FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[1]F. Pollock, Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, p. 314.[2]Cf. I Enoch XCI-CIV.[3]Cf. Parables in I Enoch XXXVII-LXXI.[4]Cf. Apocalypse of Baruch; 4 Ezra, 4 Maccabees.[5]Irenaeus Adv. Haer. V 33. II Baruch XXIX.[6]Hist. of Dogma, Vol. III, p. 19.[7]Ens. H. E. VI 27-2.[8]Justin Martyn, Tertullian, Lactantius.[9]Ad. Celsus LXI.[10]Sib. Orac. VIII, 148 seq.[11]Hippolytus, Com. on Daniel.[12]Strom. VII, 17; VI 16; IV 25; V 6, 14.[13]De Princ, II, 11.[14]Cf. e.g., A. R. Wallace, The World of Life.[15]Eus. H. E. VII 25.[16]Discourse on the Resurrection, I, 9 seq. See also Conviv. IX, 1, 5.[17]Ep. CII, 4.[18]Ep. CCLXIII, 4.[19]Cp. CCLXV, 2.[20]Frag. Dan. I, 5, 6.[21]De Christo et Antic. 50.[22]Instructions, LXXX.[23]Schaff Hist., ii, 855. Sec. LXVII of poem.[24]Comm. XX 4.5.[25]Comm. XX 1.3.[26]Div. Ins. Bk. 7 XXIV.[27]C.D. XX 7.[28]I.e., the Millennium.[29]C.D. XX 7.[30]Rev. XX.[31]De Prin. II, 11, 3.[32]De Prin. II, 11, 7.[33]City of God in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 1st Series, Vol. II, p. 427.[34]E.g., Lydia, Phrygia, The Thebaid.[35]Clem. Alex. Paed., iii, Strom. VII. Origen, Hom. on Num., XXV. Hom. on Ps. XXVI. Lactantius, VII, 20.

[1]F. Pollock, Essays in Jurisprudence and Ethics, p. 314.

[2]Cf. I Enoch XCI-CIV.

[3]Cf. Parables in I Enoch XXXVII-LXXI.

[4]Cf. Apocalypse of Baruch; 4 Ezra, 4 Maccabees.

[5]Irenaeus Adv. Haer. V 33. II Baruch XXIX.

[6]Hist. of Dogma, Vol. III, p. 19.

[7]Ens. H. E. VI 27-2.

[8]Justin Martyn, Tertullian, Lactantius.

[9]Ad. Celsus LXI.

[10]Sib. Orac. VIII, 148 seq.

[11]Hippolytus, Com. on Daniel.

[12]Strom. VII, 17; VI 16; IV 25; V 6, 14.

[13]De Princ, II, 11.

[14]Cf. e.g., A. R. Wallace, The World of Life.

[15]Eus. H. E. VII 25.

[16]Discourse on the Resurrection, I, 9 seq. See also Conviv. IX, 1, 5.

[17]Ep. CII, 4.

[18]Ep. CCLXIII, 4.

[19]Cp. CCLXV, 2.

[20]Frag. Dan. I, 5, 6.

[21]De Christo et Antic. 50.

[22]Instructions, LXXX.

[23]Schaff Hist., ii, 855. Sec. LXVII of poem.

[24]Comm. XX 4.5.

[25]Comm. XX 1.3.

[26]Div. Ins. Bk. 7 XXIV.

[27]C.D. XX 7.

[28]I.e., the Millennium.

[29]C.D. XX 7.

[30]Rev. XX.

[31]De Prin. II, 11, 3.

[32]De Prin. II, 11, 7.

[33]City of God in Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, 1st Series, Vol. II, p. 427.

[34]E.g., Lydia, Phrygia, The Thebaid.

[35]Clem. Alex. Paed., iii, Strom. VII. Origen, Hom. on Num., XXV. Hom. on Ps. XXVI. Lactantius, VII, 20.

The Chiliasm of the early Christians had a direct bearing upon their attitude toward the property institutions and property concepts of the time. Neither the declension of Chiliasm nor the progressive socialization of the Church can be understood without some consideration of the attitude of the Christians toward property, and conversely the effect of the existing economic system upon the Christians.

The early Church made its appearance in a world where the institution of private property was supreme in fact and very largely unquestioned in theory. It is recognized with perfect clearness by all the ancient thinkers who refer to the subject that their civilization was based upon the property rights of man in man. It is not true that slavery was invariably considered part of the unalterable law of nature. Aristotle expressly states that a sufficient development of mechanistic technology would abrogate slavery. But such a technological development was not expected nor indeed wished for. Contempt for mechanical processes of industry was universal, with the dubious exception of the application of science to military engines. There is a similar unanimity in regard to commercial enterprise. Money obtained by ordinary mercantile methods was considered as dishonestly acquired. It was assumed as self-evident that the merchant had to be a thief. Interest on money was of course reprobated as contrary to nature.[1]Return from landed property was almost the only socially reputable form of income—with the exception of spoils of war. Free wage labor was so unimportant that the Roman law did not even develop a set of legal principles regarding it.

The Jewish property system, which originally had some notable peculiarities of its own, had by the first centuryA.D.become of necessity so like the Roman that the differences may for our purposes be disregarded. The more so as Christianity very early came almost exclusively under the influence of the Roman institutions and concepts in this regard. It is perhaps unnecessary to add that Romanpractice in regard to property was widely at variance with Roman theory, with the result that serious moral disintegration came over persons engaging in commercial enterprises. The moral lapses of the early Christians are largely to be set down to this cause, on the principle that a destruction of moral integrity in one respect makes other delinquencies easy.

With respect to the attitude of Christ towards contemporary property institutions, it is unnecessary for our purpose to regard any conclusions of modern criticism. The synoptic gospels were uncritically accepted by the early Church and we are concerned merely with what was commonly accepted as the teaching of Christ.

