Aaron Pidel SJ: The Limits of Ecclesial Economy on the Eve of Lyons II
Though some have argued that the Eastern Christian tradition of ecclesial oikonomia, that is, the relaxation of an ecclesial norm to promote a greater good, underwent a process of refinement culminating in the eighth and ninth centuries, this article argues that the theory of oikonomia operative in the debates surrounding the proposed ‘Union of Lyons’ (1274) does not fit this narrative. That is to say, few parties debating whether union could be justified as a measure of oikonomia, whether unionist or anti-unionist, had yet restricted oikonomia’s scope to disciplinary (as opposed to doctrinal) matters; and no parties had yet excluded temporal-political (as opposed to spiritual-ecclesial) advantages from oikonomia’s legitimate motivations. Thirteenth-century Byzantine ecclesiastics instead discerned the limits of economy toward the Latins by reasoning analogically from patristic cases, cases often ambiguously straddling these doctrinal-disciplinary and ecclesial-temporal boundaries. The fact that thirteenth-century Byzantine Christians continued to construe the scope of oikonomia so broadly, at least in principle, may also have implications for current ecumenical efforts between the Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Keywords: oikonomia – Council of Lyons II – doctrine – heresy – ecumenism