Christian Economic Ethics

History and Implications

Daniel K. Finn

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780800699611
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451452280
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for economic life in the twenty-first century? Here Daniel Finn reviews the insights provided by a large number of texts, from the Bible and the early church, to the Middle Ages and the Protestant Reformation, to treatments of the subject in the last century. Relying on both social science and theology, Finn then turns to the implications of this history for economic life today. Throughout, the book invites the reader to engage the sources and to develop an answer to the volumes basic question.

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From the Bible to the Reformation

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The Hebrew Scriptures

The history of Christian views of economic life began long before Christianity existed. Like the first Christians, we today are deeply indebted to the Jewish tradition out of which Christianity has flowed. Jesus himself continually employed the wisdom of his own Jewish tradition. Even modern popes have referred to Jews today as elder brothers in the faith.^[1]

The Hebrew Scriptures (the Old Testament) are a collection of writings that include a wide variety of literary genres, from law to history to poetry and more. Though dating from centuries before the birth of Jesus, the Hebrew Scriptures in a real sense also belong to Christians and are critically important for the faith and life of Christians today. For our purposes, we will focus on a few of the major elements of this tradition, those that most directly address economic life.

The creation story

The Bible begins with two versions of the story of God’s creation of the world in the book of Genesis. Scripture scholars now understand that these stories were not from the earliest of Israelite history but came into being much later. Nonetheless, they convey fundamental insights for Jewish and Christian theology.

Creation, not creationism

All Christians believe that God created the world. This is the doctrine of creation. Only fundamentalist Christians believe in “creationism,” the belief that God created the world in seven twenty-four-hour days, about 6000 years ago. Fundamentalist Christians interpret the Bible literally and hold that the truth of the Bible requires that we believe that everything happened exactly as the biblical texts relate.

Catholics and mainline Protestants do not see the Bible as designed to provide a scientific description of events but as a religious statement, inspired by God to reveal religious truth to its readers. Modern science has learned that the rocks of the earth are billions of years old, that fish, cattle, and humans evolved over millions of years, and that the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around.

Many atheists today argue that because the Bible is wrong scientifically, Christian faith is based on an illusion. Ironically, creationists share with these atheists a presumption about the bible and science—because these two sources provide different accounts of the earth and the cosmos, they cannot both be true. But fundamentalists argue that since the bible must be literally true, science must be in error.

It is far better to understand religion and science as two different ways of understanding the world—each with its own means for perceiving and articulating what is true.

The world is good.

The creation stories in Genesis leave us with two broad principles that are immediately relevant to economic life today. While neither can tell us exactly what to do in concrete situations, each contributes to a proper attitude and provides an important background conviction that should influence how we approach daily economic decisions.

The first principle is that the world is good. The first creation story tells us that at the end of each day of creation, God “saw that it was good” (Gen. 1:1-31). What does this mean for us today? Basically this goodness says that plants and animals, and even rocks and soil, are religiously significant, religiously important. Thus the life of the Israelite then and of the Christian today must take into consideration God’s evaluation of the material world. This has important implications for our view of environmental problems today. But even broader than this is the conviction that religious faith is thoroughly tied to the material world. Most basically, we humans are not simply spirits but are body/spirits. That is, our physical body is just as much “who we are” as our spiritual side.

The most important aspect of the goodness of creation is articulated when the creation story says that humans have been created “in the image and likeness of God.” Because of this unique characteristic of humanity, we have a fundamental dignity, not arising from what we do or from what others think of us but simply from what we are. But this dignity does not diminish the importance of the physical world—which is also religiously important. There are some world religions where the goal of religious faith is to somehow withdraw from “the world” into a spiritual place where the believer can more purely understand humanity’s spiritual destiny. But this has not been a part of the authentic Christian tradition. Although our ultimate destiny is to be with God, Christianity remains respectful of and involved in worldly life. This is not an “otherworldly” religion.

Thus for example, the importance of the work we do, the respect we have for the material things we own, the care we take for the natural world, all these arise from this fundamental conviction that the material world is good.

In premodern times there clearly was no awareness of the great extent to which human life and technology today can threaten natural systems and the biosphere as a whole, but there was nonetheless an awareness of a connection between human evil and the natural world.

Human evil threatens nature.

Hear the word of the Lord, you Israelites, because the Lord has a charge to bring against you who live in the land:

“There is no faithfulness, there is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed.

Because of this the land dries up, and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field, the birds of the sky, and the fish of the sea are swept away.

Hosea 4:1-3

The most basic statement of the relation between humans and the natural world was given in the first creation story when God tells the first humans to “be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and every other living creature that moves on the ground” (Gen. 1:28).

