The Stewardship of Wealth: Successful Private Wealth Management for Investors and Their Advisors, + Website

The Ancients

The more men value moneymaking, the less they value virtue.

—Plato, Republic (quoting Socrates)

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

—Jesus, Sermon on the Mount

We could go on and on with anticapitalist quotes from the ancients (“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven,” etc.) From Greek and Roman times through the late Middle Ages, the world was burdened by the notion that whatever wealth existed was fixed and immutable. Only in heaven could riches be created anew, and then only by God Himself. Therefore, if one man enriched himself, another man must inescapably become poorer. In such a world any sort of market activity would naturally be considered immoral:¹ “Si unus non perdit, alter non acquirit.”²

By the twelfth century, however, modern-style cities had begun to appear, commerce began to thrive, and even a hidebound Church hierarchy could not fail to notice the dramatic improvement in the condition of men. The Church was thus faced with a serious dilemma. On the one hand, commercial activity was clearly a profound social good. On the other hand, all the Church's founding documents and theories—written when the world was a more static place—had heaped scorn on this very activity. Thus began a slow and careful “reinterpretation” of Church gospel, led by such thinkers as Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas and other Scholastics marshaled ...