Skip to main content

Notes on a Christian Approach to Work, Property, and Community in Roger Crook's Introduction to Christian Ethics

[This post continues notes on various authors regarding wealth, poverty, and economic justice.  Here is a chapter from Roger H Crook, An Introduction to Christian Ethics (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1990), pp. 227-243.  I have organised the notes into the table, below.]

Crook’s concern is to find a Christian approach to work, property and community different from capitalism and communism.  Note the compatibility of his approach to natural law ethics.
         
Capitalism: ‘the system of private ownership of the instruments of production, distribution, and exchange, and the use of those instruments under a plan of individual initiative and open competition to earn private profit’ (Crook, p. 228):

1.     Problems with property: acquisition and use of property (falling into the hands of a few, misuse of property)
2.     Problems with free enterprise: unrestricted accumulation and use of money may run counter to the needs of society as a whole
3.     Problems with competition as the basis for trade: competition to regulate quality of products, set prices, establish wages, determine which products will be produced may not always be decided best by unregulated competition in the market-place.
4.     Problems with profit as the primary motive for driving the economic system: but profit now may involve payment later in destruction of the environment, or profit for a few may involve exploitation of the labourer.

Values
Virtues
Actions
1.     ‘Nature has an intrinsic value’: Gen. 1.31 (‘it was very good’); Ps. 19, 89, etc (nature praises the Creator); Ps. 8 (nature reflects Creator’s glory); Rom. 8.19ff (‘nature will take part in the final fulfillment of God’s purposes)
2.     ‘Human beings are part of the natural order’ and interdependent with it: Gen. 1-2 (part of creation); Gen. 3.19 (made from the dust).
3.     ‘Human beings have a responsibility for the natural order’ as trustees (not owners): Gen. 2.15 (till and keep the garden); Gen. 1.14 (‘dominion’ over creation)
a.     Value resources more than profit margins
b.     Value right of private property, but understood as trustees of God’s world: Ps. 24.1 (‘the earth is the Lord’s and all the fulness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein’); Ex. 20.15 (‘do not steal’àprivate ownership)
c.     Value the worker and work as a vocation (including being able to see connection between the product and the worker, being free to choose careers)
d.     Value the individual’s right to make significant choices
4.     Value one’s neighbour: Lev. 19.18 (love your neighbour as yourself)—perhaps going beyond the Genesis story, but creation or natural law does impose on us the value of others against any selfishness (or worse: vengeance, grudges—Lev. 19.18) to which we might be inclined
Labour Virtues: Industrious, diligent, efficient, faithful worker (cf. Gen. 2.15; 2 Thes. 3.10)

Social Virtues: Caring (cf. Acts 2.44-45; 4.32), compassionate, fairness (just) and honesty (related to justice and valuing the worker), respectful (of each other’s dignity and eternal worth as human beings)

Countering vices of endless accumulation of wealth (cf. Mt. 6.19-21; 19.24), greed and selfishness, competition (free market economy) on which capitalism is based
1.     Individual: conservation of energy, reduction of waste; acts of  compassion towards the needy (Mt. 25.40)
2.     Communal:
a.     Stop unfair distribution of wealth—unfair wage distribution (jobs, gender, age, race, abilities); unfair control of wealth by a few, unfair entrapment in poverty
b.     Assisting poor (Mt. 6.3; Lk. 18.22) and poor nations: land reform, sharing technology, education, gender issues keeping women in poverty
c.     Stop exploiting natural resources
d.     Educating others

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

‘For freedom Christ has set us free’: The Gospel of Paul versus the Custodial Oversight of the Law and Human Philosophies

  Introduction The culmination of Paul’s argument in Galatians, and particularly from 3.1-4.31, is: ‘ For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery’ (Galatians 5.1). This essay seeks to understand Paul’s opposition to a continuing custodial role for the Law and a use of human philosophies to deal with sinful passions and desires.   His arguments against these are found in Galatians and Colossians.   By focussing on the problem of the Law and of philosophy, we can better understand Paul’s theology.   He believed that the Gospel was the only way to deal with sin not simply in terms of our actions but more basically in terms of our sinful desires and passions of the flesh. The task ahead is to understand several large-scale matters in Paul’s theology, those having to do with a right understanding of the human plight and a right understanding of God’s solution.   So much Protestant theology has articulated...
Post a Comment
Read more

Alasdair MacIntyre and Tradition Enquiry

Alasdair MacIntyre's subject is philosophical ethics, and he is best known for his critique of ethics understood as the application of general, universal principles.  He has reintroduced the importance of virtue ethics, along with the role of narrative and community in defining the virtues.  His focus on these things—narrative, community, virtue—combine to form an approach to enquiry which he calls ‘tradition enquiry.’ [1] MacIntyre characterises ethical thinking in the West in our day as ethics that has lost an understanding of the virtues, even if virtues like ‘justice’ are often under discussion.  Greek philosophical ethics, and ethics through to the Enlightenment, focussed ethics on virtue and began with questions of character: 'Who should we be?', rather than questions of action, 'What shall we do?'  Contemporary ethics has focused on the latter question alone, with the magisterial traditions of deontological ('What rules govern our actions?') and tel...
Post a Comment
Read more

The New Virtues of a Failing Culture

  An insanity has fallen upon the West, like a witch’s spell.   We have lived with it long enough to know it, understand it, but not long enough to resist it, to undo it.   The very stewards of the truth that would remove it have left their posts.   They have succumbed to its whispers, become its servants.   It has infected the very air and crept along the ground like a mist until it is within us and all about us.   We utter its precepts like schoolchildren taught their lines. Its power lies in its claims of virtuosity, distorted goodness.   If presented as the vices that they are, they would be rejected.   These virtues are proclaimed from the pulpits and painted on banners or made into flags.   They are established in our schools, colleges, universities, and seminaries.   They are the hallucinogen making our own cultural suicide bearable, even desirable.   They are virtues, but disordered, or they are the excess or deficiency of...
Post a Comment
Read more