Cioè, conoscere l’altro significa conoscere me stesso, e senza l’altro non posso neanche conoscere me stesso.  Sì, è vero che l’altro m’eccede sempre, ma è anche vero che in qualche modo io m’eccedo sempre a me stesso in quanto mi sperimento come «altro».

Mantenere una tale simmetria nei rapporti altrui non mi sembra problematico in quanto non credo che ci voglia necessariamente una trascendente asimmetria levinasiana perché non si sfrutti l’altro.  Mi pare che non è tanto la simmetria stessa il problema quanto una simmetria che possa divenire asimmetrica nell’diminuire l’altro.

È appunto perché il rapporto con l’altro è essenzialmente allo stesso tempo simmetrico, trascendente e auto-riflessivo nel modo di conoscerci l’un l’altro che non sono libero di negare l’altro, di definirlo inferiore.  Ne segue appunto che negando l’altro nego me stesso.  Nel definire inferiore l’altro, mi definisco inferiore.

Questa qualità auto-riferente del mio rapporto con l’altro nel pensiero di Wojtyla mi pare un punto cardinale della sua etica.  Insomma non credo che cambii la conclusione del saggio di Lottieri in quanto l’altro, in contrasto alla visione della persona sotto l’ottica moderna, rimane sempre trascendente.  Volevo però mettere in rilievo questa distinzione tra Wojtyla e Lévinas per meglio riflettere sugli eventuali esiti diversi dei loro sistemi etici.

Am I myself when, by an act of free choice, I deny the truth that I have established as such, having ascertained it as an eyewitness?

Did Peter, who affirmed “I do not know the man” (Mt. 26:72), deny only the truth?

Did he not also deny himself?

In betraying Christ, did he not also betray himself?

Would he not remain himself only by siding with the truth, by choosing to testify to it, and, in a certain sense, “transcending himself toward it”?

(My translation of the opening lines of Tadeuz Styczen’s Introduction to “Persona e atto” (“Person and Act”) by Karol Wojtyla, in Metafisica della persona, G. Reale e Tadeuz Styczen, eds., Bompiani, Milano, 2003.)

Taken from the Italian translation of “Persona e Atto” (Person and Act) from the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003)

In the first half of the second section of the Introduction to Person and Act, having begun from the experience of the human, Wojtyla comes to how we know something of a “person”.  We observe ourselves and others as human, and this empirical experience of the human is the starting point for how we intend, or come to know, something of a person.  In experiencing a human one of the facts which is given is that “a human acts”.  The observation that humans act is the starting point for Wojtyla’s work Person and Act.

Again, Wojtyla explicitly rejects a purely phenomenal empiricism, as the reduction of experience to the function and content of the senses alone results in profound contradictions and equivocations.  In the phenomenal experience of a human only a “surface” is directly given, nothing of the human him- or herself.  In particular what is not given in mere sense data is the human and his or her conscious action, or the act itself.  That knowledge sources from the action of the intellect of the observer in intending, or understanding, that the source of the perceived sense changes when a human acts is that a human has made a conscious decision and has done something as a result.

Nor does Wojtyla accept that the human or the act as understood by the intellect is an object constructed or synthesized by the intellect.  Rather, it is that the intellect of the observer is somehow engaged in the very experience itself, and in that engagement a direct contact with the observed is somehow established, different from but no less direct than the sensible.  In other words, what the intellect engages is not just some assembled bundle of sense data, but somehow, in the very sense experience of the other, the intellect makes a different but equally direct contact with the other.  Thus every experience is also a sort of comprehension of what is experienced.  This direct knowledge of the other will be important for his argument how we intend, or come to know, the other as person.

It is our experience of a human as acting that is the “moment of intuition” into the person of the other.  Since in the experience of another as acting we engage as well in a different but equally direct knowing of the person, the act is that which reveals the person, and the means by which we understand the person.  Wojtyla notes that the general approach is that the act presupposes the person; in ethics, as an example, consideration begins from the person and proceeds to the act.

Wojtyla however proposes to reverse that order.  His will instead be a study of the act as revealing the person, a study of the person by means of his or her actions.  This actually fits with how we experience others; it is in their actions that we understand who they are.  Were we unable to observe the actions of others, we could know nothing of the persons that they are.  We are convinced of the personhood of others because we observe that they act.  Thus it is through the acts of others that we comprehend, intend, them as persons.

