ABSTRACT
Any holistic account of ‘spirit and capital’ in relationship to inequality must explain how supernatural, natural and social realities hang together. More specifically, how we think God relates to human beings bears directly on how we think we ought to relate to one another and to our material possessions. This essay aims to adumbrate the falsity, evil and ugliness of three related modes of thinking that justify inequality: election-cum-irresistible-grace, selection-cum-irresistible-genes and distinction-cum-the-irresistible-self. It argues that these three are basically the same hubristic phenomenon expressed in different disciplines and applied to different contexts. They are enemies of human equality and love of neighbour, and they produce paradoxes wherever they appear. This chapter also attempts to intimate an alternative, ‘political agape’.
