Theology in business ethics: Appealing to the religious imagination

Abstract

By appealing to the religious imagination Theology can make a distinctive contribution to business ethics. In the first part of the essay I examine what is entailed by appealing to the imagination to reason in ethics: through converging arguments the imagination enables us rationally to interpret reality and to infer obligations. In the following sections I consider the relevance of the religious imagination for business ethics. In the second part I explain the imagination's use of religious metaphor to establish its theological distinctiveness in ethical inquiry. Then in the final part I illustrate Theology's contribution to business ethics by studying the imagination's use of religious metaphor with regard to profit and to third world debt.