Condemnations of economic sins can be found in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Book of Mormon, and the Doctrine and Covenants. Indeed, I think it would be safe to say that preoccupation with economic sin is one of the major themes of the scriptures. This is interesting since we seem to have a tendency to read around these statements, preserving our opinion that the commandments are largely about sexual morality, honesty, obedience to leaders, and so forth. Yet, as the citations below will show, economic matters are in fact a central topic of the standard works.
Reading the Old Testament makes clear that economic sin was a major theme in the Mosaic Law. We have the mental image of that law as having been all about temple sacrifice, ritual purity, and sexual restraint. But in fact, a major component of the law had to do with economic mercy toward the poor and the socially disadvantaged. Consider the following examples, which require interest-free loans to the destitute, charitable donation of food, support for widows and orphans, and equitable wages and work conditions.
If thou lend money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not be to him as an usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury. (Exodus 22:25)
And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard. (Exodus 23:10-11)
If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren within any of thy gates in thy land which the LORD thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, nor shut thine hand from thy poor brother: but thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need, in that which he wanteth. (Deuteronomy 15:7-8)
And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts. (Malachi 3:5; see also 3 Nephi 24:5)
In fact, the Old Testament is full of similar statements. Both the Law and the Prophets seem to consider inadequate economic deference to the poor and the disadvantaged to be a sin at least on the order of sexual misbehavior.
The New Testament, of course, continues and builds on this Old Testament tradition of emphasizing economic sin. Let us briefly consider two of the more famous economically-significant passages in the New Testament.
Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. (Matthew 23:23-24)
This passage makes reference to the weightier matters of the law–which, as discussed above, largely involve economic issues such as mercy in lending, making judgments on behalf of the poor and the socially excluded, and generally biasing society in favor of the powerless. In fact, Jesus specifically refers to such themes in this passage when he mentions judgment and mercy. A major sin of the Pharisees, then, was ritual observance coupled with neglect for the poor and the disadvantaged.
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me. But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful: for he had great possessions. Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (Matthew 19:21-24)
The economic content of this passage is obvious, indeed, so obvious that a great deal of reinterpretive effort has been made over the years to reduce the economic implications of this statement. My suggestion is to let such efforts at revising the New Testament message go and to simply hear the words of the text.
Other New Testament material has also traditionally been interpreted in ways that tend to reduce the economic importance of statements that actually contain a great deal of economic content. For instance, consider the following famous quote:
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. (Matthew 6:19-21)
We often read this statement as if it were only about our emotional and social priorities: don’t get too emotionally attached to the standards of this world and the praise of other people, because these things end whereas heaven doesn’t end. But in actual fact the quote is literally about economic behavior. Jesus is cited as instructing us not to acquire economic fortunes, telling us instead to invest in spiritual things. In light of the other scriptural material cited in this post, it would seem that one obvious way of investing in spiritual things–which the author of these words likely had in mind–is to give our wealth to the poor and the socially excluded.
These quotes–while far from exhaustive–are probably sufficient to demonstrate that the New Testament reinforces and enhances the Old Testament condemnation of economic sin.
The Book of Mormon likewise builds on our understanding of economic sin. In the context of the final speech of King Benjamin, we are given a lengthy discourse on our economic duties with respect to the poor and the powerless. This is an especially significant statement because it is by far the longest description in the speech of a sin that could cause us to lose our eternal reward.
