 I'd like to thank the Mises Institute and Joe Saleno for their very kind invitation. Also want to thank the Lew Church Foundation for its generous sponsorship. And certainly I want to thank Lew Rockwell, who has made it all possible. In my lecture today, I would like to attempt to demonstrate how Austrian economics is one of the blessings that God has given to mankind to assist in human flourishing. As such, the Hungarian economic tradition is actually a manifestation of what many reformed Protestant theologians call God's common grace. Additionally, it is my hope that I can effectively defend Austrian economics from certain charges leveled by a particular set of Christian critics, those who seem to reject Austrian economics root in branch for ideological reasons more than anything else. On the one hand, there are those professing Christians who criticize Austrian economics for being excessively logically rigorous, thereby abstracting too much from history. At the same time, one hears judgments against Austrian economics by Christians who do not want to accept our analysis as legitimate, seemingly because they think it is necessarily wedded to a political philosophy they find distasteful. They have questioned its analytical validity, implying that it's not scientific, as if Austrian economics is merely ideological prejudice for anarcho-capitalism masquerading as social science. Now, there are Austrian economists who are anarcho-capitalists. It should be noted, however, that there are also anarcho-capitalist economists who reject Austrian economics, and there are Austrian economists who are not or were not anarcho-capitalists. The name Ludwig von Mises comes to mind. You may have heard of him. In any event, dismissals of Austrian economics for these reasons miss the point. These critics fail to recognize that Austrian causal realist economics is what it is, a social science that is derived from realistic human action as the cause of all economic phenomena. As such, it can be drawn upon with confidence by those who desire to promote human flourishing. Austrian economics can therefore be seen as a channel of common grace. Now, before I continue, I should lay my presuppositional cards on the table. I am a theologically a conservative, reformed, Presbyterian Christian. I believe that the scriptures contained in the Old and New Testaments are the word of God. As such, they teach us what we are to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of us. They also teach us a lot about human nature. Several of the particulars in my argument will draw upon this reformed tradition. Necessarily, therefore, some of my lecture will no doubt include some inside baseball, so to speak. At the same time, I hope that those who do not share my faith nor my theological framework will still find the lecture a helpful exercise in demonstrating how Christians can better think about economics and why there is no necessary conflict between Christian thought and Austrian economic analysis. Now, in order to determine whether Austrian causal realist economics is a manifestation of common grace, it is helpful to define what common grace is. So the first question to consider is, what is common grace? Or, as they say on the street, common grace, what it is. Well, 20th century theologian John Murray defines common grace as, quote, every factor, whatever kind or degree, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God. It is clear, therefore, that common grace is different from what we would call saving grace. Saving grace is that grace which saves us from our sins. The apostle Paul tells us we are saved by grace through faith because we are dead in our sins. If we are to be saved, we must be made born again by the power of the Holy Spirit. God gives us this gift of repentance of sin and saving faith in Christ, our receiving and resting upon him alone for our salvation. God then bestows upon those who believe on Christ the forgiveness of sins, adoption into his family as God's sons and daughters, and sanctification, working in us so that we die more and more to sin and live more and more for Christ. Scripture teaches, on the other hand, that those who do not believe and rest on Christ remain under the wrath and curse of God and have no very bright, eternal future. Now, this raises additional questions. How is it that men who still lie under the wrath and curse of God because of their persistence in rejecting Christ as a redeemer enjoy so many good gifts at the hands of God? Why, indeed, do good things happen to bad people? How is it that men who are not savingly renewed by the Spirit of God nevertheless exhibit so many qualities, gifts, and accomplishments that promote the preservation, temporal happiness, cultural progress, social and economic improvement of themselves and others? How is it that such people also contribute so much to human civilization? In short, how is it that this sin-cursed world enjoys so much favor and kindness at the hand of its holy and ever-blessed creator? Or as William Denison puts it, the reformed world admits the obvious. The unbeliever maintains the two plus two equals four just as a believer does. How does this factual agreement fit into the biblical doctrine of sin and its effects? Well, one answer comes in the doctrine of common grace that was developed by reformed theologians such as John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, Charles Hodge, Archibald Alexander Hodge, Hermann Bovink, Abraham Kuiper, Cornelius Vantil, and others. It should be noted that not all of these thinkers are in complete agreement with one another, nor are