Economy and Theology

This brief piece opens a new area of discussion, prompted by Kathryn Tanner's recent books: The Economy of Grace, 2005 and Christianity and the New Spirit of Capitalism, 2019. In the series we will look at Tanner's attempt to subject the secular field of economic the theological analysis. Since we are not part of an academic structure this means that we will be interested in what way such a theological engagement yields for the pastoral ministry.  

The Economy of Grace

                One might likely object that this is an oxymoron, but the tension is precisely what makes this title worthwhile. The use of the word economy to signify the behavior of markets and enterprises of secular communities only appeared in the mid‑17th century. The term originates from the ancient Greek word to signify the behavior of a household. Long before its secular us, it has a lengthy history of theological use. For this reason, we should be comfortable using it to explore the nature of behavior in the House of Grace, that is, in the Church. 

                We might make a begin by looking at the parable of the parable of “the Laborers in the Vineyard” found in Matthew 20:1–16. It is not uncommon for homilists to belabor the apparent issue of inequity contained in the parable, but John Chrysostom famously embraced. In an Easter homily, his opening remarks were based on the parable. His success was so stunning that it counties to read at Easter, particularly in Orthodox Churches, where it has become part of the liturgy!

                John used the parable as a way for greeting worshipers who had come the Paschal Liturgy: “If any man be devout and love God, let him enjoy this fair and radiant triumphal feast.” He goes on to welcome those who have wrought with fasting from the first hour and he continues on, hour by hour, until he comes to the end. “He gives rest unto him who comes at the eleventh hour, even as unto him who has wrought from the first hour.”

                How is this fair? Grace is superabundant so that what is given to one, the eleventh-hour person, takes nothing from what is given to the first-hour person. Should that first hour person complain, he shall surely be told: “Friend I do you no wrong,” by no less than God himself!

                A homilist will do well in asking his congregation to practice the economy of grace. He will error, however, if he poses it as an alternative economy to the secular economy, the economy of scarcity, least he starves or eats at the expense of others.  He may be so bold as to challenge the secular economy, to respect the economy of grace, least it loses its foundation, its arche and its end, its telos both of which are framed by grace.

               

 Parochial Theology

As a follow up on my earlier post in which a argue the case for a Parochial Theology, I am posting a brief homily which I preached at a midweek Eucharist commemorating George Herbert, 1593-1633. I do so because I think that his writing were an early contribution to the body of Parochial Theology. 

  A Brief Homily Preached at A Week Day Eucharist, Feb. 2026

 + George Herbert was born in 1593. The Herberts were a wealthy lot, not nobles, but important commoners who participated in English government.  His father served in the parliament and held various governmental functions as did his elder brother.  He went off to Trinity College at Cambridge, the academic bastion of the English Reform, intent on becoming a priest. Recognized for his rhetorical skills, King James recruited him to service in parliament and in the governance of the kingdom. Which he did until James’s death in 1624, when he was ordained a priest and took on a rural parish, in southwest England. The parish was about 8 miles north of Salisbury Cathedral. It consisting of two churches St. Peter’s Fugglestone and St. Andrews, Bemerton, the later serving as his residence.   

The importance of this move is made clear if we recall that the reform of the English Church, at the time less than a hundred years old, was largely focused on political issues played out in public forum and on ideas debated in academic circles! Something that was broadly true of the 16rh century reforms across the board. At this point, we might register the thought that we could very well say the same about our own church in the 21st century.

One might suppose that George Herbert's action was an escape, but in truth it was a choice to take on the frontier, namely, the life of the parish church! After all, the Gospel is neither politics or ideas, but a Life. Herbert went out intent on living that life.

He wrote an essay called “The Country Parson” in which he described the role of a priest in a parish setting.  He added a second title, “Priest to the Temple” which makes it clear that his essay was the blueprint of what he intended to do. During the ministry that followed he wrote poetry that captured his daily prayer life as a priest. This body of poetry is quite stunning, theologically and poetically. As late as the 20ieth century T. S. Eliot pointed to his poetry as a foundation for modern English poetry.  Theologically, because he identified poetry as a basic media for English theology.  In the poetry of the “Temple” he indicates a commitment to the liturgical life, for example, he commends the observance of Lent:

Lent

                                                                Welcome dear feast of Lent                                                                                                                                         Who loves not thee                                                                                                                            He loves not Temperance and Authority                                                                                                                      But is composed of Passions

 and he ends the “Temple” with his oft quote poem on the Eucharist:

Love

                                              LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
                                                               Guilty of dust and sin.
                                              But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
                                                                From my first entrance in,
                                              Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
                                                               If I lack’d anything.

