Economics and theology special issue: introduction


E D I T O R I A L

Economics and theology special issue: introduction

Luigino Bruni1 • Paul Oslington2 • Stefano Zamagni3

Published online: 19 February 2016

� Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016

A new and promising debate between social sciences and theology is taking off.

From the very beginning of Christianity up to modern political economy, cross-

fertilization between theology and oikonomia has occurred, sometimes to the extent

that one constituted the other. For example, the economic notions of redemption and

reconciliation are integral to the New Testament account of God’s dealings with

human beings. The early Christian theologians developed the idea of an economy of

salvation. Smith, Marx, Vico, Genovesi, and others drew on theology, and their

theoretical systems were influenced by theological debates (see Urquhart and Elias

in this special issue).

Philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote in 1921 that ‘‘Capitalism is a religion, that is to

say, capitalism essentially serves to satisfy the same worries, anguish, and disquiet

formerly answered by so-called religion. Then, capitalism itself developed parasit-

ically on Christianity in the West’’ (Benjamin 1986 [1921], p. 102). According to

Benjamin, capitalism is a new form of religion that calls for an exclusive form of

worship and replaces Christianity (not any religion), because it spawned from Jewish–

Christian humanism (see Nelson 2010 and also Samir in this issue for a discussion of

the interplay between economy and Islam). According to this view (that is consistent

& Luigino Bruni
luigino.bruni@gmail.com; l.bruni@lumsa.it

Paul Oslington

paul.oslington@ac.edu.au

Stefano Zamagni

stefano.zamagni@unibo.it

1
LUMSA University, Rome, Italy

2
Alphacrucis College, Sydney, Australia

3
University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

123

Int Rev Econ (2016) 63:1–5

DOI 10.1007/s12232-016-0251-6

http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s12232-016-0251-6&domain=pdf
http://crossmark.crossref.org/dialog/?doi=10.1007/s12232-016-0251-6&domain=pdf


with Marx’s vision of capitalism, less with Weber’s: see Weber 1976; Fanfani 1934;

Barbieri 2013; Oslington 2011, 2014), modernity is not characterized by a

disenchantment of the world, but instead by the affirmation of a new religion, i.e.,

by the transformation of the Christian spirit into the ‘‘spirit’’ of capitalism. In modern

times, the deep and crucial links of capitalism to the protestant ethics were a classic

locus in sociology, and the issue of providence has been central not only in Adam

Smith but also in the foundations of the whole modern political economy, from the

Neapolitan G. Vico to the French Physiocrats or la sect de les économists, as first

underlined by Viner (1972) and Hirschman (1977). In the tradition of political

economy after Smith there have been economists with strong theological interests, i.e.

the English Wicksteed (1885, 1910) or the Italian Sella (1930).

Moving from the realm of ideas to actual economies in general, the intertwined

relations between Christianity and capitalism run deep. Capitalism borrows from the

vocabulary of the Bible (faith–trust, credit–belief). And we cannot understand the

Middle Ages, the Reformation or Modernity, unless we take into account the

numerous intersections between grace and money.

A key period in the interconnections between theology and the economy is the

protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter Reformation (Controriforma) in

the XVI–XVII centuries. Before this crucial crossroad of Western civilization,

market economy had growth as a unique European movement, from Sicily to

London, from Lisbon to Prague. Christian faith had represented the new philia

(fides) that, as in the polis of Aristotle and Pericles, made possible trust and trading

among different people belonging to different clans and villages. The fiere along the

big rivers of Europe were the hubs of complex networks of commercial, artistic, and

cultural relationships that sprung into the Civic Humanism and Rinascimento of XV

and XVIII centuries. The scholastic philosophers and theologians—Aquinas over

all, for his huge influence over the second Middle Age social, philosophical, and

economic syntheses—have built up a first ethics of the proto-market economy based

on the pivotal idea of common good, namely the thesis that the good of the

individual has to be seen in deep and necessary connection with the good of the

community. From that vision came a conception of economy—money, usury, just

price …—ontologically communitarian and hierarchical, because the mediators
(priest, king, father …) were the basic mechanism to implement the harmonization
of public and private goods. Furthermore, in the late Middle Age, the connections

between market and religion have reached a very huge dimension: indulgences,

poor people paid by the rich ones for making prayers and penitence in their place,

donation of bankers for buying reduction of years of purgatory, etc.

Martin Luther reacted against at least two elements of the southern Christianity:

(a) the excessive and often insane mixture money–grace, (b) the magnificence of

Rome and Italy that were also the fruit of the wealth created by a new and positive

attitude toward luxury and money during the XIV and XV centuries. Luther was

deeply impressed and shocked by the mundane and market-based society he met in

Italy that considered far from the original message of austerity and poverty of the

gospel. The strong reaction of Lutheran and later Calvinist Reformation was against

not only the theology of the Roman church, but also against the style of living of Italian

Renaissance, its palaces, masterpieces of art, Michelangelo, Leonardo. Therefore, the

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protestant cultural program was also a reestablishment of a more authentic and less

money-oriented society, but, paradoxically, due to the elimination of the hierarchical

mediation of the church, the protestant culture created an environment much more

adapt to develop the capitalist economy (Magatti and Martinelli, in this issue; see also

Barbieri 2013). In fact, while in southern Europe the counterreformation stopped the

process of freedom in commerce and politics started with the civic humanism, in the

northern protestant countries the individual freedom (produced by the elimination of

hierarchy of the church) was the engine of capitalistic revolution. Then was the

northern protestant Europe where the civic humanism and renaissance tradition

continued, although in Roman Catholic countries, such as Italy or Spain, there was a

re-feudalization of the society that brought back those countries into a situation close

to the Middle Age before civic humanism.

