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The Real Mystery of Positive Business: A Response from Christian Faith

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DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3186-7

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Journal of Business Ethics ISSN 0167-4544 J Bus Ethics DOI 10.1007/s10551-016-3186-7

The Real Mystery of Positive Business: A Response from Christian Faith

Lloyd E. Sandelands

1 23

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The Real Mystery of Positive Business: A Response from Christian Faith

Lloyd E. Sandelands1

Received: 27 July 2015 / Accepted: 19 April 2016

� Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2016

Abstract I ask why an increasing number of business

scholars today are drawn to an idea of ‘‘positive business’’

that they cannot account for scientifically. I answer that it is

because they are attracted to the real mystery of positive

business which is its incomprehensible and unspeakable

divinity. I begin by asking why the research literature has

yet to speak of positive business plainly and with one

voice. I find that it lacks for the right words because it

comes to human being in business as a science attuned to

its objects rather than as a religion attuned to its spirit.

Next, I say what I can about the real mystery of business,

keeping in mind that we can say about it only what we can

say about God. This brings me at last to the Christian

insight that human being, in business and everywhere else,

is the mystery of Jesus Christ in whom we are reconciled to

God. Business is positively human as it invites us to be as

Christ, to be a fully human person in joyful communion

with others in God. This, in sum, is how to speak plainly

and with one voice of the positive business that our hearts

desire but our science cannot say.

Keywords Positive business � Being � God � Metaphysics � Thomas Aquinas � Christian humanism

Introduction

Imagine a business as a joyful solidarity of persons for the

common good. Imagine its good to be that of each person

and that of all persons together. Imagine its solidarity to be

that of an integral communion of persons who are unique

and fully alive in their individuality. And imagine its joy to

be that of being fully human, the joy greater than any

passing pleasure. Pure fantasy? There are businesses today

that reach for this ideal and have been described in its

terms, including such names as AES, Herman Miller,

Menlo Innovations, Reehl Manufacturing, ServiceMaster,

Southwest Airlines, Tom’s of Maine, and Zingermans’

Community of Businesses (see, e.g., Baker 2011; Bakke

2005; Benefiel 2008; Blanchard and Barrett 2011; Chappell

1993; De Pree 1997; Hoffer-Gittell 2005; Nayar 2010;

Ouimet 2010; Pollard 1996; Sheridan 2013; Weinzweig

2010). This ideal is given voice by William Pollard, CEO

of ServiceMaster:

In ServiceMaster, leadership begins with our objec-

tives: To honor God in all we do. To help people

develop. To pursue excellence. And to grow prof-

itably. Thus, our role and obligation as leaders

involves more than what a person does on the job. We

must also be involved in what that person is

becoming and how the work environment is con-

tributing to the process (p. 129).

This ideal is remarkable because stands athwart a broad

cynicism about business today—too often celebrated by

novelists and Hollywood—that sees business as a selfish,

cruel, and unrepentant scramble for wealth, a worship of

Mammon. And this ideal is perplexing because it calls

business executives to run business in a new way. What,

they ask, should the business of business be, if it is not

& Lloyd E. Sandelands

[email protected]

1 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

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DOI 10.1007/s10551-016-3186-7

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business itself (Sandelands 2009)? And to what end should

business point, if not to the profits of business owners

(Friedman 1970)?

Positive Organizational Scholarship

Into this milieu has stepped a new field of business

scholarship called Positive Organizational Scholarship

(POS).1 Founded in 2003 at the University of Michigan

(see Cameron et al. 2003), POS ‘‘is concerned primarily

with the study of especially positive outcomes, processes,

and attributes of organizations and their members… [it]

does not represent a single theory, but it focuses on

dynamics that are typically described by words such as

excellence, thriving, flourishing, abundance, resilience, or

virtuousness, … [and it] is distinguished from traditional

organizational studies in that it seeks to understand what

represents and approaches the best of the human condi-

tion’’ (p. 4). If not stated in so many words, positive

organization or positive business is as above: a joyful

solidarity of persons for the common good. Its positive

outcomes, processes, and attributes are for the common

good of persons and organizations; its dynamics of excel-

lence, thriving, flourishing, abundance, resilience, and

virtuousness are those of integral human solidarity; and its

‘‘best of the human condition’’ is the joy of human persons

fully alive. In 2011, eight years from its founding, positive

organizational scholarship was recognized as a subject for

an Oxford Handbook which gathered 79 chapters from 152

authors from around the world (Cameron and Spreitzer

2012). The burgeoning interest in POS has not been con-

fined to business scholars but has come also from business

students and activists who are likewise drawn to its humane

promise.2

Positive organizational scholarship is of natural interest

to business ethicists because it speaks to their central and

abiding question; ‘‘What is the first good of business; the

good that makes sense of and gives order to its other

goods?’’ Turning from the prevailing idea that the first

good of business is profit or shareholder value, POS points

toward a rival first good, which in its founders’ words is

‘‘the best of the human condition’’ (Cameron et al. 2003,

p. 4), and lately ‘‘the highest aspirations of humankind’’

