In my previous post I showed that Jesus himself appears to have taught that his disciples (not just one or two of them) had to give up *everything* in order to be his followers.  Most likely this insistence on voluntary poverty was related to his message that the Kingdom of God was to arrive soon, so people needed to devote themselves entirely to it and to spread the message before it was too late.

It is difficult to imagine that the Christian mission would have become massively successful if an entrance requirement was the complete divestment of property and a life of itinerate beggary.  It is no surprise that after Jesus’ death (most of) his followers modified his discourse on wealth: what mattered was not voluntary abject poverty but generosity.  That view came to be endorsed in later Gospel traditions – sayings placed on Jesus’ lips by story tellers and Gospel writers– and became the standard view among Christians down till today.

Already in Luke’s Gospel we find Jesus’ encounter with the fabulously wealthy Zacchaeus whom Jesus praises (unlike the rich man of Mark)–he gave half his money to the poor (Luke 19:1-10).  By doing so he has earned entrance into the kingdom, even though he remained extremely rich.  So too in later New Testament writings such as 1 Timothy: those who “want” to be rich are warned; but there are no condemnations for those who are already rich or orders for them to divest.  Instead they are instructed to have the right relationship to their wealth, not to devote their entire lives to it, and to give some of it away generously (1 Tim. 6:9-10, 17-19).   By now the radical injunctions of Jesus have fallen away: a bit of charity will bring eternal treasure.

Among the clear virtues of this alternative position are that it makes almsgiving socially acceptable and, perhaps more important, democratic.  Most people can give at least something; and with proper incentive, many will.  This becomes the clear emphasis of the Christian tradition, not just as a rhetorical trope but as a social reality.

The shift can already be seen in our earliest Christian author, Paul.  One of Paul’s major missionary projects involved collecting funds from among his gentile converts for the “poor among the saints in Jerusalem” (Rom. 15:25-27; 1 Cor. 16:1-4).  There was apparently a famine in Judea in the late-50s, and the situation was dire.  Paul by this time had spent years in the mission field, converting pagans in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), Macedonia, and Achaia (modern Greece).  His collection for the Jewish poor in Jerusalem was not simply a matter of famine-relief.  Paul explicitly saw it as a tangible expression of his missionary message, that even though Christ was the Jewish messiah who had come to fulfill the Jewish Scriptures, both gentiles and Jews had an equal standing in the church.  Gentiles were not inferior for not coming from the original people of God (Israel) and Jews were not inferior for being from those who had rejected their own messiah.  Jews and Gentiles were completely equal in Christ, and Paul meant for the collection to demonstrate church unity in a very concrete way.  The spiritual blessings of the Jews had been transmitted to the Gentiles, and now the material blessings of the Gentiles was being transmitted to the Jews.  Two groups, completely unified.

The gentile donors from Paul’s churches were not just the wealthy.  Everyone was encouraged to contribute as much as they could.  In terms of the development of Christian views of wealth and poverty, this collection not only demonstrated the democratic nature of charity, it also set the tenor of later understandings of the relationship between rich and poor within that democratic union.  Those with spiritual assets and those with material assets can provide mutual support and help. The rich can assist the poor materially and in exchange the poor can assist the rich spiritually.  The rich give to the poor and the poor pray for the rich, and both then benefit.

The irony, of course, is that this perspective justifies wealth within the Christian tradition.  Having money is now not a stumbling blog but a virtue, a view rather more appealing than money as an unnecessary and disposable evil.  Those with assets to spare could use their wealth to help others; in turn the blessed poor – whose prayers were particularly efficacious before the God of the poor – could intercede for the spiritually needy rich, helping them attain “treasures in heaven.”

This symbiosis of rich and poor in Christ becomes a standard trope of the Christian discourse on wealth.  And so, for example, we have a second century work called the Shepherd, an important Christian writing considered canonical scripture by some church leaders of the first four centuries.  In one key passage of this lengthy work, the author, an otherwise unknown Roman author named Hermas, describes a symbolic vision he had of the intertwined relationship of an elm tree and a vine that grows up it (ch. 51).  Hermas knows that seeing these two plants is significant in some way, but he cannot understand how.  An angelic interpreter explains the symbolism.  The tree itself cannot bear any fruit (it’s an elm); the vine, on the other hand, can bear fruit, but since it lies on the ground its fruit will rot.  Only by being lifted above the ground by the elm can the vine produce fruit that will be of any use.  The elm that assists the vine, in turn, bears fruit by making the fruit-bearing possible.  In unison, the strong but fruitless tree and the weak but fruit-bearing vine produce fruit that would be impossible for either of them to produce separately.

For Hermas, that is a parable for rich and poor Christians.  The rich may be deeply impoverished in spiritual matters, with their prayer and confession bearing almost no fruit.  But they can provide financial assistance to their impoverished brothers and sisters in the faith, who in turn will pray for them; and these prayers are efficacious in covering over the sins their affluent brothers and sisters.

Here then is a new way to obtain salvation without engaging in fanatical acts such as divestment.  Everyone benefits: the poor don’t starve to death; the rich are right with God despite their spiritual shortcomings; and God receives more people into his kingdom.