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The pure and selfless joy of the elderly for the beauty of youth is a precious heritage of humanity. We are exhausting it, when instead we should simply cherish what little we have left.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Il Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on October 2, 2025
Every generation has its own new collective challenges, and generally also has the resources to face them. One of our most important challenges, although not the only one (think of wars or the environmental crisis), concerns the relationship between the elderly and young people. This is an epochal challenge that takes various forms. The most obvious and worrying one has to do with the sustainability of the pension system and public health, which, however, is being addressed without placing it within a broader framework that touches on many dimensions.
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The first is a new poverty of the desire for motherhood in women, who will have to rediscover the meaning and sense of being mothers, because today, when motherhood is finally no longer a destiny but a choice, one does not choose to bring a child into the world without a strong sense of gift, gratuitousness, and sacrifice (a word that has disappeared from our vocabulary). Without this new culture of motherhood, there will only be an increase in sad strollers with dogs and cats inside, and a decrease in everyone's joy of living, especially women.
Another challenge concerns the urgent need to relearn how to age and die. Past civilizations, up to that of my parents, knew how to die because they knew how to live, and because they had faith. Faith has always been a great resource for hoping for a good encounter with the angel of death. In the space of a couple of generations, we have completely forgotten the craft of living and dying, and if we do not find another one soon, the new pandemic will be depression. But in the meantime, for those of us who no longer have the culture of yesterday and have not yet generated a new one, aging is becoming an increasingly difficult experience, a very tiring climb for which we are not equipped, which we end up facing in undershirts and flip-flops.
This summer, I spent a few days at the beach with my mother and aunt. One evening, while we were having dinner, a group of young girls came in. My mother and aunt looked at them and exclaimed together, “How beautiful, how beautiful youth is!” Their gaze and words struck me deeply. A life spent ensuring that their children and young people became adults has generated in them a typical virtue, which we could call “anti-envy,” which is the precious ability to find true joy in observing and contemplating the youth of others, and not only that of their own children and grandchildren. This is a wonderful resource for living and aging well. It is the opposite virtue to that of Mazzarò who, in the novella La roba, had spent his whole life solely accumulating ‘stuff’. When he is told that death is approaching, he takes a stick and hits a boy, ‘out of envy’, says Giovanni Verga. In cultures that worship stuff, old people see young people as their own hell, because that youth only brings them envy, regret, and remorse. In cultures that worship life, on the other hand, young people are paradise for the elderly. The pure and selfless joy of the elderly for the beauty of youth is a precious heritage of humanity. We are exhausting it, when instead we should only be preserving what little we have left.
Photo credit: © Giuliano Dinon / MSA Archive

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The pure and selfless joy of the elderly for the beauty of youth is a precious heritage of humanity. We are exhausting it, when instead we should simply cherish what little we have left.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Il Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on October 2, 2025
Every generation has its own new collective challenges, and generally also has the resources to face them. One of our most important challenges, although not the only one (think of wars or the environmental crisis), concerns the relationship between the elderly and young people. This is an epochal challenge that takes various forms. The most obvious and worrying one has to do with the sustainability of the pension system and public health, which, however, is being addressed without placing it within a broader framework that touches on many dimensions.
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As adults, we can only enjoy life by slowing down, stopping the race, finding one place, two at most, and then sinking into this sea. It seems like a decrease, but in reality it is an increase in good life...
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 07/04/2025
A few days ago, a friend of mine, talking about her mother's vacation, told me: “She's going on vacation to the place she goes every year. She loves it there, she ‘enjoys that place.’” I was struck by the thought of this elderly lady who is able to ‘enjoy’ life. Why? There are many ways to “enjoy” life, today as in the past, all over the world and at every age.

