Marrying Economics and Theology

(First of three parts)

I owe this column series to Mr. Revelation (this is how he wants to be called) for lending his hard-to-find books. For what seemed to be an initial act of kindness, Revelation must have been overpowered by his sense of generosity that he offered to let me keep his books instead! I don't know how to requite this generosity to a man who claims to have been "a reader" of this characterless column "longer than I imagine", and whose face I haven't seen for once or an address for me to return the favor back.

To Mr. Revelation, whoever or where ever you are, please let me at least return the favor by lending your books to students or researchers who are not as privileged as you to own them.                                    

For relevance sake, I would like to share a glimpse of one of Rene's books titled: Divine Economy - Theology and the Market by D. Stephen Long. And for lack of space, I will only cover those points which Long wants to propound especially the correspondence of theology and economics and the influence of the former to the latter and to today's modern events.          

Although he structured the discipline of economics in a theological method, the study is nonetheless compelling in that it opens thinkers and economic managers on the insights and principles of our theological history in planning and in policy making as well as in the distribution of the resources of the state.

Long states that "Economists seem to be concerned with the facts present in the now." Although this is not to say that Economists don't have a good grasp of their history or intuits the same in pies, bars and lines but Long observes that "What occurred in the past is of mild interest" to them. He posits that it [history] is relevant to the extent that it helps us form a historical mathematical model appropriate to the present.

But before we go any further let's hold our horses first, What has theology got to do with economics anyway, to begin with? ’Nothing. That is, from the standard economics textbook or for a practicing economist. It might have relevance for the cultural values that undergird the economic system, but its actual economic value can serve "when theology keeps to its own proper sphere." according to Long.

But despite the economists’ neglect of theology, Long says that a number of theologians work on the relationship between theology and economics that "they have maintained the ancient tradition that faith and economic matters are inextricably linked" and that it is a considerable achievement because it works against the historical development of modern economics as economics has increasingly developed an "anti-humanistic mode" from where theology finds its dialectical relationship to the underlying values behind all the facts and figures that brought it and as to whether or not these values and traditions are kept or betrayed by our leaders.  

"Political economists first freed economics from theology at the end of the eighteenth century with Adam Smith’s revolution. Economists then freed economics from political theory in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century economics has become an increasingly abstract – mathematical -- science. That “All of us who care about both faith and economics are in their debt because the gravest temptation we face is that the rending asunder between them will one day be complete. No one will remember to ask ‘What has Jerusalem to do with Wall Street?’ The ancient tradition will disappear."

(to be continued…)

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