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January 1982 · Vol. 11 No. 1 · pp. 26–34 

Understanding Profits from the Christian Perspective [Perspective II]

Calvin Redekop

There are few words which are more emotionally loaded than the word “profits.” In Greek writings, one notes the emotional intonations when profits are mentioned, and as recently as the 1960’s students viewed profits with anger. The Christian community is no less exercised by the idea, for already the Apostle James suggested that the rich should “howl” because of the profits they have made from their employees.

In this paper we consider some historical perspectives on profits, the theory of profits in modern economic systems (not limited to Capitalism), and then what the Christian faith has to say about profits in the marketplace. 1

A HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE UNDERSTANDING OF PROFITS

Aristotle has determined many subsequent attitudes on profits. Aristotle states that there are two forms of economics: production and acquisition. He suggests that trade (acquisition) should be censured because “the gain in which it results is not naturally made, but is made at the expense of other men.” 2 Aristotle also assumed that there can be two kinds of production—production for use or for profit, with the latter being totally indefensible.

The early church was deeply concerned about the inequalities between the rich and the poor, even within the Christian church. There was a good deal of “depreciation of secular affairs in general and trade in particular . . .” 3; and bishops and clerics were not to be involved in trading. Lactantius states, “This is the greatest and truest fruit of riches: not to use wealth for one’s personal pleasure, but for the welfare of many, not for one’s own immediate enjoyment, but for justice, which alone perishes not.” 4

The medieval church laid down stringent restrictions on wealth and the making of profits. For example, the Councils of Lyons (1273) and of Vienna (1312) reaffirmed the Third Lateran Council of 1175 which “virtually made the money lender an outlaw.” 5 This position was held by the Roman Church until long after the Protestant Reformation. {27}

But a distinction between usury and interest began to support the idea of profit. Although Aquinas stated that “to accept usury for a loan of money is by its nature unjust,” 6 he defended interest, saying, “usury is gain from a loan; interest is compensation for a risk of inconvenience.” 7 Aquinas reasoned that the basic issue was the motive. “He denied that trading at a profit is the same as trading for a profit.” 8 It is in this context that the “just price” was proposed, which included a right for the merchant of a compensation commensurate with his services.

Luther, the Reformer, stated, “The greatest misfortune of the German nation is easily the traffic in interest . . . the devil invented it. . . .” 9 John Calvin was no less concerned about the need for justice and mercy in the economic sphere but differed from Lutheranism and the Roman church by assuming that economic activities could not be renounced and that the crucial factor was subduing these activities for the glory of God. 10 Hence it was not interest or profit which was at issue but rather that a just interest be charged and a fair profit be made.

In a famous sermon entitled “The Use of Money,” Wesley based his reasoning on Luke 16:9 (the teaching on making “friends of mammon”). Three principles result: 1) Gain all you can. With eight provisos, Wesley believed the Christian should pursue profits and the increase of wealth. 2) Save all you can. Eight points show how the Christian can be frugal and circumspect. 3) Give all you can. A carefully expanded analysis of how much one should retain for himself, how much should be given to the needy, to the household of faith, “to all men!” concluded his sermon. Wesley seemed to accept the reality of the emerging economic order, and he believed that faith and obedience “to God’s righteous rule in the lives of men,” 11 would make the crucial difference.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE “FREE MARKET” AND PROFIT

A comprehensive description of the development of the western Free Market system is impossible, but certain motifs or paradigms can be identified which capture the essence of its history. In Max Weber’s paradigm, the engine of the free market system is predestination in the Calvinist tradition. Since works as a means to salvation is ruled out by the Calvinist understanding of scripture, the alternative is “ritualistic” behavior in fulfilling one’s calling, even though the individual cannot influence his election. Success in business is thus presumed to be a sign of God’s approval. Though favor in the sight of God is based mostly on moral terms,

Above all, in practice the most important criterion is found in private profitableness. For if that God, whose hand the Puritan sees in all the occurrences of life, shows one of His elect a chance of profit, he must do it with a purpose. Hence the faithful {28} Christian must follow the call by taking advantage of the opportunity. 12

Another paradigm that helps understand the free market idea is the Troeltschian concept of the church and sect. The Church is seen as the religious force which attempts to bring the religious presence into society “from above,” while the Sect impulse works “from below.” The Sect type of religious movement therefore would be concerned about “primitive Christianity” which would include communalism and mutual sharing, a downgrading of worldly success, and an emphasis on the eschatological community. The Church type would support and integrate the individual as a constituent of the larger social monopoly, with an hierarchical “ordering life,” with salvation and the ethical life commensurately individualistic. 13

A final paradigm which can be included in an understanding of the free market and profits is the concept of laissez-faire. It is not accidental that almost all social thinkers have wrestled with the concept of private property and its influence on the “justness” of human society. With the defense and justification of private property eloquently propounded by John Locke, among others, the floodgates were opened for the promotion of the theory of laissez-faire. 14

The concept of laissez-faire needed the justification of private property to develop, for if individuals would not be given rights to own anything “to themselves,” then the gaining of wealth (profit) would be placed in serious jeopardy.

