For Christians, the question of government is how the church should understand the lordship of Christ in regard to earthly powers. If Jesus Christ is “King of the ages” (1 Tim. 1:17) and “King of kings and Lord of lords” (Rev. 19:16), and if “he disarmed the rulers and authorities . . . triumphing over them” (Col. 2:15), what does this mean for Christian living with respect to civil and political authorities? The question of government can, of course, be directed internally to the spiritual life of persons. So, for instance, Ignatius of Loyola describes his spiritual exercises as being for “the ordering of one’s life,” and a Charles Wesley hymn describes the believer as “govern’d by the word of truth.” When focused on external aspects, how-ever—the relation to Christ of those authorities who administer the law, execute judgment and punishment, collect taxes, and so on (see Rom. 13:1; 1 Pet. 2:13)—the question of government is contentious from almost every conceivable angle.
New Testament Texts
An initial problem is the seeming inconsistency of NT texts. Paul’s instructions to his audience in Rom. 13:1-7 to “be subject to the governing authorities” because they are “God’s servants” sit uneasily with texts that appear to designate earthly rulers as destroyers of the earth who set themselves for destruction (e.g., Rev. 6:15-17; 18:9-10).
Some NT texts affirm the need for earthly government to deal with wrongdoers and repeat the injunction to believers to be subject to rulers and authorities (e.g., Titus 3:1; 1 Pet. 2:13-19). In the Gospels, Jesus’ reply to the Pharisees and Herodi-ans about the payment of taxes implies that some kind of earthly rule is part of the universal human experience of divine providence: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s” (Mark 12:17 pars.). Jesus gives little ground to the Zealot politics of violence (John 18:11; cf. Luke 22:3538), implying instead that earthly government has a justifiable place within divine providence. He appears to accept the right of government to expect its citizens to meet certain obligations for the sake of good order. The saying in Mark 12:17 depends for its effectiveness on a distinction between the limited jurisdiction of earthly government and the supreme authority of God.
By contrast, other texts call the churches to oppose the “beast rising out of the sea” (Rev. 13:1) and the harlot of Babylon (Rev. 19:2), two figures commonly understood to represent the political tyranny and economic exploitation of Rome. Paul describes civil magistrates as those considered to be “of no account” in the church (1 Cor. 6:4). Earthly government is “doomed to perish” (1 Cor. 2:6). His presentation of Jesus Christ as almost an anti-Caesar, the promise of whose coming again in glory carries a huge political charge, seems to delegitimate rather than legitimate earthly government. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, notes Jacob Taubes, opens with a declaration of Jesus Christ as “Son of God with power” (Rom. 1:4). This is reminiscent of Ps. 2, an enthronement psalm: “You are my son. . . . Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession” (Ps. 2:7-8). Such allusions, Taubes says, present the gospel as a declaration of war against Rome; Jesus’ political order is universal but based on love and forgiveness, not law or ethnicity.
Methodological Issues
Also contentious are methodological claims about how to address the topic. Biblical scholars are sometimes so suspicious of the motives hidden in the politics of biblical texts that it becomes difficult, even impossible, to ask questions about their meaning today. Some, for instance, probe the extent to which parts of the Pentateuch, the Deuteronomic literature, and even the psalms are propaganda documents for the Davidic empire, Aaronide priests, or other interest groups (P. R. Davies; Keith Whitelam). Feminists remind us of the missing voices (e.g., women, ethnic minorities, people of low social class) in documentation that justifies the scope of secular government and recounts its history (Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza). Some literary scholars draw our attention to how biblical accounts of the possession and rule of the promised land have legitimized violent forms of secular government (Regina Schwarz). All remind us that any account of government is likely to be constructed from the point of view of those who made it. Biblical texts about government must be examined in terms of self-interest and power; interpretation is vulnerable always to ideological abuse.
