Theology and the Economics of Sustainability: Towards Meaning in the Debate on how the Earth Endures

What is sustainability? Several definitions can be found; it has become a ‘container’ word for the ability of an economy, a society, and the environment to keep going, or for the care about posterity, or the ability of economic and ecosystems to function over time.[1] In its various permutations sustainability is an elaborate commentary on material trends and human responses to it. In short, sustainability is the science to make the earth endure.[2]

How should we reflect theologically on the sustainability of the economy and ecological at all? Or, in other words, what does Wall Street, or the Club of Rome, have to do with Jerusalem?

The Complexity of Faith and Economic Matters

 If we follow Tertullian’s logic that ‘all theological errors and all heresies have their origin in the incursion of pagan philosophy and its reasoning into doctrine and theology’,[3] it would be detrimental to theological education to invite a modern economist working on the climate- and ecological crises to write theological reflections, let alone one who is still practicing and teaching his trade. Is he not peddling the wares of Babylon?

Faith and economic matters are, however, intertwined and complex without ready-made solutions. Christian economists have long tried to find ways to relate their faith to their work but have not been able to find common ground. In an earlier overview of such debates in the 1990s, the following options were utilized for Christian economic engagement:[4]

·      Infiltration in the economic mainstream: a constructive engagement with mainstream economics; the focus is on doing quality economics, and show this by signaling who you are, the topics chosen, and in the style of work.

·      Reject mainstream economics on ethical and methodological grounds, by including norms brought forward by Christian social ethics, and by including religious values into methods. Several suggested a Post-Keynesian/Institutional (PKI) approach to economics, with some streams of ecological economics included.

·      Reject all forms of secular economics and reconstruct a new Christian economics based on Biblical laws and guidelines.

·      Keep silent about privately held values and do not engage with a fallen society.

Given the stalemate in the debate among Christian economists, it is prudent to pay attention to underlying theological viewpoints to help explain why such diverging positions have been taken. Modern economics and the questions of sustainability are not only posing a challenge to Christian economists but are posing a challenge for theology at large.

Promising is Stephan Long’s Divine Economy which takes a much deeper historical and theological dive into the relationship between theology and economics. For example, Long starts by postulating ‘economic exchange…as [the] most important purpose of society since [the] 18th century’. Long claims there are two main theological responses to economics that are relevant to our problem:

·      The ‘dominant tradition’ (Weberian) in which the ordinary life of production and work is hallowed.

·      The ‘emergent tradition’ which is in opposition to the dominant tradition, but maintains some of its vestiges.[5] This tradition is unified in its rejection of capitalism and in its reliance on liberation theologies.

Note that Long further develops a third option - the ‘residual tradition’, focussed on virtues, the truth, good and the beautiful in opposition to both.

The main traditions in Christianity that are influencing the development of a theological ethics of environmental protection can similarly to Long’s two main traditions be described as an “affirmation of the worldly” or a “contempt of the world”.[6].

The Dominant Christian Tradition 

The dominant tradition affirming the worldly, emphasize humans as uniquely positioned as lords over creation and advocate a hierarchy in the management of societies and ecosystems. Christians who maintain that human anthropology centers around having a divine moral endowment (often expressed through the language of the imago Dei in the Augustinian tradition) can easily come to argue that humans are best served by what Robert Klay mentions as “…accord[ing] as much freedom as possible to all actors participating in the spontaneous order of markets”.[7] Novak has worked out such liberty into a doctrine of co-creation with God but at the expense of limiting the importance of Christology and the doctrine of original sin. Such a position tends to affirm the market economy, but is vulnerable to hubris, making God immanent to the market economy and equating the morality of mankind and markets to God’s will. One pertinent example is the Cornwell Declaration on Environmental Stewardship,[8] signed by several prominent individuals from various Christian traditions,[9] which downplays the validity and extent of environmental destruction and promotes an ethic of stewardship with a strong belief in technology and free markets. 

