 
                           19990512.01

     I acknowledge the insolence implicit in my request that you
lend me your copy of "God the Economist" when we next meet, for
the reason that I am interested, but don't want necessarily to
add the book to my collection and don't want to take the time to
negotiate for it with some library.

     Not having read the book, however, hardly inhibits me from
thinking about its theme. The title itself "God the Economist"
implies that God is a person, a thesis which to my mind at least
urgently requires the antithesis of God as pneuma; and the
essential task of the exposition would be the controversion of
that thesis: the insight that to denominate God as an economist
is profanity if not indeed sacrilege.  My first question would be
whether the author recognized the dubiousness (Fragwuerdigkeit)
of his thesis.

     To my mind at least, the economic phenomena with which the
Biblical chronicles are replete effectively refute any thesis to
the effect that God _is_  a person, and refute, by extension, any
thesis that God should be an economist, in asmuch as an
economist, whatever else he or she might be, must be a person.

     If economics is the science of scarcity, then God created
the grounds for economics with the creation of the world, its
plants and its animals, exemplified within the bondaries of the
Garden of Eden; God created scarcity, the fact of economics, with
the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden, "Im Schweisze
deines Angesichts sollst du dein Brot verdienen" concomitant one
might add with his creation of pathologic physiology in general
and obstetrics in particular.  Why did God do this? If he is all
powerful? The issue of theodicee, the chain of questions leads
nowhere.

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