Updated: 1/13/20
Christian Economics: Teacher's Edition
See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority (Colossians 2:8–10).
Humanistic economists are involved in a giant charade. They pretend to be ethically neutral. They pretend that economic science is a true science, and that true science is value-neutral. Science is never value-neutral. It always has highly theological assumptions about God, man, law, sanctions, and the future.
Economists want to be regarded as scientists. They also want policy-makers to take their recommendations seriously, especially policy-makers in civil government. Alone among academic social scientists, economists’ opinions are taken seriously by politicians. Economists are sometimes paid to be advisors. Yet if we take seriously their claims of ethical neutrality, and we therefore take seriously their claim of being scientists, we should not take seriously their policy recommendations. Why not? Because policy recommendations are not scientific, according to economists. Why not? Because it is impossible to make scientific comparisons of subjective economic utility, and subjective economic utility is the only economic utility there is, according to methodological individualism. This was Lionel Robbins’ argument in 1932 in The Nature and Significance of Economic Science, Chapter VI. But economists dearly want to be taken seriously both as scientists and policy advisors. They want to have their cake and eat it, too. This included Robbins. He backed off from his position publicly in 1938 without offering any logical explanation for his reversal when Roy Harrod pointed out that his position would mean that economists could not make policy recommendations.
The best example I have ever read of this cake-having and cake-eating schizophrenia was provided in a book written by George Stigler early in his career. He was for over two decades a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1982. His second book, The Theory of Competitive Price (1942), became a standard text in upper division college courses on economic theory. In it, he wrote the following:
Ethics is the study of values; so, in the means-and-ends terminology ethics considers the relative desirabilities of the various ends. The philosopher, and not the economist, attempts to decide whether a consumer should prefer recitals of the modern dance to spiked beer. Strictly speaking, words like ought and bad cannot occur in an economic discussion—at most one may say that an action is not appropriate to the end in view (p. 15).
Why did he write this? Because of his view of science.
The reason for assigning such an austere role to economics is this: it is the fundamental tenet of those who believe in free discussion that matters of fact and of logic can (eventually) be agreed upon by competent men of good will, that matters of taste cannot be reconciled by free discussion. Assuming this to be true, it is apparent that if value judgments were mixed with logic and observation, a science would make but little progress. Disputes over on demonstrable value judgments would color disputes over demonstrable facts or relationships. A healthy skepticism, moreover, is very useful in examining conventional economic judgments. But this austere economics has its disadvantages. An economist cannot, as a scientist, say that the legislation which requires the treasury to buy domestically mined silver is bad legislation (pp. 15–16).
Then, with the humor that marked his whole career, he added these words: “But it is bad legislation!” This is how self-proclaimed ethically neutral economists sneak their ethical judgments through the back door, or even the front door. (He reprinted this passage verbatim in his slightly revised edition, The Theory of Price, in 1946, on the same pages.)
[His humor failed him in his refutation of my article, “A Note on the Opportunity Cost of Marriage,” which was published in The Journal of Political Economy, vol. 76 (March/April 1968), pp. 321–23. It was written as a humor piece. Incredibly, he took it seriously. He replied here: “Opportunity Cost of Marriage: Comment,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 77 (Sept./Oct. 1969), p. 863.]
He insisted that economics must be value-free. Why? Because of his faith in “free discussion.” By means of free discussion, “matters of fact and of logic can (eventually) be agreed upon by competent men of good will.” This will happen when hell reaches its final equilibrium position. Economists are legendary for never coming to any conclusion. This is a standard description of economists: “Where there are five economists, there will be six opinions.” For all of their rhetoric about not indulging in value judgments, and for all of their assertions about the ability of scientific men of good will to come to agreement through rational discussion of the facts and logic of economics, there is no trace of either ethical neutrality or rational agreement among the various competing schools of economic opinion. The same could be said accurately of every social science.
In Part 6, I discussed the irreconcilable intellectual and methodological disagreements that separate Christians from Darwinists. This separation is not simply a matter of the church pew vs. the laboratory, as Darwinists like to portray it. This separation is fundamental to the challenge of Darwinists against a worldview that defends biblical revelation as the foundation for all human thought.
The essence of the confrontation is the question of God’s design of the cosmos vs. Darwinism’s hypothesis of the cosmos as the product of impersonal law and impersonal chance. This is the debate between creationism and evolution. It cannot be reconciled. Darwinists understand this. Most Christian academics attempt to play down this conflict. They argue that the two worldviews can operate side by side. They are, in short, intellectually schizophrenic. They do not want to surrender their positions in humanist college classrooms. They do not want to live their lives as self-described by the Canaanite woman who wanted Jesus to deliver her daughter from a demon.
And Jesus went away from there and withdrew to the district of Tyre and Sidon. And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and was crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David; my daughter is severely oppressed by a demon.” But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” And he answered, “It is not right to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs.” She said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Then Jesus answered her, “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed instantly (Matthew 15:21–28).
She knew her place: under the table, feeding on scraps. Christians in academia also know their place: under the accredited table, feeding on scraps. She accepted her reality for the sake of the scraps. They refuse to accept theirs. They got through the humanists’ bureaucratic hoops in college and then grad school, and they do not want to live in the outer darkness: teaching in a Christian high school, where the pay is low and the teaching burden is high. So they avoid a head-on epistemological confrontation in the classroom or anywhere else.
They have never studied epistemology. They do not understand the power of presuppositions. They do not see that the Bible speaks to their academic discipline. They follow the guidelines of their profession. They have been trained to think as humanists do. They were not taught anything different in college. They probably attended a public high school. If they attended a Christian high school, their textbooks baptized a humanist worldview. They do not perceive that they suffer from intellectual schizophrenia.
I have made the epistemological case for Christian economics in Part 6. I have also made the ethical case. I have argued that the two cases are interlinked in both camps. Epistemology cannot be separated from ethics. Darwinists pretend that academic disciplines can and must be separated from ethics for the sake of scientific integrity. But integrity must be defined ethically. It is not ethically neutral.
This is a war of the worldviews. We can see it in these five areas of economics: design vs. Darwinism, trusteeship vs. autonomy, ethics vs. efficiency, entrepreneurship vs. equilibrium, and eternity vs. entropy. It ultimately boils down to this: value-laden economic theory vs. value-free economic theory. There is no such thing as value-free economic theory.
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