In the second half of the second section of the introduction Wojtyla will take up morality as a property of human acts.

My translation of Luigino Bruni’s brief paper What the Economic Crisis Teaches Us is online.

Karol Wojtyla, in his life before his election as Pope John Paul II, was a highly regarded philosopher in the Catholic University of Lublin.  His major philosophical work is Person and Act, published in 1969, to which I here begin to set myself.  What follows is drawn from the Italian translation of the original Polish by Giuseppe Girgenti and Patrycja Mikulska, contained in the Italian language compendium of all Wojtyla’s philosophical works Metafisica della Persona, Giovanni Reale and Tadeusz Styczen, eds. (Bompiani, 2003).  This is a fresh and careful translation, done with great care and recognized by John Paul II himself.

The opening sentences of the first section of the introduction, which is what I will consider in this post, state that the purpose of the work is show the objective aspect of the rich and complex cognitive process which can be defined as, in Italian, “l’esperienza dell’uomo“.  This is accurately translated as the “experience of man”, “man” in this case being clearly understood multi-dimensionally both as an individual “man”, whether myself or others, and in its collective sense of “mankind”.  For that the English “experience of man” is, I think, quite adequate.  Perhaps the best gender neutral translation is however “experience of the human”, as this seems to best capture the multi-dimensionality of the Italian; it can be at once individual of oneself, of another human and of what is common to humanity.  (“Experience of human” is not a well formed English phrase, and “experience of humanity” tends exclusively toward the collective and misses a crucial individual aspect of Wojtyla’s thought.)

A critical point must be made here.  By “experience of the human” Wojtyla does not mean an experience which a human has.  Rather he means the direct, cognitive experience of that which is human, whether of oneself or of another or others.

A brief sketch of what Wojtyla is about might be in order.  He is ultimately working toward how we know something of what a person is, whether oneself or another.  With the very rapidly deepening scientific understanding of how we as humans tick physically, contemporary philosophy has tended to reduce metaphysical entities, in this instance a “person”, to either pure sense data or to a construction of the perceiver.  Working from a phenomenological approach, he will first examine how we experience the human, and from there he will move to the phenomenology of person intended through actions.

For Wojtyla, the primary experience of the human is to be understood as one’s approaching oneself experientially, and thus establish a cognitive contact with oneself.  The experiential nature of one’s contact with oneself is not constant; it is interrupted during sleep, and in waking moments the clarity of one’s experiential self-awareness varies.  Yet, since one is ever oneself, the experience of one’s self persists in some manner.  The experience of oneself as human is constituted as the result of the manifold of experiences of oneself, at once as subject and as object.

In the course of the first section Wojtyla specifically mentions three things that what we experience as human are not.

First, a person does not reduce to a collection of phenomena or, as David Hume would have it, a bundle of perceptions, though Wojtyla does not mention Hume by name.  Wojtyla counters that while each experience is unique and unrepeatable, there exists nonetheless something that can be called the experience of the human that is based on the entire continuity of empirical sense data.  The object of experience is not only the momentary sense phenomenon, but also the human as him- or herself, which emerges from all such experiences and which is present in each one.

Second, a person is not merely an intellectual construct, formed on the basis of the current totality of individually perceived phenomena.  The experience of the human, of the particular human who I am, persists as long as there is the direct cognitive contact with myself, as both subject and object.  The object perceived as a human does not reduce to a construction formed by the intellect from continuous empirical sense data.  While the intellect does form such a construction from sense data, resulting in my understanding of who I am, my experience of myself as human is based upon a cognitive experiential contact with the human that I am, apart from what I have experienced of myself.

Third, without mentioning Kant by name, Wojtyla rejects that ascertaining the identity of a human object entails any proof of an a priori operation of the mind in constructing the object.  Rather, this is simply the proof of the indispensable operation of the intellect in the perception of the objective world and the formation of the objects of experience.  It is precisely to the intellect that we owe the qualitative identity of the object of experience of the human, whether when the subject identifies with the object, as within the same person, or when the subject differs from the object as with others.

