As a philosopher, whose theory about economics and business is systematically connected to a moral and political philosophy, Aristotle provides a rich conceptual framework to reflect upon personal wellbeing, the wealth of households, and the welfare of the state. Even though Aristotle has mainly been portrayed as an enemy of business, interest in his teachings has been on the rise among management scholars. Several articles have examined Aristotle's position with regard to current managerial approaches such as total quality management, knowledge (...) management, crisis management, and networking. Even though Aristotle is a constant reference point for business ethics scholars, only rarely have there been attempts to see what consequences his thinking would have for reorienting business philosophy and organizational strategy. In this study, we wiD outline how Aristotle's theory of household management can be applied to the management of modern corporations. We argue that conceptions of chrematistike and oikonomia provide a basis to discuss the relationship between business and society and to draw important conclusions for business management. (shrink)

This research essay explores the ethical implications of the stewardship metaphor for journalists. A three?part examination of stewardship is undertaken: a philological survey of the Greek vocabularly, from which ?oikonomia?; (stewardship) has arisen; an elaboration of four ethical implications for journalist (journalists? incentive to serve, their delivery but not ownership of messages, their ambiguous authority, and their need for professional discipline); and two critical issues arising from the sterwardship metaphor (to define the master of the journalistic house as the (...) long?term public interest, and not the news media owners, and to define ?good stewardship as journalism that is contextually intelligible and socially constructive). The essay was written for a seminar taught by Dr. Edmund Lambeth. (shrink)

Michel Senellart Cet article propose une réponse à la critique adressée par G. Agamben, dans Le Règne et la Gloire (2008), à la généalogie foucaldienne de la gouvernementalité. En cherchant dans la pensée chrétienne des premiers siècles la matrice d’une conception nouvelle du pouvoir comme gouvernement des hommes — « économie » ou conduite des âmes —, Foucault aurait méconnu la signification proprement théologique, au sein du dispositif trinitaire, du mot oikonomia. Nous voudrions montrer, à partir d’une relecture du (...) 2e Discours (362) de Grégoire de Nazianze (329-390), dont Foucault tire le concept d’une « économie des âmes », que cette idée ne présuppose nullement la référence au schéma trinitaire et renvoie bien davantage au modèle du « patronage » romain, couplé à la figure sacerdotale du bon berger. Cette analyse conduira, en outre, à rappeler le lien de la « direction des âmes » avec le paradigme médical. (shrink)

The article reviews the uses of the term ‘oikonomia’ in Greek-speaking antiquity and illustrates how the term was used in all spheres of human existence and in various arts and sciences, usually denoting the prudent dispensation of the field resources. In this era the arts and sciences also received their own economies, and the term oikonomia, designating in most cases the prudent management of resources, appears in political theory, military strategy, law, finance, medicine, literary criticism, architecture, music, history (...) and rhetoric. Among all the spheres, arts and sciences that were economized, the story of oikonomia in the field of rhetoric is at the center of this article’s attention. As shown, the concept of oikonomia took an intermediate form between the realm of thought – that is, the domain of philosophy – and the realm of public speech – the domain of politics. (shrink)

This paper investigates the role of oikonomia in the writings of St John of Damascus and how that role is integral to the construction of the figure of the Jew.

This article outlines the limits of Marx’s critique of political economy by underscoring the grounding of economics in the nomos of the oikos—law of the household, or oikonomia. It traces the racial-gendered limits on concepts of equality and justice that have shaped neoliberalism, economic nationalism, and their contemporary criticism.

Ce texte est une proposition d’interprétation des liens, substantiels, conceptuels et théoriques, qui existent entre ce qu’il est possible de nommer économie et ce que nous nommons poésie. Notre hypothèse est qu’économie et poésie fonctionnent de la même manière du fait d’une contrainte ontologique forte imposée à la poésie. La modernité poétique essaie de s’en défaire et donc le poétique est un art récent.

