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[Expositions 13.1 (2019) 81–92] Expositions (online) ISSN: 1747–5376 

Humanizing Economics Theologically:  

Mary Hirschfeld’s Aquinas and the Market 

 

D. STEPHEN LONG 

Southern Methodist University 

 

 

Since publishing Divine Economy: Theology and the Market in 20001 I have found myself engaged 

in many conversations, debates, conferences, and seminars with economists. These conversations 

almost always bear a family resemblance. At some point, the economist will critique the moral and 

theological considerations brought to bear on economics by saying something like, “You 

theologians and ethicists are naïve and utopian. You do not understand how markets work and 

while your concerns are well intended the consequences of implementing them will be disastrous 

to the poor that you intend to help.” Whether the issue be rent controls; a just, livable wage: a 

wealth tax; or criticisms of economic concepts like scarcity, opportunity costs, and the marginal 

rationality that undergirds economics as a discipline, the arguments are nearly always the same. If 

theologians and ethicists adopted marginalist rationality, which some economists use to explain 

nearly everything, then they would not be so naïve and come to adopt the economist’s point of 

view.  

This all too familiar economist’s critique begs the question because the issue is whether one 

should adopt the economist’s point of view, and the “should” here is intentional. It questions one 

significant defense many economists make of their discipline when moral or theological questions 

are put to it. They are just giving us the facts; theirs is a positive science and while we need 

normative sciences that attend to values, the economists’ data and rational models provide neutral, 

arms-length analyses of the costs involved to those values. The economic prescriptions, however, 

that result from this conversation are also predictable. The only way to help the poor is more 

economic growth unhindered by well-intended regulations. Let the market do its work, and in some 

distant future, we will reduce poverty, increase standards of living, bring in the wealth of nations 

or get to that three-day week work Keynes promised us nearly a century ago. But these 

prescriptions resulting from marginalist rationality are more a matter of “should” than “is.” They 

are normative political and economic judgments. If that is the case, then the rationality theologians 



Humanizing Economics Theologically 82 

  

and ethicists are asked to adopt is not so innocent. It already imports moral and theological 

evaluations into the construction of the discipline. It asks us to abandon forms of theological and 

moral reasoning and view the world through marginalist rationality.  

These conversations are so predictable that they are tiresome, which is why Mary L. 

Hirschfeld’s Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy2 is such a breath of fresh air. 

When theologians and ethicists question the basic form of practical reasoning that much of 

economics and contemporary business practice assumes, they are easily dismissed with, “But you 

don’t understand economics.” (I’ve also discovered that business persons use a similar argument 

against economists, “But you have never run a business.”) No one can dismiss Hirschfeld on 

similar grounds. A Harvard Ph.D. in economics, who taught it for fifteen years, Hirschfeld found 

herself dissatisfied with aspects of her discipline, converted to Catholicism, and shifted into a 

theological vocation. She left a tenured teaching position to pursue a master’s degree and Ph.D. in 

Moral Theology at the University of Notre Dame, completing her second dissertation under the 

supervision of the well-known moral theologian Jean Porter on the relationship between Thomas 

Aquinas and neoliberal economics. (Her first dissertation was supervised by Lawrence Summers 

and Jeffrey G. Williamson.) Her 2018 publication is the fruit of a journey that began in 1989 with 

her Ph.D. in economics and followed by eight years of study in theology. It is a splendid work, the 

best book on theological economics available in English. In fact, along with Kathryn Tanner’s 

Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism3, those of us invested in the conversation between 

theology and economics now have some of the best resources available for consideration. These 

two works deserve to be read in tandem. Tanner’s and Hirschfeld’s works offer similarities and 

contrasts that should be the state of the question for theological economics today. I will conclude 

this review with some suggestions on what that state might be.  

Hirschfeld’s dissatisfaction with economics and her conversion to theology does not appear to 

have been some Damascus Road experience. In fact, her story is not one of conversion from 

economics to theology. Her original attraction to the scientific rigor of economics and its potential 

to contribute to human flourishing remains very much reflected in her criticisms of economics. 

