To date, arguments about how markets morally form us have tended to be theoretical in nature, relying on anecdotes and contestable philosophical interpretations of economic concepts and practices. This has often resulted in the two sides speaking past each other. This essay argues that it is time to move the discussion to more empirical grounds, by engaging behavioral research on decision-making in different economic contexts. Instead of asking whether markets corrupt or support our character, this research enables us to ask—and begin to answer—“under what conditions do markets work against virtue?” This essay illustrates this through a consideration of scholarship available on the moral influence of reputation and competition.
Beginning with a critical review of Hayek's "Atavism of social justice" thesis, this paper suggests an alternative explanation of the widespread and increasing demands for social justice in contemporary society. While Choi (1993a) explores the nature of entrepreneurship and its tendency to incite envy, we focus here on the likelihood of saving and investment activities in a market economy to incite envy. Our analysis reinforces Choi's earlier understanding of the persistent hostility against commerce and the market system, adding to a systematic exploration of the factors that make the demand for social justice stronger or weaker.
Christian social ethics needs a confident theology of the person and society—a theology rooted in revelation, embodied in Christian consciences and community, and able to give an account of the person and society that is independent of the social sciences. The account of positive and moral knowledge in Pinckaers (1995) and the discussion of the four sources of moral knowledge in Ratzinger (2007) describe what is possible from a collaboration of economics with Christian social ethics. When theology acknowledges and embraces its status as crucial interior knowledge shaped by revelation, it will then assume its proper role in orienting positive, exterior knowledge toward true human values.
While it would be inaccurate to claim that C. S. Lewis wrote as a public policy wonk or addressed “the social problem” at length, he did care about social issues like poverty, inequality, and class conflict. His writings on these issues focus more on achieving clarity with regard to how Christians should, and should not, engage matters of justice. While the institutional church has a part to play, it is a secondary role as compared to what Christians might accomplish by employing their vocational gifts and exercising the duties and privileges of citizenship.
This article (re)considers Protestant (post)modern treatment of contraception. Using the 1930 Lambeth Conference and C. S. Lewis’s Abolition of Man as primary touchstones, it proceeds with a theological and literary analysis to treat a topic that the Catholic Church’s encyclical tradition resolutely settled in 1930 with Casti Conubii and subsequently deepened with the doctrinal developments of the 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae . In evaluating this contraceptive dialectic, I draw on primary and secondary ecclesial and academic literatures to help Protestants take up the mantle and speak boldly where Lewis laid laudable groundwork but ultimately remained less resolute. The article’s purpose is to help Protestant Christians in general––and Anglicans in particular––to reconsider present orthopraxical silences and laxities in reproductive ethics in light of wisdom gleaned from prior conciliar and cultural precedent.
The articles in this issue, while from various disciplines, resonate with different aspects of Lewis’s thought to generate insights about “mere Christian social thought” and in the process take Lewisian scholarship in new directions.
Scarcity, understood as the condition where human desires outstrip available resources, stands at the center of both economic theory and human experience. While many economists and futurists envision the progressive alleviation of material scarcity as a mark of human progress, C. S. Lewis’s The Great Divorce offers a counternarrative. Through a depiction of Hell as radical autonomy enabled by abundance, Lewis highlights how material sufficiency alone may exacerbate isolation and disordered desire. Drawing on Lewis’s anthropology, recent work in humanomics and the moral philosophy of exchange, and insights from Christian economic thought, this paper argues that dependence – both on others and on God – is central to human flourishing. Scarcity, while no intrinsic good, may serve as a teacher that presses us into mutual care and humility, revealing the deeper ordering of desire that points ultimately toward communion with the divine.
This article explores the ServiceMaster corporation as a case study of the modern influence of the long tradition of Christian humanism—rediscovered by the company’s early leaders in one of their favorite Christian authors, C. S. Lewis.
