Capital formation and business enterprise fuel a city
economy. They are unavoidable for modern progress. But they can also create
divisions that never existed before. In early hunting and farming communities,
people had shared their resources more or less on an equal footing. As soon as
money began to play a decisive role, things changed. Those with control over
money began to claim privileged and dominant positions.
Let us go back to first-century Corinth to see what this meant in practice. The inhabitants of Corinth fell into three different categories: the rich, the ordinary people and the poor. If we could set the clock back by twenty centuries and visit the Christians at Corinth in Paul’s time, we would have been struck by the contrasts in their living standard.
Some of the Early Christians belonged to the wealthy upper classes but the majority, we may be sure, were middle-class citizens: shopkeepers, skilled workers, artisans, soldiers, employees in the various institutions. They were not rich but they shared in the general good fortune of a prosperous harbour town. Perhaps, we should visit these people first and have a taste of what their life was like. We could then visit the rich and, in their houses, meet the social underdogs, the slaves, who depended body and soul on their masters and mistresses.
The ordinary people lived in apartment buildings which to some extent were not so different from what we find in the lower middle-class sections of large cities all over the world today. The buildings were usually two or three stories high with the ground floor space reserved for shops or storerooms and the upper floors for living space. Such buildings were known as insulae, literally ‘islands’, because they stood surrounded by narrow streets on all sides.
The living quarters were small, and were rented by the month. Normally one would find one family per room. The buildings possessed no toilets; people had to use public latrines in their part of the city or carry their excrement in pots to dumping holes. Water could be obtained from various points in the city, sometimes from wells or streams, but also from running water brought into the town through aquaducts.
There was no electricity, of course, and all cooking had to be done on small stoves. The windows had no glass. They could be closed off with wooden shutters to ward off rain or cold. At night light came from torches, oil lamps or candles. Contemporary writers tell us that the tenements were often overcrowded. Fire was a hazard. The buildings were often poorly constructed and so they frequently collapsed.
Ordinary people did not have many possessions. A typical family room would contain one or two beds covered by mattresses, a stove for cooking, some larger jars for storing water and food, simple utensils for eating and drinking, a few wooden stools to sit on and low, square tables for holding plates. People kept tools, a change of clothes and, perhaps, the family jewels, in a wooden box. Ladies would use phials, saucers and pins for their make-up.
 |
As I said earlier, the ground floor of any apartment building was usually reserved for shops and workshops. Some shops would sell wine, others oil, bread, vegetables and fruit. The cobbler would make sandals. Dressmakers would cut cloth. There were laundries and potteries, workplaces of dyers of cloth, coppersmiths and toolmakers. What is more, the workers and their families often lived in the shop.
Inside the room that served as a shop, a ladder would lead up to a ‘loft’, which was like an elevated shelf that ran along the wall over the door. On that loft the family would cook, eat and live. At night the entrance to the shop or workshop could be closed off with heavy wooden doors.
Living standards were not very high for ordinary people. However, we should not on that account underrate their strong intellectual interest, which characterised Hellenists, whether they were rich or poor. They could, if they so wished, attend occasional lectures in the city market or even borrow a book from the public library, if they were literate.
Even if higher learning was denied to the ordinary folk, cultural education was made up for by many public functions. Public meetings would offer speeches and discussions in which all citizens could take part. From time to time troupes of professional actors and actresses would visit the city to stage classical comedies and tragedies in the city theatre. Through magistrates on circuit from neighbouring towns, soldiers, travelling merchants and even tourists, people were continuously kept informed of what was happening in other parts of the world. The daily news could be heard in the basilicas, the market place, and the taverns in every part of the city.
Wealthier people, could afford to live in a proper ‘house’, which was called an oikia or oikos in Greek and a domus in Latin. (1) The best to way to imagine a ‘house’ is to think of it as a detached villa, its gate opening on to the street and with a garden at the back.
 |
Excavations in many hellenistic cities give us a good idea of what such a house looked like (see also the illustration on page 54). Through the front gate one entered a vestibule that led to the atrium, a small courtyard with a pond in the middle that was surrounded by colonnades. A hole in the middle of the roof over the atrium let rain water fall straight into the pond. In fact, the atrium with its four corridors around the pond, was like a parlour where guests would wait before they were admitted to the rich man’s lounge.
This lounge was known as the triclinium, the ‘dining room’. Couches surrounded the walls on three sides. During the day the owner of the house and his wife would receive visitors here. If they gave a banquet, food and drink would be served on low tables placed in front of the couches. This was the heart of the house, the public area for reception and entertainment.
