Jun 18, 2015 04:24 PM
http://www.laphamsquarterly.org/philanth...ure-heaven
EXCERPT: When Christians of late antiquity thought of religious giving, they went back to what for them was the beginning—to the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus to the Rich Young Man described a transfer of “treasure” from earth to heaven: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’ ”
[...] When one turns to present-day scholarship on this theme, we find that the idea of a transfer of treasure to heaven is surrounded by a loud silence. [...] Altogether, it is a notion that causes acute embarrassment to modern persons. Such discomfort is calculated to make the historian sit up and take notice. Why is it that a way of speaking of the relation between heaven and earth that late antique and medieval Christians took for granted seems so alien to us? Why is it that we have such inhibitions in approaching the subject of the joining of God and gold?
One way of emphasizing the importance of the transfer of treasure to heaven is to view the question through the writings of St. Augustine. Augustine, who was bishop of Hippo (now Annaba, Algeria) from 395 to 430, developed a distinctive attitude to religious giving. When Augustine became bishop of Hippo, he took the task of preaching on the relations between rich and poor. His audience may not always have included large numbers of the poor, but his preaching left those who heard him in no doubt as to their duties toward the poor. He also attempted to answer, if in a studiously cautious manner, some of the many questions that Christians had pondered about wealth since the early days of the church. His insistence that the giving of alms was intimately related to the expiation of sins would become dominant in future centuries.
[...] Roman North Africa was one of the last provinces of the western empire to have maintained a high standard of civic life. This was especially true of the region best known to Augustine: Carthage and the cities through which he traveled. Throughout the fourth century, gifts from wealthy citizens allowed buildings to be renewed, theaters to be repaired, and great circus games to be performed in Carthage and elsewhere. [...] This ideology has come to be called, by modern scholars, “civic euergetism.” [...] The wealthy were expected to spend their money on their city and on the comfort and entertainment of their fellow citizens—and on those only. It was a model that tended to look through the economic structuring of society. Poverty, in itself, gave no entitlement. Those who received benefits from the wealthy received them not because they were poor but because they were citizens.
For Christian bishops such as Augustine to preach in favor of giving alms to the poor was to do far more than stir the wealthy to occasional acts of charity and compassion. It was to undermine the traditional model of society that had directed their giving habits up to this time. Civic notables were challenged to abandon the notion of citizen entitlement. They were urged to look beyond their fellow citizens and to switch their giving toward the gray immensity of poverty in their city and in the countryside around them.
[...] The congregations of Africa—rich and poor alike—heard Augustine’s message with a certain relief. Augustine’s preaching fitted in well with the realities of their social condition. Even if they were good Christians and wealthy, none of them suffered from the overabundance of wealth that characterized super-rich Roman Christian families. They had no wish to be told to renounce their wealth in its entirety. The rich and poor alike were encouraged to save their souls, on a regular basis, by forms of giving that were as regular as the daily repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.
This attitude had social repercussions. Augustine never discouraged heavy giving by the rich, but his insistence on the expiatory nature of giving ensured that the rich did not see themselves as special. Their giving was associated with penitential habits they were assumed to share, as fellow sinners, with all other members of the congregation. Hence there was a significant contrast between almsgiving and euergetism. A citizen gave to the city, quite frankly, so as to show his own glory and that of his family. Citizens were not supposed to give in that way to the church. Rather, one gave “for the remission of sins.” [...] the donor was “mindful of the eternal safety of his soul.” This language brought to the gifts of even the wealthy a note of human fragility, a sense of risk and of a need for safety for the soul, such as could be shared by all Christians, rich and poor alike. There was room in such a view for relatively humble donors. Everyone was a sinner, and, so, everyone could give.
Above all, Augustine presented almsgiving as regular and dependable. His hearers were to think of almsgiving as a machinamentum, a well-known device in Africa. It was a wheel whose constant turning caused a chain of buckets to move up and down [...] The perpetual horizontal movement of a wheel (pushed by an animal or a human) was transformed, by a complex set of gears, into a vertical motion that drew the chain of buckets so that they poured water taken from a low river or canal on to the higher fields. Working ceaselessly to place water where no water was to be found, alms were the machinamenta occulta—the “hidden devices”—that raised treasure to heaven. In this way, Augustine gave his Christian contemporaries a doctrine for the long haul. Driven as it was by the perpetual motion of the need to expiate sin, religious giving endured....
