Mason and Schaefer offer only a beginning for their analysis of the role of the state in the economy as based on ethical teachings derived from the Pentateuch. Underlying their analysis is the idea that biblical teaching can and should be used for developing the norms of society. They seem somewhat divided on this issue themselves, for on the one hand they note that the Pentateuch referred to a very different social setting and that it is made up of laws developed in primitive economic conditions, which raise questions about their applicability in the modern state. At the same time, they suggest that they can find in the Mosaic provisions directed at early Israel "the intentions the God of creation holds for all peoples and nations" (Mason and Schaefer 47).
The two authors are correct that much more analysis needs to be done to demonstrate the connections they hint at in this paper. The basic question as to whether biblical teaching should be the basis for the norms of society is a problem in itself. It assumes that a particular religious tradition should be the basis for the norms of society. Do the authors mean all societies, or only Judeo-Christian societies? Are they using the norms developed as measures for societal structures already existing in the world, or are they seeing these as truly normative and so as prescriptive of what should be instituted? The question they themselves raise is also in need of more analysis--can the norms developed in a primitive economic and social system be applicable in a more complex system such as we have today? These questions are raised by not answered by this one paper.
The encyclical Centesimus Annus is best represented by the headline "Pope warns against godless capitalism." The Pope in the earlier Rerum Novarum had affirmed the right to private property as a fundamental right "for the autonomy and development of the person" (John Paul II 43), but at the same time Leo XIII h...