John Barnet

Published in Anthony Scott, ed.,
Good and Faithful Servant: Stewardship in the Orthodox Tradition (SVS Press, 2003).
Reprinted by permission

A Scriptural Understanding of Property

For as long as there has been history there has been private property; for as long as there has been private property there have been wealth and poverty. Natural law theory holds that in pre-history's Golden Age all possessions were held in common and that, in Martin Hengel's words, "the moral downfall of man began with the introduction of private property."[1]  Metal working, agriculture, trade, and various crafts destroyed the paradisal condition by introducing "mine" and "thine."  On the other hand, the Christian perspective, amply attested in the writings of the Church Fathers, sees private property, and therefore wealth and poverty, as a consequence of the Fall and not its cause.  The distinction is an important one, for perspective dictates the approach with which one solves the problem of wealth and poverty:  philosophy sees the solution in the eradication of private property; Christianity in the restoration of communion with God. (Interestingly enough in both instances private property is viewed as an unnatural condition, a condition that provokes philosophy's romantic call for a return to nature and the Fathers' admonitions that possessions are the root of all dissension.)  The Christian approach -- the restoration of communion with God -- suggests that what is to be condemned is not property itself but the misuse of property, which makes communion with God impossible.

The possibility, indeed probability, of misusing property means that, for a Christian, property represents, again in Hengel's words, both "a dangerous threat and a supreme obligation."[2]  In the first half of this chapter I shall outline the scriptural view of property as threat and obligation.  In the second half of the chapter I would like to explore the limitations of the threat-obligation paradigm for the theme of stewardship, proposing instead that stewardship, or the management of property, must be rooted above all else in the New Testament conviction that private property represents the opportunity for Christian witness.

Property as Threat and Obligation in the Old Testament

In the Old Testament one finds numerous references implying that possessions themselves are not wrong.  Indeed, there are frequent allusions to the idea that possessions are actually a blessing from God, as in the examples of the blessing of Abraham and the blessing of Isaac:

Scriptural regulations for debt remission and land redistribution were possible, as Hengel notes, because "Yahweh was the real owner of the holy land."[3]  Even the Jews were no more than sojourners on Yahweh's property, hereditary tenants entrusted with a loan for which they were accountable to God.  This for the Jews was the "supreme obligation" of property.

The "dangerous threat" of property, on the other hand, may well have represented the greater concern for the Jewish community, for it struck at the very heart of Judaism as expressed in the Shema:  "Hear, O Israel:  The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might" (Deut 6.4-5).  Only the worship of another god -- an idol from Judaism's perspective of universal monotheism -- could destroy the very foundation of Judaism.  Yet it was precisely this tendency toward idolatry that constituted the dangerous threat of property.  For as Luke Johnson explains, idolatry can be understood as

In other words, when the mind is preoccupied with possessions, regardless of whether the possessions are many or few, then the mind is closed to God.  Such a person is closed to God even if he or she professes faith in God, a contradictory condition that actualizes the terrible words of the prophet Isaiah:  "This people draw near with their mouth and honor me [the Lord] with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment of men learned by rote" (Is 29.13).  The dangerous threat of property is well illustrated in the contrasting responses to God's call of Abraham, the model of appropriate response, and Lot's wife, the example of one who responded wrongly.[5]  Abraham was a wealthy man (Gen 12.5).  Nevertheless, when he was called by God to an unknown land (Gen 12.1), he did not identify his life with his possessions but, in Johnson's words, "allowed his identity to be determined by the one who called him."[6]  Lot's wife, on the other hand, identified her life with the wealth of her husband (Gen 13.5) and failed to obey (Gen 19.26) God's call to leave Sodom (Gen 19.17).  As Johnson concludes, "She could not respond to God's call, and so lost the life that she sought to establish by what she owned."[7] 

The Reappraisal of Property in the Presence of the Kingdom

The Old Testament understanding of property as threat and obligation finds expression in the New Testament as well, although it is reinterpreted in the light of the gospel, as indeed is the entirety of the Old Testament Law.  For, as the Apostle Paul teaches, the Law was only "our custodian until Christ came, that we might be justified by faith" (Gal 3.24).  The reinterpretation of the Old Testament understanding of property is a consequence of what Hengel calls the "central significance"[8] of Christianity, namely, its emphasis on the imminence of the kingdom of God.

