Westmont Magazine Lessons from the Early Church Regarding Wealth and Poverty for Contemporary Christians

By Helen Rhee, Professor of Religious Studies

OUR EARTHLY POSSESSIONS

The early church’s understanding of God’s intent for and absolute ownership of the created world motivated and influenced the handling of possessions. While early Christian authors in general affirmed the legitimacy of private property, they considered it a share of the common creation intended for the common good.

All material goods are God’s gracious gifts intended for sustenance of all humans through common access to his grace. Therefore, human possession of earthly wealth is good when it fulfills God’s creative purpose: sufficient provision of our needs and the needs of others for common enjoyment and flourishing.

On the one hand, this understanding affirms the material dimension of human needs. It also shows the appropriateness and necessity of providing for needs following God’s design for life and the common enjoyment of earthly goods. On the other hand, it reveals that the needs of others must matter in human stewardship of God-given possessions. This should influence our decisions about money or property. Human stewardship is always conditional in light of God’s absolute ownership and creative purpose: the common good.

Beyond sufficient provision and common enjoyment, we have no natural right to hoard money, indulge in riches and display wealth conspicuously. Early Christian voices identified these actions as symptoms of avarice and greed. Our possessions, even as the fruits of our hard work, remain contingent upon our broader social responsibility and our witness to God’s ultimate ownership. Moreover, while all wealth ultimately comes from God, it brings a real and powerful temptation and deceitfulness that can easily lead to idolatry and injustice. 

APPLICATION FOR TODAY: FOUR PRINCIPLES

In light of these fundamental teachings, how should we handle God-given wealth and respond to poverty in our time? Consider the following four practical principles.

I. USE RESOURCES TO RIGHTLY NURTURE SOUL AND BODY

As physical and spiritual creatures with physical and spiritual needs, we appropriately and necessarily use God-given money and possessions for our sufficient physical and spiritual care. Thus, we rightly spend in areas that nurture our souls and bodies. God expects us to enjoy his creation and the works of humans with gratitude. Sufficient care and appropriate enjoyment extends beyond quantity to quality—provided we avoid harming people or God’s created world or falling into consumerism and covetousness.

The key words here are “sufficient care” and “appropriate enjoyment” since these notions, and those of necessities, inevitably evolve and gain context through time (e.g., antiquity, medieval times, modern world) and geographical and social locations (e.g., Australia, Vietnam, USA). In this new era with a culture of affluence, what we used to consider “luxury” items decades ago, such as smartphones, iPads, flat-screen TVs and laptops, have become “necessities” for many in developed and even developing countries.

Many—even most—people in developed and developing countries have come to enjoy and take for granted dining out, urban entertainments such as movies, concerts, sporting events, vacations, and domestic and international trips, not as an extravagant lifestyle but as affordable and necessary leisure. We do well to remember what the early church believed: What feeds our bodies, as we use God-given money and possessions, affects our souls. We must consider how meeting our physical needs and finding enjoyment through material things helps and affects our spiritual needs—positively or negatively.

II. PRACTICE SIMPLICITY TO CULTIVATE INNER FREEDOM

The early church exhorted qualified renunciation as evidence of an inner freedom from the grip of material things and therefore as a way of reorienting desire for spiritual good. They consistently saw the real danger of wealth and its power to corrupt souls. From the “Shepherd of Hermas” and Clement of Alexandria to Cyprian of Carthage, renouncing or cutting away at least some earthly riches through simple living and generous almsgiving provides a partial antidote to dealing with insatiable desire for, attachment to, and pursuit of earthly riches. The virtue of internal freedom and contentment requires cultivation by cutting away or giving away external goods because of the force and deceitfulness of wealth and our fallen state. Simplicity calls for the discipline of taking regular inventory of our possessions and cutting away our excess good. Generous giving calls for going beyond the law of tithe and giving in proportion to our wealth.

III. DEVELOP A HEAVENLY PERSPECTIVE

In pursuing the second principle, prominent voices in the early church repeatedly exhort us to cultivate a heavenly perspective, i.e., placing our hope in and actively looking forward to heavenly riches as our true wealth and security. This heavenly pursuit calls for a cultivation of eschatological hope and a reorientation of our values, which requires at the same time spiritual imagination and faith. Furthermore, this heavenly pursuit means investing earthly possessions in the eternal and transferring our earthly possessions into heavenly assets.

What are our heavenly assets? First and foremost, the early church valued people as God’s image bearers. We must, therefore, think about ways we can invest the money and possessions we steward into people and their welfare and nurture relationships near and far that last eternally. People, especially those unable to repay us, become our neighbors to love and respect.

We could give to disaster relief work and urgent needs (e.g., to literally save the victims of disasters, to feed and provide shelter for the people without homes, to care for the sick, or to provide for the needs of struggling relatives or friends, etc.). We could also give to development organizations that work toward long-term, structural and institutional changes for the betterment of the poor and the underprivileged (e.g., basic education and literacy, affordable housing, asset-based community development, micro lending, access to health care, etc.). These direct and indirect forms of investment in people fulfill God’s creational intent: sufficiency for all humanity through common access to the created world— through productive means and finished products—for common flourishing.

IV. ALLOW THE GOSPEL PROCLAIMED TO BECOME THE GOSPEL EMBODIED

Finally, the church was at the center of providing relief for the poor and the afflicted in early Christianity and throughout church history. No dichotomy existed in the mission of the church on whether to attend to either the spiritual or the material/social needs of the community.

The task of caring for the “widows, orphans and the poor” and other socioeconomically marginalized groups (such as people with disability, the elderly, the sick, etc.) constituted faithfulness to the gospel and was never separated from the essential self- definition and mission of the church. The gospel proclaimed and the gospel embodied were never pitted against each other, nor did they compete for the loyalty of the FAITHFUL.

If contemporary (evangelical) churches are to reclaim this holistic notion and practice of the gospel they must bridge the gap or wedge between the spiritual and social/physical ministries of the churches, an unfortunate byproduct of the fundamentalist- modernist controversy in the early 20th century. The church then becomes uniquely positioned to recognize and deal with both material and spiritual dimensions of poverty. We have much to learn from the early church.

CONSIDER THREE PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS FOR THE DISCIPLINE OF SIMPLICITY AND LOVING THE POOR.

1. The discipline of simplicity demands a discipline of contentment, which is a faithful and grateful response to God’s abundance and provision. Contentment requires a practice of restraint: Saying no to the advertising phrases such as, “I deserve this” or “I’m worth it,” and severing a tie between identity or self-worth and particular desired goods.

2. A lifestyle of simplicity entails making ourselves accountable to others—perhaps family, church home groups, close friends, like-minded people in our neighborhoods, even Facebook friends—for our consumption patterns, the kinds of goods we prefer and want, and the ways we acquire those goods.

3. Based on Matthew 25:34-46 (the parable of the sheep and the goats), early Christians saw Christ in the poor and regarded the poor person as Christ in disguise. We may feel a bit uncomfortable about this attribution, but we should constantly remind ourselves of the dignity and value of each poor person as God’s image bearer.

FURTHER READING

Brown, Peter. The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015.

Holman, Susan R., ed. Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008.

Rhee, Helen. Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2012.