For them, reasoned progress is possible with humans who understand their obligations and are free to act on them. The Cornwall Declaration states that ‘human persons are moral agents for whom freedom is an essential condition of responsible action’ and that they ‘…aspire to a world in which liberty as a condition of moral action is preferred over government-initiated management of the environment as a means to common goals.’[10] An ‘ethic of stewardship’ is used as veil for anti-environmental activities and climate denialism.  The Cornwall Declaration states that ‘[s]ome unfounded or undue concerns include fears of destructive manmade global warming…and rampant species loss’.[11] The doctrine of creation is reduced to an affirmation of a good creation for the purpose of human creative potential, and being a co-participant in the production of wealth - the antinomian tendencies of such unbounded freedom have been well observed.[12]

The operational logic and ethics of sustainability of this dominant tradition can be characterized as follows:

·      A Newtonian/Smithsonian ‘telos’ of freedom and management control of mechanical system deferred to self-interested individuals tending to equilibrium (Versions that focus on emergence in complex adaptive organic systems are also around, but less dominant in economic thought).

·      A fundamental belief in progress, a willingness to accept the ‘price of progress’, that means high social (incl. environmental) costs.

·      A utilitarian ethics which only allows a debate on the means to achieve the ethical goals of that which is useful – such as on the liberty of markets and the need for intervention by governments.

Emergent Positions

In contrast, ‘emergent’ positions emphasizing ‘contempt for the world’ tend to view humans as being in relation to all of creation, and often advocate embeddedness and being subject to boundaries posed by societal or ecological systems. James Nash for example, argues for an ‘ethic of love’ extended to the whole creation, which would imply self-giving, ascetic directions for public policy that includes ‘simpler lifestyles, stringent conservation, rigorous regulations, pollution taxes, international cooperation, and equitable sharing of resources.’[13] Likewise, Wendell Berry strives towards an ideal that seeks the ‘maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption’, achieved with an ethics of ‘neighbourly love.’[14] Such positions tend to embrace contempt for the modern, capitalist economy, and are vulnerable to otherworldly or eschatological ideas that alienate human beings from the good gifts of God’s creation, including culture, in the here and now. A contributing reason for this tradition’s emergence is the fading ‘economic religions of progress’, as manifested in the protest of the poor, the protest of the oikos – household and women, minorities and the environment, the reality of war, the possibility of nuclear annihilation, and waves of populism. All reject capitalism and argue for some notion of socialism.[15]

Theologically, the notion of the Kingdom of God is central, whereby God’s just reign is contrasted to the evils of a dominant political economy. Sally McFague, for example, based her whole discourse on ‘open commensality (act of eating together) and the radical egalitarianism’ of the gospels.[16] Jesus is seen as a teacher of subversive wisdom. McFague calls for changing the view of Jesus’ work from atonement/theology of the cross towards a call for new way of living in world.[17] According to Long, in various versions of the emergent tradition eschatology is reduced to ethics, ecclesiology is relativized and methods are centred on praxis.[18] The operational logic and ethics of sustainability in this emerging tradition can be characterised as a Kantian/Rawlsian focus on social, community and public goals for human beings and the placement of ecological norms above individual preferences. Thus, the emergent tradition can be characterised by a rule-based economic ethic, with values of fairness and justice to be achieved through the praxis of liberation and emancipation.

The Difficulty Faced by Both Positions

Despite being polar opposites in many respects, what binds the dominant and emergent positions together is the temptation that faces both, namely that contemporary society and culture ‘so emphasize human potential and human agency without giving God much thought’ that it is easy to succumb to the ‘insidious…temptation of practical atheism.’[19] As a result, when we ‘lose sight of God, we also lose sight of ourselves’ and become a secular society that is ‘not simply ‘godless’, but impersonal and inhumane.’[20]

Both positions struggle in its orientation to theology; either theology has been captured by economic thought or theology is portrayed as inferior to economics, or in response, a residual theology is portrayed as superior to economics. Theology is captured or inferior when there is no or a weak role for theology to play in economics, whether in dominant or in emergent traditions. In an uncritical affirmation of the capitalist economic order, theology is captured by relegating it to a footnote debate around values and ethics. In the rejection of the capitalist economic order, theology is captured and secularised as a justification for liberation and emancipation. These are the default positions in modern Western society, yet as Long observes in these situations ‘too much is conceded to the economists’ social science.’[21] In both the dominant and emergent traditions, the importance of theology is acknowledged, but reduced in service of attaining human liberty in its various forms, and subjected to values, morals, ‘house rules’, or the ‘natural’, that does not touch the heart of the autonomous, desiring subject. Humans are left on the throne and theology remains incompetent in its central claim to know God.

