Bible

The Charismatic Gift of Giving or the Law of Tithing? Which?

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The Charismatic Gift of Giving or the Law of Tithing?  Which?

FATEB – 27 January 2006  Dr. Peter W. Dunn

Acts 2.41-47

Acts 4.32-5.11

Romans 12.6-8

Introduction:  Having taught the books of Acts several times at FATEB, I have read several exegesis papers on the Acts 2.41-47 and Acts 4.32-37.  There was even at least one sermon here in chapel on one of these passages.  What has struck me is that in every case Fatebian exegetes and preachers have placed the emphasis so squarely upon the imperative:  this is what we must do if we wish truly to be the community of God.  When I have taught Matthew 5.20, where Jesus says that unless our righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, we will surely not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven, I have told my students that the problem with our righteousness as evangelicals is that our righteousness too often IS the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.  Because our righteousness is the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, we see the actions of the earliest disciples, adhering to the apostle’s teaching, joining for the breaking of bread, the holding of all things in common, as prescriptions—things that God requires of us as Christians in order for us to be a good community of faith.  Since the absence of these qualities in our community continually besets us, we are forced to preach sermons and write exegesis papers making law out of passages which do not come to us in the form of a law, but as a description of true Christian community as it was experienced in the nascent church.  At least the Pharisees had the excuse that their tradition was based upon the Torah, which really is in the form of a law.

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Intolerably Pharisaical Progressive Christians

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Randal Rauser, Associate Professor of Historical Theology, Taylor Seminary, Edmonton, says that evangelicals who drive SUVs are hypocrites.

Poser or Prophet, Dan Oudshorn concludes that I am neither generous nor counter-cultural in my giving on the basis of zero evidence. (My tax returns are protected by Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act).  My wife says that if this is the kind of slim basis upon which he makes judgments, he is a very poor scholar indeed.

Brandon, a missionary in South Africa, judged me because I mentioned making a six fold increase in my RRSP through investing of which he is also critical.  Yet he doesn’t seem to ask his donor base whether their funding was appropriately gained, i.e., not through ill-gotten investments or usuary. As a donor to missions, I would certainly be less inclined to give to a missionary who is critical of the way I make money. I am not at all sure how such progressive views are going to help collectivist Africa either.

The one thing all three of these people have in common is that they depend on those who work hard and those who make risky investments in the real world.  They can sit in an ivory tower pontificating about how evil investors are; meanwhile, their bacon, their very livelihood, depends on the real-world risk taking of investors, who provide jobs, who pay taxes and who make it possible for missionaries, educators, and street workers to get paid to do their jobs.

Upside down interpretation of the Parable of the Kingdom

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A few months ago, Andrew posted at City of God a few question, one of which was:

  • Does Jesus’ logic in the parable of the talents support the concept that, all other things being equal, it is more rational that people invest money than hoard it in the ground?

    • …

    I responded as follows: In my view yes. Jesus is teaching from the known to the unknown; from everyday experience, in this case investing, to the unknown characteristics of the kingdom of God. Thus, Jesus is not teaching that investing money is better than burying money, but using that very assumption to point out something about the Kingdom of God.

    Then a certain Brandon responded (Brandon is a missionary in South Africa and if you would like to give some of your ill-gotten filthy usuary to him, you can link to this giving page here):

    1. March 6, 2010 1:48 pm

      Why do we always assume the parable of the talents is a glorification of free market principles?

      As he is much more eloquent than me, I’ll let the words of Ched Myers speak:

      This parable reads much more coherently as a cautionary tale about the world controlled by great householders (this is even clearer in Luke’s version of the story, Luke 19:11-27). Jesus may even have been spinning a thinly-veiled autobiographical tale here—for he, too, will shortly stand before the powers, speak the truth, and take the consequences. To read in it a divine endorsement of mercenary economics and the inevitable polarization of wealth is to miss the point completely—and to perpetuate both dysfunctional theology and complicit economics in our churches.
      The consequence of the third slave’s noncooperation is banishment to the “outer darkness where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (25:30). We have presumed this to be “hell,” and so perhaps it is—that is, the hell on earth experienced by those rejected by the dominant culture: in the shadows where the light of the royal courts never shine, on the mean streets outside the great households, the dwelling place of the outcast poor like Lazarus (Luke 16:19-21). But the story that immediately follows this tragic conclusion—the famous last-judgment parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt. 25:31-46) may illuminate the nature of the dissident slave’s exile. This singular judgment story in the Gospels suggests that we meet Christ mysteriously by feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned (Matt. 25:25-40). In other words, we meet Christ in places of pain and marginality; the “outer darkness.” The whistle-blower’s punishment kicks him out of the rich man’s system, but brings him closer to the true Lord, who dwells with the poor and oppressed.

