Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2044

Typescript heavily amended in pencil by Heath so that it was difficult to transcribe. Consequently this transcription does not contain all of the material that is in the original. An abbreviated essay was started from this by Spencer MacCallum, titled by him “The Historical Jesus’ Earthly Vision” (working draft Item 2044a), deleting the discussion of contemporary Christian Left and Right. This abbreviated essay MacCallum intended to use in a book-in-process based on Heath’s Chapman College talks, Economics and the Spiritual Life of Free Men. Item 2044 has a close relation to three items discovered subsequently — 2163, 2251 and 2278. The order of the writing can only be determined by close study, but 2251 may be the most developed of the three. Item 2278 has an intriguing one-page preface, suggesting Heath may have been planning another book. These presumably date from the early 1950s because of reference to an article in The Freeman, which magazine started in 1950, and the fact that MacCallum, who joined Heath in 1954, does not recall Heath working on it.

 

 

 

 

Jesus Christ was born at the geographical center of the United Nations of his day, free from international wars, but under the centralized tyranny of the then Imperial Rome. He brought a new light into the world. With matchless divin­ation of the human mind and heart, he called to the unborn grace and beauty unawakened yet potential within and proclaimed a new dispensation of peace and freedom, a new kind of kingdom, a Kingdom of Heaven on the earth. He showed the way, the truth and the light for the attainment of peace and joy within and for the creation of the Kingdom outwardly in the earthly lives of every race or creed or clime.

 

This new Kingdom was to spring from a new kind of action — co-operation in place of contra-operation among men — that in fullness of time would lead them out from political servitude and domina­tion into a life abundant and eventually immortal in this new kind of world and in the timeless Great Beyond whence all life springs. He was the poet who dreamed and the seer who foresaw the creative power that lay within His Golden Rule Commandment of the contractual, the non-political and non-coercive process among men, for the transformation of their material world to nurture of their bodies, and for the transfiguration of their souls. He was herald of a transcendent civilization that in this modern era has only just begun and whose birth pangs disturb and terrify the but half awakened soul of modern man. His dream was for a solace in his day and for the healing of the nations in times far away.

 

But in that age of world conflict and dominion by political power, as in our own, His vision /of/ world-wide reciprocal relations quietly growing and eventually displacing and superseding the political, was too strange and distant from the thoughts of men. Only simple and unlearned minds, and of these only a few, could conceive so great a marvel. So it had to be told in stories that would entertain and not greatly challenge yet, for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear, carried a profounder meaning than was ever known before. [The rest of this paragraph moved here from top of page 11] Love for others would be objectified in reciprocal services, become impersonal and universal and creative, thus spiritual and divine, throughout all the nations of mankind. And this new kind of relationship would regenerate men from destroyers into creators and thus loose the bonds of death in the freedom and abundance of a new form of life, of mankind fulfilled and redeemed in a social organism — that may well be symbolized as the living body of the Risen Christ. [A following paragraph, “There was a Jewish tradition..,” crossed out here but preserved with others at bottom of this item.]

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In such circumstance and where imagery and metaphor were the habit of the common speech as it is today, it need not be wondered that the deeper meaning was clothed in speech that even to the most devoted could at times be only privately explained. The full true meaning, consistent with the place and time and with itself throughout, was hidden from the hard of heart and blind, and even more so today; for its magnificence was of necessity diminished and obscured in the gospel narratives and commentaries of those who long after­wards re-told and wrote them down, and again by the fixed and dogmatic preconceptions of official translators into modern tongues.

 

The vision was too magnificent, too far prophetic for the times. It had its metaphysical aspect of present salvation for as many as could be, as it were, born anew. This was the new life of serenity and peace for the individual, the kingdom within, abiding in his certain hope of a like kingdom potential in the midst of all and yet to come. And for all men to grow into and achieve also the glory of this outer kingdom as well as the one within, but one single and simple rule need be observed and followed. There was the old rule of peace by covenants or treaties to refrain from trespass or aggression — and the penalty was war, retaliation in kind. And the old rule — that of mere survival — was not to be destroyed but a higher purpose fulfilled. It was to be outgrown by practice of the New Rule, the higher law — [Paragraph to this point crossed out.] “that ye love one another” by doing unto, by serving one another. This was no rule of resistance against evil, nor was it any rule, like the Buddhist, to refrain. The Golden Rule was positive, balanced yet dynamic: that ye do each to others in the new manner — as ye would that all others should do unto you; that each should love others by serving them, as he would have others love and serve him. [Following three sentences moved here from page 11] To gain admission and to realize this New Kingdom there was but a single simple rule. It was to act towards one another with only one kind of equality, the freedom to own oneself and one’s property, the equality of equal authority over one’s person and his rightful possessions. It was a divine command to each thus to do unto others in the same manner of non-aggression as he would have others do unto him. Mere covenant to refrain from mutual evil, with its sanction of retaliation, was to be transcended and superseded by the rule of contract — of drawing together in mutual agreement and accord to perform mutual good. In so far as any practiced this new Rule they would be thus far in the Kingdom of Heaven, for they would become creators of good and thereby spiritual and divine whether they understood it or not, — and this irrespective of any sub­jective or self-conscious metaphysical considerations. For, like the laws of God in all His living and His physical realms, even an unwitting obedience brings its blessings no less than their defiance brings the undoing of mankind.

