2020 |
 | Ballor, Jordan J Adam Smith in Theological Perspectove Online 2020. Abstract | Links | BibTeX @online{Ballor2020,
title = {Adam Smith in Theological Perspectove},
author = {Jordan J. Ballor},
url = {https://www.adamsmithworks.org/life_times/adam-smith-in-theological-perspective},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-08-06},
abstract = {A new turn to religion in Smith studies helps provide a better understanding of the great Scottish philosopher and political economist than has traditionally been on offer. […] Rather than providing a close textual reading and explication of a particular passage or a comprehensive survey of religious and theological themes in Smith’s work, this essay sets the stage for a broad theological understanding of Smith.},
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A new turn to religion in Smith studies helps provide a better understanding of the great Scottish philosopher and political economist than has traditionally been on offer. […] Rather than providing a close textual reading and explication of a particular passage or a comprehensive survey of religious and theological themes in Smith’s work, this essay sets the stage for a broad theological understanding of Smith. |
 | Ballor, Jordan J Interdisciplinary Dialogue and Scarcity in Economic Terminology Journal Article Journal of Markets & Morality, 23 (1), pp. 131–137, 2020. Abstract | Links | BibTeX @article{Ballor2020b,
title = {Interdisciplinary Dialogue and Scarcity in Economic Terminology},
author = {Jordan J. Ballor },
url = {https://www.moralmarkets.org/wp-content/uploads/Ballor-Interdisciplinary-Dialogue-and-Scarcity-in-Economic-Terminology-ESSAY.pdf},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-05-01},
journal = {Journal of Markets & Morality},
volume = {23},
number = {1},
pages = {131–137},
abstract = {"As an illustration of the various challenges in interdisciplinary dialogue, particularly with respect to theology and economics, the remainder of this essay will focus on the economic concept of scarcity and its typical reception and use by theologians. One of the most common errors in interdisciplinary dialogue is to take a technical term used in one field and apply to it a nontechnical or mundane meaning. In the case of scarcity, this would take the form of understanding its meaning to be simply something like 'lack' or 'poverty.' When theologians think of scarcity, we, perhaps like most people, commonly conceive of a scorchedearth vista, starvation, or deprivation. The immediate reaction is one of horror and sorrow: Scarcity is a result of sin and thus is not the way the world is supposed to be. The answer to the problem of scarcity is thus clear: God is the source of all good things and he gives bounteously, first in creation and, after the fall into sin, in the context of his ongoing providential care. The basic distinction in this case is between economics as a science of scarcity, which is concerned with material deprivation and poverty, and a broader understanding offered by theology, which emphasizes divine abundance."},
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"As an illustration of the various challenges in interdisciplinary dialogue, particularly with respect to theology and economics, the remainder of this essay will focus on the economic concept of scarcity and its typical reception and use by theologians. One of the most common errors in interdisciplinary dialogue is to take a technical term used in one field and apply to it a nontechnical or mundane meaning. In the case of scarcity, this would take the form of understanding its meaning to be simply something like 'lack' or 'poverty.' When theologians think of scarcity, we, perhaps like most people, commonly conceive of a scorchedearth vista, starvation, or deprivation. The immediate reaction is one of horror and sorrow: Scarcity is a result of sin and thus is not the way the world is supposed to be. The answer to the problem of scarcity is thus clear: God is the source of all good things and he gives bounteously, first in creation and, after the fall into sin, in the context of his ongoing providential care. The basic distinction in this case is between economics as a science of scarcity, which is concerned with material deprivation and poverty, and a broader understanding offered by theology, which emphasizes divine abundance." |
 | Graafland, Johan; Wells, Thomas In Adam Smith’s Own Words: The Role of Virtues in the Relationship Between Free Market Economies and Societal Flourishing, A Semantic Network Data‑Mining Approach Journal Article Journal of Business Ethics, 2020. Abstract | Links | BibTeX @article{Graafland2020b,