      From here

       

    To this I wrote:

    Brandon, the parable doesn’t glorify free market principles. It uses an investment as an means of illustrating the nature of the Kingdom. Thus, the parable makes certain assumptions. Evidently, in Jesus’ day, no one would ever think it proper to bury a couple hundred thousand US dollars in the ground (on this understanding of how much is a talent, see Is Debt Sin ).

    The article Brandon cites starts out:

    Even more problematic than our sentimentalizing of kingdom parables is the way we misread Jesus’ parables about the world, reading them as if they were kingdom parables—with disastrous consequences. The most notorious case is the infamous parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-30).”

    Matt 25.1, which is the near context says: “Then the Kingdom of heaven shall be compared to … ” (Τότε ὁμοιωθήσεται ἡ βασιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν). Then vs. 14 (῞Ωσπερ γὰρ ), “For it will be as when …”(RSV); “Again it will be like” (NIV). BDAG suggest the meaning of ῞Ωσπερ γὰρ is “for it is just like” — i.e., we are not dealing with parable of the world as the authors suggest but with another parable of the kingdom. Their position is a severe violation of context.

    The article goes down hill from this statement to other false assumptions. One of which is the time period of the journey:

    In the 1st Century AD, without the availability of today’s electronic financial instruments, securities exchanges and stock markets, hedge funds, arbitrage, trading on margin, etc., to double such a vast fortune in currency within a journey’s time was unthinkable, and impossible through honest “work”. We today have difficulty hearing the story as those first listening to Jesus heard it, because in our day and age we are utterly habituated to dubious investment schemes, unlike the poor in Jesus’ audience.

    The period of time is unspecified. I always thought of it as about 10 years (“now after a long time”; μετὰ δὲ πολὺν χρόνον), perhaps because of the Odyssey, where the warriors were all gone 10 years, and the Odysseus himself was lost another 10 years. But in any case, the period time is a long time, not a short time, which the exegesis of Myers and Debode requires to be coherent. Brandon, I was able to quintuple one of my RRSPs (like an IRA) in 22 months. Does that make me a faithful servant or a dishonest investor, using the evil capitalist system make more myself “dubious” gain?

    Thanks for referring to this article. It will be easy to retort such tendentious “exegesis” in a future blog post at the Righteous Investor. Cheers.

    Then the following discussion ensued:
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    Extreme communism or just counter-cultural generosity? The case of Acts 4.34 and a dangling participle

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    [NB:  There is a discussion of this post at:  City of God]

    The Book of Acts records two major passages in which counter-cultural generosity plays a significant role:  Acts 2.43-47 and Acts 4.32-36.  Some have read these passages as representing an early practice of communism in the primitive Church. Commenting on Acts 4.34, C. S. C. Williams, in Harper’s New Testament Commentaries (a.k.a., Black’s New Testament Commentary, Henry Chadwick, ed., 87), cites Easton, Purpose:

    In one matter Luke praises a standard even more rigorous than that actually taught by Jesus, for Luke is evidently delighted to tell of the extreme communism practised by the first believers.

    These passages in Acts represent the influence of the Holy Spirit on the Christian community, causing them to share in a counter-cultural manner.  But it is not communism by a long shot.  Here I mean communism in the sense of the relinquishment of private property, as some have understood Luke’s statement (Acts 2.44-45; RSV): “And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.”  Yet it would do violence to the text to say that everyone sold everything they had to provide for the poor: Luke does not say that.  First of all, the pronoun “their” is not in the Greek.  Secondly, it would be justified to translate this sentence,  “They sold possessions and goods” (καὶ τὰ κτήματα καὶ τὰς ὑπάρξεις ἐπίπρασκον), the distinction between possessions and goods, is likely that one is immovable property (real estate) and the other is personal possessions (so F.F. Bruce).  Thus, I consider the usage of the article to be generic (see Dan Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, 227) not possessive.

    Now, let us consider Acts 4.34-35 (RSV):

    There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.