Se presenta una Reseña del libro 'Oikonomía. Los orígenes de la reflexión económica en Grecia' de Carlos Martín, publicado por la Editorial de la Universidad de San Martín (Argentina).

O texto faz uma reflexão teórica a partir de Benjamin, Arendt, Foucault e Agamben. Em um primeiro momento faz-se uma análise da assertiva benjamineana de que “tornamo-nos muito pobres de experiências liminares”. Em seguida associamos essa idéia de “aniquilamento das transições” à idéia de homogeneidade e efemeridade da experiência urbana contemporânea. A partir desse ponto o texto articula essa homogeneidade com uma idéia de empobrecimento da esfera do comum, ou seja, do político, em prol de uma “gestão de necessidades”: a (...) gestão como sucedânea do político, que se refletiria na produção contemporânea do espaço e na “construção do comum”. (shrink)

The state of exception is mostly considered within the context of the modern sovereignty. Although the state of exception is thought within the modern paradigm of state governance, it carries a Christian context. The Christian context represents an eschatological way of power that comes in a miracle which cannot be interiorized by present. This divine way of governance therefore refers to a power which occurs as a threshold. The theological-political form of governance, which is also called the divine oikonomia, (...) shows the power of governance in creating an exception which cannot be foreseen by any current contexts. That is why the power of modern sovereignty resembles its archaic model in which the divine power of God is designated as a pure potentiality which cannot be limited within any contextuality. This article aims to explore the theological source of modern sovereignty in order to understand the very meaning of governance. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship interprets Sergej Bulgakov’s sophiology as an engagement of Orthodox theology with the modern world and as being on its way to becoming a political theology. In this paper I undertake a re-evaluation of the kind of engagement sophiology was and was intended to be, and of the kind of world it was destined for. It will be argued that sophiology was not so much a political-theological engagement with the world concentrating on the relation of religion and politics or (...) state and church, but rather an economic-theological engagement in the tradition of oikonomia theology that tried to understand the world in its relation to and as part of divine oikonomia. Furthermore, the world sophiology promotes engagement with is not only the real contemporary world, or the sociological ideal type of modernity, but primarily the world as such, this secular and human world over and against the divine and transcendent world. (shrink)

In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the paradigm of a new science, political economy, was established. It was a science distinct from the Aristotelian sub-disciplines of practical philosophy named oikonomía and politiké, and emphasis on its character of science not unlike the natural sciences – still called ‘natural philosophy’ – mirrored precisely a willingness to stress its autonomy from two other sub-disciplines of practical philosophy, that is, ethics and politics. However, the new science resulted from a transformation (...) of part of traditional practical philosophy, allowing the inclusion of bodies of knowledge accumulated by experts of commerce and public finance. Such bodies of knowledge were unified by the (true or alleged) discovery of regularities, mechanisms, causal connections making for a new partial order within the overall social order. How far this paved the way to a science similar to mathematics rather left a normative discipline as alive as ever was a recurrent question for at least a century, until the marginalist revolution opened the way for a sharp division, leaving ‘economics’ as a science of causes and effects facing ‘economic policy’ as a discourse on ends. (shrink)

Contemporary scholarship interprets Sergej Bulgakov's sophiology as an engagement of Orthodox theology with the modern world and as being on its way to becoming a political theology. In this paper I undertake a re-evaluation of the kind of engagement sophiology was and was intended to be, and of the kind of world it was destined for. It will be argued that sophiology was not so much a political-theological engagement with the world concentrating on the relation of religion and politics or (...) state and church, but rather an economic-theological engagement in the tradition of oikonomia theology that tried to understand the world in its relation to and as part of divine oikonomia. Furthermore, the world sophiology promotes engagement with is not only the real contemporary world, or the sociological ideal type of modernity, but primarily the world as such, this secular and human world over and against the divine and transcendent world. (shrink)

