Calvin and Commerce Redux

You may recall that a month and a half back, I was busily blogging my way through David Hall and Matthew Burton’s book Calvin and Commerce: The Transforming Power of Calvinism in Market Economies, as preparation for a short review I was writing for the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology.  That review will be published in the Autumn edition of the SBET within the next couple weeks (the much longer and more interesting VanDrunen review, alas, will not, having been postponed to the Spring 2011 issue out of space considerations).  If you were following any of my posts on Hall and Burton, you may have noticed that I stopped only a couple of chapters in, and never posted a full review.  This was, to be frank, simply because it became clear that the book wasn’t worth the time.  Hall and Burton did not have really have any coherent arguments, nor any coherence in the way they said them out, and so it became impossible to justify expending the time to patiently analyze and deconstruct the text.

As I put it in the opening to my original draft of the SBET review (omitted in subsequent revisions, but worth stating here):

“In any work of writing, the author’s goal is to bring about a meeting of the minds between himself and his readers, to bridge the chasm between alien consciousnesses, that he might impart information and generate insight in his readers.  This task is never an easy one, and successful execution has at least three prerequisites: a facility in the use of the medium--language; a distinct and readily grasped shape for the content; and a clear conviction underlying the content, that will excite sympathy in the reader.  Unfortunately this volume raises serious obstacles for itself at each of these points.  At many points, neither the language nor the organization are sufficiently lucid to grant the reader insight into just what the authors are seeking to convey, and the driving purpose and assumptions behind this work are never clearly stated.”

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The Tyranny of Efficiency

(following from "Embracing the Fall")

My second big concern about Chapter 2 of Calvin and Commerce is that, to the extent that Hall and Burton want to confront and ameliorate the effects of man’s depravity in economics, their solution is one of law, rather than grace.  One of the first sections in the chapter is entitled “If We Recognize Depravity, We Will Not Tolerate Non-productivity.”  This language is harsh and a bit frightful.  For Hall and Burton, productivity and efficiency are the highest values, and the slothful nature of man must thus be greeted with no mercy.  The Calvinist doctrine of total depravity is meant to bring us all to humility, not pride, recognizing that we too are totally depraved.  This thus serves as a basis for a gracious and compassionate response to the sinner (in imitation of Christ), not a stark refusal to tolerate him. 

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Embracing the Fall

One of the most frequent motifs of Reformed pseudo-theo-economics is that of human depravity, and Hall and Burton are no exception.  Chapter 2 of their book is called “The Fall,” and is essentially dedicated to telling us that Calvinism has done the world the service of recognizing that man is fallen and depraved, and therefore we should not expect him to act otherwise.  We all know where this is going, right?  Capitalism is the best economic system because it assumes fallen men and sinful desires, and seeks to balance such sinful desires against each other rather than pretending they don’t exist, like utopian socialism.  This is, predictably enough, Hall and Burton’s argument.  

Yet how often have we paused to consider just how singular this ethical move is?  Man is sinful, and therefore we as Christians should seek an ethical system that works with man’s sin, rather than against it.  Huh.  But isn’t it redemption, rather than fallenness, that is the core of Christianity?  Plenty of pagans have been able to figure out that the world is a fallen and sinful place; what they haven’t been able to offer is any account of how it might be redeemed.  If Christianity’s main ethical contribution is the observation that man is sinful, then we might as well pack our bags and give up.  Just to get an idea of how bizarre Hall and Burton’s move is, let’s imagine another sphere of life--sex.

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And God said, "Let There Be Private Property"

In Chapter 1 of Calvin and Commerce, we begin with the doctrine of Creation, and Hall and Burton’s use of the doctrine reflects the common conservative presupposition that private property is a direct institution of creation.  This, I say, is a presupposition--it is never a conclusion they argue for, and I for one have no idea how one might argue for such a proposition.  But it has dramatic consequences.  It means, for instance, that the fundamental problem of economics--the relationship between private and common property--is never addressed, nor the issue of the just distribution of wealth.  For Hall and Burton, the great debate in economics is over whether wealth is to be viewed positively or negatively, and they see modern society as falling into the error of viewing wealth negatively, as something “inherently evil.”  

I must confess that this seems a very bizarre diagnosis for our materialistic, money-obsessed culture, but that’s what Hall and Burton think.  Of course, the problem is that their invisible opponents have nothing against wealth per se, but against unjustly distributed private wealth.  Our authors, however, take no note, throughout the 50 pages of this chapter, of such subtle distinctions as the existence of wealth vs. the distribution of it, and go on stubbornly repeating that since “wealth is part of creation,” it is basically good, not evil.   What might this statement mean?

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Calvin and Commerce

I am currently working on another review for the Scottish Bulletin of Evangelical Theology,  this one on a book that is part of the “Calvin 500 Series” called Calvin and Commerce: The Transforming Power of Calvinism in Market Economies.  One of the authors, David Hall, is a theologian/pastor, and the other, Matthew Burton, is an economist.  Unfortunately, like many such theologico-economic collaborations, this one fails to live up to its promise.  Indeed, I must confess that it fails quite dreadfully.  The book is hampered by an almost unreadably poor writing style and organization, an inability to decide on exactly what it’s trying to argue, and what seems to be a blind ideological commitment to extreme free-market capitalism.  

I will not elaborate on the first of these problems, though no doubt you will pick up on some of it when I include quotations.  It is worth pausing for a moment to examine the second. 

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