Issues in Western Christian Tradition A further thread of contention requires comment. It concerns government as “either/or” or “both/ and” (1) a consequence of sin and (2) integral to the state of nature before the fall and directive toward the good. Unfortunately, the Latin West did not always hold these two meanings (or ministries) of government together adequately and tended to fall into dichotomized ways of thinking with far-reaching consequences for relations between the church and earthly powers.
Augustine, and some later Protestant traditions, tended to view earthly government as comprising measures to curtail the corruption of human nature, essentially coercive, law-based, and focused on punishment and restraint of the wicked. Augustine speaks of government in terms of the checking of anger and restraint of lust: “This is accomplished only by compulsion and struggle [cohibendo et repugnando]: it is not a healthy, natural process [ex natura], but, thanks to guilt, a weary one” (Civ. 14.19).
Thomas Aquinas, and some later Roman Catholic traditions, tended to view earthly government as, potentially at least, an expression of human nature in its goodness. Arguing from final causes, Thomas emphasizes the true role of earthly government as directive, in the sense of ordering those governed toward the ultimate end (Gk. telos) of created existence in God:
For as “it belongs to the best to produce the best,” it is
not fitting that the supreme goodness of God should
produce things without giving them their perfection.
Now a thing’s ultimate perfection consists in the attainment of its end. Therefore it belongs to the Divine goodness, as it brought things into existence, so to lead them to their end: and this is to govern. (ST I, q. 103,
a. 1, sed contra)
The aim of the common good necessitates political dominion. The natural order as established by God in the universe requires this directive influence.
That Thomas Aquinas drew frequently on Augustine indicates that differences between them are not as deep as sometimes implied (e.g., ST I, q. 96, a. 4). John Calvin (1509-64) later insists that the tasks and burdens of civil government are both necessitated by sin and integral to the “order established by God” (Institutes 4.21.1). Yet the contrast recalls much about the politics of Western Christianity in the Middle Ages, notably the power struggles between the papacy and the Holy Roman emperors in the eleventh and twelfth centuries about the investiture of bishops and popes (i.e., whether the pope had the power to depose the Catholic rulers of medieval Europe) and the “two realms” or “two swords” theologies that tended to separate church and state.
“Two realms” or “two swords” theology often is associated especially with Martin Luther’s An Open Letter to the Christian Nobility (1520), in which his attempts to disentangle Christianity from “theopapacy,” or supremacy of church over the state, gave a relative autonomy to civil authorv ity in its checking and punishment of the wicked. His clear distinction between the day-to-day roles and responsibilities of spiritual and temporal authorities echoes Augustine’s supposition that need for political dominion arose with the requirements of temporal peace and felicity amid resentment, murder, and destruction (Civ. 15.3-4).
Eastern Orthodoxy
Nor has Eastern Orthodoxy always negotiated these tensions well. Its theology of government is sometimes difficult to disentangle from a complex history of the supremacy of the state over the church, exemplified by the subordination of the Russian Orthodox Church to the state in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, beginning with the reforms of Peter I. The concept of symphonia, however, a mutuality of submission and cooperation, remains a guiding aspiration. Emperor Justinian’s Novella 6 (535) spoke of the blessings of both as flowing from the same divine source. The Epanagoge, or legal compendium from the Byzantine era (867-1056), written probably by Patriarch Photius I, described this symphonia of priestly and imperial earthly government as comparable to the harmony of body and soul.
This relationship never existed in a pure form. At the least, however, and in similarity to aspects of Augustinian and Thomist theology, it offers a way to conceive of the tension between coercive and directive modes of government.
The Powers That Be
Today, a pressing issue that remains for Christians thinking about government is why many were silent when the Nazi regime took over the church in the early 1930s. Ernst Kasemann, a NT scholar critical of the church’s weakness before Nazism, warned that Rom. 13:1-7 can open doors “not only to conservative but also to reactionary views even to the point of political fanaticism” (Kasemann 354). Uncritical evaluations of other texts might also risk an apparent licensing of acquiescence in the face of tyranny. Old Testament traditions of theocracy (1 Sam. 8), Israelite acceptance of kings only when divinely anointed (2 Sam. 1:14; 1 Kgs. 1:39; 2 Kgs. 11:12), and affirmations such as “By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just; by me rulers rule, and nobles, all who govern rightly” (Prov. 8:15-16) might be deemed susceptible to this kind of interpretation.
