To speak of wealth and power is to plunge into a raging torrent, and to try to describe the stream while swimming in it. There is no objective point of view. All of us are strugglers who try to master this environment while we are understanding it. We all see through the particular experiences and prejudices of the classes, peoples and lands of which we are a part. Yet we have a common problem. We recognize together that although God's promise and judgement have not changed their character, we face dimensions of them, in the late twentieth century, which are new, because human power and wealth have achieved unprecedented proportions with all the temptation and danger they bring. We must face these dimensions, furthermore, together, because, like it or not, we have been thrown economically and technologically into one world.

What is the common problem? Let one who is in the midst of it, inviting correction and help from others, suggest three descriptions of it.

First, there has been, in the last two centuries, an extraordinary expansion of human wealth and power which has transformed the attitudes and expectations of masses of people, and has seemed to render traditional Christian teachings about both wealth and power obsolete. For example: Two hundred years ago natural science was an exciting frontier but not a world power. Since then there has been an explosion of knowledge about nature far beyond the capacity of any human mind to comprehend, and most of this knowledge, though at first pure, has served to subjugate nature to human purpose for good or ill.

Two hundred years ago the speed of communication was to the gait of the fastest horse, or runner. Today news can flash around the world in seconds, programmes in hours, people and goods, weapons and armies in a few days. No culture is insulated; no economy is self-sufficient; no nation is geographically safe. Suddenly - in the time scale of human history - we live in a global village where none of us can move without enriching or impoverishing, protecting or threatening, relating with or manipulating other peoples everywhere.

Two hundred years ago the limit of energy was measured by the ox or the elephant, by wood or peat, by the water wheel or the sail. Though there were machines and mechanical ingenuity, most wealth was produced by human manual labour, somewhat expanded by trade and commerce. Today, leaving aside the boundless prospects and dangers of nuclear energy, machines driven by fossil fuels have increased human productivity a hundredfold and with the help of science-based technology have produced vast new wealth for millions, potentially for all. In the course of this the very meaning of work has been revolutionized so as to serve the machine and to live from the products of the system.

In short, the promise of our age has been that science-based technology, harnessing boundless energy, can organize nature and society rationally as to produce ever-expanding material wealth and ever new horizons for human self-expression. Nor has this been just a capitalist ideal. Socialists have resisted rightly the exploitation and inequality of this material revolution, but they also look forward to a society in which the state will manage the economy more rationally yet with the same goals on behalf of all the people. Gone is the traditional Christian condemnation of avarice, and the church's suspicion of worldly powers that make themselves ultimate. The virtues of servanthood and self-denial are consigned to private personal relations.

Thus it was until the world began to realize, with ever-growing force, a second fact about this phenomenal expansion of human wealth and power: It faces limits in the nature of creation itself. We are using non-renewable resources at a rate which will lead to their exhaustion before long. Our industrial processes are producing pollutants that will lead to irreversible changes in water, air and land. New drugs and chemicals to solve the problems of prosperous life produce side effects with new poisons in a seemingly endless chain. The harnessing of nuclear energy for war or peace threatens to expose future generations to radiation dangers over thousands of years.

The roles have been reversed. Nature once provided the context of human life and human beings both feared it as a power over them and respected it with a divine creation. Now human science and technology give nature its context, but nature is still an independent creation of God and its response to human manipulation undermines the very human power that pries into its secrets and makes use of it. We face the possibility that by our wealth and power we may make the earth uninhabitable.

In this context we must face the third fact about our time: science and technology are highly rational enterprises, but the human greed and lust for power that drive them and make use of them are not. In fact we have an ever greater centralization of economic power in institutions more interested in their own wellbeing than in creating a safe and promising future for humankind. The inequality between rich and poor is growing, and absolute poverty is as great as ever. Weaker and poorer countries and classes are being made economically dependent on strong and wealthy ones and they resist this dependence sometimes violently. Short-term interests prevail over the long-term good of the world, so forests are plundered, air and water are polluted and peoples are impoverished for the advantage of other peoples. Nowhere can the question of rational development and just use of human wealth and power be centrally focused and dealt with. Furthermore the fear and suspicion among peoples is so great that armaments absorb an appalling proportion of the world's gross production and threaten in themselves to destroy our habitation should war break out in earnest.

This, with regard to wealth and power, is the situation we are in. Christians are a part of it. By silence or connivance we are involved in all parts of the problem, even to misusing theology in support of our human interests. Theological reflection, therefore, must be a part of our "metanoia". Let me suggest three principles and four consequences.

