JI research fellow Andrew M. McGinnis recently co-edited a special issue of Reformation & Renaissance Review: “Interconfessional Dialogues in Early-Modern Ethics and Economics.”
The issue features a contribution from McGinnis, “Charity and Commerce: Joseph Hall’s Reception of Catholic Casuistry and Economic Thought.” As McGinnis observes, Hall makes significant use of Roman Catholic casuistry in the development of his own treatise on conscience, Resolutions and Decisions of Divers Practicall Cases of Conscience. This shows that, in contrast to the claims of some of the scholarly literature on this question, “some English Protestants were not only reading Jesuit moral texts, but were willing to adapt and adopt ideas from their arch theological opponents.”
I have also co-authored a piece with Cornelis van der Kooi for this issue, “The Moral Status of Wealth Creation in Early-Modern Reformed Confessions.” In this piece we survey the exposition of the 8th commandment against theft, particularly as it is expounded positively, in a variety of Reformed confessional documents. We find that there is a generally positive evaluation of wealth creation in these texts, which although they are not absolutely uniform in their treatments, do present a broadly unified perspective. This piece is available via open access, and all of the contents of the issue are available digitally to subscribers.