(Cameron and Spreitzer 2012, p. 2). In so saying, POS

orients business to a good of a different kind than economic

value; not to a good that Aristotle in Metaphysics (XII, p.3)

and Thomas Aquinas in Summa Theologica (prima pars,

question 5) called ‘‘pleasant’’ because it pleases in some

way (as might wealth or power), and not to a good that they

called ‘‘useful’’ because it leads to pleasant goods (as

wealth might buy consumer goods); but to the good that

they called ‘‘honest’’ which is not good because it is

pleasant or useful but is good because it is loved for its own

sake. The good of positive business, loved for its own sake,

is the honest good of human being itself (‘‘the best of the

human condition,’’ and ‘‘the highest aspirations of

humankind’’). This is the good of human virtuousness (see

Manz et al. 2008). And this is the good that underlies and

informs virtue ethics (Pinckaers 1995).

However, while positive organizational scholarship

offers many synonyms for this good—such as flourishing,

purpose, resilience, compassion, and high-quality connec-

tion—it has yet to pin down the fundamental idea of the

positive that underlies and joins these. Critics of POS thus

point out that its many ideas about ‘‘the positive’’ have yet

to come into one voice (see Caza and Carroll 2012; Dutton

and Glynn 2007), that its many ideas of the positive are not

clearly distinguished from ideas of the negative (Fineman

2006), and that in some cases what is called positive may

be the negative of political or class oppression (Simpson

et al. 2014). And indeed, even the POS handbook editors

Cameron and Spreitzer concede the criticism. After noting

that there are scores of ideas about what ‘‘positive’’ means,

they come to the surprising conclusion that:

Precise conceptual definition, however, does not

necessarily provide scientific clarity: consider for

example, definitions of terms such as ‘‘love’’ or

‘‘effectiveness.’’ people know what love is through

experience rather than through an explanation of its

conceptual boundaries or nomological network

(Cameron and Spreitzer 2012, p. 2).

With these words we can ask whether, in their struggle

to define the positive, POS scholars have come upon that

dilemma familiar to students of business ethics generally,

namely that the human good is beyond science to say. This

is to see, as philosopher Hume (1777) admonished, that an

objectivizing science can be about only ‘‘what is’’ and not

about ‘‘what ought to be.’’ The idea that Cameron and

Spreitzer come to—that people know the good of positive

business in the same way that they know the good of

love—suggests that a science of POS can speak no more

authoritatively of the former than it can of the latter. Per-

haps it is POS’s adherence to the ways and means of sci-

ence—in hopes perhaps to claim its legitimacy and

authority—that has been its hidden liability. Perhaps, the

good of positive business is the sort of thing that must be

known in another way, the sort of thing that must be

known, with philosopher and polymath Pascal (1950), not

1 http://www.positiveorgs.bus.umic.edu/. 2 Among the latter are the Economy of Communion as part of the

worldwide Focolare movement (see Gallagher and Buckeye 2014)

and the Blueprint for Better Business, http://www.blueprintforbusi

ness.org/.

L. E. Sandelands

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by reason alone, but by reason informed by the heart and

by faith.

In this article, I address this philosophical dilemma by

asking why positive business scholars are attracted to an

ideal of positive business that they have not yet been able

to reckon with scientifically. By article’s end I hope to

establish that this is because they are attracted to the real

mystery of business which is its incomprehensible and

largely unspeakable divinity. Positive business, I find, is

the real presence of the divine that we know in our hearts

before we know it by the reason. This positive good is not

(as typically supposed) an exception to the rule of business,

but is the rule of business because God is always with us

(even if we are unaware of or deny His presence). Of

course the idea that God is with us is hardly new and hardly

my own. It is ages old (dating at least to Aristotle); it is the

subject of virtually every theology; and it is especially and

pointedly the lesson of Christianity which identifies us with

God intimately in the person of the God-Man Jesus Christ.

In and from Christ, we learn in detail ‘‘who’’ we are in the

eyes and heart of God. Christian humanism, I conclude, is

the real and abiding mystery of positive business.

I begin by asking why positive organizational scholar-

ship has yet to speak precisely of positive business. I find

that it lacks the right words because it comes to business as

a science attuned to its visible objects rather than as a

religion attuned to its invisible being. Science is faith in

ourselves.3 It consists of the things we ‘‘create’’ when we

render our experiences in abstract terms of ‘‘objects’’—

objects which, even after we have invented them, we may

presume to be real and to have been there all the while.

