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In this article, we examine the doctrine of providence to see if
the market sys-
tem used by the United States and many other industrial nations
can be thought
of as part of Gods providential care. The doctrine of providence
concerns the
preservation and direction of the universe. Theologians
discussing providence
sometimes refer to examples from the natural sciences but not
from the social
sciences. However, economists since Adam Smith have used the
idea of spon-
taneous order to describe the orderly function of market systems
even when no
human agency is directly responsible for its operation. We
suggest that this can
be thought of as a part of Gods providential care of
humanity.
We discuss the ideas of Smith and Friedrich Hayek relating to
spontaneous
order and then examine how the market system works. We focus on
the imper-
sonal and anonymous nature of many economic interactions today
and how this
differs from the more-personal relationships that characterized
the economy of
ancient Israel. The model of perfect competition can be thought
of as a tool to
analyze the workings of the economic system when no, one person
has any con-
scious power over the plans of any other person. We conclude by
examining
whether Christians can argue for the market system when it is
based on a notion
of self-interest rather than on altruism.
Markets coordinate billions of individual decisions made daily
by workers,
businesses, and consumers. Some moral authorities vilify markets
for the role
that they are assumed to play in promoting greed, materialism,
and inequality.
Others extol the virtues of markets, such as their ability to
create abundance
while honoring the free choices of individual agents and
groups.
Robin Klay and John Lunn
Hope College
The Relationshipof Gods
Providence to
Market Economiesand EconomicTheory
Journal of Markets & Morality
Volume 6, Number 2 (Fall 2003): 541564
Copyright 2003
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66. See John Lunn and Robin Klay, The Neoclassical Model in a
Postmodern
World, Christian Scholars Review 24 (December 1994): 14363.
67. See Aaron Director, The Parity of the Economic
Marketplace,Journal of Law
and Economics 7 (October 1964): 110; and R. H. Coase, The Market
for Goods
and the Market for Ideas,American Economic Review 64 (May 1974):
38491.
Robin Klay/John Lunn