She does not dismiss economics and finds some of the criticisms levied against it to be either 

misunderstandings or satisfactorily addressed by economists. She takes us through a number of 

these inadequate criticisms. First, the problem is not with the economist’s anthropology, the 

assumption of homo economicus who correlates reason with rational choice models. For 



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Hirschfeld, this anthropology and model are more or less obvious. They tell us nothing more than 

that “people efficiently calculate how best to achieve their desired ends.” Here is not a reason for 

dissatisfaction; on occasion, we all make such calculations. Second, the criticism that rational 

choice theory fails because its modeling assumes agents are fully informed misses the point of 

economic modeling. That human agents lack omniscience poses no problem because rational 

choice can still model human action sufficiently while recognizing that people will always “lack 

information.” Rational choice is a species of formal practical reasoning. Third, the criticism that 

the predictive modeling economists make through “complicated mathematical formulations” does 

not correlate well with everyday reality misses how economists do their work. Their abstract and 

formal form of practical reasoning seeks little more than to predict as best as possible future 

decisions. Fourth, nor does it matter that people “make systematic errors in judgment.” In other 

words, contra rational choice theory people do not always act in their own interest. While this is 

true, economics has means for taking it into account. If theologians or ethicists critique economics 

for any of the above reasons, Hirschfeld suggests, their critiques lack justification. The strength of 

economics, she tells us, is “its ability to map a wide range of motivations into formally identical 

mathematical equations” that can explain both the actions of Bernie Madoff and Mother Theresa 

(41–42).  

Economic models that explain Madoff’s or Mother Theresa’s actions continue to attract her, 

but economics’ strength is also its limitation. The inability to distinguish between Madoff and 

Mother Theresa disillusioned her. That economics remains “silent” about the ends its formal, 

abstract version of practical reasoning serves led to her dissatisfaction. The criticisms noted above, 

then, are not completely misguided. They reflect an inadequacy not only with economics but more 

importantly with the political and economic structures that they assume. She writes: “The 

resilience of critiques about the excessive materialism and injustice of modern market economies 

reflects the incoherence of a society that de facto treats the instrumental good of economic 

prosperity as the highest common good” (3). The confusion of these two goods, and the inability 

for modern political arrangements to identify the good that the instrumental good of economics 

serves, entails that the limited ends its formal, practical rationality should serve has no limits. The 

problem, then, is not economics per se but that it has no end that would properly limit it. Its version 

of practical reasoning has a role in seeking the highest common good, but without proper limits it 

takes on the role. It cannot function well as the only form of practical reasoning.  



Humanizing Economics Theologically 84 

  

Having identified her dis-satisfaction with rational choice theory, Hirschfeld’s next two steps 

point first to theology and then to economics. She begins chapter one with Jesus’s words that one 

cannot serve both God and money (Matt 6:24). She does not give us an apology as to why we 

should begin with Scripture. Her work is unapologetically theological. The difference theology 

brings to economics is that it names the ends for human flourishing. For this reason, theology 

should be the “dominant partner” in any conversation between theology and economics (3). 

Hirschfeld asks if this conversation has yet been done well. If it has, of course, there would be no 

reason for her work. She could simply point in the direction of others and tell the reader to look 

into their work. I am delighted that she points to my own work and uses it well to present three 

approaches to the relationship between theology and economics. First, economics is the “dominant 

partner” in the conversation. Second, there is a “complementary” relationship between them, and 

third, theology is privileged as an “independent lens” to evaluate economics (9). One of the highest 

recommendations of Hirschfeld’s argument I could give is that I find my own work ably presented 

by her. This recommendation is not because she simply points to my work as the way forward. 

She thinks that I, and Kathryn Tanner, have the proper disposition to make theology the dominant 

partner but fail to execute it.  

Chapter One quickly sets forth the state of the question on the relation between theology and 

economics, acknowledging as many of us have that the conversation between them is primarily 

one-sided. Theologians read and examine economics. Economists seldom sense any need to return 

the favor. I have no idea if Hirschfeld’s argument will generate a more interesting two-sided 

conversation, but the richness of her arguments provides reason for hope. Although she is 

unapologetically theological, her book is written for both theologians and economists. The 

“fundamental dilemma” of theology and economics is that if theology is to set the proper limits 

for the economists’ unlimited, formal version of practical reasoning, theology would have to be 

granted a privileged role. My and Tanner’s work sought to do this, but we are too opposed to 

economics. She cites a central text that structures my 2000 publication in which I represent my 

preferred approach, “the residual tradition,” in opposition to marginalist rationality. She finds my 

work too oppositional and offers this critique: “The problem is that capitalism is too complex to 

be either embraced or rejected whole-heartedly” (17–18). At first, I thought this was a 

misunderstanding because my critique was of marginalism not capitalism in general (I originally 

titled my 2000 work Out of the Margins, which was changed—and rightly so—by the editors), but 



85 Long 

 

as I read further, I came to agree with her critique. She would agree with me that marginalist 

rationality defines economics as a discipline. She would agree with me that it has taken on too 

large a role in contemporary culture. Whereas I sought an alternative to it without conceding it any 

place in theology she seeks a proper place for it by incorporating it within Aquinas’s practical 

reasoning. Her ingenious argument is that the closest approximation to marginalist rationality is 

what Thomas recognized human agents share with animal agents. Both act from incentives. 