 

Under this new and Golden Rule of contract in place of coercion when faithfully performed, there could be no domination by force, only service by mutual accord; and any departure would be punished, for it would be a loss and priva­tion of the good. And just so far as any men failed to practice that Rule they remained unregenerate, uncreative, — lost in the evil of their evil doing whether aggressive or non-resistant, given over to the dominance of destructive powers, to force and war.

 

To the early Christian leaders this was all too simple and too inclusive of others. [Next two sentences taken from bottom of page 11] They rejoiced (gloried) in its magic transformation of chosen souls by faith redeemed and in the narrow communion of those thus elect and eligible, as they thought, for the Kingdom soon to come to them alone. In growing numbers they brought hope and promise in a weary world. But they formed instead a membership society conditioned on tests such as professions of faith, adherence to metaphysical doctrines and the like. The coming of the Kingdom of Heaven was for the elect, and it was to come quickly as by a miracle with great acclaim; not by slow and quiet development as the small seed grows and the little lump leavens the mass. As the generations passed and no signs in the heavens came, leaders lost faith in the quick coming of a last judgment day and a literal separation of the “sheep from the goats.” Nor did they permit men to hear and freely do the living word. East and West, they organized churches militant and coercive, assuming sole authority to interpret the living word and to rule the bodies and the thoughts of men. In Rome, Byzantium, Alexandria they thus postponed the “second coming” into distant time and to save their iron rule of politics and war decreed, as their successors do today, that the Kingdom of the Golden Rule on earth, so far as affairs of this world are concerned, could have no such objective real­ity as the Gospels taught. It was only for the future practice of men who were soon to die conforming to their churchly decrees and conditions for the gracious gift of immortal life in worlds to come /another world./ [From here to end of paragraph inserted from page 12] The Golden Rule relationship was reduced to a mystic subjec­tivity in preparation for the final end and a ghostly brotherhood of the elect in worlds to come.

 

So it was that the Christian gospel of a Kingdom of Peace on earth

through the practice of love and service in creative and non-political relationships was lost for a thousand years in tyrannies, persecutions and wars amid promises of eternal bliss beyond the grave.

 

Yet the vision of the gospel kingdom was not wholly lost. [Next sentence is from page 11] But how /however/ little comprehended, this new vision was too pregnant, too prophetic to be lost from the hearts and hopes of man. Time after time leaders arose in dissident religious and brotherhood groups and societies usually opposed to the normal practice of contractual freedom and vainly seeking or at least promising, by incompetent, inadequate and often un­justifiable means, achievement of their artificial Utopian dreams. From these, as heedless of the Gospel Rule as is the Christian Right, has grown the Christian “Liberal” Left, as known today. From these have grown the Christian Left as known today. [Remainder of paragraph taken from page 12] They seek the sanction of the gospels and the Church, yet faintly skeptical and impatient of future glories concern themselves with the present life and fate of man.

 

Again and again, as of old, in the blindness of their minds as

to the contractual operation of the Golden Rule, they are prone to socialistic schemes and to the false Utopian lures of the Communist contestants for world supremacy while cultivating easy tolerance of their subversive and conspiratorial ways — even their savage brutalities, as in ancient days, when or where they have the power.

 

As Imperial Rome impoverished to her own long decline the nations united under her, the Western Church took on the “garments of the empire” in a milder earthly rule throughout an “age of faith” virtually unchallenged as to its temporal as in its spiritual power. Then principalities, reviving, grew to kingdoms. Age of violence and insecurity — lands enfeoffed. Great barons rose and often aided by the Church grew into kings to take their crowns from the Papal hands as sovereigns over rival barons until by force of arms they should gain the power to crown themselves. Nobles high and low

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ruled servile populations (and often served them well) while robber barons and pirate navies ruled the highways and the sea.