Possible responses include “intertextual moves” that relativize one text against others, and “evaluative moves” that ask the reader to derive criteria from the entire canon by which to distinguish good government from bad. Some NT scholars in South Africa, for instance, have urged awareness of how reading a biblical text is an event that gives rise to choices with respect to the reading of extrabiblical texts (e.g., the Kairos Document [1985]) and questionable political situations. Bernard Lat-egan draws attention to Paul’s phrase “because of conscience” (Rom. 13:5) and explores how the ambiguity of the words and imaginative involvement of the reader in moving between the text and present-day contexts become the stimulus for evaluative judgments (Lategan 166-68). This approach reminds readers that, in liberal democratic societies especially, the governed bear some responsibility for their government.
Another related response is to read contested NT texts through a contextual political lens and draw links between the Roman Empire and government today. Richard Horsley, for example, has emphasized how Paul’s proclamation of the gospel placed the corrupt Roman imperial order under the judgment of God and thus attracted opposition and imprisonment (Acts 17:7; 1 Cor. 2:6-8; 6:1-4; 15:24; Phil. 1:7; 2:17; 1 Thess. 1:10; 2:2). His point is that Paul’s challenge with respect to the imperial cult and the kind of paganism that it entailed puts questions to present-day readers about objects of worship and loyalty. Some, such as Walter Wink, urge readers to see J esus’ message of liberation as an invitation to name, unmask, and critically engage the “powers that be” today.
Principalities and Powers
Easy to overlook these days is the extent to which NT texts are colored by the cosmic dimensions of Christ’s subjection of “the powers” (1 Cor. 15:24; Eph. 1:20-22; 3:10; 6:11-12; Col. 1:16; 2:8-10, 15; 1 Pet. 3:22). First-century readers were familiar with the spirit world of the OT (e.g., 1 Sam. 28:7-8; Isa. 24:21; Dan. 10:1-9), Near Eastern cosmology, Greco-Roman astrology and belief in daimones, emperor deities, and so on. Note the multiple references to Christ’s lordship over the spiritual powers of the universe (e.g., Rom. 8:38; 1 Cor. 15:24-27; Eph. 6:12; Phil. 2:10). A central aspect of NT discussion of government is precisely this victory. In 1 Cor. 6:2, for instance, believers at Corinth are reminded that the saints will judge the world and its angels. That Jesus Christ is an agent of cosmic history and not merely a teacher of moral precepts is a core NT witness.
So what? Twenty-first-century political theologians are unlikely to win a serious hearing with arguments based on a cosmic struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. Present-day readers are not likely to conceive of these powers as angels, daimones, or deities. Arguably, however, there remain quasi-metaphysical (suprapersonal) realities behind the government(s) that citizens experience, not least of which are spiritual battles with objects of worship other than the triune God. Despite different ways of making sense of their rhetoric, biblical texts resist retreat from theological questions about the spiritual powers behind structures of government (perhaps the veneration of material goods, market forces, and the accumulation of capital) and insist that disciples of Christ engage with earthly structures of government wary of “the elemental spirits of the universe . . . not according to Christ” (Col. 2:8).
Provisional Observations
From this difficult history, three important areas of agreement may be discerned. First, earthly government is at no time unrelated to the history of redemption. Neither Pharaoh (Rom. 9:17) nor Herod nor Pontius Pilate (Acts 4:27) was beyond the scope of divine providence. Cyrus, the Persian ruler, is nothing less than the Lord’s “anointed” with a role in the redemption of the people of Israel (Isa. 45:1). A limited deference to political powers is often assumed in biblical texts due, we may suppose, to the necessary tasks of government that they perform.
