Learning is a relatively permanent change in behaviour that is not due to maturation or accident but is brought about through practice and experience. How do we decide how much equality is enough? Too much equality, as we have been at pains to point out, would be to treat everyone identically, completely ignoring their differing needs. Various forms of “barracks equality” approximating that would also be too much. Too little equality would be to limit equality of condition, as did the old egalitarianism, to achieving equal legal and political rights, equal civil liberties, to equality of opportunity and to a redistribution of gross inequalities if allowed to stand would threaten social stability. This Hobbesist stance indicates that the old egalitarianism proceeds in a very pragmatic manner. Against the old egalitarianism I would argue that we must at least aim at an equality of whole life prospects, where that is not ready simply as the right to compete for scarce positions of advantage, but where there is to be brought into being the kind of equality of condition that would provide everyone equally, as far as possible, with the resources and the social conditions to satisfy their needs as fully as possible compatible with everyone else doing likewise. (Note that between people these needs will be partly the same but will still often be importantly different as well.) #RandolphHarris 1 of 22

Ideally, as a kind of ideal limit for a society of wondrous abundance, a radical egalitarianism would go beyond that to a similar thing for wants. We should, that is, provide all people equally, as far as possible, with the resources and social conditions to satisfy their wants, as fully as possible compatible with everyone else doing likewise. (I recognize that there is a slide between wants and needs. As the wealth of a society increases and its structure changes, things that started out as wants tend to become needs, exempli gratia, someone in the Falkland Islands might merely reasonably want an Ultimate Driving Machine while someone in Los Angeles might not only want it but need it as well. However, this does not collapse the distinction between wants and needs. There are things in any society people need, if they are to survive at all in anything like a commodious condition, whether they want them or not, exempli gratia, they need food, shelter, security, companionship and the like. An egalitarian starts with basic needs, or at least with what are take in the cultural environment in which a given person lives to be basic needs, and moves out to other needs and finally to wants as the productive power of the society increases.)  #RandolphHarris 2 of 22

I qualified my above formulations with “as far as possible” and with “as fully as possible compatible with everyone else doing likewise.” These are essential qualifications. Where, as in societies that we know, there are scarcities, even rather minimal scarcities, not everyone can have that resources or at least all the resources necessary to have their needs satisfied. Here we must first ensure that, again as far as possible, their basic needs are all satisfied and then we move on to other needs and finally to wants. However, sometimes, to understate it, even in very affluent societies, everyone’s needs cannot be met, or at east they cannot be equally met. In such circumstances we have to make some hard choices. I am thinking of a situation where there are not enough ventilation machines to go around so that everyone who needs one can have one. What should we do? The thing to aim at, to try as far as possible to approximate, if only as heuristic ideal, is the full and equal meeting of needs and wants of everyone. It is when we have that much equality that we have enough equality. However, of course, “ought implies can,” and where we cannot achieve it we cannot achieve it. However, where we reasonably can, we ought to do it. It is something that fairness requires. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22

The “reasonably can” is also an essential modification: we need situations of sufficient abundance so that we do not, in going for such an equality condition, simply spread the misery around or spread very Spartan conditions (marked by simplicity, frugality, or avoidance of luxury and comfort) around. Before we can rightly aim for the equality of condition I mentioned, we must first have the productive capacity and resource conditions to support the institutional means that would make possible the equal satisfaction of basic needs and the equal satisfaction of other needs and wants as well. Such achievements will often not be possible; perhaps they will never be fully possible, for, no doubt, the physically disabled will always be with us. Consider, for example, situations where our scarcities are such that we cannot, without causing considerable misery, create the institutions and mechanisms that would work to satisfy all needs, even al basic needs. Suppose we have the technology in place to develop all sorts of complicated life-sustaining machines all of which would predictably provide people with a quality of life that they, viewing the matter clearly, would rationally choose if they were simply choosing for themselves. However, suppose, if we put such technologies in place, we will then not have the wherewithal to provide basic health care in outlying regions in the country or adequate educational services in such places. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22

