ABSTRACT
What has the economy to do with theology? Despite the economists’ neglect of theology, a number of theologians work on the relationship between theology and economics. In so doing, they have maintained the ancient tradition that faith and economic matters are inextricably linked. This is a considerable achievement because it works against the historical development of modern economics. As a discipline, economics has increasingly developed an anti-humanistic mode. Political economists first freed economics from theology at the end of the eighteenth century with Adam Smith’s revolution. Economists then freed economics from political theory in the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century economics has become an increasingly abstract-mathematical-science. That theologians continue to make claims on it runs counter to long-standing trends. All of us who care about both faith and economics are in their debt because the gravest temptation we face is that the rending asunder between them will one day be complete. No one will remember to ask ‘What has Jerusalem to do with Wall Street?’ The ancient tradition will disappear.
