ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that reading Adam Smith might inspire one to a different economic theology: one that owns the costs of market society, and facing honestly the evils accompanying the productive advances and moral consequences of market society. If Smith's political economy embraces Providentialist themes, contemporary international political economy (IPE) claims, by contrast, to build on the explicitly disenchanted imaginings of neoclassical economists, who eschew ethics in the name of secular science and a hard-headed pragmatism. Smith seemingly ignores the deep failings of market society that his careful analysis brings to the surface. Smith uses an analogy of trader and ship captain, who rations provisions on board when they run short, to illustrate this harmonious working of the market. Theology becomes theodicy when focused on the problem of pervasive and inexplicable suffering and evil in a creation that God saw as "very good.".
