The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

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  HOMO SACER II, 4

  of the fourth and fifth centuries—allows a temporary reconciliation of the trin-

  ity with the divine unity. In other words, the first articulation of the Trinitarian

  problem takes place in “economical,” not metaphysico-theological, terms; for

  this reason, when the Nicene-Constantinopolitan dogmatics achieves its final

  form, the oikonomia will gradually disappear from the Trinitarian vocabulary,

  and will be preserved only in that of the history of salvation.

  Hippolytus’s Contra Noetum has been defined as “possibly the most impor-

  tant second-century document on Trinitarian theology” (Scarpat, p. xxii). In

  opposition to Prestige (Prestige, passim), according to whom, in Hippolytus as

  ultimately in Tertullian, oikonomia designates the internal organization of the

  deity, and not the Incarnation, Nautin—the scholar responsible for the critical

  edition of the Contra Noetum—seems to exclude a theologico-Trinitarian accep-

  tation in a technical sense and restricts the meaning of the term to “divine plan

  in virtue of which God has a son who is his incarnated Word” (Nautin, p. 140).

  In the same sense, although this meaning is not attested to until at least a cen-

  tury later, Markus can write that, for Hippolytus, “economy must be the same

  as incarnation” (Markus 1958, p. 98). Even more surprisingly, Markus adds soon

  after that Hippolytus—speaking of Christ as the “mystery of the economy”—

  would be “closely following the Christian tradition,” without realizing that Hip-

  polytus is rather literally reversing the canonical Pauline phrase “economy of the

  mystery” (ibid., p. 99). In spite of being the first to notice that “Hippolytus has

  simply reversed Paul’s phrase from Ephesians 3:9” (Moingt, p. 905), Moingt is

  so absorbed in demonstrating his thesis according to which the use of oikonomia

  with reference to the procession of the persons in the deity would be Tertullian’s

  invention, that, clearly contradicting himself, he can write that Hippolytus uses

  the term “according to the meaning established by Paul and the tradition before

  him” (ibid., p. 907; in other words, the very meaning whose formulation Hip-

  polytus radically reverses).

  Here, the debate is compromised by the presupposition that there are two

  different and incompatible meanings of the term oikonomia, the first referring

  to the incarnation and the revelation of God in time, and the second concern-

  ing the procession of the persons within the deity. We have already shown (and

  Richter’s study confirms this conclusion) that this presupposition is generated

  by a projection of a later theoretical elaboration onto the semantics of a term

  that, in the second century, simply meant “divine activity of administration and

  government.” The two alleged meanings are nothing but the two aspects of a

  single activity of “economic” administration of divine life, which extends from

  the heavenly house to its earthly manifestation.

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  Let us now turn to Hippolytus’s text. From the beginning, the “economic”

  paradigm has here a precise strategic function. In order to save the divine unity,

  Noetus affirms that the son is none other than the Father, and consequently

  denies the reality of the Christ that has been proclaimed in the Scriptures.

  And just because Noetus has no notion, this does not mean that it is the Scriptures

  that should be thrown out. After all, would not everyone say that there is a single

  God?—but we shall not deny the economy [ all’ ou tēn oikonomian anairēsei].

  (Hippolytus, Contra Noetum, p. 48)

  Oikonomia does not have here a special meaning, and can simply be translated

  as “praxis, divine activity aimed at a purpose.” Yet, the absolutization of the term

  (which usually appeared in syntagmatic nexuses such as “economy of God,”

  “economy of the mystery,” “economy of the salvation,” etc.) in relation to the

  apparent opposition between unity and trinity certainly confers on it a particular

  poignancy. The distinction, in God, between a monadic power ( dynamis) and a

  threefold oikonomia is accountable to the same strategy:

  So even an unwilling person is obliged to confess the Father as God Almighty,

  and Christ Jesus, the Son of God, as the God who became man [ . . . ] and the

  Holy Spirit; and that these really are three. But if he wants to learn how God is

  shown to be one, he must know that this [God] has a single Power [ dynamis]; and

  that as far as the Power is concerned, God is one; but in terms of the oikonomia,

  the display [of it] is triple. (Ibid., p. 64)

  This distinction is important since it possibly lies at the origin of both the distinc-

  tion between status and gradus in Tertullian ( Treatise Against Praxeas, 19, 8), and that between theology and economy, which will become common beginning with

  Eusebius. The fact that this is not a neat opposition, but a distinction that allows

  one to reconcile the unity with the trinity, becomes evident once we understand

  that the terminology is here entirely Stoic. In a famous passage, Chrysippus had

  distinguished in the soul the unity of the dynamis from the multiplicity of the

  modes of being (or, rather, the modes of “having,” the “habits,” pōs echon):

  The power of the soul is one, in a way that, according to its manner of being or

  behaving [ pōs echousan], it either thinks, or gets irate, or desires. (Chrysippus, fragment, 823, SVF, II, 823; see Pohlenz, vol. 1, p. 91)

  The oikonomia corresponds to the Stoic doctrine of the modes of being and is,

  in this sense, a pragmatics.

