Work Out Your Salvation: A Theology of Markets and Moral Formation by D. Glenn Butner Jr. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. 2024. Paperback. 262 pp. $49.00.
Studying economics can deform you. Students who enroll in such programs graduate with lower scores in concern for fairness and higher scores in dishonesty.[1] In one of these programs in the early 2000s, professor Jürg Steiner singled out a student and asked the class if the student should run for political office even though he held to “prior moral commitments.” After all, these commitments might get in the way of the student’s pure pursuit of vote maximization. The class thought the student should not run for office. The professor, in a surprising twist, thought so. The student in question was D. Glenn Butner, Jr., who is now an Associate Professor of Theology at Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. Though twenty years prior, this event helped catalyze his study of moral formation in economics, culminating in Work Out Your Salvation: A Theology of Markets and Moral Formation.[2]
Is the invisible hand a kind one? As Christians, how should we live in the midst of economic forces? Are “freer” markets better? Butner believes “the outcomes of economic interactions in a market are neither automatically just nor automatically unjust” but rather deserve careful reflection.[3]
Work Out Your Salvation provides theological answers to economics questions in light of contemporary experimental data. The book is split into three parts: I: Economics, which examines empirical data, market characteristics, and the necessity of theology; 2: Theology, which takes the character of a systematic theology; and 3: Theology and Economics, which integrates concepts toward ethical considerations.
Butner defines markets as “an imagined space where participants voluntarily buy and sell goods through a mechanism of exchange based on certain information, including price.”[4] Examples used show how frequently we interact with markets, including in the hiring process, university courses, in review apps like Yelp, pay incentives, blood donation, public service announcements, grocery store purchases, real estate valuations, and more.
Butner pays close attention to the empirical data relating to markets and moral formation. Even while he does this, he notes the limitations of such efforts: no economic data is “neutral” because anytime we incorporate some pieces of evidence and not others, our values are at work.
Regardless, the evidence we do have is clear: markets shape us. The way markets are designed change our moral behavior. One study Butner examines found that introducing fees for parents who are late picking up their kids increased, rather than decreased, late pickups. Perhaps parents felt it became permissible to arrive late for a price rather than facing the childcare provider’s polite exasperation when arriving late. What happened? A personal exchange became an economic one. Even after the late fee policy was dropped, the increased late arrivals continued. This is just one of many examples Butner provides.
Markets shape us morally, but we can also shape markets. Economists, politicians, and institutional leaders can influence markets through something called Market Design, where intentional efforts are made to shape a market for certain ends. We shouldn’t bifurcate capitalism and communism naively, as if no further granularity was needed, or as if macroeconomic factors like historical GDP per capita were the most important metrics to be considered. Butner reorients the conversation to consider morality in economics personally and theologically.
The middle third of the book unpacks three theological concepts. First, Butner provides an account of divine and human agency rooted in the doctrine of concurrence; divine providence is simultaneous with human economic activity (and market designing). As he engages with Anselm, Luther, Calvin, and John Webster, Butner shows we have real causal power when we shape markets—we are culpable for our actions—even while the noncontrastive hand of God is also at work.We shape markets and God does, too.
Second, he follows the Neo-Calvinist tradition in defending common grace.[5] He also articulates a biblical category of social sin. These concepts help make sense of the way culture shapes individuals both for virtue and vice. The common grace doctrine gives the book a positive angle; markets are a place where God works in us as we grow in sanctification, even if many aspects of markets detract from God in other ways. Butner builds on the work of James K.A. Smith, who says our shared patterns of living (such as visiting the shopping mall) act as quasi-liturgies, as “formative pedagogies of desire that are trying to make us a certain kind of person.”[6] In “freer” markets, the necessity of collaboration may act as a positive cultural liturgy where we can become more trustworthy and trusting through the societal norms (e.g. the price you see at the grocery store or on Amazon.com is the price you are charged – you trust the integrity of the system). But any market can also embed negative cultural liturgies. These may be akin to Paul’s concept of “principalities” and “power” that oppose us (Eph. 6:2). Butner notes that we mustn’t ascribe moral culpability to those powers themselves, whether they be laws, pricing policies, or otherwise.
Third, Butner explores divine agency within a trinitarian framework; notwithstanding the inseparable operations of God, the Father works providentially while the Holy Spirit, in His mission from the Father, works to form us through various means; further, Jesus Christ offers us an identity and model to be molded into.
