“It is not a great thing or desirable to be without any wealth, unless it be we are seeking eternal life. If it were, those who possess nothing - the destitute, the beggars seeking food, and the poor living in the streets, would become the blessed and loved of God, even though they did not know God or God’s righteousness. They would be granted eternal life on the basis of this extreme poverty and their lack of even the basic necessities of life!” - Clement of Alexandria
While this might at first seem to be a touching scene, this illustration is not a celebration of generosity but depicts what one is not supposed to do, akin to New York City signs advising subway passengers to not give money to people who are begging for help. Beard notes, “Roman moralists make numerous references to beggars - often to the effect that they are better ignored - and a series of paintings in Pompeii depicting life in the local Forum includes a cameo scene of a hunched beggar, with dog, being handed some small change by a posh lady and her maid, who are not obeying the moralists’ advice.”[1]
In her discussion of how poverty was generally viewed in Ancient Rome, Beard notes that “Elite Roman writers were mostly disdainful of those less fortunate, and less rich, than themselves. Apart from their nostalgic admiration of a simple peasant way of life - a fantasy of country picnics, and lazy afternoons under shady trees - they found little virtue in poverty or in the poor or even in earning an honest day’s wages.”[2]
Although good deeds - beneficentia - and generosity - liberalitas - were considered virtues among the very wealthy, it was generally understood that such philanthropy was to be extended only toward those who could be useful on down the road: that is, the worthy and respectable citizens, with a special relationship to the giver, who were able to give in return.[3] Indeed, when ‘the poor’ are mentioned by elite Roman writers, they are most often referring to fellow wealthy people who have fallen into sudden misfortune. Scholar Annaliese Parkin depicts the level of insulation from the most destitute when she notes that, “Probably the rich did not in fact often give to the destitute: they will have been largely protected from the attentions of beggars in public by their servants, clients or lictors, and many, entrenched in the doctrine of euergetism or beneficentia, may genuinely have held that it was money not well used.”[4]
It is helpful to keep this broader context in mind when looking at Clement of Alexandria (c.150-c.215 AD), one of the earliest and most vocal Christian apologists for wealth and the wealthy and one of the key sources for Christian notions of wealth stewardship. When set beside the writings of other Christian writers of his time, many of the ideas he sets out in his treatise The Rich Young Ruler appear to come out of nowhere. It is only when one considers the prevailing attitudes of the Roman elite toward the destitute that it becomes clear Clement represents a continuation - an ushering in and integration - of Christianity and the Roman elite’s comfortability with wealth and vigorous disdain for the very poor. Such integration ultimately served the growing Church well: Clement’s views on wealth were embraced and expanded upon by Augustine of Hippo in the fifth century, and as we’ll see have become the basis for mainline Christianity’s current views on wealth stewardship.
In what follows below, I’m going to look once again at Clement of Alexandria’s The Rich Young Ruler, this time with the broader Roman attitudes toward the destitute in mind. Doing so has allowed me to see more clearly how Clement’s overall project was one of integration, a smoothing over the wrinkles, between Christianity’s peculiar emphasis on compassion - misericordia - and giving away one’s wealth, and prevailing Roman attitudes regarding the honorable rich, the unworthy poor, and the utility of retaining wealth. I will conclude by looking briefly at another Christian thinker writing around the same time, Lacantius, who both represents a stark contrast to Clement and shows just how much of an outlier Clement was in his views on wealth stewardship.
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In the second and third centuries, as Christianity advanced into the higher ranks of society, the wealth of newer members became a theological problem that had to be addressed. These communities would have wrestled with Jesus’ exchange with the rich young ruler wherein Jesus concludes that it is more possible for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for the rich to be saved.[5] This position would have surprised but also warmed the hearts of the earliest Christian communities who lived just at or below subsistence level and who were the inheritors of a well-developed “pious poor and oppressive rich” tradition. As the wealthy became members of Christian communities, however, new questions emerged: Could the rich be saved? Did the rich have to give away their possessions before membership in the Christian assemblies? What was happening when the rich gave alms to the poor in exchange for the prayers of the poor? Clement of Alexandria is one of the first Christian thinkers outside of scripture to comprehensively address wealth, the wealthy, and salvation.