title = {In Adam Smith’s Own Words: The Role of Virtues in the Relationship Between Free Market Economies and Societal Flourishing, A Semantic Network Data‑Mining Approach},
author = {Johan Graafland and Thomas Wells},
url = {https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10551-020-04521-5.pdf},
doi = {https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04521-5},
year = {2020},
date = {2020-04-29},
journal = {Journal of Business Ethics},
abstract = {Among business ethicists, Adam Smith is widely viewed as the defender of an amoral if not anti-moral economics in which individuals’ pursuit of their private self-interest is converted by an ‘invisible hand’ into shared economic prosperity. This is often justified by reference to a select few quotations from The Wealth of Nations. We use new empirical methods to investigate what Smith actually had to say, firstly about the relationship between free market institutions and individuals’ moral virtues, and secondly about the further relationship between virtues and societal flourishing. We show with more quantitative precision than traditional scholarship that the invisible hand reading dramatically misrepresents both the nuance and the sum of Smith’s analysis. Smith paid a great deal of attention to a flourishing society’s dependence on virtues, including the non-self-regarding virtues of justice and benevolence, and he worried also about their fragility in the face of the changed incentives and social conditions of commercial society.},
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Among business ethicists, Adam Smith is widely viewed as the defender of an amoral if not anti-moral economics in which individuals’ pursuit of their private self-interest is converted by an ‘invisible hand’ into shared economic prosperity. This is often justified by reference to a select few quotations from The Wealth of Nations. We use new empirical methods to investigate what Smith actually had to say, firstly about the relationship between free market institutions and individuals’ moral virtues, and secondly about the further relationship between virtues and societal flourishing. We show with more quantitative precision than traditional scholarship that the invisible hand reading dramatically misrepresents both the nuance and the sum of Smith’s analysis. Smith paid a great deal of attention to a flourishing society’s dependence on virtues, including the non-self-regarding virtues of justice and benevolence, and he worried also about their fragility in the face of the changed incentives and social conditions of commercial society. |
2019 |
 | Ballor, Jordan J; van der Kooi, Cornelis The Moral Status of Wealth Creation in Early-Modern Reformed Confessions Journal Article Reformation & Renaissance Review , 21 (3), pp. 188-202, 2019. Abstract | Links | BibTeX @article{Ballor2019,
title = {The Moral Status of Wealth Creation in Early-Modern Reformed Confessions},
author = {Jordan J. Ballor and Cornelis van der Kooi},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1080/14622459.2019.1673941},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-10-03},
journal = {Reformation & Renaissance Review },
volume = {21},
number = {3},
pages = {188-202},
abstract = {This article examines the moral status of wealth creation, particularly within its theological and religious contexts, across Reformed confessions from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These confessional standards are a key source for the moral teaching of Reformed churches, and their treatments of the eighth commandment demonstrate a relatively nuanced and sophisticated view of wealth. Rather than simply denouncing wealth itself as intrinsically evil, these confessional standards, from a variety of national and ecclesial contexts, both on the European continent and Britain, provide a basis for viewing wealth creation as a moral good, even while warning against excess, temptation, and vices such as avarice and envy. This survey of the treatments of wealth from a diverse set of Reformed confessional standards provides a foundation for understanding a critical element in the formation of Reformed, and more broadly Protestant, economic ethics in the early-modern period.},