In the presence of the kingdom men and women are not to be anxious about their daily needs, as Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount:

Instead, they are called to witness at every opportunity that it is God, not mammon, who sustains them:  "Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God" (Mt 4.4).  Therefore, for Christians, the significance of the imminence of the kingdom is that property is stripped of its idolatrous power to hold them in dependent relationship, a power that can overwhelm the concern for neighbor and make impossible the love of enemy.  Certainly Jesus attacked mammon whenever it captured men's hearts.  But, as Hengel writes,

In other words, for those who have eyes to see, the presence of the kingdom truly makes the things of this world irrelevant.

The claim that the imminent kingdom renders all earthly things irrelevant stands in tensive relationship with the Old Testament view that property represents a blessing from God.  On the one hand, it is certainly true that by accepting the support of the women who followed Him, Jesus Himself implicitly affirms the view that property is not wrong:  "Mary, called Magdalene, from who seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their means" (Lk 8.2-3).  Nevertheless, Judaism's positive assessment of property as blessing is completely transformed in the teaching of Jesus, who calls His disciples "blessed" because they see and hear what the prophets longed to see (Mt 12.16-17).  While the heavenly reward of those who follow Jesus will indeed be great (Mt 19.28-29), in this life they are to expect only the subsistence provisions of those who labor for the sake of the gospel:

God will provide for the earthly needs of the disciples, as Jesus promises everyone who seeks first God's kingdom and his righteousness (Mt 6.33):  those who accept the gospel when they are evangelized by the disciples will care for them (Mt 10.11).  Indeed, the disciples' dependence on the charity of others is itself to be understood as a sign of the gospel, a sign that the disciples serve only one master (Mt 23.10).  On the other hand, to those who would think to find some middle ground between God and the things of this world, Jesus makes clear the impossibility of their endeavor:  "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and mammon" (Mt 6.24).

Perhaps the ultimate expression of Jesus' uncompromising attitude toward possessions is found in His hard words to the rich man:  "If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me" (Mt 19.21).  Although the rich man has faithfully observed the commandments of the Law, including the commandment to love one's neighbor (Mt 19.18-20), he is unable to make the final act of radical obedience that leads to eternal life.  When the rich man rejects the invitation of Jesus, he becomes a sign of how difficult it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom, much to the astonishment of the disciples, who apparently hold the view that property is a sign of God's favor:  "Who then can be saved" (Mt 19.25)?  And like the rich man, many of us also turn away from this invitation, whether our possessions are many or few, before we understand the meaning of Jesus' words:  "With men this [salvation] is impossible, but with God all things are possible" (Mt 19.26).

Although Jesus' demand of the rich man -- that he should give his possessions to the poor -- is severe, the truly radical aspect of His words is that He commands a total commitment to Himself and His path.  Therefore, even if we are able to share from our abundance, like Zaccheus who gives half of his possessions to the poor in response to the presence of the kingdom (Lk 19.8), our generosity may not be adequate, even if it fulfills the Old Testament commandment to love one's neighbor.  For this commandment too is reinterpreted by Jesus, who teaches that it is not enough to give; one must be charitable in the proper spirit:

Indeed, so important is the hidden intention of one's piety that it becomes the sole basis for evaluating the gift; the amount itself becomes irrelevant, as Jesus teaches regarding the widow's sacrifice:  "Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had" (Lk 21.3-4).

The most significant reinterpretation of Judaism's view of property, however, undoubtedly occurs as a consequence of the new understanding that Jesus brings to the greatest commandment -- the commandment to love God above all else.  The Old Testament truth that possessions are a "dangerous threat" (when they are mistaken for the Absolute) is clearly preserved in the teaching of Jesus, as noted above in the pericope on serving two masters.  But this truth is also reinterpreted by Jesus when He links the two great commandments of the Law:  "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the great and first commandment.  And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself" (Mt 22.37-39).  The significance of this juxtaposition is that each commandment is to be understood in terms of the other, with the result that it is not possible to love God and hate neighbor or to love neighbor and hate God:  "He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness still.  He who loves his brother abides in the light" (1 Jn 2.9-10).  Indeed, the juxtaposition of these commandments reveals that the love of the needy neighbor is the love of God:

In this passage, Jesus makes it clear that the love of neighbor, which must be manifested in concrete action (1 Jn 3.17-18), is the basis for salvation.  It is not possible to state more strongly the requirement to love one's neighbor, especially the needy neighbor, nor to explain how this love is to be expressed.  For Christians, this represents the "supreme obligation" of property.

