Democratic Capitalism: Will It Liberate? A Response to Criticisms of Liberation Theologies

April 29, 2011

Introduction

While many Latin American evangelical theologians have interacted, criticized, and dialogued fruitfully with theologies of liberation, there is a disturbing trend among critical “responses” to liberation theology from many North Americans.  In reality, these critical “responses” would be better labeled as polemical dismissals, uncritical rejections, or even propagandistic defenses of American capitalism.  This onslaught has been prompted by one facet of liberation theology that has been particularly intractable for privileged Euroamerican male academics: the denunciation of “savage capitalism” and the underlying relation to Marxist socio-economic criticism. While liberation theologians such as Gustavo Gutierrez and Jose Miguez Bonino cite social and economic theories and historical data extensively to support their argument, critics, such as J Ronald Blue of Dallas Seminary and Michael Novak of the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, merely write off Marxism as “a glorified Robin Hood approach” to solving the problem of poverty without quoting either Marx or any liberationist’s use of Marx a single time.

The Fox News conservative pundit Glenn Beck has continuously attacked liberation theologians for undermining American principles.  In an online article attacking Sojourners magazine editor Rev. Jim Wallis for undermining the “definition of individual salvation” that he holds, Beck even went so far as to assert that “there is a poison in some of our churches.  Social justice…isn’t in the gospel, neither is redistribution of wealth.”

Perhaps Mr. Beck should consult the words attributed to Jesus, himself in Luke 4:18, and 6:17-26 which depict social justice precisely as a reversal of fortunes between the rich and the poor.  This elucidates the grave danger in propagating criticisms without citing evidence from primary sources, historical data, or the Bible; while they consist of fabrications and half-truths that are easily debunked, many people will nevertheless hear and believe them at face value.  This serves only to obscure the substantial issues and questions raised by liberation theologies and replace genuine dialogue with another condescending monologue from the white Euroamerican male perspective.  In order to repair the broken bridge to genuine dialogue between North American theologians and Latin American theologians of liberation, these flawed criticisms, as well as their attendant sanctification of democratic capitalism, must be made to take account of the evidence.  If, as Novak claims, democratic capitalism is the true way to express Christian love for the poor, then it must be demonstrated that this system has done more help than harm to the poor worldwide and in our own country.  Novak’s question must be turned back upon his own prescription: will it liberate?

Critiquing the Critics

According to Blue, the first “major flaw” of “liberationists” is their emphasis on human rather than divine action and immanence rather than transcendence.  According to Blue, Gutierrez’s argument that “God is in all men” has no biblical reference, because, he concludes, “there is no such biblical reference.” If Blue would only read 27 verses into Genesis, he would find the exact reference from which Gutierrez develops his argument: the imago dei.

Most baffling, however, is Blue’s analysis of the flaws inherent in Marxism: “Marxist theories lead people to some irrational conclusions.” No clear argument follows to clarify the glaring ambiguities of that statement.  While he is trying to expose the alleged oversimplification of the liberationist contention that capitalist nations are largely responsible for Latin America’s destitution, his argument self-destructs.  The present inequality, we are told, is more likely to be the result of the “contrasting foundations” of Latin America and the United states than exploitation.  However, he identifies these foundations as “conquest and feudalism” (i.e. the exploitation of indigenous South Americans by the Spaniards) and the American “foundation of colonizers and free enterprise” (i.e. the exploitation of African slaves and the indigenous people and lands of North America as “capital” with which white men could freely engage in enterprise). Ironically, Blue goes on to admit that the best historical realization of the Marxist ideal of classless society with common ownership was in the early church!

In the final analysis, liberation theologians are pronounced guilty of emphasizing the precise themes that white Euroamerican male theology has neglected or even ignored.  It would be fairer and more accurate to turn Blue’s own words upside down: by restricting their analyses and cures so stringently to the eternal dimension and divine intervention, non-liberationists have neglected historical time and earthly reality.

Michael Novak is more comprehensive both in his scathing criticisms of theologies of liberation and in his unabashed advocacy for American democratic capitalism.  In his book Will It Liberate? Novak restricts his analysis and criticism to socio-economic and political concerns.  The thrust of his argument is that theologies of liberation can only truly liberate if they abandon Marxist analysis and adopt democratic capitalism, which alone can truly lift the poor out of destitution.

Novak is critical of those who “blame America first,” which is precisely what the liberationist denunciation of capitalism seems to do. This statement betrays the underlying agenda of his subsequent argument: to shrug the blame for Latin America’s poverty and oppression onto the bad decisions made by Latin Americans. After dismissing the liberationists’ usage of dependency theory (the idea that the rich gain their wealth at the expense of the poor who are then made to depend upon the rich for survival), he blames Latin America for “allow[ing] itself to become unusually dependent upon foreign capital.”

The problem, according to Novak, is that Latin American production is entirely focused on export rather than internal distribution, and that corrupt government interventions prevent the poor from participating democratically in the political economy. In one sense, liberation theologians would agree with this point.  As Jose Miguez Bonino demonstrates, in the wake of Spanish colonialism Latin America was seen by the Americans and British as “suppliers of raw materials first and of cheap labors and manageable markets later on,” and was forcibly restructured from sustainable agrarianism into an industrialized monoculture for the sole purpose of exporting cheap goods to the U.S. and U.K.

The corrupt government interventions Mr. Novak speaks of, in fact, occur to preserve the stability needed to protect a friendly atmosphere for foreign investment.  “Thus, a history exists of U.S. pressure to topple democratically elected governments and install tyrants who secured stability,” including Abenz in Guatemala and Allende in Chile.

Conclusions

As Novak indicates, the true litmus test for the legitimacy of democratic capitalism is whether it has proven effective in the United States.  Among his arguments for its success, Novak cites the fact that capitalism has made many goods which were once only available to royalty and nobility—such as silk stockings and spices—rapidly accessible to the poorest of immigrants to capitalist states.

What he never addresses, however, is where these cheap and accessible goods come from.  Novak insists that capitalism does not exploit and dehumanize laborers, yet the desire of multinational corporations to maximize profits (the only true value in capitalist systems) has led to a race to the bottom for the cheapest possible labor and production costs.  Instead of paying unionized American factory workers a dependable living wage to produce those beloved fruits of capitalism, those jobs have been exported to factories such as Kin Ki Industries in Shenzhen, China, where “workers are mostly teenage migrants, who work about eighty-four hours a week for 24 cents an hour with no medical insurance.”

The same operative principle of inequality has been observable in this country, in the evolving ratio between the income of CEO’s and the average factory worker.  Before the Reagan years, the time during which Novak and many others began to sing the praises of free-markets and decry regulation as government interference, CEO’s earned forty times that of the average worker.  As of 2001, “corporate leaders were earning 531 times as much as the average factory worker, a 571 percent increase.”

Additionally, during the 1980s, the poorest 20 percent of Americans saw a 10 percent increase in tax liability while the richest 5 percent benefitted from a nearly 13 percent decrease.

So much for the theory that the rich are not getting richer at the expense of the poor.  In a time of financial bailouts which reward the very people and institutions that cause economic depressions at the expense of the general population, growing inequality at home and abroad, ever-increasing military spending and massive budget cuts to welfare programs and public institutions, the pro-capitalist arguments espoused by Novak are no longer credible.  Certainly there are some, like Beck, who insist on promulgating this ideology in the face of mounting evidence, but they should not simply be shrugged off by those who know better.  What is needed is a critical response that prizes academic integrity over polarizing polemics.  Now more than ever the voices of liberation must be heard and their denunciations reiterated.  It is time to join our Latin American sisters and brothers in the prophetic pronouncement of God’s solidarity with the downtrodden and of righteous indignation at their exploitation (Jer. 22:3-5).  Rather than defensively react to preserve our own national interests, we must join in solidarity with our fellow Christians and pledge allegiance to God alone, not to any flag, for it is written, “No one can serve two masters” (Mt. 6:24; Lk. 16:13).  Only then can we ever hope for true “liberty and justice for all.”  Until we can achieve this kind of solidarity, the kind Jesus himself prayed for (John 17), there will only be liberty and justice for some.

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Ecolesiology—The Ecological, Ecumenical, and Economic House of God: A Perspective on Reconciliation

November 18, 2010

Introduction

The Christian themes of sanctification and reconciliation and their connection to the community life of the church are so integral and interconnected that they must be examined holistically; otherwise there is a tremendous risk of losing the core of these important teachings.  The individualization and spiritualization of the “holy” since the dawn of modernity, spawned by the so-called Enlightenment, has systematically purged it of its originally holistic, sacred community-centered orientation, which has led to the divorce of holy living from the so-called secular aspects of daily life.

This, in turn, has led to a mode of “ghettoized” Christian existence in North America and Europe that has sanctioned the emerging culture of consumption.

Cut off from the ability to critique the pitfalls of consumerism, the church has allowed itself to become another venue, or market of consumerism.  What needs to be addressed, beyond the obvious fact that over-consumption is destructive of the environment, is that “persistent and obsessive consumption is no longer merely a habit; instead, it is an addiction which rests on a foundation which functions as the equivalent of a religion.”

As such, it should be perceived as a threat not only to the ecosystem, but also to the Christian faith; it is, in short, the idolatry of our time.  Just as our toxic chemicals and industrial wastes pollute our air and water, causing sickness and death to animals and humans all over the world, so too the lies of consumerism seep into the aquifers of Christian spirituality and pollute our ways of reading and enacting the word of God.  How has this crisis come to be, and what can be done to reclaim our threatened faith?

Diagnosis: An Ecological, Economic, and Ecumenical Crisis

The ecological crisis, as it pertains to Christian faith, is rooted in the tendency in Western theology to emphasize the transcendent aspects of God and neglect the immanence of God.

When carried out to its logical end, this position leads to a view of the created world as a profane secularized realm of “resources” for human use, and to an otherworldly view of God’s redemption that only concerns humans.  This world, so the logic goes, is neither God’s true home, nor our own, but is merely the stage of the divine redemption of humanity and the forsaken arena from which humans will be liberated.

The industrial and technological plundering of the earth’s resources, however, “does not produce benefits for all societies but only for those that control…production, and it excludes others or grants them information by exacting heavy tribute (royalties).”

In other words, there is a direct link between the ecological exploitation that violates the earth and the economic exploitation that creates and increases the inequality between the rich and the poor.  Behind the modern myth of progress and infinite economic growth lies the truth that the only thing such a system is guaranteed to “grow” is inequality.

This is why Leonardo Boff and many other Latin American liberation theologians have increasingly taken notice of the inextricable link between ecological and economic liberation, doing so within the context of the doctrine of creation.  Yet the very fact that we so label theologians “Latin American” and “liberation”, among many others, elucidates the fact that the church in the West has tended to emphasize the Western view of God as all-encompassing, bracketing off other sources of theology as “contextual” theologies; in sum, the crisis can also be seen as an ecumenical one.  Only recently has the need for Western Christians to hear and be challenged by the prophetic and critical voices of other Christian traditions begun to be acknowledged.

Christians in the West are only now beginning to recognize that the biblical account depicts a deity who is both transcendent and immanent, and that the need to emphasize the latter aspect is crucial if the church wishes to be able to address the evils of our time.  We proclaim the trinitarian God who brought the world into being through God’s Word, who breathed life into all creatures by the Spirit which is none other than the personal presence of Godself in creation, and whose Wisdom and Word was made flesh in order to walk this earth alongside us so as to reconcile all of God’s creation—including, but certainly not limited to human beings (Col 1:20).  Therefore, we affirm with the apostle Paul, that God “is actually not far from us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’” (Acts 17:27-28).

We proclaim Emmanuel, God with us, and confess that it is God’s ruach, the breath and Spirit of life that is in us, and which sustains us; for we are reduced to dust when it departs (Ps. 104).

The remedy for Christian faith in the West is to replace the doctrine of creation that ignores everything but the phrase, “fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion” (Gen 1:28) with a more holistic, and ultimately more biblical doctrine of creation.  The purpose of this paper is to explore this doctrine as it plays out in the ancient metaphor of the oikos, the household of God.  The story of the oikos begins with the original harmony of the Architect’s creation, and unfolds in three spheres that have oikos as their etymological root: the ecological, the economic, and ecumenical, which is the consummated, holistic reconciliation of economics and ecology.  The story will correspondingly trace the human roles in the household from gardener and sustainer, to perpetrator and victim of domestic violence, to domestic servant, and finally to family member.  Only with a proper understanding of the ways of human sinfulness and the nature of the relationships that have been violated can the nature of the church as God’s oikos community of reconciliation begin to be understood.

Part I: The Ecological House and the Sin of Autonomy

The word ecology was coined in 1866 by the German Darwinian Ernst Haeckel from the Greek word oikos, meaning house, to refer literally to the household of living creatures on earth and their interwoven, interdependent community existence.

Wilderness ecologist Aldo Leopold once said, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may being to use it with love and respect.”

Thus, we see that the underlying premise of the science of ecology, despite its basis in evolutionary biology rather than creation theology, is very close to the central emphasis of cosmology in the Jewish and Christian scriptures: God’s creation is fundamentally relational.

Biblically, the primeval home of the human being is characterized as an ecologically harmonious garden. We are also told that the human tenants of the garden violated its relational community and were expelled from it, and from that we infer that ecological relationships are significant and are in need of reconciliation.

All practices that dominate and exploit nature and other human beings are reenactments of taking from the Forbidden Tree (Gen 2:15-17), for “abuse and misuse of power are rooted in the desire to be like God” who is characterized in the industrial West as “a dominating, self-centered being with unlimited power.”

The need to respect the strictures of the Forbidden Tree out of reverence for life and respect for others, which seems weak and foolish to the powers of this world, reflects precisely the foolishness of the way of Christ which we profess to be God’s wisdom (1 Cor 1:21-25).  According to this story, the grasp for autonomy and the emphasis on the individual over the communal are sinful and destructive acts of domestic violence.

The book of Psalms is full of imagery of God’s house depicting the created world as the place in which God dwells with and among God’s people and in which he gives and sustains life.

The Hebrew scriptures depict a God who is intimately involved in the life and redemption of all creatures.  Both man and beast, we are told, “feast on the abundance of [God’s] house, and [God] give[s] them drink from the river of [God’s] delights” (Ps 35:8).  The whole earth—humans, other creatures, and the land itself—is seen as the victim of human iniquity (Mic. 7:13, Joel 1) and it cries out in despair for God’s redemption and the pouring out of the life-giving Spirit upon it (Joel 2:21-29).  All of creation, declares Paul in the first century, is groaning with labor pains in expectation of this consummate reconciliation (Rom. 8:22).  It is thus impossible, biblically speaking, to conceive of sanctification and reconciliation that does not pertain to the entire household of ecological relationships which were ordained by God and called good, and subsequently violated and destroyed by human acts of self-indulgent autonomy.

Part II: House Economics and the Sin of Theft

We have already seen that the ecological aspect of the household implies humanity’s limitation; there is no room for autonomy in a web of interdependent relationships.  Where ecology refers to these interrelationships, economics refers to the proper ordering of these relationships; it is what sustains the delicate balance of the community of creation.

Obviously, the first part of the word economy comes from the same Greek word, oikos.  The second part comes from nomos which refers to laws or regulations.

To speak of God’s economy is to assert faith in the fact that God has ordered creation in such a way that all creatures can be sustained through the proper relationships of ecology.  It implies that each creature has its own proper place and that the earth can provide no more and no less than what each creature needs to live.  Jesus spoke of God’s economy by saying, “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them” (Mt. 6:26).  It is important to note Jesus’ contrast between what the birds do in God’s economy and the obviously human activities of sowing, reaping and especially gathering into barns.  In Luke 12, Jesus speaks of a rich man who stores a surplus of food in an extra storehouse that he built because of his perceived need for security; what this man was not prepared for was the fact of his death.  This man’s sin, as Wendell Barry poignantly explicates, is theft, because “by laying up ‘much goods’ in the present…we incur a debt to the future that we cannot repay.  That is, we diminish the future by deeds we call ‘use’ but which the future will call ‘theft.’”

This passage thus ties Jesus’ command to seek first the kingdom of God with our economic behavior.  By taking more than our proper share we are committing theft and violating our relationships; our relationships are always both ecological and economic.

A second dimension of these passages, is that there is a difference between the human economy, as alluded to by the sowing and reaping activities, and the ecological economy in which the birds are fed by God.  The human economy, however, fits inside of and is wholly dependent on the larger ecological community. When we pretend our economy is not contingent in this way, we are guilty of domestic violence, because the human economy deals with materials and forces that we did not and cannot create–the fertility of the soil, the precipitation that irrigates the soil, and even the human productivity and ingenuity that is commodified as labor.

We cannot create systems of abstract, monetary value that are not entirely dependent on and derived from the only real ecological value: life.  Only God’s Spirit can breath this value into existence and it is thus a sacred value.

In Barry’s words, the problem is that the human industrial economy “sees itself as the only economy.  It makes itself thus exclusive by the simple expedient of valuing only what it can use.”

However, once we acknowledge God’s economy, “we are astonished and frightened to see how much modern enterprise is the work of hubris” and that it thus “is based on invasion and pillage of the Great Economy,” Barry’s word for God’s economy.

Furthermore, the reliance on technology and industry to solve the problems they create renders it a fruitless enterprise plagued by the need to result to mechanical solutions that can only operate by oversimplifying problems.  Since all of creation is God’s house, we have nowhere to dwell but in God’s economy, and thus, “whether or not we know that and act accordingly is the critical question, not about economy merely but about human life itself.”

This awareness can only be cultivated out of the recognition that we are embodied residents of the created natural world and as such we are unavoidably a part of God’s ecological economy; without such an awareness, our entire understanding of God’s house is reduced to the “environment” and the “economy” and both are confined to the sphere of other “social issues” as opposed to the spiritual issues which are the supposed concern of God and the church.

Poverty, when understood biblically, is neither solely a material condition nor simply a spiritual condition; it is both.  In Matthew’s version of the Beatitudes, Jesus addresses the “poor in spirit” (Mt. 5:3), but in Luke he merely says, “Blessed are you who are poor” (Lk 6:20).  Similarly, economic sinfulness is neither solely a violation of God nor merely a violation of human beings; it is both.  Thus, when Jesus ‘cleanses the temple’ in Mark 11 he is committing a prophetic act that is both a religious and economic statement, and this is further evidenced by the two prophecies he quotes: the first is a statement by God about the nature of God’s house and who it is for—”a house of prayer for all nations” (Is. 56:7)—and the second deals specifically with how humans have profaned God’s house by making it “a den of thieves” (Jer. 7:11).  We might ask, in what way was God’s house made a den of thieves?  Of course, we only need to turn to Jeremiah 7:5-10 to discover the reason: the people do not execute justice with one another but instead they “oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood” (vv 6-7) and God refuses to allow the doers of such domestic violence to dwell in God’s house, so God asks, “Will you…then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered!—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house…become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it” (vv 9-11).  The sheer volume of prophetic writings pertaining to the indivisibility of executing justice and worshipping God make it impossible to drown out the biblical cries of the poor and oppressed.

Honoring God is inseparable from executing justice, the right ordering of relationships in God’s house (oikonomia or economy) and in the context of relationships, economic justice and ecological justice are also implicitly inseparable.

Part III: Ecological, Ecumenical and Economic Reconciliation

Now that we have begun to view the crisis holistically within the paradigm of God’s house we can begin to glimpse what is implied by the term reconciliation.  Etymologically, the word reconcile comes from Latin and means “to bring back together.”  It is a bringing back together that is ecological (relationships), economic (order), and also fundamentally ecumenical (holistic).  We have seen the ways in which humans have engaged in domestic violence against God’s house by pillaging it and tearing it down; reconciliation, in this sense, is the Architect’s plan of restoring the house to its intended form—both its material foundation and its family relationships.  It is not uncommon to hear the church called God’s house in Christian circles, but what is significant is that the imagery of God’s house in scripture is not of brick and mortar (Is. 66:1) but it is rather imagery of living flesh: the Body of Christ.  It is after building this embodied image of the church that Paul goes on to mix in the imagery of God’s house:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.  In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22).

The language of Paul depicts human beings, we who commit domestic violence and theft and property destruction in God’s house, as being brought back (reconciled) into the household.  More than that, these humans are now being called family members who serve as a “dwelling place for God by the Spirit.”  In the reconciliation through which God is bringing us back, the relationship between humanity and God is mended mutually; we are allowed back into the house as family members, while at the very same time, we are opening up to allow the Spirit of God to dwell in us!  But what can this mutual indwelling possibly mean?  How can this help us to understand the nature of the church and to find our place in the midst God’s project of reconciliation?  What does this have to do with the ecological, economic and ecumenical life of the church?

To understand all this, it must be remembered that the same trait is at the very core of the biblical imagery for God, creation, human beings, Jesus Christ, and the church: they are all alive.  According to Jürgen Moltmann, we have failed to understand the role of the church in the missio Dei and reconciliation because we have fundamentally misunderstood the mission of Christ: “Jesus didn’t bring a new religion into the world.  What he brought was new life.”

He argues that the Gospel of John quite explicitly states what God has brought into the world through Jesus Christ: life (Jn. 14:19), and in the Synoptic Gospels, he says, “Where Jesus is, there is life…sick people are healed, sad people are comforted, marginalized people are accepted, and the demons of death are driven out.”

The salvific work of the Holy Spirit in reconciliation cannot be confined merely to the spheres of religion and spirituality because it is the integrating redemption of the whole of life.  Reconciliation does not mean leaving this life to enter into eternal life; it is the breaking in of eternal life for the transformation of this life.

Thus, the apostle Paul writes, “For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality…then shall come to pass the saying that is written: Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor. 15:53-55).  Salvation is the process in which all things are reconciled through Christ which begins with the renewal of God’s people, then the renewal of all the living, and then is finally consummated with the renewal of the earth (Joel 2:21-29).  According to the bible, the signal of the Spirit’s presence is vitality and the true end of history is completion of God’s ecology wherein all relationships are indwelled by the Spirit and taken into the community of the triune God.

The church fits into this process as a living community that is also a community of life.  It is not insignificant that the ‘theology of life’ is now a source of ecumenical hope for the church, as it has been emphasized by Pope John Paul II, the liberation theologian Gustavo Gutierrez, the Korean theologian Chung Hyung Kyung, the German protestant Moltmann, and many others from divergent Christian traditions.

These thinkers are calling for the church to be the community of God’s people who work to support a ‘culture of life’ and who denounce the destructive powers of death.  In this sense, it is an ecological church, because the premise of ecology is that life is community.  This communal character reflects the communal character of God revealed in the doctrine of the Trinity.

Biblical descriptions of the experience of the Spirit are often feminine, such as that of being ‘born anew’ or of the Paraclete who comforts as a mother comforts (Jn. 14:26).  Thus, many Christians outside the clutches of patriarchal Rome (such as Syria) have come to view the Holy Spirit as the divine mother.

The benefit of this image for the context of the oikos is that it helps us to see the divine-human community of the church: our father is the Father of Christ, our mother is the life-giving Spirit of God, and the Son of the living God is our brother.  As a human community, then, we are a community of brothers and sisters in fellowship with our true Mother and Father.

Finally, as a church that exists within an insatiable human economy in which there is never enough, we are called to be a community that confesses the good news of God’s economy: there is enough.  Those of us who come into the church from places of privilege humbly admit that God is the liberator of the poor, oppressed, marginal, and downtrodden.  Those who come into the church from a position of material poverty must also admit that spiritual poverty is also a very real affliction.  For those of us who are wealthy, we must recognize that most of the wealthy people who come to Jesus in the Gospels found him to be too difficult to follow.  There is, however, one counterexample which we are challenged to follow: Zacchaeus, who gave half of everything he owned to the poor and paid back everything he took fourfold (Lk. 19:1-10).  Zacchaeus was committed to reconciliation and accordingly worked very hard to restore the relationships he had violated and broken.

In God’s economy, money is not in itself good or evil; what matters is justice and community.  In the New Testament picture of God’s community of the church, there are both rich and poor members, but what is important is that they are nevertheless a community of equals who are dedicated to sharing with one another and meeting the needs of the community (Jm. 5, Act. 4).  In fact, it is precisely this kind of diversity—the rich and poor communing together—that is essential to how God’s economy works.  It is precisely by bringing the rich and the poor together into relationships that the resources of the rich can be directed to meet the needs of the poor–both spiritually and materially.  That is because “the opposite of poverty is not property.  The opposite of both poverty and property is community.”

Conclusion: Homecoming

The household of God is the community that is marked by the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7).  This community’s vocation within the holistic project of God’s reconciliation is to be the people who have returned home to the house of our true Father.  In this oikos, we have all been the prodigal sons and daughters who return from estrangement glad even to be readmitted into our Father’s house as domestic servants but unimaginably surprised by the grace of being accepted warmly and lovingly, though certainly undeservingly, as sons and daughters (Lk. 15:11-32).

Our challenge, however, is to remember this as we call all our other long lost siblings back into the household, lest we should be like the brother in the parable and start to hate our returning brothers and sisters out of entitlement and jealousy.  We know that as the family grows, it will also change in ways that may make us uncomfortable.  Where these attitudes of fear, insecurity, and self-preservation surface in the community, they will be corrected by an affirmation of the good news of God’s economy: there is enough for everyone!  Then and only then will we be equipped for our role in reconciliation: to continue the homecoming by welcoming all who will enter into God’s ecological and ecumenical household.

Bibliography

Barry, Wendell. “Two Economies.” Review & Expositor 81, no. 2 (1984): 209-223.

Boff, Leonardo. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Translated by Phillip Berryman. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997.

Conradie, Ernst M. “The Whole Household of God (Oikos): Some Ecclesiological Perspectives.” Scriptura 94 (2007): 1-9.

Edwards, Dennis. Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995.

Gottfried, Robert R. Economics, Ecology, and the Roots of Western Faith. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995.

Harper, Brad, and Paul L. Metzger. Exploring Ecclesiology: An Evangelical and Ecumenical Introduction. Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2009.

Jung, L. Shannon. “Grounded in God: Ecology, Consumption and the Small Church.” Anglican Theological Review 78, no. 4 (1996): 587-602.

Lee-Park, Sun Ai. “The Forbidden Tree and the Year of the Lord.” In Women Healing Earth: Third World Women on Ecology, Feminism, and Religion, Rosemary R. Ruether, 107-116. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1996.

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.

Park, Rohun. “Revisiting the Parable of the Prodigal Son for Decolonization: Luke’s Reconfiguration of Oikos in 15:11-32.” Biblical Interpretation 17, no. 5 (2009): 507-520.

Schut, Michael. “Coming Home: Economics and Ecology.” Anglican Theological Review 91, no. 4 (2009): 581-588.

Snyder, Howard A. Liberating the Church: The Ecology of Church and Kingdom. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1983.

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Beyond Stewardship: Immanent Theology and the Redemptive Mission of Life

God’s Mission is nothing less than the sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son into this world, so that this world shall not perish but live…For the Holy Spirit is ‘the source of life’ and brings into the world – whole life, full life, unhindered, indestructible, everlasting life.

– Jürgen Moltmann

 

Introduction

Notions of Stewardship

The concept of stewardship has a long history of application to the context of Christian understandings of the relationship between human beings and the natural world.  Thus, there is no singular or all-encompassing concept of what stewardship specifically means; there are many interpretations.  As is the case for virtually every biblically-derived notion, proponents of stewardship have often misinterpreted or abused their scriptural sources and consequently developed unacceptable concepts.  The most prevalent text for understanding human stewardship of the natural world is the second creation narrative in Genesis 2, which states that God placed the original human being in the garden “to work it and keep it” (v. 15).  In the same account, God creates all of the animals to be in community with the human being and with each other, and then consummates the created community by giving ha adam (the earthling) an ezer kenegdo — a human companion and counterpart to share the task of working and keeping and sustaining God’s garden (2:18).  Now the harmonious community of creation was complete and it was good, just as God intended.  Though not explicitly mentioned, this passage is foundational for a concept of stewardship that entails the work of maintaining the harmony of God’s creation by working to sustain the relationships among creation in three spheres: between humans and God, between humans and each other, and between humans and the other creatures God has made (vv. 18-19).  So far, this is a healthy conception of stewardship that is rooted in solid exegesis.

 

Problems and Critiques of Stewardship

The problem with the idea of human stewardship of the earth is not found in the text of the Bible itself, but rather in the abuse of the text in its employment for the justification of corrupt and sinful human constructs.  The twin creation narratives of Genesis have been abused in such a way as to confound the proper biblical understandings of all three aforementioned spheres of relationship.  In the first place, it has been forgotten that the first humans were not simply land managers for an absentee landlord-God. On the contrary, the Lord God was present, dwelling and walking with them and the other creatures in the garden (cf. Gen. 3:8).  The immanent presence of God in creation cannot be neglected; it is the God’s ruach, the breath and Spirit of God, which animates and sustains all living creatures and renders them mere dust when it retreats (Ps. 104:29;146:4; Job 34:14).  When God is seen as wholly transcendent and absent from creation, stewardship quickly devolves into an anthropocentric view that appropriates the charge to dominate and subdue the earth (Gen. 1:26) and ignores all of the biblical constraints on this privilege.    Yet, when this critique is carried to its logical extreme, the result is a pantheistic view that ultimately also loses the fundamental basis for respecting the natural world—that it is God’s creation and we, as God’s creatures, are answerable to God for how we interact with it.  Furthermore, when God is characterized and caricatured as exclusively male, the sense of domination takes on a sexist dimension and finds in Genesis 2-3 evidence for the primacy and superiority of males over females (cf. 1 Tim. 2:9-15). The only way to resolve these problems and begin answer their critiques, then, is to reclaim a panentheistic theology that realizes God is beyond gender, recognizes both God’s transcendence and immanence and which respects God’s creation, affirms God’s ownership and lordship over creation, and sees God as both the preeminent source and indwelling sustainer of all life.  The benefit of panentheism is that it can hold God’s well-attested transcendence and often neglected immanence in tension, affirming the fullness of the divine nature without reducing God to one or the other extreme.  After surveying the foundational scriptures for such a theology, it will become abundantly clear that the missio Dei, God’s work for the redemption of creation, is at its core a missio vitae, a mission of life.

 

Old Testament Foundations

Ruach: The Spirit of Life

All that exists is created through and sustained by God’s ruach, the very breath

of life.  It enveloped the entire earth when God began to speak created life into being (Gen. 1:2), and still fills the world and holds all living beings together (Isa. 34:16).  So dependent is all life on the immanent presence of God’s ruach in creation that Job says, “If he should set his heart to it and gather to himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust” (34:14-15).  It is through the denial of God’s presence in creation that human sinfulness brings about the violation and destruction of life—both human and non-human.  For if, by the breath of the Spirit, Godself is present in creation, indwelling and supporting all life, then there can be absolutely no basis for an anthropocentric worldview.  If the very Creator is here, and not somewhere else, then it matters what we do and how we interact with God’s creatures.  It is no accident, then, that in the very same passage in Job, the presence of God’s spirit leads him to proceed directly to talking about justice!  Throughout the Old Testament the knowledge of God as Creator is inextricably bound up with God’s presence on earth, and that is precisely why justice is among God’s most fundamental concerns; in a very real sense, a violation of creation or creatures is simultaneously a violation of the Creator. More specifically, sin and injustice are essentially violations of life—all of the violence, deprivation, vulnerability, suffering and oppression that characterize human sinfulness are connected with death in that “they are all something death steals from life.”

 

Sin, Injustice and Death

That the Old Testament writers connect justice with God’s life giving immanence in creation becomes abundantly clear in the writings of the prophets, in which the concrete victims of human sin and injustice are depicted in the crying out of creatures both human and non-human.  One clear example of this occurs in Joel, where the prophet declares that because the “fields are destroyed, the ground mourns” (1:10).  He goes on to exclaim, “How the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed because there is no pasture for them; even the flocks of sheep suffer” (1:18).  The ground itself, and the creatures that depend upon it are said to “pant for [the Lord] because the water brooks are dried up” (1:20).  In the vulnerability of embodied suffering, non-human creatures, both plants and animals, know to cry out for the God upon whose Spirit they depend for their very life; it is the humans in this passage who are the last to realize this need, and it is they who are to blame for the suffering endured by all the creatures.  The desolation of the earth is “because of its inhabitants, for the fruit of their doings,” says Micah (7:13), and the ensuing punishment is brought upon this terrestrial dwelling place because humans “fill their master’s house with violence and fraud” (Zeph. 1:9).

 

The Household of God and the Missio Vitae

All of God’s creatures are linked by their mutual sharing of life in God’s household, the community of creation, as we have seen in Genesis 2.  The scientific word for the study of this intricate and interconnected community of creation is ecology, which comes from the Greek root oikos and refers literally to the household shared by all living organisms.  Wilderness ecologist Aldo Leopold once said, “We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us.  When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.”  Thus, we see that the underlying premise of the science of ecology, despite its basis in evolutionary biology rather than creation theology, is very close to the central emphasis of cosmology in the Jewish and Christian scriptures: God’s creation is a fundamentally relational community of life.

The other connection made by the prophets with regard to the injustice of human sin as a violation of God’s oikos is an economic one: the sin of slavery, oppression, and economic exploitation of the poor by the wealthy. While the first part of the word economy comes from oikos, the second part comes from another Greek word: nomos, which refers to laws or regulations.  In the oikos of God, ecology and economy are inextricably linked.  Thus, when Jesus ‘cleanses the temple’ in Mark 11, he quotes from two prophetic texts that speak to this connection: the first is a statement by God about the nature of God’s house and who it is for—”a house of prayer for all nations” (Is. 56:7)—and the second deals specifically with how humans have profaned God’s house by making it “a den of thieves” (Jer. 7:11).  We might ask, in what way was God’s house made a den of thieves?  Of course, we only need to turn to Jeremiah 7:5-10 to discover the reason: the people do not execute justice with one another but instead they “oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood” (vv 6-7) and God refuses to allow the doers of such domestic violence to dwell in God’s house, so God asks, “Will you…then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered!—only to go on doing all these abominations? Has this house…become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it” (vv 9-11).  The sheer volume of prophetic writings pertaining to the indivisibility of executing justice and worshipping God make it impossible to drown out the biblical cries of the poor and oppressed.  Injustice everywhere elicits the cry of the ecological community, as we saw in Joel, as well as the cry for economic liberation from the poor and oppressed.  Therefore, we do not understand the prophetic witness to God’s divine judgment at all unless we understand that “the judgment is for the cleansing of the world, not is demolition.”

These lamentations and God’s judgment, however, is not the end of the story, for God listens lovingly to the cries of creation’s suffering and detests the empty worship of those who call to him but do not practice justice; and to both parties, God offers the same solution: “Seek me and live” (Amos 5).  In the fallenness of the Godforsaken world of human sin and injustice, we suffer and cry out in the feeling that there is not enough to sustain us; death is everywhere encroaching on our very existence.  This is not the end of the story, as Moltmann eloquently suggests, “But if God is not far off, if God is near, if God is present among us in the Spirit, then we find a new, indescribable joy in living…we are at home.”  The prophets affirm that God does indeed dwell in this very cosmos, and that God is with us, neither far off nor cordoned off in the brick and mortar of the temple (Isa. 66:1).  Joel looks forward to the time when humans will join the earth and the animals in praising God, the giver of life, when God says, “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh” (2:28).  For now, the “palace is forsaken,” says Isaiah, but only “until the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful field…then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful field” (32:14-16).  After God’s redeeming work to restore the household community of creation, when God’s missio vitae is fulfilled, God says, “My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places” (32:18).  In this beautiful prophetic vision, not only is humanity liberated, but so too are the animals set free from economic bondage, for God also says, “Happy are you who sow beside all waters, who let the feet of the ox and the donkey range free” (v. 20).

 

New Testament Appropriations

The Immanence of God in the Incarnation

We have seen the firm Old Testament foundation for a panentheistic theology that affirms God’s life-breathing presence in creation and its implications for understanding the missio Dei as a missio vitae, a mission of redeeming and restoring life.  In the New Testament, these scriptural traditions are not only affirmed; they are radically recontextualized; God not only pours the Spirit on all flesh—through the incarnation of the Jesus Christ, the Son and second person of the Christian Trinity, God has indeed become flesh!  This is not seen as simply a symbol or merely a doctrinal suggestion; the only heresy explicitly described as such in the entire New Testament is not believing precisely that extreme statement: that God has become flesh in the person of Jesus Christ (1 Jn. 4:2-3).  At the incarnation, the immanence of God is revealed in a new and more profound way; it is Emmanuel, God with us.  The one in and through whom all of creation has come into being, according to John, “became flesh and dwelt among us” (Jn. 1:14).  In the same Gospel, Jesus later says, “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (10:10), and after the resurrection, he tells his disciples, “Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you” (14:19).  Thus, for Moltmann, the fourth Gospel states quite directly what it is that God has brought into the world through the incarnation—life—and this leads him to state that, “God’s mission is nothing less than the sending of the Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son into this world, so that this world should not perish but live.”  Through Christ, then, we understand that the beginning of the pouring of God’s spirit anticipated by Joel and Isaiah has indeed entered the world, this very world, and that it is sent out to us by Christ himself.