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This article examines the moral status of wealth creation, particularly within its theological and religious contexts, across Reformed confessions from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These confessional standards are a key source for the moral teaching of Reformed churches, and their treatments of the eighth commandment demonstrate a relatively nuanced and sophisticated view of wealth. Rather than simply denouncing wealth itself as intrinsically evil, these confessional standards, from a variety of national and ecclesial contexts, both on the European continent and Britain, provide a basis for viewing wealth creation as a moral good, even while warning against excess, temptation, and vices such as avarice and envy. This survey of the treatments of wealth from a diverse set of Reformed confessional standards provides a foundation for understanding a critical element in the formation of Reformed, and more broadly Protestant, economic ethics in the early-modern period. |
 | Graafland, Johan Marktwerking, eigenbelang en … deugden; Adam Smith en recent onderzoek Journal Article Radix (tijdschrift over geloof en wetenschap), 45 (1 (april 2019)), pp. 31-43, 2019. Abstract | Links | BibTeX @article{Graafland2019h,
title = {Marktwerking, eigenbelang en … deugden; Adam Smith en recent onderzoek},
author = {Johan Graafland},
url = {https://www.geloofenwetenschap.nl/index.php/artikelen/item/download/114_813114037681a30a9889e93bb1a04a6d},
year = {2019},
date = {2019-04-01},
journal = {Radix (tijdschrift over geloof en wetenschap)},
volume = {45},
number = {1 (april 2019)},
pages = {31-43},
abstract = {Het belang van deugden in de economie is niet vanzelfsprekend. Veel economen gaan uit van het calvinistische mensbeeld dat de mens geneigd is tot het kwade en alleen eigenbelang nastreeft. Maar dat eigenbelang wordt steeds problematischer. Toch is het de vraag of economen deze les ter harte nemen. De gedachte dat het nastreven van het eigenbelang goed is voor de economie heeft immers al oude papieren. Deze gedachte gaat onder andere terug tot de Wealth of Nations van Adam Smith, de vader van de economische wetenschap. Maar het vreemde is dat Adam Smith in zijn andere boek, \emph{A Theory of Moral Sentiments}, betoogt dat een samenleving alleen maar gelukkig kan zijn als mensen deugdzaam handelen. In dit artikel analyseer ik hoe deze tweespalt in het denken van Adam Smith wortelt in zijn godsbeeld. Daarna presenteer ik recent onderzoek in het kader van het project What good markets are good for dat inzicht biedt of en hoe deugden in de economie van belang zijn voor het menselijk floreren.},
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Het belang van deugden in de economie is niet vanzelfsprekend. Veel economen gaan uit van het calvinistische mensbeeld dat de mens geneigd is tot het kwade en alleen eigenbelang nastreeft. Maar dat eigenbelang wordt steeds problematischer. Toch is het de vraag of economen deze les ter harte nemen. De gedachte dat het nastreven van het eigenbelang goed is voor de economie heeft immers al oude papieren. Deze gedachte gaat onder andere terug tot de Wealth of Nations van Adam Smith, de vader van de economische wetenschap. Maar het vreemde is dat Adam Smith in zijn andere boek, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, betoogt dat een samenleving alleen maar gelukkig kan zijn als mensen deugdzaam handelen. In dit artikel analyseer ik hoe deze tweespalt in het denken van Adam Smith wortelt in zijn godsbeeld. Daarna presenteer ik recent onderzoek in het kader van het project What good markets are good for dat inzicht biedt of en hoe deugden in de economie van belang zijn voor het menselijk floreren. |
2017 |
 | Ballor, Jordan J Reformation Protestantism and the “Spirit” of Capitalism Book Chapter Melloni, Alberto (Ed.): Martin Luther; A Christian between Reforms and Modernity (1517-2017), pp. 965–982, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2017, ISBN: 9783110499025. Abstract | Links | BibTeX @inbook{Ballor2018,
title = {Reformation Protestantism and the “Spirit” of Capitalism},
author = {Jordan J. Ballor},
editor = {Alberto Melloni},
doi = {doi.org/10.1515/9783110499025-055},
isbn = {9783110499025},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-12-01},
booktitle = {Martin Luther; A Christian between Reforms and Modernity (1517-2017)},
pages = {965–982},
publisher = {De Gruyter},
address = {Berlin},
abstract = {Appearing at the dawn of the twentieth century, the German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber attempted to define a religious basis for economic life in his essays on "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." The argument in these essays came to be known as “The Weber Thesis,” which held that in the development of the modern world there was an intimate connection between religious doctrines and ethos on the one hand, and economic life and practice on the other.