Second, earthly government is integral to the “all things” (Gk. ta panta) that will be subject to Christ (Matt. 25:31-35; 1 Cor. 15:24-28) and are already “under his feet” (Eph. 1:22). As eschatological judge who will judge all nations, the Son of Man assumes a role that elsewhere in Scripture belongs to Yahweh Elohim (Zech. 14:5); the peoples and those in government will be judged according to the good or evil they have done with respect to welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, and much more.
Third, the divine origin and destiny of earthly government obligate Christian people to pray for its peace and order and for its rulers (1 Tim. 2:1-2). God delights when the steps of his peoples are “ordered” (Ps. 37:23 [kUn, meaning “directed aright” or “made steady”]; cf. Isa. 9:7; 1 Cor. 14:40 [kata taxis]). The Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom, widely used in orthodoxy since the fifth century, and many other liturgies around the world pray for those in public service that they may “govern in peace,” and that through the faithful conduct of their duties the faithful may live serenely and in holiness.
See also Anabaptist Ethics; Authority and Power; Civil Disobedience; Lutheran Ethics; Orthodox Ethics; Political Ethics; Powers and Principalities; Resistance Movements
Bibliography
Horsley, R., ed. Paul and the Imperial Roman Order. Trinity Press International, 2004; Kasemann, E. Commentary on Romans. Trans. and ed. G. Bromiley. Eerdmans, 1980; Lategan, B. “Reception: Theory and Practice in Reading Romans 13.” Pages 145-70 in Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament, ed. P. Hartin and J. Petzer. NTTS 15. Brill, 1991; McConville, J. God and Earthly Power: An Old Testament Political Theology, Genesis—Kings. LHBOTS 454. T&T Clark, 2006; Morrison, C. The Powers That Be: Earthly Rulers and Demonic Powers in Romans 13,1—7. SBT 29. SCM, 1960; Taubes, J. The Political Theology of Paul. Ed. A. Assmann et al. Trans. D. Hollander. Stanford University Press, 2004 [1993]; Wink, W. The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium. Doubleday, 1998.
Esther D. Reed
“Grace” or “favor” describes the personal character out of which “gift” comes. Perhaps this relationship appears most clearly in the commonality in Greek between “grace” (charis) and “gift” (charisma). Grace entails (1) divine empowerment for particular types of human accomplishment; however, within the structure of the biblical witness, this empowerment is grace only because it is grounded in (2) a more primary, embodied instance of divine favor as God’s own life in Jesus Christ (Fairbairn).
As we turn to the OT, “grace” is found in the oft-repeated formula, “If I have found grace in your eyes . . . ,” the condition that enhances social receptivity. Within the narrative order of the Scriptures, however, the first occurrence of “grace” occurs at the beginning of the Noah narrative (Gen. 6:8). God’s grace, seen in Noah, saves humanity, radically altering the path toward destruction arising from the pervasiveness of human evil (Gen. 6:7). After finding God’s grace, Noah is declared to be blameless and just (Gen. 6:9). Similarly, “grace” frames the narrative following Israel’s apostasy in Exod. 32. While Moses receives the design for right worship of God (Exod. 25-31), Israel itself falls into idolatry (Exod. 32). Moses invokes God’s grace to preserve Israel from the divine judgment (Exod. 33:12-16); God affirms his grace to Moses and Israel (Exod. 33:17-23). Moses invokes God’s grace for forgiveness of sin in the second giving of the stone tablets of the Torah (Exod. 34:9). God “passed before” Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness” (Exod. 34:6). The reiteration of the revelation of the divine name in the face of Israel’s sin ties the name “Yahweh” to grace itself as a name for God. The second giving of Torah, then, manifests the actuality of the divine grace. God’s grace not only forgives but also empowers Israel to live faithfully for God.
The use of the term grace at these two crises provides an underlying, often silent pattern throughout the biblical narrative: at each time when divine judgment is due but deferred or displaced, grace comes, not to annul God’s justice, but rather to provide the conditions for humanity to fulfill God’s intent for God’s creation. After Gen. 6:8, the rest of the biblical drama is an outworking of God’s grace for all creation; after Exod. 33, all the subsequent story of Israel, in its many failings (and occasional successes), remains the story of God’s grace.
