Christian Ethics by Georgia Harkness Part 2. Problems of Social Decision
Chapter 8: The Ethics of Economic Life
1. The economic ethics of the New Testament
As has been noted, Jesus had very little to say about specific social institutions of any kind. His concern was chiefly with individuals in their person-to-person, face-to-face relationships. Therefore in his recorded words there is less to be found about the structures of economic life than about the family. There is, for example, nothing comparable to Matt. 19: 5-6 to undergird a particular economic system as this passage does monogamous marriage.
Throughout the letters of Paul and in other parts of the New Testament there are scattered economic references, such as the obligation to work in self-support and not become a burden to others (II Thess. 3:6-12) and the injunction to slaves to obey their masters with due docility (Col.
3:22; Eph. 6:5; Tit. 2:9). Yet there is no clear focusing on any social system as good or evil, a fact which made it possible for slavery to go unchallenged by Christians for many centuries. In the prophets there is a much more direct reference to the evils of economic exploitation with repeated, ringing denunciations of it. It is to Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, and Micah that we are most apt to turn for the biblical foundations of social and economic justice.
There are a number of reasons why the New Testament is relatively so silent at this point. First, there is the fact that the Christian message
centers so largely in faith and love that justice in social relations tends to be overshadowed. In the gospel of redemption there is no
overlooking of divine justice. But in the call to love one’s neighbor and even one’s enemy, to pray for one’s persecutor and to accept injury with nonresistance, to give freely and beyond necessity to those in need, the emphasis lies on uncalculating love and not on the correction of unjust systems or the punishment of evildoers. This note in Jesus was carried on into the early Church with the further emphasis on accepting Christ and finding new life in him as all-important.
In the second place, eschatology permeates the ethics of the New Testament. For reasons given in Chapter 4, the expectancy of a speedy end of the existing world scene did not basically pervert the ethical insights of the early Church, and still less those of Jesus. But it did foreshorten the perspective and divert attention away from social systems to the individual soul. Since it was the Christian believer, and he alone, who would dwell with God in his eternal kingdom, it was the soul alone that mattered. This attitude survived long after the passing of apocalyptic expectations and has not yet been surrendered.
A third factor explains at least in part the keener social conscience of the prophets as contrasted with the early Christians.
No Christian writer of the New Testament, so far as our records reveal, ever faced the responsibility of applying high moral principles to
preserving the institutions of society, administering governments,
handling international relationships, prosecuting social reforms, or even mitigating by public measures the inequities of an economic system.1 Their life as an "odd sect" with the simplest of economic pursuits within occupied territory did not give occasion for such responsibility. The prophets as the challengers and advisers of kings in a State struggling for political survival and economic power were much closer to the perennial problems of social injustice and conflict than were the relatively detached early Christians.
Yet Jesus stood in the succession of the prophets, and there is danger of overstressing the fact that he said nothing about economic systems.
From his words and spirit has come a challenge that has persistently affected the economic order. Not only does the love commandment have a bearing on property as well as every other social issue, but in unequivocal terms he denounced some tendencies still very prevalent in
modern economic life.2
There is nothing clearer in the message of Jesus than his indictment of acquisitiveness, and the putting of one’s trust in material rather than spiritual goods. Again and again this note is sounded. "You cannot serve God and mammon." (Matt. 6.24.) "A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." (Luke 12:15.) "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in
heaven." (Matt. 6:19.) To lay up treasures on earth without being rich toward God is to follow the foolish way of the rich man who, thinking he had goods laid up for many years, heard the inescapable decree,
"Fool! This night your soul is required of you" (Luke 12:16-21).
Jesus was very forthright as to the perils of riches. He did not hesitate to condemn in stinging terms those who "cleanse the outside of the cup and of the plate, but inside they are full of extortion and rapacity." In his reference to the camel and the needle’s eye, it is hardly likely that he denied all access to the Kingdom to the rich, but this arresting
hyperbole states with great vividness the spiritual dangers and
temptations of wealth. Yet this does not mean that he thought lightly of the material foundations of life. "Give us this day our daily bread"
undoubtedly means material, not spiritual bread; and in the passage in the Sermon on the Mount in which he warns against overanxiety as to what one will eat or drink or wear, it is significant that he nowhere indicates that these are unimportant. So important, indeed, are they that
"your heavenly Father knows that you need them all" (Matt. 6:32).
Such passages indicate a perspective on the part of Jesus which puts material goods in their proper place as the instrument, and not the end, of man’s existence. Out of them has come an impulse within
Christianity toward honesty in the acquisition and philanthropy in the use of economic goods which through the centuries has had great social influence, and which ought never to be disparaged or lost. Our chief lack has been, not in directive principles from Jesus, but in the scope of their application by Christians.
As has been noted repeatedly, it is not alone from specific words that we get our directives, but from the total spirit of Jesus in his estimate of the worth of persons to God. As a fuller awareness of this became prevalent among Christians, the scope of economic concern broadened.
It was seen that economic conditions affect vitally every person and the
whole man; hence they must be a Christian concern. It gradually became — or is becoming — recognized that personal integrity and Christian giving to those in need will not meet the full requirement of the Christian ethic. We have today problems more complex than those of any previous age, but we have also a fuller sense of Christian
obligation in and to a "responsible society."