4]15]12 8ook RevIew: D.

Stephen Long`s DIvIne Economy: TheoIogy and the Market {

1]2 poIItIcaIjesus.com]2011].]book-revIew-d-stephen-Iongs-dIvIne-economy-theoIogy-and-the-market]
Book Rev|ew: D. Stephen Long's D|v|ne Economy: Theo|ogy and the Market
Posted on August 7, 2011 by RodtRDH
ln my past posts, l have made my criticism of Radical Orthodoxy known. Particularly bothersome is the lack of
engagement and appreciation for theologians from the margins." D. Stephen Long's Divine Economy comes
as a welcome surprise, with a few qualifications of course.
Long identifies three traditions in which religious thinkers from the Christendom have engaged economic
theory. ln the Part 1 of the book, named the Dominant Tradition, Long identifies persons who vary, but who
share similar assumptions, from conservative Catholic Michael Novak to Max Stackhouse and Philip
Wogaman. ln their search for a post-confessional" and post-Christian" secular theology of economics,
Christology takes a step back since economics and politics are seen as belonging to separate realms. ln
addition, theologies of creation take preeminence to Christology and ecclesiology.
Part ll recognizes the emergent tradition, the one in which the liberation theologians such as Rosemary
Reuther, James Cone, Gustavo Guttierez, and Jon Sobrino are identified and observed. Sharing a common
vision of human being with the dominant tradition, i.e., being as liberty, Christology and ecclessiology
(according to Long's interpretation" become subordinate to notions of freedom. Perhaps the most unnerving
critique for me was Long's argument against liberation theologians' tendency to claim that all theological
speech is limited in what it can say about God, and that those who argue this protest essentially against God's
plentitude. Only those who hold to the capitalist logic of scarcity, and its promotion of competition would
consider truth claims as a negation of other truth claims (i.e., other religionsj.
Part lll is Long's constructive proposal, and his engagement with economists, who he considers to be moral
philosophers, whether they be Adam Smith, Karl Marx, or John Maynard Keynes. The tradition that Long
proposes is the one of the Residual nature, not something that belongs to the past, but that has continued to
be inherited and passed down by the Church. The Residual Tradition calls for a functional economy that is all
together opposed to capitalism, for capitalism makes it impossible to pass down traditional Christian virtues.
Critique: For the the first 2 parts, l found much to agree with. However, his constructive proposal was not all
too surprising. The Eucharist sorta works like magic for the RO folks: if we can just get the ordinary lay person
to understand the magic behind the Eucharist, she would know what God's economy is like. The preference for
localism was not all too surprising as well. l don't believe in a separation of the confessional from the
cosmopolitan, the content of the faith from real world politics. Also, what Long fails to take account in liberation
theologian's such as James Cone is the idea that Jesus Christ as God's Word as Revelation is what regulates
what we can say about God. lt is in that revelation that we can participate in God the Liberator's fullness.
Though, notions of revelation and particularity disappear in Part 3 when it comes to discussion of Christ, in
favor of a Thomist natural law/New Law perspective. For me, this is an interesting turn of events. Why?
Because in Long's criticism of Sobrino, he accuses him of being anti-Judaic in the name of being for the poor
(139j. The liberationist doctrine of the election of the oppressed supersedes YHWH's choosing of the Jews
who do not stand as a symbol for some other social group."
Yet, Long never fully explicates what does Jesus' Judaism mean for a Christian economics; how does the life
of the church serves as a continuation or personification of JEWlSH virtues we find in the Hebrew Bible/Old
Testament? What we are left with is a mentioning of the Ten Commandments, but that is only to reach a more
Thomist understanding of personhood (218j. What makes Long's ecclessiology and Christology less
supersessionist than Sobrino's (given that Judaism has no connection in either's theo-economicsj? Perhaps
the most indicative of D. Stephen Long's Gentile Christology comes in his silence to John Milbank's dismissal
of the Historical Jesus in favor of a narrative, or shall l say, poetic understanding of the Messiah. While the
4]15]12 8ook RevIew: D. Stephen Long`s DIvIne Economy: TheoIogy and the Market {
2]2 poIItIcaIjesus.com]2011].]book-revIew-d-stephen-Iongs-dIvIne-economy-theoIogy-and-the-market]
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RodtRDH
Formerly known as Rod of Alexandria, Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter Preacher of Hope |
Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics. Destroyer of Trolls. lt must be
that angry puppy.
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(IV\[9VK[9+/
Formerly known as Rod of Alexandria, Rod the Rogue Demon Hunter Preacher of Hope | Black Scholar of Patristics | Writer for Nonviolent Politics.
Destroyer of Trolls. lt must be that angry puppy.
view all posts by RodtRDH
atoning life, death, and resurrection are what Long and Milbank argue as the objective content of the
beautiful" so that what is deemed beautiful exists in the Universal made Particular (251j, the very particularity of
Jesus is overlooked in favor of what it means to be human in general. Jesus as that poetic gift from God is re-
mythologized" as human language becomes a participation in God's plenitude" (253j. However, exactly what
kind of human language is Scripture recorded in? Which human bodies did God inspire to let us Gentiles know
of God's story?
This all of course means that we have to go with the RO and Hauerwasian school's narrative/dramatic
understanding of Christology and the Creeds, giving priority to an infallible ecclessial structure, i.e., the Church,
the community that God has made stewards of this story. What Long conveniently leaves out is that utmost
importance that the Historical Jesus has on liberation theologians, and as James Cone argued in A Black
Theology of Liberation, we must come to reject the division of the Christ of faith and the Historical Jesus.
Advocates of RO like Long would have us concentrate solely on the former. As l have argued before with
postcolonial biblical scholar, Sugi, the literary/narrative approach to the Bible, used in exclusion, leads to us
residing in an ideal past, separate from concerns for histories of praxis. Hence, with the typical RO emphasis
on localism, D. Stephen Long remains almost silent on global matters as they pertain to international trade,
multinational corporations, and post-colonial empire (with its soft forms of powerj imposed by the World Trade
Organization and the lnternational Monetary Fund onto developing" countries.
This entry was posted in class, corporations, economics, free market, liberation theology, The Economy of Jesus, theology and tagged book review, capitalism, economic rights,
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