Jordan Ballor

Center for Religion Culture & Democracy

This is the introduction to a symposium on religion, the Scottish Enlightenment, and liberalism forthcoming in 'Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology.'

The mainstream model of homo economicus or “economic man” has been both a major tool for modern economic theory as well as the focus of much criticism and debate. The Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition can be fruitfully placed into dialogue with neoclassical economics, bringing both challenges to as well as opportunities for cross-disciplinary edificati...

The mainstream model of homo economicus or "economic man" has been both a major tool for modern economic theory as well as the focus of much criticism and debate. The Dutch Neo-Calvinist tradition can be fruitfully placed into dialogue with neoclassical economics, bringing both challenges to as well as opportunities for cross-disciplinary edificati...

This contribution advances a critical examination of Smith’s thought in theological perspective, with a point of departure in a recent interpretation of the ‘invisible hand.’ We show that the concept of general providence has displaced traditional understandings of special providence in the way Smith presents God’s care for the world. Whereas in tr...

Interdisciplinary academic work is inherently fraught, and the incentives in most scholarly environments tend to direct efforts toward greater specialization rather than to foster cross- and interdisciplinary collaboration and dialogue. With specialization of focus comes specialization of terminology, and the challenge of overcoming the technical j...

This article explores the economic teachings of the Heidelberg Catechism, a key confessional document in the Reformed tradition, through the lens of historic Reformed commentary, particularly that of the Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920). The Catechism’s teachings concerning the origin, essence, and nature of economic activi...

This article examines the moral status of wealth creation, particularly within its theological and religious contexts, across Reformed confessions from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These confessional standards are a key source for the moral teaching of Reformed churches, and their treatments of the eighth commandment demonstrate a relat...

Purpose Creativity and innovation are interrelated, and indeed often conflated, concepts. A corollary to this distinction is two different perspectives or types of entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. The purpose of this paper is to explore the distinction between creativity and innovation on the basis of their relationship to history and implicatio...

Beyond Dordt and ‘De Auxiliis’ explores post-Reformation inter-confessional theological exchange on soteriological topics including predestination, grace, and free choice. These doctrines remained controversial within confessional traditions after the Reformation, as Dominicans and Jesuits and later Calvinists and Arminians argued about these criti...

One recurring narrative of the Reformation period and beyond emphasizes the rupture and antinomy between Protestant reform movements and the medieval church and its traditions. Brad S. Gregory's narrative is representative of a much longer line of scholarship that judges the Reformation to be a kind of deformation of the great medieval synthesis, a...

There is a subset of scholarly literature that asserts that the title of Adam Smith’s famous work, The Wealth of Nations , is an allusion to passages from the Bible, such as Isaiah 60:5. Strong forms of the claim of this relationship between Smith and Scripture argue for a direct reliance of the former upon the latter. Weaker forms of the claim mer...

This chapter discusses the nature of human work as manifested particularly in market settings. Human work is properly oriented toward the service of others, a disposition which has important implications for how we view the goal of work in relationship to things like profit, as well as the development of the human person and society. The complex in...

This article explores the implications of the Judeo-Christian tradition's influence on the United States for the foreign policy of an American Christian Democratic Party. If there were to be such a party in the United States, it would not have to create a new set of ideas and principles out of whole cloth. In fact, an articulation of an American Ch...

Although often acknowledged as critically important, the role of the entrepreneur in the modern economy is often underdeveloped or inadequately understood. The reason for this is in large part due to the complex anthropological mysteries that lie at the heart of entrepreneurship. The Christian moral tradition provides important insights into the na...

This chapter discusses the nature of human work as manifested particularly in market settings. Human work is properly oriented toward the service of others, a disposition which has important implications for how we view the goal of work in relationship to things like profit, as well as the development of the human person and society. The complex in...