Summarizing the first section of the introduction, in experiencing myself it is not that I somehow divide within myself to observe myself; it is rather that I experience myself simultaneously as subject and object, as observer and observed.  What I know of myself is what I have perceived in cognitive experiential contact with myself; for that to be the case, there is something which I experience that does not reduce to sense data or to a construction from sense data.

Furthermore, it is not that I experience myself “interiorly”, and I experience others “exteriorly”; it is rather that I experience myself at once interiorly and exteriorly.  Thus when I experience others as exterior to myself, there is a common aspect with how I experience myself, as part of how I experience myself is exteriorly.  Because of this common aspect of my experience of myself and others as external, I can at times, though never as immediately as in contact with myself, partially come to something of an experience of the interiority of the other.  Thus the experience of the human is the totality of my experience of myself and others, sourcing primarily in cognitive contact with myself, yet inseparably from my contact with all other humans.

For Wojtyla then the “experience of the human” is not just of the other, but both for self and other.  In the second section of the introduction he will approach how we know the person.

Over the past few months I have noticed that there are billboards in the area with a picture of an individual and the slogan “I am second”; there is no other explanation or contact information.  It did not take much to understand that there was some contemporary church marketing thing going on.  Further information may be found at the links below.

http://iamsecond.com/

http://iamsecond.wordpress.com/

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-billboard_20met.ART0.State.Edition1.4a2064f.html

At first glance this might appear to be an authentic expression of what the Christian church should be like.  It can be difficult to disagree with those behind such a campaign without impugning them as persons or their motives.  That is not my intent.  I do not know those behind this, but in a spirit of charity I trust that they are sincere.

That said, I profoundly disagree with the campaign’s message, partly in what it does say, but more centrally in what it does not say.

What it does say is noted in the very formulation of the statement, “I am second”.  The sole subject of the sentence is “I”, already irrecoverably self-centered.

What it does not say is that I have an essential relationship to my neighbor as well as to God.  The predication of the statement that one is immediately subordinate to an unspecified other, subsequently discovered to be God, only covers the first of the two greatest commandments, to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength.  The second greatest commandment, to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is absent.  Why?

Considering the second greatest command, the formulation should be something like “I am third”.  Would that sell?  Probably not.  Yet, when did the Gospel become something to be sold using clever marketing methods?

There will probably be some good come out of this, and one might question why I don’t simply accept that and be glad for it?  In response, this campaign may be clever marketing, but it is distorted theology; distorted theology leads to distorted praxis.  It bypasses the essential relationship to the Other that is the core of the church as the eschatological community, living kingdom values now while awaiting its fulfillment.  Because of its “I” focus and its eclipsing of the second greatest commandment, in my view the long term result of the “I am second” campaign draws us yet further away from the understanding and actualization of the eschatological church.  That is its greatest loss.

There has been a question in philosophical discussion since at least the time of Socrates (late 5th century BC) regarding the nature of what is good. The classic question posed by Socrates in Plato’s Euthyphro is “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” The question is whether that which is pious is pious of its own essence, its own nature, and thus the gods love it, or whether the pious is made pious because the gods love it; Socrates clearly comes down on the former view.

In Socrates’ question however, the “pious” is something external to the gods. As best I know there was no sense of the Greek gods defining essential goodness; they were more about power, and they could be quite capricious. Certainly for Socrates and Plato in any case the good is something ineffable which is not directly dependent on or the nature of the gods.

The Socratic question has been historically important in the discussion of what is called the Divine Command Theory. Is something good because God commands it, or does God recognize what is good and command it?

When I first read this a few years ago I intuitively differed with the terms of the Socratic argument. As I have come to understand it now, the Socratic argument is not a formulation of a DCT in terms which would be considered across the various traditions of orthodox (little ‘o’) Christianity.

The basic difference is this: Christianity is willing to posit a God that is essentially and only good. Thus goodness is of God’s essential nature, neither accidental or contingent, and he is solely good, with nothing evil in his nature. (Yes, this begs crucial questions of God’s existence and his nature, but so does any appeal to a cosmic good or moral principle which is external to God.)