A second major element supporting laissez-faire is individualism, which emphasized the importance of individual effort. The renaissance man, the scientific revolution, and other forces in the post-Reformation period tended to develop the idea of the importance of the individual and his rational processes. Today’s individualistic culture is without question the outcome and a cause of the free market. “Transferred into economic theory, individualism becomes laissez-faire.” 15

A third element is the idea that self-interest serves the best purposes of the entire social group. This idea was finally systematized by Adam Smith:

Every individual is continuously exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command. It is his own advantage, indeed, and not that of the society, which he has in view. But the study of his own advantage, naturally, or rather necessarily, leads him to prefer that employment which is most advantageous to the society. . . . 16

It was thus proclaimed that self-interest was really social concern and that the maximization of self-interest was the highest contribution to {29} the body politic. One of the most significant consequences of this position is the justification of profits because rational self-interest means “buying cheaply and selling dearly,” which will result in profits.

If it can be assumed that the greatest good is promoted through the pursuit of self-interest (a drive which needs but little encouragement to wax strong), and if it can be shown it is through profits that self-interest is realized, then there is an unbreakable link forged between profits and self-interest. The consequent elaboration of other elements of the free market system, such as the importance of individual freedom, the natural law of competition and free enterprise, the need for limited or no government, the sanctity of individual liberty, the existence of “natural laws” such as the survival of the fittest (protecting the operation of this entire system), and many others, are natural offspring.

The free market system, or laissez-faire capitalism, has been the most powerful ideology of profits in recent times. The long line of utopians, including Christian socialists and, prior to that, primitive Christian communism, have not been able to stem the tide of the apparently inexorable power of private property, individualism, and personal interest.

A CHRISTIAN VIEW ON PROFITS

With this sacred troika of powerful factors shaping the character of Western economic history, what can be said about a Christian view of profits? If in spite of the Church’s continuing warnings, individualism, private property, and self-interest have continued their march, what hope is there of any viable control of profits? Is it not true that there are “natural laws” in the universe which need to be discovered and obeyed? Even Christians claim that the only way persons will be productive is to allow them to work for themselves and to make a profit. We now call it “individual incentive.” 17

But what is the Christian position of the three prerequisites for profits—individualism, self-interest, and private property?

1. The Christian teaching on individualism is not a simple one. On the one hand, the biblical material recognizes the centrality of the person and his/her supreme value and importance. God created persons in his own image and provided for a plan of redemption when they rebelled (John 3:16).

On the other hand, individualism (ego-centeredness) is roundly condemned. The Bible teaches reconciliation with the neighbor and the formation of the koinonia (fellowship). The focus of the history of God’s dealings with humans is the formation of a “people” who constitute one harmonious whole. “But you are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts {30} of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light. At one time you were not God’s people, but now you are his people” (1 Peter 2:9-10).

Both the importance of individuality and its subjection to the larger whole are promoted in the Holy Scriptures. The essential reality of the individual person is recognized because the locus of responsibility is the individual conscience. Yet at the same time the collective nature of redemption, reconciliation, and ethics is taught. Thus Christianity cannot be judged to support individualism unreservedly; nor can it be described as denying the reality of the individual.

2. The Christian teaching on property is equally ambiguous. The tendencies toward the rejection of private property and the expression of communalism throughout much of Christian history attests to the ambiguousness of the issue. Material aspects of life are not denied in the Christian religion; in fact Christian ethics and love are expressed in the cup of cold water and in sharing human wealth.

Private property or the right to appropriate food, clothing, and a place to stay are clearly assumed. Jesus’ use of the many parables of the businesspersons who make investments, pay wages, or build towers all attest to the fact that there is a place for commerce, production, and even investment. 18

On the other hand, Jesus and the New Testament writers strongly suggest that private ownership cannot be pursued unreservedly. The rich farmer who added lands and built bigger barns was judged and found wanting. The parable of the rich young ruler carries the same message. It was not because he did not give to the poor, but rather because he could not give it up that he was judged wanting. The accumulation of private property for its own sake was condemned in Jesus’ teachings because it destroyed the soul. Profits and wealth are not considered inherently evil. It is rather the motivations and excesses which create the dangers. For example, it is the “love of money,” not money, which is the root of evil according to Paul. It is slavishness to accumulation of much riches, not wealth itself, which is the cause of judgment according to Jesus. The conclusion must be reached that the Christian Gospel does not deny the reality and utility of private property, but it does strongly indicate its dangers for personal and social salvation.