A member of elite Alexandrian society, Clement became the head of the catechetical school in Alexandria c. 200. His teachings and writings reflect his elitism and an indebtedness to Platonism and Stoicism that, quite frankly, often appear to eclipse his appreciation of the Gospels themselves. Controversial in his own time, he represents one of the most intimate relationships to Greek philosophy within early Christianity, whose insistence - derived from Plato - that knowledge increases one’s moral worth was even then perceived as elitist and unhealthy.[6] Further, his desire to find a passionless middle way resulted in some of the more bizarre conclusions that Christianity has come to, particularly in the area of sexuality. While he argues that both abstinence and promiscuity are unnatural, Clement is among the first of Christian writers to say that sex between married couples should be only for procreation rather than mutual pleasure. This position still undergirds much of Roman Catholic sexual ethics and remains a cherished theological framework for making heterosexual couples’ sexual lives miserable and for categorizing homosexuality as unnatural.
In many respects, Clement’s conclusions about wealth stewardship have been even more impactful than his views on sexuality. According to historian Diarmaid McCullough, “In defending a Christian’s responsible stewardship of riches, he provided an extended framework for Christian views of money and possessions for centuries to come.”[7] In this pior post, I wrote a much more detailed description of the themes in his treatise on wealth, The Rich Young Ruler, and so won’t rehash all of that here. What follows is a summary of the various theological moves that pertain to stewardship.
At the outset of The Rich Young Ruler, Clement toes his Christian predecessors’ line by describing wealth as “a dangerous and deadly disease” and one which endangers the salvation of the wealthy. By the end of that same treatise, however, Clement has laid pleasantries aside and makes a vigorous defense for the harmlessness and moral neutrality of wealth. He howls against the 'eye of the needle' and the first two centuries of Christianity’s critiques of wealth when he asks, “What harm has been done by one who builds economic security and frugality prior to becoming a Christian? What is to be condemned if God, who gives life, places a child in a powerful family and a home full of wealth and possessions? If one is to be condemned for having been born into a wealthy family through no personal choice, that person would be wronged by God who would offer a worldly life of comfort but deny eternal life. Why would wealth ever have been found within creation if it causes only death?”[8] This full-throated defense of wealth and, notably, the moral neutrality of (his) inheritance, rounds out a treatise full of startling theological moves.
The first and perhaps most striking thing Clement does is make the case for an allegorical interpretation of the parable of the rich young ruler. He states that the rich young ruler’s sin wasn’t that he failed to give up his wealth to the poor, but rather that he failed to understand that Jesus was speaking figuratively. “‘Sell all that you possess’: what does that mean? It does not mean as some superficially suppose, that he should throw away all that he owns and abandon his property. Rather he is to banish those attitudes toward wealth that permeate his whole life, his desires, interests, and anxiety.”[9]
Instead of requiring the wealthy to first rid themselves of their wealth, Clement believes that the new and unique message of Christ is that he is asking both the wealthy and the poor to dispossess themselves of their inner passion and desire for wealth.[10] Reflecting his indebtedness to the Stoics, Clement argues that the literal renunciation of wealth and possessions that Jesus speaks about is best understood as a new command to renounce and eliminate inner passions. “If an affluent person can control the power that wealth brings and remains modest and self-controlled, seeking God and placing God above all else, that person can follow the commandments as a poor individual, one who is free and unencumbered by the wounds of wealth.”[11] Stated bluntly, Clement takes a Stoic’s crowbar to widen Jesus' eye of the needle.
