Theological ethics, particularly Christian theological ethics, is very well-equipped both to treat the interests and needs of future generations as a genuine and pressing concern – and also to evade some of the questions they pose about temporality, by appealing to judgement beyond history. Phenomenological approaches to the question of future generations are important as a counterbalance to this tendency in theological ethics, insofar as they force us to remain with, and wrestle with, the relation to future persons as future . In this article I show that drawing on phenomenological approaches, in order to attend to temporality, produces an account of justice and responsibility to future generations that is more adequate theologically, as well as ethically. Attending to how the other, the future and the imperative of justice interrelate yields an approach to theological ethics that does not need to assume for the ethicist the God’s-eye view – the view from outside time, narrative or interpersonal encounter – and that is thus able to grapple with the core questions raised by bringing future generations into ethics.

“The Poor Will Never Cease”: Theological Textual Configurations of Time, Responsibility and Justice

The Masoretic text of Prov 13:23 (רָב־ אֹ֭כֶל נִ֣יר רָא שִׁ֑ים וְ יֵ֥ש נִ֜סְפֶֶּ֗הבְלִ֣ א משְפָָּֽט) highlights the absence of mishpat (משְפָט) as the cause of the poverty of the poor. This article reads Prov 13:23 in conversation with the contemporary conceptualisation of economic poverty. The concept of mishpat (משְפָט) is theorised and hermeneutically applied to the issue of poverty in Africa. The key questions under investigation are: What is mishpat in the text and its context? How should mishpat be read in the African context? How does the biblical understanding of the poor and mishpat inform responses to Africa's poverty? In this study, the assumptions are that poverty in Africa is the result of both socio-economic and political injustices of the West and Africans themselves. Africans are agents of their own poverty. The study employs a hermeneutical and multidisciplinary approach, drawing examples from the social sciences.

https://doi.org/10.17159/2312-3621/2022/v35n2a10

Reading Proverbs 13:23 in Texts and Contexts of Poverty in Africa: A Theoretical Framework

This article presents an overview of scholarship related to the economy in Hebrew Bible studies, focusing particularly on scholarship published in the past decade (2013–2023). For the scholarship before this past decade, please see Nam’s excellent survey on the topic in Portrayals of Economic Exchange in the Book of Kings (2012: 17–70) and in ‘Economics and the Bible’ (2013). The article has three sections. The first explores recent discussions on various models proposed to understand the economic situation of the world behind the Hebrew Bible. The second outlines recent discussions on the components of production; namely, land access, labor relations, and the role of debt in connecting the two. The third and final section surveys scholarship on two interrelated elements responsible for the flow of resources: temple and royal administration. 

‘Who Gives You the Power to Get Wealth’: Economics and the Hebrew Bible in the Past Decade

This article analyzes poverty in its ancient Near Eastern and modern contexts. Based on the release laws and vision of a society without poverty in Deuteronomy 15, it traces the development of this...

Is the biblical perspective on poverty that “there shall be no poor among you” or “you will always have the poor with you”?:

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Is the biblical perspective on poverty that “there shall be no poor among you” or “you will always have the poor with you”?: