The Monastic Economy: a Macroeconomic Account of the Bible

In this post, I would like to lay out a utopian vision of the economy (if not in a blog, where is one permitted to indulge in such fantasies?). What exactly do I mean by ‘utopian’? I could be referring either to an economy for an ideal world, or the ideal economy for a fallen world. My vision actually touches on both areas, because as fallen but saved individuals living in a created but fallen world, our reality does indeed contain aspects of both.

The Economy of Eden

To see this, first ask the question: is economics a product of the fall? In other words, was there an economy before sin? I would say yes, but not in the sense that we usually understand it. There was no scarcity, no private property, and no trade; everyone just ate from the unlimited abundance of the Garden of Eden, while everyone also held stewardship over that garden. In this regard, it was much like communism. However, we will really know the answer to this question, because Adam and Eve sinned while they were still the only people on the planet. Even if there was some division of labour between the two, the sophistication of the economy was critically limited by the small number of agents; although it was not a ‘Robinson Crusoe economy’ – the sort of single-agent economy usually invoked as an analytical starting point in economics textbooks – it was only one step above, perhaps akin to the situation in which Crusoe meets Sunday but without the scarcity and trade.

We do know, however, that the economy of Eden was regulated, albeit with only one regulation, namely the prohibition of eating from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In fact, it was only the infringement of this regulation that economics as we know it – “the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses”, in Lionel Robbins’ famous neoclassical definition – came about. So in this sense, the economy (and the study thereof) are indeed a product of the Fall; with sin came scarcity, private property, and market exchange, and all their associated evils – exploitation, inequality, alienation, waste, and environmental degradation, just to name a few. Critically, the contravention of the original regulation (that is, original sin) paved the way for an economy based on individualistic, selfish behaviour.

The Economy of the Old Covenant

How to remain set apart for God in a world of sinful nature and economic evil? In the Old Testament, the solution is more regulation (‘the Law’), set out in the first few books of the Bible after Genesis (i.e. the rest of the Torah). In some ways, this regulated economy was remarkably backward, not least in the fact that slavery was permitted. However, all were seen as equal under God and equally bound by the Law, and all would share in the inheritance of the Promised Land. Furthermore, although private property was permitted and even secured, it was extraordinarily malleable. In Leviticus 19:9-10 (see also 23:22; Deuteronomy 24:19-22), for example, Moses writes: “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.” Accordingly, anyone was allowed to eat from the wheat fields and vineyards of another, so long as she did not store any of the produce (Deuteronomy 23:45-6).

We also know that work was prohibited on the seventh day of each week (Exodus 20:8-12, 23:12; Deuteronomy 5:12-15); that every seven years there would be “Sabbath for the land”; and that after the ‘seventh-seventh’ (forty-ninth) year there would be Jubilee (Leviticus 25) in which debts would be forgiven, slaves would be set free, and property redeemed. There were also explicit directives against taking advantage of the poor and needy, for example through usury (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35-7; Deuteronomy 23:19, 24:10-5). Finally, prefiguring a kind of welfare state, a form of taxation (tithing) was imposed to provide for the “the Levite…the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow” (Deuteronomy 14:29). In short, regulations were implemented in order to protect against the adverse social effects of a fallen economy, and with conformance to these regulations, the economy would approach, if never fully re-enter, the abundance of Eden, to which numerous Old Testament prophets (economic commentators and forecasters?) alluded.

The Economy of the New Covenant

But what about the New Covenant, of which these prophets also spoke? This leads me back to the opening passage of this post, for although we are indeed living in a fallen world, the ultimate act of redemption – the ultimate Jubilee – has already occurred; although we are still waiting for Christ to “make all things new” (Revelation 21:5), we are ourselves “new creations in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:17). So as Christians we are living in a strange sort of time lapse, which Paul often refers to in his letters. In Romans 8:19-23, for example, he describes how “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” One way of understanding this odd situation is that although our spirits have been redeemed, our bodies are not yet glorified; our souls, meanwhile, are currently in the process of being sanctified. This implies that we can experience some aspects of God’s design and Christ’s redemption even in today’s fallen economy, because the behavioural foundations of that economy (at least the part of the economy inhabited by believers, which is an important caveat to keep in mind in the following) have fundamentally changed.

