Did early church leaders take Jesus seriously when he said that it was impossible to serve God if one was interested in mammon, or when he praised those who left literally everything (spouses, children, homes, jobs) to follow him, or when he said that it was “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven”?
Only a very few one-time rich Christians took him at his word and acted accordingly. Most did not. In one of the great interpretive ironies of history, most devout readers of the Gospels admitted Jesus said it but insisted he could not have meant it.
This approach to these passages makes sense. If the affluent members of the church gave all their wealth away, who would support them? And how would funds continue to fill the church coffers to help the poor and, well, pay the pastors?
But it is interesting to see how church fathers got around the problem. In our day we (those of us who are critical scholars) would say that Jesus was living in a different context from us and what is true in one world (religious or economic) cannot simply be transferred to another world without remainder, and expect it to continue to make sense.
The church fathers as a rule did not have this contextual approach to interpreting Scripture or the words of Jesus. They assumed that these had to be directly relevant to their own situation. How then could they alter or dismiss them? Only by saying Jesus didn’t mean it.
The most daring and intriguing instance of this
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