 

        Then, a thousand years from Calvary, came silent stirrings of the heavenly kind of Kingdom in the works and ways of ruthless men. Like a thief in the night came the long neglected spirit of the Golden Rule into their secular and practical lives but not the conscious minds or hearts of men. The old device of oath-bound covenants of mutual defense merely to refrain from mutual evil was left again to warring kings and sovereign powers that had now succeeded Rome. For it /this/ was a new kind of compact that had no respect of persons but had power to unite in mutual service all the sons of men. The Church had taught the Western World that all were created to be free. The common men came to own themselves, and from this it followed they could own property in the products of land and sea. An almost universal right to own property, as against the old sovereign right of ex-propriation by the few, came all unnoticed and the Golden Rule of reciprocal services by contract without coercion could be practiced widely in the world.

 

         Thus began a new kind of kingdom in the right of a man to own his person and therewith his right to own property, as against the political prerogatives of compulsion and of ex-propriation. A new kind of popular jurisdiction over property under the  juridical designation of the “Proprium” as against the “Imperium” was born into the world, and the Golden Rule of contract and mutual exchange of services and of property or of its use became the hidden genius of the creative power that was to build civilization in the modern world. But this new kind of jurisdiction, except in Saxon England, was confined to the properties and services that could be had separately and exclusively of others. It did not nor has it even now evolved to include such properties and services as cannot be enjoyed individually and separately from others but must be had in common as public properties and services. Nevertheless, this prac­tice of contract among persons who granted each to the other full and equal authority over his person and his possessions was marvelously and increasingly productive of profit for all. Drawing

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servile populations towards the cities and towns it weakened the lesser barons while kings and dukes extorted from the towns the “gifts” and blackmail that grew to become the modern system of taxation after the manner of ancient and self-destroying Rome.

 

Nor could all the robbers on the seas or land withstand the call to better ways. Finding richer gains in trade, many ceased to raid, defended their coastal cities and developed their own free system of property and contract, the law merchant, free from legislative enforcements or sovereign decrees. But the divinely sanctioned sovereignties and kings continued growing great on tribute from the towns and trade. And in the logic of war among themselves, the sovereignties grew fewer and larger and became colonial and imperial powers that fattened on tributary trade until freedom of contract became, as now it is, largely outlaw on land and sea. Thus arose the powers of the modern world whose ex-propriations from its markets without having contributed thereto take many forms. As lamented long ago, the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force. For with the modern system of Golden Rule exchange came also revival of the ancient sovereign powers whose wars alike of aggression and of resistance brought them into false unity and “peace” under the one-world power of Imperial Rome.

 

     Strangely, these successor sovereignties, these national states proto­typed in all the pagan powers of ancient times and flouting every Gospel precept, are esteemed as “Christian” and the Church gives sanction not only to the heads that once it crowned but alike to those that still deny its temporal claims. Even those Christian sects that profess non-violence seldom if ever fail to enforce their will by rudely compulsive political enactments, once they gain that supposedly Christian power. The Golden Rule practice of free and creative relationships with respect to the sources and the means of life has been for centuries far more than simply ignored. In its rebirth from mediaeval darkness it was scorned and defamed and its practice relegated to unhonored and unchristian men — especially to those of the race whence came the Great Exemplar, prophet of the warless Kingdom that would come — notwithstanding that it was the mother-fountain from whose breast the worldly powers withdrew by violence all the wealth and creative power that their wars and rulerships destroyed.

 

     Yet the revival of trading between the towns and on the seas brought with it revival of learning, new degrees of intellectual freedom and the spirit of adventure among men. There was widening of all horizons artistic, scientific, geographic. Whole new continents called to the spirit of freedom in the hearts of men. In large numbers they fled their tribute-taking tyrannies and planted seeds of the Golden Rule of property without ex-propriation, contract without coercion, far and wide. Intuitively, in the West they founded proprietary jurisdictions but they lacked both knowledge and tradition of how to practice them. The truly Christian polity of property without ex-propriation was only dimly conceived, for the Anglo-Saxon tradition of land lords and free men as the only valid basis of free community organization had been completely lost; so they established a political government on the Classical model of Republican Rome and hedged /?/ it about with constitutional restrictions they hoped would hold it within the powers assigned — the minimum of the imperium and maximum of the proprium that they could conceive. Yet notwithstanding constitutional limitations, free contract was per­mitted only as to such private and personal property as would remain above taxation, and _____________ as to community or public property and services not permitted or provided for at all. All this was left to political administration resting on coercive taxation, instead of on the proprietary based on rents freely negotiated and fixed by the market value of the public benefits received.