In discussing this parable, Clement also engages in a biblical sleight of hand that would set an important precedent by relegating the dispossession of wealth to ascetics and monks. “In the patristic era, the parable of the rich young man - a parable which appears in all three synoptics - was invariably quoted in the version of Matthew, who, unlike the other evangelists, added the qualification ‘if you wish to be perfect’ to Christ’s challenge to the rich man…”[12] Although Clement was using the Marcan text in The Rich Young Ruler, he inserts “if you wish to be perfect” at the corresponding point in his quoting of the passage. “Thus, the command to sell everything and to live a life of voluntary poverty literally became a counsel of perfection to Christians, rather than a precept. The vita perfecta, with complete renunciation of wealth, was only required of ascetics and monks.”[13]
Having made wealth a matter of inner disposition, and having relegated the requirement of dispossession to the realm of ascetics and monks, Clement then argues that wealth should be considered as morally neutral as a tool. It is wealth’s utilitas that determines its moral value. Like a hammer, wealth can be used to build up or destroy, and the Christian is uniquely able to offer wealth for the building up of righteousness. Therefore, wealthy Christians should not be asked to give up their wealth but rather offer it to the glory of God, including by directing it toward the building up of the Church.
Stewardship season, anyone?
How Clement arrives here is as clever as it is circuitous. Having shown how both wealth and poverty are, in fact, inner spiritual matters and the possibility of being pious and rich, Clement then turns to examples in the Gospel in which Jesus assumes the wealthy have wealth to give away (Luke 16:9; Matt 6:20; Matt 25:41-43). The primary biblical example Clement uses is Jesus’ parable of the dishonest manager in the Gospel of Luke which ends with Jesus instructing the disciples to use dishonest wealth to make friends for themselves, “so that when it is gone they may welcome you into their homes.”[14] But if the wealthy must use dishonest wealth to make friends, Clement reasons, doesn't this mean they must retain their wealth rather than give it away to the poor? Clement concludes that the wealthy should therefore not give their wealth away but keep it for the building up of righteousness.
In this view, wealth is morally neutral - like a craftsman tool - which can be wielded in a variety of ways. Because it isn't inherently evil, as so many of his predecessors had claimed, wealth can therefore be retained and put to good use. “An instrument, used with skill, produces a work of art, but it is not the instrument’s fault if it is used wrongly. Wealth is such an instrument. It can be used rightly to produce righteousness. If it is used wrongly, it is not the fault of wealth itself but of the user. Wealth is the tool, not the craftsman.”[15] Distinctly absent are prior Christians' views of the wealth as the fruit of stealing and exploitation, and the accumulation of wealth as the sinful withholding of that which was intended for the common good.
Augustine embraced and expanded on Clement's view of wealth's utilitas in the fifth century to make one of those breathtaking theological arguments that would serve the Church well as the Roman empire crumbled and its own institutions came to replace the prior systems and structures in late antiquity. Augustine held that insomuch as the moral value of wealth was determined by its use, it was the Church alone that should be able to own property as it was the Church alone that used this wealth to God’s glory.[16] He conceded, however, that such a move would result in societal disruption and so said that this transfer of all property to the Church should not take place, or at least not immediately so.
Finally, and perhaps most disturbingly, Clement’s narrow focus on the interior attitude one brings to wealth - rather than external wealth itself - allowed for the ushering in of the well-established Roman view of ‘the unworthy poor’ which I referenced at the outset of this post. It is important to linger on this point for a while as it shows just how interconnected our current notions of wealth stewardship are to ancient Roman notions of studied detachment and outright disdain for the destitute.
With wealth now spiritualized, Clement made the case for the honorable rich, those who lived with humility and detachment from their wealth and used it for the glory of God, and contrasted these honorable wealthy from the unworthy poor who were so rich in vices and avarice despite their external poverty that they did not merit the generosity of the wealthy. Much like the image of the beggar in the House of Julia Felix, Clement embraces the specter of the ‘unworthy poor.’ “Again, in the same way there is a genuinely poor person and also a counterfeit and falsely named: the former is the one poor in spirit with inner personal poverty, and the latter, the one poor in a worldly sense with outward poverty. To the one poor in worldly goods but rich in vices, who is not poor in spirit and not rich toward God, God says: ‘Detach yourself from the alien possessions that are in your soul, so that you may become pure in heart and see God.”[17]
Clement's insistence on 'the unworthy poor' lead him to reject outright the notion that the poor are preferentially blessed by God. For “It is not a great thing or desirable to be without any wealth, unless it be we are seeking eternal life. If it were, those who possess nothing - the destitute, the beggars seeking food, and the poor living in the streets, would become the blessed and loved of God, even though they did not know God or God’s righteousness. They would be granted eternal life on the basis of this extreme poverty and their lack of even the basic necessities of life!”[18]
One can’t help but wonder what he might have said if he’d ever taken the time to read the Beatitudes.