There is a subset of literature that asserts that the title of Adam Smith’s famous work, The Wealth of Nations, is an allusion to passages from the Bible, such as Isaiah 60:5, which reads, “Then you shall see and be radiant;/your heart shall thrill and exult,/because the abundance of the sea shall be turned to you,/the wealth of the nations shall c...

In contrast to theologians who think economics has little or nothing to teach us, and economists who balk at the strictures a nonnative discipline like theology might seek to impose, this essay explores the prospects for interdisciplinary research between theotogy and economics over the next quarter century and beyond. Theology needs economics beca...

This article discusses the nature of human work as manifested particularly in market settings. Human work is properly oriented toward the service of others, a disposition which has important implications for how we view the goal of work in relationship to things like profit, as well as the development of the human person and society. The complex in...

Envy has long been identified as a “deadly sin” or a “capital vice” in the Christian tradition, and deservedly so. Thomas Aquinas defined envy as “sadness at the good of another,” and it has been recognized as one of the perennial temptations of the human heart. This paper examines the phenomenon of envy from a theological perspective and with an e...

I’m very grateful to Joe Blosser, David Levy, Edd Noell, Dwight Lee, and Jordan Ballor for their thoughtful responses, first of all, which demonstrate that vigorous disagreement need not imply animus. I view their responses instead as a high compliment. I will first summarize those responses briefly. Joe Blosser recommends the book mostly as pathol...

A great deal of scholarship has too often juxtaposed scholasticism and piety, resulting in misunderstandings of the relationship between Protestant churches of the early modern era and the theology taught in their schools. But more recent scholarship, especially conducted by Richard A. Muller over the last number of decades, has remapped the lines...

Review of Divine Transcendence and a Culture of Change by David H. Hopper. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011. xiii 262 pp. $35.

Review of The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society by Brad S. Gregory. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. 592pp. $39.95 hardcover.

The burden of this essay is to show that not merely one but indeed two ideas usually associated with Roman Catholicism have some foundations in the Reformed theological orbit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The first of these is natural law, considered to be characteristic of Roman Catholic ethical reflection, and which after a much-nee...

Editor's Summary The transition from mechanical printing to electronic information dissemination amounts to a digital renaissance, enabling primary source documents to be reborn as electronic resources. For history scholars, this presents opportunities and challenges for preserving centuries-old original texts in a digital environment, supporting d...

This paper explores the problem of envy (“sadness at another’s good”) from both theological and economic perspectives. The theological analysis helps show why envy is a perennial feature of human existence and an ongoing problem for ordered and flourishing social life. The economic analysis examines various attempts to come to grips with envy and i...

Last century's Protestant consensus on the rejection of natural law has been questioned in recent decades, but Protestant social thought still has much work to do in order to articulate a coherent and cogent witness to contemporary realities. The doctrine of the two kingdoms has been put forward as a model for advancing the discussion, and while th...

Im Jahre 2009 jährte sich der 500. Geburtstag Johannes Calvins. Bei aller eingehenden theologischen Forschung zu Calvins Wirken rückte erst in jüngerer Zeit das Thema 'Philosophie in der reformierten Tradition' in den Fokus der Forschung. Die Beiträge dieses Sammelbandes führen diese noch jungen Ansätze fort und vertiefen die Frage, ob und in welch...

I trace here some (although certainly not all) of the antecedents in the Reformation and post-Reformation eras that stand behind more contemporary expressions of the doctrine of subsidiarity. This study focuses on two basic areas, or roots: the civil and the ecclesiastical. In the former case I examine thinkers identified in the so-called “Erastian...

Born in the Swiss town of Wildhaus, Huldrych Zwingli was a first‐generation leader along with Martin Luther in what would later be known as the Protestant Reformation. His first public writings expressing clear sympathies for the Reformation date to 1522, although in the years prior he had taken steps sympathetic with the position of Luther. Zwingl...