It follows from these premisses regarding God’s nature that God’s speech and his commands are good, in that they source from his essentially and solely good nature. Thus when God speaks he utters something necessarily good, and for God’s speech to be good it is sufficient that he speak. In argument form:

P1) God is essentially good (i.e. his goodness is not accidental or contingent.)
P2) God is good only (i.e. there is no evil in him.)
C1) Therefore God’s speech and commands are necessarily and only good.

An objection which is generally raised is that the DCT leaves open the possibility that God could command gratuitous evil, thus declaring something evil as if it were good. In response, Christianity posits God not only as essentially good but as good only. If God is good only, then he cannot speak evilly. If he cannot speak evilly, then the objection fails, as it then is impossible for God to command evil.

Corollary to this objection, one might object that God, as absolutely free, is free to choose good or evil; thus the DCT should be rejected, as this freedom opens the possibility of God choosing and commanding evil. In response I reject that God is free to choose good and evil. If one accepts that he is essentially and only good, that precludes God’s choosing evil, from which it follows that God is not absolutely free in the sense proposed. That may run counter to other ideas about the nature of God, but so far I think it holds.

We should note that the above objection sourcing from the absolute freedom of God is from a view in which good and evil are other than God; for God to be able to choose good and evil these must exist apart from God in order to be freely chosen by him. This is already a different argument, as in the proposed argument good does not exist apart from God, thus is not something God can choose; as essential to his nature, he is good, as is not of predication but of identity.

One might also object that in declaring creation as good, God declared something external to himself as good. That does not violate the conclusion that God’s commands are good, nor does it lead us to conclude with Socrates that good is other than or apart from God. As creation, the original cosmos was a dependent expression of God’s essential goodness; it was good contingent on God’s goodness. The goodness of the cosmos is not a goodness which is independent of God, thus does not qualify as a good apart from God in the same way as posited by the Socratic argument.

In conclusion, it is my view that a DCT based on the nature of God as essentially and only good is a different argument than the Socratic formulation of the DCT and thus survives the objections to the Socratic form. Thus when God gives ethical commands we, to be good, should act as he says; in so doing we will act as he acts.

The DCT in this form at least leaves open the question of how we determine just what God said or interpret how it might be applied; that is a different discussion.

Money, Greed, and God: Why Capitalism Is the Solution and Not the Problem

http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/ev050609a.cfm

From the above web site: “The church is bombarded with two competing messages about money and capitalism. The first message is that wealth is bad and causes much of the world’s suffering; the second is that wealth is good and God wants you to prosper and be rich.”

A friend sent me this; I have not had time to listen to the presentation itself so cannot comment on that.  However, snipping this bit of text from the event’s web page for brief comment, there are two foci in the above: wealth and self. This seems a misfocus; the 2nd greatest command is about the relation of self and other, not about self to wealth. With the self-other relationship as primary, I wonder if much of the rest won’t balance itself.

A couple of months ago I mulled over Ephesians 2:6 as a puzzle: what does it mean to be “seated with him in the heavens?” That is past tense, an accomplished state of things now, not a future event.

In a typical Christian dualist way of approaching this, which is how I have seen it until recently, we have an idea that being seated with Jesus in the heavens means that, were we to have the right sort of spiritual “telescope” with which we could see across a flesh/spirit divide, we could look “out there somewhere”, usually imagined at some great distance, and see ourselves literally sitting down with him. Until I rethought this, it never applied to my life here and now; it applied to some future life “in heaven”. Perhaps not all see it that way; I certainly did, as do those with whom I have discussed this.

Yet, if we understand the centrality of Incarnation and Resurrection as happening here, on the earth, that God became human and will never lose that nature, that at the resurrection we will be like him as he already is now on a new heaven and new earth, how we might understand this verse changes remarkably. I think there is reason to consider that we are already seated with him in the heavens, here and now in our present existence, in a different modality of existence that is integral to our present lives on the earth.

What do I mean by “modality of existence”? I mean simply a different form of existence which we are already living now, which began when we received the Holy Spirit as a seal of the promise yet to be fulfilled; with the Spirit living in us we live in multiple “dimensions” or “modalities” at once, though we perceive them but dimly. We are already living our new lives by the Spirit here and now, not in a different spiritual place or time, not out there somewhere, but seated already with Jesus in the heavens, now, here, as I type this. This sounds strange even to me now, as we don’t perceive ourselves that way.