                                              ‘A guest,’ I answer’d, ‘worthy to be here:’
                                                                Love said, ‘You shall be he.’
                                              ‘I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
                                                               I cannot look on Thee.’
                                              Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
                                                                ‘Who made the eyes but I?’

                                              ‘Truth, Lord; but I have marr’d them: let my shame
                                                               Go where it doth deserve.’
                                            ‘And know you not,’ says Love, ‘Who bore the blame?’                                                                                                  ‘My dear, then I will serve.’
                                              ‘You must sit down,’ says Love, ‘and taste my meat.’
                                                               So I did sit and eat.

This concern for the liturgical life contrasts with the concern of the public and academic reform focused politics and ideas for which it had little value!  

Suffice it to say at this point, that when I began my priestly ministry over 58 years ago, my blueprint was “The Country Parson.” And that today, a day does not go by in which I do not ask ‘Holy Mister Herbert’ to pray for me. Indeed, today, “I ask “’Holy Mister Herbert’, pray for us.” 

My Isaiah project has moved on to Second Isaiah, a text that divides between anticipation 40-48 and responding to a changed situation 49-55. This later section contain 3 of the 4 Suffering Servant Songs and clearly they are not anomalies but tied the central theme of the text. Sixty years ago in my formation I made a great effort at trying to understand these Songs which are so deeply embedded in Christian doctrine. So it is fascination to a close study them at this late point in my life an would like to share my results and would welcome comments.  I have done this with the help AI which has made possible to put my ideas into a shareable text. I whole own what follows. 

 Jeconiah in Exile and the Origins of the Suffering Servant Tradition

The Suffering Servant Songs of Isaiah—42:1–9; 49:1–6; 50:4–11; and 52:13–53:12—have long been interpreted through the lens of later theological appropriations. Their meaning has been shaped by post‑exilic hopes, Second Temple messianism, early Christian readings, and centuries of doctrinal development. Yet these later layers often obscure the most immediate historical and theological question that confronted the community that first received these texts: What becomes of royal agency when the king is in exile?

This question, I argue, is the generative soil from which the Servant tradition grows. The Servant Songs are not abstract meditations on suffering, nor are they originally messianic predictions. They are a theological reflection on the crisis of kingship embodied in the figure of King Jeconiah, deported to Babylon in 597 BCE. The prophetic imagination of the Jerusalem tradition—already deeply invested in the meaning of royal office in Isaiah 9 and 11—continued its work in exile, rethinking kingship under conditions where political power was impossible. The result was a profound transformation: the emergence of the servant king, and through him, the vision of a servant people.

1. The Crisis of Royal Agency in 597 BCE

Jeconiah’s exile created a theological emergency. In the Davidic tradition, the king was not merely a political figure; he was the bearer of divine judgment, the guarantor of justice, and the visible sign of God’s covenantal commitment. When the king was removed from the throne and placed under imperial control, the question was not simply political—Who rules Judah?—but theological—What is a king when he cannot rule?

The prophetic school that shaped Isaiah 9 and 11 had already articulated a vision of kingship grounded in divine agency rather than military might. In exile, this tradition confronted its most severe test. The king could no longer act as king. Yet the office could not simply disappear. It had to be reimagined.

2. Political Strategies of Exiled Kings—and Their Limits

Historically, exiled monarchs have adopted one of two strategies:

• Machiavellian strategy: intrigue, manipulation, alliance‑building, and attempts to reclaim power through political maneuvering.

• Soft‑power strategy: cultivating nostalgia, symbolic presence, or international sympathy.

Examples such as Haile Selassie and King Farouk illustrate these approaches. But neither strategy was available—or theologically appropriate—for Jeconiah. Babylonian control was absolute. Political scheming was futile. Nostalgic symbolism was insufficient.

The prophetic imagination therefore turned to a third possibility: a theological strategy.