This essay seeks to abstract from the works of Maximus the Confessor (580–662) a ‘theory’ of virtue ethics that engages Maximus’s own categories and language while still developing conversation with contemporary virtue ethics. First is a reconstruction of the larger cosmological (and moral) ‘narrative’—the oikonomia Maximus sees embodied in sacred history—that frames his essentially teleological understanding of the formation of virtue in created beings. The second part of the essay explores Maximus’s doctrine of the moral self as a synthesis (...) of ‘diachronic’ and ‘synchronic’ dimensions, and details three identifiable protocols by which moral agents cultivate the Christian virtues: first, the development of intellectual virtues such as prudence that serve clear vision (theoria) of worthy moral ends; second, the appropriate ‘use’ of the passible faculties of desire and temper in alliance with reason; and third, the conditioning of the virtues within moral communities (monastery or church) characterized by relations of accountability, imitation, and the traditioning of moral wisdom. (shrink)

Countering claims of its impossibility, this paper argues for economic theology as an intelligible figure of contemporary political rationality and organization, and a distinctive analytical strategy in relation to forms of liberal and neoliberal governmentality and the contemporary management of social life. As an analytical strategy, it has two arms: an institutional one, drawing upon Michel Foucault’s work on the pastorate; and a conceptual one, following from Giorgio Agamben on oikonomia, order and providence. Economic theology was the arcana of (...) 20th-century debates on both political theology and governmentality and a condition for their emergence. It formed the horizon of Carl Schmitt’s intervention of a political theology in response to Max Weber, and, as the pastorate, it was for Foucault the historical background of the emergence of the liberal arts of government. While appearing as a new paradigm, it thus has a measure of priority over our more established ones. Furthermore, to the extent that economic theology comes to occupy the place of political rationality in contemporary liberal-democratic societies, the political becomes less a rational public sphere and more a form of public liturgy. (shrink)

While this ‘extraordinary’ book appears as an intermezzo within the Homo Sacer series, it supports two fundamental theses with its own philological, epigraphic, liturgical and religious-historical research, and a close reading of figures such as Ernst Kantorowicz and Marcel Mauss. These theses concern political power first as an articulation of sovereign reign and economic government and, secondly, as constituted by acclamations and glorification. These can be approached theoretically through its author’s engagement with Michel Foucault’s genealogy of governmentality and with the (...) Erik Peterson/Carl Schmitt debate on the closure of political theology. Agamben’s reformulation of power and his derivation of liberal governmentality from the theological oikonomia prove convincing. A renewed analytics of power and politics of resistance should be possible, however, without recourse to a project seeking to deactivate all profane powers including those of public bureaucracies. (shrink)

Drawing from the works of Carl Schmitt, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Jacques Derrida, this article offers a theory of political theology for the contemporary Western liberal nation-state. Taking as its starting point the death penalty, it presents a triune theory of governance—what I call Trinitarian Governmentality—which exposes the thanatopolitical dimension fundamental to the very articulation of sovereign power and, as such, the theologico-political. It is thus only by conceptualizing sovereignty as Trinitarian Governmentality—composed of biopower/oikonomia, disciplinary power/theologia, and pastoral (...) power/eschatologia—that we can begin to address Derrida’s central question: how might we theorize a properly philosophical abolitionism for the present? (shrink)

The article investigates Giorgio Agamben’s turn to, and radicalization of, Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which Agamben argues constitutes a ’decisive point’ in the Homo sacer-series. The article shows that in the investigation of the Trinitarian oikonomia, Agamben finds the point of intersection between the ‘totalizing procedures’ of the state and ‘individualizing techniques’ of biopolitics thereby disclosing the ‘zone of indistinction’ between sovereignty and government and politics and economy, which constitutes power in the West. Furthermore, the article argues that Agamben (...) shows how the economy is not something distinct from politics, encroaching on its logic, but rather how the governmental paradigm of the West constitutes the continual administration of the given, the continual and perpetual government of the economy and thereby of the existing economic and political power-relations. (shrink)

