(9 votes, average: 4.89 out of 5)
Loading...In this thread I’ve been giving a short history of ancient Christian views of giving to charity – a matter of real interest for the blog itself, but of bigger interest for the world at large. Surprisingly, before Christianity started to take over the Roman world, no one apart from Jews appeared to think that the “poor” mattered enough to do much of anything to help them. Jesus, though, as a Jew, stressed the importance of taking care of those in need. That’s what God does and it’s what his people should do – give everything to help those without resources.
After his death his followers moderated Jesus’ views and began to stress that wealth was not necessarily evil or opposed to God. Those who had it could keep it, as long as they were generous with it when it came to helping out those who were poor, hungry, homeless, ill, and so on.
Eventually Christian leaders started actually to celebrate wealth, a rather serious change in the views promoted by Jesus. But how could they possibly read his own words and think that being rich was actually good before God?
The first sustained move to justify wealth in this way comes in
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Did Clement of Alexandria have anything to say about Luke 6:20 in the course of this sermon?
I don’t recall.
This has been a really interesting thread.
Sounds a lot like Jesus’ lesson in Mark 12:41-44.
When religion is a community of disciples that can meet in public places and private homes you can preach against wealth, but once you become a system with clergy and facilities to be paid for you can’t afford to offend the wealthy. It’s pretty easy to see why the preaching about wealth changed as the church changed.
Yup!
“Oh, what a great business!” I think that says it all. “Oh, what a great racket we’ve got here! It’s better than running a numbers game! Better than smuggling! SO much safer than pushing drugs! The IRS nailed Capone, but we’ve got a free pass!”
I always think it’s interesting to compare where Judaism and Christianity are today..versus perhaps how they were at the time of separation. Here’s one writer…
https://www.jtsa.edu/torah/the-morality-of-wealth/
“As for the rest of us, Judaism tries to persuade us that money ought not to be an ultimate value in our lives, but rather a force for doing good in the lives of others. Thus the Talmud (which does have a well developed notion of an afterlife) informs us that the very first question to be put to us when we stand before the Almighty to account for our lives deals with our worldly affairs. “Did you conduct your financial matters with integrity?” is clearly a formulation that undervalues the bottom line.
….
Finally, Judaism obliges us to share our blessings through charity, maximally at the rate of 20%, normally at 10%. Giving must become a habit of the heart; even a person dependent on the dole is not exempt from the commandment. No one, Jewish law asserts, ever became impoverished helping the poor. Charity ennobles the giver as it ameliorates the human condition. Though Judaism and Catholicism remain apart on the morality of wealth, they are in concord on the supreme virtue of charity.“
Dr. Ehman,
I remember hearing a sermon many years ago from a pastor that claimed the “eye of a needle” is actually a gate into Jerusalem which forced camels to kneel, thus the real message of the verse was rich men need to humble themselves before God to enter into his kingdom. A quick search in Google shows that the idea of the “eye of a needle” being a passage into Jerusalem has been circulating a long while and is historically baseless. Have you heard of this? Do you know the history of this claim, and its source? Thanks.
Yup, it’s a view that has been around for a while. It turns out that it is in reference to a gate put into the wall of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages. (Put there because of this saying!)
“Thus Christian charity is an investment”. Prof., does it matter where this investment is directed to/ what causes ? Warren Buffet is on his way to giving away most of his wealth before he dies to philantropy. A big chunk of that money is apparently set to be donated to the Susan Thompson Buffet Foundation, named after his late wife,Susan. It is a pro choice abortion rights charity. Considering your last paragraph, would this charity qualify for eternal return ?
It matters hugely. It has to go to the poor.
We know, by the Middle Ages, even the most ruthless ruler could buy his way out by hiring many monks and churches to pray his penances for him, that could be years worth. Something new or established Roman, even Jewish practice?
I really don’t know the full history of indulgences — but need to find out. My sense is that it developed ony after the doctrine of Purgatory appeared, in the twelfth century — long after one would find external influences from pagans or Jews.
