Another Intro
And another member of the blog identifies himself. I am P.J. Hill, a member of the Business and Economics Department at Wheaton College, in Wheaton, Illinois. In case you aren't familiar with Wheaton, it is a Christian college that is Protestant and evangelical in its faith commitments.
I also am associated with a research center in Bozeman, Montana, PERC (Property and Environment Research Center) where I spend my summers.
My spiritual journey started (at the conscious level) when, as a senior in college, I decided the good news of Jesus Christ was true. Since then my wife and I have been members of numerous churches, all Protestant, as we have bounced around the country.
Now to the topic of the blog, the relationship between faith and economics. Andy, I'm not sure that I fully agree that our Christian faith and economics are orthogonal. I agree that economics tells me about how people make choices, and my faith defines a set of constraints on my choices. But my faith position also gives me much more information about the quality of choices than economics does, since economics assumes that each individual knows their own best interest. In other words, the discipline of economics provides no mechanism of evaluating choice other than utility maximization. But my belief in a transcendent God who has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ leads to a way of judging my (and others) choices. That doesn't mean I necessarily want to coercively impose what I think is God's evaluation of people's choices (surely the subject of future postings), but it does move me considerably beyond the economics answer to choices of "if it feels good do it."
I also am associated with a research center in Bozeman, Montana, PERC (Property and Environment Research Center) where I spend my summers.
My spiritual journey started (at the conscious level) when, as a senior in college, I decided the good news of Jesus Christ was true. Since then my wife and I have been members of numerous churches, all Protestant, as we have bounced around the country.
Now to the topic of the blog, the relationship between faith and economics. Andy, I'm not sure that I fully agree that our Christian faith and economics are orthogonal. I agree that economics tells me about how people make choices, and my faith defines a set of constraints on my choices. But my faith position also gives me much more information about the quality of choices than economics does, since economics assumes that each individual knows their own best interest. In other words, the discipline of economics provides no mechanism of evaluating choice other than utility maximization. But my belief in a transcendent God who has revealed himself in the person of Jesus Christ leads to a way of judging my (and others) choices. That doesn't mean I necessarily want to coercively impose what I think is God's evaluation of people's choices (surely the subject of future postings), but it does move me considerably beyond the economics answer to choices of "if it feels good do it."
Related Posts (on one page):
- Orthogonality:
- Another Intro
- Why religion & economics:
Posted by P. J. Hill on
Thursday August 25, 2005 at 5:59pm
I agree with your final lines about not-imposing, etc., and I think those latter lines help to fix a minor flaw in your statement that
"economics assumes that each individual knows their own best interest"
Because econ reognizes it's dealing with human choices, I always understood it as merely saying that each individual knows their own best interest BETTER THAN ANY OTHER PERSON DOES. So God knows better about my best path, but he's not the one on the government body that purports to know better for me. So in setting up flawed human institutions, the "individual knows best" shorthand works, but in no way clashes with the religious view.
Indeed, I think that the econ view specifically coincides with the notions most of us now have about religious liberty -- maybe the Faithful do "know better" that the un-faithful should change course, but we don't try to coerce it.
I think a fruitful area for scholarship -- or if there is any already, I'd love for someone here or MOJ to point to it -- is the relationship, if any, between religious liberty theory and econ freedom-v-planning. In Catholic tradition, for example, there was a long tradition that said "error has no rights," and supporting state-supported Catholicism. Some say that's been abandoned; others say it's been consistently adapted in a prudential manner; but either way, the Vatican now supports freedom of conscience. So we call everyone to Christ, but we don't push 'em and shove 'em there.
Similarly, should we perhaps call people to help the poor, but not coerce them to do so? Hmmm . . .
In any event, I will know add "orthognal" to my vocab list.
Good luck with the new blog.
On the religious liberty vs. economic planning - see the link in my later post to Prof. Iannacone's web page. There is a great literature on disestablishment (which I will post more on at a later time) as the key to the comparative success of religion generally in the US compared to Europe. Of course, that doesn't mean that the "one true faith," whatever our various answers as to what that might be, would do best under such a system. But the state-supported churches in western Europe seems to do quite poorly in terms of observant members, so it might.