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There is the way of young people, when their boundless energy and infinite desire for life lead them to find pleasure in many things, almost everything; because life moving towards its midday throws light on everything around it—a run in the morning, an evening at a pizzeria, a conversation full of tears and hugs: in everything, young people find life and the joy of living (even if we need to understand better what is happening to this joy in the too many lonely hours spent in front of smartphones...).
Then there is the life enjoyed by children. Here, everything is truly grace. Children enjoy life simply by living, no matter what they do; they enjoy it even when they fall asleep anywhere. They are always running, moving, asking questions, trusting every adult they confuse with their parents and relatives (and this is where their special vulnerability lies).
Life envelops everything with its fullness: there is no age, more than childhood, when one enjoys life. That is why contact with children is essential for everyone's good life. Enjoying life becomes more complicated as adults and then as old people.
It is difficult because the natural generosity and selflessness of young people diminishes and the tendency/temptation to seek life in order to consume it grows. We feel life slipping away and, in order not to lose it, we think we can stop it for a moment by possessing it, capturing it, devouring it. We rush to grab life outside: entertainment, aperitifs, restaurants, cruises, vacations pursued all year round. We make the mistake of Dante's Ulysses, who seeks salvation outside, beyond the Pillars of Hercules. We eat our lives, devour people and everything we encounter. And the older we get, the more this grows.
And finally, there is my friend's mother's vacation: she waits all year for that place, that one place, that place where she finds something intimate. It's not a five-star hotel, it's not a restaurant with a chef: it's a home, a safe haven, an oikos, an environment that is both external and internal. Something similar to what ancient man experienced when he entered a temple, or when a monk enters the choir, happens there: time is pierced and eternity is touched.
As adults, we can only enjoy life in this way: by slowing down, stopping the race, finding one place, two at most, and then shipwrecking ourselves in this sea. It seems like a diminution, but in reality it is an increase in good life, learning as adults to truly enjoy the only thing that is truly essential: life.
Photo credit: © Giuliano Dinon / MSA Archive
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    [text] => 
As adults, we can only enjoy life by slowing down, stopping the race, finding one place, two at most, and then sinking into this sea. It seems like a decrease, but in reality it is an increase in good life...
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 07/04/2025
A few days ago, a friend of mine, talking about her mother's vacation, told me: “She's going on vacation to the place she goes every year. She loves it there, she ‘enjoys that place.’” I was struck by the thought of this elderly lady who is able to ‘enjoy’ life. Why? There are many ways to “enjoy” life, today as in the past, all over the world and at every age.

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Every religious experience has a consumer dimension. People do not go to church, and did not go in past centuries, solely to fulfill a moral obligation, out of fear of hell, or to avoid discrimination by their fellow citizens.
by Luigino Bruni
 
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 02/05/2025
 
The language of economics can sometimes help us understand phenomena that have little to do with economics. Religion, and faith in general, are among those realities that reveal something about themselves when expressed in the language of economics. Every religious experience has a consumer dimension. People do not go to church, and did not go in past centuries, solely to fulfill a moral obligation, out of fear of hell, or to avoid discrimination from their fellow villagers. People also went to church because they enjoyed immersing themselves for an hour in a positive atmosphere, feasting their eyes on paintings of saints, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus, touching the statues of St. Anthony and St. Rita, and breathing in the smell of incense. And then we loved the processions, the singing, the canopies, the gunshots, the Via Crucis when we all cried and recognized ourselves in Jesus, crucified on our own crosses, and rose again with him. In a short, sad, and poor life, Masses and services were our luxury goods: we entered those beautiful places and felt, for a while, almost like the rich and the lords. We too consumed emotions, relational goods, comfort goods, music, art, songs, and the Eucharist.

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Even today, we do not understand religious practice without its consumer dimension. If we look at the places and communities that still attract young people, we certainly find many consumer goods that satisfy people's needs. Experiences of strong emotions, singing together, witnessing healings, entering into a sort of ecstatic trance with songs sung and repeated for a long time, all together. And we also find the consumption of relational goods: being together with others, feeling the same things, saying the same prayers, performing the same acts of service. Certainly, we are together doing something “for” others and “for” God, but also, and perhaps above all, to do something “with” others. There is no religious experience without this special kind of consumption, and if a community that was once flourishing and is now in crisis wants to attempt a new spring, it must ask itself what it can offer people in response to their new needs.
But, and here's the point, if common consumption and the collective comfort zone exceed a critical threshold, that consumption turns from a blessing into a curse. The day we attend Mass, meetings, and services solely or primarily to consume emotions, religion becomes a mere comfort and a form of spiritual consumerism. It is an experience that no longer asks anything important of us, but merely entertains us with emotional flows very similar to watching TV or a show. The wisdom of community leaders lies almost entirely in understanding when necessary consumption is crossing that invisible threshold, and stopping while there is still time. How? By leaving home, leaving churches and comfortable places to return poor and free along the road. Like Francis, like Christ.
 
