Everything in Common?

The Theology and Practice of the Sharing of Possessions in Community in the New Testament

Gregson

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498289986
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Possessions and how believers handle them are key topics in the NT. In this book, Fiona Gregson examines the practice and theology of sharing possessions in community in the NT by examining six diverse NT examples of sharing. Each example is considered in its historical and cultural context before being compared to one or more non-Christian examples to identify similarities and differences. Gregson identifies common characteristics across the NT examples and consistent distinctives in how the early church shared possessions compared to the surrounding cultures.Gregson's findings demonstrate that Christians subverted Roman patronage expectations; Christian groups were more diverse in their membership and exhibited more flexible, less structured examples of sharing; Christians placed greater emphasis on the free choice of individuals to contribute to sharing; and Christians more frequently participated in eating together and had a greater focus on relational bonds than was common in Graeco-Roman society/culture.

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Introduction

Possessions, money, resources, and justice are themes that occur in the New Testament. Jim Wallis points out the centrality of wealth and poverty within scripture and notes that “some have even suggested [it] is the second most common topic found there, the first being idolatry.”1 He notes that one out of every sixteen verses in the NT; one out of every ten verses in the Synoptic gospels; and one out of every five verses in James addresses the theme.2

Use of and attitudes towards possessions and wealth are also important contemporary topics, particularly within a globalizing and changing world. Authors such as Witherington and Harries note critical contemporary questions around wealth and possessions. Witherington raises questions based on his study of passages about money and wealth about how institutions, nations, and individuals think about and use money in the context of the 2008 financial crisis.3 In Is there a Gospel for the Rich? Harries argues that it is particularly pertinent to ask questions about how to live as a Christian in a capitalist society because of the end of communism, the rise of the Christian right, and the growth of an evangelical social ethic.4

Possessions, poverty, and riches in the NT have been addressed through the lens of contemporary questions;5 through ethical studies;6 as part of wider historical or topical studies;7 and in NT studies.8 Across these varied ways of approaching NT texts, questions have been asked on different levels: how should individual look and use their possessions; how should Christians approach economics and social welfare; and how should Christians relate to one another with their possessions and how they are held? It is this third question on which there has been less focus and on which this study concentrates. Within this area this study looks specifically at the theology and practice of the sharing of possessions in community in the NT.9

This study addresses a number of questions about the sharing of possessions in community in the NT. First, are there recognizable common themes in how Christians in the NT share possessions in community?

One of the challenges of asking questions about NT approaches to sharing possessions is the diversity of the witness within the New Testament, both in terms of different contexts, and in terms of the different things that particular texts espouse, which can sometimes seem to be mutually incompatible. Indeed Hengel and Johnson, alongside others conclude that there is no one doctrine or paradigm in the NT for sharing of possessions,10 while Hoppe identifies communality across the diversity.11 Johnson responds to the diversity by arguing that one approach to sharing possessions—almsgiving—is more practical and less prone to abuse.12 This study considers a range of examples of sharing in community across NT genres in order to identify common themes across the diverse examples.

For each of the texts, the background to the theology and practice evidenced in the text is explored and possible causes or influences on the particular theology and practice expressed within the text are highlighted using exegetical and social-scientific approaches.

Second, is the Christian theology and practice of sharing possessions in the NT texts different from that seen in the surrounding cultures? The theology and practice evidenced and portrayed in each text is examined alongside examples within the surrounding culture of similar practice, to establish in what ways the practice and theology of the early church was similar to and different from its surroundings.

Third, was Christian theology and practice in the NT consistently distinctive from the surrounding culture? The comparisons are then compared with each other, which enables this study to show that there are common characteristics of how Christians shared across the NT examples. It also shows that there are ways in which Christian practice and theology within the NT is consistently different from its surrounding contexts, thus indicating a commonality in distinctives from the surrounding cultures.

In order to address the diversity of the NT, we consider a number of texts that show examples of sharing of possessions. The texts are chosen from across the Gospels, Acts, and Pauline Epistles in order to provide a range of examples of different kinds of sharing. The examples chosen allow us to consider a range of possibilities in terms of what is shared; the distance over which sharing happens; the geographical locations that sharing happens in; and the practice. We consider examples that show sharing within a community and those that show sharing between communities, however we do not consider the sharing shown in support for leaders within a community or from another community, thus we have not considered 1 Cor 9. We have limited ourselves to the Gospels, Acts, and the generally undisputed Pauline Epistles due to the space available in the book.13 We have not examined the Gospel teaching on sharing, as it tends to be more general teaching rather than referring to a specific example of sharing in community.

In chapter 2 we consider the example within John’s gospel of the common purse, an example of sharing between a relatively small number of itinerant people, with the money possibly coming from those outside the group. We reference the other gospels where they throw light on the practice of the historical Jesus and his disciples. In chapters 3 and 4 we look at two examples from Acts: in chapter 3, the selling, sharing, and holding in common of possessions within a community (Acts 2–6) and in chapter 4, the sharing of possessions with believers in a community in one location to those in another location (Acts 11). Chapters 5 to 7 consider three examples from the Pauline literature. Chapter 5 examines the sharing of food in one parti...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: Introduction
• Chapter 2: The Common Purse
• Chapter 3: Holding in Common
• Chapter 4: Responding to Famine
• Chapter 5: Eating Together
• Chapter 6: Giving and Generosity
• Chapter 7: Limits on Sharing
• Chapter 8: Sharing Possessions in Community in the NT
• Bibliography