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ten thousand stood before him and thousand thousands ministered unto him), yet has not therefore ceased to belong to one, so as to cease to be a monarchy because
it is administered by so many thousand virtues, how should God be thought, in
the Son and in the Holy Spirit occupying second and third place, while they are
to such a degree conjoint of the Father’s substance, to experience a division and a
dispersion such as he does not experience in the plurality of all those angels, alien
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as they are from the Father’s substance? Do you account members, and sons, and
instruments and the very forces and the whole riches of a monarchy to be the
overthrow of it [ membra et pignora et instrumenta et ipsam vim ac totum censum
monarchiae eversionem deputas eius]? (Ibid., 3, 2–5, p. 133)
Let us dwell on this extraordinary passage. First of all, angelology is here mobi-
lized as a theological paradigm of the administration, thus instituting—with a
quasi-Kafkian move—a correspondence between angels and officers. Tertullian
recovers this image from Athenagoras (without quoting him, as is usual in the
former’s case); but while in the Athenian apologist and philosopher, the em-
phasis was on the order and the economy of the cosmos, Tertullian uses the
image to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of monarchy and economy. It
is equally essential that, affirming the consubstantiality of monarchy and econ-
omy, he evokes an Aristotelian motif, without naming Aristotle. As a matter of
fact, the treatise on economy attributed to Aristotle opens with the affirmation
of the identity of economy and monarchy: “Politics is a poliarchy, economics
is a monarchy [ hē oikonomikē de monarchia]” (Aristotle, Oeconomica, I, 1343a).
With one of his characteristic gestures, the antiphilosopher Tertullian borrows
from the philosophical tradition the nexus that links economy and monarchy,
which he develops and reverses: the divine monarchy now constitutively entails
an economy, a governmental apparatus, which articulates and, at the same time,
reveals its mystery.
The Aristotelian identification of monarchy and economy, which also pene-
trated Stoicism, is certainly one of the more or less conscious reasons that pushed
the Fathers to elaborate the Trinitarian paradigm in economic, and not political,
terms. If Tertullian can write that the economy does not imply in any case an
eversio, this is also possible because, according to the Aristotelian paradigm, the oikos remains in any case an essentially “monarchic” structure. However, it is
critical that the Trinitarian articulation is here conceived as serving an activity
of domestic government, in which it fully resolves itself without implying a di-
vision on the level of being. In this perspective, the Holy Spirit can be defined
as “the preacher of one monarchy,” and, at the same time, “the interpreter of the
economy,” that is, “the proclaimer of all truth [ . . . ] according to the mystery
of the doctrine of Christ [ oeconomiae interpretatorem ( . . . ) et deductorem omnis veritatis ( . . . ) secundum Christianum sacramentum]” ( Tertullian’s Treatise Against Praxeas, 30, 5, p. 179). Once again, the “mystery of the economy,” interpreted by
those very persons who impersonate it and are its actors, is not an ontological,
but a practical mystery.
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א If up to this point we have emphasized above all the Christological aspect of the
economy, it is because the problem of the divine nature of the third person of the Trinity and its relations with the other two persons is fully thematized only during the fourth
century. From this point of view, it is telling that, having consecrated Orations 29 and 30
to the problem of the Son, Gregory of Nazianzus feels the need to add a further oration in order to deal with this divine figure, which had remained almost unmentioned ( agraphon) in the Holy Scriptures, and whose treatment is, therefore, particularly “difficult to handle”
( dyscheres) (Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations, XXXI, 1–2, p. 318). From the point of view of the Trinitarian oikonomia, the problem of the “procession” ( ekporeusis) of the third person from the other two is essential, but we cannot treat it here.
2.13. It has often been noted that time and history assume a particular and
decisive meaning in Christianity. It has been said that Christianity is a “histori-
cal religion,” not only because it founds itself on a historical person (Jesus) and
on events that are claimed to have occurred historically (his passion and resur-
rection), but also because it gives time a soteriological value and meaning. For
this—given that it interprets itself from a historical perspective—Christianity
brings with it from the very beginning “a philosophy or, better, a theology of
history” (Puech, p. 35).
However, it is equally important to add that the Christian notion of history
is born and developed under the sign of the economic paradigm, and remains
inseparable from it. An understanding of the Christian theology of history can-
not therefore be limited, as it usually is, to a generic evocation of the idea of
oikonomia as a synonym for the providential unfolding of history according to
an eschatological design; such an understanding should rather analyze the con-
crete modalities in which the “mystery of the economy” has literally shaped and
determined from top to bottom the experience of history on which we are still
largely dependent.