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Every religious experience has a consumer dimension. People do not go to church, and did not go in past centuries, solely to fulfill a moral obligation, out of fear of hell, or to avoid discrimination by their fellow citizens.
by Luigino Bruni
 
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 02/05/2025
 
The language of economics can sometimes help us understand phenomena that have little to do with economics. Religion, and faith in general, are among those realities that reveal something about themselves when expressed in the language of economics. Every religious experience has a consumer dimension. People do not go to church, and did not go in past centuries, solely to fulfill a moral obligation, out of fear of hell, or to avoid discrimination from their fellow villagers. People also went to church because they enjoyed immersing themselves for an hour in a positive atmosphere, feasting their eyes on paintings of saints, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus, touching the statues of St. Anthony and St. Rita, and breathing in the smell of incense. And then we loved the processions, the singing, the canopies, the gunshots, the Via Crucis when we all cried and recognized ourselves in Jesus, crucified on our own crosses, and rose again with him. In a short, sad, and poor life, Masses and services were our luxury goods: we entered those beautiful places and felt, for a while, almost like the rich and the lords. We too consumed emotions, relational goods, comfort goods, music, art, songs, and the Eucharist.

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The civil talent or the ‘spirit’ of a country, its governing bodies and people lies in knowing how to create true civil pride and hope starting from real signs that are present in the past.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 03/02/2025
Civil Economy, whose golden age was the Neapolitan 18th century and whose founder was the abbot Antonio Genovesi from Salerno, stands for the truest and deepest spirit of our economy and society. In Lezioni di Economia civile (Lessons of Civil Economy), published by Genovesi between 1765 and 1769, we read very important pages about Italy and its South, which seem to have been written not yesterday, but tomorrow: ‘The Greeks called Magna Graecia and many other provinces of this Kingdom the land of wine; but they could also call it the land of grain, and not only of wheat, but of every other kind. Sicily was the granary of Rome, and now it belongs to many peoples. Its wines are the nectar drunk at the best tables, not only those of the English, but also those of the French, who are so proud of their Burgundy. Silk countries, and today almost the only serious ones in Europe. A land of cotton wool, which, by everyone's admission, is the best in the world; a land of wool, linen, hemp, all kinds of animals; a land of cheese, manna etc. etc. etc., a land of great minds...’ (p. 325 - in the Italian edition)

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And so, after having sung the praises of his land, Genovesi asks himself, and we join him there: why is it that Southern Italy, despite all this wealth, does not go through an adequate economic development? Why is it that these lands do not generate sufficient ‘money’? ‘I,’ continues Genovesi, ‘will never believe that there is a lack of ingenuity. Who can be persuaded that temperate climates can generate greater brains than cold ones? Nor that there is a lack of willingness to work; there is no country in Europe where people work harder, and sometimes suffer more, than the two Sicilies. Therefore, we must conclude that there is a lack of courage, and that people are labouring badly there’. These are some very beautiful words about our South, especially if we consider that today the main problem in our southern lands is the lack of esteem shown by the rest of the country and its leaders, the perfect symbol of which is the proposal for ‘differentiated autonomy’.
For Genovesi, the reason for this lack of “courage” and good “labour” (work) is clear and twofold: inadequate schooling and the demoralisation of entrepreneurs, something that does not affect the South only. ‘The reason’, he writes, ‘can only be either the rudeness of the artisans or the pressure of the spirit; the former is a consequence of not having schools of design and the crafts among us; the latter of the wrong method of finance. The greatest burden of finance has fallen on the arts (forms of craftsmanship, trades - the tr.), and it should have been based on land; that is why the arts have been discouraged and humiliated”. True words. Yesterday, just as today, there is no future for a country when taxation continues to “discourage” and “depress” the trades, that is, artisans and businesses, and favours income. The privileges granted to income – financial, from consultants, real estate, etc. – are always the first indicator of economic and social systems being still feudal, or neo-feudal. Genovesi was aware that those qualities and those firsts in the Italian economy and ingenuity were undoubtedly real virtues, but they were mixed with vices that were no less real, as always, just like everywhere.
But a generous reading of his (work on the) Kingdom inspired the Neapolitan reforms and revolutions, it was brief but still brilliant, and it continues to feed the tradition of civil economy. The civil talent or the “spirit” of a country, its governing bodies and people lies in knowing how to create true civil pride and hope starting from real signs that are present in the past. Take away this ability from a people and all that will remain is the art of denigration, criticism, pessimism, abuse, mutual malevolence. We can no longer afford to have this happen to us.
Credit Foto: © Giuliano Dinon / Archivio MSA
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    [text] => 
The civil talent or the ‘spirit’ of a country, its governing bodies and people lies in knowing how to create true civil pride and hope starting from real signs that are present in the past.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 03/02/2025
Civil Economy, whose golden age was the Neapolitan 18th century and whose founder was the abbot Antonio Genovesi from Salerno, stands for the truest and deepest spirit of our economy and society. In Lezioni di Economia civile (Lessons of Civil Economy), published by Genovesi between 1765 and 1769, we read very important pages about Italy and its South, which seem to have been written not yesterday, but tomorrow: ‘The Greeks called Magna Graecia and many other provinces of this Kingdom the land of wine; but they could also call it the land of grain, and not only of wheat, but of every other kind. Sicily was the granary of Rome, and now it belongs to many peoples. Its wines are the nectar drunk at the best tables, not only those of the English, but also those of the French, who are so proud of their Burgundy. Silk countries, and today almost the only serious ones in Europe. A land of cotton wool, which, by everyone's admission, is the best in the world; a land of wool, linen, hemp, all kinds of animals; a land of cheese, manna etc. etc. etc., a land of great minds...’ (p. 325 - in the Italian edition)

