The Judaeo-Christian Tradition as a Source of a Paradigm of Sustainable Development

The economic development of the last two hundred years has had no precedent in human history. Its dynamic was mainly a result of knowledge and technological progress, but was also associated with the adoption and acceptance of utilitarian values and thus the formulation of social aims in terms of profit for the producer and utility for the consumer. This attitude, perforce a short-term one, triggered an unusually fast increase in production, which allowed many societies to make a civilization leap, albeit at the price of an imbalance in global social and ecological conditions.

An attempt to restore ecological and social balance involves a change of economic paradigm to one that takes into account social needs and the limitations of nature. The economics of sustainable development is a concept, where economic objectives and the time horizon have been reformulated to include not just the question of economic development, but also ecological and socio-cultural aspects, and development itself is considered from a long-term perspective. It is a relatively modern concept, that only started to be considered as an alternative to conventional economic attitudes in the second half of the 20^th century. The roots of the concept of sustainable development are usually traced back to a German culture of a forest resource management. However, the idea of development taking into account the spheres of ecology, social relations and economics seems to have its beginnings already in sources from earlier Judaeo-Christian civilisation.

The texts of The Old and New Testament and supplementary writings of Judaism and Christianity create a coherent image of social development, where the areas of ecology, social needs and economic activity take equally meaningful positions. Contrary to the opinion, popular in the 1960s based on the quote from Genesis (let them have dominion over all the earth), that Judaeo-Christian civilization is responsible for ecological catastrophe, both Judaism and Christianity sources contain a strong ecological message. Regarding social development, the problems of equitable social relations are a core issue in the Old and New Testament. The third area of in-depth analysis studies economic processes at micro- and macro-levels that are limited just by the rules of social fairness and the limitations of nature.

The paper presents a selection of sources contained in Judaeo-Christian writings relating to issues of development in the areas of ecology, society and economics, which lay the foundations for the modern paradigm of sustainable development.