Various other, smaller rooms, led off from the atrium. These were the private living rooms of the family; it was here that the children were kept and where the family would sleep. There were also service rooms, like a kitchen, a private latrine, store rooms, a bathroom, living quarters for slaves, and so on. If the owner was really well-to-do, his house would possess a private garden with spaces for walking and for sitting outside.
In the houses of the rich, utensils would be finely decorated. Curtains of damask would hang between pillars. Guests would recline on silk cushions. Refreshments would be served in silver cups. Mosaics would adorn the floor and frescoes the walls. The family treasures, such as objects of bronze and marble statues, would be displayed in prominent places; usually in the atrium and the triclinium.
Corinth had a residential quarter for the rich known as the Craneum. But space there was restricted so some rich people converted the whole ground floor of an appartment building into an oikos, the space normally occupied by shops. Such a ‘house’ would be complete with an atrium, triclinium and so on. The apartments of the poor were owned by the rich.
In the morning the owner of the house would receive his ‘clients’. These were people who depended on his generosity and his business. Contemporary records show that clients often spent a considerable time visiting their rich patrons (2) in the morning. After this, the householder might have a discussion with his steward, the economus, about matters relating to house or staff. He might then decide to go out, perhaps carried on a palanquin, to inspect an estate or a business enterprise.
The rich could also spend more time on leisure activities such as wrestling, discus throwing and horse racing. In the evening the owner and his wife might entertain guests at home or go out to visit a magistrate or a powerful friend.
As we shall see later, it was in the houses of well-to-do families that the early Christians used to meet because only in such houses was there enough room for larger groups to assemble.
 |
Maintaining a house required staff: cooks, cleaners, nurses, guards and bearers. All such domestic servants were resident slaves, or slaves who lived in hovels nearby. Someone’s ‘house’ referred not only to a building but to all who lived in the house, slaves as well as relatives. In this sense Paul can say:
‘I baptised the house of Stephanas’. (1 Corinthians 1,16.)
‘You know the house of Stephanas. They were the first converts in Achaia. They have given themselves to the service of Christians. I urge you to follow the leadership of such people. (1 Corinthians 16, 15-16.)
Slavery probably came about as the result of war. The victors of conquest made the people they captured work for them. In the Graeco-Roman Empire, wars continued to be the main source of acquiring slaves, at least until the time of Emperor Augustus. The military expeditions of the Romans, like those of the Greeks before them, always resulted in tens of thousands of captured slaves being brought home and being sold on the cities’ markets.
Slaves provided cheap labour and thus became an important economic factor. They were used in their thousands wherever hard work was required: as carriers and stone cutters in the mines, as farmhands on large estates, as oarsmen in the state galleons, as dock workers in the harbours and as domestic slaves in the homes of the wealthy. In hellenistic cities up to a third of the population may have been slaves.
Slaves belonged totally to their masters. They were property, not people, as far as the law was concerned. Slaves could be used in any way their masters dictated. The Roman statesman Marcus Porcius Cato, for instance, bluntly advised the owners of large estates that it was more profitable to use slaves fully for a number of years and then finish them off, rather than have to look after them in old age.
Slaves could be tortured, mutilated, even flogged to death. (3)
Of course, wise masters would keep their slaves healthy and domestic slaves who nursed the children and helped educate them, might become real friends of the family. Relationships were not always hostile, therefore, and some slaves and their families may have profited from the good fortune and kindness of their masters.
Moreover, since free citizens objected to doing work under supervision, the jobs of managers, stewards, administrators, and so on were also entrusted to slaves; which gave some of them a measure of responsibility and standing.
However, at the end of the day, slaves, even intelligent and dear ones, were just property. When their master died, they would be inherited or sold off like any other asset the master had owned.
Later on, in chapter seven of this book, we will consider slavery once more from the point of view of the ideology that made it possible. Here we will restrict ourselves to their economic aspect. On the scale of human prosperity the slaves were right at the bottom. They could not own anything. No more care was bestowed on them than was required to keep them alive. Everything a slave, whether man or woman, might have to sleep on was a piece of cloth spread out on the floor; and even that did not belong to them.
We have seen in the previous chapter that the forma- tion of capital is an necessary requirement for economic progress. But capital can also become a tool for personal ad- vancement at the expense of others. It was wealth that divided the people of Corinth into masters, workers and slaves. And that is still the case today. Owning or not owning property, or how much property one owns, is still the main factor that divides people.
