It seems
much of the world is in for a slow recovery from the economic malaise of the
past few years. What Christians aim to see "fixed" are not the fine
points of banking laws, executive salaries, mortgage-backed securities
regulations, or bankruptcy protections. Certainly, such changes have their
place. Yet the Christian perspective must be far more holistic, pushing beyond
corporate and governmental structures to the dispositions of individual people
towards wealth and towards the financial, environmental, educational, legal,
and social needs of the poor.
Should I
buy a new, high-definition TV? Is universal healthcare a right? Should I expand
my business? From what manufacturers should I buy my clothing? From the
Christian perspective, every aspect of stewardship—time, talents, and
money—should carry a concern to restore socio-economic injustice. Fortunately,
Christians today not only benefit from the voices of current leaders but also
may take advantage of the wisdom of those Christians who in earlier times
wrestled with many of these same questions. Early Christianity provides us with
a wealth of resources to retrain our minds to think Christianly about wealth,
poverty, and the desire to resolve economic disparities.
Case in
point: In Mark 10:21 (and the parallel text in Luke 18:22), Jesus told a rich
young man that he needed to "sell all that he possessed" in order to
be one of his followers. This was as jarring to the early Christian readers as
it sounds to us today. Was Jesus suggesting that a person can be too rich for
heaven? Early Christians were divided about the question before a consensus
emerged around a critique of superfluous wealth.
Renunciation vs. detachment
The
natural reading of Mark 10:21 is that Jesus called for a lifestyle of
renunciation, that is to say, a disavowal both of wealth and of one's access to
wealth. During the second century, some Christian writings taught as much. The
Epistle of Barnabas, for example, exhorted its readers, "Treat as common
all things with your neighbor, and do not say things are 'one's own,' for if
you are sharers in incorruptible things, how much more ought you to be sharers
in corruptible things!" The command not to call things "one's
own" is also found in Didache 4.8, a late first-or second-century
document, although it is less clear in Didache that the author held strictly to
a renunciation view.
Even in
the second century, however, the matter was the subject of some debate. In
Against Heresies, Irenaeus of Lyons accepted that property is morally neutral.
Property itself is not to blame; rather, one's use of property should be
scrutinized. In fact, the possession of property is not a right, since
everything one currently has is the result of someone else's earlier labor.
Thus, the property one acquires is always to be used for a morally good
purpose. Irenaeus recalled how the Israelites took wealth from the Egyptians just
prior to their exodus (cf. Ex 12:35), only later redeeming it when they used it
to build their temple. "And we are proved to be righteous by whatsoever
else we do well, redeeming, as it were, our property from strange hands."
The implication of this argument for later Christians was that, just because
you labored in a field for a planting and harvesting season, you do not have
the right to declare that all that is harvested from the field is your own. All
property is the result of someone else's earlier labor. Someone in an earlier
time acquired the raw materials. People in earlier times designed the tools
used in harvesting or tradecrafts. Land and any rain that falls upon it are a
divine gift and not the product of human labor. Thus, property could never really
be considered "private" because no one person could ever claim to
have produced every part of it!
Irenaeus's
arguments resonated in the third century. One of the bishops of Alexandria,
Clement, articulated what we now call a detachment view of wealth and property
in Who Is the Rich Man that Shall Be Saved? Clement's text specifically
addressed Jesus' teaching in Mark 10, and he applied a spiritual style of
exegesis that had gained some currency in his day. A spiritual reading of the
text was necessary, argued Clement, for Jesus would otherwise be requiring the
renunciation of property in one text while requiring that we regularly share
our resources with the poor in another text (cf. Matt 25).
"If
no one had anything, what room would be left among men for giving? And how can
this dogma fail to be found plainly opposed to and conflicting with many other
excellent teachings of the Lord? … How could one give food to the hungry, and
drink to the thirsty, clothe the naked, and shelter the houseless, for not
doing which He threatens with fire and the outer darkness, if each man first
divested himself of all these things?" (Clement, Who is the Rich Man that
Shall be Saved 13)
Clement
articulated a vision for wealth and property in which a person may freely possess
what he or she needs or is useful to him or her, but must give all that is
superfluous to the poor or otherwise needy. Clement therefore opened a more
fruitful course of inquiry: how much is enough?