Perhaps as convenient a way as any of illustrating the breadth of view in Christ's attitude toward property institutions would be to take a single illustration and apply to it the whole range of property concepts found in the teachings of Christ. No single illustration is so applied in the Gospels as we have them, but the principles will be the clearer for the consistent use of the same illustration. We shall take as our type case one which Christ himself used; the case of a thief who steals a coat. The teachings of Christ about property can conveniently be put down under four heads, each illustrating, by a different way of treating the thief, a different property concept.

First: The ordinary or conventional manner of treating the thief, based on the concept of the morality and sacredness of private property; i.e., catching the thief, recovering the stolen property and punishing the crime by fine or imprisonment or torture. This conventional standard of morality and attitude towards property is illustrated, e.g., in the story of the man with one talent in the parable. It is very concisely summed up in the expression: "To him that hath shall be given and he shall have abundance and from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."

Second: What may be called for convenience the socialistic manner of treating the thief—no implications either good or bad being intended by the use of the term socialistic. This treatment would consist of catching the thief, recovering the stolen property but letting the thief go free with merely an admonition to future good behavior. This treatment is based on the concept that the institution of private property has only a partial validity and that violations of private property rights are to be blamed not alone upon the violator butupon society at large in equal degree. This attitude is illustrated in the case of the woman taken in adultery: "Neither do I condemn thee; go and sin no more." The illustration is perhaps more apt than appears at first glance for female chastity is and was legally possessed of tangible economic value i.e., adultery was viewed as a violation of a property right belonging to the husband of the adultress.

Third: What may be termed the anarchistic manner of treating the thief—here again no implications either good or bad are intended by the employment of the term anarchistic. This treatment consists essentially in pacificism, in Tolstoi's non-resistance. It is purely negative and allows the thief to get away with the stolen coat without anyone making any move to recover the property. This treatment is based on the concept that private property institutions have no validity at all, but that the only valid property arrangement is that of pure communism. This attitude toward property is illustrated by such sayings of Christ as "Of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again;" "Resist not him that is evil," etc.

Fourth: What may be distinguished as the specifically Christian manner of treating the thief—using the word Christian as appertaining strictly to the founder of the Church. This treatment consists of running after the thief not for the purpose of capturing and punishing him; not even for the purpose of recovering the stolen coat but for the purpose of giving him a vest and an overcoat in addition to what he has stolen. It amounts to the direct encouragement and reward of the thief for doing what is presumably a meritorious action by stealing. This way of treating a thief is not socialistic, or communistic; it is not even anarchistic. It is something as far beyond anarchy, as anarchy is beyond socialism, or socialism beyond ordinary conventional individualism. It is specifically and peculiarly and uniquely Christian, using that word as above defined. This treatment is not based on any concept of any kind of property institution. Its logical, intellectual position is the denial of the validity or worth of any property institutions, private or communistic. It involves indeed the destruction of the very concept property as implying possession by right of social agreement. This attitude of Christ toward property finds expression in such sayings as: "From him that taketh away thy cloke withhold not thy coat also." "Blessed are ye poor." "Woe unto you that are rich." It is easier for a camel to go through theeye of a needle, etc. etc. The great bulk of Christ's statements about property are to be classified under this fourth head. The views are probably connected, with just what degree of closeness it is impossible to say, to the belief in the immediately imminent catastrophe of the world. With somewhat less certainty, it may be ventured that certain of Christ's sayings which we have listed as anarchistic are perhaps influenced by the same idea.

It is of course obvious that the above four fold division is not exact in the strict scientific sense, or that any teaching of Christ concerning property can be unhesitatingly classified under one head or another. Still less is anything intended to be implied as to the existence or non-existence of any underlying, universal, theological principle which would reconcile apparent divergencies. Theological metaphysics as such, lie outside the scope of this chapter which is intended as an objective study of concepts of property. From an objective point of view it is evident that the four divisions imperceptibly shade into one another and form a continuous series, nevertheless for the sake of convenience it may be considered as approximating a rational organization of the material under distinct heads.

Immediately after the time of Christ the Christians in Jerusalem developed a communistic organization. "All that believed were together and had all things in common and sold their possessions and goods and parted them to all men, as every man had need." "Neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. Neither was there any among them that lacked; for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need."[2]

It is doubtless true that the participants in this communistic society believed themselves to be living according to the principles and precepts of Christ. Yet there is some evidence which would lead to the conclusion that perhaps this experiment was less a deliberate and reasoned out endeavor to organize a permanent society on a new economic basis, than an instinctive movement, entered upon under the influence of a belief in the immediately imminent second adventof Christ and therefore expected to be of only very limited duration. The collections subsequently taken up in other Christian communities 'for the relief of the poor saints in Jerusalem' would seem to lend color to this view of the matter.

In St. Paul's teaching about property there is a fundamental inconsistency. He makes statements which taken separately are applicable to particular situations but which are not in harmony with one another. He loyally supported the established right of private property, even in slaves. But at another time he pronounced that property right depended upon service rendered. In one place we have: "Slaves obey your masters" in another: "If any will not work neither let him eat." But if a man's slaves obey him he can eat without working. There is no suggestion of communism in St. Paul's writings. If all the 'property passages' in the epistles are collected and read in connection with their contexts two facts come into prominence, First: Property institutions as such have only a relative validity. They are not viewed as ends valuable in themselves but are subordinated to religious ends, and the concept of an immediately imminent second advent lies at the base of this relative valuation.[3]Second: Economic arrangements of the existing social order, like similar political arrangements, are to be strictly conformed to, in spite of their merely relative validity, for fear of jeopardizing the more important religious movement.[4]St. Paul whether consciously or not, is, in regard to social institutions, an evolutionary revolutionist. He would doubtless have been the first to admit that his doctrine of human brotherhood, for example, would eventually overthrow his doctrine of slavery, supposing—as there is no ground for thinking he did suppose—that time enough elapsed for his doctrine of brotherhood to permeate the general social consciousness. In so far as property concepts are concerned it would probably be difficult to maintain that there is any essential divergence between the teachings of St. Paul and some at least of the teachings of Christ. St. Paul was by nature an ecclesiastical statesman. He seems to have taken such of Christ's property concepts as served his purposes and ignored the others.

