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I myself, for instance, talk, and you hear; yet, certainly, I who converse do not
become destitute of logos by the transmission of it, but by the utterance of my
voice [ proballomenos de tēn phōnēn, probably a reference to Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, 61], I endeavor to reduce to order the unarranged matter in your minds.
(Tatian, Address of Tatian to the Greeks, 5, p. 10)
An analogous acceptation can be found in Chapter 21:
Hector also, and Achilles, and Agamemnon, and all the Greeks in general, and
the Barbarians with Helen and Paris, being of the same nature, you will of course
say are introduced merely for the sake of the disposition of discourse [ charin
oikonomias], not one of these personages having really existed. (Ibid., p. 28)
In the remaining part of the Address, the term oikonomia refers to the ordered organization of the human body:
The constitution [ systasis] of the body is under one management [ mias estin
oikonomias] [ . . . ] and the eye is one thing, and another the ear, and another
the arrangement of the hair and the distribution of the intestines [ entosthiōn
oikonomia], and the compacting together of the marrow and the bones and the
tendons; and though one part differs from another, there is yet all the harmony
of a concert of music in their arrangement [ kat’ oikonomian symphōnias estin
harmonia]. (Ibid., 12, p. 17)
or of matter:
If anyone is healed by matter, through trusting to it, much more will he be
healed by having recourse to the power of God [ . . . ] Why is he who trusts
in the ordered arrangement of matter [ hylēs oikonomiai] not willing to trust in
God? (Ibid., 18, p. 24)
Even if there is not yet here a properly theological use of the term, it is inter-
esting to observe that, in order to describe the relation between the Father and
his Logos, Tatian resorts to the metaphorical extension of the term oikonomia
that already existed in a rhetorical context. Just as the ordered arrangement of
the matter of a discourse into different parts does not compromise its unity or
diminish its power [ potenza], so the divine Logos receives “the distinction of the oikonomia.” The first articulation of the Trinitarian procession takes place by
means of an economic-rhetorical paradigm.
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א Modern historians of theology have overlooked the importance of the rhetorical
meaning of the term oikonomia for the constitution of the Trinitarian paradigm. And yet, the fact that the subject of the passage from Tatian is, indeed, the Logos, the word
of God, should have hinted at the presence of a rhetorical image. The use of the rhetor-
ical term diairesis in Athenagoras (see below, 2.8) proves the correctness of Schwartz’s replacement of hairesis (present in the manuscript) with diairesis in the above quoted passage from Tatian.
א In the Martyrdom of Polycarp, we find once again the meaning of economy as in-
ternal organization of the body. The torn flesh of the martyr allows us to see “the economy of [his] flesh [ . . . ] even to the lower veins and arteries” ( The Martyrdom of Polycarp II, 2, p. 315). Even here, the extension of the denotation of the term to physiology does not
substantially alter its semantic nucleus.
2.8. The use of a rhetorical metaphor to express the Trinitarian articulation of
the deity can be recovered in Athenagoras, who is a contemporary of Marcus Au-
relius and Commodus, and introduces himself as “Christian philosopher” in the
seal of his Embassy for the Christians. He uses the term oikonomia in the common sense of “praxis ordered for a purpose” with reference to the incarnation (“why,
even if a god according to a divine oikonomia does take flesh upon himself, is he then at once passion’s slave?”: Embassy for the Christians, 21, 4, p. 55). However, in an important passage, he uses another technical term of the rhetorical vocabulary— diairesis, strictly linked to oikonomia—precisely in order to reconcile the unity with the trinity:
Who then would not be amazed hearing that those who recognize a God Father
and a God Son and one Holy Spirit, and proclaim their power in unity and in order
their disposition [ tēn en tēi taxei diairesin], are called atheists? (Ibid., 10, 5, p. 40) In the passage that immediately follows, Athenagoras extends economy to the
angelic ranks, a singular intuition that Tertullian will remember:
Nor does our theology stop there, but we assert a multitude [ plēthos] of angels and assistants [ leitourgōn] whom God, maker and artificer [ poietēs kai dēmiurgos] of the universe, set in their places by means of His Word and appointed severally to
be in charge of the elements and the heavens and the universe and all it contains
and its good order. (Ibid.)
2.9. Irenaeus’s treatise Against Heresies presents itself as a refutation of Gnostic systems and expounds Catholic faith through an accurate polemical confrontation with them. The strong presence of the term oikonomia in his work, which
makes of it, if not a proper technical term, at least a Lieblingswort (Richter, p. 116) of his thought, should first of all be read in this polemical context. This means,
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HOMO SACER II, 4
however, that the term oikonomia becomes technical in the language and thought
of the Fathers of the Church in relation to the use the Gnostics make of it; it is
therefore strange that one might try to define its sense, while completely neglect-
ing (as, for example, Richter does) an examination of these authors.
D’Alès, who catalogued the occurrences of oikonomia and its Latin equiva-
lents, dispositio and dispensatio, in the Adversus haereses, lists thirty-three instances in which Irenaeus uses it to refer to a properly Gnostic doctrine—for which the
term designates the process internal to the plerome and, in particular, “the fusion
of the divine aeons from which the person of the Savior results” (D’Alès, p. 6).
