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This book shows how early economic ideas structured Christian thought and society, giving crucial insight into why money holds such power in the West. Examining the religious and theological sources of money's power, it shows how early Christian thinkers borrowed ancient notions of money and economic exchange from the Roman Empire as a basis for their new theological arguments. Monetary metaphors and images, including the minting of coins and debt slavery, provided frameworks for theologians to explain what happens in salvation. God became an economic administrator, for instance, and Christ functioned as a currency to purchase humanity's freedom. Such ideas, in turn, provided models for pastors and Christian emperors as they oversaw both resources and people, which led to new economic conceptions of state administration of populations and conferred a godly aura on the use of money. Divine Currency argues that this longstanding association of money with divine activity has contributed over the centuries to money's ever increasing significance, justifying various forms of politics that manage citizens along the way. Devin Singh's account sheds unexpected light on why we live in a world where nothing seems immune from the price mechanism.
— Adam Kotsko
Divine Currency offers an incisive contribution to the debate about neoliberalism's Christian origins. Devin Singh's bold reading of the sources challenges us to reconsider the relations between theology, politics, and economics."
— Philip Goodchild
"Devin Singh probes the true meaning of divine economy, revealing the centrality of economic thinking to the formation of Christian theology. His book is a welcome and timely addition to recent scholarship in religious as well as finance studies, and with far-reaching consequences."
— Susanna Elm, University of California
"Singh's illuminating study shows the power of economic discourse to shape theology, while also demonstrating that one of the reasons theology is able to alter economic practice is precisely that it does not stand outside economic thinking.Clearly written and modestly argued, Singh's work should be taken up by those who would seek to keep economics and theology at arm's length, and by those who would see theology as an artifice which simply hides the "real" power of money."
— Myles Werntz
"Divine Currency is an intriguing work in religious and cultural studies that challenges much of the work done in theology and economics suggesting that it failed to attend to how the two central mysteries of the Christian faith, the Trinity and incarnation, are implicated both in ancient and modern Western economic dominance....The strength of Singh's work is his historical attention to the use of economic metaphors in the development of Christian doctrine."
— Stephen Long
"[To] read Devin Singh's Divine Currency is to be transported from our commonplace assumptions about the nexus between Christianity and economics into a world, that of late Antiquity, both wonderfully unfamiliar and uncannily resonant with our own....Whilst Divine Currency is a conceptually assured and sophisticated book, it is also grounded in the patient deployment of historical knowledge and philological method."
— Alberto Toscano
"Devin Singh's profoundly important book, Divine Currency, provides readers with invaluable tools to help us understand why it's so hard to talk about God without talking about money, and why it's so hard to talk about money without talking about God."
— Roberto Sirvent
"Singh performs the much-needed task of establishing a vocabulary for the conceptual-historical connections between Christian theology and monetary economy in the West....[The] theoretical blueprint Singh provides us with will no doubt become a guide for future scholarship on Christianity and monetary economy."
— Danube Johnson
"Singh offers a crucial critique of problems contained within Christian thought itself that prop up capitalist systems that undermine human dignity."
— Nichole M. Flores
"Singh's very simple and yet forceful argument—that a ransom theory cannot but be about money—is compelling. I truly doubt that I will ever be able to think about or to teach [Gregory of Nyssa's] imagery again without taking Singh's explanation into account."
— John E. Thiel
"Singh's work may enable us to rethink what Christian theology is....Far from accepting a pure theological origin for authorisation and legitimation of doctrine, practice and conduct, Singh charts the messy involvement of Patristic theology with the power practices and techniques of exploitation conducted by the Roman Empire."
— Philip Goodchild
"Devin Singh presents his readers with a thought-provoking close reading of the deep homology between the concept of oikonomia as it developed in ancient Greek philosophy and early Christian articulations of God's immanence and transcendence....One of the most admirable traits of this book is that it avoids the trap of simplistic or predictable deconstructive critique. Instead, it enacts intellectual humility in light of historical complexity and is satisfied with providing a rich reconstruction of conceptual evolution."
— Alex Holznienkemper
The introduction situates the study amidst current inquiries into religion and economy. It explains why such works are often impressionistic, reactionary, or lacking in sustained analysis of real relationships between theological discourse and monetary practice. It claims that a genealogically and historically informed approach improves the current conversation, which is dominated by allusive explorations of the supposed affinities between theology and the market. It also makes the case that a political dimension to the study of money is needed in order to link the investigation to current inquiries into political theology. It briefly introduces studies of the links between economy and Christian thought by Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben, explaining how this study follows their intuitions and noting where it diverges. It explains the importance of metaphor and homology between money and theology and provides an overview of the book chapters.
