That is as true within the church as it’s anyplace else – maybe much more so. A lot of my work is in main people, teams, and establishments into recognizing their cash narratives and unpacking how they got here to imagine what it’s they imagine in relation to funds. What I’ve discovered, maybe satirically, is that a lot of our cultural assumptions, unstated beliefs, and even practices round cash have roots within the theologies of the Christian custom.
The phrases redemption and debt actually have fashionable implications, however atonement theories in addition to varied Christologies have additionally relied on debt language to explain Christ’s relationship to humanity and/or redemption thereof. I invite you to think about your individual narratives as we stroll by way of a quick historical past of those phrases.
The etymological roots of debt is derived from the Latin verb debere, which implies to owe. Its stem is the time period de habere, or to have, to carry, to grab or to stay away from somebody. Theological notions round debt, like their etymological roots, discover their starting in Roman antiquity. Christians residing earlier than 300 CE imagined God’s redemptive energy over creation as being akin to an ordered family, an oikos (from the Greek phrase for family). If the oikos (both historically understood or that of the imperial court docket) was the inspiration for Christian theology, then the oikonomia, fairly actually, described how the family was ordered and managed. It turned the realm by way of which Christians understood the mechanics of how God functioned and the way God would possibly relate to humanity:
“Moses was devoted as a servant in all God’s home [oikos],” bearing witness to what can be spoken by God sooner or later. However Christ is devoted because the Son over God’s home [oikos]. And we’re his home [oikos], if certainly we maintain firmly to our confidence and the hope during which we glory. (Hebrews 3:5-6, NIV)
This grace was given me: to evangelise to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everybody the administration [oikonomia] of this thriller, which for ages previous was stored hidden in God, who created all issues. (Ephesians 3:8-9, NIV)
