of this page

Long-term mega-trends of DECENTRALIZATION, DEMOCRATIZATION, & DIVIDED SOVEREIGNTY in CHRISTIANITY, RIVAL POLITIES, & PRODUCTIVITY — Best seen only thru TRINITARIAN CHRISTOCENTRISM, the MOST POTENT ANALYTICAL TOOL

INTRO	POSITIVE	NEGATIVE
⇓ ⇓ ⇓	— CATHOLICISM —
UNSYNTHESIZABLE ANTITHESES ANTI-TRINITARIAN NON-CHRISTOCENTRISM is to OPTIMISM ON HUMAN NATURE & UNDIVIDED HUMAN SOVEREIGNTY as TRINITARIAN CHRISTOCENTRISM is to PESSIMISM ON HUMAN NATURE & DIVIDED HUMAN SOVEREIGNTY. Irreconcilable anathemas Philosophical humanism is optimistic on human nature. It believes: 1 ) Man is born good or self-perfectible. 2 ) Truth has an absolute source (i.e., society as a whole or each individual) but no absolute content, save whatever society as a whole or each individual defines wherever & whenever (absolute relativism or relative absolutism). 3 ) Sovereignty is indivisible & rests either with society as a whole or with each individual. "Divided sovereignty" is oxymoronic, like half-pregnancy. 4 ) Naturally-good men will not abuse undivided human sovereignty. Trinitarian Christocentrists are pessimistic on human nature. They believe: 1 ) Christ's deity implies man's depravity, & vice versa. Christ's divine atonement for sin means man cannot auto-regenerate. Conversely, if man is not born good or cannot self-perfect, Christ had to be divine to atone for sin. 2 ) Truth has an absolute Source (Christ) & an absolute Content (Scripture). Those Personal & written Words of God are equally exhaustive, definitive, ne plus ultra. 3 ) Sovereignty is shared in the Trinitarian Godhead and rightly divided among sinful men in order to restrain them, based on Biblical absolutes of self-, family-, church-, & civil government 4 ) Naturally-evil men abuse undivided human sovereignty.	– Divided sovereignty between church and state – Gelasian ("2-sword") theory Investiture Controversy	– Undivided sovereignty over the Church – "Petrine theory:" Apostle Peter was the first Pope. (Matthew 16:13-19)
	Popes claimed the right to crown Holy Roman Emperors, who alleged power to approve Popes' elections.	Yet apostles had to have personally witnessed the resurrected Christ (Acts 1:22). No next-generation Pope did, hence papal succession but no Petrine succession.
	– historic refutations of claims to unbroken catholicity (i.e., "universality") – "Babylonian [Avignon] Captivity" (1305-77): Popes under French kings travestied role as Christ's vicar.	Papal infallibility ex cathedra on faith & morals
	"Great Schism" (1378-1417): 2 or 3 simultaneous competing "anti-popes" burlesqued undivided sovereignty & Petrine succession.	Papal infallibility ex cathedra on faith & morals
	— PROTESTANTISM —
	Decentralization discouraged corruption of entire Church.	– Still accepted state-controlled churches ("Erastianism") – "cuius regio, eius religio" – Peace of Augsburg (1555), Peace of Westphalia (1648)
	– Reformation – - vernacular Bibles - priesthood of all believers - "Scriptura sola" (i.e., God's Word is equally final in Scripture as in Christ. More written "Words of God" logically raise inadmissible possibilities of more Christs.)	– Catholic Counter-Reformation – Reaffirmed Vulgate as official Bible, sacramental priesthood (vs. Christ as sole Mediator [1 Timothy 2:5]), & power of Popes & Councils to declare new dogma not in Scripture (e.g., "Immaculate Conception," although Mary's Magnificat [Luke 1:46-47] says she needed a Savior; purgatory); Imprimaturs, Index, Jesuits, Inquisition
	– Dynamic Arminian democracy on SALVATION –	– Static, Rigid Calvinist elitism on SALVATION –
	Equal opportunity for salvation; Christ died for all	Limited atonement; unequal opportunity for salvation;
	Individual self-determination, open-endedness	No free will or self-determination; fixed spiritual classes = fixed medieval social classes; Baptized Hinduism: Calvinist elect and non-elect = Brahmins and Untouchables.
	Fluidity, mobility – names in Book of Life can be blotted out (Revelation 3:5; 22:19) "God is no less sovereign if, in His sovereignty, He chooses to give man free will." Election & predestination = God foreknows each man's decision.
	— CHURCH GOVERNMENT —
	– First decentralization & division of sovereignty – Catholicism & Greek Orthodoxy split (1054).	Overextended "fighting bishops' " dual roles compromised spiritual with military obligations.
	Henry VIII's Act of Supremacy (1534)
	Prestige momentum to secede from Rome's undivided ecclesiastical sovereignty	King / state atop new Anglican church (anti-republican James I – "No bishop, no king.")
	– Congregationalism / Presbyterianism – independent local churches / regional synods; no central control; unity only in Christ at divine level	– Episcopacy – Human hierarchical pyramid under an earthly leader posing as Christ's rep
	— ECONOMICS —
	– Trinitarian Christocentric Incentives to Productivity – divided economic sovereignty; market competition restrained corrupt human nature	— Mercantilism — less-productive undivided state economic sovereignty
	Free-market factors in Europe's Commercial Revolution (1300-1700): Predictable laws – To calculate risks, potential investors had to know in advance how laws would apply in given situations. Divided power – Merchants prospered where a plurality of institutions shared sovereignty & no absolute political authority existed. Mutual consent – Business & political relations rested on contract, whose obligations neither party could unilaterally change. Autonomous towns – Towns were competing economic units, centers of middle class wealth, & foes of political absolutism. Private property – Commercial capitalism flourished where personal wealth was safe from arbitrary seizure. Profit incentives – Output rose when medieval price ceilings collapsed & where producers retained & reinvested their earnings. Limited taxes – Merchant capitalists resisted unpredictable or confiscatory taxes & favored taxation by consent alone. Unrestrained commerce – Political & economic entities were so small, weak, or diverse that distant sales amounted to free trade. Uncontrolled markets – Supply & demand, not traditional "just prices," set the terms of trade in the new, far-flung transactions. New competition – Facing guilds' regulations & higher production costs in towns, some merchants organized rural cottage industries. Expanded credit – To finance a venture, business obtained short-term loans by selling bills of exchange at discounts. Interest payments – To avoid anti-usury laws, purchasers justified as risk premiums their discounts of bills of exchange. Combined resources – Private joint-stock companies raised funds & spread risks for more ambitious projects. More entrepreneurs – Investors engaging in very risky but very profitable overseas trade diversified & insured their enterprises. Rising bourgeoisie – A wealthy urban merchant middle class arose, which favored representative government & constitutionalism.	1500s – 1700s Governments strove to promote favorable international trade balances by central economic regimentation, encouraging home manufacture & export of more-costly finished goods to their own colonies, &/or to other nations, while ideally importing only cheaper raw materials from them, the difference being measured in net gain & accumulation of gold & silver, alone considered real wealth. Flawed here was the assumption that international exchange must be adversarial, a fixed-sum amount of wealth situation where one party must lose if the other gained. In fact, both could benefit by producing & trading based on comparative advantage, each side specializing in what it could produce most cheaply, most efficiently allocating resources & increasing mutual net wealth. Naïve too was the notion that gold & silver alone constituted ultimate wealth, ignoring the greater ideals of higher real purchasing power & better living standards. In fact, more money in circulation – like in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s from Spanish America – inflated prices & cut living standards, as costs of goods & services rose faster than wages.
		positive	negative

