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In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Catholic Church, and in the teachings of the Church Fathers which undergirds the theology of those communions, economy or oeconomy (, oikonomia) has several meanings.Lampe, et al., A Patristic Greek Lexicon (Oxford, 1968) 940–943. The basic meaning of the word is "handling" or "disposition" or "management" of a thing, or more literally "housekeeping", usually assuming or implying good or prudent handling (as opposed to poor handling) of the matter at hand. In short, economia is a discretionary deviation from the letter of the law in order to adhere to the spirit of the Canon law and charity. This is in contrast to legalism, or akribia (), which is strict adherence to the letter of the law of the church.
According to Vladimir Lossky, theology (literally, "words about God" or "teaching about God") was concerned with all that pertains to God alone, in himself, i.e. the teaching on the Trinity, the divine attributes, and so on; but it was not concerned with anything pertaining to the creation or the redemption. Lossky writes: "The distinction between οικονομια economy and θεολογια theology ... remains common to most of the Greek Church Fathers and to all of the Byzantine Greeks tradition. θεολογια ... means, in the fourth century, everything which can be said of God considered in Himself, outside of His creative and redemptive economy. To reach this 'theology' properly so-called, one therefore must go beyond ... God as Creator of the universe, in order to be able to extricate the notion of the Trinity from the cosmological implications proper to the 'economy.' "V. Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir's, 1985), 15.
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