In the epistle of St. James are to be found very bitter complaints as to the working of property institutions. These complaints are so serious as to suggest the inevitable attempt to make over the institutions and the fact that no such attempt is indicated is due to the manifestly lively expectation of the second advent. Yet even so it was necessary for the writer to council patience to his brethren.[5]

In the Revelation there is a passage, xviii, 12 seq., quite in the manner of the most violent of the ancient prophets or the modern anarchists. In this passage property is conceived as evil and the destruction of civilization as it then was, is conceived as a cause of rejoicing to saints, apostles, and prophets. On the other hand the New Jerusalem in the same book[6]is a 'wholesale jewelers paradise' and involves the property concepts of those cities of Asia Minor who did most of the jewelry manufacturing of the Roman Empire. It is very doubtful how far anything in such a description can be said to embody property concepts but the ideal put forth is the communistic enjoyment of incredible luxury.

The epistle of Clement of Rome has only incidental references to property. They can be well summed up in the quotation:[7]"Let the rich man provide for the wants of the poor; and let the poor man bless God, because He hath given him one by whom his need may be supplied." There is manifestly no question of tampering with received property institutions and concepts on the part of the writer of such a sentence. It is equally evident that such an attitude in regard to property is eminently well calculated to enable the holder to propagate specifically theological opinions with a minimum of interested opposition.

The Didache holds a naïve and touching communistic creed.[8]"Thou shalt not turn away from him that hath need but shalt share all things with thy brother and shalt not say that they are thine own." This passage, the only one on the subject in the Didache, would seem to indicate that the institution of private property existed as a matter of fact in the writer's community, but that thevalidity of it was not acknowledged. The position may perhaps be called one of conceptual and constructive communism.

The Epistle of Barnabas holds exactly the same view in almost exactly the same words:[9]"Thou shalt communicate to thy neighbor all that thou hast, thou shalt not call anything thine own."

Early in the second century we come upon the Ebionites who in the matter of property held very strong views.[10]The stricter of them made poverty a condition of salvation. They refused to acknowledge the validity of the concept property—that is in theory. In practice some of them seem to have been influenced by the doctrine and practice of the Essenes in regard to communism.

All through the second century we find a continuous succession of heretical sects, Gnostics and others, who held either the doctrine of the wickedness of property-ownership as such, 'holy poverty,' or else objected to individual ownership of property and preached or practiced communism in such degree as might be possible under the circumstances. Of these sects it is sufficient to name the Marcionites 110A.D.The Carpocratians 135A.D.The Procidians 160A.D.(?) The Basilidians 138A.D.It is evident that there was in progress in the second century an ascetic movement which later took on the forms of Manichaeism and Christian asceticism. The Church consistently opposed all these sects and maintained the validity of private property without condemning communism as such, except in extreme cases, such as that of Epiphanes of Alexandria, a Carpocriation, who in a book on Justice, 125A.D., defined virtue as consisting in absolute communism of goods and women.

To return to orthodox Christianity, Hermas shows very clearly the inconsistencies which beset Christian theory and practice in the first half of the second century. All who are rich must be deprived of their wealth in order to be good Christians.[11]Yet this deprivation of wealth must be only relative; there must be wealth enough left for the giving of alms.[12]There is no trace of communism in Hermas and no praise of poverty as such. The chief justification for the existence of property institutions would seem to be that they aresocial structures which can be utilized for the giving and receiving of alms. Perhaps one paragraph is worth quoting as giving possibly the earliest formulation extant of the property concepts that finally became dominant. "The rich man has much wealth but is poor in matters relating to the Lord because he is distracted about his riches and he offers very few confessions and intercessions to the Lord and those which he does offer are small and weak, and have no power above. But when the rich man refreshes the poor and assists him in his necessities, believing that which he does to the poor man will be able to find its reward with God—because the poor man is rich in intercessions and confession and his intercession has great power with God—then the rich man helps the poor in all things without hesitation; and the poor man, being helped by the rich, intercedes for him, giving thanks to God for him who bestows gifts upon him. And he still continues earnestly to interest himself for the poor man, that his want may be constantly supplied. For he knows that the intercession of the poor man is acceptable and influential with God. Both accordingly accomplish their work. The poor man makes intercession; a work in which he is rich, which he received from the Lord, and with which he recompenses the master who helps him. And the rich man in like manner, unhesitatingly bestows upon the poor man the riches which he received from the Lord. And this is a great work and acceptable before God, because he understands the object of his wealth and has given to the poor of the gifts of the Lord and rightly discharged his service to Him."[13]

The inconsistent and irreconcilable nature of the evidence about early Christian property institutions is well illustrated in Justin Martyr. Two short extracts are sufficient for the purpose. "We who valued above all things the acquisition of wealth and possessions, now bring what we have into a common stock and communicate to every one in need."[14]"We carry on us all we possess and share everything with the poor."[15]

The second of these passages would indicate that the first is not to be taken in a too literal and comprehensive sense. It may perhaps be ventured as an opinion that the truth of the matter, as regards theChristians of whom Justin wrote, is that the concept of private property was largely invalidated and that personal possessions were thought of as owned in common while the 'common stock' consisted in reality of contributions—it may be large contributions—given for the relief of necessity among the members.