So what might a redeemed, not-yet-glorified, and still-being-sanctified economy look like? Before I hazard a guess, I would emphasise that Christ did not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it (Matthew 5:17-20). This implies that the regulations of the Old Testament will be fulfilled without needing to be enforced, namely through the punishment of death. In this respect, I think it is relevant that, as believers, we are all members of a “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2:9). Although the Levite priests in the Old Economy had no property of their own, apart from the cities set aside for them. At the same time, they had special privileges in redeeming property – a sort of ‘jubilee at will’. Our priesthood is similar, I feel, but also different; it is, after all, based on the order of Melchizedek, rather than the lineage of Aaron (Hebrews 7:13-7).

The vision I have for the economy, which follows on from the priesthood concept, is what I call “the monastic economy”, although it might just as accurately be called a “kibbutz economy”. Monasteries have historically acted not only as religious institutions dedicated to worship and scholarship, but also, and simultaneously, as economic units engaging in large-scale production and prolific trade. The economy I have in mind would be made up of similar socio-economic groups, each comprising, say, five-hundred ‘monks’ (and ‘nuns’!). Each monastery would be self-sufficient in basic services such as education and healthcare, but not necessarily in all goods; it would engage in agricultural and industrial production, selling its surplus products to other monasteries in exchange for its outstanding requirements, perhaps directly through barter or perhaps through a system of money, or perhaps through some centralised ‘clearing house’. Each monastery would be autonomous, controlled in a democratic (and, through the New Covenant within each believer, hopefully theocratic) manner, for example with regards to how to distribute responsibilities and apportion rewards, what to produce and what to purchase, and so on. As intrinsically social groups, the monasteries would also purport to reintegrate the social dimension back into the economic, and vice versa, thus naturally fulfilling the innumerable regulations on social life stipulated in the Old Covenant (although disciplinary codes would undoubtedly need to be democratically established in each monastery – we are, after all, in the process of being sanctified).

If the communist flavour of this vision upsets the reader, I would remind her of the point I made with regard to the economy of Eden, viz. that it, too, was palpably communistic. That said, it might be alleged that such an economy, if implemented within the confines of a fallen world, would be incredibly backward, leading to the sort of decline experienced in, say, China under Mao Zedong. The precedent of the Mondragón cooperatives in the Basque Country, however, demonstrates that cooperative enterprises need not be run purely as communes, but can rather enjoy the benefits of specialisation, management, and innovation, and can therefore thrive on a large scale. In fact, monasteries themselves provide a telling precedent; apparently, monks in the Rievaulx Abbey in Yorkshire developed a prototype blast furnace in the 1500’s – centuries before the Industrial Revolution – and were set to use it on a large scale before being evicted by Henry VIII (see here).

Relatedly, it might be alleged that monastic enterprises would fail to incentivise workers and suffer from ‘free-riding’, given the fallen nature of mankind. However, Mondragón again provides evidence that the individualistic behaviour usually assumed by economics to prevail unconditionally is in fact a product of an economy based on such behaviour, and that alternative economic organisations can elicit alternative modes of behaviour. After all, is it not the crux of the New Covenant that we are given the gift of grace in spite of any works of our own, and are thus motivated to carry out good works (e.g. Ephesians 2:8-9)? Do we not love because we were first loved (1 John 4:19-21)? And does not love sum up the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:36-40; Galatians 5:13-4)? In any case, the argument can be made that communal, communal, and generally unconventional forms of enterprise are only inefficient (and only suffer from the ramifications of individualistic behaviour) precisely because they are unconventional, which leads to various kinds of formal and informal ‘institutional bias’. Accordingly, if they were scaled up to the entire economy, their inefficiencies would disappear.

Alas, this vision is thoroughly utopian, firstly because not everyone would agree on it, and secondly because there would be no way to implement it without going through the intermediate stage of complete nationalisation that Marx envisaged – a step which, as the experience of the Soviet Union attests, would undoubtedly backfire when it comes to altering the behavioural foundations of the economy. There are also potential pitfalls that I have not covered, such as the possibility for monasteries to exploit each other, or for internal systems of exploitation to develop (pitfalls to which Mondragón also gives precedent!). But one can dream...