3. The Servant as the Reimagined King

Isaiah 42:1–9 introduces a figure who bears unmistakable royal features—chosen by God, endowed with God’s spirit, commissioned to bring justice to the nations. Yet this figure does not rule. He serves. He suffers. He embodies divine judgment not through coercion but through obedience.

This is the theological answer to the crisis of Jeconiah’s exile:

When a king cannot rule, he can still serve.

When royal power is stripped away, royal vocation remains.

The Servant Songs develop this theme progressively in Isaiah 49–55, a section responding to the Persian victory in 540 BCE. Suddenly the exiled community faced the real possibility of returning to Jerusalem. Yet the physical and economic challenges of such a return were immense, and the emotional difficulty of detaching from seventy years of Babylonian life was no less daunting.

The prophetic school in exile addressed these challenges through three further Servant Songs, in which the royal servant is no longer Jeconiah himself but his theological successors:

• Isaiah 49:1–6 expands the Servant’s mission to Israel and the nations, echoing the universal scope of royal responsibility.

• Isaiah 50:4–11 presents the Servant as teacher and witness, steadfast in suffering.

• Isaiah 52:13–53:12 culminates in a vision of redemptive suffering that transforms the community.

These texts are not about a generic righteous sufferer. They are a theological re‑articulation of royal agency under the conditions of return from exile.

4. From Servant King to Servant People

Once kingship is reframed as service, the people themselves are drawn into this vocation. The king becomes the prototype of a community whose identity is no longer anchored in land, temple, or political sovereignty but in obedience to God’s word.

This shift explains a historical puzzle:

Why did Judah survive exile with its identity intact, while other conquered nations—including the northern kingdom—did not?

The answer lies in this theological transformation:

• The king became a servant.

• The people became a servant people.

• Memory became vocation rather than nostalgia.

• Identity was preserved not by power but by purpose.

The Servant Songs thus encode the spiritual logic that sustained Judah through seventy years of displacement.

5. Later Appropriations and the Clouding of Origins

Subsequent interpretations—whether messianic, national, or christological—are not wrong, but they must renounce claims of exclusivity if they are to honor the originality of the tradition and the many collateral appropriations that followed. In a sense, Isaiah 42:1—composed some twenty years after Jeconiah’s death and in very different circumstances—is itself the first appropriation.

These later readings build upon a tradition whose original function was to address a concrete historical and theological crisis, yet the Servant figure proved capable of imaging divine agency in new historical contexts.

By recovering Jeconiah’s exile as the generative context, the Servant Songs can be read not as mysterious predictions but as a profound reimagining of kingship—one that reshaped Israel’s self‑understanding, enabled its return in the fifth century, and continued to live on through successive historical transformations, including our own, in a rich variety of ways.

This opens a new area of discussion, to which I have long been devoted. It has been made possible though AI, which I embrace a remarkable tool that has quickly presented thoughts that I have sustained over many years.

                 I found that I was by then, 
                        so into living theology in a congregation, 
                        and writing it on human hearts 
                        that I did have the heart to do what was required 
                        in order to qualify for living theolog in academia 
                        and doing theology in classes so transient 
                        and in books so problematic, largely un read. 
                I left the editorial work undone and went on.  

                                                                                                from On Giving My Word, 2022, p. 45

Toward a Parochial Theology: Recovering the Local as a Theological Venue

Modern Christian theology is often mapped according to its venues. Scholastic or academic theology arises within the university, shaped by dialectical reasoning and conceptual precision. Monastic theology emerges from the cloister, formed through contemplation, ascetic practice, and the rhythms of communal prayer. Yet a third venue—arguably the most ancient and the most neglected—remains underdeveloped: the parish. A theology rooted in the life of a local community, shaped by its liturgy, its stories, its struggles, and its shared discernment, may be called parochial theology.

The term parochial has suffered from a modern narrowing. In common usage it suggests small‑mindedness or provincialism. But its etymology tells a different story. The Greek paroikia refers to dwelling near, living alongside, being a resident alien. Early Christian communities understood themselves precisely in this way: local, embodied, provisional, and yet deeply theological. To recover the older sense of parochial is to recover the parish as a genuine theological locus.