The account preserved to us in Lucian of the Christian communities of Judea in the later half of the second Century would seem to bear out this opinion. Lucian says: "The activity of these people in dealing with any matter that affects their community is something extraordinary. They spare no trouble, no expense. Peregrine all this time was making quite an income on the strength of his bondage. Money came pouring in. You see these misguided creatures start with the general conviction that they are immortal for all time, which explains the contempt of death and voluntary self devotion which are so common among them and then it was impressed upon them by their original law giver that they are all brothers from the moment that they are converted and deny the gods of Greece and worship the crucified sage and live after his laws. All this they take quite on trust with the result that they despise all worldly goods alike, regarding them merely as common property."[16]

In Tertullian we find the same contradiction as regards private ownership and communism which has already been noted in Justin. The contradiction is more glaring, but possibly the explanation of the real situation is similar. The following two extracts from the same chapter bring this contradiction out in high relief: "Family possessions which generally destroy brotherhood among you, create fraternal bonds among us. One in mind and soul, we do not hesitate to share our earthly goods with one another. All things are common among us but our wives." "On the monthly collection day, if he likes, each puts in a small donation; but only if it be his pleasure and only if he be able, for there is no compulsion, all is voluntary."[17]

Tertullian was a Montanist and one of the most serious charges made against the Montanists was that some of their prophets received interest on money loaned by them.[18]Tertullian is above suspicion in this respect. He demonstrates by quotations from both the Oldand New Testaments that it is absolutely contradictory to Christianity. Interest on money is the only property institution in regard to which the teaching of the early Church is consistent. Every reference we have in regard to this practice condemns it—not mildly as a venial offense—but fiercely and savagely as a heinous crime like incest or murder. "Fenerare est hominem occidere" is a favorite formula. In this respect the most pronounced apologists of private wealth like Clement of Alexandria are in perfect accord with the most pronounced communists like Tertullian. The only difference to be noted is one of emphasis. In the earlier writers there are relatively few references to interest, which may perhaps be due to the fact that in the earlier time there were relatively few Christians possessed of surplus means requiring investment. As might naturally be expected, the writers of the period after the establishment of Christianity as a legal religion make more frequent and more bitter reference to the matter. The vehemence of denunciation indulged in by these later writers almost exceeds credibility. The most improbable and strained exegesis is resorted to in an effort to explain away the words of Christ in the parables of the pounds and talents. But this vehemence is by no means confined to the Nicene and post-Nicene fathers. So statesmanlike a bishop as Cyprian, in a long railing accusation against certain opposition bishops brings forth as their final sin that they had "multiplied gain by usury."[19]Usury is not to be taken, of course, in its present sense of excessive or burdensome interest and it is evident that Cyprian did not use it in such a sense. He is simply condemning interest as such. In the minds of the early Christians the difference between taking five percent interest or fifty percent was exactly the same as the difference between stealing one dollar or ten. The sin was essentially the same irrespective of the particular amount involved. Indeed this comparison is scarcely a valid one; for taking interest was conceived as a much worse sin than plain robbery. It is perhaps worth noting that the moral distinction between interest and usury is of very late development. The credit, if it be such, of making it, is to be ascribed to Calvin and is not unconnected with the predilection of certain types of pecuniary interest for that reformer's system of ecclesiastical polity. The Roman law did indeed fix a maximum legal rate of interest, varying at different times and evenat the same time for different forms of commercial risk. During the first three centuriesA.D.it was, for example, consistently twelve percent on ships and varied from six to twelve percent on other forms of investment. But this has little moral connotation.

Early Christian condemnation of interest on loans was by no means confined to the expression of opinion by church writers. Council after council legislated against it with ever increasing severity. The forty-fourth Apostolic Canon prohibited the practice to clerics. The Council of Elvira 310A.D.forbade it to both clerics and laity. The Council of Arles 314A.D.provided that clerics guilty of the practice should be deposed from the ministry. The seventeenth canon of the Council of Nicea 325A.D.provided that they should be excommunicated. The penalty is reiterated in the twelfth canon of the First Council of Carthage 345A.D.There is no need to continue the list. It is sufficient to say that nearly every council whose canons have come down to us has legislation against interest. Again and again it is absolutely forbidden to clergy and laity alike under the severest ecclesiastical penalties—and it is necessary to remember that after 325A.D.these penalties could, if need be, be enforced by governmental authority.

This attitude of the early Church toward interest on loans is a matter of very considerable historical importance. Although, as we shall endeavor to show later, the ecclesiastical laws were frequently and largely evaded, they still had such influence that their contribution to the sum of economic forces which accomplished the overthrow of ancient civilization is by no means an insignificant one. Nor did the influence of this attitude cease at the fall of Rome. It rather increased thereafter and for several centuries, the so-called "Dark Ages," civilization was strangled by the power of this idea of the sin of usury. To this day the Roman Church regards interest on money as a reprehensible thing which, however, is not, for practical reasons, to be spoken of as sinful by the clergy.[20]This attitude has been no inconsiderable factor in the relatively late industrial development in Catholic countries.

The early Christian concept of interest was not an idea original with Christianity. It was not derived from Christ at all. It was taken over bodily from Old Testament Judaism and contemporarypagan philosophy. It is a well known fact that the views of Plato and Aristotle, of Cicero and Seneca on interest, correspond in a very astonishing way to the views of Deuteronomy and Isaiah, of the Psalms and Ezekiel. The strength of the concept in the early Church was due to this fact. In regard to no other concept was there such a unanimity of opinion. The Christian convert found that the sacred scriptures of his new faith confirmed in the strongest language the condemnation of interest which he had become familiar with from the writings of the noblest pagan philosophers. When reason and religion were in accord it is not wonderful that their judgment was accepted—as a theory.

In spite of this union of pagan philosophers and Hebrew prophets, of Christian Fathers and Ecclesiastical Canons, the condemnation and prohibition of interest on money was a theory only. A very ordinary knowledge of classical civilization is sufficient to explain the reason of this. More nearly than any other institution, the financial machinery of antiquity corresponds to that of modern life. Trusts and millionaires were phenomena of their economic life as of ours. Banks were numerous and ubiquitous. They were of all sizes and degrees; from the great metropolitan corporation with correspondents all over the civilized world, to the hated money lender in a shabby office on a side street. The great bankers were men of the first importance in society. From their number were regularly recruited the officials of the imperial treasury. They were almost without exception men of the strictest financial integrity. The Roman banking laws protected the depositor more securely than the laws of any modern nation, and these Roman laws were rigidly enforced. Every banking institution had to obtain government authorization in order to do business and this authorization was withdrawn on the discovery of the smallest discrepancy in the accounts. The regular rate of interest on ordinary deposits was four percent; under certain peculiar conditions the rate went as low as two and a half and as high as six percent. The rate published by a bank had to be paid even though payment swept away the banker's entire private property. The banker lost everything before the depositor lost anything. The banks were used by the government in carrying out such fiscal measures as could not be conveniently handled by the treasury department directly. They played a still more important part in theordinary commercial life of the times. A relatively small volume of business was, or could be, carried on by transfers of specie. The great bulk of commercial transactions were of necessity carried on by checks, drafts, discounts, bills of exchange and similar instruments of credit. It was a matter of simple impossibility for any man in ordinary commercial or industrial life to carry on his business for even a single day without participating directly or indirectly in transactions involving loans and interest.