What did Jesus say about this?
The market economy had also come to Palestine. It even affected the countryside of Galilee. Many of the farms in the villages were owned by city landlords and were managed by stewards on their behalf. (4)
In his parables Jesus mentions examples that reflect people’s everyday struggle to survive.
This economic realism is brought out especially in the Gospel of Luke. This need not surprise us. Luke wrote for ((5) hellenist converts and he knew their condition only too well. People in the cities thought in terms of money. Luke carefully selected the sayings of Jesus that have an economic edge and moulded them into a coherent set of Christian ‘economics’.
To begin with, notice the importance of capital. Think of the parable of the talents. (6) A king entrusts a capital of one talent each to ten of his courtiers. When he returns, he expects the capital to have yielded profits. By a policy of good investment one courtier has increased his initial capital to ten talents; another one to five. Both are rewarded. One courtier who has not made any profit incurs the king’s anger.
‘You know I am a hard man. I take what isn’t mine and reap what I haven’t sown.
Why then didn’t you put my money in the bank?
Then I would have received it back with interest on my return.
And Jesus draws this amazing lesson from the parable:
I tell you: to every person who owns property, more will be given. But as to a person who owns nothing, even the little he has will be taken away from him!
Obviously, Jesus applies the parable to the capital of life, to everything God gives to us. But the underlying economic principle of which Jesus was aware and from which he draws lessons, is taken for granted: enterpreneurs use capital to make more capital.
A man who wants to build a ‘tower’, which could well mean: a building with more stories, needs to sit down and calculate whether he has the capital to finish the job. (7) The crooked manager who is going to be sacked by the landowner, tampers with the credit notes of the tenants to become their friend. (8) Jesus does not justify the corrupt behaviour of shrewd businessmen, but he observes it and draws the conclusion that the disciples should be equally determined and ambitious in promoting God’s Kingdom.
The children of this world are more astute in handling their affairs than the children of light. (Luke 16,8.)
Given that our world is divided into haves and have-nots, what Christian response does Luke suggest in his Gospel? I believe it can be summarised in three principles.
1. Respect the poor. God is on their side.
This is quite a startling pronouncement. It overthrows the way people normally favour the rich and ignore the poor.
‘Blessed are you who are poor. The Kingdom of God belongs to you!
Blessed are you who are hungry now, for your hunger will be stilled! ....
But woe to you who are rich. You have enjoyed your comforts!
Woe to you who have plenty of food now, for you shall hunger!’ (Luke 6,20-25.)
In God’s sight all people are equal. Since it is the poor who suffer, God takes their side. In his Kingdom they are not the underdogs, but the people who will benefit most from its spiritual gifts.
To underline God’s radical stand, Luke describes how Jesus himself shared the life of the poor. When Mary was about to give birth to him, there was no place for them in the inn. Jesus was born in a stable and laid in a manger. When God wanted people to know about the birth of the Saviour, he announced the news to shepherds, the poorest people in Bethlehem. (9)
At the presentation in the Temple, Mary and Joseph offer two turtledoves, the sacrifice prescribed for the poor. (10) Moreover, Jesus himself lived as a poor worker: he was just a handyman in the small hamlet of Nazareth. (11) To characterise his mission Jesus quotes the words of Isaiah: ‘God has chosen me to bring good news to poor people’. (12) To crown it all, Jesus dies on the cross, a punishment usually inflicted on slaves.
In a place like Corinth, these were revolutionary ideas. ‘I preach Christ crucified’, Paul said, ‘a scandal to Jews and a stupid thing for Hellenists’. (13) But there were practical consequences. In the Christian community all had to be respected, even workers and slaves.
From Paul’s first letter to the Christians of Corinth we can infer that a problem had arisen concerning the eucharist.
The Christians used to gather as small groups in two or three places in the city, perhaps in the houses of Crispus, Stephanas and Gaius. From time to time all of them, ‘the whole Church’, would come together and their place of assembly seems to have been the house of Gaius. (14) Christians numbered at least fifty people at the time.
What must have happened is the following. Before the time appointed for the Eucharist, Gaius and his wife may have invited the richer members of the community to a meal in the triclinium, which, as was explained above, held about nine couches. When the others arrived, the families of the workers and the slaves, they were probably made to wait in the atrium.