This gives a new dimension to Ephesians 2:10, that we are created in Christ Jesus for good works. That is not later, or somewhere else; that is now, and here, as the manifestation of our new modality of existence, our new lives, which are yet to be fulfilled. I think this is the task of the church, to begin living by the ethics of the Kingdom here and now as evidence of that new life, making that new existence indirectly manifest by how we live.

That existence is summed up in two commands: we are to love God with all our hearts, and we are to love others as ourselves.

The following is a brief translated transcription from the program Uomini e Profeti (“Men and Prophets”), a program on the Italian radio RAI3 (the transcribed Italian follows.)  It is the second in a series of six interviews by Gabriella Caramore (whose comments are marked “GC” in parentheses below) with Paolo Ricca, a Waldensian pastor and theologian, on the theme of the judgment discourses of Jesus; this clip starts about 18:40 into the second program.

To me it seems apropos regarding contemporary trends in church marketing.  For the last few years I have felt a growing concern of exactly what he describes, that the more that churches seek to market themselves the more they lose sight of Jesus.  It is my conviction that were we to focus on living the Gospel instead of marketing it, people would be drawn to the churches without being enticed, and those that were changed would stay of their own commitment, without the need to constantly and increasingly entice, satisfy, entertain, stimulate, titillate, lest they become bored and leave.  We have substituted building the church as a successful organization for building the church as an expression of the kingdom of God, and our marketing and branding programs (which are big business) exhibit that deception.

Paolo Ricca: “Then there is the other extraordinary theme, which is that of “visibility”, we might say.  In our media society we know well that you exist only if you appear, only if you are seen.  And churches are easily and fatally induced into seeking visibility.  (GC: The most important seats of authority, the places of honor, greetings in public places….)  These are all things that are called “the religiosity of public relations” as we might call it, the spectacularization of religion which by now occupies an important place in the collective imagination, and which precisely for this provokes an ever increasing perplexity.  We know the invitation of Jesus; in the Sermon on the Mount he goes exactly in the opposite direction.  Do not make a show of yourself as a Christian.  Do not make an exhibition of your piety.  Do not let yourself be seen when you pray.  (GC: Pray in your bedroom if you must pray….)  What does this signify?  It signifies that the search for visibility has nothing to do with the search for God.  S/he who seeks visibility is not seeking God.  S/he should at least be aware of that… and it has nothing to do with truth.”

“Poi c’è l’altro tema straordinario, che è quello della visibilità, potremmo dire.  Nella nostra società mediatica sappiamo bene che tu esisti solo se appari, solo se sei visto.  E le chiese sono facilmente e fatalmente indotte a cercare visibilità.  (GC: I primi seggi, i posti d’onore, i saluti nelle piazze…)  Sono tutte cose che appunto sono state chiamate “la religiosità delle pubbliche relazioni”, così la potremmo chiamare, la spettacolarizzazione della religione che tra l’altro occupa un posto importante nell’immaginario collettivo ormai, e proprio per questo suscita una perplessità sempre più grande.  L’invito di Gesù lo sappiamo; nel Sermone sul Monte va proprio nella direzione opposta.  Non metterti in mostra come cristiano.  Non esibire la tua pietà.  Non fare vedere che preghi.  (GC: Prega nella tua cameretta se devi pregare.) … Che cosa significa questo?  Significa che la ricerca della visibilità non ha nulla a che fare con la ricerca di Dio.  Chi cerca visibilità non sta cercando Dio.  Lo deve sapere per lo meno … e non ha a che fare con la verità.”

This morning, in the first few minutes after awaking while reorienting to the world, it occurred to me that the Beatitudes have an answer to my perennial bugaboo, the opening of Ecclesiastes:  “Vanity of vanity; all is vanity.”

As I have written elsewhere in this blog, during my late teenage years in the late 60s a confluence within myself of Ecclesiastes 1:2 and the huge cultural seachanges of that time left me with a nagging despair.  Nothing seemed worth it; what is the use in pursuing a career or a life (we did not then think in terms of “lifestyles”) that will end up in a stale, ossified culture that can but fearfully try to preserve itself, only to have it all lost as vain at death anyway?  It was not until many years later that I saw The Graduate; though I was not in a situation like Benjamin’s in essentially every respect, I did closely identify with him in this respect: I felt the pressure of a culture that seemed to demand that one surrender to it, be swallowed up by it, in order to survive.  My response then was an instinctive “no.”  To be sure I could not have clearly described that then, but in retrospect I understand that was my response.