Muhammad Yunus, Franck Riboud, Grameen Danone, those are some names and projects that may come to mind when thinking about social entrepreneurship. But what about Paul of Tarsus, John Chrysostom or Basil of Caesarea? In this theoretical article, we propose to revisit the ancient notion of oikonomia. Greek philosophers and after them the Church Fathers have drawn for more than twelve centuries the contours of this notion. In the light of their works, we consider the promise of an economy (...) that can be intrinsically altruistic and generous. Building on the work of Paul Ricoeur, we study the ethical dimension of oikonomia as economy of the self, others and the city. The Christian oikonomia is then interpreted as practical wisdom. And at the top of it, social entrepreneurship appears as a sign of a new ethical form of economy that we call relational economy. (shrink)

The present essay contends that progressive readings of Smith ignore the influence of theological concepts and religious ideas on his work, notably three distinct strands: first, seventeenth- and eighteenth-century natural theology; second, Jansenist Augustinianism; third, Stoic arguments of theodicy. Taken together, these theological elements help explain why Smith’s moral philosophy and political economy intensifies the secular early modern and Enlightenment idea that the Fall brought about ‘radical evil’ and a ‘fatherless world’ in need of permanent divine intervention. As such, Smith (...) views the market as divine regulation of human sinfulness and an instrument to serve God’s providential plan. Indeed, the ‘invisible hand of the market’ represents a nominalist realm where human cooperation intersects with divine providence, blending private self-interest with the public commonweal. I will also argue that Smith’s conception of a morally neutral market is ultimately incompatible with creedal Christianity, in particular orthodox catholic Christian ideas of the common good in which all can share and the practice of charity for those most in need who have been abandoned by state bureaucracy and the marketplace. The main reason is that Smith, not unlike Calvin, tends to divorce human contract from divine gift by dividing the theo-logic of gratuitous reciprocal giving from the economic logic of contract – a dualism that bears an uncanny resemblance with Suárez’s Baroque scholasticism of which Smith’s friend David Hume was rightly critical. In particular, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation theology of Calvin, Luther and Suárez sunders ‘pure nature’ from the supernatural and develops a ‘two ends’ account of human nature, according to which human beings have a natural end separate from their supernatural finality. So instead of participating in the divine oikonomia of asymmetrical gift-exchange, human society and the economy operate autonomously and are ordered towards a purely natural end. Smith conceptualises the market mechanism as both a fundamental precondition for interpersonal relationality and at the same time separate from the sociality it engenders. Smith’s anthropology hovers half-way between Machiavelli and Mandeville’s homo œconomicus in search for maximal profit, on the one hand, and the diametrically opposed conception of man as a gift-exchanging animal striving for mutual social recognition, on the other hand. By viewing market exchange as separate from the private virtues of benevolence, justice and prudence, he introduces a split between the exercise of moral virtues and the operation of commercial society. Such a divide is wholly foreign to the project of an overarching civil compact in the writings of Smith’s contemporary Antonio Genovesi and other members of the Italian schools of civic humanism and civil economy. In consequence, Smith’s œuvre marks a decisive shift from civil to political economy. (shrink)

This essay examines Orosius’s historical-theological perspectives on the basis of the theologumenon of the Pax Augusta. First, it studies the method of Orosius’s chronography and his understanding of salvific oikonomia. Then the Author analyzes the Imperium Romanum and its fulfillment in the Imperium Christianium. A third section treats the synchronism of the Incarnation of the Logos in the Pax Augusta. Finally, the essay demonstrates how Erik Peterson detached Augustus’s theology as political theology from its late ancient context, and contrasts (...) it with the emerging imperial church of National Socialism and Peterson’s denunciation of it. (shrink)

Iconomie est un mot-valise dans lequel on entend d’une part l’icône ( eikôn, c’était l’un des noms grecs pour l’image) et d’autre part l’économie, cette oikonomia qui désignait la bonne gestion des échanges. Mais l’iconomie dont il sera question ici s’inscrit dans ce que, après et d’après Marx, il faut bien décrire comme un supermarché esthétique, en y repérant ce que Walter Benjamin nous a aidé à concevoir comme une sensibilité innervée.

