Christian economists hold vastly different views on environmental issues that stem from underlying theological divisions. Three typical responses to ecological crises are analyzed: internalizing external costs, acknowledging limits to growth, and taking a pluralistic approach. There are also deep disagreements over policy issues like climate change. While some argue Christianity promotes stewardship and sustainability, others are more skeptical or indifferent. The document examines alternatives like prioritizing justice and a Christ-centric ethic of discernment. It argues Christian economists should grow in wisdom about complex economic and ecological interactions, finding unity and appreciating particulars. Their task is the careful ordering of love according to Christ's objective reality, involving moral learning case by case. Resolving tensions requires root

1. Christian
economists, environmental
externalities and ecological scale
Paper presented at Kuyper Workshop
‘Economics, Christianity & the Crisis, 8-9 January 2013
By
Martin de Wit
1

2. Typology of a crises
• Mainstream neo-classical economic disconnect from
the natural world
• Central idea that limitations of natural resources and
ecosystems services can be captured in market prices
– In the event of absolute scarcity -
science, technology, innovation and markets would be able
to solve the problem
• Supply-side constraints, depletion effects, peak
oil, accumulation of carbon dioxide seen as evidence of
an emerging ecological crises and the inability of
economic theory and practice to respond.
2

3. Typical theoretical responses
• Internalising external environmental costs (Environmental
and Resource Economics)
– Better defined property rights
– Better price signals in well-functioning markets
– Value lies in exchange
– Better technologies to circumvent resource scarcity
• Limits of ecological scale (Ecological Economics)
– Earth as thermodynamically closed, not growing in material
sense
– Limits to growth by natural laws governing materials and energy
– Value in use of (biophysically constraint) objects.
– Price signals do not capture limits, more pluralistic approach
needed to achieve ecologically desirable outcomes
3

4. Deep divisions, high policy stakes
• Stern Report on Climate Change
• Social costs of carbon too high for economies (5% of global GDP if inaction, average SCC
of $311t/C)
• From crises to boon
– Decoupling, innovation and technology, efficiency
– Cost of action = 1% of global GDP (later revised to 2% to stabilize under 500ppm CO2e )
• ‘New Green Deal’: more, but greener production and consumption
– Prominent environmental economists highly critical on treatment of future
risks and intergenerational ethics
• Mean value for SCC closer to $23t/C assuming gradual warming scenario
• Rockstromm et al on planetary boundaries
• ‘safe space’ for human development
• Safe minimum standards, limits to growth, precautionary principle
• Humanity already transgressed three planetary boundaries: carbon dioxide, biodiversity
loss and global nitrogen cycle.
– Nordhaus reply to Rockstromm:
• Question empirical evidence of planetary thresholds, relevance rather on regional or
local scales, and little or no evidence of impact on human welfare
• Pretence of Earth Science in interface with policymaking
4

5. Christian positioning
• McFague: justice and sustainability
– Cosmological context of Christianity; away from narrow psychological focus
– Planetary household, relational: humans, living things and earth processes =>
ecological economics
– Theologically justified wrt parable of the feast where everyone is invited
• Wilber: justice (CST)
– Co-creators, participating in redemption world and Kingdom
– Preferences of humans are judged in the light of moral values
– Protecting the poor and controls market failures such as environmental
pollution => environmental economics
– Theologically focussed on justice
• Bouma-Prediger: creation care, stewardship
– Doctrine of creation
– Humans entrusted with responsibility to God to take care of creation
– Theologically justified on human beings created in the Image of God
– Very diverging positions ranging from faith in free markets (neo-classical) to
stronger governmental control (ecological economic)
5

6. Earlier debates among Christian
economists
• Constructive engagement
– Quality economics work in the mainstream (Richardson, 1994; du
Plessis, 2011)
• Engage, but distinctively (Tiemstra, 1993; 1994)
– Normative behaviour not seen as self-interested
– Moral and religious agents
• Reject and reconstruct (Gary North)
– Reject all secular economics
– reconstruct on basis Biblical laws and guidelines
• Radical and unnoticed (Heyne, 1994)
– Not impose values on fallen society
– Radical following of Jesus, but private
No common ground…
6

7. Christians and environment
• Kearns (1996): three main responses to Lynn White’s(1967) call for
a rethink or new religion
– Christian stewardship: rethink in own tradition
– Creation/eco spirituality: a possible new religion
– Eco-justice: liberation theology
• Van Houtan&Pimm (2006): Christian worldviews on the value of
biodiversity and its conservation
– Earthkeeping: recognizes the biodiversity crises and seeks a biblical
response to it
– Skeptics: question the validity of conservation science
– Priority: more priorityto other moral issues, often emphasizing that
Jesus is not saving the environment, but souls
– Indifference: does not see conservation as a relevant topic at all
• Curry (2008): Christian responses to climate change
– weak relationships between Christianity and particular environmental
beliefs/ behaviors and a great deal of complexity in these relationships.
7

