It is no exaggeration to say that, now and in the past, many Christians have maintained very critical – if not hostile – views of the world of commerce. At the same time, there are Christians who have a positive view of business but nonetheless are skeptical about the market economy. Commerce can and has, after all, operated in conditions that are not reflective of a market economy, ranging from the heavily slave-based economies of the worlds of Greece and Rome to the mercantilist economies that characterized many European nation-states and their colonies from roughly the late fifteenth century until the late eighteenth century.