After a summary of Weber’s basic argument, we will proceed to examine more closely the figure of Martin Luther (1483-1546) in Weber’s study. Then we shall examine the significance of Protestant rhetoric as it influenced both Protestant ethics and the cultural spirit underpinning modern economic life. As this survey approaches the contemporary era, we will find that there are good reasons to question Weber’s identification of specifically Protestant, and particularly Puritan, backgrounds for the spirit of modern capitalism. We will conclude with an evaluation of Weber’s thesis, which must be judged to be insightful even as it is incomplete and in some ways mistaken. In highlighting the doctrine of predestination as the dogmatic ground for the Puritan ethic and in turn the spirit of modern economic life, Weber displays an erroneous understanding of both this doctrine and its historical role. At the same time, however, Weber does rightly identify important features of capitalism and its grounding in Christian ethics, and these insights continue to have relevance and insight today.},
keywords = {},
pubstate = {published},
tppubtype = {inbook}
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Appearing at the dawn of the twentieth century, the German sociologist and philosopher Max Weber attempted to define a religious basis for economic life in his essays on "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." The argument in these essays came to be known as “The Weber Thesis,” which held that in the development of the modern world there was an intimate connection between religious doctrines and ethos on the one hand, and economic life and practice on the other.
After a summary of Weber’s basic argument, we will proceed to examine more closely the figure of Martin Luther (1483-1546) in Weber’s study. Then we shall examine the significance of Protestant rhetoric as it influenced both Protestant ethics and the cultural spirit underpinning modern economic life. As this survey approaches the contemporary era, we will find that there are good reasons to question Weber’s identification of specifically Protestant, and particularly Puritan, backgrounds for the spirit of modern capitalism. We will conclude with an evaluation of Weber’s thesis, which must be judged to be insightful even as it is incomplete and in some ways mistaken. In highlighting the doctrine of predestination as the dogmatic ground for the Puritan ethic and in turn the spirit of modern economic life, Weber displays an erroneous understanding of both this doctrine and its historical role. At the same time, however, Weber does rightly identify important features of capitalism and its grounding in Christian ethics, and these insights continue to have relevance and insight today. |
 | Ballor, Jordan J A Biblical Myth at the Origin of Smith's The Wealth of Nations Journal Article Journal of the History of Economic Thought , 39 (2), pp. 223–38, 2017, ISSN: 1053-8372. Abstract | Links | BibTeX @article{Ballor2017,
title = {A Biblical Myth at the Origin of Smith's The Wealth of Nations},
author = {Jordan J. Ballor },
url = {https://doi.org/10.1017/S1053837216000286},
doi = {10.1017/S1053837216000286},
issn = {1053-8372},
year = {2017},
date = {2017-06-01},
journal = {Journal of the History of Economic Thought },
volume = {39},
number = {2},
pages = {223–38},
abstract = {There is a subset of scholarly literature that asserts that the title of Adam Smith’s famous work, The Wealth of Nations, is an allusion to passages from the Bible, such as Isaiah 60:5. Strong forms of the claim of this relationship between Smith and Scripture argue for a direct reliance of the former upon the latter. Weaker forms of the claim merely raise the possibility of the relationship or point more broadly to the significance and relevance of scriptural passages. This article sets these claims against the historical context of Smith and his work, finding that the relationship among “the wealth of nations,” Adam Smith, and English translations of the Bible demonstrates that Smith did not, in fact, allude to the passages in Isaiah. Thus, the rise of political economy itself, of which Smith’s work was an important element, was part of the background for, and preceded the appearance of, the phrase in English bibles.},
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There is a subset of scholarly literature that asserts that the title of Adam Smith’s famous work, The Wealth of Nations, is an allusion to passages from the Bible, such as Isaiah 60:5. Strong forms of the claim of this relationship between Smith and Scripture argue for a direct reliance of the former upon the latter. Weaker forms of the claim merely raise the possibility of the relationship or point more broadly to the significance and relevance of scriptural passages. This article sets these claims against the historical context of Smith and his work, finding that the relationship among “the wealth of nations,” Adam Smith, and English translations of the Bible demonstrates that Smith did not, in fact, allude to the passages in Isaiah. Thus, the rise of political economy itself, of which Smith’s work was an important element, was part of the background for, and preceded the appearance of, the phrase in English bibles. |
