Biblical thought on economics is complex, but I think we can make some observations.
First, all economic activity, that is, work and the use of the world's resources, express personal relations. For example, Israel's slavery in Egypt was understood as oppression, the decision of Pharaoh and his taskmaster's to exploit the Hebrew people. Or, according to the two creation accounts, God's work as Creator is understood as a personal decision on his part to bless the earth's inhabitants. According to the Creed, all things were made through Jesus Christ. Therefore, all economic actions in relation to creation directly concern the person of Jesus Christ. Or again, biblically, economic life is governed by covenant, and the covenant is a personal commitment between God and his people. In short, economics, work and the use of the world's resources, are personal, revealing how individuals, nations, and classes, love, care for, ignore, or exploit, one another.
Secondly, economic activities are circumscribed by limits. The Sabbath expressed this limit. Work halted on the Sabbath. Every seven years the land was to lie fallow for the sake of the land itself, its workers, and the animals (Lev. 25:1 7, 26:34 35). There were laws which curtailed unlimited accumulation of capital, lending at interest, profiting at the expense of others. All of this was consummated by Jesus who redeemed the broken covenant by becoming poor so that the poor might become rich.
Prior to the sixteenth century, Catholic Europe universally believed that economic activities expressed personal relations between people. They were subject to the laws of God and their goal was ultimately religious, the salvation of society and the individual. After the seventeenth century, economics and religion were torn apart into separate spheres. There were two major results. First, economics was emancipated from religious control. It became impersonal, the operation of an "invisible hand," or of mathematical laws. Secondly, what had previously been vices, lending money at interest, consumption beyond one's station in life, and unlimited expansion of wealth, became virtues.
There have been several consequences. First, the myth is perpetuated that slavery is abolished. This is false. We are enmeshed in an international economy which forces masses of people to work at wretched wages producing products consumed by the middle and upper classes all over the world. That is slavery. Slavery is forced labor by some for others without reciprocal service. This unjust system is maintained by international political alliances. Presumably, the poor are improving their lot. I don't believe this. Millions of people in South American, Africa, and elsewhere, are getting nowhere. The tendency to understand economics as impersonal conceals the fact of the slavery.
Secondly, the violation of the "Sabbath" limits has led to the ruthless destruction of the environment.
Thirdly, since economics is ultimately personal, the formation of an international market has led to an international political system in which stronger nations and classes dominate weaker ones. This has been going on since the eighteenth century, in fact, from time immemorial. Every age has its gods which oversee the domination. The god of our age is unlimited accumulation.
I know my views on this are out of the mainstream, but, in spite of its certain advances, I cannot see how an economic system that ignores God's purposes can lead to an enduring good.
The book by R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, is an excellent treatment of the momentous changes that took place in the 17th century.
I would like to thank Dr. David Norman, agricultural economist as Kansas State University, for his collaboration in this essay. (Plenteous Harvest, April, 1994)
The Rev. Robert J. Sanders, Ph.D.