 

Reconciliation in Christ

The apostle Paul connects the notion behind John’s words about Christ with the imagery of God’s nature in Isaiah 34:16 in his epistle to the Colossians: “all things were created through him and for him…and in him all things hold together” (1:15).  Having brought together the Old Testament understanding of God’s creation and life-sustaining activity and the incarnation of God in Christ, Paul goes on to speak about what was accomplished in this miraculous event, “For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven” (vv. 19-20).  God’s reconciliation, says Paul, is not just for all humans, or all animals, or all life; it is for the entirety of creation.  In his letter to the Romans, Paul strikes this chord even more eloquently, speaking of the “hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (8:21).  Before speaking about our own hope, Paul speaks of the hope of creation crying out in yearning for God’s Spirit, just as the ground and the animals did in Joel 2.  For the fate of the earth is not merely to be the staging ground for human salvation; with the earth, from which we were made, our own fate is inextricable bound up.  Thus, Paul goes on:

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.  And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  For in this hope we were saved (vv. 22-24).

Here we get a new image of life in the redeemed household of God: family.  In Jesus Christ, the firstborn, we have the hope of life and adoption into the very family of God.  We do not get the idea that we will escape this world, nor our bodies; instead we are promised the “redemption of our bodies.”

 

 

 

The Body of Christ

It is not uncommon to hear the church called God’s house in Christian circles, but what is significant is that the imagery of God’s house in scripture is not of brick and mortar (Is. 66:1) but it is rather imagery of living flesh: the Body of Christ.  It is after building this embodied image of the church that Paul goes on to mix in the imagery of God’s house:

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God…In [Christ] you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (Eph. 2:19-22).

In the reconciliation through which God is bringing us back, the relationship between humanity and God is mended mutually; we are allowed back into the house as family members, while at the very same time, we are opening up to allow the Spirit of God to dwell in us!  But what can this mutual indwelling possibly mean?  How can this help us to understand the nature of the church and to find our place in the midst of God’s project of reconciliation?  To understand all this, it must be remembered that the same trait is at the very core of the biblical imagery for God, creation, human beings, Jesus Christ, and the church: they are all alive. Moltmann says that we have failed to understand the role of the church in the missio Dei because we have fundamentally misunderstood the mission of Christ: “Jesus didn’t bring a new religion into the world.  What he brought was new life.”  Thus, as we read the accounts of Jesus’ earthly mission in the Gospels, we discover that, “Where Jesus is, there is life…sick people are healed, sad people are comforted, marginalized people are accepted, and the demons of death are driven out.”  According to the bible, the signal of the Spirit’s presence is vitality and the true end of history is completion of the missio vitae wherein all relationships are indwelled by the Spirit and taken into the community of the triune God.  To us, the firstfruits of God’s redeemed household have been entrusted.  It is in this sense that we, who by grace have been allowed back into the house, indeed even welcomed in as actual family members, can conceive of ourselves as oikonomoi—stewards.  Such an understanding is not hierarchical, nor does it seek to dominate the household in the place of an absentee Master; it is ecumenical.  For the literal sense of the word “ecumenical” is of all the inhabitants of the household living together as a family.

 

The Church and the Missio Vitae

Home Economics 101

As a church that exists within an insatiable human economy in which there is never enough, we are called to be a community that confesses the good news of God’s economy: there is enough.  Those of us who come into the church from places of privilege humbly admit that God is the liberator of the poor, oppressed, marginal, and downtrodden.  Those who come into the church from a position of material poverty must also admit that spiritual poverty is also a very real affliction.  For those of us who are wealthy, we must recognize that most of the wealthy people who come to Jesus in the Gospels found him to be too difficult to follow.  There is, however, one counterexample which we are challenged to follow: Zacchaeus, who gave half of everything he owned to the poor and paid back everything he took fourfold (Lk. 19:1-10).  Zacchaeus was committed to reconciliation and accordingly worked very hard to restore the relationships he had violated and broken.  In God’s economy, money is not in itself good or evil; what matters are justice and community.  In the New Testament picture of God’s community of the church, there are both rich and poor members, but what is important is that they are nevertheless a community of equals who are dedicated to sharing with one another and meeting the needs of the community (Jm. 5, Act. 4).  In fact, it is precisely this kind of diversity—the rich and poor communing together—that is essential to how God’s economy works.  It is precisely by bringing the rich and the poor together into relationships that the resources of the rich can be directed to meet the needs of the poor–both spiritually and materially.  That is because “the opposite of poverty is not property.  The opposite of both poverty and property is community.”  In this community of sharing, it becomes possible to speak, like Arias, or “evangelization by hospitality.”

Homecoming

The household of God is the community that is marked by the ethic of the

Sermon on the Mount (Mt. 5-7), and its mission must reflect this ethic.  This community’s vocation within the holistic project of God’s missio vitae is to be the people who have returned home to the house of our true Father.  In this oikos, we have all been the prodigal sons and daughters who return from estrangement glad even to be readmitted into our Father’s house as domestic servants but unimaginably surprised by the grace of being accepted warmly and lovingly, though certainly undeservingly, as sons and daughters (Lk. 15:11-32).  Our challenge, however, is to remember this as we call all our other long lost siblings back into the household, lest we should be like the brother in the parable and start to hate our returning brothers and sisters out of entitlement and jealousy.  We know that as the family grows, it will also change in ways that may make us uncomfortable.  Such are the challenges to the oikonomoi, the stewards of the household.  Where these attitudes of fear, insecurity, and self-preservation surface in the community, they will be corrected by an affirmation of the good news of God’s economy: there is enough for everyone!  Then and only then will we be equipped for our role in reconciliation: to continue the homecoming by welcoming all who will enter into God’s ecological and ecumenical household.

 

The Missio Vitae in Context

The Stewardship of Life

We have expanded our view of God and the church in order to glimpse the

missio Dei in a new lens: the life-affirming activity of God on behalf of all creation.  As disciples of Jesus who are welcomed into the family life of God’s household, we are stewards of life called to participate in God’s mission, whose aim is the abundance of life (Jn. 10:10).  “If we could start from that premise,” Douglas Hall argues, “The despondency that now so often clings to our discourse on mission…would be exchanged for a new sense of being needed.”  It is the grounding in the missio vitae that finally enables us to get beyond stewardship as a flawed framework, dismissed by economic and environmental activists as archaic and oppressive, and shrugged off by the church as a periphery slogan and biblical euphemism for shrewdness.  Instead, the stewardship of life becomes “a way of designating the very core of our faith. In a time given over to the courting of death, the gospel means: stewarding life!”  Throughout the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy to the prophets, God’s people have been confronted with a choice: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse.  Therefore choose life” (Deut. 30:19).  In the New Testament, we learn that in Christ, God has personally brought this life into the world.  On the cross, Christ took upon himself the world’s response to the charge in Deuteronomy 30, in order to transform the world’s opting for death into the possibility and promise of new life.  Hall poignantly remarks, “I am interested in rediscovering the mission of that Jesus; and I suspect that it doesn’t have very much to do with getting people to say, ‘Lord, Lord.’”

Lest we should fall into a form of Christian legalism and merely solicit the empty cry of ‘Lord, Lord,’ we must remember the task to which we have been called.  As Johannes Nissen reminds us, “Mission is not only about verbal proclamation but healing action as well, and it strives not just for church growth but for the wholeness of creation.”  To be a community of healing, we must seek out and identify with vulnerable and suffering creation.  What we need is “compassion so that we enter into the suffering of the earth…In sharing its wounds, we will become participants in the healing of the earth.”

 

Implications

What does it mean to be a community of sharing justice and peace in God’s household?  For starters, we must recognize that the basic unit of God’s salvific mission is not the individual, or even simply humanity; it is the whole of creation.  “Justice, biblically, is the rendering, amidst limited resources and the conditions of brokenness, of whatever is required for the fullest possible flourishing of creation.”  The primary advantage of beginning to adopt this point of view for the concern of evangelism is that it entails truly good news for everyone.  What agent for centripetal mission could be better than being known as the community that is dedicated to the fullest possible flourishing of all creation?  Who could possibly find in that goal any bad news?  The sheer universality of this claim identifies it with the very heart of the gospel itself and also opens up a vital starting point for dialogue.  In a postmodern world in which models of authority and conquest are distrusted and abhorred (and for good reason!), the humble goal of upholding all life and identifying with the most vulnerable members of creation will open more doors than any other missionary model.  Jesus did not lay down his life so that we could avoid our responsibility, and the cross that we must take up in our own time is that of affirming life in a world in which it is always and everywhere threatened.  If we send missionaries to Iraq or Afghanistan alongside the troops whose bombs and bullets are killing and destroying their lands and people, what success could we possibly expect?  Yet if there are Christians in those places, risking that their own lives may be caught in the crossfire, to stand alongside Iraqis and Afghans in the name of Christ, what better witness could be asked for?  How can the Christian mission reach those people who are already laying down their lives for the life of the world today, but who do not know the Lord for whose mission they work?  As Hall points out, “Those who are really giving their lives for the world’s life today are too altruistic to be concerned primarily for their own salvation.”  But what if the message of the Gospel and the hope of salvation is not just about me?  Then, I suppose, there would be a mission worth joining, a God worth serving, and a community—indeed, a household and family— truly worth participating in.  Then, we might actually have some good news to proclaim to a world numbed and deafened by the ceaseless drone of bad news.

References Cited

Attfield, Robin. “Environmental Sensitivity and Critiques of Stewardship.” In Environmental Stewardship, Edited by R.J. Berry, 76-91. New York: T & T Clark International, 2006.

 

Boff, Leonardo. Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor. Translated by Phillip Berryman. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1997.

 

Conradie, Ernst M. “The Whole Household of God (Oikos): Some Ecclesiological Perspectives.” Scriptura 94 (2007): 1-9.

 

Dyrness, William. “Stewardship of the Earth in the Old Testament.” In Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth, Edited by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, 50-65. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

 

Edwards, Dennis. Jesus the Wisdom of God: An Ecological Theology. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1995.

 

Gottfried, Robert R. Economics, Ecology, and the Roots of Western Faith. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995.

 

Hall, Douglas J. The Stewardship of Life in the Kingdom of Death. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985.

 

Jegen, Mary E. “The Church’s Role in Healing the Earth.” In Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth, Edited by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, 93-113. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

 

Knights, Philip. “”The Whole Earth My Altar”: A Sacramental Trajectory for Ecological Mission.” Mission Studies 25, no. 1 (2008): 56-72.

 

Moltmann, Jürgen. The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. Translated by Margaret Kohl. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997.

 

Newbigin, Lesslie. The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission. Grand   Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

 

Nissen, Johannes. New Testament and Mission: Histonrical and Hermeneutical Perspectives. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2007.

 

Palmer, Clare. “Stewardship: A Case Study in Environmental Ethics.” In Environmental Stewardship, Edited by R.J. Berry, 63-75. New York: T & T Clark International, 2006.

 

Park, Rohun. “Revisiting the Parable of the Prodigal Son for Decolonization: Luke’s Reconfiguration of Oikos in 15:11-32.” Biblical Interpretation 17, no. 5 (2009): 507-520.

 

Rasmussen, Larry L. “Creation, Church, and Christian Responsibility.” In Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth, Edited by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, 114-131. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.

 

Van Dyke, Fred, David C. Mahan, Joseph K. Sheldon, and Raymond H. Brand. Redeeming Creation: The Biblical Basis for Environmental Stewardship. Downer’s Grove, Ill.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1996.

It would be nearly impossible to cite the biblical references to the theme of economic justice exhaustively, but here is a short list: Is.1:2-4, 56:4-8, 58:6-7, 59:13-15; Jer. 11:13-16, 22:4-5,13-17; Ezek. 9:9, 12:2-3, 14:11, 37:10-14; Hos. 4:1-3; Joel 1:9-20, 2:12-16; Amos 3:15; Mic. 7:13-17, Zep. 1:9; Hag. 1:4; Hab 2:8-20; Zec. 3:7

 

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Upside-Down Ethics in the Sermon on the Plain: Luke 6:20-38 as Crash Course in Gentile Discipleship

December 6, 2010

Luke 6:20-38

²⁰Then he looked up at his disciples and said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. ²¹“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. “Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. ²²“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. ²³Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. ²⁴“But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. ²⁵“Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. “Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. ²⁶“Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.

²⁷“But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. ²⁹If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. ³⁰Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you. ³²“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. ³³If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. ³⁴If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. ³⁵But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. ³⁷“Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; ³⁸give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”

Introduction

Compared to the rest of the third Gospel, Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Plain (SP), as it has traditionally been called, has received little critical scrutiny and still less appreciation.  Until recently, scholars and theologians have assumed that this passage was merely a shortened, less accurate, and ultimately less insightful Lucan summary of the much preferred Sermon on the Mount (SM) from Matthew 5-7.  These scholars believed that the two accounts were different versions of the same speech, and thought that Luke omitted important parts of the SM and redacted according to his own ideas and theological bias whereas Matthew merely reported accurately what Jesus had actually said.

Thus, scholarly attention was diverted from the presumably inferior SP in Luke to the superior and more detailed SM in Matthew until the emergence of the two source hypothesis—that both Matthew and Luke used Mark’s account and a second hypothetical source called Q—which suggested that both writers used and edited the same or similar source material independently.  If this is true, then the SP must be taken into account in its own right as an independent passage with its own structural integrity and purpose unique to its setting in Luke’s Gospel.  The purpose of the following exegesis, then, will be to illuminate the salient features of the beatitudes and ethical exhortations of Luke 6:20-38 and shed some much needed light on the setting of this teaching within the two overarching purposes of Luke-Acts as a whole: to depict Jesus’ mission in the context of God’s Jubilee, and to show that Jesus came both to reclaim the lost sheep of Israel and to be a light to the Gentiles.

Literary Criticism

The pericope is found within the two volume work known as Luke-Acts.  The author of Luke-Acts is anonymous and there are no explicit clues about its authorship within the text itself.

Due to the tendency of ancient writers to write pseudonymously in the name of a particular figure’s school or tradition, the anonymity of Luke-Acts must be respected.

Nevertheless, the only clue we have about the author’s identity is that the church tradition ascribes both volumes to an educated gentile named Luke, the ‘beloved physician’ and companion of the apostle Paul (cf. Col. 4:14).

In any case, the writer displays a brilliant command of Koine Greek and is extremely well-regarded for his dramatic compositional technique.

A variety of dates for the composition of Luke-Acts have been offered (as early as 60 c.e. and as late as 110), due mostly to the uncertainty of the age of Luke’s sources, but the most widely accepted round date is 80 c.e.

The precise location of the composition and the community for which it was composed are also subject to a wide range of speculations, but what is fairly certain is that Luke wrote from an urban church community in the Hellenistic world.

That the religious and ethnic background of Luke’s audience is primarily Greek and gentile can be readily deduced from Luke’s consistent efforts to portray Jesus’ identity in Greek cultural notions.

The SP is used by Luke as a summary of Jesus’ message that combines the forms of beatitudes (blessings) and woes with exhortations for his disciples that are adapted by Luke to make sense to a primarily Greek audience.

In this way, the traditional designation of the passage as a sermon is misleading as pertains its specific genre.  Hans Dieter Betz argues convincingly that it ought to be identified as an example of a Greek epitome, a presentation of Jesus’ teaching in a particular selection of sayings organized systematically for the specific purpose of educating and training gentile Christian disciples.

The point of the epitome is to confront its audience with the need to be hearers and doers of Jesus’ word by casting it in the concrete terms of identifying with the poor as opposed to the rich (vv. 20-26).

Form Criticism

The narrative structure of Luke-Acts as a whole is aligned geographically with a progression of Jesus’ ministry and revelation that starts in Judea in the Gospel and ends with the apostle Paul in Rome in Acts.

Within this scheme, the SP falls within the  section of the Gospel that is centered in the villages of Galilee (4:14-9:50).

Like Matthew’s SM, Luke places the SP right before the story of the healing of the centurion’s servant at Capernaum (Mt. 8:5-13; Lk. 7:1-10).  The difference is that in Luke, Jesus has called the twelve apostles before the SP, whereas in Matthew the SM precedes the calling of the twelve (Lk 6:12-16; Mt. 10:1-4).

Due to the lack of clear section breaks created by Luke’s use of “bridging passages” to splice subsections together and the eclectic thematic content of the SP, commentators are far from unanimous agreement on its overall structure.

Nevertheless, most commentators divide the entire passage into three sections: introductory exordium with blessings and woes (vv. 20-26), a main body of ethical teaching (vv.27-45), and concluding peroration (vv.46-49).

Within this structural scheme, the pericope under consideration includes the exordium and the first subsection of the main body (vv. 27-38), which entails the ethical conduct of disciples to others outside their immediate community.  The progression of thought is achieved more by an association of ideas rather than a close-knit argument, and the introductory beatitudes underscore the overall emphasis of both the particular pericope and the Gospel as a whole on Jesus‘ promise of God’s blessings for the poor and oppressed, and the consequential need for disciples to show the same love and mercy (v. 36).

Textual Criticism

The accuracy of the manuscripts for this passage is as certain as any passage in the Gospel.  The earliest manuscript that contains the entirety of the SM is the proto-Alexandrian papyrus known as P⁷⁵ which is dated around 175.

The scribe responsible for this manuscript copied the text letter by letter and primarily restricted changes to grammatical and stylistic improvements, in keeping with the Alexandrian tradition, with no major changes or systematic revision of the text.

The Alexandrian text, of which this manuscript constitutes the earliest phase, is regarded as the best ancient recension and the nearest approximate of the original text known to contemporary biblical scholarship.

The corruptions of the text that surface in later manuscripts, aside from attempted grammatical improvements, mainly arise from the desire of the copyist to harmonize the SP with the SM by adding “in spirit” to verse 20, transposing the beatitudes into the third person rather than Luke’s usage of the second person, and by omitting the temporal designation “now” in verse 21.

Redaction Criticism

Most scholars agree that the SM and the SP are based on one basic piece of tradition, held to be found in Q, upon which both authors subsequently expanded and edited for their own purposes, and contrary to what scholars before the 20^th century held, it is now believed that Matthew took more redactional liberties while Luke stayed closer to the original.

