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Economics of Jesus: Capitalist or Socialist

I find it strange that the economic principles of Jesus are rarely studied, especially in America where an entire political party is built largely on Christianity. Jesus actually spends most of his time teaching about money in one form or another, and states that money is antagonistic to the kingdom of God: “You can not serve both God and Mammon (the god of money)” - Matthew 6:24.

Before going too far I’d like to make a bold claim. I’d like to suggest that Galatians 2:10 is the most important verse in the New Testament for understanding what Jesus taught. When this verse was penned by Paul, Jesus had already been crucified. The book of Galatians is one of the earliest books of the New Testament, dating to the middle of the first century. Paul is describing a falling out he is having with the 12 apostles. He has suggested to the apostles that he go and preach the gospel to the non-Jewish people of the west. What is so interesting to me is that in this candid, very early book of the New Testament, he discloses that the 12 apostles ask him to remember only ONE thing. What would you expect them to ask Paul to remember? Jesus is God? Jesus died for your sins? Here’s the verse:

Let’s examine a few verses to see if we can draw some preliminary conclusions that will help us understand why this doctrine of poverty was at the heart of early Christianity. Let’s start in Acts 4:32-35, where the Christian community of the 1st century was struggling to organize after the crucifixion of Jesus.

We see in the early Christian community a tendency for sharing of possessions and money among the community. Is this something Jesus taught them to do, or was it just a community trying to survive? Let’s look at Mark 10 to see if this practice in Acts was learned from Jesus:

So this rich man was turned away because he refused to give up his wealth. Additionally there was a severe penalty for not fully participating in the redistribution of wealth described in Acts 4 as illustrated in Acts 5:1-11 where Ananias and Sapphira were killed for withholding money from the community. Let’s return briefly to the passage of  Galatians 2:10 where Paul says the apostles asked him to “only remember the poor”.  Is there any evidence outside of this verse that poverty really was the central doctrine of Jesus?  In Luke chapter 4, the first public proclamation of Jesus is “I have come to preach the Gospel (the good news) to the poor.” In other words, Jesus saw that his primary objective was to address the poor. Whatever his message was, the poor were the ones who were supposed to hearing it.

From a statistical standpoint, the word “poor” appears 25+ times in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), and an additional 15+ times in the other books of the New Testament.

A number of scholars have suggested the following theory, some explicitly, some tacitly, but I’m going to suggest that the odds are incredibly in favor of this option: what if there was a religiopolitical party in the 1st century called “The Poor”? In fact there was, and they claimed that Jesus and James were its principle leaders. The party came to be known as The Ebionites, which in Hebrew means “The Poor”. I won’t go into all of the controversy around this group, but what I will say is that in the second and the third centuries the Christians of the west hated them, because beliefs of western Christianity had deviated so far from the Ebionite belief system that common ground was impossible, so they attacked the Ebionites as being heretical. The Christians of the west were now sponsored by the empire and the wealthy class, while the Ebionites of Jesus’ home country were in poverty, their religion was built on poverty. The converts of Paul in later generations couldn’t understand them from an imperial roman viewpoint.

Let’s return to Galatians 2:10. Now that we know there was a religio-political movement in Palestine during the first century called “The Poor Party”, or “The Poor”, that claimed to have descended directly from Jesus, could we read the passage from Galatians 2:10 like this:

James, the older brother of Jesus, became the leader of the church in Jerusalem after Jesus was crucified. Unfortunately we only have one authentic letter from him. The following is one of the most important verses from James, which supports a view of poverty as the central doctrine, and more importantly suggests the name of their group was in fact “The Poor”:

In other words, the noble name by which they are called is “The Poor”. The context of James’ passage demands this reading. In the context of this passage he is referencing the suffering of the poor and immediately shifts into an argument that challenges the listener, who were poor, “don’t they slander the noble name which you are called?” The NIV translation and some others have intentionally tried to manipulated the Greek into saying “Are they not the ones who are slandering the noble name of him to whom you belong?” But the words “of him to whom you belong” is not in the Greek and has been supplied. Unfortunately translation is interpretation, and sometimes this is theologically driven which hides what the text really means.

In other words, this passage is referencing the ancient religiopolitical party called “The Poor”, or The Ebionites.

Jesus and The Poor

Let’s examine Matthew 6:19-21,24:

Again, from a modern point of view most readers assume Jesus is really saying “you can be rich, just don’t let it rule your life.” But this is not what Jesus was saying. From all the evidence the movement he started took this statement literally, so that you couldn’t be his follower unless you gave up everything and took a vow of poverty. To be a true follower of Jesus meant giving up all your wealth. To be a true member of The Poor, or The Ebionites, meant living a life without money and possessions. In fact, the monastic life probably can trace its roots to the original teachings of Jesus and the apostles. After Emperor Constantine in the 4th century made Christianity the religion of the Empire, all of the original teachings of Jesus regarding a life of poverty were re-interpreted, all those Ebionites who held to the original teachings of Jesus were deemed heretics, and churches became the centers of wealth and pomp. By the 4th century, Jesus’ original religion of poverty had vanished.

When reading the New Testament through the Ebionite/poverty point of view a number of other stories become clear. The feeding of the 5000 from the food that a few attendees had brought to the event was really a demonstration to show that by redistributing the few resources that were available there would be enough food for all to be satisfied, a demonstration that would be considered socialist from modern standards (Matthew 14:13-21). By removing the element of sharing from this story, a powerful demonstration of a community sharing resources becomes nothing more than a magic trick by a magic man, completely deflating the story’s power and purpose.

I frequently hear Christians quote the verse “give unto Caesar the things of Caesar” to support the notion that Jesus supported taxation. We know from other revolts from the same era, such as Simon bar Kokhba’s revolt in the 2nd century, there was a move to mint a Jewish national coinage to avoid using the imperial Roman coinage. Let’s look at Matthew 22:15-22

Jesus and his followers were required to give all their wealth to the poor. It is quite likely that they were trying to back completely out of the Roman monetary system in protest to the heavy taxes Rome was taking. The rationale may have simply been “if we don’t have money for them to take, they can’t take anything.” In other words, what Jesus was saying is “if it has Caesar’s image on it, give it back to Rome; we don’t need their money.”

Conclusion
Jesus’ primary doctrine was social justice. His movement was originally called “The Poor”, or The Ebionites. As illustrated from the gospels and Acts they were implementing a social movement where one of the requirements was to share all that you had, ultimately taking a vow of poverty. This was either a temporary protest against Roman occupation, or a permanent model akin to modern socialism. A secondary conclusion is that Jesus’ teachings are at odds with the teachings of protestant Christian capitalism in the United States. Economic individualism and Darwinian economics, or survival of the fittest economics, is in conflict with Jesus’ core teaching of poverty and sharing. It is also clear that the economic principles Jesus taught were mandated by Jesus and his community before one could join (ex. the rich man being turned away and the death of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5); charity in the original Christian group was not voluntary, but compulsory. I’m not suggesting Christians should support this model; I’m simply asking that they admit that Jesus taught a different economic model than that supported by Christians in America. “Survival of the fittest” economics is completely at odds with Jesus’ economics.

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