Friedrich Hayek’s defense of neoliberal free market capitalism hinges on the distinction between economies and catallaxies. The former are orders instituted via planning, whereas the latter are spontaneous competitive orders resulting from human action without human design. I argue that this distinction is based on an incomplete semantic history of “economy.” By looking at the meaning of “oikonomia” in medieval providential theology as explained by Giorgio Agamben and Joseph Vogl, I argue how Hayek’s science of catallactics is itself a (...) secularization of providential theology. This exposes Hayek to three criticisms: he unjustifiably neglects the possibility of tendencies toward spontaneous disorder in free markets, he condemns the “losers” of neoliberal competition to being providential waste on the road to general prosperity, and he imposes on people the duty to consent to a neoliberal order that hinders them from cultivating their inoperativity. (shrink)

This article tackles Giorgio Agamben's critique of Michel Foucault's genealogy of governmentality in two ways: first, by presenting an alternative model of the relations between pastoral and theological economy and, second, by conducting a genealogy of the former as revealed in the state of exception, when canon law is suspended. Following the author's genealogy of oikonomia in the state of exception, he argues that politics and economy are distinct from one another by virtue of the fact that the primary (...) relation of the latter is one of inclusion while that of the former is one of exclusion. Finally, the author traces three of oikonomia's prolific qualities in the operation of governmentality in civil society and of market economy: its inclusiveness; the constant representation of the irreconcilability of law and authority; and its operation by accommodating to the ways of the governed. (shrink)

In this article, I propose four considerations that might frame a history of economic consciousness from the pre-modern oikonomia to the modern economy. Before the economy dominated attention in the public sphere, economic consciousness was pre-discursive. Only once economic concerns were being dealt with, discursive practices were possible. Thus economic practices, for most parts of human history, have been considered a condition rather than a locus of culture. As soon as economic affairs enter the discursive sphere, they cause problems (...) of trust and nourish a culture of suspicion. This is manifest specifically in the pre-eminence of ad-hominem arguments. Modern economic knowledge results from a set of strategies that avoid, rather than deal with, this mistrust. This is apparent from the tendency of economic knowledge to be formal. The notion of the economy as an anonymous social structure emerges from this intellectual avoidance. The problem of the ideology of economic knowledge is less that of hidden interests but that economists cannot assume social responsibility without losing their face as scientists and indeed reinforce the culture of mistrust inherent in modern economic discourse. (shrink)

The Spirit is the form and transforming power of divine love. As the bond and ever-greater «more» of the love of Father and Son, the Spirit is the sovereign freedom and fruitfulness of God. As the ekstasis of divine love in theologia, the Spirit is also God's openness outward as love for the world in oikonomia. By forming the human life and mission of Jesus Christ to be the revelation of the self-surrendering triune love for the sinful world and (...) by conforming believers in new and unique ways to Christ in his body and bride the church, the Spiritus Creator transforms the whole creation and incorporates it into the life of the triune God. (shrink)

