I have an FB account, although I’ve never used it much – but still can’t figure out how to get to Tom Ward’s post, conversation. The link just dumps to my home. Any suggestions?

RJS,
Someone here should know: Would one have to be a “friend” of that person to be able to read that post?

Thank you Scot for the Formation House shout out, it’s exciting to be launching this place for folks to learn more about intentional Christian community, as we grow through praying and working. If folks are interested in applying for the annual cycle beginning in August, applications are currently being accepted. See this link for more info – http://formationhouse.org/application/
Pray. Work. Grow.

What about Neon Deon Sanders?

Thanks for the link to the article by Burggemann. It is yet another example of what makes me want to pull my hair out when theologians start talking economics.
There are two basic questions every society has to wrestle with: ?How many of which things shall we produce today?? and ?On what basis shall things be distributed?? Theologians almost invariably dwell on the second question to the exclusion of the first. The mindset is that material goods simply exist. The only obstacle to abundance is greed and lack of generosity. If we were just more giving, then inequities would just melt away.
But material goods do not simply exist. Economic labor is about transforming matter, energy, and data from less useful states into more useful states. On any given day a society has X number of people, with X amount of productive capacity, and X amount resources. Which things shall we produce today? While a small community (i.e., family, small commune) may be able to know each other?s needs well enough to come to some communal decision about what to produce how to distribute, you cannot do this when the community grows to more than a few dozen. How to coordinate the productive capacities millions of people who are complete strangers? Markets.
Markets create instantaneous feedback loops about what is wanted and what should be supplied. Markets are far from perfect. They process people?s bad choices just as well as people?s good choices. Alone, they will not lead to an entirely just production and distribution. The must be constrained by effect juridical systems and supplemented with a populous that values generosity. But they are absolutely essential to creating abundance the theologians like Bruggemann want us to share with each other.
Bruggeman is right that viewing the individual as the basic economic element is wrong. He does not precisely articulate what the basic element should be, but based on his ?common good? motif it appears that national government might be his preferred economic element. But the only alternatives are not individual versus national control. The Torah has families living in community with other families as the basic element. The jubilee prohibits the permanent alienation of families from their allotted land. Land is privately held in trust for God to provide for the family and to be used in making available goods for trade and sharing. Levels of societal administration beyond these local communities exist largely in service to these communities. They are not the focal point of societal functioning or economics.
Autonomous individualism is a product of the Enlightenment. But so is the notion that a national government entity can correctly comprehend massive complexity, act with greater wisdom toward the common good than what emerges from people freely engaging one another, and that it can do so with greater moral rectitude than would otherwise be the case.
Bruggeman?s economic vision is too small. Generosity? Yes. But we were created to be co-creators with God. There is scarcity. We are finite beings with finite time, capabilities, and resources on any given day. We participate in the generation of our individual and communal abundance. When we celebrate communion we don?t take of the grain and grape but rather of the bread and the wine. Human labor is integral. But because theologians like Bruggeman see only existing goods to be justly distributed, the productive aspect of dominion ? transforming matter, energy, and data from less useful states to more useful states ? is lost. The basic question is not generosity but how rather how do we create a mutually advantageous cooperative venture that both justly produces and distributes abundance. Generosity and markets are essential to such a venture.
What we need from theologians is a carefully thought out understanding of how to engage basic economic questions in creating the cooperative venture. We need to rediscover the high calling of work in the marketplace and understand it in other than purely instrumental terms. Instead, we get moralist platitudes like, ?Whereas autonomous economics begins with a premise of scarcity, biblical faith is grounded in the generosity of God who wills and provides abundance.? We deserve far better from our best theological minds.

Thanks for the links to David Cramer on Christian Pacifism.
I am around no other Christians who hold to it, and a professor who attends our church recently dismissed it when I brought it up.
I found his posts interesting, and stimulating. A needed shot in the arm for me.

Although politically I often lean in the same direction as Brueggemann, I have to agree with Michael that his article is naive (or at best not very clear about what he is saying). Whatever the moral of the current crisis is, it isn’t that markets are mere instruments of greed. To the contrary, they are the best means we have for an efficient, productive economy.
Sure, markets need to be regulated. And it may be best for governments to interfere with normal market operation in some instances to promote just distribution. But when we do so we can’t pretend like it won’t have trade-offs.
Conservatives seem to focus only on the size of the overall pie, and liberals only on the way you cut up the pie. Conservatives need to realize that just distribution (the way you cut up the pie) is a Biblical value that we need to take very seriously, and that it is ok to give up some level of efficiency for governments to promote just distribution (and that, even aside from government involvement, individual and church assistance to widows and orphans carries very little market disruption). Liberals need to realize that if you monkey with markets too much, there won’t be a big enough pie to help anyone, the rich or the widows and orphans. Unless both sides begin to acknowledge the trade-offs and values running in both directions, the discussion itself won’t be either efficient or just.

#7 Eric
“… acknowledge the trade-offs …”
Harry Truman, the first president to have formal board of economic advisers (as I recall), once said he only wanted one armed economists because he got so tired of endless rejoinders, “On the other hand …” But that is the reality. Every economic decision involves trade-offs. We need theologians to help us deeply think through economic questions yet precious few seem inclined to really engage the task. Miroslav Volf and Darrell Cosden are a couple of exceptions I can think of. There is good stuff in some aspects of Roman Catholic scholarship as well.
For me, this “no scarcity,” “just be generous,” “markets evil” mantra is what literal six-day creationism and ID is to RJS.

Michael — agreed

You are all wrong–if it’s two sport athlete–it’s Jim Brown hands down:
1. Greatest Lacrosse player of all time
2. Greatest running back of all time
QED.

I’m with Mich, Jim Brown.