And also, ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish. Perhaps thou shalt say: The man has brought upon himself his misery; therefore I will stay my hand, and will not give unto him of my food, nor impart unto him of my substance that he may not suffer, for his punishments are just–but I say unto you, O man, whosoever doeth this the same hath great cause to repent; and except he repenteth of that which he hath done he perisheth forever, and hath no interest in
the kingdom of God. For behold, are we not all beggars? Do we not all depend upon the same Being, even God, for all the substance which we have, for both food and raiment, and for gold, and for silver, and for all the riches which we have of every kind? And behold, even at this time, ye have been calling on his name, and begging for a remission of your sins. And has he suffered that ye have begged in vain? Nay; he has poured out his Spirit upon you, and has caused that your hearts should be filled with joy, and has caused that your mouths should be stopped that ye could not find utterance, so exceedingly great was your joy. And now, if God, who has created you, on whom you are dependent for your lives and for all that ye have and are, doth grant unto you whatsoever ye ask that is right, in faith, believing that ye shall receive, O then, how ye ought to impart of the substance that ye have one to another. And if ye judge the man who putteth up his petition to you for your substance that he perish not, and condemn him, how much more just will be your condemnation for withholding your substance, which doth not belong to you but to God, to whom also your life belongeth; and yet ye put up no petition, nor repent of the thing which thou hast done. I say unto you, wo be unto that man, for his substance shall perish with him; and now, I say these things unto those who are rich as pertaining to the things of this world. And again, I say unto the poor, ye who have not and yet have sufficient, that ye remain from day to day; I mean all you who deny the beggar, because ye have not; I would that ye say in your hearts that: I give not because I have not, but if I had I would give. And now, if ye say this in your hearts ye remain guiltless, otherwise ye are condemned; and your condemnation is just for ye covet that which ye have not received. And now, for the sake of these things which I have spoken unto you–that is, for the sake of retaining a remission of your sins from day to day, that ye may walk guiltless before
God–I would that ye should impart of your substance to the poor, every man according to that which he hath, such as feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and administering to their relief, both spiritually and temporally, according to their wants. (Mosiah 4:16-26)
This is, in my opinion, one of the most direct and unavoidable discussions in the entire scriptures on the topic of economic sin. The Book of Mormon, of course, contains several other statements on related issues; for example, we are told that, in the semi-millenial ideal society following Christ’s visit, the Book of Mormon people "had all things common among them" (4 Nephi 1:3)–implying that other, less communal societal arrangements are imperfect and thus a form of economic sin.
All things considered, it seems safe to conclude that the Book of Mormon makes more explicit and more rigorous the principles of economic sin taught in the Bible.
Finally, the Doctrine and Covenants continues this line of prophetic argument. In a previous post, I have included the following citation:
But it is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin. (Doctrine and Covenants 49:20)
My interpretation of this statement and its context is that its strong condemnation is specifically targeted at social and economic systems that provide unequal access to food resources. In effect, it is an economic sin to have enough (or too much) to eat when others are starving.
To this, I will add two other strong, explicit statements on economic sin (pausing to note that the Doctrine and Covenants contains many more). These statements originated during the period of time when the church tried to regulate its economic affairs through the Law of Consecration. That law, of course, has never been repealed and is still in force on all members of the church who have passed through the temple. Likewise, these statements have never been either decanonized or officially repudiated. (See also the discussion related to these quotes here.)
Nevertheless, in your temporal
things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of
the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld. (Doctrine and Covenants 70:14)
For if ye are not equal in
earthly things ye cannot be equal in obtaining heavenly things; for if you will
that I give unto you a place in the celestial world, you must prepare
yourselves by doing the things which I have commanded you and required of you. (Doctrine and Covenants 78:6-7)
As in the other three books of scripture discussed above, it seems clear that the Doctrine and Covenants condemns as sinful those economic practices that involve withholding our wealth from the poor and the socially excluded. In fact, they go farther, instructing us to seek absolute equality in earthly things as a prerequisite to achieving celestial spiritual status.
I wonder if these economic messages, which permeate our scriptures, are given their due air time in modern Latter-day Saint meetings. When was the last time you heard a Sacrament Meeting talk on our duty to give to the poor or on the gospel requirement that we structure our society to achieve material equality? As noted above, the Pharisees were condemned at least in part because they obsessed on the non-economic parts of the Law of Moses but neglected the commandment to help the poor and the oppressed. Could we be in danger of becoming modern Pharisees?
——
P.S. This jeremiad serves as notice that Serenity Valley and I are at this point somewhat settled after our move.
You really should consider doing some more analysis and prepare a manuscript for submission. I think this has the potential for a really great paper, especiallyif you could quantify in some way the focus of scriptural exhortations/commandments.
Yes, but where would it be published?
BYU Studies, Dialogue or, might I suggest, the nacent Archipelago.
Very interesting thoughts. I have thought about this issue from time to time, and it really bothers me that it is not talked about in the church as much as it should. Hugh Nibley, of course, talked about it a lot, but very few took his essays seriously. It cut to close to home. I second J. Stapley’s suggestion and develop your ideas further and get it published, maybe even a short book?