It is in Origen—an author in whose works the term oikonomia finds an ex-
tensive development—that this essential nexus between oikonomia and history
can be grasped in a particularly evident way. When something like a notion of
history in the modern sense—that is, a process endowed with a sense, albeit hid-
den—appears for the first time, it is precisely in the guise of a “mysterious econ-
omy,” which insists on being interpreted and understood as such. In De principiis, referring to the enigmatic episodes in the history of the Jews, such as the incest
between Lot and his daughters or Jacob’s double marriage, Origen writes:
That there are certain mysterious economies [ oikonomiai tines ( . . . ) mystikai]
made known through the divine scriptures is believed by all, even by the sim-
plest of those who are adherents of the word; but what these economies are,
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fair-minded and humble men confess that they do not know. If, for instance, an
inquirer were to be in difficulty, about the intercourse of Lot with his daughters,
or the two wives of Abraham, or the two sisters married to Jacob, or the two hand-
maids who bore children by him, they can say nothing except that these things
are mysteries not understood by us. (Origen, On First Principles, IV, II, 2, p. 272) The Christian concept of history results from the strategic conjunction of this
doctrine of the “mysterious economies” (elsewhere Origen speaks of “a hidden
and apocryphal character of the economy [ tēs de oikonomias autou to lelēthos kai
apokryphon]”) with the practice of the interpretation of the Scriptures.
In De principiis, Origen also writes that “by means of stories [ dia historias]
of wars and the conquerors and the conquered, certain secret mysteries ar
e re-
vealed to those who are capable of examining these narratives” (ibid., IV, II, 8,
pp. 284–285). Thus, the duty of the Christian scholar is that of “interpreting
history” [ historian allēgorēsai]” (Origen, Philocalie, I, 29, p. 212), so that the contemplation of the events narrated in the Scriptures is not “a cause of error
[ planasthai] for uneducated souls” (ibid., p. 214).
If, unlike what happens in classical historiography, history has for us a
meaning and a direction that the historian needs to be able to grasp; if it is not
simply a series temporum but something in which a purpose and a destiny are
at stake, this is first of all due to the fact that our concept of history has been
formed according to the theological paradigm of the revelation of a “mystery”
that is, at the same time, an “economy,” an organization, and a “dispensation”
of divine and human life. Reading history amounts to deciphering a mystery
that involves us in an essential way; yet, this mystery does not concern anything
like pagan fate or stoic necessity, but rather an “economy” that freely arranges
creatures and events, leaving to them their contingent character and even their
freedom and their inclinations:
We think that God, parent of all things, in providing [ dispensasse, which translates in all likelihood a form of the verb oikonomein] for the salvation of his entire
creation through the unspeakable plan of his logos and wisdom, has so ordered
everything that each spirit or soul, or whatever else rational existences ought to
be called, should not be compelled by force against its free choice to any action
except that to which the motions of its own mind lead it [ . . . ] and at the same
time that the motions of their wills should work suitably and usefully together to
produce the harmony of a single world. (Origen, On First Principles, II, I, 2, p. 77) Christian history affirms itself against pagan fate as a free praxis; and yet, insofar
as it corresponds to and realizes a divine design, this freedom is itself a mystery:
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413
the “mystery of freedom,” which is nothing but the other face of the “mystery
of the economy.”
א The link established by Christian theology between oikonomia and history is crucial to an understanding of Western philosophy of history. In particular, it is possible to say that the concept of history in German idealism, from Hegel to Schelling and even
up to Feuerbach, is nothing besides an attempt to think the “economic” link between
the process of divine revelation and history (adopting Schelling’s terms, which we have
quoted earlier, the “co-belonging” of theology and oikonomia). It is curious that when the Hegelian Left breaks with this theological concept, it can do so only on condition that
the economy in a modern sense, which is to say, the historical self-production of man,
is placed at the center of the historical process. In this sense, the Hegelian Left replaces divine economy with a purely human economy.
2.14. The treatment of the concept of oikonomia that relates it to the theme
of providence will have decisive consequences in medieval and modern culture.
Such a treatment is to be attributed to Clement of Alexandria, and possibly
amounts to his most original contribution to the elaboration of the theologi-
cal-economic paradigm. As we have seen, in the Excerpta ex Theodoto, Clement
repeatedly mentions the term oikonomia with regard to the Valentinians; but
the term appears very often with the whole range of its possible meanings (ap-
proximately sixty times in Stählin’s index) even in his masterwork, the Stromata.