  The key strategic device by means of which Hippolytus confers a new mean-

  ing upon oikonomia is, however, the reversal of the Pauline syntagma “economy

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  HOMO SACER II, 4

  of the mystery” to form “mystery of the economy.” This reversal is carried out in

  two passages, both of which concern the relation between the Father and his logos: But in whom is God, except in Christ Jesus, the Father’s own logos and the mystery of the economy [ tōi mystēriōi tēs oikonomias]? (Hippolytus, Contra Noetum, p. 52) So the statement “In thee is God” revealed the mystery of the economy—that

  once the Word had taken flesh and was among men, the Father was in the Son

  and the Son in the Father, while the Son was living among men. So this, brethren,

  is what was being pointed out—that the mystery of the economy really was this

  very logos proceeding from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin, which the Son had

  brought to completion [ apergasamenos] for the Father. (Ibid., p. 52)

  While, in Paul, the economy was an activity carried out to reveal or accomplish the

  mystery of God’s will or word (Colossians 1:24–25; Ephesians 3:9), now it is this

  very activity, personified in the figure of the sonword, that becomes a mystery. Even here, the key meaning of oikonomia remains the same, as is evident in the last sentence of the second passage (the Son brings to completion, realizes an economy for the

  Father). Yet, the sense of “plan hidden in God,” which was a possible, though im-

  precise paraphrase of the term mystērion, tends now to be transferred onto the very term oikonomia, giving it a new significance. There is no economy of the mystery, that is, an activ
ity aimed at fulfilling and revealing the divine mystery; it is the very

  “pragmateia,” the very divine praxis, that is mysterious.

  Thus, in the last passage in which it is used—repeating one of Tatian’s stylis-

  tic features to the letter— oikonomia tends persistently to be identified with the harmonic composition of the threefold divine activity in a single “symphony”:

  This economy the blessed John, too, passes onto us through the witness of his

  Gospel, and he maintains that this Word is God, with the words: “In the be-

  ginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God”

  (John 1:1). But then if the Word, who is God, is with God, someone might well

  say: “What about this statement that there are two gods?” While I will not say

  that there are two gods—but rather one—I will say there are two persons; and

  thirdly the economy, the grace of the Holy Spirit. For though the Father is one,

  there are two persons—because there is the Son as well: and the third, too,—the

  Holy Spirit. The Father gives orders, the logos performs the work, and is revealed as Son, through whom belief is accorded to the Father. By a harmonious economy [ oikonomiai symphōnias] the result is a single God. (Hippolytus, Contra

  Noetum, p. 74)

  With a further development of its—even rhetoric—meaning of “ordered ar-

  rangement,” economy is now the activity—as such truly mysterious—that

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  articulates the divine being into a trinity and, at the same time, preserves and

  “harmonizes” it into a unity.

  א The importance that the reversal of the Pauline syntagma “economy of the mys-

  tery” into “mystery of the economy” has in the construction of the economic-Trinitarian

  paradigm is attested by the persistence with which the latter phrase imposes itself as an

  interpretative canon of Paul’s text. Thus, in Theodoretus of Cyrus (first half of the fifth century), we can still find the claim that Paul, in the Letter to the Romans, has revealed

  “{the mystery of the economy and showed the cause of Incarnation}” (Theodoret of

  Cyrus, Commentary on the Letters of Saint Paul, vol. I, p. 72).

  2.11. It is common to identify Tertullian as the first author for whom oikonomia is unequivocally referred to the procession of the persons in the deity; yet, we should not expect to find rigor of argument or terminological precision in

  his works—Gilson defines his way of reasoning as “antiphilosophical,” and even

  “simplistic.”

  The oikonomia—and its Latin equivalents dispensatio and dispositio—is rather the apparatus with which, in his polemics against the “restless” and “very

  perverse” Praxeas, Tertullian tries to come to terms with the impossibility of

  a philosophical formulation of the Trinitarian articulation. He thus begins to

  make the term more technical—and, at the same time, render it more mysteri-

  ous—by leaving it in its Greek form:

  We however as always [ . . . ] believe [ . . . ] in one only God, yet subject to this dispensation (which is our word for “oikonomia”) [ sub hac tamen dispensatione

  quam “oikonomian” dicimus], that the one only God has also a Son, his Word who

  has proceeded from himself [ . . . ] ( Tertullian’s Treatise Against Praxeas, 2, 1, p. 131) Shortly afterward, this technicization is reinforced in order to neutralize the

  “Monarchian” objection of his rival:

  While Latins are intent on shouting out “monarchy,” even Greeks refuse to un-

  derstand the oikonomia [ “oikonomian” intellegere nolunt etiam Graeci]. (Ibid., 3, 2, p. 133)

  But, as in Hippolytus, the crucial gesture is the transformation of the Pauline

  syntagma “economy of the mystery” into oikonomias sacramentum, which con-

  fers on economy all the semantic richness and ambiguity of a term that means,

  at the same time, oath, consecration, and mystery:

  As though the one [God] were not all [these things] in this way also, that they

  are all of the one, namely, by unity of substance, while nonetheless is guarded

  the mystery of that economy that disposes the unity into trinity [ oikonomias

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  HOMO SACER II, 4

  sacramentum quae unitatem in trinitatem disponit], setting forth Father and Son

  and Spirit as three, three however not in condition [ statu] but in degree [ gradu], not in substance [ substantia] but in form [ forma], not in power [ potestate] but in species [ specie] [ . . . ] (Ibid., 2, 4, p. 132)

  Kolping has shown that Tertullian does not invent the new Christian meaning

  of “sacrament,” and that he must have found the term in the Latin translations of

  the New Testament that circulated at his time (in particular, the translation

  of the Letter to the Ephesians: Kolping, p. 97). The reversal of the perspicuous

  Pauline syntagma that results in the obscure formula oikonomiae sacramentum

  and the simultaneous attempt to clarify it through a series of oppositions—

  condition/degree, substance/form, power/ species (just as Hippolytus resorted

  to the opposition dynamis/oikonomia)—is all the more significant. Here, the

  antiphilosophical Tertullian shrewdly draws on the philosophical vocabulary

  of his time: the doctrine of a single nature that articulates and distinguishes

  itself into various degrees is Stoic (see Pohlenz, vol. I, p. 438), just as the idea

  of a distinction that cannot be divided into “parts” but that articulates forces

  and powers (Tertullian explicitly refers to this distinction in the De anima; see Pohlenz, vol. I, p. 439).

  The distinction between substantial separation and economic articulation

  reappears in the Treatise Against Praxeas, 19, 8:

  The Father and the Son are two, and this not as a result of separation of substance,

  but as a result of an economic disposition [ non ex separatione substantiae sed ex

  dispositione], while we declare the Son indivisible and inseparable from the Father, another not in condition but in degree [ nec statu sed gradu alium]. ( Tertullian’s Treatise Against Praxeas, p. 158)

  Here, “substance” should be understood in Marcus Aurelius’s sense (12, 30, 1):

  there is a single common ousia, which articulates itself in a singular manner

  into countless individualities, each with its own specific qualitative determina-

  tions. In any case, it is essential that, in Tertullian, the economy is not un-

  derstood as a substantial heterogeneity, but as the articulation—at every turn

  administrative-managerial or pragmatic-rhetorical—of a single reality. In other

  words, the heterogeneity does not concern being and ontology, but rather action

  and praxis. According to a paradigm that will deeply mark Christian theology,

  the Trinity is not an articulation of the divine being, but of its praxis.

  2.12. The strategic meaning of the paradigm of the oikonomia is clarified

  in the long passage from Chapter 3 in which the economy is referred back to

  its original meaning as “administration of the house.” The definition of the

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  juridical-political concept of “administration” has always been problematic for

  historians of law and politics; they traced its origin back to the canon law of the

  twelfth–fourteenth century, when the term administratio begins to appear to-

  gether with iurisdictio in the terminology of the canonists (Napoli, pp. 145–146).

  From this perspective, the
passage from Tertullian is interesting since it contains

  a sort of theological paradigm of administration, which finds its perfect exem-

  plum in the angelical hierarchies:

  The simple people, that I say not the thoughtless and ignorant (who are always

  the majority of the faithful), since the Rule of Faith itself [ ipsa regula fidei] brings

  [us] over from the many gods of the world to the one only true God, not under-

  standing that while they must believe in one only [God] yet they must believe in

  him along with his oikonomia, shy at the economy. They claim that the plurality

  and ordinance [ dispositio] of trinity is a division of unity—although a unity which derives from itself a trinity is not destroyed but administered by it [ non destruatur

  ab illa sed administretur]. ( Tertullian’s Treatise Against Praxeas, 3, 1, p. 132) At this stage, what is essentially at stake in Tertullian’s argument appears to be

  the articulation of economy and monarchy in the figure of the administration:

  But while Latins are intent on shouting out “monarchy,” even Greeks refuse to

  understand the economy. But if I have gathered any small knowledge of both

  languages, I know that monarchy indicates neither more nor less than a single

  and sole rule [ singulare et unicum imperium], yet that monarchy because it be-

  longs to one man does not for that reason make a standing rule that he whose

  it is may not have a son or must have made himself his own son or may not

  administer his monarchy by the agency of whom he will. Nay more, I say that no

  kingdom is in such a sense one man’s own, in such a sense single, in such a sense

  a monarchy, as not to be administered also through those other closely related

  persons whom it has provided for itself as officers [ officiales]: and if moreover he whose the monarchy is has a son, it is not ipso facto divided, does not cease to be a monarchy, if the son also is assumed as partner in it, but it continues to belong

  in the first instance to him by whom it is passed on to the son: and so long as

  it is his, that continues to be a monarchy which is jointly held by two who are

  so closely united. Therefore if also the divine monarchy is administered by the

  agency of so many legions and hosts of angels (as it is written, Ten thousand times