In focusing closely on the Beatitudes of Matthew 5 over the last week for an upcoming discussion with some friends, a couple of days ago the phrase “…will be satisfied” suddenly popped to my attention in the context of those who hunger and thirst to see right prevail (following the Revised English Bible’s reading.)  The promise of that phrase transformed what I have heard all of my life; if justice is what I want, if that is what drives me forward as if it were my very food and drink, I will be satisfied.  (The discussion of John 4 with the disciples after the discussion with the woman at the well comes to mind.)

This morning in the first few minutes of my post-awakening musings I coupled that promise of the Beatitudes to the conundrum of Ecclesiastes 1:2, and I suddenly knew that I had an answer to the despair that has and still does, in varying degrees, whisper in the back of my thinking.  Not all is in fact lost.  If my life’s focus is on what I best understand of Jesus’ purpose, if I am willing to let him form me as I go, then what I put into the coming kingdom of God is in fact not lost.  If what I want is justice, or peace, or the other values of the kingdom of God, those ends are not vain.  Those desires will be satisfied.

What we want is the pivotal issue.  If we want to be well thought of, or comfortable, we will have gotten out of it what we want; our desires will have already been satisfied.  And, by the way, that will exclude us from the coming kingdom; if we do not want it now, why would we want it then?  If we want that which Jesus wants, that cannot possibly be satisfied now; that must await the coming of the kingdom, and he will be delighted to see that we are satisfied together with him at its fulfillment (cf. Jesus’ comments at the Last Supper.)

Once again one’s eschatology seems important.  If, as is broadly accepted in evangelical circles today, our destination is “going to heaven” as a totally separate, independent existence that has nothing to do with this earth and is not particularly coupled to our existence now (except in some sense of judgment for things done here,) this will not make much sense.  If however one understands that our destiny is resurrection on a new/renewed heaven and earth, that our purpose as the church is to work toward actualizing the kingdom now to the extent to which we are able, then our work to that end is not in vain.  That is the promise of the Beatitudes.  From this latter view Matthew 25 makes much more sense; such actions are not merely about “good works” to the poor and helpless with some future judgment in mind, rather they are motivated by living out the radical ethic of the kingdom now, looking ever for the not yet, awaiting its fulfillment at the parousia.

The following is by Italian philosopher of law and political science Carlo Lottieri, 22:26 into the fourth edited segment of a two day closed door conference of Italian economists called “The Invisible Hand” held 16-17 October 2008 on the theme of the current financial crisis; this is the close of Lottieri’s argument for federalist reform. The transcribed original text follows my translation, as well as links to the four edited sessions broadcast by RAI3 in the Percorsi series. The translation is mine, and any errors are solely mine. Interpolated additions are enclosed in square brackets [].

…and so I close my presentation with what I hold to be in reality the most authentic reasons for market federalism, which are neither juridical, institutional nor economic. It seems to me that an order that undoes political violence (which is the objective of the logic of the market,) and that affirms a horizon in which natural and individual rights are preserved (an order of liberty which is based on the respect of the other, and therefore a free economy which is freed from constant political interference,) all this in my view cannot even be imagined without a culture of solidarity that recognizes the transcendency of the other.

If we have had, and in part we have had some space for the market, it is after all because we have developed a certain idea of the personhood of the other which has resulted in the impossibility of the manipulation of society, which is in every way in contrast with the logic of libertarianism. In short, only if the sanctity of power, so to speak, is dissolved by the sanctity of the visage, to use the image of Emmanuel Lévinas, is it possible to check the complete availability of society, the goods of others, etc. [for exploitation] and therefore, the “thingness,” so to speak, of the human being that characterizes the modern state.

In my judgment the right of property, which is at the heart of classic libertarian theory and which libertarianism preserves, tells us that there exists something that is totally beyond us, which is beyond our [right to] control, now and always. On the contrary, with modernity property has become simply a legal attribute (consider what has happened with the codified reduction in rights simply by the will of the those in political power) and which is therefore something absolutely modifiable, alterable, and in the extreme, even cancellable.