 

     But even so limited in the nineteenth and notwithstanding the vast extension of twentieth century political powers, the system of contractual free enterprise has been the marvel of mankind. Aided by science, it has

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yielded to society so much of good and to government such power of harm as never existed in all the ages of the world, for the same science that serves is no less powerful to destroy.

 

     In the hands of the proprium — of the system of ownership and property, and thereby of free contract and exchange — all property, knowledge and power must be employed directly and primarily in the service of others, for on this the recom­pense depends. The process is creative and therefore spiritual on both sides for, irrespective of ulterior aims, each does to the other in the manner he would have others do unto him and each becomes the more creative in return. It were as ungenerous in spirit as it is false in reason — the devil’s logic — to de­cry the essential virtue of good works by imputation of self-regarding motives, whether false or true. But under the Imperium there is no practice of the Golden Rule; none but the Iron Rule of force. Property is de-social-ized, seized out of the societal amenities of contract and consent and of equivalence in exchange. It ceases to produce, even to maintain itself. It must be consumed or destroyed and can be replaced only by further violence. All that the Imperium provides for anyone it must seize from others for subsidies and doles or to be destroyed wantonly in peace or from necessity in war. The Imperium is the power of “The World” in the New Testament sense, destructive therefore anti spiritual now as it was then, notwithstanding its early adoption by the militant-metaphysical Church and ages of indoctrination of the divine rights of governments and kings.

 

     The Christian alternative is in the “Proprium”, the positive evolu­tion of the Christian Society under the alternative of the Golden Rule — objectification of the Christian dream of a King­dom of Heaven on the earth.

 

     As in the past, there is no escape from imperial rule, under whatever forms, but as Society evolves and extends its proprietary and thereby Golden Rule kind of ad-ministration into the field of community protection and over the properties appurtenant to the community itself and requisite for the conduct of public and community affairs. For it is the in­completeness of this social evolution, of this Kingdom of Heaven on the earth that leaves men exposed and beholden to the worldly powers.

 

Meanwhile, men must divide their affections between the political State sanctioned by the militant Church and the modern longing for a better life on earth. The one is for meeting evil by force and war under a but slowly changing status quo, the other puts its faith primarily in a kind of non-action called non-resistance and having no positive effect. But to all those who conceive the Christian Way and the Gol­den Rule merely as precept to charitable works or alms and as no more than a command of non-resistance and surrender to aggression — a covenant not to do good to all men but merely to refrain; nei­ther to do evil to them nor to resist evil from them — to all such there is no Christian alternative, no recourse but surrender to the “dominations and powers” of the world.

So we have two Christian polities: the polity of politics and power and the polity of non-resistance. But since non-resistance has of itself no objective practice or effect and no conception of the Golden Rule as the dynamic and creative technology of property, contract and exchange that has developed modernly as the Kingdom of Heaven in our midst, the protagonists of the New Testament earthly dream are thrown back upon the powers of “the world” for enforcement of their non-resistant and falsely equalitarian Christian ideal. Small wonder then that the more fervently emotional and humanitarian                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   leaders of the Christian clergy are so much deceived by the human­itarian pretenses of the Communist /Marxist/ conspirators

 

We have therefore the present-day phenomenon of a militant Christian Front divided into two opposing camps: the extreme Christian Right whose Christian gospel is only for another world and depends on politics for its worldly power, and the Church non-resistant with its impossible ideology of equality of worldly goods without worldly aggression and whose instrument perforce is ‘social’ action (meaning political) or revolution, or aid and comfort to an alien and profoundly totalitarian power. [Continuing as per pages 19-21 since there are no marks to show where to stop]

 

The extreme Christian Right frankly postpones the Christian ethic to another world as having never been intended for this earthly life and only suited for the souls of men in worlds to come. It goes so far as to denounce its own Gospel as a dreadful evil when sought to be followed in the organization of this earthly life. It takes its stand on the Machiavellian conventions of diplomacy and war — “means appropriate to the problems of this world” — as regards the Red menace from the East.