These three theological aspects work together to buttress Butner’s thesis, which, in his words, is that “human economic activity in markets is also the triune God’s concurrent work that can contribute to the transformation of Christians, but the extent to which this transformation is impeded or enhanced by markets is based in part on the contexts in which markets occur and on the design of particular markets.”[7]
In the last third of the book, Butner weaves theology and Market Design together. For example, he gives attention to bias and discrimination in the hiring process. Meta-analyses confirm how applicants with Asian last names are less likely to be selected for a job interview than Anglo names, despite identical resumes.[8] Butner shows the frailty of arguments used to defend this discrimination, such as the Heckman-Siegelman critique which says there is more statistical variation in outcomes in some populations than others (and therefore it is more economically viable to hire the “safer” and “less statistically variable” candidate). Butner grants this might be true in purely utilitarian terms, but “Christian ethics cannot be utilitarian… both taste-based discrimination and statistical discrimination are unacceptable from the standpoint of Christian ethics.”[9]
Butner also considers income inequality, drawing on Christopher Wright, Oliver O’Donovan, James Thompson, and others. Given Old Testament commands intended to reduce inequality, the affirmation of private property, and the various modern complexities in global markets, Butner argues, “capitalism may be able to generate wealth, but considerable effort is required to ensure that poor people benefit from such wealth production.”[10] These efforts must do better than the redlining and systematic restriction of Black Americans from markets even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Further, organizations must reprioritize corporate self-interest in light of Christian ethics, which from my own experience on nonprofit boards, can be difficult. I was trained on the legal duty to vote for the best interests of the corporation. This was referred to as a binding legal necessity. Butner notes, in one of his many fascinating footnotes, how there is legal justification for corporations to shift away from this kind of pure profit or shareholder maximization; he says “while there is established a precedent in US case law for corporations’ fiduciary duties toward their shareholders, all state laws recognize that other interests should be considered, including those of employees and customers.”[11]
Butner identifies the good and bad in markets and how the invisible hand of God works not alone but with ours in everything from microfinance to macroeconomics. Our call is to “respond in faith to the Father’s providence by fulfilling our duties as outlined in the preceptive will of God, pursuing economic justice by designing markets that result in better outcomes for those who are poor.”[12]
Butner researches broadly, writes with clarity, and structures his arguments with logical precision. Every student of economics should read this book. Pastors and institutional leaders will be well-served by this book as they seek to help people grow more like Jesus in their workplaces and marketplaces. Butner has a humble hope for theologians and economists as well, that they “could begin a new series of experiments [on moral formation in markets] shaped from the beginning by more explicit theological commitments.”
Two final comments are worth adding for the sake of future readers.
First, a work like this would be complemented by consideration of technology criticism such as that of Jacques Ellul.[13] While Butner notes the limitations of experimental studies, his frequent use of them may provide a kind of cultural liturgy in itself, training the reader into a narrow world-vision that reduces the real to the measurable. What we measure is often what matters but what matters most is impossible to measure. When Paul prayed for the Ephesians to know the height of God’s love, he was not expecting them to get out the measuring tape. Butner does provide caution about the extent to which empirical studies can be used. This is a caution to the reader, not a critique of Butner.
Second, people should read this book in the context of moral theology more generally as our practice of loving our neighbor in markets should not eclipse our responsibility to love our God. They are the two greatest commandments, but they are not one-in-the-same. Butner largely avoids this risk, I believe, partly through his examination of the Sabbath to the Lord and his emphasis on the eucharist. He says, “the primary context for sanctification is within the church.”[14] But I caution the reader; do not over-immanentize our moral formation. In 1776, just as Benjamin Franklin edited the final draft of the Declaration of Independence to refer to certain human rights as “self-evident” rather than “sacred,” Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations invoked God’s providence as the “invisible hand” guiding the market.[15] Charles Taylor observed how Adam Smith’s world was “one of interlocking causes, not of harmonized meanings.”[16] Moral theology must be about our ultimate telos for God’s glory, for the beatific vision and our seat in the heavenly realms (which are also morally formative!), not Adam Smith’s immanentization.[17] Moral theology must remain, at least in some sense, other-worldly; we serve a God who is not of this world. And simultaneously, we must do good in the world. And to help us with that, I am thankful for Butner’s work.
Andrew Noble serves at Grandview Church in Kitchener, Ontario. He is a husband, a father, and a graduate of Heritage College & Seminary (MDiv). He writes at andrewnoble.substack.com, co-hosts a podcast called What Would Jesus Tech, and tweets at @nobullnoble.
D. Glenn Butner, Jr., Work Out Your Salvation: A Theology of Markets and Moral Formation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2024), see locations 442-474, 3565-3582 in Kindle Edition. ↑
Butner describes this story in a footnote; Butner, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 5260. ↑
Burbwe, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 763. ↑
Butner, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Locations 1454-1456. ↑
Butner draws from Neo-Calvinism as defined by Cory C. Brock and N. Gray Sutanto, Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction (Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2022). ↑
James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), 24. ↑
Butner, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 316. ↑
Zschirnt, Eva, and Didier Ruedin. 2016. “Ethnic Discrimination in Hiring Decisions: A Meta-Analysis of Correspondence Tests 1990–2015.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 42 (7): 1115–34. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2015.1133279. ↑
Butner, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 4268. ↑
Butner, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 764. ↑
Butner., Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 4641, citing See Julie A. Nelson, Economics for Humans (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 98–99.) ↑
Butner, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 3897. ↑
See Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society (New York: Vintage Books, 1964). ↑
Butner, Work Out Your Salvation, Kindle Location 4426. ↑
Andrew Wilson, Remaking the World: How 1776 Created the Post-Christian West (Wheaton: Crossway, 2023), 10-11, 129-130, 218-221. ↑
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 177. ↑
James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 47–50. ↑