Neither Poverty nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Material Possessions (original) (raw)

Ecclesiastical Response on Economic Justice – A Biblical Theology of Wealth

BIBLICAL STUDIES JOURNAL, 2021

The fundamental needs of humans are food, shelter and clothing. Despite progress, the existence of absolute poverty for many hundreds of millions of people involving malnutrition, illiteracy, disease and starvation is a fact of today's world. What is Jesus's attitude and teaching of Jesus on Poverty? What does the church as a community say when there is economic injustice going on in society? What does the Bible teach about the economic welfare of people? How can the Church at the local, national, and global levels play a vital role in the economic welfare of people? I attempt to briefly present the Biblical Theology of wealth or Economic Justice in the light of the present-day global economic inequalities.

An Exploration of Economic Rhetoric in the New Testament in Light of New Institutional Economics

Welcoming the Nations: International Sociorhetorical Explorations, 2020

This paper aims to introduce the thought and incentive for incorporating economic texture into New Testament interpretation. Economics has been considered irrelevant for analysis of the New Testament context since economics is modern theory interested in areas that simply did not exist in the market economy of antiquity. Living in Hong Kong, the world’s most capitalist economy for more than forty years and being trained as an economist for more than ten years, I witnessed how deeply our lives and values are shaped by our economy. I used to believe that the rules of a capitalist society were fair because the market is free. Not until I personally encountered many poor families and witnessed their stories did I realize that the formal rules of the economy were supported and sustained by many values and informal institutions that are not true or fair. I started to realize that the economy is not merely a mechanism for allocation of resources; it shapes our values as well as our perceptions in many different ways. It is not only composed of formal rules but also informal institutions, and people may overlook its impact on their values, relationships, and perceptions. This view of the economy, that is, seeing economy as a set of institutions, comes from New Institutional Economics, and it helps us see the relevance of economics in interpretation of the New Testament.

Economic Interpretation of the New Testament: Invisible Hands at Work

2014

Note. This draft is for discussion only. It was prepared for an edited volume that never saw the light of day. It was the basis for a presentation at the 2014 Society of Biblical Literature International Meeting in Vienna, Austria, and it provides background for a greatly expanded discussion of the biases of New Testament scholarship for a volume honoring Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza on her 80th birthday.

On the Fall of the Angels: Economic Theology after the Middle Passage

The Journal of Religion, 2024

This article engages recent readings of Anselm of Canterbury’s Cur Deus homo that highlight the centrality of debt and indebtedness for his economy of salvation. In the rush to establish homologies between Anselm’s theological economy and neoliberal governance, readers have tended to focus on Anselm’s insistence that debt must be repaid. Highlighting the specifically involuntary character of the debt described by Anselm, as well as Anselm’s digression into the irredeemable status of damned angels, this article argues that Anselm’s continuing relevance is best understood not in light of the general predicaments faced by borrowers but in light of the racial calculus and moral economy that characterize the afterlife of Atlantic chattel slavery. The popularity and persistence of accounts of atonement modeled on Anselm’s, it claims, raise questions about both the Christianity of contemporary antiblackness and the antiblackness of contemporary Christianity.

Neither Capitalism nor Socialism: A Biblical Theology of Economics

The Journal of Markets and Morality, 2012

Thanks to my book, Neither Poverty nor Riches: A Biblical Theology of Possessions, and smaller follow-up studies on related topics, I was invited twice in the last year to participate in panel discussions on economics at national conferences, once for a society of Christian economists and once for a much larger secular counterpart. In both contexts, various economists lamented that, while they tried to be very cautious in weighing in on religious or theological topics about which they knew comparatively little, it seemed to them that biblical scholars and theologians did not return the favor, making confident but simplistic pronouncements on complex economic issues that deserved much more careful study. I believe I was aware of this danger before this past year but now, as a result of these conferences, I am particularly sensitive to it and hope that I can avoid meriting a similar charge after delivering this paper.

Review of Theology of the Old Testament by W. Brueggemann

Princeton Seminary Bulletin

At a time when many wring their hands before its numbing complexities, Walter Brueggemann writes about the OT with the buoyant hope that postmodern Westerners at the turn of the third millenium are ready to learn not only about its contents, but also about the particular process by which it came into being. This book is the magnum opus of one of the world's greatest OT theologians, a book which attempts to be as definitive about OT theology as Michael Fishbane's Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel is about biblical hermeneutics, or Brevard Childs' Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments is about canonical theology. Pulsating at its core is B.'s well-known conviction that the modernist theologies of Eichrodt and von Rad are not simply antiquated, but inadequate: "Old Testament theological interpretation at midcentury was able to appeal to and rely on the 'assured results' of the critical consensus of scholarship. It is fair to say that much of the old critical consensus ... is now unsettled, if not in disarray" (p. xv). The reason for this "unsettledness," in B.'s opinion, is the "so-called postmodern epistemological situation. Underneath that reality (moreover) ...

You Shall Not Bow Down and Serve Them: Economic Justice in the Bible

Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, 2015

In the context of our modern global economy in which the richest one percent of the population becomes richer, while the poor grow ever poorer, this essay draws attention to the many biblical texts that announce God’s concern for economic justice. From teachings that govern community life in the torah of Moses, to the indictments of injustice made by the prophets, and to the good news proclaimed by Jesus in the Gospels, the Bible contains a radical message of God’s favor for the poor and God’s condemnation for those who exploit the poor and sustain systems of economic injustice. Society today tends to compartmentalize “religion” and “real life” in order conveniently to ignore these biblical imperatives.1

What is Economic Justice: Biblical and Secular Perspectives Contrasted - By Andrew Hartropp

Religious Studies Review, 2009

Chapter six provides an interesting discussion on the sovereignty of God and the necessity of Christ. Wright, in affirming that the "ontological necessity of Christ" does not require an "epistemological necessity of Christ," entertains optimistic soteriological possibilities for the fate of the unevangelized. The strength of the book is found in its global, dynamic, and universal view of salvation that conceives the grace of God as operative in the midst of, or in spite of, the religions. However, its weakness may be seen in its neglect of pneumatology to help bear out this relationship between grace and the religions. Nevertheless, the book remains highly recommended as a valuable resource for soteriological studies in a global perspective.

Normativity in Walter Brueggemann's Theology of the Old Testament

1999

Walter Brueggemann is one of the more influential Old Testament theologians in this generation of American scholarship. Already recognized as an essayist and speaker, the publication of his Theology of the Old Testament 1 in 1997 has established Brueggemann as a voice to be reckoned with in the current debate over Old Testament theological methodology. In this work Brueggemann has distilled the variety of overtures and perspectives represented in his previous works into a comprehensive and relatively thorough system for interpreting the Old Testament. What Brueggemann's long-term legacy in the church and academy will be remains to be seen, but, especially since the publication of the Theology, he cannot be ignored in this generation. This thesis proposes to exposit and evaluate Brueggemann's theological system as it is represented specifically in the Theology with respect to its value for doing normative theology for the church. The thesis will argue that, for several reasons, the philosophical and theological structure of Brueggemann's thought which forms the foundation for his theology of the Old Testament undermines his efforts to do normative theology.