Religion is faith in God. It consists of the things we

‘‘discern’’ when we take their real being into our own and

by reason aided by faith ascertain what they are and mean.

Next, I say what I can about the real mystery of positive

business, bearing in mind that it is nothing less than the

mystery of human being which is nothing less than the

mystery of God. Finally, I examine in brief the Christian

insight that these mysteries are one in the real person of

Jesus Christ who reconciles man to God. This is to see that

business is ‘‘positive’’ when it invites us to be as Christ;

which is to be a person in joyful communion with the

Father; and which, as we noted at the outset, is to take part

in a joyful solidarity of persons in the common good. This,

I suggest, is how to speak plainly and in one voice of

positive business.

When Science Fails

Science speaks vaguely of positive business because it

lacks the vocabulary to speak of it clearly, or indeed to

speak of it at all. It has words for the objects of business

(individuals, groups, tasks, jobs, leaders, followers, owners,

employees, products, services, buyers, sellers, etc.) that it

relates as cause to effect, but it has no words for the spirit

or being of human persons in communion. This is a

problem especially when it comes to the distinctive qual-

ities of positive business—of joy, solidarity, and common

good—which are not objects or attributes of objects that it

can see and size-up, but are appearances of a human being

or spirit that can be known only by some other means. Let

us consider each.

Joy is a condition of the human spirit, of being ‘‘one’’

or ‘‘right’’ with being itself. It is not simply a physical or

sensory experience of pleasure but is more profoundly a

metaphysical and spiritual emotion. As noted by the

Christian theological historian Pinckaers (1995, p. 132),

both the Fathers of the Church and later St. Thomas

understood joy to be linked with faith and hope, to be a

direct effect of love or charity, and to be one of the signs

of virtuous human action. It is, in a word, the feeling of

‘‘the best of the human condition’’ and ‘‘the highest

aspirations of humankind.’’ Such a feeling cannot be the

focus for the science of man because it is subjective

rather than objective—subjective not only because it is a

personal feeling but also because it is about a ‘‘one-ness’’

or ‘‘right-ness’’ or ‘‘best-ness’’ or ‘‘aspiration’’ of being

that cannot be objectively defined. It is the kind of thing

Hume (1777) discounts as a mere sentiment, a soft

feeling about what ‘‘ought to be’’ rather than a hard

indication of what ‘‘is.’’

A solidarity of persons is a substantial form in which

each person is at once a member of an integral com-

munion or ‘‘body’’ of persons (he or she is one in being

with others) and his or her own personality (he or she is

one in his or her own being). This duality of being—of

communion and person—is likewise of the spirit that

science cannot observe. Science can speak of this duality

only in terms of one object or the other—as a commu-

nion or as a person—but not both at the same time

(Sandelands 1998). Where psychology sees the individual

psyche it does not see the communion, which it turns

into what it is not, an aggregate or collection of psyches.

On one account, communion is an entativity, a perception

of individuals in a group (Campbell 1958). On another

account, it is a cohesion, a number of individuals who

want to belong to a group (Janis 1972). For psychology,

3 I speak of science as a faith because it rests upon an extra-rational

premise in the same way that religion does. Both faiths rest on beliefs

born in rationally unjustified intuitions. Belief in natural cause and

effect, like belief in supernatural God, comes neither by the logic of

induction or by the logic of deduction (Hume, 1748), but by simple

and direct intuition (what philosopher Alfred Whitehead called

‘abduction’). It is thus a sophistry to argue, as the modern atheists do,

that one faith is more logical and reasonable than the other.

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the solidarity in ‘‘solidarity of persons’’ is not real but is

a figure of speech for a number of individual psyches.

And where sociology sees the communion it does not see

the individual psyche, which it too turns into what it is

not, an instance or expression of the social whole (e.g., a

position, office, or role). On one account, the individual

psyche is an instance of like-mindedness (Toennies 1879/

1957). On another account, it is a residual of a division

of labor (Durkheim 1893/1944). For sociology the person

in ‘‘solidarity of persons’’ is not real but is a figure for

the social whole. Thus, the sciences of psychology and

sociology offer views of the solidarity of persons that are

false to its being. Each tells the lie of putting a half-truth

in place of the whole truth.

Finally, the common good locates the solidarity of

persons in the moral order of what is right and just. It is

the good of every person and of the community as a

whole. And it is likewise not of nature but of the spirit.

The common good is the good of persons on behalf of a

greater being which they ‘‘realize’’ (literally make real)

in solidarity. This greater being has different names.

Aristotle (1999) spoke of it as the ‘‘transcendent third’’

and found it the ground of all true friendship. Thomas

Aquinas (1990) spoke of it as ‘‘God’’ who is spirit and

being itself. By either name science cannot speak of it

because it cannot see how persons are ordered to one

another in a greater being. For being about nature sci-

ence cannot be about what is above and transcends

nature (about what is literally ‘‘super-natural’’).