Thanks, everyone, for your comments. When RT read his post to me this morning, I said the same thing.
J,
You just can’t help yourself can you? But I second your suggestion. (Unfortunately, papers accepted at Archipelago cannot have as their author “Mr. Roasted Tomato”. RT, we could work around that.)
Oh, and RT: Amen and Amen.
But “Mr. Roasted Tomatoes” would bring such a cheerful touch to it…
So, you’d like to see the Welfare Session of General Conference brought back?
Everyone: thanks–I’m overwhelmed by your near-universal support! I’ll look at what it would take to expand this into a full manuscript.
John: I don’t think we necessarily need to return to the period of four-day general conferences in order to sometimes talk about trying to avoid economic sins. In fact, having a separate session again might even reinforce the misperception that these kinds of commandments are separate from the rest of the gospel. But you’re right–the existence of the welfare session in the past is clear evidence that we, just 25 years ago or so, used to pay more attention to economic sins.
RT: My comment was as to publication helping you to get a tenure-track job & tenure; not to whether it was a good idea; which it is. In fact, you quasi-inspired me and I’ve just posted on economic sins. Let’s begin with the biggest one: legislatively imposed minimum price/cost floors which hurt the poor.
Lyle, there’s no real issue with tenure and Mormon Studies papers; I’d never list Mormon Studies-related publications on my CV anyway. That’s just not my professional profile.
I thought your post was great! Reasonable people can obviously disagree on the policy means for translating the gospel imperative on behalf of the poor into action. But it’s important to me that we at least share an understanding of the gospel imperative. That said, in a comment on your site I’ve spelled out my policy perspective somewhat, which is that you’ve created an artificially restricted policy space: you don’t allow for compensation policies that can mitigate the impact of economic and other regulations on the poor. Such compensation policies can allow us to meet our duties with respect to the poor while also pursuing other important aims.
RT: It seems to me that you have three seperate issues with regard to economic sins. First, you have the problem of witholding help from the destitute. I take it that this is what the Mosiac passages about the gleanings and corners of the field are about. I don’t think that you can really read these are wholesale endorsements of economic equality, only that allowing people to drop below a certain level is immoral.
Second, you have the issue of those with wealth using their power to extract further wealth from the poor. This seems to me to be less about the economic condition of the poor or the distributional justice of society than about the misuse of power. This point is important, I think. For example, I think that many people read the prophetic literature in the Old Testament as being a jeremiad about distributive justice. I tend to think that this is mistaken, and that it is much more about the immorality of the strong oppressing the weak.
Finally, there ARE passages that discuss distributive justice. They are actually comparatively rare. Concern for the material well-being of the poor and the immorality of abusing power take up the lion’s share of scriptural discussion of economics. What is striking as well is that the statements about distributive justice — and I think that they are strongest in the D&C — were given in the context of an instantiation of the law of consecretion that did NOT create absolute material equality. Indeed, as well you know, even the concept of material equality is devilishly slippery, as the work of people like Ronald Dworkin or Amartya Sen demonstrate.
Hence, I agree with you that economic sin enjoys some pride of place in the scriptures, but the scriptural treatment of economics is complicated. Hence, not only can reasonable people disagree on questions of ends and means in policy debates, but they can also disagree on the exact import of the economic message of the scriptures.
That said, I liked your post, and I think that understanding the morality of economics and markets is one of our central challenges, as well as being a really facinating set of issues and problems. I like this kind of stuff.
Nate, thanks for your thoughtful comments. First of all, I agree completely that the scriptural imperatives can be compatible with quite different ideas about implementation. On the other hand, I worry that we are sometimes complacent enough that we rarely even start the discussion of which economic actions are morally justified and which are sinful.
Second, I think you’re under-selling the scriptural endorsement of social equality. The Book of Mormon narrative depicts class division as perhaps the sine qua non of a society on the verge of total wickedness and destruction, and the idyllic period after Jesus’s visit (just like the early church in the New Testament) is fundamentally characterized by economic equality. Hence, there is a solid basis for concluding that economic equality is a moral good–and hence that inequality is sinful–during any period of history. Furthermore, the Law of Consecration has never been repealed or revoked, so what was required in the 1830s is required today.
