The mechanisms of religion assimilated into the political-economic culture of modernity

Can we axiomatically define that the Christian’s Sisyphean striving for reconciliation with the world is part of divine oikonomia, as the Fourth Gospel, that of St John, explicitly states? Or can we view the development of human history as a divine pedagogy of social cohesion, as some Pauline or Acts of Apostles readings might suggest? In order to avoid simplistic interpretations, the answer can only be nuanced, or even susceptible to a certain duplicity, if formulated within the paradigm of a superhuman understanding beyond the power of understanding. It is not uncommon for secular researchers who have studied Council Vatican II to equate the change in attitude towards the world with a kind of theology of compromise. Aggiornamento, a neologism that would be adopted by almost every language on this occasion, appeared to denote an adaptation of the Church to the contents of the world, as E. Voegelin termed them. However, a more thorough investigation into the origins of modernity reveals a process that mirrors the developments of the latter half of the 20th century, albeit in the opposite direction. This earlier period can be characterised as a subversive appropriation of a series of cultural and symbolic elements that were specific to a world order based on a religious vision. The present study will focus on investigating those elements in the economic field, which are considered to be among the innovative elements of modernity. The advent of the Industrial Revolution, concomitant with the rise of liberalism, signifies the initial phase in the genesis of the new economy. Consequently, both the centralized economy and autarchy, despite their inherent challenges to liberalism, will become avatars of the new economy. The concept of an intramundane ecclesia is proposed as a theoretical framework underpinning various proposals for reordering the world on new foundations, including the invisible hand, catallaxy, historical determinism, or variants of political-economic Gnosticism, and will constitute veritabile epiphanies of it. Nevertheless, when considered within the overarching framework of the Economy of Redemption – a framework that is often overlooked – the newly proposed economic systems will expose their inherent limitations rather than demonstrating their efficacy.