they identical. Nevertheless, in their writing, we can identify a general theology of common grace. So what is the nature of this common grace as identified by the reformed tradition? It is common in the sense that the numerous blessings of God here spoken of are bestowed in a variety of ways upon our sin-cursed world, but which are not in themselves in their nature and effect saving people from their sins. The doctrine does not teach that each particular favor is given to all equally without discrimination or distinction, but rather the variety of favors are bestowed upon the unbeliever as well as the believer. Murray goes on to note that there are two sides of the common grace coin. The first is restraint, God's restraint. God's restraining sin, God's restraining his divine wrath, and God restraining evil in general. No one, whether a Christian or not, is as bad as they could be. We're not all physical murderers or rapists or what have you. Everyone is capable of more wickedness than they exhibit. At the same time, God does not immediately pour out the full measure of his punishment due to sin right away. He is actually long suffering. God also prevents the full disintegration of nature and the full disintegration of society that would be the full and necessary and natural consequences of sin. The other side of the common grace coin is God's bestowal of good to all his creatures. In Psalm 104, we find just one of the many passages in which God showers divine blessing on all of creation. Speaking of the Lord, the Psalmist declares, quote, you make springs gush forth in the valleys. They flow between the hills. They give drink to every beast of the field. The wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them, the birds of the heavens dwell. They sing among the branches. From your lofty abode, you water the mountains. The earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate. That he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man. Oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man's heart. The trees of the Lord are watered abundantly. The cedars of Lebanon that he planted. In them, the birds build their nests. The stork has her home in the fir trees. The high mountains are for the wild goats. The rocks are the refuge of the rock badgers. He made the moon to mark the seasons. The sun to know it's time for setting. You make the darkness and it's night when all the beasts of the forest creep about. The young lions roar for their prey seeking their food from God. When the sun rises, they steal away and lie down in their dens. Man goes out to do his work and to labor until the evening, end of quote. Now additionally, those humans who are in a rebellion against God in their heart, nevertheless also receive temporal divine favor and goodness. In Matthew chapter five and Luke chapter six, we read Jesus instructing his followers to love, pray for, do good to and be charitable toward their enemies. Not their friends, but their enemies. Why? Jesus says so his followers can be made sons of their heavenly father and imitate him. Christ reminds them that God makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust. He is kind even to the ungrateful and to the evil. Note also that relative good is attributed to unbelievers. Love as shown to fellow men and reciprocating good to one another is something that is practiced and attributed to to publicans, sinners and yes, even tax collectors. Even tax collectors are not as evil as they could be. As Jesus says in Matthew 646, quote, for if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same. Now this goodness and love by those outside of Christ is not enough to earn them acceptance by our holy God, but it nonetheless is called good. Now the scripture likewise teaches that those in rebellion against God can also do much to advance civilization. Hence chapter four of Genesis is instructive. It includes a list of the descendants of Cain, a line of people in rebellion against God. As Gerhardus Vos notes in his book, Biblical Theology, the wickedness progresses until we have lamech singing an anthem of arrogant vengeance to his having murdered someone. A sort of raising of the musical fist against his creator. Nevertheless, his various offspring are personally identified as those who developed cattle ranching, musical culture and metallurgy. And there's no condemnation of those activities because of their father's sin. Now John Murray then sums up common grace as follows, quote, the world as a whole, though subject to the curse incident to sin, receives the showers of manifold blessing, that men who still lie under the divine condemnation of sin, including even those who will finally suffer the full weight of that condemnation and perdition are the recipients in this life of multiple favors that proceed from God's loving kindness. That of unregenerate men is predicated moral good that externally or formally is that required by the law of God. So that viewing God's government of this world even from the aspect of his common or non-saving grace, we may say the earth is full of the glory of the Lord and all the peoples see his glory. Now, what does all of this have to do with Austrian economics? I can imagine many of you are asking. Well, it is my argument that the knowledge of true economic law is like mental reign that falls on the just and the unjust and the rays of intellectual sunshine that God causes to enlighten and warm the evil and the good. I certainly hope that economic principles can be discovered, written about and taught by Christians. If not, people like Jeff Herbner, Bob Murphy, Tim