These two key OT scenes provide a pattern that finds its fulfillment in the NT. Divine grace grants life from death in the face of sin. Ultimately, this grace is not “something,” but God, “the Lord,” who is directly encountered in Jesus. Grace opens life past death to live in the eternal that is the triune God. As John Behr has observed, early Christians turned to the Jewish ancestral writings to understand the suffering and resurrection of Jesus Christ: “In this it is not so much scripture that is being exegeted, but rather Christ who is being interpreted by recourse to the scriptures” (17).
A crucial link in the Scriptures between God, grace, and Jesus Christ appears in John 1:14-18: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (v. 14). As Martin Hengel writes, “From v. 14 the Logos has to retreat because he is now identified with an historical person, a man through whom his mystery is disclosed: ‘grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (v. 17)” (Hengel 271). Thomas Aquinas articulated the logic of the relationship between God, grace, and Jesus in this passage: Jesus “was full of grace insofar as he did not receive any special gratuitous gift from God, but that he should be God himself” (Comm. John, chap. 1, lecture 8, §188).
The Pauline writings provide a locus classicus for the use of “grace” within the Scriptures. In Rom. 5:12-21 Paul uses “grace” as a cipher to speak of the center of his thought: the faithful obedience of Jesus Christ as the act of God for our redemption. Here Paul describes the obedience of Jesus as the “grace of God” (Rom. 5:15). As Luke Timothy Johnson remarks, “The obe-dience/faith of Jesus is itself the expression of God’s gift of grace to humans and, therefore, the way in which (in this present time, apart from the Law) God’s way of making humans righteous is revealed” (89). In Ephesians, “grace” can function as a brief sign for this christological content (see Eph. 1:6; 2:5-8; 4:7).
Because “grace” names God’s favor seen in the faithfulness of Jesus (2 Cor. 8:9), Paul keeps possible antinomian impulses in the concept at bay (Rom. 6:1-23; Gal. 2:19-21; 5:4). As seen in the obedience of Christ, God’s grace demands human participation. As one “stands” in the gospel (1 Cor. 15:1), one must also “stand” in “this grace” (Rom. 5:2). As grace comes in Christ, so living “in Christ” means that one lives in grace as a member of the ecclesia. As grace is cruciform in Jesus, it manifests the same character in those who receive grace through faith (Phil. 1:7).
Grace therefore takes on the sense of the human empowerment that comes from participation in Christ by the Spirit. The grace of God in Christ helps the church, via its individual members, to take on the cruciformity of Christ. By grace (charis) one receives the gifts (charismata) of the Spirit to form the body of Christ in the world (Rom. 12:1-13:10; 1 Cor. 12).
Hebrews and 1 Peter share a similar structure for grace as found within the Pauline writings. In Hebrews, “grace” names the beneficence of God (4:16) seen in Jesus’ death for all (2:9); the “Spirit of grace” will, ironically, bring punishment against those who spurn the sacrifice of the Son of God (10:29). One must therefore be strengthened in grace (13:9) and thus obtain it in the future by avoiding bitterness (12:15). For 1 Peter, “grace” envelops the believer’s life through Christ’s death by the Spirit in preparation for an end in God. The author of 1 Peter emphasizes the eschatological end of God’s grace (5:10) as the end “that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed” (1:13). This final grace presupposes the grace of Jesus’ sufferings and subsequent glory (1:10). In the meantime, divine favor reaches to those who manifest its christological form (2:19; 5:5). Therefore, grace provides the context in which the believers are to “stand fast” (5:12). Believers participate in God’s favor to sustain them as “sojourners and aliens” in preparation for the eternal life that will come ultimately through Christ.
