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Against Satanic Economics: Aquinas’ Theology of Virtue and Political Economy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Abstract
The purpose of this essay is to challenge the Modern assertion that economics is a theologically neutral science founded in the pure rationality of number, yet also connected to morality, particularly in regards to the ancient virtue of justice—“to render to each one their due”. Such an understanding has come at great philosophical, moral, and economic cost, as the Great World Recession of 2008–2013 is demonstrating. Instead, I argue that today's current economic crises are due precisely to a loss of orthodox Christian theological understanding of economics and virtue. I make this argument by examining St. Thomas Aquinas’ theological understanding of the virtues and his consequent understanding of political economy in the Summa Theologica. To evaluate the viability of applying Aquinas’ thought in addressing today's severe economic and ethical crises, I also consider Alasdair MacIntyre's call for a revival of Aristotelian virtue ethics along with his advocacy of Thomisic rationalism to combat the West's ethical decline. However, with John Milbank, I maintain that the integral deprivation of Western moral philosophy and political economy requires a distinctly theological solution that supersedes MacIntyre's neo‐Aristotelianism and neo‐Thomism. This is to be found in a (radical) orthodox reading of Aquinas’ Summa.
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1 The translations in this paragraph are mine. The absence of the article before “son” in Greek suggests to me that the satan really does not know who he is trying to test—YHWH Incarnate: (“. . .‘Ei huios ei tou theou’. . .” (vss. 3, 6); see the 2nd ed. of the Aland et al. Greek New Testament).
2 The parallel account in Luke 4:6 records the satan's statement that all the kingdoms of the inhabited world and their glory had been given to him. Jesus knows this is a lie—in truth, ultimately all the “earth and the fullness thereof” belongs to the LORD (Psalm 24:1). The satan could not justly give what already belonged to the Father and the Son. (Cf. John 17:10)
3 MacIntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue, 3rd ed., (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), pp. 11–12Google Scholar.
4 Ibid., pp. 23–24.
5 See Goodchild, Philip, Theology of Money (Durham and London, UK: Duke University Press, 2009), p. xiiiGoogle Scholar. I thank John Ebel for pointing me to this source.
6 MacIntyre makes this point throughout Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990); Rudi Te Velde demonstrates this in his first chapter of Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae, (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2006Google Scholar).
7 Te Velde, pp. 10, 17–22.
8 Ibid., pp. 14–17.
9 Ibid., pp. 17–18. Thomas’ view of humanity's natural telos as being good, and therefore the image of God, is based on the authority of Genesis chapters 1–2, and on Aristotle's philosophy that humans have by nature an intrinsic aptitude towards virtue, and that this aptitude is brought to fruition and perfection through practice. (see Ethic II.i) Following these two ideas Thomas states, “. . .virtues perfect us so that we follow in due manner our natural inclinations, which belong to the natural right. . .” (STh II‐II q. 108, art. 2 resp., with my emphasis.)
10 Cf. Jan A. Aertsen's “Aquinas's philosophy in its historical setting,” pp. 13, 35 in The Cambridge Companion to Aquinas, eds. Kretzmann, Norman and Stump, Eleonore (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Cf. John 3:16.
12 Deut. 6:5 and Lev. 19:18 respectively; cf. Matt. 22:37–40.
13 See Te Velde, chapter 1. Thomas’ discussion of the cardinal virtues, questions 47–170, follow the “Treatise on the Theological Virtues,” questions 1–46 of the Secunda Secundae.
14 See Milbank, John, “Against Human Rights: Liberty in the Western Tradition,” Oxford Journal of Law and Religion (2012), pp. 1–32Google Scholar.
15 Cf. Milbank, John, “Evil: Silence and Darkness,” Chapter 1 of Being Reconciled: Ontology and Pardon, (London; New York: Routledge, 2003; 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for his assertion that the Kantian autonomous will is evil.
16 Cf. Daniel 5:26–27.
17 See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2006), p. 13 and ff. for more on the difference between Aquinas’ notion of the “dominion of use” and the early Modern re‐appropriation of the pagan Roman concept of ownership as pure dominium.
18 See MacIntyre, After Virtue, chs. 4–5, and passim.
19 Ibid., pp. 52–55.
20 For more insight on Thomas’ pre‐Liberal conception of the integration of political economy, see ST II‐II. q. 77, art. 2 ad 2, where he states concerning trade: “However in each place those who govern the state must determine the just measures of things salable, with due consideration for the conditions of place and time. Hence it is not lawful to disregard such measures as are established by public authority or custom.” See also his treatise on kingship, book II, “The Practice of a Monarch,” chapter VII, “Economic autarchy” where Thomas states that kings are responsible for picking sites for cities that are both economically viable and beautiful for their citizens. (St. Aquinas, Thomas, On Kingship: To the King of Cyprus, Phelan, Gerald B. trans. (Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1949Google Scholar; reprint 1967), pp. 74–78.
21 Goodchild, pp. 12, 14. Goodchild points out that since the invention of money—or more specifically the system of signs representing credit and debt developed in Early Modernity in the 1690s, that it is money which has abstractly determined the value of all things in economics rather than the commodities themselves.
22 See the entry on pleonexia in Arndt, William F. and Gingrich, F. Wilbur, A Greek‐English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 673Google Scholar. See also MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 137, where he notes John Stuart Mill's mistranslation of pleonexia as the vice of wanting “more than one's share” (my emphasis). After almost 300 years of capitalism, it had become inconceivable that simply wanting more could be a vice.
23 Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, vol. I, (New York: Clarendon Press‐Oxford, 1976), p. 343Google Scholar. The quotations below also come from this edition.
24 See Goodchild, pp. 7–18.
25 Cf. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 363–364.
26 See Ruskin's, John Unto This Last: Four Essays on the First Principles of Political Economy, 12th ed., (London: George Allen, Sunnyside, Orpington, 1898), p. 29Google Scholar.
27 Ibid., pp. xii‐xiii.
28 See MacIntyre's prologue to the 3rd edition of After Virtue, x‐xi, for a description of his turn to Thomism subsequent to writing After Virtue. Here MacIntyre states that he became a Thomist in part because he “became convinced that Aquinas was in some respects a better Aristotelian than Aristotle. . .” (x) I.e., Thomas was more logical and rational in some aspects of his moral philosophy than Aristotle. This belies, I believe, MacIntyre's persistent debt to the post‐Enlightenment cult of Reason. Cf. Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 328–329.
29 MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 179.
30 Ibid., pp. 179–180.
31 Ibid., p. xi.
32 MacIntyre, Three Rival Versions, pp. 114–126.
33 See for instance Chapter III, “Too Many Thomisms?” in Ibid.
34 Ibid., pp. 147.
35 Ibid., pp. 127.
36 Ibid., pp. 137.
37 Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, pp. 349–354.
38 Ibid., pp. 367, 380–381.
39 Ibid., pp. 367, 375.
40 Ibid., pp. 363–366.
41 Goodchild, p. 6; and passim through 25.
42 See Goodchild's discussion of the formation of the Bank of England in 1694, and modern banking in Holland, pp. 7–11; and 20.
43 See Milbank, pp. 354–355.
44 Smith, p. 26, with my emphasis.
45 My translation.
46 MacIntyre, After Virtue, p. 75; cf. also Milbank, Theology and Social Theory, p. 1.
47 I thank Dr. Johannes Hoff, Dr. Michael Behrent, Angel Cordero‐Collins, and Allen E. Knott III for their reading and suggestions. All imperfections are mine.