We should not, under those circumstances, put those technologies in place. However, we should also recognize that where it becomes possible to put these technologies in place without sacrificing other more pressing needs, we should do so. The underlying egalitarian rationale is evident enough: produce the conditions for the most extensive satisfaction of needs for everyone. Where A’s need and B’s need are equally important (equally stringent) but cannot both be satisfied, satisfy A’s need rather than B’s if the satisfaction of A’s need would be more fecund for the satisfaction of the needs of others than B’s, or less undermining of the satisfaction of the needs of others than B’s. (I do not mean to say that this is our only criterion of choice but it is the criterion most relevant for us here.) We should seek the satisfaction of the greatest compossible set of needs where the conditions for compossibility are (a) that everyone’s needs be considered, (b) that everyone’s needs be equally considered and where two sets of needs cannot both be satisfied, the more stringent set of needs shall first be satisfied. (Do not say we have no working criteria for what they are. If you need food to keep you from starvation or debilitating malnutrition and I need a vacation to relax after a spate of hard work, your need is plainly more stringent than mine. There would, of course, be all sorts of disputable cases, but there are also a host of perfectly determine cases indicating that we have working criteria.) #RandolphHarris 5 of 22

The underlying rationale is to seek compossible sets of needs so that we approach as far as possible as great a satisfaction of needs as possible for everyone. This might, it could be said, produce a situation in which very few people got those things that they needed the most, or at least wanted the most. Remember Robert Nozick with his need for the resources of Widener Library in an annex to his house. People, some might argue, with expensive tastes and extravagant needs, say a need for really good wine, would never, with a stress on such compossibilia, get things they are really keen about. Is that the kind of World we would reflectively want? Well, if their not getting them I the price we have to pay for everyone having their basic needs met, then it is a price we ought to pay. I am very found of very good wines as well as fresh ripe mangoes, but if the price of my having them is that people starve or suffer malnutrition in Oakland, or indeed anywhere else, then plainly fairness, if not just plain human decency, requires I forgot them. In talking about how much equality is enough, I have so far talked of the benefits that equality is meant to provide. However, egalitarians also speak of an equal sharing of the necessary burdens of the society as well. Fairness requires a sharing of the burdens and for a radical egalitarian this comes to an equal sharing of the burdens where people are equally capable of sharing them. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22

Translated into the concrete this does not mean that a child or a man who is a senior citizen or a woman with an unborn child are to be required to work in the mines or that they be required to collect garbage, but it would involve something like requiring every able bodied person, say from nineteen to twenty, to take his or her turn at a fair portion of necessary unpleasant jobs in the World. In that way all, where we are able to do it, would share equally in these burdens—in doing the things that none f us want to do but that we, if we are at all reasonable, recognize the necessity of having done. (There are all kinds of variations and complications concerning this—what do we do with the youthful wonder at the violin? However, that notwithstanding, the general idea is clear enough.) And, where we think this is reasonably feasible, it squares with our considered judgment about fairness. I have given you, in effect appealing to my considered judgments but considered judgments I do not think are at all eccentric, a picture of what I would take to be enough equality, too little equality and not enough equality. However, how can we know that my proportions are right? I do not think we can avoid or should indeed try to avoid an appeal to get them in wide reflective equilibrium. #RandolphHarris 7 of 22

Suppose we go back to the formal principle of justice, namely that we must treat like cases alike. Because it does not tell us what are like cases, we cannot derive substantive criteria from it. However, it may, indirectly, be of some help here. We all, if we are not utterly zany, want a life in which our needs are satisfied and in which we can live as we wish and do what we want to do. Though we differ in many ways, in our abilities, capacities for pleasure, determination to keep on with a job, we do not differ about wanting our needs satisfied or being able to live as we wish. Thus, ceterus paribus (with other conditions remaining the same), where questions of desert, entitlement and the like do not enter, it is only fair that all of us should have our needs equally considered and that we should, again ceterus paribus, all be able to do as we wish in a way that is compatible with others doing likewise. From the formal principle of justice and a few key factors about us, we can get to the claim that ceterus paribus we should go for this much equality. However, this is the core content of a radical egalitarianism. However, how do we know that ceterus is paribus here? What about our entitlements and deserts? #RandolphHarris 8 of 22

Suppose I have built my house with my own hands, from materials I have purchased on land that I have purchased and that I have lived in it for years and have carefully cared for it. The house is mine and I am entitled to keep it even if by adding a third story on to the house greater and more equal satisfaction of need would obtain for everyone. Justice requires that such an entitlement be respected here. (Again, there is an implicit ceterus parabus clause. In extreme situations, say after a war with housing in extremely short supply, that entitlement could be rightly overridden.) There is a response on the egalitarian’s part similar to a response utilitarianism made to criticisms of a similar logical type made of utilitarians by pluralistic deontologists. One of the things that people in fact need, or at least reflectively firmly want, is to have such entitlements respected. Where they are routinely overridden to satisfy other needs or wants, we would not in fact have a society in which the needs of everyone are being maximally met. To the reply, but what if more needs for everyone were met by ignoring or overriding such entitlements, the radical egalitarian should respond that that is, given the way we are, a thoroughly hypothetical situation and that theories of morality cannot be expected to give guidance for all logically possible Worlds but only for Worlds which are reasonably like what our actual World is or plausibly could come to be. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22