Hungry and tired after a day’s work, they would see and smell the dishes enjoyed by the privileged group. When the rich had finished eating, the tables would be cleared away and the rest of the community would be herded in to start the Eucharist. It led to real discrimination and Paul was furious about it.
 |
‘When you come together as a group, it is not the Lord’s Supper that you eat. No, each one goes ahead with his own meal. Some are hungry, while others get drunk. Haven’t you got your own homes in which to eat and drink? Or do you hold God’s community in contempt and humiliate those who have nothing? What shall I say to you? Shall I praise you? I certainly will not!’1 Cor. 11, 20-22.
Paul then goes on to say that this kind of behaviour is an offence to Jesus, in whose new covenant we have part when we eat his body and drink his blood. People have to eat at home and wait for each other as brothers and sisters of the same family. Christ will condemn whoever acts differently. (15)
Given the enormous social gap between the rich and the poor in hellenistic society, it must have been difficult for Christians to realise the new equality brought about by Christ. From this excerpt in the Letter of James we can fathom to some extent the revolutionary implications of treating the poor with equal respect.
‘Suppose a man comes into your assembly dressed in expensive clothes and wearing a gold ring. A poor man, dressed in rags, also enters. If you show more respect to the well-dressed man and say to him: ‘Have this place of honour’, while you tell the poor man: ‘Stand over there’ or ‘Sit on the floor by my feet’, don’t you then make distinctions among yourselves, setting yourselves up as judges of people, yes, as judges with warped standards?’ (James 2,2-4.)(16)
2. Wealth is a dangerous thing. Money corrupts.
People who have riches may fall prey to them. Money can so easily become an idol which people worship instead of God. (17) That is why we should get our priorities right.
*‘How hard it is for the wealthy to enter the Kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to slip through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter God’s Kingdom.’( Luke 18,24-26 see also 8,14.)
* ‘Make yourselves purses that don’t wear out. Lay up your treasure in heaven where it will not devalue, and where neither thieves can steal it nor moths destroy it. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.’ (Luke 12,33-34.)
What can happen to rich people is presented by Jesus in two graphic images. One is that of a rich landowner who builds new barns to hold a bountiful harvest and who dreams of having years of pleasure and enjoyment. He dies that same night. (18) The other concerns a millionaire who enjoys life day after day without bothering about a poor beggar, Lazarus, on his doorstep. Only when it is too late, after death, he realises his mistake. (19)
At first, when rich people were converted, they were invited to ‘sell all their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor’. (20) This, however, could not realistically be expected from everybody. The least that was demanded, was justice. It is stated most clearly in John the Baptist’s response to tax collectors. They had asked him: ‘What shall we do?’, assuming, perhaps, that he would tell them to give up their profession. But he simply stated: ‘Do not collect more than is your due’. And soldiers received the ruling: ‘Do not take money from people by force or on a fraudulent claim. Be content with your wages.’ (21)
3. Invest your money in doing good to people.
Wealth is a resource that can benefit the community. If we look on money in terms of investment and profitable returns, it is its spiritual and charitable returns that should count most.
 |
‘When you give a dinner or a banquet, don’t invite your friends, your relatives or rich neighbours, for they will invite you back, and so you will be repaid for what you did. No, when you give a feast, invite the poor, the handicapped, the lame and the blind. Then you will be blessed because they cannot repay you. God will repay you on the day when he will raise up the just.’ (Luke 14,12-14.) (22)
Consider also Jesus’ advice that we should make friends for ourselves with ‘the money which can do so much evil’ so that when money fails (that is: when we die), those friends will welcome us into their eternal home. (23)
It is not only the rich who should learn to use their money well. Jesus praises the poor widow for contributing two small coins to the Temple. ‘Out of her poverty she has given all she possessed! (24) The Samaritan who rescues the Jew who was robbed and wounded by criminals on the desert road to Jericho, is just an ordinary man. But he promises to refund the inn- keeper for any money spent on behalf of the injured man.’ (25)
Everyone is expected to use his money with the new priorities in mind. But the richer we are, the heavier the obliga- tion that rests on us. ‘Much will be required from the person to who much has been given’. (26)
We should read the story of Zaccheus against the background of the principles we have just studied. Tax collec- tors were hated by the Jews not only because they often abused their powers and blackmailed the people into paying them bribes. Since they worked for the Romans, they were considered part of the whole system of foreign oppression. If some Jews even doubted whether they were allowed in conscience to pay taxes to a pagan Emperor, (27) it can be surmised what people thought of tax collectors who had made this their living.