Clement is careful to specify that the oikonomia does not merely concern the
management of the house, but the soul itself (Clement, The Stromata, Book I,
Chapter VI, p. 307), and that, in addition to the soul, the entire universe also re-
lies on an “economy” (Book III, Chapter IX, p. 392); there is even an “economy of
milk” ( oikonomia tou galaktos), which makes it flow into the breast of the woman
who has given birth (Book II, Chapter XVIII, p. 368). But, above all, there is
an “economy of the savior” (this combination is typical of Clement: hē peri ton
sōtēra oikonomia: Book I, Chapter XI; oikonomia sōteriou: Book VI, Chapter VI), which was prophesied and has been accomplished with the passion of the Son.
And it is precisely from the standpoint of this “economy of the savior” (of the
savior, not of salvation: the original meaning of “activity, task” is still present)
that Clement binds economy and providence ( pronoia) tightly together. In the
Protrepticus, or Exhortation to the Heathen, he had defined the histories of the pagans as “vain fables” ( mythoi kenoi) (Clement, Exhortation, 1, 2, 1, p. 171); now, in a decisive move, he writes that “the philosophy that is in accordance with divine
tradition establishes and confirms providence, which, being done away with [ (tēs
pronoias) anairetheisēs], the economy of the Savior appears to be a myth [ mythos ( . . . ) phainetai]” ( The Stromata, Book I, Chapter XI, p. 312).
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Clement is constantly concerned to prevent the “economy of the savior”
appearing as a myth or an allegory. He writes that, if somebody says that the
Son of God, the Son of the creator of the world, was incarnated in the flesh and
was conceived in the womb of a virgin, if he tells how “his material body was
formed,” how he suffered the passion and was resurrected, all this “appears in-
deed a parable to those who know not the truth” (ibid., Book VI, Chapter XV,
p. 509). Only the idea of providence can make real and consistent what seems
to be a myth or a parable: “There being then a Providence, it were impious to
think that the whole of prophecy and the economy in reference to a Savior
did not take place in accordance with Providence” (ibid., Book V, Chapter I,
p. 445).
If we do not understand the very close connection that links oikonomia with
providence, it is not possible to measure the novelty of Christian theology with
regard to pagan mythology and “theology.” Christian theology is not a “story
about the gods”; it is immediately economy and providence, that is, an activ-
ity of self-revelation, government, and care of the world. The deity articulates
itself into a trinity, but this is not a “theogony” or a “mythology”; rather, it is
an oikonomia, that is, at the same time, the articulation and administration of
divine life, and the government of creatures.
From this the peculiarity of the Christian concept of providence follows.
The notion of pronoia had been diffused widely in the pagan world thanks to
Stoic philosophy; in writing “the economy of creation is good [ ktistheisa ( . . . ) oikonomia], and all things are well administered: nothing happens without a
cause” (ibid., Book IV, Chapter XXIV, p. 437), Clement was repeating ideas
that were current in the Alexandrian culture of his time. Yet, insofar as the Stoic
and Judaic theme of pronoia is linked to the economy of divine life, providence
acquires a personal and voluntary character. In opposition to the Stoics and
Alexander of Aphrodisias who had claimed that “the essence of the gods lies in
providence, just as that of fire lies in heat,” Clement eliminates any naturalis
tic
and involuntary character from providence:
God [is not] involuntarily good, as the fire is warming; but in Him the imparting
of good things is voluntary [ . . . ] God does not do good by necessity, but from
His free choice. (Ibid., Book VII, Chapter VII, p. 534)
The debates surrounding the free or fatal, mediate or immediate, general or par-
ticular character of providence that, as we shall see, will divide medieval theolo-
gians and philosophers from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century find here
their archetype.
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Connecting economy with providence, not only does Clement embed the
temporal economy of salvation in eternity (in “eternal facts and reasons”: The
Stromata, Book VI, Chapter XV, p. 508)—as has been observed (Torrance,
p. 227)—but also he initiates the process that will lead to the progressive con-
stitution of the duality of theology and economy, the nature of God and his
historical action. Providence means that this fracture, which in Christian the-
ology corresponds to the Gnostic dualism between an idle God and an active
demiurge, is—or is claimed to be—actually only apparent. The economic-
administrative and the providential paradigms here manifest their fundamental
co-belonging.
א It is precisely this strategic conjunction of economy and providence that clearly
shows how, in Clement, the term oikonomia still cannot mean, following the common
translation that would make the conjunction tautological, “divine plan.” It is only from
the moment at which Hippolytus and Tertullian reverse the Pauline expression “economy
of the mystery” and Clement joins oikonomia and pronoia together that the meanings of the two terms will start to become indistinguishable.
A century later, in John Chrysostom, the link between economy and providence is
solidly established, but this does not diminish its “mysterious” character. The economy
is now defined as “ineffable,” and its link with the “abyss” of providence is an object of
“amazement”:
Having seen the opening up of an immense sea and, in this part and in this
point, having wished to probe the abyss of its providence, feeling dizzy before the