The dissolution of property and therefore of the market, and I would also say of the federalist logic that is so tightly connected to the market, is entirely one with the expansion of power which has long nutured a totalitarian prerogative, a prerogative that sometimes succeeds in satisfying, which at other times must repress, and in any case is always ready to rise up [to assert itself], clearly primarily when defenses are weakest, therefore especially in times of crisis.

It is clear that in crises that power can expand itself with great ease, and individual liberties can be overlooked, cancelled, and so forth. In these days we live exactly in such risk. I do not believe that there has ever been in history such a massive despoliation as the one enacted by the US government with the stock market [rescue] plan. Every American family–a populace of three hundred million inhabitants–has seen a withdrawal, because in one way or the other the money will come from the families, of around ten thousand dollars.

That is a monstrous figure, a robbery that is without equal in human history. I truly believe that the state is making a power play in these situations, in this specific case a policy (which I would have difficulty defining as other than Keynesian, which is exactly whan Greenspan carried out) which inundated the world with dollars (we all know how many dollars the Chinese possess, for example,) which affixed the cost of money artificially low, thus which encouraged every sort of bad investment.

When money costs little it is easy for someone to borrow that does not have well-laid plans, which can even be loaned, for example, for housing to people that realistically have no possibility of repayment. The same interventionism which caused this crisis is now naturally switching to saving the world by fixing market prices, multiplying regulations, nationalizing banks, implementing rescue missions for bankers, etc. It is clear (permit me this remark) that “the occasion makes the politician,” and this is an occasion, due to the crisis, of ravenous exploitation.

I believe ultimately that there is fragility in a western civilization that does not recognize in the other, in his property, in his material presence (because property is presence within social relations) a limit to the unlimited will [to dominate] that all of us would want to express. In some way hubris is the desire to have no limits before oneself that expresses itself as a general [exertion of] will in lust for power, but this is possible because the other, in one way or the other, is negated. Thus it is probably from here that one would need to begin if one desires to construct a bulwark in the preservation of liberty, and above all if one wants to think that a federalist reform might represent all this.

Session One

Session Two

Session Three

Session Four

Testo originale trascritto da me: 22:26 “…e vengo qui alla chiusura del mio intervento, su quello che ritengo essere in realtà le ragioni più autentiche del federalismo del mercato, che non sono né di tipo giuridico-istituzionale, né di tipo economico, perchè il mio parere è un ordine che dissolva la violenza dell’ottico politico è questo in realtà, l’obbiettivo della logica del mercato, e affermi un’orizzonte in cui i diritti naturali e singoli siano tutelati, un’ordine di libertà che è basato sul rispetto dell’altro, e quindi un’economia libera che sia francata delle costanti interferenze della politica — bene, tutto questo al mio parere non potrà mai neppure essere immaginato senza il consolidarsi di una cultura che riconosca la trascendenza dell’altro.

23:12 Se noi abbiamo avuto, e in parte abbiamo avuto nella storia occidentale un qualche spazio mercato, è perchè in fondo abbiamo sviluppato una certa idea della persona dell’altro, che ha reso impossibile quella manipolazione della società che è del tutto in contrasto con la logica liberale. Insomma, solo se la sacralità del potere, per così dire, viene dissolta dalla santità del volto, per usare l’immagine di Emmanuel Lévinas, è possibile che si inizii a porre un freno di fronte alla disponibilità e quindi, usiamo questo termine, alla “cosità” dell’essere umano che invece caratterizza la modernità statuale, la piena disponibilità della società degli uomini, dei loro beni, eccetera.

23:54 Nella sua essenza a mio giudizio il diritto di proprietà, che è al cuore della teoria liberale classica e della tutela libertaria, ci dice che esiste qualcosa che è assolutamente al di là di noi, che è fuori del nostro controllo, ora e sempre. Vice-versa, con la modernità, la proprietà è divenuta un semplice attributo legale, pensate a cos’è successo con la codificazione, con la riduzione del diritto a semplice volontà del centro politico, e quindi qualcosa di assolutamente modificabile, alterabile, al limite anche cancellabile.