Benefits of free enterprise in the Industrial Revolution (1700-1900):

Employment of displaced farmers – Farmers displaced by the Agricultural Revolution lacked tools & marketable skills. They had known long hours, low wages, child labor, & poor working conditions for millennia on the farm. Factory jobs helped them survive by breaking guilds' remaining traditional monopolies on manufacturing, & paid better than any alternative employment.
Accumulation of new capital – Entrepreneurs created huge amounts of new wealth in the Industrial Revolution because they could freely earn & retain profits. Production outran consumption as they reinvested profits in more production rather than consume them. Industrial capitalism generated & sustained its own accelerating momentum.
Increased industrial productivity – The Industrial Revolution was so productive that it financed continued expansion through its own reinvested profits often even without (during its first 100 years) incorporating to sell stock, except for banks & railroads. Adequate capital was always available to develop promising new power sources, technologies, & manufacturing processes.
Rising real wages – Prices of manufactured goods fell greatly. Workers' purchasing power rose greatly. Living standards went up. Reinvesting profits helped workers more than using profits to pay above-market wages, which would have slowed industrialization, decreased the number of jobs, & increased demand without boosting supply, thus raising prices.
More economic opportunity – The basis of economic relations shifted from privilege to enterprise. All could incorporate & patent. Poor but creative innovators enriched themselves by developing new technologies & industries. The masses for the first time escaped grinding poverty. Immigrants bettered their own lot or their children's.
Enhanced social mobility – The basis of social relations shifted from birth to character. Social class membership became dynamic rather than static, open to rapid entry and exit. Much of the lower class moved into the middle class. Through private enterprise, ethnic minorities rose socially despite majority-group prejudice & discrimination against them.
Growth of political democracy – The basis of political relations shifted from passivity to activism. Capitalism increased the middle class's size & economic influence & catered to majority preference & popular demand. First the middle class, then the lower class, won suffrage. Majoritarianism introduced mass political parties, electioneering, & appeals to the common man.