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    [title] => The deceptions of leader-cracy
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The more the fashion of leadership grows, the more our democracy weakens into a leader-cracy. Perhaps, then, we should all care about it more.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 03/12/2024
Leadership has become one of the dogmas of the new capitalism. We have already discussed it on these pages, and now we return to it again to reflect on its other dimensions. By now there is no university that does not have entire courses on leadership, and not only in the faculties of economics or management; there are also many in philosophy, engineering, and increasingly in the theological and pontifical faculties, where the accompanying adjectives – inclusive, gentle, Trinitarian, Benedictine, Franciscan leadership... – are multiplying. It is not easy to understand whether the demand (of the public) has driven the supply (of the universities) or vice versa; or whether this fashion has reached its peak or we are only at the beginning of what is destined to become a real and new worldwide popular cult, where we will all be called upon to become leaders (and where will we find enough followers?).

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Here I want to focus on two aspects. The first has to do with a somewhat paradoxical fact. As the fashion for leadership explodes, companies are beginning to experience a shortage of candidates for roles of responsibility. Despite the high salaries and the prestige of the role, fewer and fewer people are willing to accept proposals for positions of governance and leadership of work groups, institutions or communities. This has already been evident for some time in the administration of municipalities, where it is increasingly difficult to find people willing to run for mayor or councillor. But for some time now this trend has also been reaching businesses and organisations. The great complexity of the new workers and their new frailties, the growth of conflicts and new forms of complaints in the workplace, mean that people are settling for lower salaries and a less anxious life – ‘why should I take on more responsibility and unpredictable risks every day, just for “a few extra dollars”?’ Thus, a new, unprecedented season of famine of responsibility is in sight, which will lead to new, perhaps very deep, crises. At the same time, and as a natural consequence, those who instead offer themselves for leadership roles are the people least suited to the role itself. They may have done a lot of training to become a good leader: because, in general, those who self-candidate for government roles are almost always the wrong people (it is a phenomenon studied in economics as ‘adverse selection’).
The second aspect concerns the damage that the fashion for leaders is already doing in political life. What we are now observing in many countries in recent years is a shift in democratic life towards new forms of government centred on the charismatic leader, which is the other name for populism. We have known for at least a century and a half that democracy is not the government of the majority but the government of the elites, which, as Pareto recalled, are almost always made up of the same people despite the movements of different parties. But today the phenomenon is changing forms, and the political game – from the USA to Italy, passing through many European and South American countries – is increasingly played on the personal and charismatic characteristics of a single person, of the leader. Programmes, parties, parliaments count less and less: what is really important is the direct ‘pact’ between the leader and the people, bypassing all intermediate bodies and counterweights. The more the fashion of leadership grows, the more our democracy weakens into a leader-cracy. Perhaps, then, we should all care about it more.
Credit Foto: © Giuliano Dinon / Archivio MSA
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    [text] => 
The more the fashion of leadership grows, the more our democracy weakens into a leader-cracy. Perhaps, then, we should all care about it more.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 03/12/2024
Leadership has become one of the dogmas of the new capitalism. We have already discussed it on these pages, and now we return to it again to reflect on its other dimensions. By now there is no university that does not have entire courses on leadership, and not only in the faculties of economics or management; there are also many in philosophy, engineering, and increasingly in the theological and pontifical faculties, where the accompanying adjectives – inclusive, gentle, Trinitarian, Benedictine, Franciscan leadership... – are multiplying. It is not easy to understand whether the demand (of the public) has driven the supply (of the universities) or vice versa; or whether this fashion has reached its peak or we are only at the beginning of what is destined to become a real and new worldwide popular cult, where we will all be called upon to become leaders (and where will we find enough followers?).

