Bruno Latour ( An Inquiry into Modes of Existence ) says that “the entire modern experience has stood up against living under the control of an indisputable metadispatcher. No one can make us believe the contrary: we know that it is false ” (469).
Except when it comes to economy. Latour wonders how “the Whites, who thought they could teach the rest of the world the ‘pure, hard rationality of economics,’ are still so imbued with that ‘secular religion,’” the belief in a Providential invisible hands, a metadispatcher that distributes as he/it/she wills.
Latour thinks that religious wars made us give up theocracy. But nothing has made us give up the mysticism of the market: Moderns ask whether we prefer the hand of tyranny or the hand of the market, but “have never imagined that there might be no hand at all! They have never believed it possible that they could escape from all tyranny, from all maxi-transcendence. Has any war of religion done more than this one to cover first Europe and then the entire planet with blood? Who will have the courage to publish the Black Books of all these symmetrical crimes?” (469).
Having given up belief in our heavenly Father, we end up supposing ourselves subject to faceless principalities and powers and metadispatchers. Perhaps economics can only be coherent if it is a form of theology.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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