{"id":18208,"date":"2016-06-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=2988"},"modified":"2016-06-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T00:00:00","slug":"treasure-in-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/06\/treasure-in-heaven\/","title":{"rendered":"Treasure in Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

J<\/span>esus can be an embarrassment, not least to disciples. Peter Brown points to an example in his recent The Ransom of the Soul<\/em><\/a>, Jesus\u2019s statement to the rich young ruler to \u201cgo and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.\u201d Brown has found few studies that take up the point, and notes that those who do do their best to neutralize its obvious meaning: \u201cKlaus Koch insisted that, when Jesus spoke of \u2018treasure in heaven,\u2019 he must have meant something very different from the meanings that came to be attached to it in later centuries. Belief in the direct accumulation of treasure in heaven through almsgiving on earth . . . was dismissed by Koch: It was \u2018fur den Protestanten eine abscheuliche Vorstellung<\/em>\u2018\u2014\u2018a notion abhorrent to any Protestant\u2019\u201d (28). Catholics and Jews express similar reservations. An inscription at the tomb of bishop Hilary of Arles states that the bishop had \u201cbought up heaven with earthly gifts.\u201d Brown writes, \u201cThe editors of a 2001 catalog of early Christian monuments of Arles suggested, somewhat timidly, that such a phrase might strike a modern person as \u2018a formula which certain of us . . . would not doubt have found somewhat abrupt or heretical.\u2019\u201d Commenting on a story of the Jewish King Monobazos, who spent his family fortune on the poor of Jerusalem, Ephraim Urbach looked in vain for \u201ctraces of a more refined doctrine . . . [some] sublimation of the materialistic simile of collecting treasures above through squandering them below\u2019\u201d (29). Gary Anderson\u2019s Charity: The Place of the Poor in the Biblical Tradition<\/em><\/a>, Brown notes, is one of the few studies to take Jesus quite at His word (28).<\/p>\n

Brown finds no trace of such side-stepping embarrassment in early Christian texts, and wonders \u201cWhy is it that a way of speaking of the relation between heaven and earth that late antique and medieval Christians took for granted seems to very alien to us? Perhaps it is we who are strange\u201d (29).<\/p>\n

Searching for an explanation for this disparity, he points to John Parry\u2019s observation that \u201ceconomic transactions [have] become increasingly differentiated from other types of social relation\u201d in the modern world, with the result that \u201cthe transactions appropriate to each become ever more polarized in terms of their symbolism and ideology\u201d (29). Religious and economic exchanges exist in realms so distinct that we are virtually \u201cunable to imagine the mechanisms by which they are joined\u201d (quoted, 30). These are not entirely modern attitudes. Brown observes that \u201cancient philosophers, from Socrates onward, made a clear distinction between ordinary exchanges for ordinary goods and the existence of goods so precious and nourishing to the mind and soul . . . that they would be tarnished and diminished by being connected in any way with mere money\u201d (30). Early Christians were aware of this tradition, but stuck with the biblical \u201cimages of the transfer of treasure from earth to heaven and of the preparation of heavenly mansions through regular almsgiving.\u201d They believed, in Anderson\u2019s words, that alms \u201callowed the individual to enact the miracle of God\u2019s grace\u201d in a small scale on earth (31).<\/p>\n

In Brown\u2019s summary, the early Christians didn\u2019t think of the heavenly treasure house as a mere bank account, storing their goods for future use. Rather, by giving alms Christians \u201cbrought together two zones of the imagination that common sense held apart.\u201d And if heaven and earth might be joined by the miracle of charity, perhaps all other divisions might also be overcome through generosity, including the division between rich and poor: \u201cIt tingled with the sense that almsgiving created a bridge over a chasm that was as vertiginous as that which separated earth and heaven, and human beings from God\u201d (32).<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesus can be an embarrassment, not least to disciples. Peter Brown points to an example in his recent The Ransom of the Soul, Jesus\u2019s statement to the rich young ruler to \u201cgo and sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.\u201d Brown has found few studies that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[955,1599],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charity","category-heavenly-treasure"],"yoast_head":"\nTreasure in Heaven<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jesus can be an embarrassment, not least to disciples. 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