Posted: April 24th, 2025
Discussion Thread: Christianity in Business
Read and react to the following 2017 article by Lloyd Sandelands (in the Resources section) in the context of leadership that includes important financial responsibility in a sport business position with a focus on how a sport organization engages with the outside market.
Include Biblical integration in the topic with a Scripture connection or reference citations and reference to at least two sources in addition to those provided in the prompt.
SMGT 506
Discussion Assignment Instructions
The student will complete 4 Discussions in this course. The student will post one thread of at least 400 words by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Sunday of the assigned Module: Week. The student must then post 2 replies of at least 200 words by 11:59 p.m. (ET) on Sunday of the following assigned Module: Week. For each thread, students must support their assertions with at least 2 scholarly citations in APA format. Each reply must incorporate at least 1 scholarly citation in APA format. Any sources cited must have been published within the last ten years. Acceptable sources include relevant articles that are external to the course (i.e. must be in addition to the course text and other course materials provided).
See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/302978881
Article in Journal of Business Ethics · November 2017
DOI: 10.1007/s10551-016-3186-7
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1 23
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
lsandel@umich.edu
1 University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USA
123
J Bus Ethics
DOI 10.1007/s10551-016-3186-7
Author’s personal copy
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10551-016-3186-7&domain=pdf
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s10551-016-3186-7&domain=pdf
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
123
Author’s personal copy
http://www.positiveorgs.bus.umic.edu/
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.
The Real Mystery of Positive Business: A Response from Christian Faith
123
Author’s personal copy
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
L. E. Sandelands
123
Author’s personal copy
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.
The Real Mystery of Positive Business: A Response from Christian Faith
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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.
L. E. Sandelands
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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).
The Real Mystery of Positive Business: A Response from Christian Faith
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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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The Real Mystery of Positive Business: A Response from Christian Faith
Abstract
Introduction
Positive Organizational Scholarship
When Science Fails
To See or to Behold
The Mystery of Being in God
The Christian Humanism of Positive Business
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
References
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