The Kingdom of God and the Common Good

Recently, many Orthodox Christians and many critics of society have been reading and wrestling with Paul Kingsnorth’s Against the Machine: On the Unmasking of Humanity (Penguin Random House, 2025). Kingsnorth decries the reduction of the human being to a machine that lives in a machine. The metaphor of the machine, if I am interpreting Kingsnorth correctly, brings to mind a critique of materialistic science that treats the world as being deterministic and humans as being automata, driven by their wants. (I am elaborating my own findings on the subject from “Hayek and the Machines” [CHOPE Working Paper No. 2025-07, 2025] that, as far as I can tell, are consistent with Kingsnorth’s critique.) Such is the nature of Kingsnorth’s arguing that the definition of science proposed by Francis Bacon and that proposed by the dark mystic Aleister Crowley “could be swapped around without anybody really noticing. The thread that links them is control” (Kingsnorth, p. 75). We live in a conceptual world where “living things still tend to be assumed to be ‘machines’ unless proven otherwise” (Kingsnorth, p. 68). We ourselves live in a ‘[m]achine civilization [that] is an urban civilization” (Kingsnorth, p. 82). This scientistic view, seen as promoting individual agency with knowledge of cause and effect, ironically treats human action as being wholly determined by one’s environment and by one’s programming.

This tension is reminiscent of the critique from Jacques Ellul, a Calvinist social theorist, that our lives are increasingly encroached upon by “technique,” often manifesting through modern institutional “technology.” This tension is not resolved by Kingsnorth, who dreams to “[b]ecome human again” and provides some heuristics focusing the reader on one’s participation in local relationships and institutions (Kingsnorth, p. 318). Perhaps we need this encouragement. And perhaps we need to recognize a growing nihilistic attitude toward our own cultural inheritance that has made us aliens in an increasingly technical world where, despite unprecedented freedom, we find ourselves more and more subject to intense political and economic winds.

For those also hoping to dream of a solution without succumbing to hope in a self-defeating delusion, we need look no further than The Kingdom of God and the Common Good: Orthodox Christian Social Thought. Dylan Pahman’s solution corresponds to Kingsnorth’s identification of the source of the problem. Kingsnorth, a recent convert to Orthodox Christianity, laments, “Want is the Acid” (Kingsnorth, p. 89). Recognizing the danger of our own appetites, Pahman’s humanistic solution is to embrace of Christian asceticism: “All the ascetic disciplines, including fasting, have as their goal the flourishing within us of the grace we receive in the Sacraments through the cultivation of virtue” (p. 334). As we will see, the irony is that capitalistic development often associated with self-interest, narrowly defined, flowered through the labor of monastics in collective enterprise. While this is widely recognized with regard to development in the Roman Catholic world, this tendency also appears in the Orthodox East.

I have gotten ahead of myself. My purpose here is to contextualize the text in terms of the needs of contemporaneous discourse. I will focus on broad themes that reappear throughout the book and represent Pahman’s most valuable contributions to discourse rather than a complete summary of each section.

I was delighted to find that not only does The Kingdom of God and the Common Good rigorously integrate insights from economic and institutional theory into religious context, it is also a catechism that focuses on responsibly integrating modern concerns into its analysis. It is a book that a Christian academic should want to share with intellectually and spiritually inclined friends. The reader benefits from discussions of Catholic and Protestant social thought, from histories that identify novel contributions, both Western and Eastern. Yet Pahman does not let a desire for sympathy cloud the vision that he projects. Orthodox in orientation, his work provides historical grounding for those in the tradition and much fruit, for others to appreciate, from our shared past. In this respect, where Kingsnorth recognizes that we “are now something entirely new—even if, as of this moment, we have no idea what” (Kingsnorth, p. 140), Pahman’s exposition traces out the history of what defines us.

