We the Person
(Originally published November 29, 2012) Public debate regarding the most recent American financial crisis, known as “The Great Recession” or the “The Great Stagnation”1 began in the later portions of 2007, and has included the blaming of various individuals, organizations, and even social systems. During that tumultuous season of finger pointing the Supreme Court of the United States ruled on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (Docket No. 08-205), on January 21, 2010, which in part muddied the legal concept of corporate personhood, and even stated corporations may be subject to protection under the First and Fourteenth Amendments equal to human beings.
During an impromptu debate at the Iowa State Fair, in August 2011, former Massachusetts Governor, former Republican presidential candidate, and former Bain Capital CEO Mitt Romney commented, “Corporations are people, my friend.”2 President re-elect, then Democratic candidate for re-election, Barack Obama responded to Romney’s comments from the campus of Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, in May 2012, saying, “I don’t care how many ways you explain it, corporations are not people. People are people”3.
President Obama’s view may represent the philosophy of atomistic individualism, the belief that reality is made up of a vast number of indivisible units, and that the self is one of these units4. It is one of the most basic assumptions of the modern Western worldview5. This idea can be found permeating all modern things from fast food advertising, Burger King telling the world they could “Have it your way” in 1974, to the popular salvific appeal, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”.
However, such “individualism” is fundamentally foreign to ancient Israeli, early Christian, and modern Eastern Christian ecclesiology6. Thomas Jefferson, while not a supporter of corporations, probably would not have advocated for individualism as it exists today either7. Therefore as it relates to the validity of Mr. Romney’s statement, “Corporations are people”, he may have been more biblical accurate than President Obama.
The purpose of the remainder of this essay will consider corporate personhood from an explicitly theological vantage point, considering ways in which biblical-theological themes come to bear on evangelism and perhaps politics- church politics.
Corporate Personhood and the Nation of Israel
The word “corporation” is not found in the bible, well not in the 1995 Edition of the New American Standard Bible (NASB95). A textual query of the Pentateuch8 will reveal the expression most used to describe the plurality of persons known as the descendants of Jacob and the aliens who sojourned with them, numerically, may be the “Descendants (or Sons) of Israel”. This phrase occurs more than 300 times in the NASB95. It was used to describe them in everything from their rebellion (Exodus 16:2) to census taking (Numbers 1:2). However Descendants of Israel was used more to identify them as a people without including many overt inferences to any corporate solidarity. Richard Longenecker defined Corporate Solidary as: “That important Semitic complex of thought in which there is a constant oscillation between the individual and the group…too which he belongs so that the king or some other representative figure may be said to embody the group or the group may be said to sum up the host of individuals.”9
The term “Israelites” might seem like a fitting equivalent for corporation, however it appears only once in the Pentateuch, Exodus 35:29, and there it does not imply corporate solidarity: “The Israelites, all the men and women, whose heart moved them to bring material for all the work, which the LORD had commanded through Moses to be done, brought a freewill offering to the LORD.” Israelites is more a fraction of the whole, because not everyone brought an offering. No, the term best used in the Pentateuch, and keeping with Longenecker’s definition is simply, “Israel”.10
In Exodus 5:1, Moses tells Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel”. Moses isn’t referring to Jacob. When God is being portrayed as the God of Jacob, who had his name changed to Israel, He is called the God of Jacob (Exodus 3:6). In Numbers 23:7, “[Balaam] took up his discourse and said, ‘From Aram Balak has brought me, Moab’s king from the mountains of the East, ‘Come curse Jacob for me, and come, denounce Israel!’” There are many other places in Tanakh where the term, Israel, is used to refer to the entire nation, especially in Kings and Chronicles. If the word Israel can be used to represent many people, then so should we allow the word corporation to represent a multitude?
Corporate Personhood and the Church
In the New Testament, you also would not be able to find the word corporation. Nevertheless, Jesus said, “I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd” (John 10:16). In John 17 Jesus prayed, “That they may all be one” (21). The Apostle Paul informs the non-Israeli Christians in Rome that they have been grafted into the “corporation” “and became partaker with them of the rich root of the olive tree” (Romans 11:17). One, so not Christians, or churches, but something better. The Flock. The Tree. The Nation. The Corporation. Israel. That language meets the criteria set forth by Longenecker.