According to D’Alès, it is against this Gnostic acceptation that Irenaeus, in his
use of the term in the profession of the Catholic faith, “forbids himself any allu-
sion to the internal economy of the Trinity, considering the path taken by Tatian
dangerous” (ibid., p. 8). Markus had already observed that such an opposition is
not consistent with fact, since in the quoted Gnostic texts, oikonomia does not
really refer to a process internal to the plerome, but rather, indeed, to the fusion
of the aeons that leads to the constitution of the historical Jesus (Markus 1958,
p. 92). We could also add that, even in the texts that refer to the Catholic faith
(in particular, the passage from Book 4 (33, 7), which D’Alès quotes as a proof),
Irenaeus not only speaks of the “economies” of the Son (significantly enough, in
the plural), but also of the economies of the Father. More generally, the pedantry
with which modern theologians try, at any cost, to keep the economy of incarna-
tion and the economy of the Trinity separate is meaningless at a time when the
term oikonomia generically designates divine activity and government.
What is at stake in the confrontation between Irenaeus and the people he
calls “the disciples of Ptolemaeus of the school of Valentinus” is not so much
the shift of the notion of economy from a process internal to the plerome to the
incarnation of the Son—or from a supratemporal plan to a plan in the history
of salvation (Bengsch, p. 175)—but rather, more generally, an att
empt to remove
the term oikonomia from its Gnostic context in order to make it the central stra-
tegic apparatus of the rising Trinitarian paradigm. It is only by closely following
Irenaeus’s polemical confrontation with the Gnosis that it is possible to define
his use of the term.
The word appears for the first time with reference to Christ in the guise of
the adjective oikonomos at the end of the long exposition of the Gnostic doctrines of the plerome and the Savior that opens the treatise (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I, 7, 2). Following a pattern that is also present in Clement’s Excerpta, the Savior is composed of a spiritual element, deriving from Achamoth, a psychic element,
and an “economic element of incredible craftsmanship”: the Christ who under-
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goes the passion is not spiritual, but psychic and “economic.” This exposition is
followed by a refutation, in the course of which Irenaeus uses the term “econ-
omy” again, this time in the context of a profession of the faith that the Church
received from the Apostles:
[ . . . ] one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea,
and all things that are in them; [ . . . ] one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who
became incarnate for our salvation; and [ . . . ] the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed
through the prophets the “economies” of God, and the advents, and the birth
from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead [ . . . ] ( Irenaeus,
Against Heresies, I, 10, 1, p. 42)
A few lines later, the polemical confrontation is further specified: the different
ways in which this single faith is exposed do not imply that one
should conceive of some other God besides Him who is the Framer, Maker,
and Preserver of this universe (as if He were not sufficient for them), or of an-
other Christ, or another Only-begotten. But the fact referred to simply implies
this, that one may [more accurately than another] [ . . . ] explain the operation
and the economy of God [ tēn te pragmateian kai oikonomian tou Theou ( . . . )
ekdiēgeisthai]. (Ibid., I, 10, 3, pp. 43–44)
What is at stake is clearly maintaining the idea of a divine “economy” that causes
the incarnation of the Son—which the Gnosis had derived from Paul—while
nonetheless avoiding the Gnostic multiplication of divine figures.
A similar preoccupation is evident in Irenaeus’s defense of the flesh and its
resurrection against those who “despise the entire economy of God, and dis-
allow the salvation of the flesh” (ibid., V, 2, 2, p. 59). Using a remarkable phrase,
Irenaeus writes here that, in denying the flesh, the Gnostics “overturn [ . . . ]
the entire economy of God [ tēn pasan oikonomian ( . . . ) anatrepontes]” (ibid., V, 13, 2, p. 88). The Gnostic radicalization of the dualism (itself of Pauline origin) between the spirit and the flesh subverts the sense of divine activity, which
does not admit such an antithesis. And against the Gnostic multiplication of
the divine Aeons founded on the number thirty, “image of the superior econ-
omy” (ibid., I, 16, 1, p. 69), Irenaeus writes that, in this way, the Gnostics “pull
to pieces [ diasyrontes] [ . . . ] the economies of God [ . . . ] by means of Alpha and Beta, and with the aid of numbers” (ibid., I, 16, 3, p. 71). In the same way,
the Gnostic proliferation of the gospels “upsets the economy of God” (ibid.,
III, 11, 9, p. 295). In other words, for Irenaeus, it is, once again, a matter of sub-
tracting economy from its constitutive nexus with the Gnostic multiplication of
the hypostases of the divine figures.