Was this the first major issue that early Christian theologians massaged using a symbolic or allegorical reading of Scripture? In other words, did Christian exegetes (esp the “Alexandrines” like Clement and Origen) adopt this mode of interpretation in order to deal with the issue of wealth — eventually expanding it to cover virtually any ethical/theological/historical question in the bible?
The use of symbolic / allegorical reading was deeply rooted in the Christian tradition since it was common both in pagan literary circles (e.g., when dealing with Homer and myth) and in Jewish modes of interpretation. Paul already uses it in both Galatians (that allegory of Sarah and Hagar) and 1 Corinthians (the “rock” in the wilderness). It was a widespread and, to modern minds, convenient approach to texts)
It sounds like I need to hold on to my lucre so that I can continue to give to charity and thus spend the afterlife a winner, just as I spent my worldly existence . Sure, some children will starve because I didn’t help them today but I need to buy this here stairway to Heaven.
I assume that Clement viewed wealth as a means of generating more wealth but that raises the uncomfortable question of why an omnipotent creator needs a free market to take care of his people when supposedly he could just snap his fingers. To quote the greatest theologian of the 23rd century, “What does God need with a starship?”
If only someone has written a book about this conundrum…
I want to ask what Jesus is likely to have taught about voluntary divestment and poverty if he didn’t believe God’s kingdom was coming within his generation. That belief seems crucial to this teaching. However, since the imminent arrival of the kingdom was at the very core of his belief, is this question answerable or even meaningful?
And doesn’t the falsification of a major premise of the ethical teaching invalidate the conclusion?
I still find the Great Commandment and Golden Rule compelling. And I can understand this attitude toward wealth perhaps being necessary in order to put the kingdom of God first.
But I still think it’s reasonable for Christians to modify the teaching in light of Jesus’s failure to return with the kingdom in the lifetime of his followers. On the other hand, in light of this failure, it may not be reasonable to give much of any validity or authority to Jesus’s teachings.
But we’re still left with the problem of the best way to reduce the horrible suffering in the world that is caused by poverty.
I wish there was some way to know what he would have thought if he had a non-apocalyptic view. But I’d say that an ethical injunction can be valid even if the fundamtental premise underlying it is problematic — so long as there is some even deeper fundamental premise that can still support it. E.g, giving to the poor because the end is near could have a lower substructure: givng to the poor because the end is near is important because God truly values the poor; if that isn’t a substructure you’re drawn to, it could be giving to the poor because the end is near is important because being fully human menas living in community where all people have value and importance and deserve to live without suffering; or something else. Even if the end is NOT near the deeper substructure could still hold.
That makes sense to me. My main reservation is whether that means that voluntary divestment and poverty are still necessary except to the extent that equality requires them per the Great Commandment and Golden Rule. And I have serious doubts that even those principles are more realistic than not—both in the sense of people actually being able to live that way and in the sense of being the best way to create material abundance.
I believe even many Marxists would say (eg, Michael Harrington) that you can’t “socialize” poverty, ie, that socialism requires a certain level of material abundance.
But the Great Commandment and Golden Rule are “common sense” formulations of the ideal of justice. Even if not entirely realistic people can aspire to live like that.
It looks like the fundamental key would be presence or absence of empathy. Some of us have a lot, some of us have not so much, and some of us have none, and some of us DO have empathy but in a sort of twisted way– the sadomasochist, for instance, finding the suffering of others gratifying because their empathy allows them to feel that suffering and take pleasure in it. So, if some argue that we are made “in the image of God”, that image seems a little weird and variable. If God is responsible for human nature… ? Most religious beliefs don’t seem to fit comfortably into the context of behavioral science.
“Sell everything to have treasure in heaven.”
New archaeology finds the original border of Judaea to be Petra – emblem: Lord of Heaven.
There’s treasure there if the little guys support Jesus, too!
