MoneyWisdom #490

 "Monetary overtones emerge noticeably in Christian discourse about the Son as a type of currency in the divine exchange that takes place due to the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. In other words, the potential connotations of the Logos as money come to a head in explicit discussion of Christ serving as some form of offering, sacrifice, payment or compensation rendered either to God or, in some cases, the devil. It is because the Son is the originary numismatic stamp and cosmic currency that he can in turn become the incarnate coin and serve as the payment or ransom so central to Christian soteriology. Likening Christ to gold - as the iconoclast Constantine V did - while perhaps meant to indicate the precious nature of the savior, invokes the long tradition of discourse about Christ as payment for sin. Christ is not merely valuable; Christ is value - the central, determinative value in the economy of salvation. As the treasury administrator and lieutenant in the Father's minting process enters the economy as its essential treasure and currency, Christ as the coin of God comes to the fore as the critical means of payment in a redemptive exchange."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.131 

MoneyWisdom #489

 "The implicit connotation of the Son as the type and die used to imprint the image of God on the coins of humanity - the Son who became incarnate as the chief coin of the Father - emerges in these various instances of material connection between coinage and Christ. Actual coins carry on the work of incarnation as material symbols making theological claims: they proclaim Justinian's imperial submission to Christ, they distinguish the hypostatic union from the body of the virgin mother, and they serve as ritual objects of iconophilic practice. Significantly, this conceptual connection between Christ and coins emerges in political contexts during declarations of, or struggles for, sovereignty. The implicit idea of Christ as principal coin of the Father's kingdom proves itself repeatedly useful in imperial attempts at consolidation of power."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.129-130

Money Wisdom #488

"A coin reflects the character of its issuer. Just as any individual could look at a coin and determine its originating center, so should one, implies Philo, look to humankind and see the marks of God, the issuing emperor. Therefore, one way to understand the imago Dei is within the register of numismatic imprinting. In fact, a chief term used for the nature or character of a person - charaktêr - is derived from the practices of imprinting or stamping an image upon a coin, wax seal, or other object."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.111

MoneyWisdom #487

"Christian theology [...] bequeathed to the West, as part of its inherited 'governmental machine,' a unified rupture of elements in political power and authority, the aporias of which continually plague the actual praxis of such authority in time and space. The sphere of sovereignty is made manifest with a praxis that executes the laws of the sovereign and manages its space through economy. Such administration makes present the transcendent sovereign, paradoxically making its absence present while permitting its distance to remain."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.38

Money Wisdom #486

 On the painting of Willem de Kooning...

"The female genital symbolizes creativity and de Kooning, in painting woman, is painting creativity, and when he can no longer paint woman, he loses his creativity, or else goes through the motions of being creative. His postwoman works are pseudocreative rather than authentically creative. 

When the female genital becomes totally manifest - oppressively evident, confronting and overwhelming the viewer with the self-evidently female - the female body has almost completely disappeared: The female figure has itself been almost completely overwhelmed by the sign of itself - the most vital fact of its authenticity, the smallest but most significant part of its femaleness. Totally exhibitionist, the female body dissolves - into its roots, as it were. One can understand this an example of locker-room irony, and there is no doubt such an unflinching disclosure of the usually obscure 'mystery of life,' and even more heroically as a militant, fearless, in-your-face revelation of the unconsciously terrifying intimate reality of the female body. De Kooning is a Perseus who uses painting as a mirror in which to stare at the Medusa - the female genital, surrounded by its snaky roots - and not turn to stone."

Donald Kuspit Venus Unveiled: De Kooning's Melodrama of Vulgarity in
Uncontrollable Beauty - Toward a New Aesthetics Ed Bill Beckley (1998) p.285

Money Wisdom #485

"Do not neglect or forget the gods. This was the essential commandment of the Hellenic world. We humans were not asked to have faith as with the Christians or to obey the law as with the Hebrews. We were asked not to forget or neglect the gods. Surely this caution has some relation with the role of beauty in Hellenic culture. But how? Perhaps it means that art, as anything else we humans do, remembers the non-human and immortal powers - as the gods were defined in antiquity.

Then, we could lift the repression from beauty by anchoring the mind in nonhuman values. For surely the humanist program is not enough: Social protest and political concern, the exploration of self-expression and the full exploitation of the materials, the reaction of one school or movement to another school or movement, to say nothing of the drive for fame, career, and money, are not satisfactory anchors of the mind's intention in making art. Beauty cannot enter art unless the mind in the work is anchored beyond itself so that in some way the finished work reflects the sacred and the doing of the work, ritual."

James Hillman The Practice of Beauty
in Uncontrollable Beauty - Toward a New Aesthetics (1998) p.273

Money Wisdom #484

 "...importing monetary and broader economic language into theology informs theological systems in unique and substantive ways. To speak of Christ metaphorically as currency and coin, for instance, is to ascribe to Christ key attributes of monetary economy in ways that establish elements of Christ's identity. These attributes in turn become footholds and bearing points for subsequent theological formulations and expanding networks of doctrinal claims. The monetary metaphor may thus come to inform the logic of the entire system. As a central building block of the broader edifice, the metaphor may even be forgotten or dismissed. This can be seen in the way the metaphor of redemption, used to speak of salvation, can be repeatedly invoked in Christian context without an awareness of its thoroughly economic derivation and sense."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.20

Money Wisdom #483

 "What might accepting money's influence on theology and theology's shaping of economic order mean for theological projects of personal, communal, and social transformation?"