In Long’s residual tradition, the ‘ought’ of theology reorders the ‘is’ of the economy and ecology. For Long that means the New Law of the Gospel constitutes the ‘is’ of modern economy; theology is portrayed as superior to economics. Long argues for radical change: the capitalist economy is heresy and a mistake to be undone; starting with social reconstruction. Whereas the emergent tradition works within modernity Long argues to go back to pre-modernity; it is there where a true economic order can be found, where decisions are to be guided by virtue, enabling a good life - that is reaching the good, the truth, and the beautiful. In such a retrieval of medieval social order (Thomistic/Aristotelean teleology seeks true and good ends) modern economics needs to be theologically re-imagined. I will not further follow Long’s radical orthodoxy here but rather start with developing the contours of an alternative here.

Towards A Theology of Economics and Sustainability

I would like to argue that a theology that is either captured, inferior or superior to economy and ecology as described in the sense above, poses serious constrains on a fruitful theological reflection on economics and sustainability. I propose looking at theology that is ‘suspicious’ - or better critical - of human thought, theology as ‘affirming’ of faith, and theology as instilling a faith that is ‘life giving’.

• First, a theology is needed that is critical of any school of human thought (Col 2:2-4). As Long argues, the content of theology cannot be sacrificed in support of the ‘fact-value distinction or through a defence of the ‘natural’ that needs no theological coding and is thus self-evident…[in such a case] theology becomes reduced to silence.’ Theology cannot be de-historicized and de-particularized, as it will lose its power and meaning.[22] Theology needs to be suspicious to be captured or treated as inferior to any human thought, as it may end in service of the daily (economic) practices of the current market system, or in service of those who are calling to be liberated from it.[23]

  Second, a theology is needed that affirms the faith, that is confessional (heart and mouth). The starting point of all theology is God, not humans. God’s will as sufficiently revealed to us is a Christians’ guide. The whole Bible is the inspired Word of God and in all its specifics makes a claim on the whole of life. Paul Williams correctly pointed out that ‘[i]t would be a sad irony if Christian theologians and economists were unable to find common resources for collaboration in the whole of Scripture’.[24] Christ is the mystery revealed to us in human flesh. He is Creator, Saviour. Mediator and King. I do want to affirm Long’s emphasis on the direct relevance of Christology on economics.[25] Free and autonomous market agents or individuals liberated from the evils of capitalism are by nature far removed from being persons in Christ. As Oliver O’Donovan says; the real problem is not an under-representation of virtue, but a misrepresentation of freedom.[26]

• Third, a theology is needed that instills a living faith. The starting position of an alternative formulation on who we are is God’s love as gloriously revealed in Jesus Christ - to who we stand in a direct and personal relation. A theological reflection on the human person is the ‘true knowledge of the human person begin[ning] with the relationship between God and humans…[that is] with the person and work of Jesus Christ’.[27] The focus is on koinonia – defined as the specific relationship of persons participating in communion with Christ.[28] Believers in Christ are not autonomous humans but are raised with Christ, engrafted into Christ, and clothed in Christ to use various biblical expressions. John Calvin famously commented that we are not our own anymore.[29] We do not want to be autonomous and independent from Christ.[30] Being adopted as God’s sons and daughters in Christ changes human behavior from an “earthly nature” (Col 3:5), towards a life filled with the virtues of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forgiveness, love, and peace (Col 3:12-15). To be fully human is to realize that believers are adopted in a relationship with the incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and ascended Christ who is now seated at God’s right hand, and that believers are transformed through the work of the Holy Spirit to providentially reign with God over all the world. Such a view transcends both the theological anthropologies of divine moral endowment (e.g., intelligence, reason) and of self-giving relationality (e.g., self-limitation).

The Question of Meaning

A critical, confessional, and life-seeking theology can address questions of meaning. As some have started to observe, economics needs to take account of meaning, if not ‘it runs the risk of missing something important in the understanding of human behavior.’[31] The starting point to a meaningful economy would be to engage with the question what a divine-human relationship entails. An anthropology where humans are graciously offered by God to participate in communion with Christ changes the true meaning of everything. The standard answers to the search for meaning is a tendency to reduce meaning to a well-defined human goal or purpose (telos) that we can understand and manage (e.g., wealth, well-being, or sustainability),[32] or on the other extreme, that humans are not worth much in the vast scale of everything and that real meaning is to be found in humanity’s place within ecology.[33] In my opinion, both these standard answers miss the sense of amazement and wonder of participating in communion with Christ. The richness of what meaning really is, has led some to formulate broader definitions. Irenaeus wrote that the glory of God ‘is a human being fully alive.’[34] Francis Collins wrote that finding meaning in life means to pay serious attention to the sense of awe and wonder instilled by the creation around us, to the insatiable hunger we observe inwardly for something more than ourselves, and the sense we all have of good and evil.[35]

