Work Out Your Salvation: A Theology of Markets and Moral Formation

by D. Glenn Butner Jr.

In  Work Out Your Salvation , D. Glenn Butner Jr. demonstrates that participation in markets forms our moral character, perceptions, actions, and ideas. Drawing on experimental economics and moral theology, he argues that the nature of such formation varies based on the design of the market and our interactions within it. How, he asks, does formation of the market relate to the formation of grace--providence, justification, and sanctification? Are these forces at war for our souls? 

Through a detailed analysis of these three doctrines and the theology of common grace and concurrent divine/human action,  Work Out Your Salvation  argues that God can work through the social context of markets, through human identity, and through economic incentive structures to foster providentially the created basis for the supernatural gifts of justification and sanctification. Careful and theologically guided participation in a market can, by common grace, provide the occasion for positive spiritual formation through concurrent divine action. 

However, such formation is not guaranteed. Maladaptive practices, ideas, and identities can also be fostered by markets not oriented toward a supernatural end. Butner provides detailed evidence backed by extensive experimental and empirical research as to which market practices allow Christians to "work out their salvation" (Phil 2:12) and which practices resist such moral transformation.  Work Out Your Salvation  undermines simplistic endorsements or rejections of capitalism in favor of more nuanced analysis and lays bare which features of markets make us better and which make us worse.

262 pages, Hardcover

Published April 9, 2024

Reviews

[Alex Blount · Rating 4 out of 5]

Butner affirms that markets are formative, but he’s making a theological case that they are morally neutral: they reflect the values of the people that embody them. In that sense, they form people only in the way that the market is embodied. Structural sin, exists, but only due to the way the market reflects the values of the people that embody it. The Cavanaugh and James KA Smith “markets always bad” take and the “markets form virtue” take are challenged by Butner. He takes on impressive amounts of doctrine to make his case. What I would have liked to see more of was sustained engagement with work on Mammon in particular. Economically-informed, worth a read.

Ironically, I got this when Amazon was selling it for like 90% off. I don’t know what that says about my own formation.

[James Korsmo]

I really enjoyed this book. (Thanks, Glenn!) I'm interested in questions of economics, thanks especially to Richard Thaler's work on behavioral economics, and there can be no question that economics pervades modern Western life. So I enjoyed Butner's reflections on markets and moral formation. But to me the heart of the book, chapters on providence, sin, and the trinity, are where the book shines. He interacts at length with Kathryn Tanner's theology of God and creation (particularly her idea of noncontrastive transcendence), and I've already started a reread on that chapter, as it's one of the clearest engagements with her ideas that I've found. And the groundwork he lays in that careful theological work pays dividends for thinking about markets, and it will pay dividends (like that apt metaphor there?) in areas far beyond that.

[Brian Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Butner offers a compelling argument for the relationship between Trinitarian action and the actions of market agents. He (perhaps wisely) studiously avoids dipping into the contentious realm of capitalism vs communism while offering substantive critiques of how a right understanding of who God is and what God does can enable Christians to better participate in any market, but especially those of us in an American context.

[Derek Kubilus · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great scholarly work that explores the convergence between economics and theology from a Reformed perspective! Butner weaves strands of experimental economics, market design, and Biblical ethics together to form a compelling picture of how Christians should understand the moral formation of markets and work to design and influence markets for the sake of grace and virtue.

[John Andrew Szott III · Rating 5 out of 5]

Descriptively nuanced and theologically robust, Butner offers a compelling argument for potential positive and negative moral formation within markets. It may not be as fatalistic as we thought (though in many cases, it’s still bad…). I’ll be coming back to this one when encountering economic questions and how to frame them theologically!

[Jake]

Just couldn't get into this one.