Our interest in positive business thus compels us to look

beyond today’s science of business which casts aside

human elements of spirit. We cannot abide its nominalism

which turns all things human into objects of psychology

and sociology which have no solidarity of persons, no

common good, and no joy. As Lewis (1944, p. 71)

famously observed, the paradox of natural science applied

to man is that the more ‘‘nature’’ we find in him the less

‘‘man’’ we find in nature:

We reduce things to mere nature in order that we

may ‘conquer’ them. We are always conquering

Nature, because ‘Nature’ is the name for what we

have, to some extent, conquered. The price of con-

quest is to treat a thing as mere Nature. Every con-

quest over nature increases her domain. The stars to

do not become Nature till we can weigh and measure

them; the soul does not become Nature till we can

psychoanalyze her. The wresting of powers from

Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature.

As we are soon to see, natural science fails to grasp

the positive in business because it cannot reach the

human in it. Its mistaken ontology begins in a mistaken

epistemology.

To See or to Behold

When we cannot get to where we want to go we do well to

ask if we have gotten off on the wrong foot and set off in

the wrong direction. What if human being is not a ‘‘what’’

that we can see exteriorly with eyes on objects in space and

time, but is a ‘‘who’’ that we must behold interiorly with a

heart open to spirit and being? These two ways of coming

to the human in business—these two epistemologies of

seeing and beholding—open upon two different worlds.

Between them goes all the difference in what we can

understand of positive business.

The seeing that begins in faith in science and the

beholding that begins in faith in religion are easiest to grasp

by example. Consider the two young women below:

First, see the women; see that they are sisters, see that

the younger is on the left, see that the older is married, see

that both somehow resemble their mother and their father,

and see that when others are asked on a questionnaire both

are liked and admired. Inspect the sisters from different

angles and in different ways; see that the younger is

slightly taller, and see that the older has a fairer com-

plexion and shorter and thinner hair. Give the sisters the

Oregon Research Institute’s International Personality Item

Pool test of human personality (the so-called ‘‘Big 5’’

personality test); see that the younger is a little more

introverted, see that both are highly agreeable, see that both

are conscientious, see that both are open to experiences,

and see that the older is a little less emotionally stable.

Give the sisters IQ tests to see that both are very intelligent.

Put the sisters in a footrace to see that first one wins, then

the other. See them this way and that, give them test after

test, and you will learn many objective facts about them,

but they will not be present to you and you will not learn

who they are.

Now behold the women; take the sisters to heart. Open

your being to theirs to receive their inner and outer beau-

ties. Marvel at the verbal dexterity and sparkling humor of

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the younger. Be lit up by her as her sister is lit up by her.

Wonder at the alert responsiveness of the older. Have your

light brought out by her as her sister has her light brought

out by her. Take in and feel their love for one another.

Reach out to each to learn how each opens and reaches

back; how the quieter younger reaches out boldly to meet

you with confidence and spontaneity; and how the more

loquacious older opens up so completely that you feel

utterly ‘‘known’’ and loved. Dwell with the two awhile and

feel how each moves in spirit; how the younger expands

outward to find joy in all that is; and how the older con-

centrates inward to leave no nuance unrecognized and

unappreciated. And be with the two over a life to find that

more you learn of them the more there is to learn. Try to

make a final claim about either one to find that any such

slips through your hands. Seek to find yourself; behold how

each becomes part of you, how you become a part of both,

and how you and they become a kind of ‘‘one.’’ Behold

these two women and they are present to you; in them you

find life and before that you find being and before that you

find God.

Seeing and beholding the two sisters thus are profoundly

different epistemic acts from which to glean profoundly

different things. To ‘‘see’’ the sisters with the eyes of sci-

ence is cast them as objects apart from our self that we can

experience with our senses and remark about with our

reason. This is the modern religion of empirical science

conceived in the enlightenment philosophies of Francis

Bacon and Rene Descartes. In this religion, we are the

(small ‘g’) gods who decide what the facts of the sisters

will be. Apart from what we decide, the sisters have no

facts. In contrast, to ‘‘behold’’ the sisters with the heart of

religious faith is to welcome them into our being as spirits

to love and know as we love and know our own. By

receiving their being into our own we become ‘‘one’’ with

them, not in the scientific relation of subject and object that

philosopher and theologian Martin Buber (1958) called ‘‘I-

It’’ but in the religious relation of being he called ‘‘I-

Thou.’’ This is the ancient religion of metaphysics con-

ceived in the classical philosophy of Aristotle and extended

in the theology of Thomas Aquinas. In this religion the

‘‘uncaused cause’’ of Aristotle or the (big ‘G’) God of

Aquinas creates and sustains the sisters as they are and

before any ideas we have about them.

