Work Out Your Salvation: A Theology of Markets and Moral Formation
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In Work Out Your Salvation, D. Glenn Butner Jr. demonstrates that participation in markets forms our moral character, perceptions, actions, and ideas. Drawing on experimental economics and moral theology, he argues that the nature of such formation varies based on the design of the market and our interactions within it. How, he asks, does formation of the market relate to the formation of grace--providence, justification, and sanctification? Are these forces at war for our souls?
Through a detailed analysis of these three doctrines and the theology of common grace and concurrent divine/human action, Work Out Your Salvation argues that God can work through the social context of markets, through human identity, and through economic incentive structures to foster providentially the created basis for the supernatural gifts of justification and sanctification. Careful and theologically guided participation in a market can, by common grace, provide the occasion for positive spiritual formation through concurrent divine action.
However, such formation is not guaranteed. Maladaptive practices, ideas, and identities can also be fostered by markets not oriented toward a supernatural end. Butner provides detailed evidence backed by extensive experimental and empirical research as to which market practices allow Christians to “work out their salvation” (Phil 2:12) and which practices resist such moral transformation. Work Out Your Salvation undermines simplistic endorsements or rejections of capitalism in favor of more nuanced analysis and lays bare which features of markets make us better and which make us worse.
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- Presents detailed evidence backed by extensive experimental and empirical research
- Demonstrates that participation in markets forms moral character, perceptions, actions, and ideas
- Argues that God can work through the social context of markets, through human identity, and through economic incentive structures
- Part I: Economics
- Part II: Theology
- Parth III: Theology and Economics
This wholy original book intervenes with wit and rigor in conversation about moral agency and moral formation, sin, and salvation. Trinitarian theology, and, not least, economic ethics. Glenn Butner succeeds admirably in his nuanced aim, neither to defend nor to deride markets, but to help us see them more clearly, urging Christians to recognize our own agency in shaping markets as they, inevitably, shape us.
—Kate Ward, Associate professor, Marquette University, and author, of Wealth, Virtue, and Moral Luck: Christian Ethics in an Age of Inequality
How should Christians respond to living in a society where most economic activity occurs through markets? D. Glenn Butner explores this question with theological, philosophical, and empirical analysis, avoiding both blind support and easy criticism of capitalism. He examines how markets shape us and how intentional design might transform them. Butner offers a theological framework that centers on God's redemptive work, seeing markets as a space where divine and human agency intersect. This work is a welcome exercise in faith seeking economic understanding.
—Jules Martínez-Olivieri, visiting professor of theology, Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, and author of A Visible Witness: Christology, Liberation, and Participation
Butner’s theology of the market is a risky endeavor. Previous attempts fall into serious theological error by sacralizing the market, instrumentalizing the Trinity, or invoking “common grace” to justify existing social relations. With judicious insight, Butner avoids these errors and produces a remarkable achievement --a theology of the market that helps us reconsider its place in the divine economy. Combining in-depth knowledge of economics and theology, this work is a must read for anyone who works in the intersection of faith and business.
—Dr. Stephen Long, Cary M. Maguire University, Professor of Ethics, Southern Methodist University
- Title: Work Out Your Salvation: A Theology of Markets and Moral Formation
- Author: D. Glenn Butner
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Pages: 262
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9781506479422, 1506479421
- Resource ID: LLS:WRKYRSLMRLFRMTN
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-09-18T21:26:11Z