Creation points to the Creator who is to be glorified. In such richer definitions it is more appropriate to think of meaning instilled through faith in Christ, not through our efforts to gain certainty. Gratitude, being full of wonder, thanksgiving, prayer, and wise discernment are vital religious emotions that help retain a better sight of what meaning is.[36] Real meaning is to walk with Christ, to be in step with the Holy Spirit (Gal. 5:25). It can be frighteningly messy and painful at times, with little certainty and prospects, also in an economy that is in crisis and an ecology that groans, but in trust and perseverance Christians know that they are participating in communion with Christ and that by the power of the Holy Spirit all God’s works are brought to a glorious consummation. A reformation of the broader economy, corporations and business beckons every time human beings are responding to the abundant grace on offer to participate in communion with Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit. This means that, when clothed with the spiritual nature of Christ, whole societies and economies have and can change.[37]

How Shall We Then Live and Work?

How would the connection between changed meaning and human behaviour work in practice? Economies have changed throughout history and to define what is good in changing circumstances is not always a priori clear either in Scripture or in common practice.  John Calvin, in his reflections on usury and interest, for example, took the ‘immanent norms of world process seriously’, in sharp contrast to a medieval classicist focus on ‘transcendental control of human development.’[38] Calvin’s method includes both transcendent (God’s intended, but not yet realized possibilities of practice for human living) and immanent norms (actual, realized possibilities of a practice itself). Economies are constituted by both such norms and by grasping the intelligibility of both norms operative in concrete economic situations economic knowledge is advanced.[39]

Methodologically, a cycle of questions and answers of inquiry sharpens understanding and guards against empirical reductionism and moral idealism. Seeking the good is thus to study Scriptural texts and contexts, to ‘let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach’ (Col. 3:16 NIV), and to study concrete human experiences with the view of finding the good in the immanent process ‘that responds or correlates to the Divine intentionality revealed by Scripture.’[40] Neither Scriptural blueprints for society, nor a reduction of practice to immanent operations should thus control human beings in their engagement with society and the economy. Rather, the starting point is a faithful, reflective inquiry and virtuous engagement by human beings alive in Christ seeking the good for the societies they are living in.[41] Calvin’s mediating position between ‘unrealizable idealism’ and ‘unwarranted pragmatism’,[42] already a tension then and still not resolved in late modernity, is a workable proposal on how persons-in Christ are to practically defend the truth and to seek the good in society.

Staying with Wall Street and the Club of Rome

In summary, it may help to enrich the discussion on sustainability with the reality of meaning, and to include both transcendent norms and immanent practices. Joy and pain are part of this same reality.  An attitude of compassion means to care for God’s creatures, an attitude of humility means to self-restrain from conspicuous consumption, an attitude of kindness means to give, and an attitude of patience means to trust and to be content.  With God’s blessings meaningful economies emerge out of being responsive to Him, not as an emergent spontaneous order of autonomous human beings but as those who participate in communion with Christ. Stay in Christ!

That means to stay at Wall Street. And to stay at the Club of Rome. Christian economists cannot leave the debate on sustainability to the natural and social sciences only. Fruitful reflections from a critical, confessional, and life-seeking theology is needed. Despite Satan’s claim on being the prince of the world, both Wall Street and the Club of Rome belong to Jerusalem, which in its renewed, cleansed form will be eternally sustainable.

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References:

[1] Short version of a lecture held on 26 September 2024 at Regent College.

[2] In the environmental and economic realms, the dominant terms referred to has changed over the years from ‘species and habitat protection’, ‘stewardship of land, water and air’, the ‘environment’, ‘sustainable development’, ‘ecosystems’, ‘sustainability’ to ‘planetary boundaries’. What binds these developments together is (i) that a more sustainable world is desired and (ii) that the scale of what is referred to as the ‘environmental problem’ has expanded from species and habitats to global change on a planetary level.

[3] Justo Luis González, “Tertullian (ca. 155–ca. 220),” ed. Justo L. González, trans. Suzanne E. Hoeferkamp Segovia, The Westminster Dictionary of Theologians (Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 323–325.

