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Keywords

Christianity, Church fathers, Economics, Liberal tradition, Austrian economics, Marxism

Abstract

This Article seeks to make three modest contributions. First, this Article serves to correct a failed historiography of the early church. While no patristic scholar argues that the early church professed a sort of proto-communism, other disciplines, namely, economics and business, perpetuate a misapprehension of how the early church thought about property and markets. Second, this Article offers an intellectual survey of both Ante-Nicaean and Nicaean/Post-Nicaean church fathers on property and markets. Through this survey, this Article seeks to demonstrate a general theme of the acceptance of private property, capital accumulation, market exchange, and arbitrage. Finally, this Article supports two theoretical contributions to business ethics from the fathers: property is a moral instrument where ownership confers normative obligations, rather than absolute entitlements; and moral formation and voluntary distribution are ethically preferable to coercive redistribution through regulation. This Article concludes with three practical contributions to business ethics from the fathers.

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