Terrell and myself would be in big trouble. At the same time, it is clear, absolutely clear that brilliant economics has been elucidated by people like Manger, Bumbavrik and Mises, and none of whom, as far as I know, explicitly professed faith in Christ. A good example of this phenomena is the theory of economic prosperity developed by Mises and his followers in the Mangerian tradition. Now, I'm well aware that economic development theory did not originate, nor was it contributed to solely by Austrian economists. However, in my research, it has become apparent to me that Mises and his followers did develop a distinct theory of economic progress that is both more realistic and more theoretically rich than other known alternatives. For Christians, economic thought, as it relates to human flourishing, should be important because the very first chapter of Genesis we find in the very first chapter of Genesis that God placed us in a teleological universe. God made all things for a purpose and gave man the first commandment to be fruitful and multiply and have dominion over the earth. We are now called to do this, however, in our present fallen and finite world. Since our banishment from the Garden of Eden, man has faced a central cultural dilemma. How do we fulfill God's creation mandate in a world of aggravated scarcity without either killing one another or starving to death? This is not at all a mood point. This is not something that just is answered sort of automatically. Whether they know it or not, different societies seek to answer this question with every change in their economic institutions and economic policies. And history is full of stark examples revealing different attempts to solve our dilemma. And some of them have, that these different attempts have resulted in wildly different consequences. According to the book, Lenin's Terror by James Ryan, Lenin's experiment with hardcore socialism from 1918 through 1921 left as many as 5 million dead, many from starvation. There's no way to run an economic railroad. Economic theory rooted in an understanding of man as a rational actor, teaches that to avoid such disasters and rather enjoy the blessings of prosperity, we must take advantage of the division of labor, capital accumulation, technological advance, and entrepreneurship. And these pillars of economic progress require social maintenance of private property rights. Now, as I mentioned before, the Christian understands that even before the fall of man, God gave our first parents the mandate to be fruitful and multiply, to replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over every living thing that moves on the earth. Now, this mandate requires action. It requires filling. It requires procreation. It requires working. And this working requires making concrete changes in the created order. It means tilling the ground. It means building buildings. It means establishing homes. It means creating things like music, musical compositions, writing books. It requires cutting down trees to make paper upon which the words other books are printed. It also requires ruling creation and also keeping creation. It requires us doing this in a wise way. So fulfilling this mandate requires wise balance. It is possible that we rashly try to draw too much from creation too quickly. We make changes too abruptly or do so without replenishing the earth. We can also err, however, on the other extreme and act as if nature is our museum and we are its curator. If we do that, we advocate our calling to develop what is both beautiful and useful in creation. And instead, adopt the attitude of MC Hammer. Can't touch this. Now, in light of the cultural mandate and the nature of the cursed ground, two questions come to the forefront. How do we develop creation wisely? How do we fill the earth with people growing the population, working and ruling without starving to death or killing one another? How do we do this without descending into a barbaric struggle for survival? Now, it should be apparent that multiplying the population and subduing and exercising dominion over the earth requires economic progress. It obviously requires survival and each person developing their potential and it requires the development of the potential of the natural order. Massessian economic theory identifies four contributors to economic progress, the division of labor, capital accumulation, technological innovation and entrepreneurship. The division of labor according to Massess is the fundamental social phenomenon. It opens the door to increased productivity by allowing people to specialize at lines of production where they are the most efficient. This increased productivity results in higher real incomes for society in general. However, people can only benefit from the division of labor if they are free to exchange the goods that they produce. Likewise, the use of capital goods contribute to economic progress by increasing the productivity of the user. However, before capital goods can be used, they must first be produced. In order to accumulate capital, people must be willing to put off present consumption so that they'll have resources available to invest in the production of capital goods. Now the lower people's time preferences are, the more they will save and invest, accumulating more capital goods resulting in increased productivity, incomes and wealth. Likewise, with more capital investment comes better technology that will further increase productivity. Now in order for economic progress to continue over time, however, it is important not to waste capital that has already been accumulated. And