Let us now turn from the two sisters to the human ele-

ment of business. What can we know of it by seeing it in

the faith of science? And what can we know of it by

beholding it in the faith of religion? Before observing that

by these faiths we know different things, let me hasten to

say that we compare them here with no intention to pro-

nounce on the adequacy or sufficiency of either faith to

predict or explain how people think or behave in business.

Our interest is not psychological but philosophical; to

observe that where science depicts people as objects (ac-

tors) who act in economically rational ways, religion

understands people as beings in communion who act to be

closer to God. And where the one depicts a theoretical ideal

far from our native understanding of positive business, the

other depicts a living reality that keeps with that

understanding.

Homo Economicus

People in business are objects:

autonomous individuals who

are rational and motivated by

self-interests

Business is not an integral whole

but is a coincidence of self-

interests in a market or

hierarchy

Imago Dei

People in business are embodied

spirits: unique persons who

form and are informed by

others and who seek to ‘‘be’’

with one another in communion

(and ultimately in God)

Business is an integral whole; a

joyful solidarity in the common

good (which is ultimately the

good of God)

In the faith of science, the human element of business

consists of objects related as cause and effect. This faith is

typified and writ large in the science of economics which

describes man, not as a human person in communion, but

as an idealized economic actor in markets or hierarchies,

and which calls this man homo economicus. Indeed, the

history of this idea of man illustrates well how science

objectifies the human element of business and turns it into

an ideal apart from the real. As chronicled by Mele and

Canton (2014), homo economicus can be traced to the

moral philosopher-cum-economist Adam Smith (1981)

who wrote of how the economic self-interests of the

butcher, brewer, and baker convene in the ‘‘invisible hand’’

of the market. But, as Smith was a moral philosopher first

and economist second, he saw man as more subtle and

socially attuned than a self-interested economic actor

simply. However, when Mill (1874) later wrote of man in

his philosophy of utilitarianism, the subtleties in Smith

began to give way to a narrower and more hypothetical

actor oriented to selfish ends. And finally, by the time of

the so-called ‘‘neo-classical synthesis’’ of scientific eco-

nomics in the last century (see Robbins 1945), there was

nothing left of man but the idealized ‘‘economic actor’’

who is all self-interest and rational calculation—pure homo

economicus.4 As depicted in the figure, economic man is

not a recognizably human person, but is an idealization fit

to a theoretical model. And with this idea in mind, business

4 This is an admittedly sweeping and crude rendering of economic

science. Today there are new strands of thought about the psychology

of homo economicus, including those of behavioral and now neural

economics. Nevertheless, despite their nuance and sophistication,

these new strands remain, philosophically speaking, forms of one and

the same scientific idealism.

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is not as an integral whole unto itself but is a coincidence

of individual self-interests in markets and hierarchies. This

coincidence of interests is not recognizably a human

communion, but is again an idealization fit to the theoret-

ical model. As professor of finance Martijn Cremers (2016)

points out, it makes no difference to economists that homo

economicus is an idealization (i.e., that no real person is

actually autonomous or motivated mainly by self-interest

or that no real business is actually formed as a rational

nexus of contracts), so long as he can be employed in

arithmetic models to predict prices and the buying and

selling of goods and services in markets (see also Friedman

1968). In a word, it is no strike against their scientific faith

that homo economicus is not real.

In contrast, in the faith of religion the human element of

business is as it is everywhere, an instance of humanity that

consists of all persons in the communion of God. This faith

is writ large and plainly in the theological idea of man as

the image of God—the so-called imago Dei—an idea as

old as the Hebraic religion of Abraham and that has been

cultivated since by the faith traditions of Judaism, Chris-

tianity, and Islam. This idea consists of humanly embodied

spirits, who form and are formed by others, and who seek

to ‘‘be’’ with one another in union with God. As depicted in

the figure, when discerned in business, this idea renders

employees as human persons who form and are formed by

one another in the integral solidarity of the business. For

theologians, in contrast to economists, it matters utterly and

totally that this image of the human element in business,

which has been revealed to us by God, is metaphysically

real and is not a man-made idealization fit to a theory. It is

a strike for religious faith that its human being is a vibrant

one of spirit, of a joyful solidarity of persons in the honest

good of being rather than the pleasant or useful good of

having.

When we come to the human element of business in the

second way of faith in religion we grasp it in a radically

different and richer way, according to its spirit. We

understand that while this spirit can be more or less real-

ized and more or less apparent to us in the conduct of a

given business (in Aristotle’s terms, in ‘act’), it is a real

possibility of every business (in Aristotle’s terms, in ‘po-

tency’) because every business is human. Spirit is a real

essence of persons in business, not a theoretical construct

such as the economic actor. And so whereas people in

business cannot actually be as the ideal of homo eco-

nomicus pretends—namely purely selfish actors linked in a

market or hierarchy—they can actually be as the real imago

Dei portends—a joyful solidarity of persons in the common

good of God.