    Now in order for Easton’s “extreme communism” to apply, we must again assume that everyone sold all their lands and houses.  Yet we find strong evidence that the Christians did not do this.  To begin with, the practice of Christians of “breaking bread” (cf. Acts 2.42) took place in private homes. So when Paul ravaged the church, he went from house to house to attack the Christians and to haul them off for punishment (Acts 8.3).  So whose houses were they meeting in?  It would appear to me that some of the Christians who owned houses hadn’t sold them.  Two such people are explicitly mentioned in Acts.  Mary the mother of John Mark owned a house in Jerusalem, where the believers met to pray for the imprisoned Peter (Acts 12.12).  And certain Mnason of Cyprus owned a house where Paul and his entire entourage were able to lodge while in Jerusalem–he is described as an early disciple (Acts 21.16), and was perhaps converted on the day of Pentecost along with many other Diaspora Jews, but for reasons untold he was able to stay in Jerusalem when the other Hellenistic Jewish Christians fled during the persecution of Stephen (Acts 7.1-8.4).  Philip, one of the first deacons chosen in Acts 6, was also an early disciple; he had a house in Caesarea that he didn’t sell, and there he lived with his four virgin daughters who prophesied (Acts 21.8).  Barnabas, the one person explicitly named who generously sold a field and was called “the son of encouragment”, probably retained some other holdings in Cyprus, for he returned there with his cousin John Mark after his dispute with Paul (see Acts 4.36-37; 15.39).  He sold a field but not likely everything he owned.  Still, this was a fantastic act of generosity.  Finally, the early church wasn’t practising communism, for in Acts 5.1-11, Peter says to Ananias and Saphira that the property, of which they allegedly brought the full sale price, belonged to them and even the proceeds of the sale belonged to them, and they could have simply given a part.  But instead they chose to give only a part and to pretend that it was the full amount.  Thus, Peter affirmed their right to private property.

    Now let us turn to the analysis of Acts 4.34.  If we are to accept the RSV translation, then we would most likely diagram the sentence as follows:

    The term, “for as many as”, is used in constructions like this:  “as many as did the one thing, did the other thing”.  So the suggestion of the RSV translation is that everyone who was an owner of a field or a house, sold them and brought the proceeds to the apostles, i.e., extreme communism.  There doesn’t seem to be much wiggle room.  However, as we have seen, Luke explicitly mentions people who still owned houses.  How do we reconcile this?

    There is a point of grammar in the original Greek that doesn’t come out in the RSV:   ὅσοι γὰρ κτήτορες χωρίων ἢ οἰκιῶν ὑπῆρχον, πωλοῦντες ἔφερον τὰς τιμὰς τῶν πιπρασκομένων, literally, “For as many as were owners of lands or houses, selling, brought the prices of the things that were sold”.  The participle πωλοῦντες dangles between the imperfect verbs ὑπῆρχον and ἔφερον, the comma being an editorial addition to the text (UBS4).  If we were however to translate using the second option, that the participle goes with ὑπῆρχον instead of with ἔφερον, this would require moving the comma to after πωλοῦντες instead of after ὑπῆρχον.  We then diagram the sentence as follows:


    Now the sentence makes more sense in the overall context of Luke’s Acts:  As many as sold the lands or houses that belonged to them, brought the proceeds to the apostles.  The text thus should not be forced to say that all the Christians sold everything they had, but that those who did were generous and brought the gifts to the apostles’ feet for administration.  The principle of charity towards the author (as Andrew has suggested to me) would play a role here:  the author, Luke, would not seek to write incoherently, suggesting at the same time that all the Christians sold their property but some retained their property.  The principle of charity would suggest that we interpret Acts 4.34, if possible, in a manner which does not create this contradiction.  Thus, I conclude that those who sold their property did so to provide for the community.  This is counter-cultural generosity.  But others did not sell their houses but rather made them available for the use of the community while maintaining ownership.  This is not communism.

    Christianity, the apocalyptic, and the economy

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    The world-wide economy is in terrible shape.  Charles Hugh Smith provides a glimpse of the situation in four chart of four different economies:  (1) A Healthy Economy; (2)  A Speculative Economy (bubble); (3) A Hangover Economy (post-bubble); (4) A Default Economy (the tyranny of debt).  A healthy economy has high interest rates, high productivity, low debt (private and government), and high individual net worth and a low debt to equity ratio on real estate.  A default economy has low interest rates, high government debt, next to zero equity in real estate, and zero net worth.  Currently, the majority of people have negative equity and the government debts are piling higher and deeper.  A bad economy is a sign of bad times.  It can be the first birth pang of the apocalyptic: war, famine, and mass death–Doomsday, if you will.