Tertullian is often portrayed as a prescient figure who accurately anticipated the Nicene consensus about the Trinity. But when he is examined against the background of his immediate predecessors, he falls into place as a typical second-century Logos theologian. He drew especially from Theophilus of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons. At the same time, Tertullian did introduce some important innovations. His trinitarian language of ‘substance’ and ‘person’, rooted in Stoic metaphysics, offered the church a new way to be (...) monotheistic while retaining the full deity and consubstantiality of the Word. Tertullian also significantly developed the concept of a divine oikonomia, God’s plan to create and redeem the world. The Son and Spirit are emissaries of the Father’s will—not ontologically inferior to him, yet ranked lower in the way that the sent are always subordinate to the sender. For this reason, Tertullian denied that a Father/son relationship was eternal within the Trinity, seeing it rather as a new development emerging from God’s plan to make the world. Such temporal paternity and filiation distances Tertullian from the eventual Nicene consensus, which accepted instead the eternal generation theory of Origen. While Tertullian did propose some important terms that would gain traction among the Nicene fathers, he was also marked by a subordinationist tendency that had affinities with Arianism. Tertullian’s most accurate anticipation of Nicaea was his insistence on three co-eternal and consubstantial Persons. Historical theologians need to start admitting that Tertullian was a far cry from being fully Nicene. Rather, he offered a clever but still imperfect half-step toward what would become official orthodoxy.. (shrink)

Love and money, according to the intuitive logic of Christian political theology, stand in opposition to each other. Where economic relations obtain, relations of love are understood to be absent or distorted. The opposition between the two has led social theorists and political theologians—including John Milbank, Kathryn Tanner, and Daniel M. Bell—to understand Christian love as a reservoir of opposition to the politics of contemporary financialized capital. This opposition, however, ignores the complex interrelationship that has characterized Christian thought about love (...) and money. Love and money—and their apparent competitive relationship—have been understood throughout the history of Christian thought on the basis of a relationship both maintain to the notion of indebtedness. This paper argues that any apparent tension between Christian theological caritas and oikonomia must to be contextualized in terms of a shared relationship between both of these concepts and the organization and administration of relations of debt and obligation. (shrink)