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.11

Money Wisdom #482

"Medieval philosophers were fascinated by mirrors. They inquired in particular into the nature of the images that appear in them: What is the being, or rather the non-being, of these images?

[...]

Two characteristics are derived from the insubstantial nature of the image. Since the image is not a substance, it does not possess any continuous reality and cannot be described as moving by means of any local movement. Rather, it is generated at every moment according to the movement or the presence of the one who contemplates it: "Just as light is always created anew according to the presence of the illuminator, so do we say that the image in the mirror is generated each time according to the presence of the one who looks." The being of the image is a continuous generation (semper nova generatur), a being [essere] of generation and not of substance. Each moment, it is created anew, like the angels who, according to the Talmud, sing the praises of God and immediately sink into nothingness.

The second characteristic of the image is that it cannot be determined according to the category of quantity; it is not, properly speaking, a form or an image but rather the "aspect of an image or of a form" (species imaginis et formae). In itself, it cannot be described as long or wide, but instead as "having only the aspect of length and width." The dimensions of the image are therefore not measurable quantities but merely aspects or species, modes of being and "habits" (habitus vel dispositiones). This characteristic - being able to refer only to a "habit" or an ethos - is the most interesting signification of the expression "being in a subject." What is in a subject has the form of a species, a usage, a gesture. It is never a thing, but always and only a "kind of thing" [specie di cosa]. 

The Latin term species, which means "appearance," "aspect," or "vision," derives from a root signifying "to look, to see:' This root is also found in speculum (mirror), spectrum (image, ghost), perspicuus (transparent, clearly seen), speciosus (beautiful, giving itself to be seen), specimen (example, sign), and spectaculum (spectacle). In philosophical terminology, species was used to translate the Greek eidos (as genus was used to translate genos); hence the sense the term takes on in natural science (animal or plant species) and in the language of commerce, where the term signifies "commodities" (particularly in the sense of drugs and spices) and, later, money (especes). 

[...]

The mirror is the place where we discover that we have an image and, at the same time, that this image can be separate from us, that our species or imago does not belong to us. Between the perception of the image and the recognition of oneself in it, there is a gap, which the medieval poets called love. In this sense, Narcissus's mirror is the source of love, the fierce and shocking realization that the image is and is not our image. If the gap is eliminated, if one recognizes oneself in the image but without also being misrecognized and loved in it - if only for an instant - it means no longer being able to love; it means believing that we are the masters of our own species and that we coincide with it. If the interval between perception and recognition is indefinitely prolonged, the image becomes internalized as a fantasy and love falls into psychology.

In the Middle Ages, species was also called intentio, intention. The term names the internal tension (intus tensio) of each being, that which pushes it to become an image, to communicate itself. The species is nothing other than the tension, the love with which each being desires itself, desires to persevere in its own being. In the image, being and desire, existence and conatus* coincide perfectly. To love another being means to desire its species, that is, to desire the desire with which it desires to persevere in its being. 

[...]

The transformation of the species into a principle of identity and classification is the original sin of our culture, its most implacable apparatus [disposiuvo]. Something is personalized - is referred to as an identity at the cost of sacrificing its specialness. A being - a face, a gesture, an event - is special when, without resembling any other, it resembles all the others. 

Giorgio Agamben Profanations (2007) p.55-58

* striving - an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself

Money Wisdom #481

"Insights on the nature and function of money afford additional opportunities for conceptual comparison between economy and theology. Money serves as a useful point of entry into such considerations because it brings to the fore questions about the materialization of transcendent value and the role of representation, issues central to debates about God's relation to the world..." 

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.5

Money Wisdom #480

 "It has become commonplace today to speak of a widespread, so-called faith and hope in money and markets. The ubiquitous power and influence of the economy appear to require, or at least inspire, religious language and invocations of the divine. [...] Money is depicted as an object of 'worship', as enthusiastic participants in the global economy prostrate themselves before the 'altars' of capital, seeking economic 'salvation'.

[...]

Particular early Christian theological ideas incorporate and retain traces of monetary economy. Monetary language, concepts and practices prove useful in clarifying and formalizing certain emerging and central  theological claims. This infusion of monetary thought and practice into core Christian doctrine means that Christian ideas, practices and traditions help to convey this theological and economic combination into new social and political formations and legitimate evolving customs and institutions of monetary economy. If money lends its logic to the structuring of theology, God-talk repays by offering its prestige and sacred power to the world of exchange."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p1-2

Money Wisdom #479

What [Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics by Robert Skidelsky] reveals is an endless war between two broad theoretical perspectives in which the same side always seems to win—for reasons that rarely have anything to do with either theoretical sophistication or greater predictive power. The crux of the argument always seems to turn on the nature of money. Is money best conceived of as a physical commodity, a precious substance used to facilitate exchange, or is it better to see money primarily as a credit, a bookkeeping method or circulating IOU—in any case, a social arrangement? This is an argument that has been going on in some form for thousands of years. What we call “money” is always a mixture of both, and, as I myself noted in Debt (2011), the center of gravity between the two tends to shift back and forth over time. 

(my emphasis)

David Graeber Against Economics (2019) 

A Review of Money and Government: The Past and Future of Economics by Robert Skidelsky

in The New York Review of Books (link)

Money Wisdom #478

"Eusebius's reflection on coinage under Constantine highlights his awareness of the role money plays in a system of rule an administration. Money is communicative and proclamatory , declaring the nature and values of the sovereign. It draws upon the imperial image, sharing in and augmenting its authority. Money is itself a critical image of the nature of sovereign character, a representation reaching out into the governed sphere."

Devin Singh Divine Currency (2018) p.93