Our excuse for reciting these commonplace details of Roman commercial life is that their very commonplaceness explains the discrepancy between early Christian theory and practice in the matter of interest. It would be an easy task to convict the early Christians of hypocritical pretense in this regard. Nothing more would be necessary than to print their theory in one column and their practice in a parallel one. Yet the early Christians were not hypocrites. As regards sincerity of profession they compare very favorably with any religionists of any age. As a matter of fact the historians have long ago shown that it is altogether impossible and unjust to argue from a sect's opinions to their feelings and actions. To quote Macauley[21]"Only imagine a man acting for one single day on the supposition that all his neighbors believe all that they profess or act up to all that they believe. Imagine a man acting on the supposition that he may safely offer the deadliest injuries and insults to everybody who says that revenge is sinful; or that he may safely intrust all his property without security to any person who says it is wrong to steal. Such a character would be too absurd for the wildest farce." "The law which is inscribed on the walls of the synagogues prohibits covetousness. But if we were to say that a Jew mortgagee would not foreclose because God had commanded him not to covet his neighbor's house, everybody would think us out of our wits."[22]Yet that Jew is no hypocrite in his religion. He is sincerely and honestly devoted to his faith and will sacrifice time and money; will undergo social obloquy and contempt in support of it. So it was with the early Christians. By the process of abstracting their theory and practice of interest from the social matrix which alone makes the theory or practice intelligible,it is easy to show a logical inconsistency. It would be equally foolish and false to deduce from this inconsistency any conclusions one way or the other as to early Christian morality. It is if course no aim of this thesis to attack or defend any religious or moral opinions. It is a matter entirely apart from our present concern to evaluate interest or non-interest in ethical terms. Our purpose is not to explain away the inconsistency of the early Christians. Admitting the inconsistency in the fullest degree, our aim is to explain it as natural, and, under the social conditions then prevailing, practically inevitable. The early Christians left funds to care in perpetuity for the family burial lot.[23]Under any religious creed; Pagan, Jewish, or Christian, decent provision for the care of graves of relatives was not only admissible, it was a positive demand of social reputability; to say nothing of the demand of natural affection.

Similarly annual agapes were established by bequests as a charity to the poor brethren.[24]These agapes were no innovation. As an institution they were perfectly familiar and in universal observance among the pagans. The agapes were simply ordinary Roman silicernia with the name changed. To the Romans, founding a silicernium was like wearing a toga or going to a bath. It possessed the sanction of law and the benediction of religion; but its real compulsion lay in social custom. No person could escape this pressure of the mores and retain self respect, to say nothing of the respect of others. The pagan silicernium was morally respectable; it perpetuated friendship and promoted good feeling. There was no reason for avoiding it, if avoidance had been possible—as it was not. The Christians not only preserved this pious institution; they improved it. Their annual agapes fed the poor, which the silicernia, excellent as they were, seldom did.

The explanation we have endeavored to give of the endowment of family burial lots and annual agapes is applicable, mutis mutandis, to other cases of interest. It therefore is not surprising to learn that Callixtus (pope 218-223A.D.) was a banker previous to his elevation to the papacy; that large numbers of Christians, particularly widowsand orphans—entrusted their money to his bank, and that he had large loans out at good interest to Jewish bankers.[25]

The truth is that the early Christian horror of interest, while absolutely honest and even desperately sincere, was a strictly legalistic, ceremonial, and ritualistic horror. It was purely formal and was not at all concerned with any economic principle. The thing that was wicked, was not income from capital invested, but incomein the form of interest on money. To own a ship and sail it and make profits from ownership by freight charges was perfectly honest, but to invest money in a shipping corporation and receive dividends was wicked. So it was honest to own a building and get money as rent. It was immoral to invest money in the construction company that erected that building and receive income in the form of interest. Rent, profit, and interest are merely three forms of the same thing, income from invested capital. Any endeavor to distinguish between them in this respect is entirely devoid of moral or economic justification. The ancient Church fathers were as well aware of this as we are. The real point and importance of their concept of interest was their defense of that concept. That defense was a curious one and illustrates the difference between ancient and modern reasoning on economic matters—and on other matters also. The difference in a word is that of mistaking means for ends on the theory of course that we moderns are right and the prophets, philosophers, Christian fathers, et al. wrong. According to modern social science, interest is merely a means adopted for the attainment of certain ends—economic, educational, religious or whatever. The goodness or badness of interest is to be judged strictly and solely by the convenience and economy with which it serves these ends. If any other property institution can, in a given situation, serve a given end more easily and more cheaply than the institution of interest, then, in that situation, the institution of interest—other things being equal—is immoral and should be abolished. If, in the given situation, no other property institution can serve the given end more easily and more cheaply than the institution of interest, then that institution is moral and should be retained. That is, from the modern sociological point of view, the institution of interest is inconceivable except as a means to some end outside itself. As a means it is to be judged in apurely objective and pragmatic manner by the ordinary standards of cost price, economic, social, and other.