At a time when fossil fuel burning, nationalism, ethnic and religious intolerance, and other retrograde steps are being promoted, the prospects for world peace and environmental systems stability may appear dim. Exactly because of this is it the more important to continue to examine the sources of conflict. A major obstacle to general progress is the currently dominant economic practice and theory, which is here called the economy-as-usual, or economics-as-usual, as appropriate. A special obstacle to constructive change is the language (...) in which economic matters are usually discussed. This language is narrow, conservative, technical and often obscure. The rapid changes in the environment are largely kept in a separate compartment. If, however, the partition is removed, economics-as-usual, with its dependence on growth and its widening inequality, is seen to be unsustainable. Radical economic change, for better or worse, is to be expected. Such change is here called economy change. The change could be for the better if it involved an expansion of the concept of economics itself, along the lines of oikonomia, a modern revival of a classical Greek term for management or household. In such an expanded view, not everything of economic value can be measured. It is argued that economics-as-usual is the source of much strife. Some features are indicated of a less conflictual economy—more just, cooperative and peaceful. These features include a dignified life available to all people as of right, the word ‘wealth’ being reconnected with weal, well and well-being, and ‘work’ being understood as including all useful activity. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment by T. J. GorringeLibby GibsonThe Common Good and the Global Emergency: God and the Built Environment T. J. Gorringe New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 309 pp. $90.00Building on arguments set forth in A Theology of the Built Environment: Justice, Empowerment, and Redemption (2002), theologian Timothy Gorringe begins The Common Good and the Global Emergency by (...) exploring whether an idea of the common good is relevant in a multicultural society and, if so, how an account of the common good can give rise to an alternative economic paradigm grounded in grace. While respect for cultural differences and the rise of individualism may argue against a robust understanding of the common good, Gorringe looks to the concept of oikonomia, or household management, to express the concept of managing “our affairs in such a way as to further what we perceive to be good ends” (35). Since our understanding of the economy shapes every aspect of the built environment, Gorringe traces local, regional, and national economies to what Wendell Berry calls “the great economy” or God’s creation, redemption, and sustenance of all things.Gorringe grounds his arguments about the common good in his Trinitarian theology of the built environment, expressed as God the Creator, God the Reconciler, and God the Redeemer. The triune perichoretic nature of God is inherently relational; therefore, as humans made in God’s image, we cannot ignore our interdependence. While God the Creator offers a sense of the common good springs from creation, God the Reconciler gives Gorringe traction to discuss the many barriers—race, gender, class, and space—that divide human beings and how our built environments structure these separations. God the Redeemer is concerned with empowering human beings to challenge all things that destroy life; thus Gorringe sees his project as contributing a theology of liberation committed to justice and fullness of life for all humans.Gorringe argues that our best chance to identify a common good rests on constructively addressing the common bad that he calls the global emergency. This emergency can be seen in the doubling of the world’s population in the past forty years, the problem of climate change, and global resource depletion. Seeing climate change and food, water, and energy issues as among the most pressing ethical issues of the coming decades, Gorringe challenges the reader to examine how our current common values have degraded the environment [End Page 202] and the lives of people worldwide. Since he specifically addresses the built environment, Gorringe’s purview is necessarily anthropocentric and justified by the doctrine of incarnation. Yet the Creator God expresses great wisdom in the laws of nature, and much could be learned from the “built” environments in the animal kingdom. While this line of thought would clearly depart from the rigorous academic method of Gorringe’s analysis, the book arose from a feeling that the Lord instructed him to continue working in this area, and attending to other nonrational sources of wisdom could greatly enhance our understanding of God’s grace in all the world.Gorringe acknowledges that the chapters do not unfold linearly, and that he seeks to point out points of confluence. The fluidity with which he addresses theological, political, economic, architectural, sociological, and ethical issues leads the reader to an overall picture of the common good and its powers to liberate us from injustice while an exact map of this process may be difficult to draw. Gorringe clearly and directly addresses both critics and supporters of his previous work on the built environment and solidifies his case for attending to the ways that our built environments could express a common good, grounded in grace, that allows for the fullness of life for all beings.Libby GibsonVirginia Theological SeminaryCopyright © 2013 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Although Political Theology examined mainly the political dimension of the relationship between God-Father and God-Son, it is paramount to consider the political performance of the Holy Spirit in the Economy of Redemption. The Holy Spirit has been characterized as the binding cause and the principle of relationality both referring to God’s inner life and to God’s relationship with His creatures. As the personalization of relationality, the Holy Spirit performs a unique task: to bring together what is apart by means of (...) organisation. This power of the Spirit to turn a plurality into a unity is manifested in the Latin translation of oikonomía as disposition, that is, giving a special order to the multiple elements within a certain totality. Within this activity of the Spirit, Theodicy can be regarded as the way to depict God’s arrangement of the world and of history, bringing everything together towards the eschatological Kingdom of God. The paper aims at showing this fundamental activity of the Holy Spirit in Christian Theology, and intends to pose the question on how to think on a theology beyond theodicy, that is, how to think on a Trinitarian God beyond the categories of sovereignty and totalization. (shrink)

In 2012 Wendell Berry delivered the National Endowment for the Humanities' prestigious Jefferson Lecture. While other recent lecturers steered clear of controversial topics, the cantankerous farmer-poet from Kentucky issued a scathing critique of “corporate industrialism” and an impassioned plea for the “cause of stable, restorative, locally adapted economies of mostly family-sized farms, ranches, shops and trades.”1 “Family-sized” is the key word for Berry. He hopes to re-embed the economy in society, and thus to at least partially recover an older understanding (...) of economy “in its original sense” as oikonomia or “household management.”2 Just as a healthy household is built upon…. (shrink)

This sermon-study—a sequel to a previous study of Newman’s theology of the Immanent Trinity, 1829–1834 (NSJ 7/1: 73–86)—examines Newman’s theology of the Trinity in the economy of salvation. Viewing the mystery of the Incarnation as the Revelation of Theologia in Oikonomia, Newman developed a “theology of glorification” and a “theology of within-ness,” which in turn grounded a “theology of Rest and Peace.” Newman’s Trinitarian theology (1835–1841), which was deeply influenced by the Fathers of the Church, was simultaneously his response (...) to the anti-dogmatic Liberalism that rejected Christ’s divinity and so denied the Trinity. (shrink)