Christian faith and economic power

1. The first principle is so basic that one can hardly believe the world, in its fascination with individual or collective prosperity, could have forgotten it. Human beings live by being called into a covenant relation with a living and purposeful God who is lord of all creation. Human existence is constituted by this limitation. No ideal changeless order of things invites us to participate in its eternity. No inherent laws of change and progress lead us upward to more perfect futures. No self-liberation establishes us as masters and planners of our fate. Rather we are placed by the Creator in a relationship with him, with each other, and with the non-human creation. The character of this relation is found in the goodness, faithfulness and mercy of God the covenant partner. The direction of it is the divine promise, guidance and reconciling work. By this relationship, and not by any essence in ourselves, we are defined and redefined as human beings.

This covenant expresses itself by analogy in human community and in human responsibility for the non-creation around us. On this level, the limit which makes us human is the just claim on us of the other person, with whom we must live before God. The limit on our science and technology is the integrity of creation that demands to be fulfilled, not destroyed, in relationship with us. The New Testament called this relationship, as it drew in the created world and expressed itself in the production and exchange of goods and services, "oikonomia". The word means stewardship as it refers to human activity (1 Cor 9.17; Col 1.25). It means plan, as it describes the mind and purpose of God (Eph 1.10, 3.9). Neither translation is adequate; the fullness of the Greek word should not be divided. But the concept is basic. The steward in the gospels stood at the nexus between human and material relations. He was in charge of the estate on behalf of the master, though he owned none of it. The servants, the fields, the vineyards, and the finances, were under his care. The test of his stewardship was first of all in human relations (Lk 12.42-46), then in the management of the material estate, and lastly in finances (Lk 16.1-8) The apostle Paul went still further. A steward, he says, is responsible for the unsearchable riches of Christ, "to make all see (Greek 'to bring to light') the plan ('oikonomia') of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things" (Eph 3.9). No New Testament Christian could have interpreted this passage as a spiritualization of the stewardship function. It includes the management of the material estate, but within the context of the whole purpose of the primary economist: God. "The stewardship ('oikonomia') of Gods' grace" (Eph 3.2) which was given to Paul and to the whole church is to cultivate all the relationships of creation so as to change and be changed by God, one another, and the creation which surrounds us. This is its limits and its promise.

2. This already portends our second principle. Within the context of this covenant relationship, and only there, God has called human beings to have dominion over the animals, to make the earth subject and to bring forth its fruits. He calls us, as stewards, to transform creation. This is the charter of economic progress and creativity in Scripture. In facing the laws of nature we are not discovering something divine. but rather ways in which we may more faithfully respond to the one who reveals himself to us in the history which Scripture records. Nature has an historical meaning. It participates in the divine judgement and promise. Economics is the intelligent organization of creation in the light of its redemption and renewal. This scientific-technological calling with its economic consequences has three dimensions:

First, it affirms material wellbeing, even prosperity, as a blessing from God. Metaphysical dualism has never been a part of the Hebrew-Christian faith. Economic asceticism has been at best a subordinate theme, and where it has been practised its aim has been to enhance a proper appreciation of the material gifts of creation in their time and place. The Old Testament is filled with this material blessing. but it permeates the New Testament as well. There was "not a needy person" in the church as the book of Acts relates it (Acts 4.34). Paul speaks of the "blessing in abundance" that gives the church "enough of everything" that it may "provide in abundance for every good work" toward those in need (2 Cor 9.8-12). The blessing of God, also in Jesus Christ, has a material dimension.
Second, in the transformation of creation by the power of science, technology and economic organization, the guide of the process is the need and claim of the poor. The goal of the entire enterprise is to realize in all the relationships of humanity and nature a living response to the righteousness of God who continually reaches out for the deprived, the oppressed, the suffering, the sinful and the sinned-against, and brings them into the community of his grace. Its name is human justice. Its method is justification. It is an open-ended process which aims at bringing all people into the kind of covenant community which God intends in his kingdom.
This process too has a material dimension. "Blessed are you poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you that hunger no, for you shall be satisfied" (Lk 6.20-21). Or, from the promise of God to the chastened people of Israel: "Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickednes, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your houses; when you see the naked to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? Then shall your light break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up speedily; your righteousness shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard" (Is 58.6-9). The renewal of the earth and the empowerment of the poor are two sides of one calling inspired by one hope toward one community whose quality is mutual sharing in love.
Third, material prosperity in itself is a by-product, not the main objective, of science, technology and economics when they are pursued as divine calling. A sustainable community of justice and love, faithful to God within the conditions of creation, has absolute priority. Whenever the order is reversed, whenever the search for material wealth and security becomes primary, the result is idolatry. Material goods and technological power become a curse. In the Bible this is not just a pious warning but an operating principle. The Book of Deuteronomy drives it home in every chapter. Amos and Micah denounce commercial civilization, Isaiah and Jeremiah denounce military power and alliances, for this reason. Jesus drove the point home continually: his rebuke to the man who asked his help on an inheritance and the story which followed of the man who built many barns (Lk 12.13-21), his encounter with the rich young man and the lessons he drew from it about the danger of riches (Mk 10.19-27), his rejection of the calculating spirit in the case of the woman with the jar of costly ointment (Mk 14.3-9), his approval of the scheming steward (Lk 16.1-9)... one could multiply the examples. One can use "unrighteous mammon" but one cannot serve it and serve God as well.