The Hebrew word translated as “rule” has sometimes been translated as “have dominion.” In either case, however, Scripture scholars remind us that in a world where humans were too insignificant to cause environmental damage, this sense of human superiority over the natural world was quite ordinary. Today, Christian theologians recognize the importance of not simply having dominion over the natural world but living in accord with the order there that God has established. Thus a greater sense of humility is required of people today in light of the capacity of our technology to impose immense risks and costs on our planetary biosphere. God’s directive (in Gen. 2:15) to “tend the garden” requires a care for nature often absent in economic development today.

In their appreciation for the natural world, the ancient Israelites recognized that the creatures around them had an existence that had meaning for God, independent of the actions of humans. Recall what the psalmist says:

All creation praises God.

Let them praise the name of the LORD, for at his command they were created, and he established them for ever and he issued a decree that will never pass away. Praise the LORD from the earth, you great sea creatures and all ocean depths, lightning and hail, snow and clouds, stormy winds that do his bidding, you mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars, wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and women, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the LORD, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens. And he has raised up for his people a horn, the praise of all his faithful servants, of Israel, the people close to his heart.

Ps. 148:5-14

Later Christian theology understands the natural world sacramentally. Nature not only praises God, but is itself translucent to the divine light, showing God’s splendor and power. This sacramentality of creation arises from the biblical account and has important implications for our view of environmental issues today. The natural world is not simply a mine from which we can take whatever we wish or a dump into which we can put any waste we may generate. A responsible environmental ethic—and an appropriate environmental policy—will require a careful interplay of scientific analysis and moral vision.

The world is a gift.

The second theological principle arising out of the doctrine of creation is that the world is a gift. Christian theology understands all of creation—the physical world around us and even our own lives—as a gift created and given by God. We do not understand our presence in the world as simply the outcome of some sort of cosmic lottery. Although chance plays an important role in the evolution of the universe, our world, and our personal lives, Christians believe that the benevolent creative intention of God stands underneath all of this. Creation by God signifies that there is a meaning to our being here, that our very existence is a gift.

Paul Camenisch has articulated an understanding of gift that is quite helpful here. Camenisch points out that gift giving is not simply a transfer of an object from one person to another, but is part of a deeper relationship. A thing becomes a gift because of the intention of the giver, and when the recipient accepts it, the intentions of the giver become part of the thing possessed. The gift is transferred for the benefit of the recipient and comes at some cost to the giver, but “to accept the gift is on some level to consent to that total complex reality and to consent to become part of it.”^[2]

Consider an example. We sometimes give a gift for a birthday or Christmas simply because we are expected to. However, this is a cheap version of gift. In its best sense, a gift is a transfer of something from one to another with a special meaning attached, a meaning that corresponds to the relationship that exists between the two people. We are most aware of that when we choose a gift for someone we love deeply. The ideal gift to give is not something that you care greatly about but the recipient doesn’t like, nor is it simply something that the recipient cares much about but which you abhor. Rather, a gift is best when you value it as a representation of your willingness to give of yourself to the other and when it is also deeply valued by the one to whom you give it.

Have you ever received a gift—say, a small figurine from an aunt—that did not fit your expectations very well? Perhaps you didn’t like it, but you felt an obligation to appreciate it, simply because you knew that your aunt was trying hard and intending the best in the gift. Perhaps you even now put that gift out on a table when your aunt is about to visit. Such times are awkward, but they remind us that the meaning of a gift is not simply the value of the thing given but rather the relationship expressed in the gift. And even when we receive a wonderful gift—where we greatly value the thing itself—the fact that it expresses a relationship makes it even more valuable.

Now we are able to consider what it means that the Israelites understood the world as a gift from God. They felt indebted to God, of course, for having been given this land when they had been slaves in Egypt, unable to escape the Pharaoh. But even more, because the Israelites recognized the presence of God in their lives, the gift of the land that they used each day in raising their crops and shepherding their flocks had a deeper meaning because it was being used in the presence of the giver. For this reason, the conditions that God had set for the use of such gifts had a much stronger resonance, the sort of “tremor and draw” we saw in the poem at the start of Chapter 1. Those conditions—moral expectations expressed in Israelite law and culture—arose from the gift-character of the world. Morality arose primarily from internal gratitude, not from a fear of punishment when violating laws imposed from the outside. “Morality is secondary to God’s founding initiative, which we express theologically in terms of gift, . . . the consequence of the experience of God, more precisely the God-given experience of an entirely unmerited gift.”^[3]

The same is true for Christians today when we employ the material world to meet our needs and even to enjoy life to the full. At our best, we recognize that it is a gift from God who is present in our lives. If we remain appropriately attentive to our si...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• From the Bible to the Reformation
• Resources for Interpretation
• Modern Church Teaching on Economic Life
• Coming to Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Index
• Additional Praise for Christian Economic Ethics