La dissoluzione della proprietà e quindi del mercato, e quindi io direi della stessa logica federale che è così strettamente connesso al mercato, questa dissoluzione della proprietà è tutt’uno con l’espansione di un potere che da tempo comunque nutre un’avvocazione totalitaria, un’avocazione che talvolta riesce a soddisfare, che altre volte deve reprimere, e che comunque è sempre pronta di emergere, sopratutto evidentemente quando le difese sono più deboli, e quindi specialmente quando abbiamo situazioni di crisi. È chiaro che nelle crisi che il potere può espandersi con grande facilità e, come dire, le libertà individuali possone essere dimenticate, cancellate, e così via.

25:13 In queste ore viviamo esattamente tali rischi. Non credo che nella storia si sia mai vista una così massiccia spogliazione, quale quella decisa dal centro politico statiunitense, con il piano borso. Ogni famiglia americana, ed è un popolo di trecento miglioni di abitanti, ha visto sottratti, perchè in un modo o nell’altro da lì questi soldi verranno, cioè dalle famiglie, circa dieci mila dollari. È una cifra davvero mostruosa, una rapina che è senza ugali nella storia umana. Veramente credo che lo stato tira forza in queste situazioni, nel caso specifico una politica (che difficilmente potrei definire se non come Keynesiana, quale quella che è stata appunto condotta da Greenspan) [che] ha innondato il mondo di dollari (tutti sappiamo come dire quanti dollari posseggono ad esempio i cinesi,) ha affissato un costo del denaro artificiosamente basso, ha favorito ogni genere di “malinvestment”, cioè di cattivi investimenti.

Quando il denaro costa poco, è facile che possa essere chiesto anche da chi non ha grandi progetti, e che possa essere usato per dare ad esempio abitazione a persone che non hanno poi realisticamente la possibilità di ripagarlo. Quello stesso interventismo che al mio parere ha causato il disastro ora naturalmente si cambia da salvare il mondo, bloccando i mercati, moltiplicando i regolamenti, nazionalizzando le banche, operando salvataggi dei banchieri, ecc. È chiaro che l’occasione, per così dire lasciatemi questa battuta, fa l’uomo politico, e questa dalla crisi è un’occasione ghiotta.

26:42 Ma in fondo credo che c’è la fragilità d’una civiltà occidentale che non riconosce nell’altro, nella sua proprietà, nella sua presenza materiale, perchè la proprietà è questa all’interno delle relazioni sociali, un possibile limite di fronte alla volontà tendenzialmente illimitata che ogni uomo vorebbe esprimere. In qualche modo la ubris è il desiderio di non avere confini di fronte a sé che si veste da volontà generale per concupiscienza verso il potere, ma questo è possibile perchè l’altro, in un modo o nell’altro, viene negato. E allora da qui probabilmente che si deve muovere se si vuole davvero costruire, come dire, qualche paratia a tutela della libertà, e sopratutto se si vuole pensare che una riforma in senso federale possa davvero rappresentare tutto questo.

In conversation last Sunday afternoon with someone visiting from the Pacific Northwest, the topic of membership covenants at large evangelical churches came up.  This person is in such a church, and she described that the form to fill out is quite lengthy.  She felt it intrusive, though she did eventually sign it.  At some point they came around again and apparently wanted to be really sure that everyone was with them, and they required each one to re-sign the document.  This person was clearly disturbed by the process.  She was even cautioned by a friend about differing too much with a particular man, as he had the power to “ruin her reputation as a Christian woman” in that particular large city.

My conclusion is that those documents are about power, about control, the power of church leadership to keep the members in subjugation or obligation.  I do not ever expect to be in a church where I would be asked to sign such a document, nor do I see any possible way that I would sign such.  However, if someone were to approach me about signing a membership covenant, my response will be clear: I first want to see the covenant that the leaders signed.  If there is no such leaders’ covenant, or if it is not more binding in responsibility and accountability than what is expected of the members, something is insidiously wrong with the power structure of that church.

I understand that there are serious questions of submission to authority at stake, and I understand from those that have signed such that they desire to be in submission.  Yet nowhere in the New Testament do I see anything like this form of compelled, oppressive subjugation, with even the threat of defamation if one differs too much.  Paul was very clear; his authority was to build up, not to enforce rigid conformity — or else….