The social implications of the accumulation of wealth are also stressed in biblical teachings. Producing and consuming material goods is natural and approved, but the excessive accumulation of property and profiteering (at the expense of others) is strongly condemned and forbidden. The parable of the “rich man and Lazarus” teaches that the accumulation of wealth at the expense of others is morally wrong. {31} Keeping material wealth to oneself and withholding it from others in need becomes immoral. Where selfishness or self-interest has accrued wealth at the expense of others, it is totally condemned.

3. The teaching on self-interest is probably one of the most unexplored dimensions of the relationship of the Christian faith and the economic order. The biblical teaching, while emphasizing self preservation, is not unambiguous on the matter of self-interest. John the Baptist’s and Christ’s calls for repentance so as to escape the coming judgment utilize the self-interest motive.

On the other hand, Jesus preached unceasingly of the dangers of self-preservation and exemplified in his own life the teaching that “he who would save his life will lose it.” His criteria of membership for his followers were very simple: deny yourself, take up your cross and follow him. Furthermore, Jesus continually emphasized that being the greatest meant serving others, and explained that he came not to be served but to serve and to give his life to redeem others (Matt. 16:24-26; Mark 10:35-45).

We conclude that self-interest is a valid motive but it is not achieved by seeking self-gratification but by serving one’s neighbor and even giving one’s life for him. This is not a socially undesirable situation, yet it is rather mystifying why “works salvation” is considered so evil. 19

At the heart of the secular philosophy of profits is the nature of individuals in society. If one can believe that as individuals satisfy their own self-interest they automatically serve the welfare of the body politic, then a justification for selfishness has been forged, and the basis for self-interest’s perpetuation has been created—the more you aggrandize to yourself, the more you are serving the welfare of society! “Virtue” thus feeds on itself and the only end is infinite accumulation and indulgence. Private property and individualism are the chief foundation stones of this perspective.

If, on the other hand, self-interest does not usually serve the larger society, then the fact of self-seeking by way of profits must be limited. Consequently the unlimited pursuit of profits is very quickly reined in. In the New Testament church, each person is admonished to “seek the welfare of the neighbor” and to share with compassion. In fact, the Christian community is premised on communion and community. Having the same heavenly Father and a common Lord involves and implies a common life where mutuality is the norm. 20

THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH AND PROFITS

These insights are not new, and the Christian church has for centuries confronted the issues and attempted to deal with them. It is my thesis that it is because of the inability of the Christian community to {32} control unlimited self-interest that the defence of unlimited profits developed. If it is not possible to bring reality around to faith, then faith can always be brought to reality! It is thus not too surprising that capitalism, specifically individualism, private property and self-interest, should emerge in the Christian West as the highest virtue.

Given the unique configuration of the geography, resources, culture, and history of Western Europe, Christianity was nurtured in a civilization where production, profits and individualism were able to grow and expand. We may grant that there was much deprivation and suffering at many points; yet, relatively speaking, the West has been very much the scene of growth and plenty. In the face of increasing well-being and surpluses which permitted the culture and sciences to flourish, Christians were unable to stem the tide of materialism. The strictures of usury, profits, and wealth uttered through most of the Christian centuries point to the futile nature of the conflict.

Thus out of the bosom of the church came the support for private property, individualism, and self-interest. Once the church embraced the view that “living for one’s self” is the highest of all motives, all moral footing was undercut. Christians in general in the West have accepted and promoted the concepts of private property, individualism, and self-interest. The evangelical tradition forthrightly states that “God and the American way of life are one.” As Billy James Hargis put it, “The American System is as intimately based on the Bible as the Ten Commandments are.” 21

This charge that the church blessed what could not be controlled may be harsh, but it is more “respectful” than the view of contemporary social science which makes Christianity an institution which emerged out of mundane and immanent sociological forces. It is more respectful for the Christian to believe that Christianity has some transcendental and supernatural essence, but in the process of interaction with the “world” loses some or all of its holiness, than to assume with the secular social scientist that religion is a totally sociological phenomenon.

As a Christian social scientist I must find a way to reconcile the claims of the Gospel with its expression on earth. One way of explaining the Christian history on profits is to say that we are sinners, that no one has lived perfectly, and all need to be justified—a reasonable answer, and the standard one for centuries. But it is more responsible to admit that the Christian ethic has not been realized and, consequently, the theory has been changed to fit the facts.

