Reaching for Heaven on Earth: The Theological Roots of Economics.

• Author: Stanfield, James Ronald

For many generations past, dissenting economists, notably Marxists and Institutionalists, have insisted that conventional or orthodox economics wisdom displays the characteristics of faith or dogma. Robert Nelson takes this lament a step further by arguing that economic thought is not merely similar to religion but is in fact the continuation of unfolding religious doctrine. To be exact, he seeks to show "not only that modern economic thinking is a secularization of the Judeo-Christian tradition in a general sense, but that it recreates many specific theological controversies" [p. 23]. Moreover, despite outward appearances to the contrary, modern economic thinking has not radically departed from "theological content" and receives its social legitimacy not so much from its scientific rigor as from its representation of the Roman religious tradition.

Nelson's central organizing principle is the distinction between two traditions of Western religion, the Roman and the Protestant. Plato, the first great figure in the latter tradition, set the theme of human existence in perpetual illusion, distracted from the reasonable conduct of life by false consciousness. The central focus here is the human will. Among the tenets of the Protestant tradition we find deep alienation from human essence, deluded and unreliable reason, corruption of positive or human law and necessary submission to ironclad mores of conduct not amenable to understanding via the exercize of reason, revelation, revolution, self-sacritice, and communalism [p. 53]. Apparently, the tenets are not meant to be logically consistent ideologically but in mood or temper. Extremism seems to be Nelson's common denominator, as well as a propensity to fomenting disorder [p. 309].

By contrast, the Roman tradition, with Aristotle as its first great figure, focuses upon the human intellect as decisive because there is an orderly and knowable universe which the human being can discem and use to govern its existence. The characteristic tenets here derive from the view that the world exists in a rationally knowable form or fundamental reality that is more basic than the world of ideas and wills. Hence progress is possible, as is justice, and happiness is an appropriate...