This leads to the third principle: The people of God, in the Old Testament and the New, recognized that economic drives tend to destroy the covenant, to exploit and ruin nature, and to enslave human beings both poor and rich. They knew that mammon is a power in the world. It would not be straining exegesis to call it one of the principalities and powers against which Paul called Christians "to put on the whole armour of God" (Eph 6.12), which try to operate by their own laws in defiance of God, and yet are being subdued by Christ. It is no accident that the church through the centuries, down at least to the middle of the eighteenth showed a profound suspicion of the spirit of economic calculation, the profit motive, and the lust for power and wealth which characterize what we today call the "economic system". The problem of the human calling to bring forth the fruits of the earth and to bear witness to the economy of God, is to find ways of controlling and redirecting the spirit of mammon so that wealth and power may serve and not destroy human community in its created environment

Consequences for Christian action

How can this be done? Let me close with four suggestions.

The church can project a new vision of the promise of God for the transformation of the earth which will replace the goal of ever-expanding human wealth and power with which the world is obsessed. The direction of the promise of God is toward human community which includes the non-human creation, in which the limits which define us are creative opportunities, not fetters on human ambition. Self-denial for the neighbour in need is an investment in this new community, a small human reflection of the saving ministry of Christ's sacrifice for us all. Creative asceticism has always been part of the Christian tradition. It may now provide the guideline for redefining human goals and redirecting human power away from the self-destruction to which that power would otherwise lead.

The church can project a fuller and deeper understanding of public justice for a technological age than "the principles of individual rights or of peoples' solidarity which guide most contemporary thought and action. The key to this understanding is divine justification, which brings the sinner and those sinned against into a new relationship with one another. On the one side the public good, reflected in this relationship, has priority over private goods, general welfare over private property, human community over contract rights, planning for the whole society over the pull and haul of group and personal interests. On the other side, no such justice can be defined without the participation of the powerless and the poor, or without hearing and answering the cry of those who are hurt and excluded by policies conceived for the general good. Justice is a continuing process by which the laws and customs of society are made and reformed, but in which no one is justified save by the forgiveness and grace of God expressed in the grace of the neighbour, which makes community possible.

The church can create new lifestyles in its own community, but on behalf of society as a whole. Until Christ comes again, the church is always called to be the community in which the possibilities of the new humanity are in some way demonstrated beyond what is possible in the structures of law or the movements for change in the world as a whole. The church, therefore, needs to be a place of continual experiment with styles of life and ways of service which free human beings from the social imprisonment of a consumption-centered society and therefore from the grip of greed and exploitation. It needs to be a discerner of these lifestyles where they appear elsewhere in human society, in families, in neighbourhoods, in communities of human work, and in social and political movements. The new reality of human life governed by the risen Christ is a redeeming presence here and now in the midst of the powers of the old world. The church needs to be both witness and demonstrator of it.

The church can engage in the struggle to direct the structures of human wealth and power into the ways of justice, with a hope that is not based on the success of human management of human revolution. The promise of God does not stand or fall with the world's ability to control the arms race, or multinational corporations. It does not depend on the victory of liberation movements in their struggles against wealthy oppressors. It is not even identical with the establishment of a just, participatory and sustainable society. The new reality created by God in Jesus Christ demands actualization in all these and in other ways because it transcends, inspires, and at times overrides all human achievements. It is faith in this new reality that gives us courage and confidence to work for very relative political goals, for small improvements, reforms and revolutions without setting our total hope upon them, while we discern the judgement and therefore the promise of God even in the catastrophes which the world brings on itself. Christians are called to be the guardians of both hope and realism in the face of where human lust for wealth and power is taking us today, and to inspire secular movements for justice, with both.