Many studies and documents have contributed to Christian social teaching across traditions in the past 150 years, yet there remains a lack of philosophical clarity as well as dialogue between traditions on social issues. Cicero’s social philosophy had a profound but often forgotten impact on the development of Christian social thought: He coined the very terms societas and humanitas and developed the concept of communitas . We are indebted to him in the very language we employ to discuss social thought, yet we often lack the rich context and deeper meaning he provides. This research details the seeds in Cicero’s social philosophy for the principles of Catholic social thought—the common good, human dignity, solidarity, and subsidiarity—and then traces Cicero’s influence from the fourth to the fourteenth century, to show how Christian thinkers have incorporated his ideas. By learning about the unacknowledged sources of some of our presuppositions, we hope to retrieve vital resources common to all Christians, for developing Christian social thought, fostering collaboration between traditions, and promoting dialogue with non-Christians who address social issues.
Proponents of transgenderism offer a competing story of reality, epistemology, and anthropology vis-a-vis Scripture’s teaching that God made humanity in his image either male or female. If the transgender argument continues to take root in culture as it has begun to do so in the courts and legislatures, it will have devastating effects in both the church and the marketplace where Christians will be subjected to public criticism and further legal battles. This essay argues from a conservative Evangelical perspective, augmented by a biblically informed natural law moral point of view, that it is permissible for Christian employers to terminate employees on the basis of transgender identity, and that this perspective should be protected, rather than persecuted, by the state.
A key problem in the Roma minority’s social status in Slovakia and Central and Eastern Europe is education. Failure on all levels of the education system contributes to the socioeconomic exclusion of the Roma, leads to increased crime, and prevents members of the minority from having equal access to opportunities in the areas of employment and the fulfilment of life goals. Through analysis of successful projects and approaches, we want to outline ways Christian churches may support such projects in the interests of a society that is evolving positively and prospering.
Governing Least: A New England Libertarianism Dan Moller Oxford University Press, 2019 (336 pages)
The Price of Bread: Regulating the Market in the Dutch Republic Jan de Vries Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019 (515 pages)
After “a world of change” in this journal’s editorial staff over the last few years, I write now as its executive editor, succeeding friends and mentors in the honor of publishing the foremost scholarship on the morality of the marketplace, of faith and of freedom.
Reimaging Capitalism in a World on Fire Rebecca Henderson New York: Hachette Book Group, 2020 (322 pages)
Aristotle’s objection to unlimited commercial exchange as an unnatural activity governed by no moral constraints or teleological aims continues to endure as a powerful criticism of markets. This article applies this criticism to the thought of Edmund Burke and F. A. Hayek. It argues that whereas Hayek’s suspicion of teleology and a hierarchy of ends does leave his embrace of market economies vulnerable to Aristotle’s criticism, Burke overcomes this objection by explicitly subordinating commerce to the religious and moral imperatives of a nation.
The corona pandemic has forced us to examine rules for allocating survival chances and mortality risks when ICU beds and ventilators are not sufficient for all patients who need them. In the debate about triage ethics one must distinguish between ex ante triage and ex post triage. Ex ante triage addresses which of the patients arriving simultaneously in an emergency room should receive an intensive care bed and which should not. Urgency and prognosis are the decisive medical criteria. Ex post triage determines whether a respirator may be removed from a patient who has already been connected to it and given it to a newly admitted patient. The most frequently made mistake in ex ante triage is discrimination based on the patient’s age. Frequent aberrations in ex post triage are decisions based on the quantification of expected life spans, as well as an equivalence of ex ante and ex post triage, which is justified by the false equivalence of action and omission or the thesis of the inevitability of human culpability.
Evangelical religion was a recognized force in some periods of history, effective in social and political reform in Britain and America. In postcommunist Europe, reconstruction is hampered by a multitude of problems common to all its communities and political systems, in particular by residual effects of Marxist atheistic principles, which, under totalitarianism, were applied to the whole way of life and culture. This article offers suggestions of how the past successes of evangelical revivals in the West might provide inspiration for the theological and practical work of contemporary evangelicalism, if it is to help in postcommunist reconstruction.
The Great Reversal: How America Gave Up on Free Markets Thomas Philippon Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2019 (368 pages)
