Ethics (philosophically and theologically) is set over and above the various areas of life. A one-way pattern of social-ethical judgements, or in the individual sphere, conscience, may correspond to the traditional understanding of the moral function of the church (cf. Galileo). However, such a pattern in no way corresponds to the self-understanding of modern, or post-modern people. Instead, maturity is important, freedom is to be recognized and protected, and these alone can be the place and condition of responsibility.

In contrast to this, the popular enlightenment model

The separation/subordination of ethics (the "two-worlds" model). Christian ethics, which witnesses in the foundation of its faith to the divine ordinance of human beings to freedom, to the assurance of their acceptance and the demands of the whole of their life, could never be satisfied with the total separation of individual areas of life (eg economics, politics) from any ethical responsibility simply because they appear to have their own ethical rules ("autopoiosis").

The relational model of integrative ethics

Contemporary ethics is understood to be methodical questioning, systematic searching for criteria of ethical judgements and for definitives in the form of simultaneously normative and descriptive markers determining actions. In doing this, the individual ethics of an area are respected, but claims of relevance are not just abstractly claimed or negated, but taken in context and thereby made concrete in a more relative sense.

Fundamental decision - criteria - markers for action: degrees of normativity

During the process of communicative transmission of norms and factuality in the determining of the ethical orienting of actions it is necessary to differentiate between various degrees of normativity or validity. I will put these into three levels:

The first level of normativity aims at the personal, basically confessional moral position (which constantly needs to be re-affirmed in arguments): the fundamental decision.

For Christians, and therefore for churches as their communities, it is inevitable in the light of their existence in the responsibility to God that they face the ethical demands presented to them in the knowledge that they might fail, but also in the knowledge that failure is permitted. The guiding principle for this comes from the gospel: to commit themselves to the interests of the socially weak and poor.

The second level of normativity concerns the criteria or basic orientation for an ethical existence. This is always characterized by transcending the interests of self towards the interests of the Other, the neighbour, the community. Correspondingly, the criteria for ethical orientation are to be applied universally. This ethical, basic orientation constantly needs to be kept alive in ethical discussion. I will set the following criteria as regulatory points:

Humanity as a creation of God and all other parts of God's creation: in this instance the focus of ethical reflection is the Other and the environment in the sense that they are a part of God's creation.
Freedom as a freedom to decide and to act defines humanity. Simultaneously, this is the basis for responsibility in society and the demands on me (us) to guarantee the same freedom for all others.
Justice as an expression of ontological equality in relation to creation.
Participation is the active and passive part played in the cultural, social and economic life in the local, regional and global context.
Development is a normative expression and describes the improvement of living circumstances (as a dynamization of the static right to a minimal living).

Solidarity summarizes the determining norms of freedom and justice, participation and development into the givenness of the fact that everything is a part of creation. It points towards the necessity of "being together" and "interdependence".

The third normative level is the interaction of the normative validity of criteria and aims with the factuality of the relevant area of concern (politics, economics etc.). This happens through making them concrete for a particular situation in society. The results are relative markers determining actions that are relevant to their context (maxims, postulates).

Morality and the marketplace The question of socioethical criteria for economic activity

In my experience it is very difficult to talk about "the market" or the concept of "the market economy". It is noticeable that I experience this more often and in a stronger form when I am in conversation with theologians and with church people or laity who are familiar with theological-moral language. Primary, pre-reflective and pre-analytical criticisms point to (economic) problems and observed injustices as being the direct responsibility of "the market economy". In addition, newer theological approaches - I'm thinking here of political theology and liberation theology (thought patterns which have an inner connection to social-ethical involvement) - do not necessarily show themselves to be absolved of an impartial, unbiased methodology when dealing with economics in general and market economy in particular.

The problems and injustices in connection with market economics are by no means to be disregarded or underestimated. However, it appears to me to be important to relativize scepticism of "the market" so that an insight into the positive functions of markets can be encouraged, and so that the real reasons for economic injustices can be brought to light.

Markets, market economics: the unknown - theoretical constructs and contradictory reality

In conversations about economic problems, the terms "market" and "market economy" are often used in a very colourful way.

I claim that: we are not living in a "market economy" or in a system that is determined just by market economics. However, we most certainly do live in a mixed economic system.

Only a part of our economic reality is ordered through market relationships - other areas are defined through other control systems (production, distribution and consumption). In addition, economic society is defined not just through various economic models (e.g. market), but also through relationships between systems throughout society, and in particular, through the political and legal order or system. Concrete forms of economic models are always multifaceted and lie somewhere between the two poles of decentralized and centrally controlled sequences of events. Economics can therefore only be thought of as an area of activity contained within the political and cultural system.

The economic and ethical question therefore points to, amongst others, the question of what kind of "mix" is better (this in the sense of a preference, not of a clear-cut yes/no). The question about the optimal "mix" can only be answered once the following basic questions have been decided by each economic society:

What is to be produced? How much? When? This includes the question: why? (production)
How should the goods and services be produced? By whom? Using which resources and technologies? (technology and organization)
For whom should this production take place? Who will benefit? The poor or the rich; the able or the weak? (distribution)

What Does this Mean, "Economics", "Market" and "Price"?