EXCERPT: When Christians of late antiquity thought of religious giving, they went back to what for them was the beginning—to the words of Jesus. The words of Jesus to the Rich Young Man described a transfer of “treasure” from earth to heaven: “Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.’ ”
[...] When one turns to present-day scholarship on this theme, we find that the idea of a transfer of treasure to heaven is surrounded by a loud silence. [...] Altogether, it is a notion that causes acute embarrassment to modern persons. Such discomfort is calculated to make the historian sit up and take notice. Why is it that a way of speaking of the relation between heaven and earth that late antique and medieval Christians took for granted seems so alien to us? Why is it that we have such inhibitions in approaching the subject of the joining of God and gold?
One way of emphasizing the importance of the transfer of treasure to heaven is to view the question through the writings of St. Augustine. Augustine, who was bishop of Hippo (now Annaba, Algeria) from 395 to 430, developed a distinctive attitude to religious giving. When Augustine became bishop of Hippo, he took the task of preaching on the relations between rich and poor. His audience may not always have included large numbers of the poor, but his preaching left those who heard him in no doubt as to their duties toward the poor. He also attempted to answer, if in a studiously cautious manner, some of the many questions that Christians had pondered about wealth since the early days of the church. His insistence that the giving of alms was intimately related to the expiation of sins would become dominant in future centuries.
[...] Roman North Africa was one of the last provinces of the western empire to have maintained a high standard of civic life. This was especially true of the region best known to Augustine: Carthage and the cities through which he traveled. Throughout the fourth century, gifts from wealthy citizens allowed buildings to be renewed, theaters to be repaired, and great circus games to be performed in Carthage and elsewhere. [...] This ideology has come to be called, by modern scholars, “civic euergetism.” [...] The wealthy were expected to spend their money on their city and on the comfort and entertainment of their fellow citizens—and on those only. It was a model that tended to look through the economic structuring of society. Poverty, in itself, gave no entitlement. Those who received benefits from the wealthy received them not because they were poor but because they were citizens.
For Christian bishops such as Augustine to preach in favor of giving alms to the poor was to do far more than stir the wealthy to occasional acts of charity and compassion. It was to undermine the traditional model of society that had directed their giving habits up to this time. Civic notables were challenged to abandon the notion of citizen entitlement. They were urged to look beyond their fellow citizens and to switch their giving toward the gray immensity of poverty in their city and in the countryside around them.
[...] The congregations of Africa—rich and poor alike—heard Augustine’s message with a certain relief. Augustine’s preaching fitted in well with the realities of their social condition. Even if they were good Christians and wealthy, none of them suffered from the overabundance of wealth that characterized super-rich Roman Christian families. They had no wish to be told to renounce their wealth in its entirety. The rich and poor alike were encouraged to save their souls, on a regular basis, by forms of giving that were as regular as the daily repetition of the Lord’s Prayer.
This attitude had social repercussions. Augustine never discouraged heavy giving by the rich, but his insistence on the expiatory nature of giving ensured that the rich did not see themselves as special. Their giving was associated with penitential habits they were assumed to share, as fellow sinners, with all other members of the congregation. Hence there was a significant contrast between almsgiving and euergetism. A citizen gave to the city, quite frankly, so as to show his own glory and that of his family. Citizens were not supposed to give in that way to the church. Rather, one gave “for the remission of sins.” [...] the donor was “mindful of the eternal safety of his soul.” This language brought to the gifts of even the wealthy a note of human fragility, a sense of risk and of a need for safety for the soul, such as could be shared by all Christians, rich and poor alike. There was room in such a view for relatively humble donors. Everyone was a sinner, and, so, everyone could give.
Above all, Augustine presented almsgiving as regular and dependable. His hearers were to think of almsgiving as a machinamentum, a well-known device in Africa. It was a wheel whose constant turning caused a chain of buckets to move up and down [...] The perpetual horizontal movement of a wheel (pushed by an animal or a human) was transformed, by a complex set of gears, into a vertical motion that drew the chain of buckets so that they poured water taken from a low river or canal on to the higher fields. Working ceaselessly to place water where no water was to be found, alms were the machinamenta occulta—the “hidden devices”—that raised treasure to heaven. In this way, Augustine gave his Christian contemporaries a doctrine for the long haul. Driven as it was by the perpetual motion of the need to expiate sin, religious giving endured....