Marginalism, then, has a role but a limited one. By refusing to grant it this limited role, I left 

marginalist rationality to its own devices. She adds, “Long, ironically, ends up ceding too much 

power to economic thought when he seeks out an approach which is simply in opposition to it” 

(18). I would agree. Oppositional discourses tend to collude with what they oppose. 

While I think her critique of me is valid, I was less convinced of her critique of Tanner. She 

agrees with Tanner that the competitive logic of economics does not name an “effectual truth of 

human nature” but a contingent social practice. Yet Tanner’s noncompetitive “economy of grace” 

concerns non-scarce “spiritual goods” and ignores the scarcity of material goods. She neglects an 

adequate economic model of “rivalry in consumption.” Adopting her role as economist, Hirschfeld 

writes, “If I eat the apple, you cannot also eat that apple.” While that is a truism and I would add 

an undeniable metaphysical claim—two temporal, material goods cannot be in the same place at 

the same time—it is less a compelling critique of Tanner because it does not address any reasonable 

context within which someone would eat an apple at the expense of others. There is no reason why 

a humane economy grounded in the virtues would be anything other than deeply critical of 

someone who coming upon a single apple decided to eat it herself rather than sharing it. It is always 

possible to cut the apple into pieces and share it non-competitively. Hirschfeld makes this very 

argument later in her work in a compelling discussion of virtue as the perfection of a disposition. 

Here she also draws on the desire for food and how those desires need to be properly habituated. 

She writes, “As a child I wanted all the candy for myself. As an adult I really could not enjoy the 

candy if I did not offer to share some with those around me” (103). Should not the same be said of 

eating apples? 

Tanner’s point is not about the metaphysics of a universe in which only a single apple exists. 

Her concern is how we describe what are contingent social realities of production and distribution. 

Much as Adam Smith begins the Wealth of Nations with people who find themselves in a pin-

making factory without any consideration for how they got there—what convinced them to move 



Humanizing Economics Theologically 86 

  

off the commons to spend their days performing a single operation?—Hirschfeld’s example 

foregoes any description of the production and distribution of the apple. It is just there to be eaten 

in its entirety by one at the expense of the other. But this does not describe well apple-eating. From 

where did the apple come? If someone owns the apple tree from which the apple came, and you 

cannot eat that apple except under the conditions defined by the market relations within which the 

owner buys and sells, then the fact that one person eats the apple and others do not reveals very 

little about “rivalry in consumption.” If the profits for eating the apple primarily accrue to 

shareholders who sell the apple on a global market for a price that exceeds what the apple pickers 

can command as a wage because their comparative advantage is nothing but their labor, then the 

fact that someone eats the apple in Pennsylvania and someone does not eat the apple in China tells 

us more about contingent social realities to which alternatives could and should be made. Setting 

forth “contrasts” in these circumstances does not let economics “set the agenda” (18). It asks for 

imaginative thought about alternative possibilities to contingent social realities. 

Perhaps Hirschfeld would agree with the much of the above criticism. The purpose of the first 

chapter is less to set out her theological economics and more to critique theologians who set 

theology and economics in opposition. She concludes the first chapter by pointing in the direction 

of the difference Thomas Aquinas makes for rational choice theory. It is not diametrically opposed 

to Thomas’s practical reasoning, but his version sets marginalist rationality within a more humane 

and complex version. Thomas agrees with modern economists that “the human quest for happiness 

involves a longing for more.” His disagreement is twofold. First, the “infinite desire” human agents 

possess cannot be satisfied through the accumulation of finite goods; it can only “rest” in God. 

Second, happiness is not the “satisfaction of desires” but a “perfection” (24–25) of them. She will 

return to these important points when she constructs a Thomistic “humane economy” in Chapters 

Three through Seven. Before engaging in that constructive work, she turns in chapter two to “the 

perspectives of economists on their central model of human behavior, the rational choice model” 

(35).  