Zaccheus was the chief collector of taxes in Jericho. It probably meant that collecting taxes from the whole area had been contracted out to him by the Romans and that he subcontracted parts of it to others. He was a wealthy man who possessed a real oikos in hellenistic style. We can be sure that he had adopted the comforts and way of life of the Greeks. It was this, even more than tax fraud, that made the scribes angry about Jesus’ visit to Zaccheus’ house. ‘He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner’. (28)
Jesus accepts Zaccheus and does not require him to change his hellenistic life style or to give up his job. But he does demand a new attitude to wealth. And Zaccheus responds.
‘See, Lord, half of my property I give to the poor. And if I have taken money from anyone unjustly, I will restore it fourfold.’
This is truly a generous response. The restitution required by the Old Testament was one-fifth of the unjust gain added to the amount. (29) Zaccheus promises to return the unjust gain four times over. And he will distribute half his wealth to the poor. This was the kind of response that pleased Jesus.
1. In their pastoral letter Economic Justice for All (Washington 1986) the RC Bishops of the USA laid down principles such as these:
*Vigorous action should be undertaken to remove barriers to full and equal employment for women and minorities.
*Self-help efforts among the poor should be fostered by programs and policies in both the private and public sectors.
*The tax system should be continually evaluated in terms of its impact on the poor.
*All of society should make a much stronger commitment to education for the poor.
*Welfare programs should provide recipients with adequate levels of support.
Was taking such a stand the Bishops’ duty, or interference with government and politics?
2. Comment on Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 8,9:
The Lord Jesus was rich, but he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.
3. What are the consequences of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7,29-31?
4. Paul gives practical admonitions on how people should contribute to the community’s common funds in 2 Corinthians 8,11- 15 and 9,6-9.
Can you put his advice into your own words?
1. The word ‘economy’ stems from this; originally it meant the art of running a household.
2.Our words ‘patron’, ‘patronage’ and ‘to patronise’ derive from this relationship.
3. Occasionally legislation was brought in to curb excesses by masters. The Lex Petronia (19 AD) forbade masters to send slaves into the arena without government permission. Claudius (41-54 AD) decreed that masters could not kill their sick slaves. Domitian (81 -96 AD) prohibited the castration of slaves. Antoninus Pius (138 - 161 AD) confirmed that the killing of a slave was homicide, but Constantine (306-337 AD) absolved the master if the slave died as the result of flogging.
4. References to this can be seen in Matthew 11,8; 18,23-34; Luke 14,18; 16,1-9; 19,11-27. For a description of the economic situation in Galilee at Jesus’ time, read J.WIJNGAARDS, My Galilee, My People, London 1990, pp. 146-158.
| 5. Luke 1,1-4. | 6. Luke 19,11-27. | 7. Luke 14,28-30. | 8. Luke 16,1-9. | 9. Luke 2,1-20. |
| 10. Luke 2,24; see Leviticus 5,7. | 11. Matthew 13,53-56. |
| 12. Luke 4,18; see Isaiah 61,1-2. | 13. 1 Corinthians 1,23. |
14. Romans 16,23: ‘Gaius who is host to me and to the whole Church, greets you.’ Paul wrote the letter to the Romans from Corinth.
15. 1 Corinthians 11,17-34; J.MURPHY-O’CONNOR, St.Paul’s Corinth, Wilmington 1990, pp. 153-161.
16. James 2,2-4. It is interesting to find the following guideline in the oldest collection of Church laws, the Didascalia Apostolorum (Syria 250 AD): ‘When a poor man or a poor woman enters the assembly and there seems to be no place for that person, give up your own place, O Bishop, with all your heart, even if you yourself will then need to sit on the floor. In this way you will avoid being a respecter of persons and your service will please God’; see E.H.ACHELIS and J.FLEMING, Texte und Untersuchungen, Neue Folge X, Leipzig 1904, pp. 19-21.
| 17. Luke 16,13. | 18. Luke 12,13-21. | 19. Luke 16,19-31. |
20. Luke 12,33; 18,22. In certain Christian communities, like in the Church at Jerusalem, people would sell their properties and give the proceeds to a common fund; see Acts 2,44-45; 4,34-36.
21. Luke 3,13-14.
22. Luke 14,12-14. The Early Christians took this advice literally. When St.Lawrence (martyred in 258 AD) was summoned to produce the treasures of the Christian community, he brought into court the crippled and blind beggars of Rome.
| 23. Luke 16,9-11. | 24. Luke 21,1-4. | 25. Luke 10,35. |
| 26. Luke 12,48. | 27. Luke 20,22. | 28. Luke 19,1-10. |
29. Leviticus 6,5; Numbers 5,7.