Over the last few decades, a picture of the Reformation has been formed that stands in marked contrast to the received wisdom of the early twentieth century. A history of Christian doctrine that largely emphasizes the importance of the Reformation’s leading men, especially Martin Luther and John Calvin (and to a lesser extent Philip Melanchthon and...

In this article I argue that the essential relationship between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Karl Barth stands in need of reassessment. This argument is based on a survey of literature dealing with Bonhoeffer and Barth in three basic areas between the critically important years of 1933 and 1935. These three areas come into sharp relief given the politic...

Like many other publications in what J. David Bolter calls ‘the late age of print,’ the Journal of Markets & Morality is at a crossroads, brought about by the rapid advent of technological progress. While embarking on a discussion of the contemporary issues facing the publication of a scholarly journal, the author provides a brief survey of the his...

The question of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's relationship to natural theology is explored in this thesis, especially in conversation with Karl Barth and Emil Brunner. It is argued that Bonhoeffer represents a "middle way" between the positions of Brunner and Barth on natural theology. The period of study is Bonhoeffer's middle period, from 1931-1939, whic...

Given the close relationship between economic activity and material wealth, it is certainly important to closely examine motives as well as outcomes and to submit economic action to moral scrutiny. The association of economic thinking with greed, though, often illustrates frameworks that implicitly, or even explicitly, presume the benevolence of ot...

Earlier this year former Calvin College professor and librarian Lester DeKoster passed away at the age of ninety-three. DeKoster authored books on a wide variety of subjects focused on economics and liberty, including Communism and Christian Faith (Eerdmans, 1962) and Light for the City: Calvin’s Preaching, Source of Life and Liberty (Eerdmans, 200...

The scholarly research methods of various fields, including those at the core of the editorial focus of the Journal of Markets & Morality, are undergoing significant changes in light of new developments in digital technology. Researchers in fields such as philosophy, history, and theology, as well as economics and social sciences, are gaining acces...

Debates about the future direction of national spending have swept through Western governments in recent years. Driven by doubts about the long-term viability of past levels of spending, present levels of budget deficits, and future levels of promised entitlements, governments have been faced with hard choices. In some cases, such as in the United...

Gratian, the great medieval codifier of canon law, included this aphorism: “It is always unlawful for men to fornicate, but it is sometimes lawful to do business.” To say that the Christian tradition’s interaction with the world of business has been mercurial might be an overstatement, however. There has been a relatively clear development in the a...

With this issue of the Journal of Markets & Morality, we introduce a new semiregular feature section, the Status Quaestionis. Conceived as a complement to our Scholia, which are original translations of early modern texts and treatises on ethics, economics, and theology, the Status Quaestionis features are intended to help us grasp in a more thorou...

In recognition of a number of significant anniversaries occurring this year, the Journal of Markets & Morality invited submissions for this special theme issue, “Modern Christian Social Thought.” The year 2011 marks the 120th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, the encyclical from Leo XIII in 1891 that inaugurated the subsequent social encyclical traditi...

Looking back on his experience in America in 1931, Bonhoeffer would refer cryptically to a sort of conversion experience, a turning toward the biblical text in a radically new and authentic way. In some ways, then, Bonhoeffer’s first trip to America determined the course of the next decade of his life, which is characterized by an increasing focus...

Efforts to modify or replace public systems of criminal justice in accord with the principles of restorative justice have long been understood to include a variety of practices, ranging from educational programs to victim-offender conferencing. What has only come to the forefront relatively recently is the pluriformity of perspectives on the values...

While Witherington applies the "rich man" passages to modern Christians, the rich then were the landed elite. He warns against wealth (151) but ordinary middle-class Westerners are all wealthy and yet have little in common with either the rich or the poor of Israel. Western Christians are still looking for moral guidelines that allow for the common...

Abstract. Thesis (Th. M.)--Calvin Theological Seminary, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-122). Microfiche. s

Thesis (Th. M.)--Calvin Theological Seminary, 2004. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-122). Electronic reproduction. s