Thus, the rival epistemologies of ‘‘seeing’’ and ‘‘be-

holding’’ engender rival understandings of things, be these

sisters or businesses. However, and although all things can

be regarded in either way, ours is the age that sees more than

it beholds. Natural science sees the facts of everything and

the being of nothing—it sees that birds fly, fish swim, babies

cry, the two sisters love, and business people exchange

goods and services in markets, but it does not know bird, fish,

baby, sisters, or business people. By its outlook, we may gain

technical power and advantage over things by making them

objects that we can manipulate and manage (including

people who we too often regard as objects like any other), but

this technical power and advantage come at the expense of

being with the things themselves. By its outlook, we miss the

real being of things and in the process miss our own real

being which subsists in and through them. In this way and

over and over again, we confirm poet Wordsworth’s lament

that ‘‘we murder to dissect.’’5

The Mystery of Being in God

We have seen that our world divides philosophically along

the lines of our two faiths: one of objects and facts, the

other of spirit and being. One is an overt world of matter

and mechanism in Cartesian dimensions of time and space.

The other is a mysterious world of divine being before and

beyond objects, causes and effects, and dimensions of time

and space. In what follows we come to see that however

much we may try to locate positive business in the objec-

tivity of the former, it belongs squarely in the spirituality of

the latter.

Positive business subsists in the epistemic and onto-

logical act of beholding that is faith in religion. It is the

form of business we come to when we are open to its

human being, a being which is ever present as a possibility

and which is originally and ultimately of God, who is being

itself. Standing on the tall broad shoulders of Aristotle

(1999) (who he called simply ‘‘the philosopher’’), Aquinas

(1990) discovered that all things exist by two related acts of

being. The 1st act is of substantial existence which asserts

being against non-being. By this act, we who are human

exist as both a finite and infinite being. Like other finite

beings—such as a rock or river or rose—we are a material

body that takes up space and exists only for a time. But

unlike finite beings, we are also a spirit in the image of God

5 William Wordsworth, 1888, from the poem ‘‘The tables turned.’’

This line appears in the penultimate stanza and bears repeating here

along with its following:

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:–

We murder to dissect.

Enough of Science and of Art;

Close up those barren leaves;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart

That watches and receives.

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that does not take up space or exist only for a time and that

we are called to realize by our actions. In spirit we are self-

possessed and self-aware. And in spirit we choose, with

Shakespeare’s Hamlet, ‘‘to be or not to be.’’ The 2nd act of

being enlarges upon the 1st as a communication and

sharing of being with others. In this act of self-communi-

cation, we who are human express (literally ‘‘press out’’)

our being to form relationships with others. As theologian

Norris W. Clarke (1993) observes, this 2nd act is a rela-

tionality that tends toward communion as its natural ful-

fillment. In our case, this 2nd act of self-communication

joins the 1st act of substantial existence to form not one but

two real finite and infinite beings—the human person and

the human communion.6 Thus, our being in beholding is

being in relation; it is at one and the same time personal

and communal—a ‘‘solidarity of persons.’’ We come to be

in communion as we convey our being to others and

receive their being into our own. In this way and in humble

docility, we desire and will the good of the other as we

desire and will our own. Moreover, we experience this

common good of love of neighbor as self as joy (again, the

joy that is the direct effect of love, the sign of virtuous

action, and the feeling of ‘‘the best of the human

condition’’).

According to Aristotle, real being is defined by what it is

for—its ‘final cause’ or purpose is the first and determining

cause of its other causes (i.e., of its material, formal, and

efficient causes). Thus, our real being (the substantial

existence we communicate) is defined by what we are for.

As we have just seen our human being is for relationships

with others. As we choose who we are ‘‘for’’ we decide

‘‘who’’ we are, whether we are more or less, large or small,

noble or base, saint or sinner. The crucial question for us in

practice then is what relationship is our first and greatest

purpose? Here Aquinas (who we ought to call simply ‘‘the

theologian’’) delivers us beyond Aristotle to recognize that,

no matter what our faith or lack thereof, our human being is

ineluctably theological; that our being in relation to one

another is ultimately for being in relation to God. Thus and

whether we know it or not, our first and greatest purpose is

God. We exist to unite with Him; He who is Being itself

and whose essence is to exist. And we do this by uniting

with one another in His real being. Our joy in being with

others in this life is a foretaste of our ultimate joy of being

with God in the next. Thus, for Aquinas, the practical

question of our lives is easily put: ‘‘How can we be more

and more in God?’’ It is the practical question of real being

in every corner of our lives, including our lives in business.

