Finn - Christian economic ethics : history and implications

In writing this book, I have incurred significant debts to many people who have helped me improve both the substance and presentation of the ideas included here. Colleagues who have attended exceptionally carefully to the manuscript and have provided extensive critical advice include Sylvester Theisen, Patrick Henry, David Cloutier, Albino Barrera, O.P., Mary Hirschfeld, Thomas Massaro, S.J., and Andrew Yuengert. I am indebted to many who took time from their days to provide careful advice on particular parts of the book, including Brian Matz, Jon Gunnemann, Joseph Friedrich, John Erb, Christine Firer Hinze, James Childs, Karen Bloomquist, and Bronwen McShea.

My colleagues in the economics department at the College of St. Benedict and St. Johns University provided helpful feedback on Chapter 13. The theologians at New Wine, New Wineskins provided really helpful input on several chapters. And numerous colleagues at the Society of Christian Ethics, the Catholic Theological Society of America, and the Association for Social Economics have improved my thinking about the issues underlying this book over the past three and a half decades. I have likewise been assisted over the years by a number of able and generous student research assistants at St. Johns, including James Foley, Tylor Klein, Natalie Landwehr, Richard DeVine, Shafak Samsheer, and Adam Liske.

I am particularly grateful for the generous help of editors at Fortress Press, particularly Will Bergkamp, Esther Diley, Lisa Gruenisen, and Marissa Wold.

I am deeply grateful to St. Johns University, where, since 1977, I have been a member of the Department of Economics, the Department of Theology, and the School of Theology, and where since 1984 I have held the William E. and Virginia Clemens Chair in Economics and the Liberal Arts. Many people at St. Johns and St. Bens have helped me in a myriad of ways over the years. Of all those who contributed directly or indirectly to this book, I owe the greatest debt of gratitude to Judy Shank, who has painstakingly typed and made a multitude of changesand changes of the changesin each page of this book. Her patience and care have made this final version possible.

Its easier to see what we are already expecting.

They have an undying

tremor and draw,

like well water far down.

In the poem Out of This World, the Irish poet Seamus Heaney describes a man who has lost his faith as a Christian but whose heart still resonates when he recalls the words host and thanksgiving and communion bread. Even after years of absence from any church, he finds that these have an undying tremor and draw, like well water far down.

Few citizens of the industrialized world think much about well water, as most get their water from a large water-distribution system. Even if the system originally drew that water from a well, the liquid has typically been filtered, treated with chlorine to kill bacteria and fluoride to improve health, and has flowed through miles of pipes to get to the end user. The tap at the kitchen sink has a sort of technological predictability about it, and that drink of water on a hot day occurs at a great psychic distance from any well.

But those of us who depend on the well in the yard for that gulp of refreshment on a steamy July afternoon think about wells more frequentlyand differently. The well is not only a necessity of life, but depending on the geology of the area it often bears a significant fragility, as it can fail to produce that life-giving liquid when its overused or if the drought lasts long enough. Theres an increased connection to that water lying far below ground, partly because it is so far down thereinaccessible to eye and ear but compelling, more powerful in life for its importance and the frailty of our access to it.

This seems to be the sense Heaney appeals to when he says the man recalls former religious beliefs that still have a hold on himthe way well water deep down has a hold on those who are conscious of their dependence on it every day.

This book aims to answer an important question: What does the history of Christian views of economic life mean for our economic life in the twenty-first century? Over its pages we will review a large number of texts in that history, from the Bible to the writings of the early church, the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, and much that has been said about all this in the last century.

Very few Christians today know about most of these texts, which are like well water deep down. They lie in wait to provide refreshment, guidance, and even relief to believers today caught up in an economic systemand often in a jobthat they think of as a kind of inevitable necessity, an arid fact of life, the unquestioned way the world works. Yet by investing the proper time and attention, we can experience these ancient texts in their persuasive insight, their call to meaning, their tremor and drawand they can help us reflect critically on much that we may have unconsciously assumed about our economic life in the twenty-first century.

Our engagement with ancient Christian texts on economic life must be part of the conversation about the economy today. Yet as soon as we turn to this contemporary task, we find that debates about economic life within the Christian churches in our era exhibit a range of opinions almost as wide as within secular society itself. This is something of a surprise, since it would seem that the moral doctrines of Christianity ought to operate as limits on the range of views that can actually be warranted by the Christian tradition. However, it is a fact of life that both Christian socialists and Christian libertarians believe their views are supported by Christian faith. Thus it will be helpful to start with a close view of how one representative of each approaches the issues. As we will see, each includes a view of the person and community, but the character and relationship of these two differ significantly.