that is why entrepreneurship is the fourth major contributor to economic development. Waste is possible because production decisions in the present are based on a forecast of uncertain future market conditions. If the producer forecasts incorrectly, he will use his capital making something that people don't want. Or at least they don't want enough to be willing to pay a price high enough to cover the cost of production. That entrepreneur will be a loser and that is no way to make America great again. Entrepreneurs therefore need to use economic calculation if they are to direct factors of production toward their most highly valued uses. Market prices allow entrepreneurs to make meaningful comparisons of social value between consumer and producer goods because money prices are all expressed in terms of the same good. These same objective prices are determined by the subjective preferences of buyers and sellers. If the expected price of a final product is greater than the sum of the prices of factors of production, the entrepreneur will produce that good. And if the entrepreneurs are forecasting correctly, they will reap a profit. And when they reap a profit, they do so precisely by providing those goods that people value the most in the least costly manner. Now, one crucial insight we receive from Austrian theory is that we cannot neatly sever components responsible for economic expansion from one another and find a single key, one key that explains all of economic progress. A highly developed division of labor, for example, would be impossible without the accumulation and use of capital goods. Likewise, the entrepreneur must invest real capital in the production process. And if he errs in his market forecast, he can indeed reap large losses. At the same time, capital per se never guarantees economic progress either because it must be wisely utilized. Economic prosperity, therefore, is the happy consequence of a highly developed division of labor taken advantage of an increasing, more technologically advanced capital stock, wisely invested by entrepreneurs. Consequently, if we want society to benefit from economic expansion, we need social institutions that foster the development of the division of labor, the accumulation of capital, and successful entrepreneurship. Searching for a common condition that is necessary for all of the above to function, we find that all require the institution of private property. Because it is voluntary exchange that makes the development of the division of labor possible, we will benefit from the division of labor only if dwelling in a society with institutions supporting voluntary trade. We can only engage in exchange in an environment of private property. One cannot trade what they do not own. Therefore, in order to take advantage of the division of labor and benefit from the economic development that flows from it, members of society must be secure in their property. Likewise, for capitalists to have the incentive to accumulate capital, they must be secure in their property as well. If, for example, the state enforces confiscatory taxation, capital accumulation is hindered because taxes reduce net incomes. So capitals will have less money to save, less money to invest. The capital stock will be relatively smaller and society will be relatively impoverished. Additionally, capitalists have less incentive to save and invest in the face of increased confiscatory taxation because they are therefore guaranteed a smaller return on their investment. The entrepreneurs need for monetary prices, monetary market prices in order to calculate profit and loss also points to the necessity of private property for entrepreneurship. Only voluntary prices are manifestations of the subjective values of the buyers and sellers in society. Again, voluntary exchange requires private property and without voluntary exchange, there can be neither money nor market prices. Without economic calculation, those directing the allocation of factors of production have no way to know how to allocate them wisely. Capital is consumed and standards of living fall. A corollary of security of private property is security in general for the division of labor to develop and extend, society must enjoy peace. As Mises says, quote, the market economy involves peaceful cooperation. It bursts us under when the citizens turn into warriors instead of exchanging commodities and services fight one another, end of quote. So the division of labor is able to develop only because its participants expect lasting peace and the ability to exchange that goes along with such peace. Conflict destroys the division of labor because it forces each group to consume only what it produces. So Christians understand that God told our first parents to be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it and have dominion over every living creature. The only way to cultivate and fill the earth without descending into a barbaric struggle for survival is to take advantage of the social division of labor, capital accumulation, technical innovation and wise entrepreneurship. As Mises says towards the end of the ultimate foundation of economic science, quote, what is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups or classes of the savers, the scientists, inventors, investors and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy so far as it is not sabotaged by the endeavors of the non-progressive majority of the rootinists and the public policies supported by them. By the way, here when Mises is talking about the three progressive groups, he means the groups that result in