Through his strenuous defense of the wealthy and exasperation at the idea of the outwardly poor as being somehow preferentially blessed by God, Clement reveals himself as far more aligned with prevailing attitudes of the Roman elite toward the poor than many of his Christian counterparts. In this respect, Clement stands out. A genuine question for me - one that I am actively wrestling with - is whether one can ultimately extricate his notions of wealth stewardship from his baptizing of Greco-Roman disdain for the poor.
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The Question of Mercy
One of the most interesting points of contrast between Clement of Alexandria and other writers of early Christianity has to do with the seemingly unique appreciation that Christianity had for misericordia, or mercy, for the most destitute. The Stoics, to whom Clement was profoundly indebted to, viewed misericordia toward the most vulnerable with suspicion and as a personal weakness, both because it undermined the ideal of being untroubled by emotion and because it suggested a transgressive questioning of the wisdom of how society was ordered.[19]
In Annaliese Parkin’s aptly named article, You do him no service: An exploration of pagan almsgiving, she echoes other scholars’ view that “Christian charity did not develop out of pagan munificence” and that “the two were concerned with fundamentally different sectors of ancient society.”[20] While there is extensive evidence that people were begging and received some support, Parkin maintains that these gifts primarily came from the lower rungs of ancient Roman society and that “organized material aid and services as the elite were prepared to extend to their social and economic inferiors were not directed at the poorest of Graeco-Roman society in the early imperial period... The destitute were never en masse targets of aid.”[21] In her evidence for the prevalence of begging and extreme levels of destitution, she notes that Roman laws had to explicitly prohibit parents from maiming their own children so as to increase the compassion and gifts extended to their families, practices which contemporary comparative poverty studies show as taking place in only the most desperate situations today.[21a]
An anti-empathetic culture was embraced by the Roman elite. On the prevailing view of misericordia itself, Parkins notes: “The Stoics, in particular, saw in it a sickness and disturbance of the soul. Their ethics dictated that the wise man was to feel no pain over the misfortunes of his neighbour, for pity brings grief.”[22] She continues: “Understanding this is the key to understanding the Stoic disapproval of pity: pity was a self-regarding emotion, a pathos experienced by imagining oneself in the place of the pitied, which undermined the Stoic ideal of being untroubled by emotion, autarcheia.”
The Stoic emphasis on passionlessness - indeed, being without compassion - is what problematically connects Clement’s discussion of the honorable rich, the valuing of the accumulation of wealth, detachment from the destitute, and outright disdain for ‘the unworthy poor.’ There is a deliberately merciless quality to the way Clement discusses wealth and wealth stewardship that only begin to makes sense when considered in light of the prevailing elite’s attitudes toward the most vulnerable. Expressions of empathetic identification with the most destitute was viewed with profound suspicion as it was a breach of the hierarchical caste system that allowed ancient Roman society to continue to hum along.
In contrast, a part of Christianity’s peculiarity and gift was its belief that God’s misericordia had resulted in God’s becoming human and subsequent identification with ‘the least of these’, and this comes through in other Christian writers’ appreciation - indeed, insistence - on misericordia as the basis for generosity.