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There are types of happiness that can be bought – the joy of living cannot, it is pure gratuitousness, and it is the most beautiful one. It comes often, almost every day. We are the ones who have to learn to recognise it and to make room for it
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 02/10/2024
Happiness is the great promise of the new market economy. Yesterday its promise was prosperity, today it is happiness. It promises it to us in many ways, most recently with artificial intelligence that will finally give us perfect happiness – by doing everything we do not like better than us and by doing the new things we do not yet do. A happiness that has to do with possession, with comfort, with the freedom of choice, with growth, with ‘more’, and that often borders on fun and pleasure. Some of these commercial types of happiness are also good, we like them and maybe they even do us some good.

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But after these happinesses and pleasures, there is something else, something different and much more important. It is the joy of living. I rediscovered it this summer, when I accompanied my mother and aunt to the seaside for a few days. The slow breakfasts in their company, the short walks, those few moments on the beach, the amazement at a rose blooming out of season, and above all, their words made me rediscover the joy of living. We all know it or at least used to know it, past generations knew it, and it was the true consolation of the poor amidst life's great hardships.
It is not linked with ‘more’ but with ‘less’, more with the little than with the great, it has nothing to do with comfort, even less with wealth. It is that joy that comes to us all of a sudden, without us having sought it or expected it. It just comes, it happens, simply. While you are looking at the sea, a child, or a seagull lining up perfectly with the others on the horizon line past the rocks and my mother says, ‘How can they do it? They don't even know how to measure distances!’
It lights up while during dinner in the small pensioners' hotel in September an accordion player shows up to intone old songs, and everyone starts singing together, clapping their hands, and someone strikes up a dance step. A joy of living that comes from merely being alive, that draws only from being alive, that needs nothing but life. And then one goes to bed happy to be in the world, with the joy of one who knows, hopes, to get up tomorrow just to continue life. That joy that enters the homes of the elderly who are left alone but know how to set the table with the same care as when the lunches were full of people and life; and while they eat, that well-cared-for meal, alone, a different sweetness emerges in their hearts, one that has something of the good nostalgia of yesterday and yet is all present and future.
Providence has placed this resource among those essential to living. It has hidden it, however, among the little, tiny things, almost invisible if we run too fast. And perhaps for this reason the poor and the pure in heart are able to grasp it, perhaps only them. It is part of the landscape of that Kingdom of Heaven where all the poor and the pure in heart dwell, sometimes without knowing it. Sometimes it comes after great sorrows, depression, mourning, and its arrival is the sentinel announcing the approaching dawn. As in the last scene of Fellini's Cabiria, where that final smile is the end of the desperate nights. It is grace, grace only, all gifted. There are types of happiness that can be bought - the joy of living cannot, it is pure gratuitousness, and it is the most beautiful one. Sometimes it comes during a different prayer, and blooms from tears of sorrow that turn into tears of joy. It comes often, almost every day. We are the ones who must learn to recognise it, make room for it, and let it enter the wine cellar of the heart. And there celebrate, clap our hands and, if we can, even strike up a dance step.
Credit Foto: © Giuliano Dinon / Archivio MSA
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There are types of happiness that can be bought – the joy of living cannot, it is pure gratuitousness, and it is the most beautiful one. It comes often, almost every day. We are the ones who have to learn to recognise it and to make room for it
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If we want to bring the modern spirit closer to Jesus' message of life, we need to purify theological language, starting with the economic and commercial language.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 12/07/2024
The first to use the economic metaphor in the New Testament was St Paul who, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, even uses the word price: «You were bought at a high price» (7:23). Since Paul is a giant of Christian theology, many theologians from then on thought that one could not talk about theology without using the metaphor of the ‘price of salvation’. Saint Paul, however, uses some other metaphors in his letters, too, including the sporting one (cf. 1 Cor 9:24-26). Yet no theologian of the past or present has ever thought that such a metaphor was necessary to explain Christian theology. Instead, a real and actual “economy of salvation” was derived from the economic metaphor, which would justify the existence of a kind of contract with prices to be paid and collected, and which would see Jesus as a “divine merchant”. Forgetting that biblical metaphors are always the daybreak of debate, points of departure. The other half of the argument has to remain unsaid: only partial metaphors leave a gap between the mystery of God and our theological ideas about Him.

