The Differences Which Truly Make a Difference

Lessons from Medieval Monastic Codes

How we think about decision making says a lot about who we think people are, and what we should value about them.

Some lessons from the Augustinians and Benedictines.

What Matters Is Not Your Decision-Making Paradigm

After my review of David Fitch’s new volume, Chris Smith of the Englewood Review of Books invited the two of us to come on the podcast to continue the conversation. It was an fun opportunity, but I don’t think we came any closer on how we view power dynamics.

The basic criticism in my review was that consensus, which Fitch points to as an alternative, is no silver bullet when it comes to handling power. But in reflecting on it more, I think the deeper issue is not just a matter of what kind of agency we have or what kind of decision making processes we have, but how agency indicates the kind of personhood we think matters.

In putting forth consensus, Fitch proposes to enact a “power under”, a more humble kind of process in church life. But I think this does more work than he intends. In doubling down on consensus, we are saying that what matters about choice is not what we choose, but how and that we choose. I don’t think this is an overstatement, in that consensus proceeds from a posture of epistemic equality—the table matters and everyone at the table’s voice matters.

This is an important thing to stay with, because the distinction between “power over” and “power under” turns on this very distinction. “Power over” doesn’t hold to the same premise as “power under” with respect to the equivalence of desires at the table.

With “power over”, one person has a very distinct vision of direction, but works to coerce people into that vision. With “power under”, though, what matters is that people choose, but what’s left off here is whether it matters that their agreement is any good. This isn’t to say that the visionary is always correct, or that hierarchy of decision can’t go wrong, but just that the presumption of consensus is that to be able to choose is to be valued in a way hierarchies don’t.

Consensus works by aligning the wills of all involved into one decision. Many agendas are brought into a singular one, one which no one involved could see in advance. All involved sublate their wills into a single will, even if the decision winds up being something like the Abilene paradox. So far, not great, but not bad.

The part that consensus gets right is that people are persons with wills that must be taken seriously.

But this is where consensus presumes that a number of interlocking things about who people are that become a problem.

1. In assuming that consensus matters first and foremost, it assumes that what people will is of less importance than that people will. If what matters most in our decision-making is that the will is respected, it is because we assume that the object of our willing is less important than the willing itself.

2. To preserve the integrity of persons is to preserve the integrity of this choosing. Coercion is a spectre frequently invoked here, which unhelpfully conflates directing kind of power (“Go and sin no more”) with “power over”. Again, if what I’m choosing is in fact bad for me, I’m not sure that preserving choice is a great thing to die for here.

3. By preserving choosing, we are saying that what makes us distinct people is our ability to choose, and that violation of that capacity is an abuse of persons. Now, we’re getting into interesting territory. If what distinguishes one person from another is not what they choose, but whether they can choose, this helps us to see why the ultimate villain is repression in its various forms. It’s why democracy is paramount to preserving human society. It’s why fights over how decision-making happens in churches is paramount: it’s not that we don’t trust the leaders, but that those who don’t get to choose are not taken seriously as people.

Consensus ultimately is valued because it preserves the thing which helps us to preserve the person from the tyranny of others, to distinguish us from one another: that you can make choices, but not necessarily what those choices are.

In this way, consensus wants us to come together as valued co-decision-makers, but this doesn’t tell us much, and honestly, doesn’t give us much distinction in the end: if what we choose is a matter of indifference, then any choice I make is valued the same as any other choice, so long as it is a freely-made choice.

Reader: this is not a great way to preserve personal dignity. It ultimately undermines the thing it wants to preserve (dignity of persons) by telling them that their capacity to choose matters but not the particulars. It is better, as we will see shortly, to say from the onset, that not everything which is desired is good.

This ethos of person-preserving-choice, we can see it not only in this book, but in many other very popular podcast series, Substack series, and bestseller books, fueled by an awareness of abusive power within churches: consensus, democratic process, and discursive process are to be valued at all costs because in and through them, our personhood is preserved. I’m not naming names because you know who they are.

Here, I want to signal that it’s not so much that consensus can’t be helpful, but as a way of preserving personhood, it’s a pretty thin thing to defend.