Evangelistic Implications
Western churches must see the greater redemptive oneness of being a corporation, even if they never adopt the term itself. Corporate evangelistic solidarity must transcend the one testifying or the one judging that testimony. Christians must be prepared to answer questions regarding the actions of Christians from other theological persuasions, and not say we are different from them. We are not. Every individual Christian must see themselves as an authorized representative figure for the entire Body of Christ. One Body, many members… many locations (1 Cor. 12:12). President Obama was correct the corporation is not people; the corporation is person.
The Apostle Paul said, “I planted, Apollos watered, but God was causing the growth… you are God’s field, God’s building” (1 Cor. 3:6, 9b). Such a building, or corporation, could serve as a hedge against ministerial burn-out, clerical impropriety, strife, etc. The clergy would not be the one expected to facilitate all the spiritual encounters of the community. The corporation could serve as a resource for the smaller churches to access programming normally out of their reach. This corporation ecclesiology would promote the church as one body manifest in many places with no attempt to rank members or locations more than the local equivalent of shophet, or chieftains, elder, bishops, or pastor.
These and other such attempts should be applauded, however there is a great amount of post-denominationalism that must be attained so that when Christians around the world speak, we are speaking for the entire Body. Such an endeavor is much easier to achieve than previously thought. The personhood of Jesus Christ may be the only unification to be found in the entire Christian corporation. Most Eastern and Western Churches agree concerning the information about Him as contained in the modern creedal statements.
Our Christian corporation finds solidarity when we focus on the crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and eventual return of Jesus Christ. When we go out to make disciples of the nations, we would do well to focus on the information contained in the stories in the four canonical gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and less on books like Leviticus and Corinthians. Those books are more for people already in the corporation.
Lastly, ecclesiologically speaking when all Christians serve as representatives of the corporation, our holy government would flatten out tremendously, perhaps vanish altogether (Rev. 21). We would have no need for denominations or hierarchies, because we would all be one. When such solidarity is achieved one can speak, and they all speak Christ. And reciprocally when all speak, the one still speaks Christ. We will all be unified as one body in our desire to make only God famous. We the Person, not we the People.
Works Cited:
1 Steve Denning, “From The Great Recession to The Great Stagnation”, Forbes, October 10, 2011. (http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/10/10/from-the-great-recession-to-the-great-stagnation/)
2 Philip Rucker, “Mitt Romney Says ‘Corporations Are People’ at Iowa State Fair,” The Washington Post, August 11, 2011. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mitt-romney-says-corporations-are-people/2011/08/11/gIQABwZ38I_story.html).
3 Amy Gardner and Felicia Sonmez, “Obama dings Romney’s ‘corporations are people’ line in official campaign kickoff,” The Washington Post, May 5, 2012. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-to-showcase-technology-at-kickoff-rallies-saturday/2012/05/05/gIQAZNA32T_story.html).
4. Seumas Miller. “Social Institutions”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, rev. February 8, 2011. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/social-institutions/)
5. Nisbett, Richard. The Geography of Thought (New York: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 2010 Kindle Edition). (p. 57).
6. ibid. Chapter 3 discusses how the non-Westerners find it impossible to separate the self from the company one keeps. East Asian Philosopher Hu Shih writes, “In the Confucian human-centered philosophy man cannot exist alone; all action must be in the form of interaction between man and man.” (p. 50). Also Douglas Cramer’s “The Saint is the Only True Revolutionary” (http://www.antiochian.org/node/18159).
7. Justice Stevens who wrote a dissenting opinion regarding Citizens United v. FEC reference the letter written by President Jefferson to Tom Logan (Nov. 12, 1816), “Thomas Jefferson famously fretted that corporations would subvert the Republic.” The footnotes read “54See Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Tom Logan (Nov. 12, 1816), in 12 The Works of Thomas Jefferson 42, 44 (P. Ford ed. 1905) (“I hope we shall . . . crush in [its] birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country”).” This author has serious doubt that the explicit connection can be made between 16th Century British corporation activity and 21st century American corporation activity.
8. This author chose to limit his query to the Pentateuch because the Pentateuch covers the period of time before the descendants of Israel became solidified as the Nation Israel or the United 10 Northern Tribes known as Israel.
9. Richard N. Longenecker, Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.). (p. 77)
10. Reynoso, Rey. "Corporate Identity in The Pentateuch." Bible Archive. N.p., 25 2010. Web. Web. 21 Nov. 2012. <http://biblearchive.com/blog/2010/israel/corporate-identity-in-the-pentateuch/>.