If genuine political activity can only be undertaken by citizens in the public sphere in a nation-state, what of stateless people today – asylum seekers and refugees cut adrift on the high seas? This is what is at stake in Hannah Arendt’s political theory of necessity. This article reconsiders Arendt’s notion of the Greek oikos as the sphere of necessity with the aim of challenging the idea that there is a condition of necessity or mere subsistence, where life is reduced (...) to satisfying basic biological needs. For Arendt, the Greek oikos is the model that provides the inspiration for her theory because necessity activities were kept quite separate from action in the polis. The ordinary and the undistinguished happen in the oikos and its equivalent, with the polis being reserved for extraordinary acts done for glory without any regard for life. The exclusionary nature of this theory of the polis as action has, at best, been treated with kid gloves by Arendt’s commentators. With reference to Heidegger on the polis and Agamben’s notion of oikonomia, I endeavour to show that the so-called ordinary is embedded in a way of life that is extraordinary and the key to grasping humanness. (shrink)

The “Trypillian altars” are important and diverse group of Eneolithic religious objects discovered by archaeological science during the last century in the vast territory of the Cucuteni-Trypillian cultural community. To date there has been a considerable accumulation of information which is in need of a proper systematization and religious understanding of this phenomenon. Trypillian altars, as elements of the Trypillian religious system, have so far remained outside the scope of comprehensive study. However, they are undoubtedly of great importance as a (...) source of information on the ritual and mythological system not only of the Cucuteni-Trypillian community, but of prehistoric societies in general. The altars discovered in Ukraine during the excavations of the Nebelivka Temple (Trypillian culture) in Kirovohrad region of Ukraine are of particular importance for the study, as they are among the largest temple altars of their time in the entire oikonomia of the ancient world, and their design and iconography are well preserved. These sacred objects are also the earliest type of altars in world history that were part of the celebration of archaic temple rites (approximately 4000-3900 BC). The paper deals with typological, iconographic, chronological and ideological questions concerning Trypillian altars from the territory of modern Ukraine, Romania and Hungary. The function of altars in places of worship—sanctuaries and temples of the Trypillians, as well as in domestic and public spaces—is of particular interest. As a result, the religious and social function of the “Trypillian altars” is revealed by the author of the paper. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Bryson’s Oikonomikos is a fascinating example of the oikonomia genre in several different respects. Although the problematic transmission of this Neopythagorean text makes studying it a challenge, such effort is well-rewarded with an elaborate argument which paints the human bodily constitution, the central bodily functions and oikonomic activities as intrinsically linked. Focusing on Bryson’s argument which roots oikonomic behaviour in human biology, I explore the underlying conceptualisation of human nature and contextualise it within (...) relevant philosophical and scientific traditions. (shrink)

This essay considers Newman’s basic epistemology in terms of two of his most important, and often overlooked, sources: Aristotle and the Church Fathers. Inparticular, Newman’s reliance upon Aristotle’s ethical and rhetorical thought on the one hand, and upon the patristic concept of oikonomia on the other, guided him in crafting the well-known account of faith and reason in his thirteenth University Sermon.

This sermon-study—a sequel to a previous study of Newman’s theology of the Immanent Trinity, 1829–1834 (NSJ 7/1: 73–86)—examines Newman’s theology of the Trinity in the economy of salvation. Viewing the mystery of the Incarnation as the Revelation of Theologia in Oikonomia, Newman developed a “theology of glorification” and a “theology of within-ness,” which in turn grounded a “theology of Rest and Peace.” Newman’s Trinitarian theology (1835–1841), which was deeply influenced by the Fathers of the Church, was simultaneously his response (...) to the anti-dogmatic Liberalism that rejected Christ’s divinity and so denied the Trinity. (shrink)