Hirschfeld subjects three “key features” of economics to critical examination. The first is its 

“distinctive concept of practical rationality” based on homo economicus. As previously noted, 

Hirschfeld is less concerned about homo economicus than most theological and ethical critics. 

Likewise, she acknowledges a role for the economist’s practical rationality. Only when this 

anthropology and its reasoning are placed within the second and third features that she examines 



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does it go awry. The second feature is a sharp distinction between positive and normative 

economics. She tips us off in the preface that she was dissatisfied with this distinction when she 

tells us, “One of the core arguments of this book is that economics is not value neutral” (xviii). 

Economics fails to be value neutral because the role “efficiency” plays. Efficiency depends on the 

“equation of a consumer’s willingness to pay with her marginal benefit and the seller’s willingness 

to sell with his marginal cost.” The marginal benefit is the “utility function” and a dilemma arises 

at this point. On the one hand, the utility function is nothing more than “consumer preferences.” 

On the other hand, the efficiency of the market serves the purpose of the consumer’s “well-being.” 

Thus, we are left with a tautology that what the agent desires or prefers constitutes the agent’s 

well-being (48). Equating well-being with desires or preferences is neither value neutral nor 

reasonable, especially when it is placed within a third key feature in economics that “wants are 

unbounded” (36). If wants have no limit and are at the same time the basis for well-being, then 

there can be no rest, no end to our consumption, no adequate satisfaction even of our preferences. 

Hirschfeld names well the consequence of combining these three features of economic activity. 

“If there is no theoretical content limiting what can constitute all-things-considered preferences, 

we are left with a tautology: when people act purposively they do so in a way that seems best to 

them” (59). That is not high praise for homo economicus and his practical reasoning. Economics 

cannot claim its innocence with respect to having “strong ethical and metaphysical commitments,” 

and those commitments do not lead to human flourishing (67).  

Having made a compelling case for the limitations of the theological and ethical criticisms 

brought to bear on economics in Chapter One, and the limitations of the practical reasoning 

undergirding economics including its putative ethical and metaphysical innocence in Chapter Two, 

Hirschfeld begins her constructive argument for a Thomistic theological economics in Chapter 

Three. Chapters Three and Four compare and contrast the practical reasoning of Aquinas with that 

of economics. Chapter Three does so by attending to the “metaphysical backdrop” for Thomas’s 

“distinctively human exercise of practical reason.” Chapter Four attends to “virtue and prudence” 

for that same exercise. Hirschfeld places Thomas’s practical reasoning within the “perfection of 

our being.” It is the metaphysics necessary for Thomas’s practical reasoning and it exceeds the 

capacity for the rational choice model to render intelligible. Her argument is that Thomas’s 

practical reason is sufficiently “capacious” to accommodate rational choice as a lesser form, but 

rational choice is incapable of accommodating Thomistic practical reasoning. In other words, if 



Humanizing Economics Theologically 88 

  

Thomas is correct about our teleological ordering, then the happiness for which we act will never 

be satisfied through maximizing utility. The latter is an “unbounded quest for more.” Because our 

true end is the beatific vision, “an enjoyment of the infinite good, which is God,” the economists’ 

model has some plausibility. Both are oriented “toward an infinite good.” Yet the difference 

between them is decisive. For the economist’s model, the infinite good is quantitative and extended 

(80). For this reason, its model always requires more, more growth, more consumption. It cannot 

be satisfied until everything is consumed. She hints toward but does not “take up” questions of 

environmental sustainability. The logic of her critique, however, finds her making common cause 

with Pope Francis’s Laudato si in questioning the “energy-intensive lifestyles” driving modern 

production (152–153, 160).  

Chapter Four opens with an acknowledgement that the perfection of the human being is 

“beyond our natural capacities” (97). Perfection is found in God and thus requires more than the 

acquired virtues; it involves the theological ones as well. She briefly discusses the contested 

relationship between our temporal and eternal happiness in Thomas, a relationship that is crucial 

for her interpretation of his practical reason. The two ends are not on a “continuum” as if one leads 

to the other. Nor are they completely unrelated. In other words, they are neither univocal nor 

equivocal. Instead, they are analogical. The analogy resides in humanity created imago dei that 

makes us, like God, the “‘principle’ of our actions” (99). Virtue, especially the virtue of prudence, 

allows human agents the “self-mastery” necessary to “order” their lives “into a coherent pattern of 

life.” She offers a succinct but masterful interpretation of the acquired virtues and correlates them 

to temporal well-being, highlighting the role of prudence. Prudence is “Aquinas’s alternative” to 

the economist’s practical reasoning, an argument found in a section entitled “Prudence versus 

Rational Choice” (109). It is through the exercise of prudence that human agents properly flourish.  

