The Church and Money - a Historical Perspective

Following an occasional series on the issue of money in the church portrayed in the new testament writings, I now take a slight historical detour to look at "Christian attitudes to finance in the first four centuries" - the title of an article by Frances Young of Birmingham University. I am grateful to Early Church for the heads up on this article.

Frances Young highlights three key themes in her essay:

1. The Ban on Lending Money with Interest

Young outlines the growth and consolidation of this teaching from its roots in the Old Testament commands (Exod 22.25; Deut 23.19; Ps 15.5; and Ezek 18.8) to its application to, first church leaders, then all Christians by the ninth century.

Although not opposed to banking as such, the early church did protest against the growing consolidation of wealth in the hands of a powerful few and the use of their economic power to lend money with interest.

2. The Use of Money to Care for the Poor

Young also provides some fascinating statistical data to illustrate the nature of the church's concern for the poor during this period. In the third century, for instance, the church in Rome is recorded as supporting 1,500 widows and other poor persons at an annual cost of between 1/2 and 1 million sesterces.

Just after 400 AD, the church in Antioch was supporting 3,000 virgins and widows, and the Church in Constantinople financed the care of 50,000 poor people.

It was during this period that some of the more well known quotations by outsiders commenting on the church's practice were noted and written down. The pagan satirist Lucian, for instance, notes of the Christians that "their original law-giver taught them that they were all brothers."

Tertullian, meanwhile, describes the varied use of the church common fund:

• feeding poor Christians
• providing for orphans both inside and outside of the church
• paying for the funeral costs of poor Christians
• supporting Christians in prison and those sent to the mines as punishment for their faith

Against this backdrop, Tertullian quotes outsiders as saying of the Christians, "Only look how they love one another!"

At a later date, the Emperor Justin expresses frustration in his attempts to revive the fortunes of the pagan cults. Forming imperial charitable institutions to rival those of the Christians, Justin writes, "It is disgraceful that all men should see our people lack aid from us, when no Jew has ever had to beg and the impious Galileans [i.e. Christians] support not only their own poor but ours as well."

3. The Support of Church Leaders

The church in Rome in the third century is reported as having 150 paid "clergy" exercising a variety of serving/leadership functions.

Many of the church's salaried workers during this period were, in fact, appointed to administer the church's communal charity funds - a development anticipated in the narrative in Acts 6 concerning the appointment of the "seven" to care for the daily distribution of food to widows in the Jerusalem church.

Conspicuous for its absence until the 4th century is any reference to the use of money to buy or maintain buildings. By the fifth century, however, as Christianity became the official religion of the empire and started to receive government allowances, the proportion of the church's finances directed towards the poor dropped to about one-fifth, the rest being spent on the clergy and the upkeep of buildings (pictured).

Third Stream Christian Groups and Christmas

With the Catholic and Protestant Christmas celebrations at hand, it may be a timely occasion to consider the different responses to Christmas that third stream Christian groups have adopted over the centuries.

221 AD is the earliest proven year when we know that December 25th was widely advocated as marking Christ's birth, though it was not particularly an occasion for feasting or celebration. Tertullian (referred to elsewhere for his support of Montanism) makes no reference to it while Origen (hardly a third stream leader) denounced the idea, claiming that only sinners not saints celebrated birthdays.

During the Reformation, many Protestants avoided Christmas celebrations along with statues, incense and other Catholic rituals. Oliver Cromwell's government banned Christmas for 12 years, starting in 1647. A similar law existed in Boston from 1659 to 1681, though other colonies observed it freely in the period before American Independence.

The idea of a "church year" with certain special dates and celebrations was largely absent from Mennonite thought by the time it had transplanted to the United States, although some European Mennonites did pay more attention to the holidays of the church year. Christmas Day was rarely observed until the 20th century among such groups.

The Old Order Amish followed a somewhat different pattern. January 6th was their "Alt Christtag" (Old Christmas) marked in addition to 25 December. They celebrated this day with fasting, (i.e. omitting breakfast) but without church services, and followed by visiting relatives and friends.

The use of the Christmas trees in connection with the Christmas season was rejected by more conservative third stream groups. It was seen as a pagan symbol, out of place among Christians.

Most European Mennonites continued to observe Christmas with a church service and the following day (Boxing Day in Britain) as a holiday with a focus on family, friends and children.

As the practice of gift-giving at Christmas only became widespread in the mid-19th century following the publication of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, we ought not to be surprised to find it largely absent from third stream Christian groups before this period.

On a more contemporary note, it is interesting to reflect on the fact that some of the "new churches" that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK did not mark Christmas in any special way. Whatever their current practice, the Coign Church in Woking was one example of a new church that did not celebrate the event during its early years.

A Mennonite group from Canada has taken things a step further by inviting others to celebrate their buy nothing Christmas as an alternative to unrestrained commercialism.

Cult or Church? The Enigma of Montanism

In the late second century AD, a charismatic reform movement emerged in the Phrygian region of Asia Minor. Named by its critics after its leading figure, Montanus, the movement was to create controversy throughout the Empire and remains a subject of disagreement among church historians to the present day.

The facts as far as we can deduce them are limited in their scope. Montanus, about whose background we know next to nothing, was a Christian who attempted to reform and purify the churches by preaching a message of moral and spiritual purity, paying particular attention to practical holiness, prayer, fasting, resisting persecution and, more controversially, avoiding remarriage.

Believing that the Holy Spirit was still speaking to the church, the movement acquired a prophetic dimension, with two women, Priscilla and Maximilla, exercising the gift of prophecy along with other un-named individuals. This aspect of the group's life led to its preferred name - the new prophecy.

Tertullian (150 - 225 AD), bishop of Carthage in North Africa, eventually came to believe that the new prophecy represented an authentic spiritual movement and strongly defended it in his later writings. Unfortunately his work in defense of it, De ecstasi, has been lost, though was known and referred to by several ancient writers. Tertullian himself is perhaps better known for his works on the nature of God (he coined the term Trinity) and the person and work of Christ.

Other ancient church leaders were less sympathetic. Jerome wrote a letter at the end of the 4th century refuting the movement and it was declared heretical by the bishop of Rome.

Beyond these facts, a number of claims and counter claims have been made about Montanism. Bearing in mind the difficulty in reading church history through the texts of those who opposed the movement, it is hard to know what to make of these competing claims. They include:

• the suggestion that Priscila and Maximilla described themselves as logos and paraclyte
  
• the description by Montanus of a town on Phrygia as the site of the New Jerusalem
• the claim that the movement were orthodox in their doctrine of the Trinity
• that its leading figures were Sabellians (believers in modalistic monarchianism)
• an expectation on the imminent return of Christ
  

One view of Montanism is that the personalities whose names survive to this day may indeed have been heretical in some regards but that this controversy masks a deeper movement of spiritual life and renewal that was indeed taking place at this time.

Current archaeological work lead by William Tabbernee at the site of the Montanist New Jerusalem in modern-day Turkey represents an exciting development in our understanding of this early Third Stream Christian movement. [See William TABBERNEE, Portals of the Montanist New Jerusalem: the discovery of Pepouza and Tymion, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11:1 (2003), pp. 87-93. ]