Economy (religion)
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, and in the teachings of the Church Fathers which undergirds the theology of those communions, economy or oeconomy has several meanings. The basic meaning of the word is "handling" or "disposition" or "management" of a thing, or more literally "housekeeping", usually assuming or implying good or prudent handling of the matter at hand. In short, economia is a discretionary deviation from the letter of the law in order to adhere to the spirit of the law and charity. This is in contrast to legalism, or akribia, which is strict adherence to the letter of the law of the church.
Eastern Orthodoxy
Divine economy
The divine economy, in Eastern Orthodoxy, not only refers to God's actions to bring about the world's salvation and redemption, but to all of God's dealings with, and interactions with, the world, including the Creation.According to Lossky, theology was concerned with all that pertains to God alone, in himself, i.e. the teaching on the Trinity, the divine attributes, and so on; but it was not concerned with anything pertaining to the creation or the redemption. Lossky writes: "The distinction between οικονομια and θεολογια remains common to most of the Greek Fathers and to all of the Byzantine tradition. θεολογια means, in the fourth century, everything which can be said of God considered in Himself, outside of His creative and redemptive economy. To reach this 'theology' properly so-called, one therefore must go beyond God as Creator of the universe, in order to be able to extricate the notion of the Trinity from the cosmological implications proper to the 'economy.' "