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I am convinced that the use of economic language by theology has hurt both theology and economics. It has not helped us understand what economics is, nor has it helped us understand the heart of the Christian mystery, which is all about gratuitousness - charis. The use of economic language to explain the Christian faith has, in fact, led to the theology of prosperity (and thus to the theological legitimisation of meritocracy that is generating the blaming of the poor). It has also created an exaltation of sacrifice, which has become very deeply rooted in the Catholic culture. As a reaction to Luther, who waged a pitched battle against the idea of the Mass as a sacrifice (‘The Mass is the opposite of a sacrifice’: Luther, Complete Works), sacrifice became, in fact, a pillar of Catholic theology, liturgy and piety. The cross of Christ became a praise and a sacralisation of our crosses: ‘Crosses come from God. Crosses are necessary because God has ordained so. True penitents are always crucified’. (D. Gaspero Olmi, Quaresimale per le monache - ‘Lenten /reflections/ for Nuns’, 1885). Thus, in the age of the Counter-Reformation the offering of our sufferings to God became the most flourishing economy in the Latin countries - while trade and businesses were developing in the North - fuelled by a proliferation of penances, especially in women's monasteries, where sufferings sought as a form of love for Christ became the currency of a new trade between earth and purgatory.
But if we do a serene reading of the Gospel, a question immediately arises: how were we able to believe that the loving God of Jesus was a “consumer of human pain”, that the first fruits he most liked were our sufferings? Not least because the Bible had taught us well that deities who love the blood of their children are called idols. The biblical God, the God of Jesus, is not an idol, because he does not want to increase the pain of his sons and daughters, but to reduce it: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ Hosea and Jesus repeat to us. The biblical God does not love sacrifice, because he loves us and does everything to remove us from our crosses. Sacrifice is an ambivalent word even in human relationships - it is dangerous to read love as a willingness to sacrifice oneself for another - and it is even more dangerous when it is used to understand the relationship between us and God. If we want to bring the modern spirit closer to Jesus' message of life, we need to purify theological language, starting with the economic and commercial language.
Photo credits: © Giuliano Dinon / MSA Archive
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    [text] => 
If we want to bring the modern spirit closer to Jesus' message of life, we need to purify theological language, starting with the economic and commercial language.
by Luigino Bruni
published in Messaggero di Sant'Antonio on 12/07/2024
The first to use the economic metaphor in the New Testament was St Paul who, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, even uses the word price: «You were bought at a high price» (7:23). Since Paul is a giant of Christian theology, many theologians from then on thought that one could not talk about theology without using the metaphor of the ‘price of salvation’. Saint Paul, however, uses some other metaphors in his letters, too, including the sporting one (cf. 1 Cor 9:24-26). Yet no theologian of the past or present has ever thought that such a metaphor was necessary to explain Christian theology. Instead, a real and actual “economy of salvation” was derived from the economic metaphor, which would justify the existence of a kind of contract with prices to be paid and collected, and which would see Jesus as a “divine merchant”. Forgetting that biblical metaphors are always the daybreak of debate, points of departure. The other half of the argument has to remain unsaid: only partial metaphors leave a gap between the mystery of God and our theological ideas about Him.

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