The “facts” of self-interest, however, have not even fitted Adam Smith’s theory of the “invisible hand.” For a long time the evidence that self-interest leads to exploitation, oppression, injustice, rape, violence, or destruction of the environment has been denied. Garrit Hardin’s {33} parable of the “Tragedy of the Commons” is only one little lamp being lit in the brightening room, which is helping us to see that belief and facts must harmonize.

CONCLUSION

In this article, the following arguments have been developed:

  1. Profits and the accumulation of wealth have been ethical concerns among philosophers and Christians for many centuries.
  2. Jesus and the biblical record do not deny private property and profit-making as legitimate activities.
  3. Private property accumulation and excessive profiteering are destructive of personal salvation.
  4. Private property accumulation and profiteering at the expense of others receive severe biblical strictures.
  5. Individualism, private property, and self-interest have developed as the justification of profits, which in turn has been defended as working to the betterment of all.
  6. The Christian Church has supported the philosophy which justifies self-interest and profit because it found it could not curb or control the desire for private property and profit nor create of it a benefit for the larger community.

The Apostle Paul seems to have been fully conscious of the tendency of humankind to become accommodated to its environment and warns:

For if the gospel we preach is hidden, it is hidden only from those who are being lost. They do not believe, because their minds have been kept in the dark by the evil god of this world. He keeps them from seeing the light shining on them, the light that comes from the Good News about the Glory of Christ, who is the exact likeness of God (2 Corinthians 4:3-4).

REFERENCES

  1. Profit has many definitions. The most common sense is “the excess of returns over expenditures.” Economics provide much more complex definitions, which include return for implicit factors, innovation, risk and monopoly. In our context, the focus is on the “ethical” aspect—undesirable returns for expenditures.
  2. Anthony Flew, “The Profit Motive” in Ethical Issues in Business, ed. Thomas Donaldson and Patricia Werhane (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1979), p. 157.
  3. Cecil John Cadoux, The Early Church and the World (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1925), p. 601. {34}
  4. Ibid, p. 603.
  5. R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York: Hentor Books, 1947), p. 47.
  6. Rollin Chambliss, Social Thought from Hammurabi to Comte (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1954), p. 275.
  7. Ibid.
  8. Ibid, p. 276.
  9. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, p.85.
  10. Ibid, p. 96.
  11. Albert C. Outley, John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 239.
  12. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958), p. 162.
  13. Cf. William Swatos, Into Denominationalism: The Anglican Metamorphosis (Storrs, CT: Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, 1979). The utopian and communal movements within the Roman church and in the radical wing of the Reformation attest to this axiom. All of the “community”-oriented groups broke with the “established” and monopolistic tradition and proceeded to set up communities which diverged greatly from the emerging centralistic order.
  14. Laissez-faire as a doctrine is much larger than the definition given it in economics and, according to some theorists, is at the heart of the United States constitutionally. “The laissez-faire doctrine of Adam Smith and his successors had been accepted as final by the great majority of Americans in the years immediately following the war, and a fitting capstone has been put upon the theories by the first section of the fourteenth amendment: ‘No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. . . .’ ” Harold Underwood Faulkner, American Economic History (New York; Harper & Brothers, 1943), p. 430.
  15. Julius Friend and James Fiebelman, The Unlimited Community (London: George Allen and Unwin, Ltd., 1936), p. 18.
  16. Donaldson and Werhane, Ethical Issues in Business, p. 138.
  17. Indeed, the concept of productivity is one of the indices of the economic viability of nations, and most are based on the assumption that productivity occurs when the worker receives personal gratification or rewards for giving his labor. Westerners assume that a “piece of the action” will increase productivity, while Marxians assume that the abolition of the “oppressors” will release dedication to the common good and hence increase productivity.
  18. John Miller, “Jesus’ Personality as Reflected in His Parables,” in The New Way of Jesus, ed. William Klassen (Newton, KS: Faith and Life Press, 1980).
  19. The only way to solve this paradox is to assume that both are part of the same, i.e., that they are identical. It is solved only by saying that self-preservation is exactly the same as the preservation of others. Thus, the individual can be saved only by the help of others, and others (the group) are saved only as individuals are being saved.
  20. Peter James Klassen, The Economics of Anabaptism (The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1964), pp. 129-30: C. Norman Kraus, The Community of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1974). The most subtle yet important distinction between the self-interest of laissez-faire and the Christian faith is that the former puts no restrictions on self interest, while the Christian Gospel limits it—love your neighbor as yourself, or do unto others as you would be treated.
  21. John Redekop, The American Far Right (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1968), p. 30.
Calvin Redekop is professor of Sociology at Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo, Ontario, and Secretary of Mennonite Industry and Business Associates (MIBA).

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