Faith & Economics
NUMBER 59, Spring 2012
The Nature of Biblical Economic Principle and Its Critics
Clive Beed and Cara Beed
Both of Australian Catholic University and the University of Melbourne
Abstract: Recent evangelical theology has come to the view that the key to the legitimate application of normative biblical teaching to the present involves “principlizing.” Selected Christian economists have practiced methodology over the last twenty years, but, nowadays, its practice has virtually died out in economics. The Introduction explains what is meant by biblical economic principle, outlines its justification, and surveys theologians and economists who have applied the method to economic matters. Section 1 details how two sets of Christian economists, Hay (1989), and Tiemstra et al. (1990) employed the technique. The case is proposed in section 2 that most Christian economists nowadays do not use the method, for reasons suggested in section 3. If the above evangelical theology proposition is compelling, more debate is required to assess the nature and use of biblical economic principle.
JEL classification: A10, A12, A13, Z12
Key Words: biblical principle, Christian economists, theologians, methodology.