Care Not What You Clothes Your Body

When you read the monastic codes, it’s pretty fascinating what they pay attention to. The Rule of Benedict is the most famous here, but I want to draw in the lesser known Augustinian Rule to make this point as well. To start, their vision of making a contribution to decision-making, at least as something central to our personhood, doesn’t square with our expectations. That being said, if you think of monastic life as autocratic, read closer. From Benedict, chapter 3:

Whenever any important business has to be done
in the monastery,
let the Abbot call together the whole community
and state the matter to be acted upon.
Then, having heard the brethren's advice,
let him turn the matter over in his own mind
and do what he shall judge to be most expedient.
The reason we have said that all should be called for counsel
is that the Lord often reveals to the younger what is best.

Two things are interesting here. First, monks are consulted regularly, at the table. But second, not all thoughts are given equal credence, and yet there’s no doubt that all the monks matter.

What’s happening isn’t valuing the monks as co-decision-makers, but as monks and not the abbot. The abbot, described as a person of great virtue who knows the details of each person he serves, calls everyone together, listens, and then does what he judges to be best. Not everything said by the monks matters here: what is key is not that they can choose, but what they say, as seen in the mantra that the Lord often reveals wisdom to the young.

In valuing the monks as monks, what becomes centrally important about each monk is not their decision-making ability, but their virtue.

Repeatedly, the abbot is admonished to act in wisdom toward each monk, giving what they need at the right time to keep them on the way toward virtue. And sometimes, that means telling the monk their idea is terrible or vicious or ignorant. That the monk doesn’t like it is of little concern, and that the monk might even disagree with it doesn’t matter, because what makes the monk the monk isn’t their concursus with the abbot’s decision, but the virtue coming to flower in their lives. And sometimes, virtue needs a little push here, a little restraint there.

At root here is an acknowledgment that not everyone is capable at the start of naming what’s wrong with them, or conversely, what’s right with them: they may have unacknowledged vices, but also undiscovered gifts.

Throughout the Rule, any number of things are done to efface the individualism of the monks in their dress, in what they eat, in what kinds of duties are assigned to them. But it also pays attention to distinctions between the monks, to the degree that it affects the ability of the monk not to choose, but to be a part of the corporate whole. Those who are from wealthy backgrounds are pitied for being soft, and those from poor backgrounds are admonished not to be haughty about their head start. The sick are given dispensation to go rest, and those whose stomachs are bothering them are told not to fast until they’re better.

If you’ve not read these before, it’s fascinating to note how much the particular conditions of the monks matter, and to see what differences just don’t matter. In the Augustinian Rule, there’s a comical section where it talks about the monks being distributed their habit each day, and that each monk should just be happy with whatever clothes they get. For all the attention that it pays to sickness and health and their originating social class, the Augustinian Rule pays exactly zero attention to whether a short guy gets a long habit or not.

The Differences Which Make a Difference

There is only one: whether one is a fool, or whether one is virtuous. The rich families who send their children to the monasteries lose their influence as soon as the child is accepted in, as do the poor families lose the shame of their social status. To presume that a person would be a better leader, or more wise, or capable of leading the community because of an identity marker would have appeared to the monastics as sheer lunacy, as would the assumption that a person is a person because they could choose.

For the whole reason that monasteries existed was because people choose badly all the time, and engaging in a lifelong renovation of the soul was a fitting response to the shape we find ourselves in.

It’s a distinctly modern way of thinking to lean heavily on consensus in this fashion. John Cassian, in his conferences, has a long discussion of the nature of discernment, telling story after story about people who thought they were discerning, truthfully, but were listening in fact to demons or angels of light. We might use the language of error or intellectual mistakes, but I dare say that most of us would not presume to say that if a person desired somethings that it was because they were listening to a demon.

But the world of the monastics is different in this way from ours, and perhaps worth taking more seriously on this point. As such, consensus—along with its assumptions that valuing a person is valuing their choice in the abstract—is left at the door, replaced by a humble pursuit of wisdom. Maybe the thing I want is bad for me, and it’s the beginning of wisdom to entertain that real possibility.