Since Adam Smith, modern rational economics insists that optimum is achieved by exchanges of independent decision makers on organized markets, which implies the capacity of participants to cooperate in the making of the economic ordersomething that (political and game) theory show to be logically impossible. Human experience supports the view that only second best solutions are available. This article shows that Christs message of laying down your life for your co-contractant empowers Christians to remedy the contradictions at the heart of human irrationality, thus continuously prompting the emergence of improved exchange systems. Nonbelievers and Christians are thus united in the pursuit of the objective of creating superior exchange orders, but Christians must demonstrate by their continued capacity to come forward that Christs message remains the motor of progress and the core of rationality.
Francis Woehrling, "Toward a Theology of Economics: Arresting Congenital Scarcity by Developing Exchanges," Journal of Markets & Morality 6, no. 2 (Fall 2003): 409-431