    I suppose this post will cause some people to see me as a crack pot, a crank and a doomsayer.  So be it.  But I think that Christians, of all people, should be prepared to face apocalyptic times, partly because our hope does not rest upon on this earth, for we are just sojourners here, but also because our faith was born in apocalyptic times.  Jesus himself predicts  birth pangs (Matt 24.6-8; ESV):

    And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.

    He predicted the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, a devastating war and tribulation such as the world had never seen (see ch. 24 of Matthew’s Gospel).  He said that this would all happen within one generation.  And indeed, within the lifetime of some of hearers, a mere forty years, all of these predictions took place.  The false messiahs had led the Jewish people in rebellions against the Romans until all-out war broke out between the two nations in AD 66.  By AD 70, the Temple was destroyed, millions of Jews were dead, others sold into slavery, and only a remnant remained to pick up the pieces.  The Jewish historian Josephus chronicles the events that fulfilled Jesus’ predictions in his book The Jewish War.  A couple years ago, we visited Rome and saw Titus’ Arch of Triumph celebrating the devastating defeat of the poor Jewish nation who unsuccessfully rebelled against Roman rule.

    As a result of their awareness of the coming events, the community of Jesus’ followers in Galilee, Judea and Jerusalem fled.  Jesus had instructed them to do so.  They left, scattering throughout the inhabited world, some to Pella in the Transjordan region, others to Syria, Asia Minor (Turkey), and beyond.

    Today, awareness of the precariousness of our current economy seems pretty limited.  I follow a fair number of blogs which discuss investments, and few people, with few exceptions (Monty Pelerin, Marc Faber, Peter Schiff, etc.) seem to be aware that we are headed toward the destruction of our economy as we know it.  It is not business as usual but economic default.  Yet as Charles Hugh Smith explains, situational awareness and collective awareness is dangerously low.  Jesus says:

    But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left.  Therefore, stay awake, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

    English Standard Version. 2001 (Mt 24:36–44)

    Jeremiah says that false prophets predict peace when there is no peace.  What came instead was war, death and exile for the people of Israel in Jeremiah’s day.

    But Christians, of all people, should be aware and prepared for the worse.  Why?  Because we know that mankind is sinful and incapable of creating heaven on earth.  Sinful and selfish human beings are easily capable of screwing things up.  It’s only a matter of time before our human inventions, systems and economies end in collapse and misery.

    Over the last decade I visited Africa many times.  Every single time I returned home to Canada and thanked God that I lived in peaceful, prosperous country in which freedom reigns.  But two events have shaken my tenuous optimism.  The first was 9-11-2001  The second was the economic collapse in 2008.  Now, I read a lot about the state of the economy, partly out of curiosity but mostly because of my employment as a portfolio manager.  Here are my observations and predictions.

    (1) The US Federal government is insolvent and will default.  This default will occur in one of two ways.  (i) Honest default:  the US defaults on its debt and it lays off people, reduces social security, welfare, food stamps, etc.; (ii) the US continues to create new fiat money and devalues the currency to the point where no one will accept it anymore.  Honest default will be lesser of two evils, but either scenario is dire for many people.  But the second scenario is hyperinflationary and will rob many people of their savings before ultimately leading to the same conclusion.

    (2) The US will implement serious military cuts and will have to pull back from the world.  Pax Americana is about to become a thing of history.  This will lead to the rise of new powers, to increased thuggery and chaos in the world, and to great suffering.  Already, much of the world (e.g., central Africa) is experiencing a period of chaos reminiscent of the Dark Ages.  As the US military might withdraws, that chaos will only increase until some other powers fill the vacuum.

    (3) If the US continues down the inflationary route, then expect commodities to continue to rise in price vis-a-vis the US dollar.  Only high interest rates and the end of monetization of debts (a.k.a. quantitative easing) will save the dollar now.  Only this and an honest default by the US government can end the rise of gold and silver.  But it would result in further mortgage defaults and government layoffs and the inability for the government to pay welfare and food stamps.  Either way, people will suffer and there will blood and rioting on the streets.

    (4) Financial markets will experience extreme volatility as excess liquidity tries to find a resting place.

    So Christians, are we ready for this?  What are we doing to prepare for the apocalyptic events which are coming in our generation?