Insofar as societal market economics has solved the co-ordination problem between production, demand (insofar as need is effective) and the investment of performance and pricing systems more efficiently and smoothly than other economic methods, it must, in terms of an ethical judgement, be accorded an important advantage - market and pricing systems really do produce a "fair sharing out". Human and historical preconditions, ethical and moral baselines of human activity and particular political prerequisites and systems are all a foundation for a satisfactory functioning of a market economy. Therefore, neither condemnation nor glorification/idolization of the market are adequate ethical judgements, but rather an illustrating of the moral and ethical limits of the market and the preconditions of its functioning to serve humanity,. Because of this, ethics to do with economics must primarily be political ethics, for it is in this sphere that the place of the market economy is decided.

Four conditions for a successful market economy (following Adam Smith)

(1) Personal ethos

The (individual or personal) ethos of sympathy or liking is the first condition: the human ability to empathize with others.

(2) General socioethical norms

However, because the "arrogance of self-love" has to be taken into account as well, there is also a need for general ethical rules, criteria or counterbalances (in some sense a critical collective ethos)

(3) State laws

The larger the society in question becomes, the more diminished the moral coherence and the society's binding norms/nature. In order to prevent violations of justice against such norms, society (and within society, the individual) needs "positive laws" of the state.

(4) Economic competition

Over and above this, free, decentralized economic activity is to be woven into the functioning economic competition of the "anonymous" (and therefore "impartial") participants in the market economy. A critical distance to help prevent arbitrary privileges is thereby created between people.

Deficiencies of the market - limits of the market economy.

It is necessary to optimize the inherent deficiencies of the result of market economic processes if the processes, and therefore their spirit, are to be ethically-socially approved of. The following problems can be identified:

External costs are individual, and especially societal disadvantages of (private/individual) economic production which are not included in company accounts and which are not accounted for in market prices.
Public goods (i.e. goods which are not exclusively for private use or which may involve a third party in the consumption phase) may not be produced by the market economy because of a lack of private economic stimulation. However, the converse may also be true: it may tend towards thoughtless consumption because price is not an indicator of shortage.
Markets function under conditions which result in large losses in comparison to a simple theoretical model (information and transaction costs). Companies and firms which grow ever larger are explainable in these terms, but their existence contradicts an essential of a ideal-theoretical market because in a firm, trade transactions are replaced with "bureaucracy" i.e. are removed from the market. In this way, a large section of world trade is carried out within (multi-national) corporations for which the system of free market economic pricing mechanisms does not hold entirely true.
If the precondition of seeing equal possibilities for all people as the equal possibility of all people to cover the demand is not realized, then the demand in a market economy is not the same as the need. To aim for "wealth" (spending power as wealth and income) highlights an obvious inequality within a society, even more so in West-East and North-South relationships.
The failure of the market is not only visible in the national economy, but especially in international economic relationships, and in particular in the economic imbalance between North and South. On the one hand, competition in the market economic system is incomplete and asymmetrically realized. On the other hand, the "social foundation" which I have described as essential for every market system is missing: the "guidelines" as are broadly found in the social market systems of the industrialized countries through their law and order, economic, social and environmental politics.

If market economics is to correspond to the purpose of economics as producing and distributing results that are in demand, then this deficiency must be compensated through "order", "order" through responsible personal and company actions, through frameworks and policies. Economic ethics must therefore be "structural ethics" in a broad sense and therefore also "political ethics".

The theological-ethical "purpose" of the market

Economic understanding of humanity is based on a sceptical empirical understanding of humanity:

With surprising regularity (empirically proven) human beings are always concerned (not just, but at least) about their own position and advantage.

However, it is not necessary for the economy to reduce real individuals to simply seeking their own advantage/egotism:

the "homo oeconomicus" who rationally maximizes his/her own advantage is an empirical reality - people really do act like this (whether, from a moral point of view, we like that/approve of that or not). However, they do not act just like this:
this is not a complete philosophical figure/character or normative model for "ideal rationality"
they are the result of an (empirical) partial view: humans are not economically determined, they have freedom over their preferences and their preferences can be more than an individual calculation of advantage. However, how they decide and how they follow their preferences determines their empirical reality.

they are therefore also a part of a rationality which explicitly does not exclude human goodwill.

In my opinion, such an empirical and sceptical understanding of humanity can be received in Christian theology, because Christian faith does not claim and does not have to demand that the (general and in particular the converted) person renounces self-love and turns to love of the Other, or altruism. No, it is precisely the Bible that does not expect faith for the "ideal" person who is complete in themselves, but rather for people as individuals or as nations and races that need reconciliation and salvation:

even within the law, people are required to love others as themselves;
those who (Luther's language) are fully sinners and fully justified, fully free and fully slave - in the Reformed tradition those who are totally bad and, as people justified in faith, totally free for good;
thereby called to good, to a "better justification" (i.e. to a consistent involvement), but not to self-sacrifice.

The understanding of humanity that market economics has therefore corresponds to the theological image that people are accepted by God and should be accepted by other people (e.g. in human systems) as they are: sinful and not in a position to achieve self-justification. A human system that assumes a person (through their own strength) to be what, eschatologically, they can only be through the power of salvation, dispenses with any God-analogous love towards the person as they exist in reality. Furthermore, this system becomes anti-human and of necessity totalitarian.

One can argue ethically that the market "system" should:

be minimally functional for the "average human being", theologically - with the sinner - not without moral duties, but free of self-justifying pre-conditions
give a space and incentive for "better justice"
give space for a freer choice of preferences (for goods and services), for damage limitation, for correction of mistakes.

It should therefore be decentralized and participative and not priest-like - especially not through a hierarchy valuing determining morals.