Setting this argument aside for the moment, even if it did turn out that the need satisfaction linked with having other things—things that involved the overriding of those entitlements—was sufficient to make it the case that more need satisfaction all around for everyone would be achieved by overriding those entitlements, then, for reasonable people who clearly saw that, these entitlements would not have the weight presently given to them. They either would not have the importance presently attached to them or the need for the additional living space would be so great that their being overridden would seem, everything considered, the lesser of two evils (as in the example of the postwar housing situation). There are without doubt genuine entitlements and a theory of justice must take them seriously, but they are not absolute. If the need is great enough we can see the merit in overriding them, just as in law as well as morality the right of eminent domain is recognized. Finally, while I have talked of entitlements here, parallel arguments will go through for desert. However, without ontological foundation neither love nor power nor justice can be adequately interpreted. The results of the ontological analysis to the problem of power in group relations confirms this. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22

If in this way the ontological character of love, power, and justice is established the question of their theological character arises. For the ontological and the theological are in one point identical: both deal with being as being. The first assertion to be made about God is that He is being-itself. The theological question has already entered our discussion at several points. It has been anticipated by the description of life as separation and reunion, or as love. Such a description of life is strictly analogous to the trinitarian interpretation of the living God. In his Son, God separates Himself from Himself, and in the Spirit He reunites Himself with Himself. This, of course, is a symbolic way of speaking, but it reminds Christians always of the truth that God is not dead identity but the living ground of everything that has life. Beyond this, we referred to the agape quality of love as that which is emphasized in the New Testament. We spoke of the divine justice, both in its natural aspect, according to which everything has its intrinsic claim for justice, and in the aspect of forgiving and reuniting justice. We referred to human’s resistance against reuniting love, their estrangement from themselves, for other beings, and from the other beings, and from the ground of their being. And we protested against a doctrine of God in which God is made powerless; for being must be described as the power of being. #RandolphHarris 11 of 22

All this shows that no discussion of concepts like love, power, and justice, is possible without touching the dimension of ultimate concern, the dimension of the holy. However, there is a profounder reason for the necessity of reaching into this dimension. It was our task to show that essentially, in their created nature, love, power, and justice are untied. This, however, was not possible without showing that in existence they are separated and conflicting. This leads to the question: How can their essential unity be re-established? The answer is obvious: Through the manifestations of the ground in which they are united. Love, power, and justice are one in the divine ground, they shall become one in human existence. They holy in which they are untied shall become holy reality in time and space. How and in which sense is the possible? The basic assertion about the relation of God to love, power, and justice is made, if one says that God is being itself. For being itself, according to our ontological analysis, implies love as well as power and justice. God is the basic and universal symbol for what concerns us ultimately. As being-itself He is ultimate reality, the really real, the ground and abyss of everything that is real. As the God, with whom I have a person-to-person encounter, He is the subject of all the symbolic statements in which I express my ultimate concern. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22

Everything we say about being-itself, the ground and abyss of being, must be symbolic. I is taken out of the material of our finite reality and applied to that which transcends the finite infinitely. Therefore it cannot be used in it literal sense. To say anything about God in the literal sense of the words used means to say something false about Him. The symbolic in relation to God is not less true that the literal, but it is the only true way of speaking about God. This refers also to the three ideas we are discussing. If we speak of God as loving or, more emphatically, of God as being love, we use our experience of love and our analysis of life as the material which alone we can use. However, we also know that if we apply it to God we throw it into the mystery of the divine depth, where it is transformed without being lost. It is still love, but it is now divine love. This does not mean that a higher being has in a fuller sense what we call love, but it does mean that our love is rooted in the divine life, id est in something which transcends our life infinitely in being and meaning. The same we must say of the divine power. It is applied to God symbolically. We experience power in physical acts as well as in the ability to carry through our will against contradicting wills. This experience is the material we use when we speak of the divine power. We speak of God’s omnipotence and we address Him as the Almighty. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22

Literally taken, God Almighty would men that God is a highest being, who can do what He wants to do, the implication being that there are a lot of things which He does not want to do, a concept which leads into a fog of absurd imaginations. The real meaning of almightiness is that God is the power of being in everything that is, transcending every special power infinitely but acting at the same time as its creative ground. In the religious experience the power of God provokes the feeling of being in the hand of a power which cannot be conquered by any other power, in ontological terms, which is the infinite resistance against non-being and the eternal victory over it. To participate in this resistance and this victory is felt as the way to overcome the threat of non-being which is the destiny everything finite. In every prayer to the almighty God, power is seen in the light of the divine power. It is seen as ultimate reality. This understood, we must also understand that we must not overcommit ourselves in prayer, especially if we are just beginning. It may be better for some to commit oneself to a total of fifteen minutes and maintain it—with perhaps five minutes of Bible reading, five minutes of meditation, and five minutes of disciplined prayer. A regular time of devotion and prayer will become a habit, and the habit of prayer will give wings to your spiritual life. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22

Sometimes prayer is difficult, it seems that God is too far to listen, and the Lord Jesus is strangely aloof, and prayer accomplishes nothing. However, something is happening. Often we do not enjoy our freedom in Christ because we are afraid of what others will think. We do or do not do certain things because of a fear that we will be judged or gossiped about by others. However, standing firm in our freedom in Christ means we resist the urge to live by the fear of what others think. It is very instructive to me that, in Galatians, the Magna Charta of Christian freedom, Paul also said, “Am I now trying to win the approval of humans, or of God? Or am I trying to please humans? If I were still trying to please humans, I would not be a servant of Christ,” reports Galatians 1. 10. I had to learn this lesson the hard way. Surprisingly soon after the death of my first wife, God brought into my life another Godly lady—a singe woman who had been a family friend for many years. As our friendship began to deepen into a romantic relationship, I became quite concerned what people would think. I knew I would be violating the culturally accepted maxim of “do not make any major decisions the first years.” At the same time, I sensed an inner compulsion in my spirit, which I felt was from God, to move ahead. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22

My journal during those days records numerous times when I struggled to with God over this issue. One day I wrote, “I wonder if God is pushing me along faster in this relationship than I want to go because of fear of what people will think.” I had put God in the box of our culturally accepted norm. Surely God would not do anything in my life that would be unacceptable to my friends. God was actually doing a wonderful thing, but instead of fully enjoying His work of grace, I was struggling with Him because of what people might think. If you are going to experience the joy of your freedom in Christ, you have to decide whether you will please God or people. God loves you, and people have a wonderful plan for your life. Other people want to tell you how you should live the Christian life, what you should not do and what you should do. Often their ideas will not match how you feel God is guiding you. I am not advocating that we run roughshod over other people’s convictions. We are called to a Body, and we all need to live and minister as members of the Body. However, ultimately we are responsible to God, not other people. God is the One who puts us in the Body as He pleases. He deals with each of us individually, putting each of us in circumstances tailored especially for our growth and ministry. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22

A friend of mine ministers to international students from a very different cultural and political background. For some reason, the best time of the entire week to meet with them in an evangelistic Bible study is during the Sunday morning worship service. My friend went to his pastor, explained the situation, committed himself to attending the Sunday evening service, but asked to be excused from the morning service with the pastor’s approval and blessing. Fortunately, the pastor understood and heartily granted his approval of my friend’s plan. However, what is some people in the congregation did not understand? What is the Sunday school superintendent did not understand why my friend was unavailable to teach the college age class? What are we to do in those situations? We are to exercise our freedom in Christ. If we believe God is guiding us in a certain direction, we have to obey God, not other people. I learned something else through my romantic experience. I realized I often had my own opinions of what other people should or should not do. I would not try to influence their actions, but in my mind I would judge them—either approving or disapproving. So God put the hose on the other foot; He exposed me to the possibility of other not understanding what He was doing in my life. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22

I learned the hard way to experience my own freedom in Christ and let other people experience theirs. We need to learn to let each other be free. Many Gentiles will reject the Book of Mormon—they will say, We need no more Bible—the Lord speaks to many nations—He will judge the World out of the books which will be written. About 559-545 Before Christ. “However, behold, there shall be many—at the day when I shall proceed to do a marvelous work among them, that I may remember my covenants which I have made unto the children of humans, that I may set my hand again the second time to recover my people, which are of the house of Israel; and also, that I may remember the promises which I have made unto thee, Nephi, and also unto thy father, that I would remember your seed; and that the words of your seed should proceed forth out of my mouth unto your seed; and my words shall hiss forth unto the ends of the Earth, for a standard unto my people, which are of the house of Israel; and because my words shall hiss forth—many of the Gentiles shall say: A Bible! A Bible! We have got a Bible, and there cannot be any more Bible. However, thus saith the Lord God: O fools, they shall have a Bible; and it shall proceed forth from the Jews, mine ancient covenant people. And what thank they the Jews for the Bible which they receive from them? Yea, what do the Gentiles mean? #RandolphHarris 18 of 22