economic progress in a society, not political leftists. It's not the progressive, those people he actually refers to as retrogressives, the people who wanna go back to the Stone Age. In any event, allowing these sources of economic progress to flourish requires the security provided by peace in private property. Such are the blessings we glean from appropriately applying the economics of the Hungarian tradition. Any Christian who cares about human flourishing who prefers life to death, prosperity to starvation and civilization to wretchedness dare not ignore economic truth. Now, while it seems clear that these principles can indeed be understand as God's common blessing on the general population, one strain of common grace thinking provides a warning to us. William Denison, professor of interdisciplinary studies at Covenant College, draws upon the thinking of Cornelius Vantil, arguing that while identifying and often building upon common grace insights, Christians should not forget the antithesis between those who have been adopted into God's family and those who have not. Now, as I've mentioned before, it's absurd to think that two plus two equals four for the believer, but not for the nonbeliever. Rather, the facts are the same. And Denison acknowledges this. However, he notes that Vantil argues, and he does too, that the ultimate meaning and implication of the fact is different. And we should only accept a proposition as a common grace insight if it is in accord with how God interprets creation. Now, I am somewhat sympathetic with this perspective. I do think we need to be careful not to take anything from just any rank historicist or positivists or mere rationalists, sprinkle some holy water on it and call it good. So what are we to do? Denison argues that the way to avoid allowing common grace thinking to annihilate Christian distinctives is to make sure one's intellectual endeavors in drawing out the general revelation of creation is in alignment with the special revelation given in the scriptures. An implication for economics is that its foundation should not be in conflict with the biblical view of man and creation. And we will find indeed that there is no ultimate conflict between Christian doctrine and good economics to begin with. Scripture affirms that there are scientific laws we can discover. One should not even do science or one could not even do science, social or otherwise, if there are no laws to discover. We find in the Bible, however, that God created and sustains an orderly universe. The first verse in the Bible tells us in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In Colossians 1, 16 and 17, we read that by Christ, quote, all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things and in him all things hold together. Now the phrase hold together here means that it continues and coheres. Christ actively upholds the universe so that it is not a chaos, but a cosmos. Furthermore, the universe is one with purpose and order. In Genesis 1, 14 to 15, we read, quote, and God said, let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth. And it was so. So God made the sun, moon and stars for a purpose to serve as signs and to regularly mark off seasons, days and years and to give light upon the earth. Now they can only mark off, they can only serve as signs. They can only serve to mark off days and seasons and years if there is regular movement in the heavenly bodies. Additionally, God tells us in Genesis 1 that he made all living creatures according to their kind. In Genesis 1, 25, we read, quote, and God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. So the writer of Genesis clearly wanted to emphasize that one of the hallmarks of creation is order. Stanley Jackie, the Roman Catholic philosopher of science insightfully notes in his book, The Savior of Science, that God uses the regularity of nature as evidence so we can trust him that he'll fulfill his covenants. For example, Jeremiah 30, verses 20 to 21 says, Thus says the Lord, if you can break my covenant with the day and my covenant with the night so that day and night will not come in their appointed time, then also my covenant with David, my servant will be broken so that he shall not have a son to reign on his throne and my covenant with the levitical priests, my ministers. Now God here is not saying that keeping his covenant sort of up in the air. Will God do it or will he not? I don't know. No, it is as certain as night following day. In fact, God through the prophet Jeremiah says that the recurrence of night and day is also his covenant. It's something he's committed to. It's described additionally as a natural law that it's transcended above man. Likewise in Psalm 89, we read, Once for all I have sworn by my holiness, I will not lie to David. His offspring shall endure forever, his throne as long as the sun before me. Like the moon, it shall be established forever, a faithful witness in the skies. God is saying that his covenant is as certain as the regular appearance of the sun and the moon. The conclusion is clear. There are scientific regularities in creation out there for us to discover. Scripture also reveals that God created man with the mental ability to discover these created regularities. This is because God made man in his image. Christians understand the image of God to mean God's likeness. God, man is God's replica on the earth. And because all humans bear the Amago day, we can know something about ourselves by knowing God's communicable attributes. So what does Scripture tell us about God that is relevant for our ability to engage in science? Well, in the first place, God thinks. Isaiah 55, eight and nine tells us that his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. So he has thoughts. Jeremiah 29, 11 tells us that God thinks thoughts of peace towards his people. God also reveals himself to be rational. He says in Isaiah 118, come now, let us reason together, says the Lord. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall become wool. God calls us to dialogue reasonably with him. Scripture also teaches that God is omniscient. He knows all things. Everything and everybody is naked before his sight. As a being created in God's image, man possesses mental faculties that he can use to know some things. So part of the image of God then is our ability to think. And as theologian Charles Hodge notes, in the Scriptures, God reveals himself to be a spirit. And the essential attributes of a spirit are reason, conscious, and will. Reason, conscience, and will. Part of the image of God therefore is our cognitive faculties. God fit us with minds that reflect his image and with our minds we are able to perceive reality because the same creator who made the world so that it harmonizes with the structure of our minds. Now we wanna be careful here. We humans are finite, so we don't know exhaustive knowledge and we also suffer from the consequences of the fall. We make mistakes. We can be led astray by our own biases or our sinful selfish desires. Nevertheless, because God created us in his image, because God created us in his image, we can undertake science in spite of the fall and our finiteness. We still have the ability to use our cognitive faculties to discover scientific laws that are there to be discovered. Now this is relevant for economics because economics is a social science. All economic phenomena we know to be the result of the actions of human beings. Good economics must therefore have a good understanding of the nature of man. As such, Christians who care about the truth of economics see that Christian anthropology is essential for the right understanding of economics. Suppose someone pronounces on the imposition of steel tariffs. Economic policy prescriptions are truth claims. If someone says that erecting trade barriers will benefit Americans or that it is wise and proper to increase the monetary base by $293 billion over the last year alone, they're making truth claims based on our understanding of how the economic world works. Sound economic policy, it turns out, is dependent on sound economic theory. One's economic theory is dependent upon one's conception of human action. Our understanding of human action is likewise dependent upon our understanding of human nature. To the extent that we have a faulty understanding of man, we will have a faulty understanding of human action and therefore a faulty understanding of economic theory and therefore, destructive advice for economic policy. Now, the Christian view of man as a divine image bearer is again helpful here. We've already seen that God thinks and reasons. Scripture also reveals that he plans as well. In Ephesians 1, 4 to 6, the apostle Paul writes, quote, even as he, God, chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, that we should be wholly and blameless before him. In love, he predestined us for adoption of sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the beloved, end quote. So God chose to save his people before the foundation of the world. God also reveals himself to be one who acts with a purpose. In the first chapter of Genesis alone, we read that God acted in many, many ways. The text says that he created three times. God said 10 times. God saw seven times. God divided one time. God called three times. God made three times. God said something in place one time. God blessed two times. We read that the spirit of God moved one time, called two times, and created one time. These are all action verbs. Furthermore, the Bible describes the actions of God in the framework of choice. Isaiah 14-1 is only one verse among many that explains that God shows Israel as his people from all possible alternative nations. Moreover, we have already seen the account of the creation of the sun, moon, and stars that when God acted to make them, he did so with a purpose. God created these heavenly bodies with specific ends in mind. We see therefore that God thinks, reasons, plans, and acts with a purpose. As beings made in God's image, we likewise think, reason, and act. We engage in purposeful behavior. This is what distinguishes economics from other sciences. We are not inanimate objects that merely react to stimuli. We are not merely biological organisms driven by instincts and primal urges. We humans use our reason and act with volition. We select ends we want to pursue as well as the means we think are best suited to achieve those ends. Now, because a Christian understands that acting as part of our nature as beings made in the image of God, all human beings engage in action. The premise that humans act serves therefore as the foundation for universal economic laws. A biblical understanding of man therefore points us to the foundations of economic analysis. The same foundations of economic analysis identified by the Austrians. And far from being a dismal science, economics built on the premise of realistic human action is an exercise in joy. Think again of the beauty of the market price system that allows for the generally beneficial coordination of the vast decentralized market division of labor. How the varied and even conflicting interests of the multitudes are harmonized in such a way that the scarce resources we have