The method of the ancients is entirely otherwise. Assuming still the correctness of the modern viewpoint, which viewpoint be it said is not unassailable and indeed is assailed by divers radicals, socialists and others, but for the most part persons lacking in pecuniary reputability; the mistake then, that the Early Church fathers make is that of taking the means for an end. They have many arguments against interest but all these arguments can be criticised for this one error. The fathers elevate interest to the dignity of an end in itself. Interest, qua interest, is condemned. It is taking advantage of a brother's necessity. It is grinding the face of the poor. It is producing pride, luxury, and vice. As soon as moral value is attached to anything, it of course, is viewed as an end in itself. If it be true that interest is an end in itself, then the fiercest diatribes of the fathers are none too severe. Assuming their premises, their conclusions follow inevitably. The modern man—he is not unknown—who talks about the "sacred rights" of private property is guilty of the same error as the ancient Christians, the error of mistaking means for ends. The early Christians could not see that the property institution of interest is neither good nor bad except as it is good or badfor something. Thesomethingdetermines the judgment. As a matter of historical fact the condemnation of interest developed in certain early stages of human civilization and at those stages interest was socially detrimental. At those stages, however, it was exceedingly rare and correspondingly infamous. In any country where there is abundance of good, free land the phenomenon of interest on money will disappear, provided labor is free. So it disappeared in the northern states of this Union in the later part of the 18th century. These phenomena caused the southerners to adopt slavery though all their English traditions had declared it immoral for more than three centuries. The relation of interest to slavery under a condition of free land is the relation of cause and effect, i.e., the requirement of interest will produce slavery and the abolition of interest will abolish slavery.[26]These social phenomena are of importance in our consideration of the early Christian doctrine of interest. That doctrine was largely evaded and disobeyed but it still had great effectand that effect was toward the abolition of slavery. We do not mean that this economic doctrine alone resulted in the abolition of slavery, or even that it was a chief cause in the abolition of slavery, it was not obeyed well enough to be such a chief cause; but so far as it was obeyed, it tended in that direction.

The net result of all Christian teaching together was to prolong the existence of the institution of slavery for two centuries, perhaps for three. The doctrine of the sinfulness of interest however, worked toward emancipation and forced slavery in its later end to become almost wholly agricultural, i.e., to yield income as rent. Slaves cannot be employed in commerce or industry in sufficient numbers to be profitable where the institution of interest is banned as it was in the 'dark ages.' The Christian concept of interest undermined ancient civilization by abrogating, slowly but surely, the institution of property by which such gangs of 'manufacturing slaves' as made the fortune of Crassus, could alone be made profitable. It is an historical curiosity that it accomplished this result without any attack on the institution of slavery itself.

As soon as Christian doctrines became widespread enough to produce important social results we find Christian slave owners manumitting their slaves in considerable numbers. It is no derogation to the influence of the doctrine of human brotherhood or to the humanity of the Christian slave owners to mention the fact that the doctrine of the sinfulness of interest, by tending to make slavery unprofitable, aided in the process of bringing to light the real content of the doctrine of human brotherhood, and of making the humane practice of manumission easier by the removal of certain economic impediments.

In order to understand properly the working of the prohibition of interest and its relation to manumission, it is necessary to carry the analysis one step farther to its ultimate physical basis, which was the conditioning factor of actual practice and eventually of theory also. The exhaustion of the soil of western Europe which was the result of ancient methods of agriculture, together with the rising standard of living and the competition of other more fertile agricultural regions like Egypt and North Africa resulted in the substitution of the latifundi for small landholdings.[27]As the pressure continuedthe latifundi in turn became economically unprofitable under forced labor (slavery) and large tracts of land were abandoned. In order to put this land under agriculture again the charge upon it had to be reduced by the substitution of (relatively) free associated labor, villeinage or serfdom. But this change cut off the economic margin upon which the structure of ancient civilization was built and is the ultimate economic reason assignable for the fall of Rome. Of course the collapse of the empire could, theoretically, have been avoided had the Romans of the first three centuriesA.D.been content to live the toilsome and frugal life of the Romans of the early republic. But this was an utter impossibility in practice. This slowly working and hardly understood decline in the relative and actual ability of ancient agriculture to sustain the weight imposed upon it, enables us to see why the sinfulness of interest could be steadily indoctrined even though steadily evaded, by Christians from the beginning, while manumission was not taught at all in the beginning and only worked up to the dignity of a pious action relatively late.[28]It also explains why manumission of household and personal slaves preceded that of agricultural slaves. Of course there is nothing peculiarly Christian about this later phenomenon and the operation of other causes is discernable, but it is important for our purpose to observe that Christian practice, and Christian theory in property matters in the long run, followed the broad lines of the underlying economic evolution.[29]The application of this to the origin of Christian monasticism and to the revival of communistic theories by the later Church fathers lies at the very outside limit of our study but will be briefly touched on after we have considered the final overthrow of the communistic property concept as they appear in the earlier fathers up to and including Tertullian.

Clement of Alexandria 153-217A.D.has the distinction of being the first Christian theological writer who clearly expounds the concept of private property which has held sway without substantial change in the Church until the present time. This statement does not apply to the doctrine of receiving interest on money. In respect to this doctrine Clement is in perfect accord with all other early Christians both before and after himself. Indeed he specifically states that the Mosaic prohibition against taking interest from one's brother extends in the case of a Christian to all mankind. But in regard to all other property institutions Clement's attitude is essentially that of any modern Christian of generous disposition.

In all that Clement has to say about property, and the 'bulk' of his 'property passages' is as great as that of all previous Christian writers together, he speaks like a man on the defensive. Indeed there has come down to us no other Christian writing earlier than his time which presents his view, with the dubious exception of some passages in Hermas. The fact seems to be that while Clement is undoubtedly presenting an apologetic for the existing practice in the Church of his day, that practice was felt to be more or less open to attack in the light of certain scripture passages. Communism as an existential reality was gone by the time of Clement—whatever may have been the extent—probably a limited one—to which it had existed in the earlier ages. But while communism as a fact was dead, communism as an idea or ideal of Christian economy was not dead. Indeed Clement's views about the morality of wealth were so different from those of previous writers that a great modern economist[30]in treating of this subject ventures the opinion, though doubtfully, that the reason why Clement, alone among the great early theologians, was never canonized by the Church was that he ran counter to popular belief on this subject. This opinion is probably erroneous. Clement's theological opinions have a semi-Gnostic tinge quite sufficient to explain the absence of his name from the calendar of saints.