It is the practical question that Herman Miller Corporation

CEO Max De Pree (1997) identifies as ‘‘authenticity’’:

Vital organizations don’t grant their members

authenticity; they acknowledge that people come

already wrapped in authentic humanness. When an

organization truly acknowledges the a priori authen-

ticity of each person and acts accordingly, how many

ways open up for people to reach their potential (p.

106)

Thus, we have come at last to a real and definitive idea

of positive business, namely that it is the form of business

in which we are more fully and authentically human as we

are more fully in God. And thus we have come at last to an

explanation for the fulsome but unreasoned enthusiasm of

scholars and practitioners of positive business, namely that

theirs is the joy of solidarity for the common good that is

communion in the incomprehensible and unspeakable God.

The ‘‘real mystery’’ of positive business then is its being in

God.

The Christian Humanism of Positive Business

We have seen that the mystery of positive business calls to

a transcendent being of joy in solidarity for the common

good. And with Aquinas we have identified this being with

God who is being itself. It remains to ask: What is the

nature of God? And how are we related to Him? With

answers to these deeper theological questions we can

venture deeper into the mystery of positive business.

While every theology has something to teach about

positive business—not least that positive business is an

instance and emblem of the divine—one theology is

especially instructive about how we take part in God.

Christianity reveals uniquely and powerfully that God

made us and loves us in the image of His only begotten son

Jesus Christ. By this revelation—which Christianity

accepts as a truth before all reason—we know that the

person of Christ, who is both fully man and fully God, is

the sign of our humanity and divinity. By his humanity, we

know that he is an embodied spirit of the same kind that we

are. And by his divinity, we know that he is our Word and

Way to God the Father, who is being itself. Christ is thus

the definitive and final answer to our most human questions

of who we are in relationship to God, of what we must do

to have more of Him in our lives, and not least, of how we

can make His will our own. These first questions of our

being in God are the first questions of positive business. Let

us consider each.

In Christ, we learn who we are in relation to God, in

three ways at least. First, we exist as he exists, as a being in

the image of God. In his perfect likeness to God the Father,

Christ fulfills the Old Testament teaching of Genesis that

6 As Norris Clarke (1993, pp. 57–58) further observes, the two acts of

being are logically related—the 2nd presupposes the 1st (there can be

no being to communicate without being to begin with) and the 1st has

the 2nd as its final cause (communication of being is the reason for

being in the first place).

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man is the one creature defined theologically, not with a

likeness to other creatures, but with a likeness to God (the

one creature defined in relation to Being itself). Our like-

ness to God is the basis of our dignity in positive business.

Second, we relate to God as Christ relates to God, as His

son or daughter. As we are each child to the Father, we are

beloved by Him as Christ is beloved by Him (accepting of

course the difference that we are ‘‘made’’ by God, whereas

he is ‘‘begotten’’ by God and thus is God). This love of the

Father (who is love itself) is the basis of the love we have

for one another in positive business. And finally we are

‘‘one’’ in communion with others as Christ is ‘‘one’’ in the

Trinity of God. This divine unity is the source and model

for the solidarity of positive business.

In Christ, we learn what we must do to be in God. We

learn about love; that we must love the Father as he does,

with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength; and that we

must love our neighbor and self as he loves us, even to

point of dying on a cross. We learn about moral conduct;

that we must obey the ten commandments God gave to

Moses in the Exodus; and that we must observe his

teachings and counsels in the Gospels, not least those of his

Sermon on the Mount. Far from limiting us, Christ’s

commandments, teachings, and counsels prepare us for real

being in God and thereby for real being in one another in

positive business.

And finally, in Christ we learn how to come to the

Father. We come to the Father through him. We cannot

achieve real being in God by our own initiative (it is not

enough for us to know who we are and what we are to do),

but can receive it as an unmerited gift only through Christ

by the grace of his Holy Spirit. Contrary to what many non-

Christians may suppose, Jesus Christ was not simply a wise

teacher or a perspicacious prophet; he was and is now the

one and only human Incarnation of God who joins us to the

Father in both a negative and positive way. In the negative

way, he reconciles us to the Father by freeing us from the

sins in which we have turned away from Him in selfishness,

by which we alienate and exile ourselves from true being,

and to which we have succumbed since the first days. By

ransoming himself by his passion on the cross, Christ

redeemed us for the Father that we might take part in His

abundant life—the abundant life that we call upon to be

truly and fully human in business (where there no shortage

of selfishness and sin to go around!). In the positive way,

Christ inspires and empowers us with His Holy Spirit to

live abundantly in the being of the Father. By his Holy

Spirit he commissions us to the Church in the same way as

he commissioned his original apostles. As Pinckaers points

out (1995, pp. 177–188), Aquinas called this gift and

commission the ‘‘evangelical law’’ and regarded it the first

principle of Christian ethics. Through this law, which he

also termed ‘‘the law of freedom,’’ we are able to transcend

our selfishness and act freely upon God’s will instead of

our own. Through its gift of the Holy Spirit, we are able to

cultivate the virtues of real being in God; beginning with

the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity; and

extending through the rational virtues of prudence, justice,

temperance, and courage, which the theological virtues

make possible. Thus, it is no coincidence that among these

virtues are those today identified with positive business

(see, Cameron and Winn 2012; Manz et al. 2008) which

bring about the best of the human condition, namely our

real human being.