Pahman’s presentation of the history of Christianity and retrospective on the breadth of our modern inheritance can be summed up in one word: humility. Pahman provides a sympathetic reading of the history of Christianity. Divisions within Christendom are often echoes of, or amplified by, political division. Doctrinal disputes, for example, the filioque, often arise out of a need to defend against another heresy (in this case, Arianism). Pahman reminds us that St. Augustine “had included the notion that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘and the Son,’” that popes had long “resisted including it in the Creed up to the eleventh century on the grounds that they could not unilaterally alter the product of an Ecumenical Council,” and that, contributing to the controversy, the description of the trinity in Greek was subtly different than the Latin description (pp. 159, 160). The elevation of the filioque to the level of doctrine absent an Ecumenical Council made conflict unavoidable. A. Edward Siecienski has reminded us that St. Maximus the Confessor, well respected within Orthodox tradition, expressed in his Letter to Marinus sympathy for a formulation of the filioque with the Spirit proceeding from the Father through the Son, and we can add Origen and Gregory of Nyssa among other respected Fathers who expressed this formula. (For example, see “Rethinking the Filioque with the Greek Fathers by Giulio Maspero (review),” Journal of Orthodox Christian Studies 7:1–2 [2024]: 228–230.) Still, we must recognize that the reformulation may hide conflicting interpretations concerning causation and the particular causation described by procession as compared to manifestation. As the Great Schism, whose cause also included disagreement concerning the use of leaven in the Eucharist and elevation of the papal authority, approached, conflicts within Byzantium—i.e., more than one battle to surmount iconoclasm, which, Rome never suffered—and regional political tensions persistently stoked discord within Christendom. Politics “often becomes the enemy of peace, and lack of communication, coldness, and petty self-aggrandizement have a power to tear asunder even what God has joined together” (p. 160).

A sympathetic reading of history allows Pahman to appreciate the contributions to social thought from neighboring traditions. Just as during each Divine Liturgy each identifies oneself as the chief of sinners, Pahman’s critiques are largely aimed inward. This humility allows Pahman to appreciate the tremendous value contributed by Latin Scholastics to economic and social thought, in particular the School of Salamanca. Pahman carefully differentiates between usury, defined as lending at interest, in the classical context, with no protections for borrowers and usury in the modern context, redefined by John Calvin as exploitative lending at excessive rates of interest. In the modern context, borrowers are typically protected by laws that allow for the discharge of debts in bankruptcy. There do exist modern cases of lending, for example student loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy, that look much like cases of usury condemned by the Church Fathers. Sympathy expressed in Pahman’s analysis does not mean that moral standards are flexible to our modern biases, but rather, the nature of judgment that descends from a moral standard depends upon clear elaboration of the standard and the details of the case being judged according to that standard.

In a modern context where one’s spiritual view of the world may feel muddied, we are left with questions concerning the role of individual Christians and of the greater Body: “What are we to do? How are we to live?” All that I have mentioned so far is content used by Pahman to provide the reader a sense of historical place without making mortal enemies of those who do not occupy precisely the same space. Pahman elaborates a unifying analytical frame that finds the answer to these questions in asceticism.

Nowhere in the book is this more poignantly represented then in his chapter on “Monastic Enterprise,” where he links ascetic contribution to the existence of property rights. The reader should recall that asceticism is not only a monastic calling. It is fundamental to the practice of Orthodox Christians. Most of us Westerners are familiar with the idea of vocation being tied to one’s work. This emphasis for laity follows quite naturally in a world where monastic institutions have been deleted from spiritual life. The Weberian interpretation of the Protestant Work Ethic helps to inform the relationship of work to one’s spiritual life.

While asceticism rightly sees work as sanctifying, the practice promotes sanctification through discipline not simply through work or the pursuit of its fruit. Drawing from historian Helen Rhee, Pahman notes that “[m]onastic poverty in reality was more patterned after economic self-sufficiency than destitution” (p. 134). This self-sufficiency seeks the good of the community. Pahman reflects:

We see in the Sayings of the Desert Fathers a monk who worries, “The trader is soon coming, and I have no handles to put on my baskets.” Another monk overhears this, removes the handles from his own baskets, and claiming he made extra, gives them to the worrying monk, enabling that monk to sell his baskets to provide for his needs. (p. 134)