This chapter explains why the Christian idea of incarnation is laden with political and economic themes and why it has validated imperial expansion through economy. It first takes up Giorgio Agamben's recent genealogy of sovereign power and government in the West in The Kingdom and the Glory. Although Agamben explores the idea of economy (oikonomia), he leaves unexamined central economic elements such as the circulation of very real material goods and money, as well as ideas of value, profit motive, and representation. Oikonomia refers concretely to household economies, the financial and administrative governance of cities, and God's providential, economic management of the goods of creation. The chapter then focuses on Eusebius of Caesarea as one key ancient witness, who claims that incarnation is timed to the height of Roman imperial unification to reveal aspects of divine government and economy.
This chapter considers the divine agent or operator of the oikonomia. While Michel Foucault notes the importance of the divine shepherd trope for eventual governmentality, he does not consider God as the economist who validates pastoral and imperial economies. The chapter recovers a theology of the heavenly governor who is also a steward that oversees and allots resources to creation. Eusebius provides a template for God as cosmic steward and economic manager who operates implicitly behind Christian imperial regimes. Exploring the late antique role of bishops as managers of congregations and church funds, the chapter goes on to suggest that this divine economist informs pastoral practice. Such practice is taken up by Constantine and imported into state policy once Christianity becomes the state sanctioned religion. The discussion shows how the divine economist as a submerged trope comes to inform emerging state administration in the West.
Through a close reading of his Life of Constantine, this chapter shows Eusebius's attention to imperial monetary economy and his understanding of how money functioned in Constantine's rule. The emperor represents himself and his piety on coinage, much as the Father represents himself in the world through the Son. Eusebius integrates a long tradition of Greek concern about the relationship between money and government, particularly in his critique of tyrants. Constantine's economic generosity means he is not tyrannical and reflects the nature of the economy of the God he serves. Eusebius is decisive in linking an awareness of money's role in sovereignty to language about God's activity in managing creation through Constantine. Because Constantine so closely images what God's reign is like, the emperor's economic administration offers a framework for theological descriptions of God's economic government.
This chapter explores the ancient Christian idea of Christ as currency and coin. It shows how minting coins to announce the arrival of a new ruler to the throne is an idea that turns up in Christian talk about the arrival of the divine king. Redeemed humans are described as reminted and refreshed coins, and they signal the kingship of God who coins them. This reveals a submerged idea, operating implicitly in patristic thought, of the divine Son as the minting stamp that impresses the image of God on the coins of humanity. The chapter draws out the implication that, in the incarnation of the Son as Christ, this stamp materializes as the chief coin of the Father. This theology is used theopolitically to enforce imperial power through the use of coin propaganda and monetary policy.
This chapter retrieves a central Christian idea of salvation depicted as a ransom exchange, which makes monetary transaction a primary site for conveying how God redeems humankind. Gregory of Nyssa's narrative of a ransom exchange between God and Satan serves as a window into this theological schema. Through close analysis, the chapter shows how he draws on the logic of moneylending as well as ideas of debt slavery, with Christ as the redemptive payment that sets humanity free. According to this central Christian idea, God establishes peace through a form of economic transaction. The chapter concludes by showing that Gregory of Nyssa depicts God as reciprocally entrapping Satan in a form of debt bondage, a depiction that may offer divine valorization of predatory lending practices.
This chapter considers the flip side that always accompanies ideologies of peace through economy: the violent imposition of the economy and its use to vanquish opposition and subdue opponents. As Gregory recounts, God undoes the devil's power by means of a ransom payment—which turns out to be more like a loan or even required tax obligation—cancelling this debt over humanity and bringing Satan into submission to God. Satanic territory is colonized through economic annexation by oikonomia. Payment serves divine conquest and resonates with ancient practices of the Roman Empire drawing new lands into its imperial territory by economic means. This theological account provides clues to how monetary and broader economic practices gain a spiritual hue and how the state's use of economy to regulate bodies and populations acquires a type of sacred prestige.
The conclusion foregrounds questions of genealogy and developing Western legacy. It considers how the ideas discovered in the study—notions of God as an economic administrator and as saving currency—interact with the emerging institutions and ideologies that shape Western imagination. It considers the Reformation, when ideas of spiritual credit, value, and obligation, always related to political and divine authority, may have informed nascent capitalism. Such themes can also be glimpsed in colonial expansion, where the idea of using the economy to overcome opposition and bring supposed salvation to others was centrally operative. The chapter points the way to further research that might trace the various transformations of this fundamental union in Christian thought between a model of God and monetary economy.