ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses a question asked by some readers along the way about what the historical and theological arguments of the previous chapters might mean for the contemporary relationship between economics and theology. Economics and theology have now parted ways, and the cultural situation in the 21st century is now quite different. Theology no longer has the cultural power it once enjoyed. The British tradition of scientific natural theology nourished and shaped the development of political economy in 18th and 19th-century Britain, but this tradition is now well and truly dead. Natural law can be a bridge between theology and other disciplines, such as ethics. It is usually associated with Roman Catholicism, and the most powerful versions build on the work of Thomas Aquinas. In the Reformed tradition, the doctrine of common grace provides perhaps the most promising integrative framework for economics and theology.