A historical precedent for such a recovery can be found in the Devotio Moderna. Emerging in the late medieval Low Countries, this movement occupied a space between monastic withdrawal and secular life. The Sisters and Brothers of the Common Life lived in towns, under parish priests and civic authorities, committed to prayer, work, and the sanctification of everyday life. Their spirituality was neither speculative nor cloistered. It was practical, interior, communal, and deeply embedded in the rhythms of ordinary Christian existence. In this sense, the Devotio Moderna anticipated a parochial theology: a mode of theological reflection arising from the life of a local community rather than from the academy or the monastery.

By contrast, modern pastoral theology—at least in its dominant forms—has drifted away from this communal grounding. Over the twentieth century it absorbed the language and methods of psychology, especially through the rise of Clinical Pastoral Education. Pastoral identity became increasingly therapeutic, individualized, and client‑centered. Doctrine, liturgy, and ecclesial life receded into the background. The pastor became a quasi‑counselor, and pastoral theology became a discipline concerned primarily with the interior life of the individual rather than the shared life of the parish. In losing the parish as its venue, pastoral theology lost much of its theological depth.

A parochial theology offers a corrective. It restores the parish as the primary site where Christian life is lived and where theological meaning is generated. It treats the liturgy not as background ritual but as the community’s interpretive center. It understands doctrine not as abstract propositions but as the grammar of a people’s shared life. It takes seriously the stories, wounds, hopes, and histories of a particular community. It is neither anti‑intellectual nor anti‑monastic; rather, it insists that theology must also arise from the lived experience of the people of God in a specific place.

In this sense, parochial theology is not a narrowing but a nearness. It is theology that smells like the sheep, theology that listens before it speaks, theology that emerges from the life of a people dwelling together in faith. It retrieves the ancient sense of paroikia—a community living alongside, dwelling near, seeking holiness in the midst of the ordinary—and reclaims it as a vital theological venue for our time.

 

Stephanie Rumpza, Phenomenology of the Icon, Mediating God through the Image

One who comes to this book to deepen their understand of Byzantine iconography will find the opening chapters on Phenomenology a heavy lift. As those who come to this book test the capacity of phenomenology to make a case religious art will find its closing chapters a descent into, God forbid, prayer! Regardless, I would commend this book as profoundly worth the effort it takes to read it. Which is not to say that the text itself is a problem as Rumpza’s narrative skills are engaging, but that its analysis is deep.

                What the framework of phenomenology does for Byzantine Icon, is twofold.  Firstly overcomes the divorce between art and the icon.  The recovery of icons which is rather recent. Rescuing them from a long season of decline not a little to coping western art and limitation to enclaves of piety led to an attack on the realism of western art as idolatrous and as art that in general was spiritually irrelevant.  This schism is bad enough confined to art, but it bears on life itself.  Secular life is separate from spiritual Life which means poverty for the former and irrelevant for the latter. Secondly it open the encounter with an icon by means of a language which can take to in the very foundation of being human. In terms of phenomenology that is “response” to “call,” the call to thinking/being/conscious.

               The book deserves to be discussed and I hope this contributes to that possibility. If you would like more information see "Review in Depth" Anglican Theological Review  vol 7 issue 3 Summer 2025. Page 294 "A New Frontier for Iconography" by Lance Green St. Paul MN

 

Source Criticism, Joel S. Baden, Cascade Books, Eugene, Oregon, 2024

A Brief Review.

Anyone who has approached the Bible, particularly the first five books of Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch, is aware of its complexity and of “the bumps in the road” in making one’s way through it. But only specialists are aware of the vast body of sophisticated scholarship that has been devoted to it. Baden would like to take you through it, particularly that western scholarship that began with the Renaissance’s “return to original sources” and which gained momentum in the Enlightenment and in the succeeding age of Romanticism that has shaped Western life.  The core of the attempt was to uncover the sources of the Bible, in particular of the Pentateuch.  Throughout the 19^th and 20^th century, German university scholars had a dominant role in this pursuit.

Baden’s book is intended to be an introduction for “nonspecialist.”  I think that it is essentially the open lectures of a course on the Hebrew Scripture as one might find in a seminary or theological school as “required,” I would hope, for a candidate for MDiv or MTh degree. Each chapter ends with an exercise in which the method discussed the chapter is applied to a text, Genesis 26:10-29.  no less than six times, illustrating what effect each method had for interpretation. I would highly recommend it to anyone attempting a study of the Bible, particularly whose ministry would be based on it.

