Vocational Balance: The Three Estates in Depth

Eric Brinkert is a Ph.D. fellow of the Christ School of Theology at the Institute of Lutheran Theology who as adjunct faculty teaches ethics at Christ College and the Christ School of Theology as well as at Tillamook Bay Community College in Tillamook, Oregon. In his ongoing series of articles for Verba Vitae Substack across 2026, Eric explores the notion of vocation and the balance it provides for a faithful Christian lifestyle and mindset. This seventh installment looks at the estate of the Oeconomia in its creation by God as a place where He calls us to engage in healthy, loving and productive relationships of service with our family, neighbors and friends in all that we do with our daily lives.

by Eric Brinkert

The Oeconomia, or more specifically the responsibilities within the Oeconomia, is probably what most people are thinking about when they consider the matter of vocation. The Oeconomia includes the concrete responsibilities in life that are common to the contemporary understanding of vocation, roles such as husband and wife, mother and father, and worker. Of course, as human life and society have grown more complex since the relatively simple time of Adam and Eve in the primeval history of Genesis up to our technologically industrialized world of the 21^st Century, what we conceive of within the Oeconomia has expanded along with the complexity of the world. For that reason, it is understandable why many now treat the various responsibilities within the Oeconomia such as marriage and family life, work for pay, education, and so forth, as distinct places of responsibility. In many ways, since human life and society have grown in such complexity, the complexity of the Oeconomia seems to have far outpaced the complexity of the Ecclesia and the Politia. In this essay, I will attempt to ground the reader in the fundamental and indispensable understanding of the Oeconomia as Luther presented it. In the subsequent essays which make up the third part of this series, I will then take on some selected topics addressing the complexities and challenges of the Oeconomia in the 21^st Century and will argue both how they contribute to vocational imbalance and how the doctrine of vocation can restore a necessary vocational balance within the estate of the Oeconomia.

However, in order to fully grasp the entirety of the estate of the Oeconomia, we must understand it as it stands in relation to the Ecclesia. The Ecclesia and the Oeconomia together form what will be referred to in this series of essays as the Orders of Creation.¹ That is, these are the two estates that were part of God’s original plan for creation—in that they appear in the prelapsarian creation account—and they are the two estates through which God continues his ongoing work of creation. Together, these two Orders of Creation demonstrate the cruciform nature of God’s ongoing acts of creation, where God pours out his good gifts to his creation through the Ecclesia, and then where God works through his human creatures to share those gifts throughout creation through the Oeconomia. In this way, all of God’s creatures have the special charge to participate in the ongoing work of creation according to the various places of responsibility, i.e., vocations, into which God has placed them. It is to the exploration of this second order and its various and dynamic responsibilities where these next essays now turn.

Luther on the Origins of the Oeconomia

The estate of the Ecclesia, or the church, was established first in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:16), as recounted by Martin Luther. Through the primeval Ecclesia, God provides for all of Adam’s needs. It is within the Ecclesia that God blesses Adam with life and with all the means of sustaining it. Luther notes in his lecture on Genesis 2 that in the Ecclesia Adam “is well provided for so far as his own person is concerned” (LW 1, 115), and yet Luther highlights how God says in Genesis 2:18, “It is not good that man should be alone.” Echoing his own famous phrase from the Small Catechism (“what does this mean?”), Luther asks of this text, “what good could [God] be speaking, since Adam was righteous…?” (LW 1, 115). Answering his own question, Luther writes:

…God is speaking of the common good or that of the species, not of personal good. The personal good is the fact that Adam had innocence. But he was not yet in possession of the common good which the rest of the living beings who propagated their kind through procreation had. For so far Adam was alone; he still had no partner for that magnificent work of begetting and preserving his kind. Therefore “good” in this passage denotes the increase of the human race…. Hence the meaning is that Adam as the most beautiful creature is well provided for so far as his own person is concerned but still lacks something, namely, the gift of the increase and the blessing—because he is alone (LW 1, 115-116).

And so it is here in Genesis 2:18-24 that Luther identifies the origins of the estate of the Oeconomia, noting in his lecture on Genesis 2 and referring to verse 18: “Now also the household is set up. For God makes a husband of lonely Adam and joins him to a wife, who was needed to bring about the increase of the human race” (LW 1, 115). Here also we see God’s intention for the Oeconomia, “to bring about the increase of the human race,” or as Moses records in Genesis 1:28, to “be fruitful and multiply.”