It is important to consider the notion that Q underwent a series of pre-Synoptic redactions of its own before being transmitted to Matthew and Luke in separate recensions, however, because solely appealing to the redactional activities of the Gospel writers themselves fails to adequately account for the differences in the Gospels’ respective usage of Q; it cannot account for why some Q material was worded identically by both writers whereas the rest appears quite different.

There are five possibilities regarding the redaction of the sermons in Q and the Gospels: 1) Q is closest to SP and the SM is a revision and expansion of Q-SP (most current scholars hold this position), 2) Q is closest to SM and the SP is Luke’s revision and reduction of Q-SM (no longer held by any scholars), 3) Q is not like SP or SM and both were the redactions and elaborations of Luke and Matthew who received the same Q source in different translations (evidence for this position is negligible), 4) Matthew and Luke received Q in two different recensions, one SP and one SM, and the main differences stem from pre-Synoptic redaction rather than that of Matthew and Luke (many scholars take this argument as a supplement to option 1), or 5) SP and SM were formed separately from Q and the writers later added sayings from Q to their sermons (which can account for why some of the SM material appears elsewhere in Luke).

The ethical content of the sayings also bears strong resemblance to the parenesis of the early church as seen in the writings of Paul, and the earliest section of the Didache (cf. Rom. 12:14, 17-20; 1 Thess. 5:15; Did. 1.2-5 and Lk. 6:27-28).

Luke’s personal touches can be seen in the juxtaposition of rich and poor in the blessing and the added woe statements (vv.20-26), a contrast which is very typical in Luke (see 1:53; 16:19-31).

The changes Luke made to his sources serve his goal of relating the primarily Jewish context of Jesus and his disciples to new gentile converts in Luke’s community.  It cannot, however, be conclusively demonstrated that these sayings do not trace back in some form to the actual teachings of Jesus, and this assumption should be held until proven otherwise.

Source Criticism

Luke borrows the scene for his SP from Mark 3:7-12, where Jesus is so overwhelmed by the crowds pursuing him to be healed that he retreats to his boat and addresses the crowd from the sea.  Luke preserves the details about the sort of crowd that was following Jesus—the poor, the crippled and the sick—which fit nicely within Luke’s overarching emphasis on the solidarity of Jesus and the socially marginalized (5:27-32; 6:17-19; 7:22, 37-39; 16:19-31), but he takes liberties with Mark’s actual scenery.  Where Mark’s focus is on telling about Jesus’ healing activity in detail and referring only anecdotally to his address, Luke reverses the priority by anecdotally referencing Jesus’ healings in the prologue to the sermon (vv. 17-19) to emphasize that the crowd came not only to be healed, but also to hear Jesus’ teaching.

Also important in verse 17 is the statement that Jesus came down from the mountain to a ‘level place’ or ‘plain’ in an action reminiscent of Moses descending from Mount Sinai (Ex. 34:29) which would seem to indicate the importance of Jesus’ forthcoming exhortation by analogy to Moses and the decalogue.

The symbolic action of Jesus’ movement from a high place to a level plain also serves as a performative enactment of the theme of reversal of fate for the rich and poor (1:53; 4:16-30; 6:20-26; 9:1-6; 10:1-12; 14:11).

The concrete identity of the “poor” who are blessed by Jesus in verse 20 should not be seen as contrary to the “poor in spirit” of Matthew 5:3 and both should be considered along with the others blessed in the beatitudes: those who mourn are the protestors of social evil (cf. 1 Cor. 5:1), and the meek are those who protest the loss or theft of their ancestral land (cf. Ps. 37).

Instead, the difference results from Matthew’s context of Jewish moralism wherein the world consists of the righteous (poor in spirit) and the unrighteous as opposed to Luke’s account which reflects the tendency of Hellenistic moralists to view the world in terms of the poor (good) and the rich (bad).

Yet Luke’s understanding is not unfamiliar to Jewish scriptures; in fact, his version of the beatitudes harmonizes more closely with the LXX wording of Isaiah 61:1-2, which fits with his consistent usage of this prophetic theme of Jubilee and aligns the SP with Jesus’ first ‘sermon’ in Luke’s Gospel where he directly quotes this passage (4:18-19).

Just as the Jubilee reversal of fate for the poor is invoked at the onset of Jesus’ mission, it resurfaces here as the introduction to Jesus’ ethical requirements for his disciples.  Furthermore, Luke’s reference to those who “weep” because of the fallen condition of the world and the suffering that results reflects Jesus’ weeping over Jerusalem (Lk. 19:41, 23:28), and to “hunger now” is the immediate consequence of poverty in both the literal and figurative sense (cf. Is. 32:6-7; Job 22:7).

Luke’s Greek sourcing is further evidenced by the phrase “leap for joy” in verse 23, which comes from the Greek word σκριταω.  This specific word refers to the grotesque dances of the Satyrs which were a popular decorative motif for walls and vases in Greek antiquity; such a reference would have elicited a few grins from an audience of gentile Christians, where a more Jewish audience would have been repulsed (hence the lack of a parallel in Matthew’s account).

Another example concerns the phrasing of the four maxims in verses 27-28 to resemble Greek paradoxes, and their explanation in verses 29-38, which constitutes Luke’s attempt to illustrate why Jesus’ seemingly absurd exhortation to love even one’s enemies makes Greek ethical sense.

This unique exhortation was recognized early on as the main teaching that differentiated Christian ethics from traditional Judaism, as even Jewish commentators recognized that this saying is the only part in the entire SM that is completely without parallel in rabbinic literature.

It is best understood as Jesus’ interpretation and intensification of the biblical injunction to love the neighbor (cf. Prov. 25:21; Lk. 10:25-37).  Though Jesus’ commandments have their sources in both scriptural and cultural traditions, they are unique in that they are extended in every case beyond the usual limits.

Social-Historical Criticism

It is impossible to properly understand the meaning of the SP’s ethical implications for how disciples are to interact with the societies in which they live without first grasping the social and historical context in which Luke wrote.  Roman Palestine was an honor-shame society in which concerns about the acquisition or loss of honor permeated every aspect of public life and took on the seriousness of life and death.

Honor was seen as a limited good, meaning that honor gained was honor taken from someone else, and it was inextricably bound up with economic concerns such as the control of resources, land, crops, livestock, social status, marriage opportunities and political clout.

On the other hand, the shaming of one individual had the potential to destroy the well-being of his or her entire family.  To be shameless, then, was to lack proper concern for one’s honor.  In that light, the beatitudes could be better translated as “how honorable are you who are poor” (v. 20), and the woes could likewise be rendered, “how shameless are you who are rich” (v. 24).

The understanding of rich and poor needs to be understood in light of their relation to the system of honor and shame whereby economic deprivation and social ostracism are inextricably linked.  In an oral culture, honor-shame language functions as a social sanction on moral behavior and is perpetuated by gossip—the public record of one’s honor or shame.

Thus, in verse 26, the situation in which all speak well of someone refers to flattery; to be rich was to be surrounded by flatterers, and the problem with flattery is that it conflates the proper acquisition of an honorable reputation: the merit of one’s character.

The reference to clothing in verse 29 is also related to the notions of poverty and shame.  In the Galilean village context of this passage, most people only had one cloak (outer garment) and one tunic (undershirt) to wear under it; the poorest might have to forego the tunic, whereas owning two tunics was a sign of being relatively well-off.

Clothes were scarce among the poor and thus became a frequent object of robbery (6:29; 10:30).  Furthermore, to go without one’s clothes was considered shameful and ritually impure—a point of particular emphasis in Luke’s retelling of the Gerasene demoniac who “wore no clothes” (8:27), but once he was healed was found by the townspeople to be fully clothed (v. 35).  Thus, the ethical exhortation Jesus gives his disciples concerning generosity is one that comes at a very high cost, socially speaking.  It calls, as Luke frequently points out, for a stance of seemingly shameful solidarity with the outcasts of mainstream society.

In addition to honor and shame, the social life of Roman Palestine was also structured as a patronage system in which the low class (clients) had to have their needs met by the high class (patrons).

While patrons competed with each other for social position by accumulating as many clients as possible, the clients were required to provide all of the manual labor on the patron’s land and subject themselves to frequent humiliation and were given only one meal a day as payment—anything beyond that was considered generous.

While notions of hospitality and generalized reciprocity in which favors or food were given without any expected return, this was conventionally only true within one specific sector (age, sex, occupation, status).

Thus, the idea of giving without return in verse 35 entails the expectation that Jesus’ disciples should act as if they are the benefactors, or patrons, but they should do so without any of the usual social entitlements that come with this status.

Jesus justifies this charge by appealing to the very nature of God, the benefactor par excellence in Luke’s Gospel (v. 36).  In the top-heavy power structure of the patronage system, the vast majority of people were at the bottom and many were crushed by insurmountable debt, but Jesus announces that God, the Great Benefactor, will enact a dramatic reversal to uplift the over-burdened poor, and he charges his disciples to act likewise by forgiving debts themselves—a truly otherworldly way of acting.

Praxis

The two sections of Jesus’ teachings to his disciples in Luke 6:20-26 and 27-38 raise two important principles: the repudiation of privilege based on wealth and the refusal of retaliation that leads to violence.  The ethical stance inherent in these teachings is “diametrically opposed to the assumptions of the marketplace and the media that shape American culture: the wealthy are privileged and conflict requires that one show strength through retaliation.”