Clement justifies the institution of private property. He justifies, on the highest ethical and philosophical principles, the possession by Christians of even the most enormous wealth. His apologetic is not an original one. He borrows it bodily from Plato. Indeed he quotes Plato verbatim, invocation to Pan and the other heathen gods included.[31]The originality lies in applying this Platonic doctrine to the exposition of Christian scripture. Clement's method is strictly that of Biblical exegesis. In the well known sermon or essay on: "Who is the Rich Man that shall be saved" he takes up practically all of the scriptural passages which seem opposed to the institutionsof private property and explains them in so modern a spirit that the whole sermon might be delivered today in any ordinary Church and would be readily accepted as sound and reliable doctrine. His thesis is that wealth or poverty are matters in themselves indifferent. That riches are not to be bodily gotten rid of, but are to be wisely conserved and treated as a stewardship intrusted to the owner by God. That charity to the poor should be in proportion to one's wealth and that a right use of wealth will secure salvation to the upright Christian even though he possesses great riches all his life and leaves them to his heirs. The wealth that is dangerous to the soul is not physical possessions, but spiritual qualities of greed and avarice.

His views can be best expressed by himself. We give two characteristic passages from the sermon above referred to.[32]"Rich men that shall with difficulty enter into the kingdom, is to be apprehended in a scholarly way, not awkwardly, or rustically, or carnally. For if the expression is used thus, salvation does not depend upon external things, whether they be many or few, small or great, or illustrious or obscure or esteemed or disesteemed; but on the virtue of the soul, on faith and hope and love and brotherliness, and knowledge, and meekness and humility and truth the reward of which is salvation." "Sell thy possessions. What is this? He does not, as some off hand conceive, bid him throw away the substance he possesses and abandon his property; but he bids him banish from his soul his notions about wealth, his excitement and morbid feeling about it, the anxieties, which are the thorns of existence which choke the seed of life. And what peculiar thing is it that the new creature, the Son of God intimates and teaches? It is not the outward act which others have done, but something else indicated by it, greater, more godlike, more perfect, the stripping off of the passions from the soul itself and from the disposition, and the cutting up by the roots and casting out of what is alien to the mind." "One, after ridding himself of the burden of wealth, may none the less have still the lust and desire for money innate and living; and may have abandoned the use of it, but being at once destitute of and desiring what he spent may doubly grieve both on account of the absence of attendance and the presence of regret."[33]

We have now come to the beginning of what is in many respects the most interesting period in the history of property concepts. It is a period in which everything is upside down and wrong end to. In that strange age we find a famous archbishop, one of the world's noblest orators, a man of the most spotless integrity and the most saintly life, publicly preaching in the foremost pulpit of Christendom doctrines of property, the implications of which, the most hardened criminal would scarcely venture to breathe to a gang of thieves.[34]We find the most learned scholar of the century, in the weightiest expositions of Christian Scripture, penning the most powerful apologetic of anarchy that is to be found in the literature of the world.[35]We find one of the greatest of the popes, a man whose genius as a statesman will go down to the latest ages of history, setting forth in a manual for the instruction of Christian bishops, property concepts more radical than those of the fiercest Jacobins in the bloodiest period of the Terror.[36]

Stranger still, these incredible performances are the strongest proofs of the wisdom and piety of the men responsible for them. These men are today honored as the saviors of civilized religion and their images in bronze and marble and painted glass adorn the proudest temples of the most conservative denominations of Christians. The strange history of these famous men: Athanasius, the two Gregories, Basil and Chrysostom in the East; Augustine, Ambrose, Jerome and Gregory in the West, lies outside the limits of our study. But the explanation of their desperate and uncompromising communism can be given in a word. It was the communism of crisis: the communism of shipwrecked sailors forced to trust their lives to a frail lifeboat with an insufficient supply of provisions. These great Christian scholars, enriched by all the accumulated culture of their civilization, saw that culture falling into ruin all around them; they felt the foundations of that civilization trembling beneath their feet. To vary the figure, they beheld the rising tide of ignorance and barbarism rapidly engulfing the world and with desperate haste they set to work rebuilding and strengthening the ark of the Church that in it, religion, and so much of civilization as possible, might be savedtill the flood subsided. Their task, perhaps the most important and most urgent, that men have ever had to perform, was of such a nature that they cared not what they wrecked in order to accomplish it. They ripped up the floor of the bridal chamber for timber and took the doors of the bank-safe for iron.

These rhetorical figures are violent; but they are less violent than the reality they are intended to express. Monasticism was the last desperate hope of civilized Christianity and these men knew it. To establish monasticism they degraded the sanctity of marriage and denounced the sacredness of property. They conferred the most sacred honors upon the lowliest drudgery;[37]they turned princes into plowmen and nobles into breakers of the soil. Some historians, judging them by the different standards of a later age, have pronounced them fanatics led astray by vulgar superstition. But judged by the needs of their own age, judged by the inestimable services rendered to the world by the monastic system they instituted, they are entitled to a place far up in the list of the wisest and the ablest of the human kind.

Sketchy and imperfect as the above study necessarily is, it nevertheless gives the primary facts which are essential to an understanding of the important part played by property concepts and property institutions in the transformation of early Christianity from a predominantly eschatological to a practically socialized movement.

We have seen,[38]that the earliest generations of Christians took over from contemporary Judaism a strongly Chiliastic eschatology. The logical consequence of such an eschatology is an indifference to, or undervaluation of, the existing social arrangements including the property concepts and institutions. One form easily taken by this indifference and undervaluation is that of practical communism. We accordingly find in the Acts and in such early writings as the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas a distinctly communistic theory and the traces of more or less effort to put this theory into some degree of practical effect. Chiliasm and communism in these writers go together naturally.