God gifts Adam a wife who is to be his helper (`ezer in the original Hebrew) and his partner in the work of the Oeconomia. Just has God is a helper to his human creatures in pouring out his good gifts in the Ecclesia, God now brings his human creatures together, man and woman, as helpers in sharing and distributing those good gifts throughout creation. This is the prelapsarian created estate of the Oeconomia. Luther retains a glimpse of this prelapsarian estate in the Christian Oeconomia today, although this vision is marred by our sin. Luther continues in his lecture on Genesis 2:22, “This living-together of husband and wife—that they occupy the same home, that they take care of the household, that together they produce and bring up children—is a kind of faint image and a remnant…” (LW 1, 133). If the Oeconomia of today is a glimpse of the Oeconomia in the Garden of Eden, then what responsibilities are to be understood as paramount within this estate? Luther has here stated it plainly, that together Adam and his `ezer or helper are given the responsibilities of husband and wife, mother and father, and caretakers, or workers. These are the three essential, indispensable, and inseparable responsibilities that shape and inform how Luther wants his readers to understand vocation in the estate of the Oeconomia.

What Does This Mean?

This assessment of the Oeconomia aligns with Oswald Bayer’s interpretation of Luther, as he writes on the Three Estates in his book Martin Luther’s Theology:

…the household … is at times also referred to by the term “economy.” Luther articulates what is meant by this estate as the relationship between parents and children, between a husband and a wife, between human being and field, thus as work: the interrelationship of the human being with nature, the acquisition of his means of sustenance, his daily bread (Bayer, 123).

Here Bayer clearly identifies the responsibilities of husband and wife, father and mother, and worker, and gives greater clarity to the role of “worker,” identifying the idea of that specific responsibility in the terms of a relationship as well. That is, work is to be understood as the relationship between the human creature and the role within God’s creation in which the creature is placed. This provides the reader with the understanding that God is intending for his creation to exist in relationship, and it is in part through these relationships that God works to sustain his creatures, both through the creature’s relationship with God in the Ecclesia, but also by the creature’s relationships with other human creatures, and in fact all of God’s creation, presented here as nature.

Robert Kolb, in his Concordia Journal article “God Calling, ‘Take Care of My People’,” concurs with Bayer, noting that:

Within the home God designates people to perform the responsibilities of spouse, parent, child, and other responsibilities of the extended family. In the situation of economic activity or job God meets general human needs through farmers, millers, packinghouse workers, grocery store clerks; through those who bring the harvest of wool, cotton, or synthetics to those who spin, weave, sew, and sell clothing; through physicians and teachers, plumbers and carpenters, journalists and entertainers (Kolb, 6).

Kolb reiterates the calling of father and mother, husband and wife,² and worker, and adds even greater depth to the calling of worker. Kolb underscores that it is through work that “God meets human needs” and then he spells out just a few of the types of work through which God meets those needs: by providing food, clothing, shelter, education, etc. Naturally, drawing attention to these distinct means by which God works through his human creatures to sustain them is valuable; however, if taken too far, an over-emphasis upon them can contribute to vocational imbalance by imbuing greater significance to work than is intended in the Oeconomia.

To this effect, Bayer is wise to remind us of the origins of the Oeconomia, including the precision intended in the use of this ancient word. In Martin Luther’s Theology, Bayer writes that:

Oeconomia encompasses for Luther everything that we today, in our economically differentiated situation, place into three different categories: marriage and family, business, and education and academic study; He is rooted in the Aristotelian tradition, which understands economy (οἰκονομία) as coming from the house (οἶκος), from the way a household operates (Bayer, 142).

