Note: From, A History of Christian Political Economy: From the Patristics to the Present (B&H Academics, 2026). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.
This volume is intended to provide a survey of the broad sweep of specifically Christian reflections on economic thought, that is, Christian political economy. This survey is meant to be read in tandem with a primary source anthology, Sources in Christian Political Economy: A Reader. We are aware of no directly comparable efforts, either individually or conceived of as complementary volumes.
Our use of political economy in the place of economics is deliberate. The technical term economics was little used until the end of the nineteenth century. It was initially adopted by those theorizing about the production, distribution and consumption of wealth to differentiate between descriptive (or positive) and normative discussions. Whereas political economy had been understood since the eighteenth century as a branch of moral philosophy, with interconnected ethical, political and jurisprudential aspects, economics came to be viewed as a science independent of ethics and politics. Economics came forward as a science uncovering the uniform laws governing, as Marshall famously put it and pertaining to “how he gets his income and how he uses it.” The title of Marshall’s groundbreaking 1890 work, The Principles of Economics, heralded the coming semantic transition from political economy to economics in the English-speaking world.
The thinkers, texts and traditions treated in this volume are not confined to economics in the technical sense in which that term has been deployed by economists in the recent past. Some of the figures do indeed investigate technical and theoretical aspects of production, distribution and valuation – especially beginning in the early modern period. But as a group, the sources of this study are better organized under the heading of political economy, understood widely as the study of the relations between human society and material wealth. Political economy in a broad sense looks beyond descriptive investigations and encompasses political, ethical and philosophical questions. Such questions include: What, fundamentally, is wealth, and what is the ultimate source of value? What should a society’s relation to its material wealth be? What are the implications for our concrete moral obligations? What are the implications for political organization? To adequately answer these questions requires a serious investigation into the technical dimensions of economics, but the discussion undoubtedly extends further.
For Christians, political economy must involve theological considerations. How, for example, does the notion of God’s providence impact our various understandings of the economic order? What are the implications of the Christian faith for the practice of social science generally? How should we conceive of humanity in relation to its work? What are the economic implications of the human being’s status as an image bearer of God? What are the theological connections between law, virtue and prosperity? What is the significance for economics of the pervasiveness of human evil? The sources we explore in this study deal with these questions and more, reflecting a treasury of Christian insights reaching back to the second century.
A Thematic Basis for Historical Analysis: Limited Good and Mutual Benefit
Throughout Christian history, we find two broad visions of political economy. One foregrounds the limited nature of goods, and the other emphasizes the reciprocal or mutual benefits of commercial dealings. The limited-good perspective holds that riches and material wealth are fixed within the relevant window of analysis, and that at some point, therefore, transactions and individual pursuits of wealth are zero-sum. The mutual-benefits perspective holds on the other hand that material plenty can continue to increase, perhaps not indefinitely, but very far into the foreseeable future. In the mutual-benefits point of view, one person’s wealth need not preclude the wealth of others; exchange does not simply shift around existing wealth, but can generate wealth.
In a broad theological sense, it seems evident that the biblical message is one of mutual benefits. God blesses Abraham in Genesis so that he can in turn be a blessing to the nations. Israel is brought out of exile in Egypt to make God’s name known and to be a vehicle of God’s grace to the world. In the writings of the prophets, God repeatedly promises to preserve a holy remnant of Israel out of exile, through which, again, the nations will be blessed and humankind redeemed. This culminates in the coming of Christ, in whom we are, according to the writings of Paul, blessed by God the Father with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms (Ephesians 1:3).
But the question remains concerning material blessing in the earthly realm, which is the principal concern of economics. What does Christianity have to say on this front? We find different perspectives on material blessings and riches in scripture and various solutions to the problem of scarcity proposed. Barry Gordon’s book, The Economic Problem in Biblical and Patristic Thought, usefully draws out seven approaches to scarcity from the biblical authors, four of which are particularly helpful for framing our approach in this volume.
First is what Gordon calls the “Solution by Faith,” which proposes that God will provide for the needs of his people – spiritual and material – at the proper time. This solution comes through repeatedly in the Torah, for example, in the Exodus journey by the provision of manna, quail and water from the rock for the wandering Israelites. The Solution by Faith evidently has something of a mutual-benefits aspect. Scarcity is alleviated and the budget constraint escaped, so to speak, by the divine provision of food and drink. The consumption and riches of one need not preclude those of his neighbor.
The next is “Solution by Wisdom,” associated with obedience to the rules and commands in the Levitical law and also in the Proverbs. Scarcity can be overcome and material blessing secured, in this point of view, as one obeys God’s commands and lives within the confines of the natural law generally and the Levitical law specifically. The Solution by Wisdom resonates with themes developed in the natural law tradition. A rightly ordered political and social sphere can yield a mutually beneficial economic order featuring rising standards of living and social improvements. This is a thread that runs into the discourse of classical political economy.
A related third solution Gordon discusses is the “Solution by Mediation.” The idea here is that Israel will prosper if she acts as an intermediary between God and the nations, both spiritually and ethically. Gordon writes, “With Isaiah, Job and Ruth there is even the implication that a priestly role by Israel among the nations yields mutual economic benefits all around.” This seems to be at least part of the message in the book of Jeremiah when the exiled Israelites are commanded to build houses, plant gardens, marry off their children and tend to the welfare of the city.
Finally, there is a solution prominent in the New Testament, which Gordon calls the “Solution by Seeking the Kingdom.” In a way this connects back to the Solution by Faith, which is made evident by parts of the message of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount; but it also blends into the Christian ethic of charity, which became especially emphasized in the social teachings of the early church fathers. The signal text here is from the Gospels of Luke and Matthew when Jesus commands the rich man to give all his possessions to the poor and follow him.
Excerpted with permission from A History of Christian Political Economy: From the Patristics to the Present by Erik W. Matson and Jordan J. Ballor. Copyright 2026, B&H Academic.
Erik W. Matson, Gibbons Fellow in Economics, The Catholic University of America; and Jordan J. Ballor, executive director of the Center for Religion, Culture & Democracy, First Liberty Institute