One explanation for our refusal to help the neighbor is that we often are unwilling to do the difficult work of determining the neighbor's true need and then acting upon that need regardless of the consequences.  Another explanation is that we have lost the scriptural understanding of possessions as a loan from God.  Consequently, we come to assign more value to the things of this world than to our fellow man, a perspective that reverses the hierarchy ordained by God when He created man to have dominion over His entire creation (Gen 1.26).  Thus there arises a tension born of our conflicting attitudes toward possessions and people.  The nature of this tension suggests that the problem of Christian charity could be overcome by encouraging a change of attitude toward possessions on the one hand and neighbor on the other.  In this section of the chapter I shall try to show, however, that an understanding of charity that emphasizes either detachment from possessions or obligation toward the neighbor is ultimately limited and therefore is not truly charity.  Rather, for Christians, only that which is the free and concrete expression of the genuine love of the other can truly be called charity.

Detachment from Possessions

For a Christian, a certain detachment from possessions is a natural consequence of the realization that in the presence of the kingdom private property has no meaning.  This is because the things of this world are ultimately useless in the face of an ethic that not only disregards social position, which so often accompanies distinctions of wealth and poverty, but also reverses our commonly held understanding of authority and greatness:  "But Jesus called them to Him and said, 'You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them.  It shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be servant your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave'" (Mt 20.25-28).  Such a reappraisal of the value of private property is reflected in the free attitude toward possessions characteristic of the Jerusalem community:  "Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common" (Acts 4.32).  Even the neglect of the Greek-speaking widows at the daily distribution (Acts 6.1) can be interpreted as evidence that the organization and planning of the Jerusalem community were "kept to a minimum, ... in view of the intensive expectation of the return of Jesus."[10] 

As the expectation of an imminent parousia died down, however, the early Church continued to encourage freedom from possessions as a means "to serve God's cause, to proclaim the gospel and to serve neighbors."[11]  In other words, the Church came to encourage for most a contentment with those possessions sufficient to support life, while riches were to be used in the service of the poor, as in the following exhortation of St John Chrysostom:

But such an understanding, however true it might be, can also be misleading, for it increases the possibility of understanding the management of property primarily in a juridical sense, as a law or regulation to be obeyed.  In other words, it introduces the element of compulsion. 

Such appears to have been the case with Ananias and Sapphira, who withheld a portion of their possessions from the Jerusalem community (Acts 5.1-2).  One could argue, as Peter does, that they were not compelled to give their property to the Church:

Nevertheless, Ananias and Sapphira apparently felt some sort of compulsion, since they attempted to deceive the community by withholding a portion of what was intended in its entirety as a free gift.  Why should they have been reluctant to give all that they had promised?  Apparently Ananias and Sapphira felt that the portion that they withheld still had great value for them; however, in the face of others' expectations they were unable to express this attitude.  In other words, their understanding of their place within the Jerusalem community was apparently informed by a sense of obligation, rather than being determined by the realization that in the presence of the kingdom private property has no meaning.  This suggests that a model of charity that is based primarily on a contentment with sufficiency, or a detachment from possessions, is ultimately incomplete.

The Freedom of Love

While an emphasis on detachment from possessions ultimately may not serve as an adequate basis for a model of Christian charity, it does remind us that possessions offer us the opportunity to express concretely our love of neighbor.  Nevertheless, as Christos Yannaras cautions, "Any good work, any objective act of virtue is justified in the Church's eyes only when its object is to manifest God, to reveal the image of God in man."[13]  Or, as Scripture teaches us, acts of virtue are acceptable to God only when they "so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Mt 5.14).  In order to determine what sort of work reveals the image of God in man one may begin by looking first to God Himself.