You’re right that the Law of Consecration didn’t involve assigning people an exactly equal share of income. However, it did involve satisfying (or trying to satisfy) the criterion of equality that all would have enough to meet their needs and reasonable lacks. It is famously difficult to describe necessary-and-sufficient conditions for equality. However, by analogy to the Law of Consecration, it may not be too difficult to specify necessary conditions–that the world today doesn’t yet meet. For example, righteous equality would probably involve making sure that children’s probability of living to age 5 is not a function of where on Earth they happen to be born. Achieving this wouldn’t mean we’ve reached equality, but until this happens it seems clear that there is a level of inequality that would violate scriptural norms.
I think your distinction between different kinds of economic sins is an interesting idea. Clearly, not all scriptural statements on economic issues are the same. However, the three ideas you distinguish are rather intimately interrelated. Economic justice really involves the same issues as the strong not being able to exercise power over the weak. After all, what makes the strong different from the weak? Especially in a modern society, the difference is really fundamentally economic. And the Mosaic Law gives several versions of the idea that agreements that are economically feasible (self-enforcing contracts, in the jargon) can also be sinful–exploiting the poor and downtrodden. Hence, there should be limits on permissible market relations for the purpose of artifically improving the economic standing of the people on the bottom rungs. Which sounds like economic justice. You may be right that the Mosaic law sets a lower threshold of economic justice than the subsequent scriptures. But that is in keeping with our broader notions about the differences between the Old Testament and the other scriptures, isn’t it?
Once again, thanks for your interesting ideas.
There’s an interesting issue in your comments, RT. To what degree ought we be free to do wrong? It sounds like you are tying law and legality quite closely in economic terms. I wonder if you would be consistent on this point and do the same for other aspects of morality.
The great question is what good is to be done freely (i.e. with realistic options available) and what goods are to be enforced socially? I’m never sure. I’m definitely no libertarian. But I wonder if it is wise to prevent people from being selfish the way you suggest.
I haven’t argued in this post about how to implement scriptural ideas about economic morality. My point here is simply to indicate that the scriptural ideas exist, are quite prevalent, and are relatively underrepresented in many of our scriptural discussions.
Should we compel people not to be selfish? I don’t think this needs to be an either/or question. Some forms of economic sin are tantamount to murder, even mass murder, because they directly cost human lives. I’m not at all in favor of legalizing murder–and I think such economic sins should be treated seriously in the law. More generally, economic sins are by definition never victimless crimes, so, on the moral scale, these are not near the bottom.
But I also think there’s a lot of room for creative policy that enhances equality without having a totalitarian intent or using authoritarian methods. (I’m inclined to think of taxes passed by democratic means as essentially nonauthoritarian, although I’m aware that there is substantial debate on that point. But many other kinds of incentive systems for equality are possible. We just haven’t been creative enough.)
I’d tend to be careful about the “tantamount to murder.” While I can think of a few situations that might apply to, often things are a bit messy. Consider aid to Africa. Are you a murderer because you didn’t donate enough?
RT: I was not implying that the Law of Conscecration has been repealed. My point had to do with institutional arrangements. At this level, some arrangements clearly have been repealed, and were repealed in the time of the Prophet Joseph, by revelation no less. Furthermore, once one begins talking about the issue in terms of institutional detail, there is not law of consecration, but rather succesive laws of consecration.
I agree with you that the Book of Mormon places considerable emphasis on distributive justice, but even here I think that one can overread the case. For example, I don’t read King Benjamin as being about distributive justice, but rather about interpersonal morality between rich and poor. Furthermore, I disagree with you that inequalities in wealth are inextricabily entwined with abuse of the poor by the rich. There are any number of rather respectable political philosophies that rest on a negation of this claim, e.g. toryism, liberal notions of the rule of law, etc. Furthermore, in reading the scriptures I think it is important to read them against the background economic and legal arrangments. One became rich in first century Palestine in a very different way than one became rich in say 19th or 20th century America. My point is not that we should dismiss concern with economic sins or that we should feel at ease with current economic arrangements. Rather, I am simply arguing that the interpretation of scripture — particularlly scripture related to economic matters — is considerably more complicated than it is made out to be in the standard progressive hermeneutic.
