(Classic) economics can be characterized as a morally realist social science. Following Milton Friedman, it has the intention to observe the “is” rather than the “ought.” By observing real behaviour, no additional assumptions on human nature are required, as all ethical considerations and motivations are internalized in “revealed preferences.”
In this paper, I analyse the Fall (Gen. 3), and its consequence, (original) sin, in terms of their implications for economics. I argue how the above-mentioned anthropological internalization also applies equally to what theologians might call sin, or moral evil – these are internalized (and thus only indirectly ignored). The underlying logic could be described as a reinterpretation of “sin as nature/natural.” As Swiss theologian Emil Brunner predicted: “naturalism knows of original sin – even though it does not know what sin is – this means it sees the facts that in correct interpretation are original sin, but calls them nature.” Applying this to economics, the discipline may thus be “successful” in describing the natural (hu)man, and is under the impression that this is all there is to it.
Admittedly, the Fall (Gen. 3) is not the only (and not even the primary) theological anthropological source for economics. In comparison, the creation mandate (Gen. 1-2) remains more important, both logically and chronologically preceding the Fall. However, the Fall may well have an accelerating and enhancing impact to a degree often and easily underestimated. To a perhaps disturbing extent, economic endeavour and entrepreneurial spirit seem to be driven by the Fall and its epistemological and ethical consequences. The type of vanity described in the Book of Ecclesiastes (4:4) where “all toil and all skill in work come from a man’s envy of his neighbor. This also is vanity and a striving after wind” (ESV). In addition, prominent thinkers such as St. Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Malthus, Francis Bacon, Immanuel Kant, Bernard Mandeville, Adam Smith or Michael Novak can be brought in support for the argument how the multiplication of human needs is strongly grounded in the Fall. The anthropologist Marshall Sahlins put it perhaps most succinctly: “the economics of Genesis are the genesis of economics.”
The reaction to this situation need not involve any radical change in the epistemic culture and method of inquiry of economics. The practice of internalization will surely continue. Similarly, the policy prescription following from it need neither entail a systemic revolution, nor the reduction of economic dynamism. Rather, the built-in drive to create and innovate needs to be recognised as given and maintained. Both the method of inquiry and economic dynamism need to be complemented with a better anthropological roadmap to counter the “anthropological anorexia,” recognizing the richness, thickness, and mystery of true personal existence, and the normative and relational framework within which flourishing is possible. I conclude that the lack of relationality and the Fall as an explanatory factor are directly connected – a true understanding of both are needed in the endeavour to bring back the human person and responsibly acting (economic) agent – the homo agens. In the words of Nobel Laureate Edmund Phelps: “We economists are just beginning to understand the subject. Prosperity and the development of the human spirit are linked in the dynamism of the economy.”
Key Bibliography
Archer, Margaret S. Being Human: The Problem of Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000
Brunner, Emil. “Die andere Aufgabe der Theologie.” In Ein offenes Wort: Vorträge und Aufsätze 1917-1962. Band 1. Edited by Emil Brunner and Rudolf Wehrli, 171–93. Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1981.
Harrison, Peter. The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Phelps, Edmund S. (2009): “Economic Justice and the Spirit of Innovation.” First Things, October 2009, 27-31.
Sahlins, Marshall. “The Sadness of Sweetness: The Native Anthropology of Western Cosmology.” Current Anthropology 37, no. 3 (1996): 395–428. www.jstor.org/stable/2744541.