Mark 10:30
…who shall not receive a hundredfold now in this time—*houses* and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and *lands.*
Aspiring king Jesus/ Ἰησοῦς is telling the Young Baller to buy popular support in *Jesus’ name* for the Jewish king slot opening via deified King Aretas’ (born Aeneas) war with Antipas.
Even in a non-democracy, you need popular support. For example, Romans tested crowd reactions to the bestowal of wreaths on potential emperors.
In the Bar-Abas story, Jewish nationalists reject Jesus – no paternal Jewish royal lineage.
But Agrippa is the last Hasmonean capable of producing an heir. Remember his bro, Antipas, was 100% not ethnically Jewish — no lineage.
37 CE – Herod Antipas defeated.
39 CE – after winds shift in Rome (how did that happen) Antipas finally exiled, Agrippa does happy dance.
40 CE – Jesus, regnal name King Malichus II, ascends the throne of Nabataea.
Herod the Great gained his popularity by “selling off all he owned” – gold and silver ornamentation personally peeled off his walls — to feed people.
I think he was genuinely moved to raise people up *and* it’s what you do if you want to be a leader.
The Way also had a common purse, which trad Christians never seem to talk about.
“It is easier for a camel (rope, if scribal error) to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God.”
If the Kingdom of God was their Jordan border Nabataea, archaeologists rave about finding no poverty in Petra. (Gated community, though?)
They charged a 25% tax on luxury goods (ie imported goods), so a rich man wouldn’t find it easy. Whereas Roman taxation seemed to be more focused on everyday people’s property as well as income tax, and that was a focal point the revolts.
Also, the hidden Siq was super narrow, ~9 ft for laden camels, so the analogy works.
Though the home of King Malichus II — the king that mysteriously shows up after Jesus survived — the one with the tetramorph of maybe Tribe of Judah (lion) and Nabataea (eagle) — is a bit nice! Temple of the Winged Lions. It’s more like, how, “In my father’s house there are many mansions.”
If you read the letters from Clement, Irenaeus, Ignatius and Polycarp, you may notice that they sound like ancient versions of fundamentalists. They literally blather on without comprehending what they’re talking about….pulling scriptures out of their proper context….oblivious to the events or significance of the events leading up to and including AD70 (when the need for the gospel ended and genuine Christianity began to pass away).
Polycarp and others who followed him were not the elect. They had no link to Old Covenant Israel, and by the time they penned their epistles, the emphasis on Israel’s salvation and redemption had already been misappropriated by people [like them] who were far from a Hebrew interpretive paradigm. In fact, they were hostile to Jews and sought to exclude them from their post-AD70 so-called gospel. They were the first “Christian” anti-Semites.
They were also responsible for the resurrection of bits and pieces of Israel’s redemptive narrative, the misappropriation of scriptures that had already been fulfilled, a totally different gospel than the pre-AD70 gospel, a widened scope of salvation meant for people not under the law…people who didn’t really need salvation. They also introduced yet another return of Jesus in judgement.
Hello there. Question to Bart and everyone:
Is there any chance that the New Testament Gospels were written as an attempt to Belittle Jewish Belief?
It seem rather intriguing that the main character in all the gospels is the smartest among his entire group, while others were unlettered and couldn’t figure out anything at all of what the Gospels Jesus said, why is it this extremely smart man is hanging around uneducated people all his life but debating against other educated people in the stories. It makes the gospels view of Jesus seem quite far from the true historical context, and makes him seem rather invented to have all other Jews look quite stupid.
I wouldn’t say they attempt to belittle Judaism; I’d say that — despite their significant differences in their attitudes toward Judaism (Luke’s is not the same as Mark’s, etc) — they all want to stress that Jesus as the messiah is the fulfilment of Judaism (so that Judaism as found in Scripture, e.g., is a *good* thing) AND that many (most) Jews haver made a very big mistake in not recognizing that. The stress is less that Judaism is bad than that Judaism has been misunderstood by those who refuse to accept the Jewish messiah.