Finally, it seems to me that some of your statements conflate the issue of poverty with the issue of equality. The question of children dying from malnutrition is fundamentally a question about absolute resouce levels rather than relative resource levels. Frankly, I think that the issue of poverty — especially global poverty — is a massive moral crisis. However, it is precisely because I think that poverty is in some sense an issue distinct from issues of equality that I do not find the fact that some people buy houses and SUV’s that are too big to be an issue of equal moral weight. Furthermore, the argument as to how one might cause the other is too tenuous, in my mind, for them to be treated — as they frequently are — as two sides of the same coin. This is not to say that I have no moral objections to hog wild consumption. I just think that we should be clear about what is and is not a massive moral outrage.
Finally, I heartily agree with you that the question of ends and means is hugely complicated and that reasonable people of good faith can disagree. I do think that there is a tendency for progressives to regard all of those who disagree with as being indifferent.
Nate, a quick note. Child mortality may have to do with absolute levels of wealth–but only in specific countries. The levels of wealth in those countries are an issue of inequality, as are the cross-national differentials in child mortality. I’ll look more closely at the rest of your comment later on.
RT: That is interesting, if I am understanding you correctly. Are you saying that infant mortality rates correlate to income differentials rather than with absolute levels of income? That is extremely counter-intuitive to me, but wierder things are true. I would expect that those with very low incomes have much higher levels of child mortality, with the mortality level dropping as income increases, with deminishing marginal returns to income; however, I would expect that the infant mortality rate would be largely indifferent to relative income levels.
Nate, let me restate my point in the last comment. (Which was posted after a full day of airline travel, starting at 3:00 am. I was possibly not fully coherent…)
1) Infant and early childhood mortality is indeed a result of extreme poverty in the very poorest countries.
2) The poorest countries, who do not have enough money to combat high rates of infant and early childhood mortality, are much poorer than the middle- and upper-income countries. That difference is obviously an issue of global inequality. Hence, for the poorest countries, all issues of poverty also simultaneously involve inequality.
3) In middle-income countries, there are enough resources to achieve very low levels of infant and early childhood mortality. However, those resources are distributed in an inequitable enough fashion that mortality rates are several orders of magnitude higher in middle-income countries than in wealthy countries. Because this difference is at least largely a result of the distribution of wealth within middle-income countries, it’s an issue of inequality.
RT: It seems to me that your statements about 1, 2, 3 all amount to the claim that those without resources have higher infant mortality rates. But this, it seems to me, is an argument as to why raising absolute resource levels are good. It does not tell us anything about the value of relative resource levels.
A much better argument for equality — it seems to me — is something like the claim that inequality leads to divisions and social strife. This seems to be the argument in the Book of Mormon. Note, the negative effect here remains regardless of absolute income levels because the divisions are caused by relative income levels.
It seems to me that the solution to something like infant morality rates is to increase the absolute level of resources available to the poor, rather than to worry about the relative distribution of resources. (Of course, getting more resources to the poor may involve changing relative income levels, so the issues are not unrelated. My point is simply that they are different and distinct issues.)
Nate, given the current economic state of the world, raising the absolute level of resources available to the poor is mathematically equivalent to changing relative income levels, no?
Not necessarily. It seems to me that most countries that are wealthy are wealthy because of endogenous economic growth rather than exogenous wealth transfers. Furthermore, transfers that simply take the form of transfer payments tend to dry up in the short term. (BTW, this is one of the reasons that I think that debt relief is in many ways more important than foreign aid.) Obviously, understanding “the current economic state of the world” is more than a little complicated, and I suspect that economic growth in the developing world will require economic losses to some in the developed world. (European farmers anyone?) On the other hand, I think that you have to approach the problem in terms of creating the conditions of economic growth, rather than viewing wealth as something that exists ex ante and is simply to be distributed according to some conception of social justice.
An Addendum: Obviously if the developing world is growing economically at a faster rate than the developed world (something that I devoutly hope for), then this would change relative economic levels. However, what would be ameliorating poverty would NOT be the change in relative wealth levels, but rather the increase in the absolute wealth level of the poor. The distributive effect would be incidental and ultimately irrelevent.
Nate, we obviously agree that the major goal is to get people out of poverty. I would suggest that your view of wealthy-country development as autonomous and endogenous, rather than interactive and implicated in global poverty, may be a point of disagreement.
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