Pari passu with this logical, communistic Chiliasm we can trace the development of an illogical, individualistic Chiliasm in St. Paul, Clement of Rome and Hermas. It is already manifest even at thisearly stage, that the weight of influence and power of control in the Christian societies is on the side of the individualists. This is due to two causes. In the first place the communists among the Christians worked under a great handicap. The underlying economic institutions of society can indeed be changed. But they can be changed—on any considerable scale—only very slowly and by enormous effort. At any attempt to change them a thousand interested and determined antagonists at once arise. It is not too much to say that had all Christians insisted upon communism as an essential element of the Christian faith and practice, Christianity in the Roman world could never have developed into anything more than an unimportant sect. The very fact that Christianity spread as rapidly as it did in the first century of its existence is proof that the communists in the Church made very little headway. It was hard enough to combat pagan religion and philosophy. Had the property institutions been attacked also, the primary religious objects would have been lost sight of in the conflict.

In the second place the more practical minded Christian leaders would be antagonistic to a doctrine and practice which alienated many persons who might otherwise be won to the Church, and practically minded persons outside the Church regarded the individualists with more favor and were more easily influenced by them to become Christians themselves. The early importance attained by the Church of Rome is to be largely ascribed to the predominance in its councils of such practical persons.[39]Communism had no hold there at all and Chiliasm was never allowed to interfere with the practical workings of society.

By the time of Justin the three concepts; Chiliasm, Communism, and Individualism had arrived at a modus vivendi. According to this arrangement Chiliasm and Communism held sway as theories while individualism ruled in the world of fact. This agreement proved very satisfactory and for more than half a century was the the accepted thing. It is seen in full force in Tertullian.

There is a general tendency, due to the natural effects of use and disuse, for theories which do not correspond to realities to become discredited, even as theories. Conversely realities which at first lack theoretical justification tend to accumulate such justificationwith the lapse of time. It is therefore not surprising to find by the beginning of the Third Century, a movement to discard theoretical Chiliasm and communism and to validate by theoretical apologetic the actually existing individualism. These two processes in the nature of the case are closely connected with one another and it is not by mere chance that they find a common exponent in Clement of Alexandria. That famous opponent of Chiliasm is equally well known as the justifier of an extreme individualism. He greatly facilitated the spread of Christian theology by liberating it from the burden of an eschatological theory increasingly hard to reconcile with reality and also by bringing the economic teachings of Christianity into conformity with current practice. As noted above, there was one economic doctrine which neither he nor any other early Christian teacher ever attempted to reconcile with the facts, and it is undoubtedly true that the doctrine of the sinfulness of interest was alike detrimental to the spread of Christianity and to the general well being of society as it then existed. The reasons why this particular reality i.e., interest on money, was so slow in receiving its theoretical justification are numerous. The only ones that need concern us here are that the opposition to be overcome in this case was much more formidable than in the cases of Chiliasm and communism and the fact that this inconsistency on the part of the Christians did not in reality offer any very serious obstacle to the growth of the Church. Communism had no great body of Biblical authority at its back. There are indeed some texts in its favor but there are plenty of an opposite nature. The doctrine had no great popular prejudice in its favor. In addition it was insuperably difficult of realization in fact. It was otherwise with interest. The theoretical prejudice against interest was almost as great among the Jews and Pagans as among the Christians themselves. The Scriptures were unequivocal in their denunciation of it. Furthermore the correlative institutions of rent and profit offered so many opportunities to disguise the fact of interest that it was exceedingly easy to retain the theoretical opposition without ceasing the actual practice. Although Clement's condemnation of interest was probably merely an inherited prejudice it is by no means impossible that he considered that an attempt to justify it would endanger his defense of the more fundamental institution of private property. At any rate his course canbe defended as a practical one under the circumstances. Whatever may be said of its consistency, the Christian custom of condemning the theory and winking at the practice of interest worked well. The inconsistency which seems so glaring to us, was probably very largely unperceived by the ancient pagans—they had exactly the same inconsistency themselves.

In regard to Chiliasm and property, practically the same attitude prevailed. It worked indeed even more easily. In the West there seems to have been a considerable Chiliastic tradition. So long as this tradition did not result in any practices which interfered with the actual progress of the Church, the Fathers were content to let it alone. It did not, till at least the Third Century, hinder the acceptance of Christian doctrine by the pagans and may even have aided the process among some of the lower classes. Its long survival can be taken as sure proof that it did not effect either the development of the hierarchy or the institution of property.

As regards property of man in man, the superior power of the Christian religion to keep slaves in subjection accounts in no small measure for its relatively rapid rise to power in the ancient world. The pagan religion was inferior in usefulness to the Christian religion because it could not keep the slave contented with his position. The next world in the pagan theology was only a worse copy of this world. Christianity, in glaring contrast to paganism, proclaimed that the despised and afflicted were to sit on golden thrones in the next life. The more they were exploited in this life, the brighter their crown in the next one. The pagan slave was dangerous. The whole pre-Christian literature of Classical antiquity shows the ever present fear of a servile outbreak. There were good grounds for that fear. Outbreaks were frequent and of a most ferocious character. On more than one occasion they threatened the very existence of the ancient civilization. Christianity was able to make the slave contented to be a slave. It was economically an enormous advance over paganism. A master whose slaves were Christians was not afraid of being murdered by them. Not only was the master's life secure, his property was secure also. The pagan slaves were notorious thieves. The Christian slave did not rob his master. These facts gave Christianity an enormous leverage in its efforts to force its way into social recognition. It went far toward securing a favorable dispositiontoward the new religion on the part of the influential, wealthy, and conservative elements in the population.

Into the general economic changes which began to operate toward the end of our period it is not our purpose to enter, but it is worth notice that the efforts made by the Church to save itself in the general ruin which overtook the ancient world, chiefly the institution of monasticism, were such as to secure more firmly than ever the hold of the Church upon society. The Church rapidly became an economic factor of the first importance. The only secure basis of lasting social influence is economic. Christianity by teaching the virtues of honesty, frugality, simplicity, and charity laid the foundations of her subsequent triumph, and when she had great societies of men and women working hard and living plainly and adding all their accumulations to institutions belonging to the Church and directly under the supervision and control of the ecclesiastical authority, the Church paved the way for her subsequent domination of the civil government. Monastic communism, being economically superior to Chiliastic Communism, inevitably superseded it.

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