The North African Christian Lacantius, whose writings spanned the third and fourth centuries (c. 250–325 CE), represents a striking contrast to the mercilessness of Clement. He argued that a Christian’s common sense of humanity should result in misericordia for the most vulnerable members of society. Scholar Helen Rhee notes: “Lactantius debunks a deeply seated Greco-Roman custom of reciprocity and patronage by linking Greco-Roman reciprocity to utilitas, the basis of the unjust civil law. In contrast, Christian generosity and charity should be directed to ‘the unsuitable’ as far as possible, ‘because a deed done with justice, piety and humanity is a deed you do without expectation of return’.”[23]
Lacantius’ De Institutes is a pointed contrast to the transactional nature of the patronage system as well as to Clement’s upholding of the prevailing view of the ‘unworthy poor.’ Lacantius insists: “God also enjoins that if we ever prepare a banquet, we should invite those who cannot invite and repay us in return, so that every act of our life is its exercise of mercy [cf. Luke 14:13–14],” and that “The whole nature of justice lies in our providing for others through humanity what we provide for our own families and relatives through affection. This kindness is much more sure and just when it is offered, not to people who are imperceptible, but to God alone, to whom a just work is a most acceptable sacrifice.”[24]
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I suppose that when it comes down to it, I am increasingly troubled by how the Church has embraced wealth stewardship as a central theological tenet for its own perpetuation. Yes, there are examples in the Gospels of buried talents and miraculous abundance, but A) were these referencing the building up of the church and B) how does one square these with the much more frequent examples of profligate generosity toward ‘the least of these’? It has always seemed to me to be a square peg, round hole situation, an attempt to squeeze principles of wealth management into the wildness of Jesus and the Gospels. The Gospel of Luke advised the rich to pull down their barns and recorded Jesus’ advice to the rich young man to give away all the wealth he had to the poor. How, exactly, we got from there to multi-million capital campaigns - and the theological logic of wealth stewardship which undergirds these campaigns - is a fascinating story to begin to trace.
The distinctly unlikeable Clement of Alexandria is a key figure in the unfolding of this story. The elitist Clement was central to Christianity’s coming to value wealth stewardship, and yet it is clear his own context and sources were contradictory to Christianity’s particular valuing of misericordia and profligate generosity toward ‘the least of these.’ Clement’s wealth stewardship encourages detachment over compassion, accumulation of wealth over dispossession through acts of generosity, and makes plenty of allowance for the widely-held sense that giving to the unworthy poor and those who cannot repay you is an act of foolishness rather than an act of Christian justice and charity. That historians such as Diarmaid McCullough see his defense of the responsible stewardship of riches as providing “an extended framework for Christian views of money and possessions for centuries to come” should cause us to reflect deeply on our sources and justifications for wealth stewardship, both in our personal lives and for the building up of the wealth of the Church.
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[1] Beard, Mary. SPQR, 444
[2] Beard, Mary. SPQR, 440
[3] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving', Poverty in the Roman World. 62
[4] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving'.’ Poverty in the Roman World Page 68
[5] Matthew 19:16-30; Mark 10:17-31; Luke 18:18-30
[6] McCullough, Diarmaid. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years.147
[7] McCullough 149
[8] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources.Location 844
[9] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources, Location 764
[10] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 793
[11] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 844
[12] [4] Hengstmengel, Joost W. ‘Wealth’. Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. Ed. David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, & Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Brill Reference Online. Web. 29 Sept. 2020.
[13] Hengstmengel, Joost W. ‘Wealth’. Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online. Ed. David G.Hunter, Paul J.J. vanGeest, & Bert JanLietaert Peerbolte. Brill Reference Online. Web. 29 Sept. 2020.
[14] Luke 16.9
[15] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Loc 793
[16] Stender, Hennie. "Economics in the Church Fathers" in Oxford Handbook of Christianity and Economics. Page 27.
[17] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 804
[18] Clement of Alexandria, The Rich Young Ruler, in Helen Rhee’s Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity. Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources. Location 774
[19] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 64
[20] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 60
[21] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 60
[21a] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 71
[22] Parkin, Annaliese. ‘You do him no service’: An Exploration of Pagan Almsgiving.' Poverty in the Roman World. Page 62
[23] Rhee, Helen. Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity (Ad Fontes: Early Christian Sources) . Augsburg Fortress. Kindle Edition. Location 343
[24] Lacantius, The Divine Institutes, 6.12
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