By Luther’s time, while much economic activity remained in the home, it is certain that this differentiation to which Bayer speaks would have been apparent to Luther. After all, Luther’s father worked in the mining industry and yet was preparing Martin for a career in the law, before his inevitable turn to ministry. The option was certainly available for Luther to differentiate marriage and family life, business, and education as distinct estates, however, he chose, based on his interpretation of the creation narrative, to retain these three responsibilities within the single estate of the Oeconomia. Bayer gives his insight into the importance of this decision, writing that “the main accent in Luther’s concept of this estate, which is still important today, is rooted in the personhood of fellow human beings, which is constituted by words. For Luther, there is no theological sense in which the word “person” is to be understood individualistically…” (Bayer, 146). The vocations in the estate of the Oeconomia and the responsibilities incumbent in those vocations must be understood relationally. Just as in the Ecclesia, the relationship between the creature and the creator is paramount in all the vocations and responsibilities within that estate, so too in the Oeconomia we recognize a paramount relationship that permeates all of its vocations and responsibilities: the relationships of the household. It is from these relationships—husband and wife, mother and father, son and daughter, brother and sister—that not only the vocations of marriage and family are fulfilled, but also those of business and of education.

A relational understanding of the Oeconomia guards against the temptation toward individualism that comes when one tries to carve out business and education as distinct from marriage and family life. When separated from the household, business and education can easily become individualistic endeavors. At that point, their pursuit is no longer relationally inspired and ordered toward the interest of stewarding the gifts of creation, which is God’s created intention for the Oeconomia. This pitfall is perhaps most clearly displayed in the vocation of work for pay. Within a relational understanding of the Oeconomia, work serves two purposes: supporting the household through earning a living and, as Kolb notes above, engaging in work that meets human needs, like producing food, clothing, or shelter. When one’s work aligns with these two created intentions for the Oeconomia, it is contributing to vocational balance. However, when one’s work is done in pursuit of other objectives, individualistic objectives, then an imbalance is generated. This danger is unfortunately too often the result of our contemporary understanding of vocation, as a singular occupation to which one is uniquely called. In such an understanding of vocation, work for pay is elevated to a level of importance that rivals or perhaps even supersedes that of the household. Finding that one right profession or job can become a singular obsession, and once obtained, it can advance into a “calling” that trumps one’s other responsibilities in the Oeconomia, such as marriage and family life, or even those within the other estates, like the Ecclesia. The search for one’s “true calling” and the pursuit of excellence within that “calling” then becomes an individualist pursuit, one that is too often advanced at the expense of the very relationships into which one has been placed by their creator within the estate of the Oeconomia. When the idea of “relationship” is no longer at the heart of one’s “calling,” it is a sign that individualism has supplanted vocation with a vocational imbalance which, when exacerbated within one’s life activities and priorities, moves one further from human flourishing.

Just like those within the Ecclesia, the temptation within the Oeconomia to be something other than what one is created to be and to do something other than what one is given to do unfortunately abounds after the Fall and is likely extenuated in our modern 21^st century economy. The increasing complexity of the Oeconomia which is brought about by the different categories emerging from the “economically differentiated situation,” as Bayer indicates, creates numerous opportunities for these temptations to lead one astray with false promises of human flourishing. Such individual successes are just the mask of sin leading toward human stagnation. It is the challenges—and opportunities—that face vocational balance and human flourishing in the Oeconomia toward which the next essay in this series will focus.

Notes

1. As noted in a previous essay, different writers use “Orders of Creation” in different ways. As a reminder, in this series of essays, the Three Estates is inclusive of both the prelapsarian estates—the Ecclesia and the Oeconomia—and the postlapsarian estate of the Politia. The Orders of Creation refers only to the two prelapsarian estates.

2. While Kolb here specifically says “spouse” and “parent,” I am choosing to disaggregate these categories of responsibilities into their distinct responsibilities, recognizing the uniqueness and difference between the parental callings of father and mother, and the spousal callings of husband and wife. This is not to suggest that Kolb does not, likewise, recognize this distinction, but this is to highlight that maintaining such specificity of the given vocations is important for vocational balance.

Bibliography

Bayer, Oswald. Martin Luther’s Theology: A Contemporary Interpretation. Eerdmans, 2003.

Kolb, Robert. “God Calling, ‘Take Care of My People’: Luther’s Concept of Vocation in the Augsburg Confession and Its Apology.” Concordia Journal 8, no. 1 (1982).

Luther, Martin. Luther’s Works, Vol. 1: Lectures on Genesis: Chapters 1-5, ed. Jaroslav Jan Pelikan, Hilton C. Oswald, and Helmut T. Lehmann (Saint Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1999).