Hirschfeld draws upon Jean Porter’s Nature as Reason4 for her account of flourishing. Humans 

have the “special role of directing themselves” via prudence. Hirschfeld states, “It is our act of 

becoming beings who can pursue these goods in an excellent way that constitute the full realization 

of our nature. The pursuit of goods, then, is the material on which we exercise that excellence. 

That is to say, while a life filled with goods is desirable, our truest happiness lies in the agency we 

exercise in obtaining them” (108). The acquired virtues do so much work in this section of her 

argument that one wonders what happened to her previous discussion of the infused virtues (102)? 

She also cites Christopher Franks’s He Became Poor5 which, contra Porter, takes the evangelical 



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counsels of poverty, chastity, and obedience as the “paradigmatic form of the happy life” rather 

than Porter’s “ordinary conception” of it, and the theological virtues as the “paradigmatic form of 

virtues.” Franks interprets Aquinas as a Christological thinker for whom the natural, human action 

concerned with wealth finds its proper end in the “poverty of Christ.” Hirschfeld acknowledges 

that Franks’s interpretation, to which she is “sympathetic,” generates “some tension” with Porter’s. 

However, the tension here is not decisive. Hirschfeld claims it to be a “difference in emphasis 

more than anything else” (242n44). Yet I wonder if more needs to be done with this tension and 

the difference it makes for a Thomistic theological economics? It would require further 

conversations. One would be on the infused virtues. Hirschfeld begins this conversation in her 

section “What is a virtue?” Virtues are “intrinsic principles or internal sources of actions.” So far, 

so good. Both Aristotle and Thomas would agree. They can also be, she notes, “infused by God.” 

Now things get complicated. For Thomas, an infused virtue is an external principle that can at the 

same time be an internal source of human action. Aristotle, I think, would at least find this 

confusing. It is what allows Thomas to set forth the virtue of charity as friendship with God, 

something that Hirschfeld makes central to her theological economics in Chapter Five. But the 

emphasis on the acquired virtues and the unresolved tension between Porter and Franks leads me 

to question how the analogy between God and creatures in their actions works. What does she need 

from Thomas that she could not get from Aristotle, especially when there is so little Christology 

and pneumatology in her book? She notes its centrality for Thomas (see 24). Having noted it, it 

seems to contribute too little to a humane economy. There may be reason for this, and it may have 

to do with audience. One of the curious but delightful aspects of Aquinas and the Market is the 

ambiguity as to whom the audience is. At times, Hirschfeld seems to be interpreting theology for 

the economists. At other times, she interprets economics for the theologians. And still at other 

times, she addresses both at the same time. Another conversation would be the relationship 

between divine and human agency. She recognizes this and states, “In this analysis I do not deal 

with the vexed question of how we understand our agency vis a vis God’s agency” (235n2). If the 

theological virtues are to play more of a central role in a Thomistic humane economy (and how 

can they not if our true end is the beatific vision?), then more will need to be done here. Of course, 

not everything that should be done can be done in a single volume. To indicate what needs to be 

done next is the sign of a successful work.  



Humanizing Economics Theologically 90 

  

Hirschfeld’s theological economics is thoroughly Catholic, which makes it contrast nicely with 

Tanner’s thoroughly Protestant anti-work ethic in her Christianity and the New Spirit of 

Capitalism. Hirschfeld works with Aquinas; Tanner works with (and against) Weber. Tanner has 

offered the clearest and most lucid presentation of finance capital that I have read either by 

economists or theologians. We are fortunate to have these two works before us at this critical 

juncture when growing income inequality and environmental degradation threaten social 

existence. Both express grave concerns about making efficiency the driver behind economic 

relations, and about the disciplining power of capitalist rationality. Both intervene in economics 

and market relations theologically. Tanner’s work sounds more of an alarm than does Hirschfeld. 