been given are used in their most productive, least wasteful way. Beginning with the reality of human action, we can derive the law of marginal utility upon which the laws of demand and supply are built culminating in market price theory. The beauty of the market price system is that each price is mutually agreed upon by both the buyers and sellers who participate in the exchanges. As such, it is a voluntary price. No buyers are forced to buy when they do not want to buy. No sellers are forced to sell when they do not want to sell. Nor is anyone prohibited for buying or selling for that matter. No one gets sent to the gulag. No one's church gets burnt down. No one's spouses get shot. No one's embassy gets bombed accidentally on purpose, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Every act to buy or not buy, every act to sell or not sell is voluntary and peaceful. Now, because free market prices are the results of free actions of people motivated by their subjective preferences, the prices that are arrived at via voluntary exchange are also prices that result in the most satisfied preferences. Additionally, remember that in a free market, entrepreneurs use these market prices to calculate the expected profits and losses of potential investments. They do so by comparing the prices they expect to receive from the prices of the products that, of the factors of production. If the price of the final product is high enough to cover all the costs, as we've noted, the entrepreneur makes a profit. Notice further, however, and this is the beauty of it, that because the prices of the goods are determined by supply and demand, which in turn are manifestations of people's subjective preferences. Entrepreneurs who produce goods that they can sell at a profitable price earn profits precisely by providing the goods that people in society actually want. It is the joy and the privilege of the economist to revel in this beauty. It is also the responsibility of the economist to lovingly speak truth to those who may not have ears to hear. For example, as Mises wrote in his essay, economics is a bridge to interhuman understanding, quote, economics is called inhuman because it shows what the inextricable consequences are of protecting less efficient producers against the more efficient and by preserving by various means outstripped modes of production. However, the economists do not say thou shalt wear rayon in nylon stockings and thus hurt the cotton growers. It is the consumers who prefer rayon in nylon goods and thus restrict their demand for cotton. Neither does the economist say, quote, thou shalt not subsidize sub-marginal cotton growers, i.e. those for whom producing does not pay at the lowest market price of cotton. The economists merely point out on whom the burden of such subsidies fall and what the social consequences of generally espousing the policy of such subsidies must be. They dispel the fallacious belief that these subsidies could be granted by the state without any burden to the citizens and without lowering the productivity of labor and the general standard of living. If to say this is inhuman, then so is every expression of truth, end of quote. Reaffirming a similar point in his magnum opus, Human Action, Mises notes that whether we like it or not, economic law constrains what can and cannot be done if we wish to foster a humane society. He writes, quote, a society that chooses between capitalism and socialism does not choose between two social systems. It chooses between social cooperation and the disintegration of society. Socialism is not an alternative to capitalism. It is an alternative to any system under which men can live as human beings. To stress this point is the task of economics as it is the task of biology and chemistry to teach that potassium cyanide is not a nutriment but a deadly poison, end of quote. Such statements are not the assertions of ideology. They are the conclusions following careful economic analysis and that analysis is rooted in an understanding of human action that is congruent with the biblical view of man and creation. The implication of all this is clear. Austrian economics is a great contribution that has and continues to promote the general good. Economics in the causal realist tradition as if human action matters serves as a sure guide for the explanation of how market economies work and for the analysis of economic policy and comparative economic systems. The principles discovered by Austrian economists are common grace insights. The blessings from implementing its policy implications are enjoyed by all people in general. As such, Austrian economics can rightly be viewed as a manifestation of God's common grace. Additionally, because economics in the necessity and tradition is built upon the view of man as a purposeful actor, accords with the biblical view of man, Christians should recognize that there is no ultimate conflict between Christian doctrine and Austrian economics. Because the God who inspired the scriptures is the same God who created the social regularities we call economic laws, they are fully consistent with one another. As the past decade teaches us, trying to achieve permanent prosperity by ignoring the economic laws that God has created is a fool's game. Such an understanding by Christians should promote the contemplation of the beautiful way that various interests of vast numbers of people can harmonize in peacefully fulfilling the cultural mandate. And such contemplation should in turn call forth doxology. As the psalmist says, all your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you.