Clement of Alexandria composed, around the year 200, a small treatise titled “Who Is the Rich Man That Shall Be Saved?” Thinking of Jesus’ words regarding camels and the eyes of needles (Mark 10:23-25), he introduced his argument by criticizing, in blunt and incisive language, those who lavish praise and flattery upon the rich rather than warning that wealth can “corrupt the souls of its possessors” by turning them from God, who is the sole true Good. At the same time, he worries that the rich, hearing Jesus’ uncompromising words, will despair of their ultimate salvation, and consciously invest themselves in the goods of this present age, which is passing away. Clement, then, wants to show rich folk who will listen that salvation is possible even for them, if they accept the Word of God as their personal trainer, if they seek and know God through their trust in the Savior, if they undertake the self-transformation that is necessary by keeping the commandments and if (unlike the rich man in Mark’s story [10:21]) they finally sell their possessions and “give to the poor,” thus acquiring “treasure in heaven.”

Clement then explains what he understands by these last two instructions. “Sell what you have” — dispossessing oneself of one’s property — does not mean to Clement just throwing everything away. There is, he thinks, no point in dispossession unless the act has some aim beyond itself: there is no virtue in poverty as such. The model for the rich man, he thinks, is someone like Zacchaeus, who gave half of all he possessed to benefit the poor, and then repaid fourfold all whom he had cheated — and no doubt had a bit left over to continue his work of assisting the needy. One cannot help people if one has nothing wherewith to help them: to renounce one’s possessions means to renounce greed and the lust of possession, and so to employ wealth for the good of others, and especially for the good of fellow believers.

Clement plainly wrote as he did because there were Christians in Alexandria who thought that salvation was not for the rich — who perhaps agreed with the Letter of James that it is “the rich who oppress” the poor, and the poor for whom God’s salvation is intended (2:1-5). James’s portrayal of people of property (5:1ff.) is not complimentary, and, unlike Clement, he is not in the business of holding out hope for them. One is bound, therefore, to wonder which of these positions is truer to the overall witness of the Scriptures (and of the New Testament in particular). For better or worse, however, the answer to that question is not perfectly clear. Two or three things, however, are certain.

For one thing, the Scriptures exhibit a distrust of wealth in all forms, and for two reasons. On the one hand, as Clement himself firmly asserts, material wealth has a way of becoming an idol — a substitute for God. Jesus when tempted refused the Devil’s offer of “all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them” (Matthew 4:8-10) on the ground that to accept would be inconsistent with the worship and service of God alone. The same point is made by the well-known saying, “You cannot serve God and mammon” (Matthew 6:24), and by the parables of the hidden treasure and the “one pearl of great value” (Matthew 13:44ff.), for the sake of which farmer and merchant alike “went and sold all that he had.” Moreover, following Jesus and thus serving God’s Kingdom required that the disciples leave behind everything they possessed, including their families and their means of livelihood. The requirement was to put the Kingdom of God first and to beware of “the cares of the world and the delight in riches,” for they “choke the word” that the divine Sower sows (Mark 4:19). Covetousness, says St. Paul, quite simply is idolatry. On the other hand, riches were too often gotten and employed in ways that involved manifest injustice: deceit, corruption of the courts, lack of charity. Under the regulations of the Mosaic covenant, the poor had rights (Ex. 22:25, e.g., or 23:11; Lev. 25:39ff.); and when these were regularly ignored, the prophets just as regularly cried out against the practice of “grinding the faces of the poor” (Isa. 3:15, e.g.; cf. Amos 4:2). The Letter of James’s distaste for the arrogance of the rich had a long pedigree.

Finally, the nascent Christian churches were devoted to the ideal of mutual care. “If any one has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him” (1 Jn 3:17)? Paul for his part acknowledges the ideal of dispossession as it is commended in the Gospels; but it means little, he says, apart from love (1 Cor. 13:3), and in his eyes, love showed itself in care for the needs of others, “that there may be equality” (2 Cor. 8:14f.).

All of these ideas and themes that concern wealth, money, or riches, are prominent in Scripture. Perhaps they are not inconsistent in principle, but in any given situation emphasis might in practice fall quite naturally on one at the expense of others. (What about taking interest on money lent to the poor?)