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In his celebrated Essay on Population, Thomas Malthus raised the puzzle of why a benevolent Creator would permit material scarcity in human existence. Albino Barrera revisits this question using Thomas Aquinas’s metaphysics of participation and Sacred Scripture’s invitation to covenant fidelity and kingdom discipleship as analytical lenses with which to examine the seeming incongruity of scarcity in God’s providence. Barrera concludes that scarcity turns out to be a signal opportunity for economic agency to receive, internalize, and communicate God’s goodness and righteousness within the human community.
Written for theologians, philosophers, social scientists, and policymakers interested in the theological and philosophical foundations of economics, this study argues that precarious, subsistence living is not an immutable law of nature. Rather, such a chronic, dismal condition reflects personal and collective moral failure. In this carefully researched study, Barrera argues that scarcity serves as an occasion for God to provide for us through each other and that there are strong metaphysical and scriptural warrants for enacting progressive social policies for a better sharing of the goods of the earth.
“. . . reports a great deal of recent biblical scholarship . . . my summary of Fr. Barrera's argument must fail to do justice to its many virtues. Part II is scholarly, thorough, and 'catholic' in the best and truest sense of that much-contested world.” —Faith and Economics
Albino Barrera, O.P., is professor of humanities at Providence College, where he teaches theology and economics.