[4] See Martin P. de Wit, “Christian economists, environmental externalities, and ecological scale”, Philosophia Reformata, (2013), 78(II): 179-195.  

[5] D. Stephan Long, Divine economy: Theology and the Market (New York, Routledge, 2000), 4.

[6] Robert H. Nelson, Unoriginal Sin: The Judeo-Christian Roots of Ecotheology, in On Moral Business. Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics in Economic Life, edited by Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann, Shirley J. Roels and Preston N. Williams (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1995), 840.

[7] Robin Klay and John Lunn, “The Relationship of God’s Providence to Market Economies and Economic Theory,” Journal of Markets & Morality 6(2) (Fall, 2003), 553.

[8] Cornwall Alliance, The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, accessed September, 18 2024. https://cornwallalliance.org/landmark-documents/the-cornwall-declaration-on-environmental-stewardship/

[9] E. Calvin Beisner, “Notable Signers of the Cornwall Declaration”, accessed on December 4, 2015. http://www.cornwallalliance.org/1999/10/29/notable-signers-of-the-cornwall-declaration/

[10] Cornwall Alliance, The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship, accessed September, 18 2024. https://cornwallalliance.org/landmark-documents/the-cornwall-declaration-on-environmental-stewardship/

[11] Ibid.

[12] Long, 71.

[13] James A. Nash, Ecological Integrity and Christian Political Responsibility, in On Moral Business. Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics in Economic Life, edited by Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann, Shirley J. Roels and Preston N. Williams (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1995), 850.

[14] Wendell Berry, “Two Economies”, in On Moral Business. Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics in Economic Life, edited by Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann, Shirley J. Roels and Preston N. Williams (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI, 1995), 835.

[15] Long, 84.

[16] Sally McFague, Life Abundant. Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 173.

[17] Ibid., 238 n. 35.

[18] Long, 85-86.

[19] Craig M. Gay, The Way of the (Modern) World. Or, Why It’s Tempting to Live as If God Doesn’t Exist (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), 2.

[20] Ibid., 3.

[21] Long, 3

[22] Long, 3.

[23] Ibid., 69, 73.

[24] Paul S. Williams, Response: Finding Common Ground, in Kidwell & Doherty, p 161.

[25] Long, 66.

[26] Oliver O’Donovan, “Response: A Theology of the Economy?”, in Jeremy Kidwell & Sean Doherty (eds.) Theology and Economics. A Christian Vision of the Common Good (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), 241.

[27] Marc Cortez, Theological Anthropology. A Guide for the Perplexed (London: T&T Clark, 2010), 4-5.

[28] Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder. A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension (Eerdmans: Grand Rapids, 2010).

[29] John Calvin, “The Institutes of the Christian Religion,” accessed November, 4 2015.  http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/institutes.html, 424.

[30] Canlis, 146.

[31] Niklas Karlsson, George Loewenstein and Jane McCafferty, “The Economics of Meaning,” Nordic Journal of Political Economy 30 (2004), 73.

[32] See for example Charles Handy, The Hungry Spirit. Beyond Capitalism – a Quest for Purpose in the Modern World (London: Arrow Books, 1998).

[33] See for example George Sessions, “The Deep Ecology Movement: A Review,” Environmental Review 11(2) (1987): 105-125.

[34] Irenaeus as quoted in William Sloane Coffin, “Raging against Boredom,” in The Life of Meaning. Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, edited by Bob Abernethy and William Bole (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), 416.

[35] Francis Collins, “Discovering Things Nobody Knew Before but God,” in The Life of Meaning. Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, edited by Bob Abernethy and William Bole (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), 42.

[36] William Sloane Coffin, “Raging against Boredom,” in The Life of Meaning. Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World, edited by Bob Abernethy and William Bole (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), 417 refer to gratitude as the most important religious emotion.

[37] For example see: Edmund H. Oliver, The Social Achievements of the Christian Church. Originally published 1930, Reprint (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 2004).

[38] James B. Sauer, “Christian Faith, Economy, and Economics: What do Christian Ethics Contribute to Understanding Economics?” Faith & Economics 42 (Fall, 2003), 20.

[39] Ibid.

[40] Ibid., 21.

[41] For example when the Israelites were exiled to Babylon their instruction were to “seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper” (Jeremiah 29:7 NIV).

[42] Ibid., 21.