“Do they remember the travails, and the labours, and the pains of the Jews, and their diligence unto me, in brining forth salvation unto the Gentiles? O ye Gentiles, have ye remembered the Jews, mine ancient covenant people? Nay; but ye have cursed them, and have hated them, and have not sought to recover them. However, behold, I will return all these things upon your own heads; for I the Lord have not forgotten my people. Thou fool, that shall say: A Bible, we have got a Bible, and we need no more Bible. Have ye obtained a Bible save it were by the Jews? Know ye not that there are more nations than one? Know ye not that I, the Lord your God, have created all humans, and that I remember those who are upon the isles of the sea; and that I rule in the Heavens above and in the Earth beneath; and I bring forth my word unto the children of humans, yea, even upon all the nations of the Earth? Wherefore murmur ye, because that ye shall receive more of my word? Know ye not that the testimony of two nations is a witness unto you that I am God, that I remember one nation like unto another? Wherefore, I speak the name words unto one nation like unto another. And when the two nations shall run together the testimony of the two nations shall run together also. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22

“And I do this that I may prove unto many that I am the same yesterday, today, and forever; and that I speak forth my words according to mine own pleasures. And because that I have spoken one word ye need not suppose that I cannot speak another; for my work is not yet finished; neither form that time henceforth and forever. Wherefore, because that ye have a Bible ye need not suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that it contains all my words; neither need ye suppose that I have not caused more to be written. For I command all humans, both in the Old World and the New World, and in the islands of the sea, that they shall write the words which I speak unto them; for out of the books which shall be written I will judge the World, every human according to their works, according to which is written. For behold, I shall speak unto the Jews and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the Nephites and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto the other tribes of the house of Israel, which I have led away, and they shall write it; and I shall also speak unto all nations of the Earth and they shall write it. And it shall come to pass that the Jews shall have the words of the Nephites, and the Nephites shall have the words of the Jews; and the Nephites and the Jews shall have the word of the lost tribes of Israel; and the lost tribes of Israel shall have the words of the Nephites and the Jews. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22

“And it shall come to pass that my people, which are of the house of Israel, shall be gathered home unto the lands of their possessions; and my word also shall be gathered in one. And I will show unto them that fight against my word and against my people, who are of the house of Israel, that I am God, and that I covenanted with Abraham that I would remember his seed forever,” 2 Nephi 29.1-12. Lord, I am not worthy that Thou shouldest come under my roof, but relying on Thy loving-kindness I draw near to Thine Altar;–a sick person, to the Physician of life; a blind person, to the Light of eternal brightness; poor, to the Lord of Heaven and Earth; naked, to the King of glory; a sheep, to its Shepherd; a creature, to its Creator; desolate, to the loving Comforter; miserable, to the Merciful; a criminal, to the Giver of pardon; ungodly, to the Justifer; hardened, to the Infuser of grace; beseeching Thine exuberant and infinite mercy, that it may please Thee to heal my weakness, to wash my foulness, to enlighten my blindness, to enrich my poverty, to clothe my nakedness, to bring me back from my wanderings, to console my desolation, to reconcile my guiltiness, to give pardon to the sinner, forgiveness to the miserable, life to the criminal, justification to the dead; so that I may be enabled to receive Thee, the Bread of Angeles, the King of Kind, and the Lord of Lords, with such chastity of body and purity of mind. #Randolph Harris 21 of 22

My I receive God with such contrition of heat and plenteous sorrow, such spiritual gladness and Heavenly joy, such fear and trembling, such reverence and honour, such faith and humility, such purpose and love, such devotion and thanksgiving, as are due and meet; so that it may profit me unto life eternal and remission of all my sins! O God of Grace, I bewail my cold, listless, heartless prayers; their poverty adds sin to sin. If my hope were in them I should be undone, but the worthy of Jesus perfumes my feeble breathings, and wins their acceptance. Deepen my contrition of heart, confirm my faith in the blood that washes from all sin. May I walk lovingly with my great redeemer. Flood my soul with true repentance that my heart may be broken for sin and unto sin. Let me be as slow to forgive myself as thou art ready to forgive me. Gazing on the glories of thy grace may I be cast into the lowest depths of shame, and walk downcast head now thou art pacified toward me. O my great High Priest, pour down upon me streams of needful grace, bless me in all my undertakings, in every thought of mine, every word of my lips, every step of my feet, every deed of my hands. Thou didst live to bless, die to bless, rise to bless, ascend to bless, take Thy throne to bless, and now Thou dost reign to bless. O give sincerity to my desires, earnestness to my supplications, fervour to my love. #RandolphHarris 22 of 22

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Rancho Cordova, CA |

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