See also Covenant; Cruciformity; Love, Love Command; Salvation
Bibliography
Behr, J. The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006; Fairbairn, D. Grace and Christology in the Early Church. OECS. Oxford University Press, 2003; Hengel, M. “The Prologue of the Gospel of John as the Gateway to Christological Truth.” Pages 265-94 in The Gospel of John and Christian Theology, ed. R. Bauckham and C. Mosser. Eerdmans, 2008; Johnson, L. “Romans 3:21-26 and the Faith of Jesus Christ.” CBQ 44 (1982): 77-90; Thomas Aquinas. Commentary on the Gospel of St. John: Part I. Trans. J. Weisheipl. Magi Books, 1980.
John W. Wright
In both Scripture and Western ethics gratitude is crucial to the motive and practice of the moral life. In a general sense, gratitude is a virtue that acknowledges one’s benefactor and the benefits themselves and desires to honor that benefactor by offering reciprocal gifts and services as is fitting and possible. Cicero says that gratitude is the greatest virtue and the source of all other virtues. Seneca notes that there was never anyone so wicked as not to approve of gratitude and detest ingratitude. Debate arises concerning whether one can ever repay a debt of gratitude. Immanuel Kant holds that one can never fulfill the sacred duty of gratitude. Aristotle teaches that some debts can be repaid, while others cannot. One who receives kindness from a friend can respond in turn, but one can never repay the debts owed to the gods, parents, and philosophy teachers. Unpayable debts stem from the greatness of the benefit received and from the asymmetry in status and resources between benefactor and recipient. Because gifts create a sense of indebtedness and a desire to reciprocate, Nietzsche and Derrida deny that there are “free” gifts. A gift is really a kind of Trojan horse, a covert form of self-interest and an attempt to elevate the status of the giver.
In Christian ethics gratitude is the summative core of a believer’s response to God’s gracious gifts freely given by God in Christ and freely received in faith. Calvin defines faith as a firm “knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us” (Institutes 3.2.7). Gratitude is the fitting response to the gifted character of life and to God as the giver and source of every good gift (Jas. 1:17). Life is not merely a loan; it is the Creator’s gift. New life in Christ is not a task; it is the Redeemer’s preeminent gift. Once faith makes one aware of God as the source of all gifts, one can only respond with thanksgiving. As Barth says, “Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth. Grace evokes gratitude like the voice an echo. Gratitude follows grace like thunder lightning” (42). Rather than being a calculated payment of a legal demand, gratitude is a spontaneous and free offering of worship and service to God. The Heidelberg Catechism places the whole of the Christian life under the heading of gratitude. Prayer and obedience express thanks to God. As Meister Eckhart observes, if the only prayer you said in your whole life was “Thank you,” that would suffice.
In Scripture, gratitude is bound up with sacrifice, love, justice, prayer, and obedience. References to “giving thanks” permeate the psalms and other parts of the OT. Gratitude is behind all true obedience to God’s commandments. The “laws of Israel and all the concrete demands addressed by God” to individual Israelites “are simply developments and specific forms of this one law, demands not to withhold from the God of the covenant the thanks which is his due, but to render it with a whole heart” (Barth 42-43). The NT abounds in references to God as giver and identifies giving thanks as the appropriate response to God and his gifts. In the central practice of the NT church, the Eucharist, the church acknowledges the “gift” (charis) of Christ’s atoning sacrifice by “thanksgiving” (eucharistia). Since all efforts to live in the Spirit and to obey God’s will are united as the giving of thanks for God’s greatest gift, the moral life is solidly grounded in a religious foundation.
Christian ethics understands gratitude as a virtue and a moral practice, but it also reaches deeper than the moral realm. It grounds all moral action and disposition of the Christian moral life in the religious roots of the heart. Gratitude is one of the fundamental affections of human life in general and of the religious life in particular. Sin is ingratitude, a persistent refusal to acknowledge God as the giver of all good gifts. If sin is ingratitude, then obedience is gratitude. For it is “right and fitting” to give thanks.