8. Synthesis?
• Empirical research in the US has reached a
consensus that Christians have vastly different
views on the environment.
• The thesis that such differences have
theological roots, is also mirrored in the
debate on what Christian economists should
do
• Thus, attention shifts to a focus on underlying
theologies…
8

9. Earlier reactions
• On what basis do or should Christians take position on
issues regarding ecology?
– Standard eco-theological response
• Critique on Christians:
– biblical view of humans made in the image of God and given dominion over
the earth introduced a dualism between humans and nature and a license for
exploitation
– inadequacies of Christian eschatology’, accusing Christianity of
otherworldliness and little rationale for creation care
• Creation: from dominion to stewardship
• Eschaton: from destruction to transformation
– Critique on standard response:
• Deriving morality from a religious interpretation of cosmology
(Jenkins, 2008; Conradie)
• Hermeneutics: too much focused on a ‘recovery’ of a positive
ecological narrative of creation care (Horrell 2010)
9

10. A Christo-centric alternative
• The objective reality of Jesus Christ demands a particular Christian ethics
and –behaviour (O’Donovan 1986)
• foundations of Christian ethics lie in what ‘God has done in Christ’
• Objective order of Christ:
– Vindication of created order and introducing dawn of kingdom
– Creation and redemption; natural order also in sphere of revelation
• Free response to this order
– New relation to natural order, a restored lordship (knowing the ‘mind of
Christ’), Faith working through Love.
– Our response is a focus on rescuing order from emptiness, not overthrow a
fallen order
• Love as overall form of moral life, of human participation in created order
• The task of Christian ethics is the ordening of love “in accordance with the
order discovered in its object”
– Creative, perceptive, appreciative
10

11. What must we do? Who we are?
• Human Acts
– Wisdom:
• Intellectual apprehension of order of things
• careful discernment of God’s future already bound, recognising
change, case-by-case learning - often through conflict/exclusion
• Conservatism or consequentialism seen as weak strategies of
finding order and stability
– Delight:
• joy of life in the world and before God
• Affective attention
• Human Character
– Acts disclosing character
– True virtue as love for God
11O’Donovan, 1986

12. Intermediate application
• Reactions to ecological crises in economic theories signal deep
divisions and have high policy stakes
• Biblically motivated positions on sustainability, justice and
stewardship tend to mirror these theoretical divisions in economic
theory
• Positions on what economists should do and positions on
environment are divided on theological ‘fault lines’.
• Eco-theology criticised for cosmological focus and positive eco-
hermeneutic.
• No convincing case can be derived for Christian economists to
justify positions ex ante:
– Christian economists can grow in wisdom to discern unity in economic
and ecological interactions.
– Christian economists have all reason to find delight in both the unity of
things and in the particular.
• Christian economist do have an eschatological vision where the
future is already objectively bound in Christ
– leading to ‘cooler heads’ in times of crisis?
12

13. A point of departure
• The work of a Christian economist will be mostly in a non-Christian
culture, thus the tension between ideal and the actualneeds to
hang together in a workable solution(O’Donovan 2001:96).
– In private and social ethics
• The theological divisions driving polarized outcomes is not an
excuse to solving complex ethical questions on economics and
ecology without an appeal to the objective morality in Christ, but
– a motivation to enter the challenging, but also delightful, path of
moral learning on how His love shapes and relates to everything
• The future is already bound by the work of Christ and our task lies
in a free response to this objective order
– The task of Christian ethics is the ordening of love “in accordance with
the order discovered in its object” - a task of careful discernment
13

14. Concluding thoughts
• Stewardship, dominion and creation care
– Concept in need of revision
– within a priority ordering of love
– In careful discernment
– In process of moral learning
• Externalities or scale?
– Ontological and epistemological discernment
• Ontologically different points of departure makes this a false choice ex
ante
• Choice ultimately depends on
– careful interpretation of reality in context of Christ-ordered objective reality
» Case-by-case, perceptive, attentative to both universal and particular
» A moral learning process in wisdom and delight and often rewarded
with true virtue
– Empirical examination of theories
14

15. Critical tensions in ecotheology
• creation order, cosmology and/or eschatology as fragmented or
absolutised sources of environmental ethics
– without a clear attempt to root these in the person and all-
encompassing work of Jesus Christ
• the idea of creation order as a source of ethics invokes tension between
the universal and particular revelation of God,
– between the cosmos and the Word of God as resources of revelation and between the
perceived importance of reason and science in relation to faith and the workings of the
Holy Spirit.
• the cosmological focus of ecotheology in tension with soteriology as
ultimate sources of Christian ethics.
• an expected continuity and discontinuity of creation in the last days
15
De Wit, 2011.

16. Beyond the tensions?
• These critical tensions further call for:
– a careful interpretation of the all-encompassing work of
Christ when making ethical claims on the basis of any
concept of created order
– a careful interpretation on how the work of Christ relate to
creation
– connecting the insights of eco-theology to soteriology, and
thereby including Christian resources on the meaning and
value of suffering and pain in a broken world
– a position of faith in God’s promises, leaving the end open
in mystery and surprise.
16
De Wit, 2011.