In this example, we see the interaction of property rights with what is often referred to in Christian spiritual discourse as Divine Economy (i.e., participation in divine ordering). Property rights are an integral part of divine ordering. Without property rights, monastic life would be hampered by an increase in external interventions that interrupt its proper functioning. These enable the fruitfulness of monastic development. This fruitfulness also generates a tension: “Father Sergei Bulgakov identified this phenomenon of wealth-generating monasteries as ‘an example of the dialectic of history which moves by contradictions: the ascetic denial of wealth leads to its accumulation,’” and with this accumulation, “[a]s Weber put it, ‘the whole history of monasticism is in a certain sense the history of a continual struggle with the problem of the secularizing influence of wealth’” (p. 136–137).

While dreams of Christian Symphonia between religious and secular authorities may be a helpful heuristic for understanding the integral nature of participation in and interaction between the spheres of governance and religion, property rights are an irreducible component in allowing its manifestation. Pahman astutely notes:

Just as the Church did not view herself as free apart from property rights, so also some monasteries insisted on freedom from state and Church control. . . . In contrast to the ideal of symphonia, Fr. John Meyendorff noted, “[The] polarity between the ‘already now’ and the ‘not yet’ was . . . constantly proclaimed by the large and prosperous Byzantine monastic movement, whose withdrawal from society and non-conformity to the standard imposed by the empire served constantly as a prophetic reminder that there cannot be total ‘harmony’ before the Parousia.” . . . Monastic independence, though tolerated, did not avoid conflict—iconoclasm being a prime example. (p. 135)

Without this division of labor, knowledge, and power, political concerns would dominate the formulation of Church doctrines. Thus, monastic independence, derived from the right of property, was critical to victory over the iconoclasts, and by extension, emphasis on the doctrine of the Incarnation. In this manner “St. Nicholas Cabasilas wrote a defense of the monasteries, claiming that ‘rulers have a right to manage subjects’ property, but this does not extend to private, only to common [i.e., public] property” (p. 136). 

Emphasis on asceticism focuses our attention on personal responsibility expressed within a relatively quiet ascetic life while also bringing to our attention the challenges of prioritizing spiritual life in a world of unprecedented wealth and convenience and an age where materialist ideology brings its own challenges to ordering Christian thought. To begin with, the Orthodox Christian tradition encourages silence:

Silence is the sound of listening. Moreover, the cultivation of spiritual silence through prayer is an ascetic discipline. Holy Tradition has a more meaningful perspective than memes. Silence can be a powerful tool for peace, reconciliation, and understanding. (p. 340)

In this manner, Ignatius of Antioch, a bishop who served during Christianity’s first century, notes that the role of a bishop is often to keep silent. In his letter to the Ephesians, Ignatius notes that “in proportion as a man seeth that his bishop is silent, let him fear him the more” (“The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians”) and qualifies his own breaking of silence, noting that “love doth not suffer me to be silent concerning you, therefore was I forward to exhort you, that ye run in harmony with the mind of God.” In much the same spirit, Pahman observes that attempts of some church leaders and members to be outward facing with respect to social doctrines adds “little to nothing” to our understanding of “how to live our faith in our world of unprecedented abundance” (p. 341). Judging from Pahman’s work, and my own expertise, the problem appears to be that such attempts lead with ideology rather than a patient observance of and participation in the life of the Church and life in the world. Pahman does give reason to hope for well-informed views, however, as he references Patriarch Bartholomew’s [of Constantinople] observation that “Western societies have not really found any more beneficial economic mechanism than the markets to regulate the activities of labor and capital” (p. 355).

We should hope that divine ordering would include apparently natural tendencies to promote order that are consistent with Bartholomew’s observation. The elaboration of such apparent divine ordering appears to have been part of Adam Smith’s agenda and, therefore, justifies careful inclusion of insights from economic theory into Orthodox understanding. Many forget that Smith was, first of all, a moral philosopher concerned with understanding how and why human behavior conforms to virtue, and how and why it does not. Smith’s great discovery was that those from the middling class, who are typically forced to persuade their trading partners to engage in exchange, are quite naturally incentivized to express the virtue of prudence, what is often described as worldly wisdom or know-how (The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Liberty Fund, p. 63). One’s budget constraint is a powerful, moralizing force. This natural moralization of acting men and women supports well-ordered cooperation when each operates, under the “rules of justice,” in pursuit of one’s interest (Smith, p. 223). It would be inappropriate to vanquish the need for beneficence from human society and our understanding of it. Still, we must recognize both domains. Markets bring order to human relations “through hope of reward. And beneficence works through love and mercy” (Smith, p. 229).