See also Faith; Godliness; Humility; Virtue(s) Bibliography
Barth, K. Church Dogmatics. Vol. IV/1. Trans. G. Bromiley Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1956; Calvin, J. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Trans. F. Battles. Ed. J. McNeill. LCC 20, 21. Westminster, 1960; Saarinen, R. God and the Gift: An Ecumenical Theology of Giving. Liturgical Press, 2005.
Douglas J. Schuurman
Instances of greed in the world of business have become all too commonplace in our day. Too often the greed of top leadership has led to the downfall of organizations with disastrous consequences for stakeholders dependent upon them. Countless numbers have lost jobs and investments on which they were dependent for retirement. The pain of financial failure is felt also when greed for gain leads to deceptive practices in selling products to people who cannot afford them and who then end up in default or even bankruptcy.
Scandalously large financial packages for top executives, often without reference to actual performance, provide another contemporary example of avarice. Arguably, the desire of some special interests to protect their wealth and power has frequently been a barrier to the common good in matters such as environmental and healthcare legislation.
Of course, not all in the business world are greedy, nor is greed a trait found exclusively among the wealthy. Greed as the excessive desire for goods and wealth, stinginess and hoarding, and covetousness of that which belongs to others are traits found throughout the human community. Furthermore, the notorious expressions of greed in our own time are matched by similar ones over the entire course of human history. The Bible is witness to this fact. The OT prophets repeatedly condemn those who oppress the poor by their greed. They are those who, according to Isaiah, “join house to house, who add field to field, until there is room for no one” (Isa. 5:8). He goes on to confront those “who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of [God’s] people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make orphans of your prey!” (Isa. 10:1-2). The Epistle of James speaks harshly of the rich who have padded their wealth through exploiting and defrauding their laborers (Jas. 5:4). Jesus challenges a rich young man to see how his wealth stands between him and devotion to God (Matt. 19:16-22), and in the Sermon on the Mount he warns, “You cannot serve God and wealth” (Matt. 6:24). In 1 Tim. 6:17-19 the wealthy are admonished not to be “haughty” or to trust in riches but rather to accumulate the wealth of good works, generosity, and readiness to share.
We are told in 1 John 3:17 that failure to help the neighbor in need when one is able to is inconsistent with Christian love. Greed in its self-centered concern for riches, great or small, fails the test of neighborly love by ignoring those in need and refusing to share. This is the thrust of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:19-31, which is preceded by an indictment of the Pharisees as “lovers of money” (Luke 16:14). As the fruits of greed are contrary to the way of love, so also they are contrary to justice. This is the message of the parable of the rich fool recorded in Luke 12:16-21. The rich man is condemned not for having the wealth of a good harvest but rather for hoarding his goods without regard for the needs of the community. This stands in stark contrast to the communal justice of Acts 2:44-45; 4:3435. Although the economy and culture of Luke’s day differ dramatically from our own, it is not difficult to see some parallels. The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a relatively small percentage of the population nationally and globally raises serious questions about the state of economic justice.
It is instructive that the Greek word koinoneo, meaning “to share,” is in the same word family as koinonia, meaning “community” or “communion” (see Rom. 15:26). Greed is the enemy of
community, and community with God and one
another in Christ is the promise of God’s kingdom, anticipated in the church’s eucharistic fellowship as the body of Christ (1 Cor. 10:16-17; Eph. 1:22-23). Sharing in this foretaste of the feast to come, Christians, then, are called to anticipate God’s future through a life of sharing the wealth that is a trust from God (Ps. 24:1) and through advocacy on behalf of economic justice and the needs of the many.
See also Business Ethics; Koinonia; Property and Possessions; Resource Allocation; Wealth
Bibliography
Meeks, M. God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy. Fortress, 1989; Moxnes, H. The
Economy of the Kingdom: Social Conflict and Economic Relations in Luke’s Gospel. Fortress, 1988; Rosner, B. Greed as Idolatry: The Origin and Meaning of a Pauline Metaphor. Eerdmans, 2007; Schimmel, S. The Seven Deadly Sins: Jewish, Christian, and Classical Reflections on Human Psychology. Oxford University Press, 1997.
