ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book illustrates the nature and scope of inquiry that is known as economic theology. It introduces the theological origins and inheritance of major concepts like money and debt in order to understand how the relentless, rational pursuit of profit can be interpreted in terms of a secular sacrality. The book analyses economic concepts that dominate the structural ways in which a capitalist economy enters and then formats the lives of people. Economics and business administration, too, have recently been exposed to a theological turn of their own. Academic scholars often have an innate aversion to theology. The analogy between political–economic and theological concepts, that is, their often striking family resemblances, can be used as a methodological entry point into economic–theological research.