Thus, it is thanks to Christian theology that we under-

stand positive business more fully as the real mystery of

being in God through Jesus Christ. Its joy in the love of

others and virtuous action is the joy of being with others in

Christ. Its solidarity of persons is the communion of spirits

in the body of Christ. And its common good is the ultimate

good of coming to God the Father through His Son. Let us

finally bring this exposition to a close by citing two of

perhaps many affidavits for this Christology of positive

business. One is the wisdom of St. Paul who, in Corinthians

1 (12: 12–13), identified our positive humanity with Christ

as follows:

Brothers and sisters:

There are different kinds of spiritual gifts but the

same Spirit;

there are different forms of service but the same

Lord;

there are different workings but the same God

who produces all of them in everyone.

To each individual the manifestation of the Spirit

is given for some benefit.

As a body is one though it has many parts,

and all the parts of the body, though many, are one

body,

so also Christ.

For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,

whether Jews or Greeks, slaves or free persons,

and we were all given to drink of one Spirit.

The other is the example of positive organization par

excellence, namely the universal Church founded by

Christ upon ‘‘the rock’’ of St. Peter and the Apostles.

Arguably the most successful and certainly the most

enduring organization in human history, the Catholic

Church accomplishes its myriad purposes—of saving

souls, charity to the poor, social services, support of the

family, education, warning of the perils of climate

change, and campaigns to eliminate abortion, human

trafficking, and political oppression—by calling all per-

sons to the joyful solidarity that is the love of God in

Jesus Christ (see Sandelands 2016). Notwithstanding its

many, varied, and at times sordid human imperfections,

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the Church is truly the continuing incarnation of Christ in

the world. And from the Church, perhaps uniquely, we

can glean many of the essential precepts and practices of

positive business—not least that every person in every

business shares in the infinite dignity of Christ because

every person is like him a child of God; that every person

in every business has a unique part to play in the life of

the whole because—per St. Paul—the whole is a com-

munion of persons in Christ; that those persons who lead

in business have authority over others as did Christ, in fief

from the Father (see Sandelands 2008); and that leaders

are responsible to their charges as was Christ to his, to be

servant to all and especially to the lowest of the low (see

Greenleaf 1977). Understood in this way, the Church is

no mere analog of, or metaphor for, positive business;

rather it is—as is the family (the so-called the ‘‘domestic

Church’’)—the form and essence of positive business.

Perhaps this explains why many businesses identified

today as ‘‘positive’’ think of themselves as ‘‘families’’

(often explicitly) and/or even as congregations of faith (if

more implicitly) (see Demuijnck et al. 2015; Gallagher

and Buckeye 2014; Sandelands 2014).

Conclusion

We began this article by asking why people are powerfully

attracted to an ideal of positive business about which they

been unable to speak plainly and in one voice. At its end

we let us confirm that it is because they are attracted to its

‘‘real mystery’’ which is its being in God. This being is not

something that we can point to and ‘‘see’’ in the way of

science but is something that we must be with and ‘‘be-

hold’’ in the way of religion. Positive business is thus a

mystery in the original meaning of that word; that is, an

encounter with the incomprehensible divine. Positive

business thereby calls for a theology that can teach us who

we are in relation to God, what we must do to be in God,

and not least how we can come to God in spite of our sins.

Christian theology answers these questions definitively by

the real person Jesus Christ.

At article’s end we understand that the reason why

people are powerfully attracted to positive business is the

reason why they cannot account for it scientifically. Posi-

tive business is real being in the God for whom we long—

to paraphrase St. Augustine, ‘‘our hearts are restless until

they rest in Thee.’’ As divine being, positive business is not

to point to and see but is to be with and behold. It is not to

catalog by a science of objects but is to be ‘‘one with’’ in a

religion of spirit. The real mystery of positive business is

revealed, uniquely and truly, by the humanism that is Jesus

Christ.

Acknowledgments I thank JBE special issues editor Thomas Maak,

guest editor Fr. Domenec Mele, two very capable anonymousre-

viewers, and my colleague and friend Jim Walsh for their invaluable

contributions to this article.

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