James M. Childs Jr.
Guilt
Guilt is generally understood in two correlative senses, the objective sense and the subjective sense, which do not always occur together. Objective guilt is a determination of one’s standing before a law or norm from the point of view of an external judge. For example, one may be found, after a trial, “guilty.” Subjective guilt is the self-reproach often experienced after one’s perceived violation of a law or norm, and it has an important and complex relationship with shame. Most modern schools of psychotherapy, particularly in the psychoanalytic tradition, give important place to subjective guilt and to the behavioral and emotional strategies used to assuage it. In both the OT and the NT, however, subjective guilt plays at best a supporting role to objective guilt, which itself can be understood only in the context of the scriptural witness about sin. Sin is described in the biblical texts in complex and various ways. In the OT the connotation is generally one of missing the mark (e.g., Prov. 19:2), betrayal of covenant (e.g., Jer. 11), or ritual impurity (e.g., Lev. 19:5-8). The NT continues these uses and emphases. Particularly in the Pauline epistles, sin is a power that enslaves and can lead to estrangement from God. In Scripture guilt (as with the Heb. asam [e.g., Gen. 26:10]) is nearly always understood as the objective condition of having sinned; subjective guilt, insofar as it is clearly evident in texts such as Ps. 51, is understood as the recognition of this objective condition. No one in Scripture, including Paul in the anguished self-examination that he undertakes in Rom. 7, suffers from “false” guilt, understood as subjective guilt without its objective correlate.
Although the Catholic penitential manuals recognized a phenomenon known as “scrupulosity,” in which penitents were inappropriately preoccupied with their own sinfulness, it was not until the rise of modern psychotherapy that subjective, rather than objective, guilt became a dominant theme in pastoral care and practice. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), who understood himself as an atheist for whom religion was, at best, a projection of deep human needs for parental comfort and care, played a major role in this. For Freud, objective guilt before God in the biblical sense could not exist, since there simply was no God and therefore no divine law or covenant to break. Religiously oriented guilt, therefore, could only be subjective and so must be explained either as a collective species memory of a primal patricide or, more intelligibly, as a projection of guilt feelings experienced in more mundane contexts, such as the child’s early relationship with parents and other authorities. This is the foundation of the self-censoring superego. Subjective guilt lacked its objective correlate and therefore was understood to be false; the relevant task of the psychoanalyst was to facilitate in the patient the reduction of subjective guilt through the interpretation and conscious recognition of its psychological determinants. In this respect, speaking very generally, Freud set a precedent for most of the modern psychotherapies, including those that do not trace their lineage to Freud and are in fact quite hostile to psychoanalysis.
Few would doubt that the modern psychotherapies have provided many important insights into human psychological functioning, including the recognition of biologically mediated syndromes such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, which can manifest as overwhelming ruminations of guilt. It remains important, however, for Christians to remember that in Scripture sin, not subjective guilt, is the primary enemy to be overcome. In Scripture subjective guilt is, after all, not a curse but rather a blessing for those who respond to it by returning to the covenant. In Scripture sin is a deadly, objective, self- and world-destroying reality; subjective guilt, standing as a sign of that reality, is therefore a movement of grace intended to bring the sinful individual or people back into right relationship with God, who loves and graciously forgives. Thus, the modern Christian therapist or moralist may appreciate the modern psychologies but must not lose sight of the fact that in Scripture the goal of “therapy” for guilt is not its assuagement per se but rather is right standing in the covenant community of the holy and yet gracious God.
See also Confession; Conscience; Contrition; Covenant; Repentance; Shame; Sin
Bibliography
Biddle, M. Missing the Mark: Sin and Its Consequences in Biblical Theology. Abingdon, 2005; Freud, S. Civilization and Its Discontents. Trans. and ed. J. Strachey. Norton, 1961; Pieper, J. The Concept of Sin. Trans. E. Oakes. St. Augustine’s Press, 2001; Plantinga, C. Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin. Eerdmans, 1995.
Warren Kinghorn