Deirdre Nansen McCloskey
University of Illinois at Chicago
Abstract
The Abrahamic doctrine of liberty of the will can allow liberalism in the economy. For a century or so in academic theology, and stretching back to the early church and such revivals as the Radical Reformation, numerous Christian writers have denied such a liberalism. In the past century, for example, they have claimed that the Sermon on the Mount entails socialism, or at any rate a large welfare state. But socialism or even the welfare state is not entailed by the core tenets of Christianity. On the contrary, their opposite, liberalism in the old European definition yielded since 1800 a 3,000 percent increase of real income for the wretched of the earth. And, the point here, it did not cost them their immortal souls.
Keywords
free will, liberalism, intentionality, Catholic social teaching, social democracy
Published
16 December 2020 (first view)
23 March 2021
How to cite
McCloskey, Deirdre Nansen. 2021. “The Liberty of the Will in Theology Permits the Liberated Markets of Liberalism.” Journal of Economics, Theology and Religion 1, no. 1: 81-108