Overall, Baden demonstrates how much this scholarship was biased by in presuppositions, as he admits is true of his as well.   The classic body of the Hebrew Bible, the Pentateuch in particular was largely Protestant. As result, its read set aside the ritual for the ethical, the latter being the original source and former being the latter corruption.  It was also true that it had a social orientation link to the German quest to construct a common “volk” out of their, up to then, diverse population. So, the source material that they identified in the Pentateuch as its foundation was the formation of a people. Bandon’s critique is not so original, but it does have the additional dimension of disclosing just how deeply anti-Semitic it was. He also makes clear that the source method they employed replaced the text by the source, where source criticism for him should be the means own the text.

By the middle of the 20^th century, their source theory, which claimed that the Pentateuch was the result of four documents, J, E, D and P, was widely accepted.  There were some significant new efforts which raised questions about how complete this analysis was. Baden identified Gunkel, Von Rad and Eichorn as scholars that raised new questions, but it was the general consensus that these would be answer within confines of the documentary thesis. This did not happen in the seventies, as Baden points out, where an attempt was made to “reimagine source criticism.”  This called for the abandonment the document theory and a new start with what it called the “smallest literary unit” of the text.

The heavy historical exploration was set aside as unnecessary, abstruse or impossible and the text as discreet pieces becomes the source.  The effort is associated with the work of Rendtorff and continued through final decades of the 20^th century. This led to the assumption that documentary theory had been made irrelevant. The problem, as the exercise at the end of chapter 5 shows, ends in fragmentation with an endless number of possible solutions.

In his final chapter, 6, “A Return to Sources,” Baden provides his solution to how Pentateuch studies should proceed.  He argues that while the classic sources did not exist as documents there did exist a more diverse set of sources.  Identifying these sources does not give one a basis for replacing the text, but a means of giving the text its meaning.  It will be interesting to follow Baden’s effort to carry out his methods as it promises to be more helpful to the student of the Pentateuch than the sterile reductionism of the most recent period which seemed only serve personalist use of the Biblical text, be it the Pentateuch, the rest of the Tanach, or the Christian testament.

I would close with a personal note.  My formation took place in the sixties when the document theory was solidly entrenched, at the very institution, YDS, that Baden serves as Professor of Hebrew Bible.  Of course, many of us who went form there in pastoral ministries followed the rule that much of what they had learned was best left behind, but some of us felt called to carry it into our ministries. I taught source theory in the parishes that I served. In fact, the Episcopal lay curriculum, EFM, included it in its first year. My experience was that this did not put off the laity but energized them in regard to scripture.

I carried from seminary some experience with Scandinavian scholarship and an introduction to Gunkel, Von Rad and Eichorn so I anticipated a continued development of source criticism.  As my pastorate was coming to an end, I noticed in my rear-view mirror that sources criticism was coming apart to my dismay.  So Baden’s work excites me. I am short on time, so I don’t expect to be around to catch the new wave, but take great solace in calling his work to your attention,

Michael J. Tancreti, MDV Berkeley YDS 1967

aka The Elder of Omaha
                            

 

 

          I realized in my awakening this morning that some heaviness made me reluctant to get up. Then I remembered that it was “Thomas Sunday.”  Oh, if it were only possible to sleep through till Monday.  Not that have anything against Thomas, the beloved twin, it is just that in the Gospel for the Second Sunday of Easter there is elephant around which our homilists carefully walk.  I mean, Jesus breathing on his disciples and saying "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

               Tell me, my fellow homilists, how do you walk around that! The resurrection is the foundation of the Church’s office of reconciliation. It is, i admit an uncomfortable office, but one that is nevertheless ours.  You will have read or at least listened to the collect which declared that God, in the Paschal mystery has established the new covenant of reconciliation. The lesson from Acts: God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins.  

               How is this so? With resurrection, the consequences of human sins are undone.  And how great these consequences are which we habitually pass on for some other time or place. An ocean is too small a metaphor to capture their immensity. But in the resurrection the unwanted brother stands before you. Just as in this Gospel, it is recorded that the betrayed stood before the betrayer. It is for that reason that they of all persons could walk out of that room and dare say your sins are forgiven.