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HOMO SACER II, 4
The reversal of the Pauline phrase “economy of the plerome” ( oikonomia
tou plerōmatos, Ephesians 1:10) into “accomplishing, fulfilling the economy” ( ten oiokonomian anaplēroun) should be read in the same way. According to Markus
(Markus 1954, p. 213), who was the first to notice such reversal (for instance, in
Against Heresies, III, 17, 4, and in IV, 33, 10), Irenaeus transforms in this way
what was, for the Gnostics, a cosmic-natural process into a historical dispensa-
tion (this is a singular conclusion to be drawn by a scholar who has just objected
against D’Alès that, for the Gnostics, the endopleromatic process could not be
separated from the historical Jesus). Markus seems to forget that, although the
Gnostics had somehow appropriated the syntagma “economy of the plerome,”
the latter is as such, as we have seen, genuinely Pauline. A reading of the first
passage shows beyond doubt that Irenaeus is actually trying to withdraw this
unclear Pauline phrase from Gnostic interpretations—which make of the “econ-
omy of the plerome” the principle of an infinite procession of hypostases—in
order strongly to affirm that the economy of which Paul speaks has been accom-
plished once and for all by Jesus:
The Logos of the Father came in the fullness of time, having become incarnate in
man for the sake of man, and fulfilling all the economy of human nature through
our Lord Jesus Christ, who is one and the same, as He himself the Lord doth tes-
tify, as the apostles confess, and as the prophets announce. (Ibid., III, 17, 4, p. 336)
It has been observed that Irenaeus’s strategy removes the concept of “conver-
sion” ( epistrophē) from the psychomythological context of the passions of Sophia
and Achamoth in order to make it the fulcrum of Catholic orthodoxy (Aubin,
pp. 104–110) by means of the formula “to convert to the Church of God”
( epistrephein eis tēn ekklēsian tou Theou). Similarly, the conflict with the Gnosis does not concern the historical character of the figure of the savior (the Gnostics
are the first to establish a parallelism between a cosmic-ontological drama and a
historical process) or the opposition between an economy limited to the incarna-
tion and an “economy of the Trinity,” which could not have been separated in the
theological context of the time. Irenaeus’s gesture rather amounts to an operation
on themes that are common to heretics and “Catholics” in order to return them
to what he believes to be the orthodoxy of the apostolic tradition, and redefine
them within a clear profession of faith. This means, however, that—inasmuch
as a redefinition is never entirely separable from a reception—at least in the case
of the concept of oikonomia (a notion that the Gnostics were possibly the first
to elaborate strategically), the common theme has become the breach through
which Gnostic elements have penetrated the orthodox doctrine.
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א The Excerpta ex Theodoto, attributed to Clement of Alexandria, have preserved
Gnostic doctrines on “economy,” which substantially agree with the information given
by Irenaeus. In 33, 3, Wisdom, which is also called “Mother,” after having delivered the
Christ, gives birth to a “ruler of the economy,” a figure ( typos) of the Father who was abandoned by him and is inferior to him ( The Excerpta ex Theodoto, p. 65). In 58, 1, the Christ, defined as “the great Champion” ( ho megas Agōnistēs), descends to earth and assumes both the “pneumatic,” or spiritual, element that originates from the mother
and the “psychic” element that originates from the economy ( to de ek tēs oikonomias to psy
chikon: ibid., p. 78). Here, economy seems to designate a salvific activity, which has a typological precursor in an “archon” and finds its realization in Christ.
The fact that the term oikonomia belongs to both the Gnostic and the Catholic
vocabularies is proved by the divisive discussions among scholars about which passages
from the Excerpta quote Clement’s opinions and which Theodotus’s. Such doubt applies especially to the three passages that contain the term oikonomia (5, 4; 11, 4; 27, 6), which the editor attributes to Clement but which could easily be attributed to Theodotus.
א From a lexical point of view, it is interesting to note that Irenaeus uses pragmateia a number of times as a synonym of oikonomia. This confirms that oikonomia preserves its generic meaning of “praxis, administrative and executive activity.”
2.10. It is a common belief that, with Hippolytus and Tertullian, the term
oikonomia ceases to be a mere analogical extension of the domestic vocabulary
into a religious field, and becomes a technical notion that designates the Trin-
itarian articulation of divine life. However, even in this case, there is no strat-
egy aimed at clearly defining a new meaning. Rather, the will to transform the
oikonomia into a terminus technicus reveals itself in an indirect way through two unequivocal devices: the metalinguistic reference to the term, which amounts to
putting it in quotation marks (thus, in Tertullian, we can read “this dispensation,
or oikonomia, as it is called”: the term is left untranslated in Greek and is transliterated into Latin characters), and the reversal of the Pauline phrase “the economy
of the mystery” into “the mystery of the economy,” which gives the term a new
poignancy without defining it.
Unlike in Irenaeus, the context of this technicization is that of the earliest dis-
putes surrounding the problematic nucleus that will later become the Trinitarian
dogma. Both Hippolytus and Tertullian are engaged in a confrontation with ad-
versaries (Noetus and Praxeas) who adhere to a rigorous form of monotheism—
and are defined, for this reason, Monarchians—and see the personal distinction
between the Father and the Word as in danger of relapsing into polytheism. The
concept of oikonomia is the strategic operator that, before the elaboration of an appropriate philosophical vocabulary—which will take place only in the course