Social thought cannot exclude the logic governing entire spheres of human existence, namely the political and the economic, if it is to provide guidance concerning one’s positions and duties in society. Smith, and the discipline of economics in general, provides the logic of incentives for understanding these spheres. Pahman summarizes this, noting according to Smith: 

Just as judgments of the impartial spectator correct our moral behavior, prices correct economic behavior. . . . “The All-Wise Author of Nature” has providentially designed us to respond to market prices and economize on our resources, creating new wealth and providing for one another through exchange. . . . We need economic exchange to provide for our needs and the needs of others. But some of the most meaningful relationships in our lives—family, friendships, Church—would be degraded if reduced to contracts and calculations. (Smith, 229). 

If the economy is a machine, we must adjust to life in which cooperation is mediated by it, but not to a life determined by that machine. Such a life is antithetical to Christian belief in the Incarnation of Christ whose manifestation in all includes human co-participation in the expression of Divine Economy (Athanasius, On the Incarnation, trans. by John Behr [St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2011]). This expression across the totality includes local cooperation with order-generating economic forces. It is in our participation that “competition [acts] as a discovery procedure, in which uncontrolled prices coordinate the plans of buyers and sellers to bring about the best use of resources” (p. 274). Pahman points in the direction of modern understanding worthy of apologetic attention.

From this careful presentation of various spheres of life, we can begin to approach the modern challenges identified by Kingsnorth:

The methods that Western colonial administrators had used to demolish and replace other cultures—rewriting their histories, replacing their languages, challenging their cultural norms, banning or demonizing their religions, dismantling their elder systems and undermining their cultural traditions—were now being used against us. . . . We are going to have to learn to be adults again; to get our feet back on the ground, to rebuild families and communities, to learn again the meaning of worship and commitment, of limits and longing. We are, in short, going to have to grow up. (Kingsnorth, pp. 143, 147)

Pahman’s introspection provides direction for our response. Catholicity in the tradition of “sobornost,”—“‘a kind of mystical, supranatural total unity lies at the bases of society’”—offers a totalizing view of sanctification that naturally integrates these concerns (p. 323; see pp. 319–329 for full discussion). Our view must be one of integration within interlocking orders, noting that our participation in this integrated role should be sanctifying for oneself and for the system itself. This totalizing vision views the world liturgically, which reminds me of similar, reconciliatory efforts from Timothy Patitsas in regard to urban development (“The City as Liturgy: An Orthodox Theologian Corresponds with Jane Jacobs About a Gentle Reconciliation of Science and Religion,” in Legacy of Achievement: Metropolitan Methodios of Boston, Festal Volume of the 25th Anniversary of his Consecration to the Episcopate, ed. George Dion Dragas, 2008):

By seeing the true, sacramental nature of God’s creation, the liturgical worldview rejects both condemnation of and overindulgence in the world. It suggests a positive role for our work, business, and commerce, so long as they are offered to God in thanksgiving. (p. 333)

We must eschew perspectives that border on a gnostic condemnation of the world that “claims the material world, and thus material wealth, is inherently evil” (p. 333). Evil is defined by the ends that are promoted by a thing’s use, not the thing itself. We need not take twisted or oversimplified presentation of economic life as a guide for our own lives. Rather, from each’s position, ascetic Christian tradition provides “spiritual and moral foundation for how best to use the scarce resources of the world for the sake not just of producing material wealth, but of offering it to God in service to our neighbors rather than being captivated by it. Asceticism connects the common good of worldly commerce with our spiritual destiny in the Kingdom of God” (p. 335).