ABSTRACT
If theology is not to concede the description of reality to Weber’s fact-value distinction, then theology itself must be recognized as constitutive of the real. Creation is not adequately defined in terms of a brute mathematical facticity that can be interpreted only at a secondary level through the meaning or value given to those facts. Theological descriptions are as constitutive of the real as are economic ones. If this point is conceded, then it should lead to a theological suspicion of any economic analysis that assumes the fact-value distinction. But this distinction has become so determinative in contemporary intellectual discourse that alternatives to it are seldom countenanced. However, such an alternative can be found in a residual tradition that either ignores or refuses to take the modern era as the benchmark against which theology must be measured.
