The Meaning of Money Wednesday 5th and Thursday 6th November 2025 A conference with speakers from business, the academy, and the Church, to consider the value of approaching the meaning of money from the perspectives of theology and virtue ethics. Book Here Now Programme One might think that economists are best suited to explain the meaning of money. However, most academic economists hardly ever publish on the meaning of money. Their definitions of money as a medium of exchange, unit of account, and store of value do not get us far in understanding either the major dilemmas or great opportunities that money creates. Avoiding the meaning of money is arguably what allows economics the conceit of being a ‘value-free science’. Yet, money is not simply a neutral, if scarce, resource, but also a powerful instrument. It is also malleable enough to become an end in itself, and even - as Jesus warns us - one’s master. Even Marx perceived it as ‘very intricate, full of metaphysical quibbles and theological quirks’. And it can be a great blessing: the reverse side of Christian charity is often the reception of money as a gift. The use of money has profound consequences, not merely for the ‘health’ of balance sheets and financial systems, but more importantly for the health of society and of one’s soul.

Speakers and participants from business, the academy, and the Church will consider the value of approaching the meaning of money from the perspective of virtue ethics. 

• What is money (for)?

• Does money have a moral character?

• Is money necessary for human flourishing?

• Which virtues are needed to use money in a way that promotes human flourishing?

• Could we speak sensibly of a theology of money?

• What should the relation of the Church be to money?

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NB. The conference will include two public lectures.

Tickets are NOT necessary to attend the public lectures but they are necessary to attend the papers that will be delivered just before the public lectures on Wednesday and throughout Thursday's colloquium. 

Some printed versions of the term card contain a mistake about the public lectures. The correct details are as follows: Wednesday, 4pm Jesus as the 'Good Money-Changer' Luigino Bruni (Libera Universita Maria Ss. Assunta, Rome) Public Lecture (delivered remotely).

Faith, hope, and love will abide, according to St. Paul, when all else passes away, and the greatest of these is love (1 Corinthians 13:13). If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing' (1 Cor 13:3). And yet, St. Paul often uses the language of profit, gain, and loss (Phil 3:7-9), the language of accounting, when speaking of the supreme value of knowing Christ in comparison toeverything else. Does the new orientation given to us by faith, hope, and love offer us a better way to understand the meaning of money?

Wednesday, 4:30pm The limited role and the problematic meanings of money in human economies Arjo Klamer (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) Public Lecture

Prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude- these four, cardinal virtues have been at the centre of pagan and Christian forms of virtue ethics. How do we exercise them when using money, or is money always something corrupting, leading us inevitably to the vice of avarice instead of virtue? How do we use money in a way that serves our flourishing? 

Followed by Evensong at 5.30pm, at which the Rev'd Paul Gismondi will preach.