– Marxist or democratic "scientific" socialism –

Comprehensive undivided state economic sovereignty theorized in 1800s; bankrupted in practice in 1900s:

Socialism is state control of the production, distribution, & consumption of goods & services in an economy. Optimistic on human nature, it fantasizes that altruistic workers will produce without profit incentives, & that unselfish welfare recipients will not game the system. (Socialist mantra: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"/ Socialist problem: "Always too many consumers, never enough producers" / Socialist error: "The more you tax productivity, the less you get of it. The more you subsidize indolence, the more you get of it." / Soviet workers: "We pretend to work. They pretend to pay us.") With no substitute as efficient as free-market prices to allocate resources & maximize production, socialist central economic planning:

Raised prices & lowered productivity. Sans price competition with other producers with lower production costs, the cost of living remained unduly high & living standards thus unnecessarily low.
Retarded price changes to balance supply and demand. Delayed adjustments of relative prices caused shortages & surpluses while price changes awaited approval by central planners, prolonging resource misallocation.
Discouraged innovation. Disapproval by the central authority certainly followed losses of capital from unsuccessful risk-taking, but approval for increasing capital by successful risk-taking was problematic.
Avoided responsibility for bad investments. Central planning committees were harder to penalize than private companies or individual entrepreneurs. "Economic decision-making without punishment for failure is like religion without hell."
Relied on a few remote parties' inadequate knowledge. They never mastered the mass of detail and depth of expertise to handle unique local production problems as competently as could many on-site specialists in decentralized economies.

— CIVIL GOVERNMENT —
– Pessimism on human nature –		– Optimism on human nature –
lawless rulers possible		lawless rulers impossible
Germanic principle: Custom was law. To change that law, both parties to customary feudal contracts must consent; otherwise, right to revolt; implicit constitutionalism, judicial review, concept of "unconstitutionality." Best example: Development & definition of "Rights of Englishmen" in British constitutional history between 1215 and 1689, whose principle was that rights are not claims on government but checks on it. Rights came from custom, not from rulers, who must respect it. England's "Glorious Revolution" established that kings could not violate them. The American Revolution determined that neither should legislatures.	Protections in English & U.S. Bills of Rights: Taxation by consent of property owners; trial by jury of peers; presumption of innocence; due process of law before property seizure; liability for unlawful property seizure; speedy trial; no standing army in peacetime without consent; no quartering of troops in private homes in peacetime without consent; freedom of travel in peacetime; regular legislative sessions; free legislative debate; right of the general militia (not just the select militia) to bear arms; habeas corpus; no excessive bail or fines; no cruel or unusual punishments; right to petition; free elections; no martial law in peacetime	Roman principle: Diabolical "roaring lions" (I Peter 5:8) Naturally-good rulers can declare / change law at will; no right to revolt: Rule by THE ONE "I am the state." – "Divine right" of kings; royal absolutism Rule by THE FEW "Living constitutions" – Courts are de facto open-ended constitutional conventions, finding ever-evolving law, unchecked by original intent or strict construction. Rule by THE MANY Parliamentary supremacy / popular sovereignty – Zero appeal against majoritarian legislative acts, all automatically, supposedly, constitutional
State recognition of Christianity differed from state support for a particular church polity.
Christendom united against separating Christianity from state. Every law system assumes some religion, not all of which are supernaturalistic, e.g., humanism, Marxism.		Christendom conflicted over one state-supported established denomination vs. separating church from state (i.e., no tax-supported denomination).

— ART —
TRINITARIAN AESTHETICS		TRINITARIAN BEAUTY'S requisites, in each medium of the TRINITARIAN GODHEAD'S ARTISTIC ANALOGS, where applicable, are melody, harmony, meter, rhyme, balance, order, symmetry, proportion, perspective, & timelessness.	LUCIFERIAN "ANGELS OF LIGHT" (2 Corinthians 11:14)
Beauty's universal language is transferable back & forth among artistic media – from visual to literary to audio. Like the three Persons in the Godhead, visual, literary, & audio beauty is Trinitarian – three separate, equal, free-standing entities, none superior nor inferior.	Trinitarian visual, literary, & audio beauty correlate with the Trinitarian Father, Son, & Holy Spirit respectively. The FATHER created the VISUAL world through the SON (Hebrews 1:1-2), Who Personifies God's LITERARY Word (John 1:1-3,14). The HOLY SPIRIT teaches the AUDIO Word heard in man's hearts (John 16:7, 12-15).		Like beauty, evil's universal language is also transferable back & forth among artistic media – from visual to literary to audio – each medium separate, equal, & free-standing, as in "unholy trinities" of artistic nudity (public nakedness is not shameful because man is not sinful), surrealism, & Dadaism (visual); Marx, Darwin, & Freud (literary); & atonality, dissonance, & rock (audio).
Trinitarian Christocentrism		… is deductively true, hence it best organizes & interpets the most data.
• notes obscurest patterns • finds subtlest connections • hones profoundest contrasts • fuels intensest conflicts		… is inductively true, because it best organizes & interprets the most data.