According to Yannaras, the experience of the Church has shown that God

Participation in the body of Christ, his Church, ultimately effects the transformation of a person's heart, the seat of human understanding and intention, for it is there -- in response to the gospel -- that one stands before God in need of His salvation. Jesus Himself declares that He "came not to call the righteous, but sinners" (Mt 9.13). Therefore, unless one first understands that one is in need of salvation, then every attempt to practice responsible stewardship, whether it be contentment with sufficiency or charity toward one's neighbor, ultimately represents merely the work of men and not, as it might otherwise be, the witness of one's salvation.

The Witness of Salvation

When the rich man rejects the invitation of Jesus to enter the kingdom, he expresses the impossibility of effecting his own salvation, despite his faithful observance of all the commandments of the Law, including the commandment to love one's neighbor.  Indeed, the words of Jesus to His astonished disciples expose the fruitlessness of all human endeavors in the presence of the kingdom:  "With men this [the salvation of the rich man] is impossible" (Mt 19.26).  Nevertheless, Jesus adds, "... but with God all things are possible" (Mt 19.26).  The path of salvation that is offered by Jesus to the rich man is the path of voluntary impoverishment, the loss not only of his great possessions but also the social status that invariably accompanies great wealth.

A similar opportunity for voluntary impoverishment is presented to the centurion, a high status soldier who declares his unworthiness before Jesus, the son of a mere carpenter (Mt 13.55):  "Lord, I am not worthy to have you come under my roof; but only say the word and my servant will be healed" (Mt 8.8).  Not only does the centurion implicitly know that he is powerless to fulfill his own need for the healing of his servant, he also appears to understand that he has no right to make his supplication when he confesses his unworthiness.  This self-lowering on the part of the centurion recalls the private instructions of Jesus to His disciples that they should take up their crosses (Mt 10.38; 16.24), lose their lives (Mt 10.39; 16.25), humble themselves like a child (Mt 18.3-4), and become the servants of others (Mt 20.26-27).  In other words, it is a self-lowering that actualizes the pattern established by Jesus Himself, who takes up His own cross (Mt 20.19), loses His own life (Mt 16.21; 17.23; 20.28), and comes to serve others rather than be served Himself (Mt 20.28), which pattern represents the will of His Father (Mt 26.39, 42), who raises Jesus from the dead (Mt 16.21; 17.23; 20.19).

Voluntary impoverishment is also the posture of the Canaanite woman, who accepts Jesus' implicit characterization of her lowly status:  "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master's table" (Mt 15.27).  Furthermore, it is precisely the Canaanite woman's acceptance of Jesus' characterization of her status, her final appeal, that is considered to be the manifestation of her great faith (Mt 15.28).  Like the centurion, the Canaanite woman overcomes the objection of Jesus' response, expressing the recognition of her need in the face of her unworthiness.  Unlike the centurion, however, who manifests his faith in an act of self-lowering, the Canaanite woman is depicted as a thoroughly marginalized supplicant whose great faith is manifested in the acknowledgment of her low status.

Conclusion

Thus one comes to see that Christian charity, properly understood, is the free and concrete manifestation of one's love for the neighbor, a love that is possible only in the person whose heart has been transformed through total participation in the body of Christ, as one who stands before God in need of His salvation.  Does this mean, therefore, that we are to forgo the inadequate charity of our imperfect love?  No.  We are to give nonetheless.  We are to give to the best of our limited ability.  We are to give ever mindful that our possessions must represent above all else the opportunity to witness to the salvation that is being effected in us.  We are to give with the knowledge that our charity must be a sign of God's providential care.  We are to give with the certainty that our voluntary impoverishment for the sake of the gospel must be a sign that we serve only one master.  We are to give with humility, all the while acknowledging the inadequacy of our gift, all the while praying with the tax collector "God be merciful to me a sinner" (Lk 18.13).  Such is the nature of Christian stewardship.

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Recommended Reading

Chrysostom, St John. On Wealth and Poverty. Translated by Catherine P. Roth.  Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984.

Hengel, Martin. Property and Riches in the Early Church: Aspects of a Social History of Early Christianity. Translated by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1974.

Johnson, Luke T. Sharing Possessions: Mandate and Symbol of Faith. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1981.

Tarazi, Paul Nadim. "Witnessing the Dynamics of Salvation," St Vladimir's Theological Quarterly 22 (1978): 179-91.

Yannaras, Christos. The Freedom of Morality. Translated by Elizabeth Briere. Crestwood: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1984.