It takes on much more of an apocalyptic tone. She holds forth little promise of reforming 

capitalism. We need to “radically break” with it, and Christian theology could provide such a 

break. More so than her previous Economy of Grace, Tanner sees capitalism generating vicious 

chains to the past through debt, asking for “total commitment,” all the while acting in the world as 

if only the present matters. Her approach is more dialectical than analogical. Christianity offers a 

“radical time discontinuity.” It places all our projects under suspicion. She writes, “every single 

present project of mine is to be repudiated to some extent or other (some of them more than 

others)—just to the extent such a project becomes a sinful interference to wholehearted orientation 

to God and God’s will for the world.”6 A Reformed total depravity haunts all our pretensions to 

perfection. Tanner finds arguments based on perfection to be dangerous. They “homogenize” 

human existence collapsing difference into an untenable sameness.7 Given the either-or within 

which our convictions operate, there is no place for any means-ends calculation.8 Faith entails total 

commitment. Contra Hirschfeld’s virtue of prudence, Tanner is critical of the language of self-

production, even when it is found in Marx rather than Aristotle or Thomas. She states, “There is 

no reason to think, as the anthropology of production typical of capitalism (and its Marxist critique) 

does, that we can produce ourselves only by producing other things. Some sort of work on things 

is needed to generate the material well-being that is part of our imaging of God’s life of supreme 

well-being. But Christians associate hand hard work and especially hard labor with the fall.”9  

Hirschfeld is less apocalyptic. She finds much to applaud about capitalism. She critiques Tanner 

for being unable to account for capitalism’s “beneficial role in, say, lifting hundreds of millions of 

people out of poverty in the past few decades” (22). Yet no statistics are cited and the poverty 

graphs that have circulated based on the United Nations’ Millennium campaign and “Our World 



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in Data” statistics often cited by Bill Gates and others, have been subjected to devastating 

critiques.10 With 60% of the world’s population living in poverty and most of the decrease in 

poverty occurring in China, it is unclear that capitalism has decreased poverty as successfully as 

some have claimed. If we measured poverty based on $5 per day rather than the $1.08 currently 

used, things look much bleaker. Given current economic inequalities, the “lifting” that would be 

necessary for a rising tide to life all boats would require the average income of the world’s 

wealthiest one-third to be $1.3 million per year so that the poorest two-thirds can live on $5 per 

day.11 If these statistics are correct, then Tanner’s apocalyptic tone is more warranted than 

Hirschfeld’s. Yet Hirschfeld gives us more of a practical way forward than Tanner. Tanner is 

certainly correct that arduous labor is not the basis for human dignity. Her anti-work ethic is not 

only a laudable contribution to contemporary theological ethics but a necessary one especially as 

work itself may experience significant changes in the next decades. Yet there are ways of thinking 

about forms of material production by which we also produce ourselves as Hirschfeld’s emphasis 

on the virtues, and especially prudence, suggests. What makes a virtue a virtue rather than a 

technical means is that the action affects the character of the agent. Hirschfeld’s Aristotelian-

Thomism has more room for Marx’s insights than Tanner’s (modified) Calvinist-Weberianism. 

Hirschfeld provides a way to make better sense of the fact that we need material goods, they can 

be means for our perfection, that grace can perfect nature rather than constantly contradict it. 

Hirschfeld convinced me that some incentives, some means-end calculation is intrinsic to our 

animality. It is part of our good,  created nature. Yet it our (fallen) nature is radically incomplete 

and needs the infused virtues.  

Hirschfeld’s Aquinas and the Market is thoroughly researched, well-written, carefully 

developed, and presents a compelling vision of how we might go forward in conceiving a 

theological economics. It is a must-read for anyone interested in theology and economics, practical 

reasoning, or the development of a humane economy. 

  

 

Notes 

 

1. D. Stephen Long, Divine Economy: Theology and the Market (London, Routledge, 2000). 



Humanizing Economics Theologically 92 

  

2. Mary L. Hirschfeld, Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy (Cambridge, 

MA: Harvard University Press, 2018). 

3. Kathryn Tanner, Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism (New Haven, CT: Yale 

University Press, 2019). 

4. Jean Porter, Nature as Reason: A Thomistic Theory of Natural Law (Grand Rapids, MI: 

Eerdmans, 2004).  

5. Christopher A. Franks, He Became Poor: The Poverty of Christ and Aquinas’s Economic 

Teachings (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2009). 

6. Tanner 88. 

7. Tanner 217–218. 

8. Tanner 162. 

9. Tanner 207. 

10. See Jason Hickel’s The Divide: Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets (New 

York: Norton, 2018). 

11. Hickel 56. 


