Loaves and Fishes III

Earlier we explored the event known as Jesus’ ‘multiplication of loaves and fishes’ (Loaves and Fishes). We deepened our dive with Loaves and Fishes II. Today we will review Jesus’ miracle again, this time from the perspective of 20th century economic theory.

All four canonical gospels include a ‘multiplication narrative’. Since these books were written by different people at different times with different objectives for different audiences, this degree of consistency is unusual and somewhat of a surprise.   

Matthew and Mark each include two different ‘multiplication accounts’ and it is in the relationship between these two accounts that we find the deeper meaning of the events themselves.  

The ‘devil’, as usual, is in the details. Check out the numbers. Jesus fed 5,000 pilgrims from just 5 loaves but a few weeks later he needed 7 loaves to satisfy 4,000. 

What’s going on here? Inflation? Entropy? Are people getting hungrier? Or was Jesus slowly running out of power? That’s a big fat ‘no’! It’s Providence. A ‘miracle’ does not vitiate nature; it contextualizes it. The ‘miraculous’ supplements the natural, but only as needed. Here, in each case, the need is defined and the resources fixed; it is the power of Triune God, operating through the non-Archimedean substructure, that bridges the gap!

In quick sketches the evangelists outlined an economic doctrine challenging today’s Liberal (capitalist), Marxist (socialist), and Islamic (iqtisad) models. According to Islam, for example, Allah created the world with just enough resources to go around: economics is a zero sum game. Anyone’s accumulation of wealth is at the expense of others’ basic needs.  

Capitalism and socialism allow supply to vary (grow), either in response to demand or as a result of public policy. Christian economics, however, is cut from different cloth entirely: the world is inherently bountiful and there is always more than enough to go around…if only we would distribute it properly. Poverty is never a matter of insufficiency; it’s always a function of injustice.

Sidebar: Communism attempted to level out the distribution of wealth, but it did so at the expense of production. The Judeo-Christian model addresses production and distribution together; it understands that neither can be optimized in isolation. It anticipates John Rawls’ model (A Theory of Justice) that seeks an algorithm that maximizes production consistent with a distribution pattern that satisfies the needs of every individual. 

In the Gospel accounts, resources are scarce, but many are fed; in both cases the process of distribution per se creates significant surplus. In fact, it is possible for the  surplus to exceed the initial supply. Is this Keynesian? Or Christian? 

These Gospel narratives enshrine a fundamental economic doctrine: You can have your cake (surplus) and eat it too (bread)! Seen from this perspective, economics is not such a ‘dismal science’ (Carlyle/Malthus) after all. 

Puzzle: With an economic platform like this and a track record to back it up (e.g. manna in the Wilderness), how is it that YHWH ever loses an election? (Ask Winston Churchill following WWII.) 

Yet c. 1000 BCE, the people of Israel chose Saul to be their king, replacing a 250 year old theocracy with YHWH ruling directly through the mitzvah of Oral and Written Torah executed by short term, ‘lame duck’ Judges designated ad hoc and only as needed. 

Joshua’s platform (e.g. Sabbath days and years and the total redistribution of productive property every 50 years) was enough to motivate the proletariat of Jericho to overthrow their rulers, tearing down the regional capital’s impregnable wall in the process, but it failed to satisfy Israel’s nationalist ambitions.  

The forces of nihilism and despair have a heavy lift: How do you persuade people that the sky is falling when it manifestly is not? And yet they succeeded…and they continue to succeed, even today. We are suspicious of good fortune: “There’s no such thing as a free lunch, it’s too good to be true, and of course, beware of Geeks (and Greeks)…” 

Sidebar: I spent most of my adult life working in an enterprise whose essential function was to give people money that they would not otherwise have had. Yet we struggled to make ends meet! No one will take Yes for an answer; we’re much too sophisticated for that!

Israel’s fledgling monarchy behaved as central governments do everywhere…and exactly as Judge Samuel had forecast (1 Samuel 8): Corruption, conscription, confiscatory taxation and the hyper-concentration of wealth. As a result, Israel was conquered by foreign powers, its capital (Jerusalem) sacked, its prominent citizens exiled to Babylon.  

From there, the prophet Ezekiel plotted the restoration of theocracy; channeling YHWH, he declared, “I will be King over you.” (Ez. 20: 33) Although the exiles were returned to Jerusalem, the restoration of theocracy would be delayed another 500 years… until the coming  of Christ.

Ironically, it was the Roman governor of Palestine, Pontius Pilate, who officially certified the restoration of theocracy when he wrote atop the cross, “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews,” and later confirmed it: “What I have written I have written.”  

By this action, Pilate effectively executed ‘regime change’, dethroning King Herod, making him a ‘rump ruler’, a king in title only. The 1,000 year reign of Israel’s secular kings was officially over; the Kingship of Christ was duly recognized by the reigning secular authority (Rome). 500 years later, Rome itself was sacked.  

500 years from the end of theocracy to the fall of Jerusalem; another 500 years to Jesus’ birth, death and resurrection; 500 more years to the fall of Rome. 

But back to the task at hand. All 4 Gospels confirm a common data point (x, y, z): 5 loaves, 5,000 people, 12 baskets of surplus. But in Euclidean geometry, one data point by itself is…one data point; it tells us nothing beyond itself. 

Mark and Matthew give us a much needed second data point: 7 loaves, 4,000 people, 7 baskets. There is only one straight line running through both data points. With these two points in place, we can interpolate and extrapolate to cover every allowable combination of  ‘supply, demand, and surplus’. 

Christian economics is not some vague utopian dream; it’s rigorously quantitative. Jesus does more with less (5,000 pilgrims fed from 5 loaves vs. 4,000 from 7).  More significantly, feeding more from less creates more surplus.

Of course, this is exactly opposite to what the other economic systems (above) would have predicted. They are based on the assumption that less supply (5 loaves) and more demand (5,000 pilgrims) will necessarily result in less surplus; Jesus proves them wrong.

But what about the numbers themselves? Do they simply offer a general illustration of a vague economic concept? By no means! They are precisely determinative…and that’s how we know that the numbers are intentional. 

We are dealing with two variables: efficiency and bounty. If the first event has an efficiency of 1.00 (5k fed from 5 loaves), then in the second event, efficiency is reduced to 0.57 (4k fed from 7 loaves). In the first case, the bounty (surplus) is 12 while in the second case it is 7, a premium of  1.71 (12/7). 

So what? Well, the greater surplus (1.71) divided by the reduced efficiency (0.57) = 3, and there’s nothing vague or haphazard about that. It’s ‘3’, and why 3? Because 3 represents God’s Triune nature and Trinity is the paradigm of all process.

God’s Providence is not vague; it is specific. There is a 3x multiplier built into the created world. Cast your bread upon the water and it will return 3 fold! Colloquial wisdom says, “Everything comes in 3’s.” This time, colloquial wisdom is correct! A triangle (3 sides) is the simplest closed polygon. Likewise, God is ‘simple’ (one substance per Aquinas) but also Triune (3 persons per Nicaea). God is Being and Being is Process; therefore God is Process; God is Triune, so Process is Triune; therefore ‘3’ is the universal multiplier. 

Christians, always count by 3’s! 

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James Tissot, Multiplication of the Loaves, 1886–1896. Watercolor over graphite on gray wove paper. Brooklyn Museum, New York.