Jesus confronts his disciples with a simple choice about who they identify themselves with in solidarity: those who are comfortable with their excesses garnered from the degradation of others, or those who are themselves degraded, vulnerable, and marginalized by their society (vv. 20-26).  Jesus gives a clear alternative to the social practices that foster hostility and oppression (vv. 27-38).

While it may not mean the same thing for us to give away our shirt as it did when Luke wrote his account, we can carry on the spirit of the passage by thinking about the underpaid and often underage workers who toil to make our clothing so that we can afford to buy so much of it.  We should not, however, be fooled by the differences between our world and the world in which Jesus lived; the extreme gulf between haves and have-nots remains just as pronounced in most of the world today as it did then.  Luke’s account of Jesus’ teaching cuts across all barriers in his audience; whether we are closer to the blessed poor or the woeful rich, the sermon speaks to us directly and in concrete terms about who we are to have solidarity with.  That is why Damian Marley’s song “Stand a Chance” harmonizes so well with the motifs sounded by Luke’s Gospel.

Though he was born into privilege to the wildly successful reggae artists Bob Marley and Cindy Breakspeare, Damian Marley still seeks to uplift, identify with and be reconciled to the urban poor.  In the song, he refers to being born in “uptown” Kingston, Jamaica—the high-rise financial district of the city (where Halfway Tree, the title of the album, is located)—as opposed to “Trenchtown” which is the city slum and home of many Rastafarians, including his father.  Thus, he is saying that even though he was born into Halfway Tree, his heart has always been and will always be in the slums.  In the song’s refrain, the lyrics echo the contrast between rich and poor in verses 20-26 by juxtaposing the phrases “where there’s more hungry mouths than food to eat” and “where there’s more food to eat than mouths to feed.”

He then appeals for all of us to look up to the Creator, our source of light, so that we may shine again and show the world God’s love which beautifully echoes Jesus’ “light of the world” imagery that appears in the SM (Mt. 5:14-16).

Appendix

Stand A Chance

Where there’s, more hungry mouths

Than food to eat

It’s where the homeless

Roam the street

Where broken glass

And broken dreams

Are shattered and scattered

Amongst debris

Sufferation wrath

And still they laugh

And dream of a mansion

Above the half

No one to speak

Upon there behalf

Now tell me do they stand a chance?

Where there’s, more food

Than mouths to feed

Where you find those who

Claim to lead

Because of all their personal greed

They always want more than they need

They don’t help those

Below the half

Instead they stand aside and laugh

As if it’s all we’ll ever ask

When will they make a change?

Children lift your heads

To the one

Who create the sun

My children

And your light will come shinning again

Show the world

Jah love is okay

When we rise and greet the son

Lets give him thanks and praise

Illegal guns

They roam the night

In hungry hands

Waiting to bite

The first sign of

Any food in sight

Youths in the dark

Searching for light

Hard time they face

Is not a choice

Police curfew

Is no surprise

And with no one

To be there voice

Do they stand a chance?

Where there’s, more hungry mouths

Then food to eat

Where you find those who

Claim to lead

Because of all there personal greed

They always want more than they need

They don’t help those

Below the half

Instead they stand aside and laugh

As if it’s all we’ll ever ask

When will they make a change?

Its like a punk never check

Or dem did forget

Say a death

We nature naughty

Ah true mi go born uptown

Tell dem fools don’t cross me

That’s only where Cindy brought me*

And that’s why they can’t impress me

With no boasty car

Me know dat ah kill dem softly

And then they’re not

Really even who they think they are

They’re not really moving crafty

Mi get fi understand

Say them plan dem faulty

Well nuff a dem a twenty

And favor forty

Filthy rich big belly

And hearty

Di real Gideon will

Be arriving shortly

Rasta nuh beat Binghi

Drum we claatt it

We live longer

Cause we food nuh salty

We grow stronger

And dem can’t assault we

So haile Rastafari love

And exhalt it

Bibliography

Betz, Hans Dieter. The Sermon on the Mount: A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Including the Sermon on the Plain (Matthew 5:3-7:27 and Luke 6:20-49). Edited by Adela Yarbro Collins, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995.

Bovon, François. Luke 1: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 1:1-9:50. Translated by Christine M. Thomas. Edited by Helmut Koester, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002.

Cassidy, Richard J. Jesus, Politics and Society: A Study of Luke’s Gospel. Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1978.

Comfort, Philip W., and David P. Barrett. eds. The Complete Test of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts. Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1999.

Culpepper, R. Alan. 1995. Luke. In Luke and John. Vol. 9 of The New Interpreter’s Bible, ed. Neil M. Alexander, 1-149.  Nashville: Abingdon.

Danker, Frederick W. Jesus and the New Age: A Commentary on St. Luke’s Gospel. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.

Malina, Bruce J., and Richard L. Rohrbaugh. Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.

Marshall, I. Howard. The Gospel of Luke. The New International Greek Testament Commentary, Edited by I. Howard Marshall and W. Ward Gasque, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978.

Metzger, Bruce M. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration. New York: Oxford University Press, 1964.

Moxnes, Halvor. The Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988.

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An Ecumenical Ecclesial Approach to Economic Equity

It is clear that the economic situation worldwide is rife with injustice and inequality, but what many of us overlook is the extent to which these ill plague our neighbors here in the United States.  As swelling unemployment rates and bad news on Wall Street threatens middle-class Americans, the question that goes unasked is what is happening to the poorest Americans who were already struggling before our economy took a turn for the worst?  Though economic justice is an exceedingly broad topic, I will attempt to highlight some of its main theological and ethical concerns by focusing on one specific issue that is significant for our time: healthcare.

According to the US Census Bureau, there were over 47 million Americans who went without health insurance in 2008.

That amounts to more than fifteen percent of the population.  A report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies estimates that around 18,000 unnecessary deaths are caused each year by a lack of health insurance.

The main source of health insurance for most Americans is their employer, but at least 27 million of the uninsured worked at least part time without receiving benefits.  Most people agree that reform is desperately needed, however, people strongly disagree about the kind of changes we should pursue.

Even within a solely Christian perspective, views on the issue of healthcare are quite divergent.  One major perspective is the conservative evangelical movement as characterized by organizations like Freedom Federation and the Family Research Council.

Both of these organizations are lobby groups that are strongly opposed to any measure of universal healthcare, citing their major objections as potential provision for abortion, potential discrimination against the elderly, and an underlying distrust of government’s ability to manage such a system.  On the FRC website, one may even download bulletin inserts and a free sermon-starter entitled “Government Healthcare Takeover: The Wrong Prescription for America.”

Such a title is an obvious hint at the underlying polemical content of these faith-based  organizations that attempt to obfuscate their political ideologies and rhetoric by appealing to Christian principles and morality.

On the opposite side of the spectrum there are Christian groups like the Sojourners, who appeal to a very different set of Christian values.  They are strong advocates for a universal healthcare plan that provides comprehensive and affordable coverage to everyone, including the poorest Americans.  Sojourners also see healthcare as an issue of stewardship and therefor suggest that it is a burden that ought to be equally shared by all in our society.

While conservative groups emphasize abortion and trust the free-market, groups like the Sojourners appeal to the faith tradition of caring for the poor and down-trodden, and they seem to distrust the free-market as a viable means of caring for the underprivileged.

While these groups attempt to appeal to their Christian convictions as a foundation for their advocacy, their output is often disappointingly polemical.  Rather than focus on the fact that they share many of the same values (as they should if they bear the name of Christ) they tend to define their own positions negatively with respect to those of the other side.  Rather than see this issue as a two-sided debate, however, still other groups have attempted to address healthcare problems in more creative ways.  One example of this is an organization called Medi-Share.  Medi-Share is a Christian organization inspired by the community described in the book of Acts, which provides healthcare coverage by fostering a large network of Christians who pay shares which are then distributed to other members on basis of need to cover whatever healthcare costs are incurred.

Rather than jump on one or the other side of a political fence, this organization has taken matters into its own hands in an attempt to model the kind of community the church can and should be.

Though I am not convinced any single approach discussed above possesses the entire solution to the healthcare crisis, each perspective is rooted in its own theological and ethical subtext.  In that regard, I find myself unable to accept the position of the conservative evangelical groups–abortion is a significant ethical issue, to be sure, however the over-emphasis of this point seems to function as a facade for the flawed prosperity theology that lies beneath.  I do not intend to suggest a sort of sinister plot being undertaken there, but there do seem to be some uncritical assumptions regarding the compatibility of American middle class values and free-market capitalism with the gospel of the Kingdom of God.  This, I believe, is the mentality that Scott Bader-Saye is referring to when he speaks of the ideas of Adam Smith.  Smith spoke of the ‘invisible hand’ that guides the capitalist system, so that the best way an individual can help someone else is to pursue their own self-interest.

The flaw, as Bader-Saye points out, is in thinking that God’s providence means it is his responsibility to care for the poor; or as the familiar saying goes, “God helps those who help themselves.”  In reality, though, God’s abundant providence is a call to us as a faith community to participate in its distribution as part of the good news we may bring too the weary and downtrodden.  If we cannot agree on the method, at least let us rally around our mutual calling and remember what Jesus reminds us in Matthew 25:44-45, “They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’  He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’”

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