There are at least two powerful tensions that cannot be ignored between the message of the New Testament and the character of persons engaged in economic activity. One is the tension between the calculating, prudential attitude of the marketplace and the gospel imperative to not lay up treasures on earth. The second is the uneasy coexistence of a trusting dependence on God with the desire to make adequate provision for ones own future. One man, after searching and achieving some congruence as both a Christian and an economist, concludes that these tensions are not the chief cause of the hostility toward commercial society that one finds in so many Christian thinkers. Who is this scholar, how does he come to terms with these tensions, and what factors does he believe actually underlie theologians traditional hostility to the marketplace?
Maryann O. Keating, "Review Essay: 'Are Economists Basically Immoral?' and Other Essays on Economics, Ethics, and Religion by Paul Heyne," Journal of Markets & Morality 12, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 359-365