The mediation of the Roman Catholic church is a very key point here. Unlike the

protestant world, in the Roman context the church and its institutions played a

central role in the legislation regarding commerce and money, using a theological

vision—that of the Scholastic, of Aquinas in a special way—written in a different

historical period (centuries XIII–early XIV) more static and based upon Aristotelian

categories (sterility of money, …) that in the Rinascimento were not anymore able
to encompass the new economic reality after commercial revolution of the Italian

and European cities. As underlined in the early XVIII century also by Scipione

Maffei, the mediation and control of the institutions of the Catholic church upon

individual economic activity, and the strong tools of implementation of this control

(i.e., Inquisitione), made the countries of South Europe (Italy, Spain, Portugal, part

of the France) in a condition of economic and financial disadvantage with respect to

Northern Europe. In fact, due also to a lack of religious hierarchy, in Holland and in

the other protestant countries, financial and money lending were allowed, and so

commerce and wealth growth (Barbieri 2013). Parallel to this, whereas in the North

Europe and later in USA, thanks to Calvinist ethics, labor and business were

considered to be moral ways of engaging in ordinary life, in Italy after the

Controriforma there was a re-feudalization of the culture, with a new praise for rural

life and diffidence toward urban life (and its commerce). Also the condemnation of

money lending and usury knew a new season in Italy in the Seicento that contrasts

with what was going on in northern part of Europe—Bentham ‘‘defence of usury’’ is

a radicalization of a widely shared idea in this context. It is true that most

ecclesiastic, political thinkers, theologians of the post-Controriforma season were

laudatores of labor, but the praised labor was agricultural and intellectual work,

whereas the manual or artisan’s activity in the cities (smiths, carpenters,

shoemakers, …) was considered to be not noble and servile.
Most of the present-day differences in labor culture, public debt, private and

public ethics, in welfare states, individual rights, and the idea of market lay in the

two different ways that Europe took after the Reform and Controriforma era. The

Cinquecento and Seicento were therefore a return to Middle Age (Aquinas) as far as

economic ethics is concerned. The modernization and openness to market of

Quattrocento, with the key role of figures such as Bernardino da Siena or Leon

Battista Alberti, were not able to fully flourish in Italy and Southern Europe.

Second, the age of Controriforma was—with few exception, such as Menochio—a

Economics and theology special issue: introduction 3

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praise of agriculture and rural life and a criticism to urban and civic activities (i.e.,

commerce). As a consequence, starting with the second half of XVI century, Latin

Europe knew a re-feudalization of society and a centrality of rent over profit of

merchants and salary of workers. Third, after Reformation, neo-Platonic thought

replaced the Aristotelian one of the Quattrocento; then, solitude, esoteric, and magic

practices took the place of social and political activities of the Aristotelian vision of

Leonardo Bruni and other civil humanists of the previous century. A thesis

consistent with that of the historians Eugenio Garin and Hans Baron, who almost in

the invented the expression of Civic Humanism in order to distinguish the (first half)

of Quattrocento.

Finally, an issue that is present in particular in Martinelli and Magatti paper is the

key role of theology for understanding the still relevant differences between the

Anglo-Saxon capitalism and the Latin European one. The southern Europe, its long

history characterized by a huge biodiversity, at the apex of Middle Age had

generated a market economy based on Catholic paradigm and then expression of a

communitarian and institutionally ‘‘mediated’’ idea of society. The northern

protestant traditions gave life to an idea of society of individuals without the

mediation of intermediate institutions, i.e., the humanism of the ‘‘invisible hand’’

and of the Leviathan: within the space of freedom of the State Leviathan created by

the social contract, the common good is not entrusted to the mediation of the

institutions but is the non-intentional result of the actions of separated and

independent individuals. The Reformation and the Controriforma have been a

turning point in the Modern Europe, and the contemporary gaps in economic and

social terms between North and South Europe are fruits of an interrupted path. The

social pathologies, the ‘‘amoral familism,’’ and the corruption of ‘‘mediated

society’’ of the Italian and Mediterranean societies are well known and serious. At

the same time, also the protestant humanism, its individualism, is facing a different

but not less relevant crisis that calls for something new too (Milbank and Pabst in

this issue).

We hope that in this transition age of capitalism, this special issue can offer some

light for a deeper understanding of our time.

We dedicate this special issue to Pier Luigi Porta, Editor in chief of this journal,

organizer of the Conference on ‘‘Economic Theology, theological Economics’’

(Rome, May 2014), where the papers of this special issue were first presented. Pier

Luigi was an exceptionally talented historian of economics, a dear friend and

beloved colleague. His death came when this issue was about to be completed. With

the hope that he would have been pleased with our work.

References

Barbieri G (2013)[1940] Decline and economic ideals in Italy in the early modern age. Leo S. Olschki,

Florence

Benjamin W (1986) Capitalism and religion. In: Liedemann R, Hermann (eds) Gesammelte Schriften, vol

VI. Suhrkamp Verlag, Schweppenhäuser, Frankfurt

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Fanfani A (1934) Cattolicesimo e protestantesimo nella formazione storica del capitalismo. Vita e

Pensiero, Milan. Translated as Catholicism, Capitalism and Protestantism

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Nelson RH (2010) Two gods: economic religion versus environmental religion. Pennsylvania State

University Press, Pennsylvania

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	Economics and theology special issue: introduction
	References