 

The Protestant Right, like the ancient West, holds to the heavenly origin of the Christian faith and ethic sent into this world as stand­ards for the soul’s admission to the mystic Kingdom while still on earth, with foretaste in this earthly life of the great Reward beyond.

 

For freedom to accept this faith and to practice this morality in the earthly life, it tends to rely on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as against the encroaching State and oppose all totalitarian ambitions both Left and Right, leaving the pressing problems of this world’s goods to be solved as best they may within the Constitution (as they construe it) and the Bill of Rights and without radical reform, by whatever is the preponderance of political power. So much for the Christian Right, both protestant and extreme.

 

The Protestant Left, as represented by the World Council of Churches, derives, in theory, from the Protestant Right. It springs from leaders who, on the whole, are less affluent in pulpit and in pew, hence more disposed by sympathy as well as intent towards the “Social” Gospel, as they conceive in its equalitarian aspects, for greater “justice” in this world.

 

Holding the free contractual process of Society, with its equity of equality in exchange as somehow the cause of injustice and inequality, they are far more disposed towards sole dependence on political means to achieve their “social” aims and ends. Never having conceived the positive and self-operating ethic of the Golden Rule and the Gospel warnings against reliance on the powers of “the world,” the Utopian promises and false equalitarianism of the Communists /Marxists/ make powerful appeal. This very considerable body of the Protestant clergy is reinforced by those who feel called upon not only to desist from evil but also to refrain from any resistance to it, and being willing to submit are no less willing to betray. [Resumes bottom of page 9:]

This Kingdom of Heaven was not to come suddenly or with trumpets

and acclaim but in the quiet and the dark like a seed in the soil, or a tiny lump of leaven in the meal, nor would it tarry with any but virginal hearts.

 

It was the story of a different kind, an unheard of kind of Kingdom, a Heavenly Kingdom that would bless and serve not one family or tribe or single nation but all the nations of mankind.

It was a New Dispensation not for any tribe or race alone or special membership organization, but in its freedom, life and love to em­brace all mankind. It came not to destroy the old law of escape and survival through enforced obedience, through rulership and punishment either by God over man or of man unto man, but to proclaim a new law of freedom through love and life moving ever onward in cooperation between God and man; not merely to survive the conflict called good and evil, but to partake of the waters and the Tree of Life, the life abundant — everlasting.

 

It was the vision of a new relationship between God and man, a new kind of kingdom, a Kingdom of Heaven in the life of all — not only in the hearts and minds of men — and a civilization whose glories would not be exclusive or divided but alike for one and all.

But in that age of world conflict and world dominion by political

power, as in our own, the vision was too magnificent and vast to be

grasped by nation-bound or race-bound worldly minds. It could be felt

and told only in strange new parables, symbols and figures of speech.

 

It would fertilize with life the nations unawares, not out of the hands of warriors or the great but of the lowly and despised. And this Kingdom of Heaven would suffer violence and the violent take it by force. And in it he would be greatest who would be the servant of all.

 

Disciples and early followers carried forward the Gospel words but not their wide interpretation.

 

They rejoiced (gloried) in its magic transformation. . .

 

When some three centuries had passed and all signs of the Second Coming failed, they fell captive, east and west to imperial powers. In Byzantium and in Rome the coming kingdom on the earth was indefinitely postponed. It became a miraculous and cataclysmic event at the end and destruction of the physical world.

 

[This sentence inserted at end of paragraph 5] The Golden Rule relationship was reduced to a mystic subjec­tivity in preparation for the final end and a ghostly brotherhood of the elect in worlds to come.

 

So the Gospel being interpreted negatively by the worldly powers, its spirit for the earthly world went underground again.

 

Time and again it reappeared in dissident religious and brother­hood groups and societies usually opposed to the normal practice of contractual freedom and vainly seeking, or at least promising, by un-natural, inadequate incompetent and often coercive means, fulfill­ment of their Utopian hopes and dreams.

 

From these have grown the Christian Left as known today.

  Their doctrine seeks the sanction and the solace of the gospels

  and the Church, yet faintly skeptical and impatient of future        glories concerns itself with the present life and fate of man.

Again and again, as of old, in the blindness of their minds as to the contractual operation of the Golden Rule and failure of the Church to encourage their humanitarian reforms, they are prone to socialistic schemes and to the false Utopian lures of the Communist contestants for world supremacy and to easy tolerance of their subversive and conspiratorial ways — even their savage brutalities when and where they have the power.