ABSTRACT
Oikonomia is a key concept in Greek patristic thought that until very recently was lost in translation, as noted by Marie-Jose Mondzain, who pioneered the contemporary research that revitalized the importance of the term. The word Oikonomia has a long pre-Christian history which is of some significance when evaluating its role in Christianity. Oikonomia was also used as a term denoting the rational management of resources in political theory, military strategy, law, finance, medicine, literary criticism, architecture, music, history, and rhetoric. Oikonomia was consolidated into a key concept in texts by apologists between the second half of the second century and the first half of the third. The rise of Oikonomia from the private space of the ancient household and its subsequent exclusion from the divine one in which the triune God subsists to public glory brought two major changes in the conception of space in Greek-speaking antiquity.
