STEWARDSHIP AND RESPONSE: John Wesley’s Moral-Theological Economics

This article examines Wesley's moral-theological economy as a hermeneutical circle that moves from stewardship to response through the structure of our moral psychology that responds to God's gracious initiative manifest throughout creation. The first part describes Wesley's Economics of Stewardship, followed by Wesley's Moral Psychology of Response and Perfect Love. While the final part, responding to the Poor as Stewards of God's Grace. The conclusion of this article is that stewardship is God's sole proprietor who requires the use of responsibility made possible through God's free initiative and ongoing throughout Creation means establishing a relationship with him, starting with our relationship with the poor. Wesley's wisdom of stewardship is thus embodied in his moral theological dynamics of response as stewards, called to use ourselves wisely in the trust of what has been entrusted to us.

The Triumph of Theological Economics

Both Marx and Freud are children of the Enlightenment in certain manners. As such, they each display a qualified but firm optimism about history inevitably making progress in specific desirable directions. Freud predicts that continuing scientific and technological advances eventually will drive religiosity from human societies once and for all. Marx likewise forecasts the withering away of religions. Moreover, he treats this predicted process as symptomatic of even more fundamental socioeconomic developments, namely, his (in)famous anticipations of subsequent transitions to socialism and communism. However, the past century of human history has not been kind to any sort of Enlightenment-style progress narratives. My intervention on this occasion takes inspiration especially from Lacan’s reckoning with a “triumph of religion” defying Freud’s expectations of relentlessly broadening and deepening secularization. I argue that socio-political phenomena of the past several decades bear witness to religious superstructures having infused themselves into economic infrastructures.