The rich and the merciless
Clement's
critique of superfluous wealth became the standard interpretation of Mark 10:21
for later Christian preachers and theologians. Yet the renunciation view never
fully disappeared. In the mid-fourth century, Epiphanius condemned adherents to
a renunciation view in his Panarion. A fifth-century Pelagian text, "On
Riches," insisted that only renunciation of property and wealth would
ensure elimination of poverty for others. Even so, more and more of the
ecclesiastical elite articulated the detachment view.
One of
Clement's early successors in Alexandria, Peter, preached on the need for
detachment from property in his sermon On Riches. Peter said two important
things that were echoed in many later Christian texts. First, he argued that
God makes a distinction between the rich person and the merciless rich person.
The former liberally dispenses his superfluous wealth to the poor; the latter
is consumed with thoughts of wealth and despises the needs of the poor. Only
the merciful rich person has standing before God. Second, Peter argued that
there is a direct connection between the giving of alms by a rich person and
that person's fate after death. The distribution of alms to the poor is the
starting point for those with greater financial means who wish to ensure that
their wealth is not a hindrance to their relationship with God.
So
Clement and then Peter set the stage for Christian teaching about Mark 10 that
continued throughout late antiquity (and, arguably, continues in our own day).
The mid-to late-fourth century theologian Gregory of Nazianzus preached a
homily encouraging love for the poor, particularly those with serious health
problems. He observed in his homily that inordinate affection for property was
responsible for the strife between persons and between nations.
"Men
squirrel away gold and silver and quantities of soft and superfluous clothes
and glittering jewels and similar items that bear the stamp of war and
dissension and of the first act of rebellion, and then in their folly arch
their brows and refuse to show compassion towards the unfortunate among their
kinsmen." (Gregory, Oration 14.25)
Love for
the poor begins, in part, with the recognition that wealth and property truly
belong only to God. Similarly, in his homily The Unjust Steward, Asterius of
Amasea, a near contemporary of Gregory's, balanced a concern for the
temporariness of property with each person's responsibility towards God.
Everyone will be obliged one day to give an account before God of his or her
use of wealth and property.
A test of virtue
Bridging
the fourth and fifth centuries was the preaching career of John Chrysostom. In
several homilies Chrysostom framed the wealth question this way: Wealth exists
to test human virtue, and whether or not we are virtuous depends on the extent
to which we willingly give of our possessions to the poor. In his Homilies on
Matthew, he argued giving to the poor is, in fact, giving to them what was
already theirs in the first place. God has simply entrusted the rich with the
responsibility to dispense it. This is echoed in his Homilies on 2 Corinthians,
in which he defined superfluous property as all things that go beyond what is
needed to live healthfully and respectably.
"I
require you to cut off superfluities and to desire a sufficiency alone. Now the
boundary of sufficiency is the using those things which it is impossible to
live without. No one keeps you from these nor forbids you your daily food. I
say food, not feasting; raiment, not ornament …. [T]hat is superfluous which is
more than we need." (John Chrysostom, Hom. 2 Cor 19.3-4)
He
exhorted his hearers not to spend their money on unnecessary things, which are
not really theirs at all—they ultimately belong to God and to his designated
heirs, the poor. Furthermore, he taught that a gradual reduction in one's
concern for the body will lead to a gradual reduction of one's acquisition of
superfluous property and, correspondingly, a gradual increase in one's
willingness to give alms.
Can you
be too rich for heaven? According to the early Christians, the answer is most
certainly yes. When they read Mark 10:21, they understood Jesus to be saying
that superfluous wealth is a clear hindrance to a relationship with God. They
appreciated the temporariness of wealth and property, which corresponds to the
temporariness of human life on earth. They also recognized that God will
require of the rich an account of how they managed that wealth for the benefit
of the needy. Finally, the early Christians acknowledged that God intended all
of creation to be for the benefit of all. They believed God intended for the
rich and poor to share with one another—even if that was conceived in so simple
terms as the rich sharing their superfluous wealth and the poor sharing their
life of prayer and nearness to God.
Source: http://www.johnsanidopoulos.com/2010/01/can-you-be-too-rich-for-heaven.html
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