Money and Faith in the Early Christian Church Series Purgatory to Paradise: The Ransom of the Soul
A Sunday Adult Forum St. John’s Episcopal Church, Worthington, OH
Presented by Miriam Utter, Parishioner Sunday April 30, 2017
Welcome back for another quick dash through late antiquity, as we examine the roots of some of the early Christian practices that became part of the practice of the Catholic Church, whose abuse led to the Protestant Reformation. We must understand that these traditions and rituals began as solutions to the social, economic and historical forces pressing on the Roman empire and its cities as it slowly decayed and became a new version of itself with the crowning of Charlemagne as Holy Roman emperor in 800 CE.
Once again, remember the structure of roman society- 90% of the population lived miserable lives, some in cities earning a living with small businesses such as restaurants, laundries, bakeries, or others oppressed by the tax collectors in rural areas or living as slaves in households or in brutal conditions in mines, bathhouses and primitive factories. No one except the town councilors and above had any immunity to torture or death, with no trial.
Christianity offered something unique- a claim that each life had value, had a place in a community of believers, and a hope of a better life in the next world. What were the beliefs in the afterlife current in the ancient world at this time? Just a reminder, as we discussed in the talk on baptism and the early church, that most early Christians were Jewish and followed those rituals.
In Judaism, religion was much more focused on actions than beliefs. The Torah and Talmud alike focus on the purpose of earthly life, which is to fulfill one's duties to God and one's fellow man. Succeeding at this brings reward, failing at it brings punishment. Whether rewards and punishments continue after death, or whether anything at all happens after death, is not as important. For the most part, the Torah describes the afterlife in vague terms, many of which may simply be figurative ways of speaking about death as it is observed by the living.
An early common theme is that death means rejoining one's ancestors. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and other patriarchs are "gathered to their people" after death (see Gen. 25:8, 25:17, 35:29, 49:33; Deut. 42:50; 2 I. 22:20). In contrast, the wicked are "cut off” from their people" (Gen. 17:14; Ex. 31:14).
Other imagery emphasizes the finality of death: the dead are like dust returning to dust (Genesis; AK. 3:19-20) or water poured out on the ground (2 Samuel 14:14).
Another recurring biblical image of the afterlife is as a shadowy place called Sheol. It is a place of darkness (Psalm 88:13, Job 10:21, 22) and silence (Psalm 115:17), located in low places (Numbers 16:30, Ezekiel 31:14, Psalm 88:7, Lamentations 3:55; Jonah 2:7, Job 26:5). In
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1 Samuel 2:6, God puts people in She'll. In Isaiah 14:9-10, the departed in Sheol rise up to greet leaders who have now been brought low as they are.
Taken together, these early biblical descriptions of death seem to indicate that the soul continues to exist in some way after death, but not consciously. Later in the Torah, the concept of conscious life after death begins to develop. Daniel 12:2 declares, "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence."
More developed concepts of the resurrection of the dead and afterlife seem to have entered Judaism under Hellenistic influence after the Torah was completed. It became one of the fundamental beliefs in rabbinic Judaism, the intellectual successors of the Pharisees. The Sadducees, familiar to New Testament readers as those who denied the resurrection, were an exception.
Traditional Judaism includes belief in both heaven and hell, as we will see below. How is one's destination decided? The School of Shammed offered this description:
There will be three groups on the Day of Judgment: one of thoroughly righteous people, one of thoroughly wicked people and one of people in between. The first group will be immediately inscribed for everlasting life; the second group will be doomed in Genion [Hell], as it says, "And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence" [Daniel 12:2], the third will go down to Genion and squeal and rise again, as it says, "And I will bring the third part through the fire, and will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried. They shall call on My name and I will answer them" [Zechariah 13:9].
In Judaism, the eternal destination for the righteous is Gan Eden (the Garden of Eden). It is generally described as a place of great joy and peace. Talmudic imagery includes: sitting at golden banquet tables or at stools of gold , enjoying lavish banquets, or celebrating the Sabbath, enjoying sunshine and sexual intercourse, similar to the Islamic paradise. On the other hand, other sages have offered a more spiritual view of Gad Eden. Maimonides agreed, explaining:
In the world to come, there is nothing corporeal, and no material substance; there are only souls of the righteous without bodies -- like the ministering angels. The righteous attain to a knowledge and realization of truth concerning God to which they had not attained while they were in the murky and lowly body.
The Jewish concept of the afterlife for the wicked is less developed. Known as genion or She'll, it has its foundations in the dark pit described in the Torah and an actual place where a pagan cult conducted rituals included burning children.
Genion is the postmortem destination of unrighteous Jews and Gentiles. In one reference, the souls in Genion are punished for up to 12 months. After the appropriate period of purification, the righteous continue on to Gan Eden. The wicked endure the full year of punishment then are either annihilated or continue to be punished.
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What did the Romans believe? We are all familiar with the imagery of Charon the boatman, who ferries the dead across the river Styx in Greek mythology.
Death was defined as the separation of body and soul. Two strands of thought were present in reference to the location of the dead. On one hand, the remains (whether buried, burned, or exposed) were localized in a particular place, important as the spot where the loved ones took their leave of the dead and where honor was appropriately shown to them. On the other hand, there was the possibility that the departed passed into a new plane of existence. The belief that the departed lived on in the tomb is reflected in giving it the name "eternal house," in constructing tombs and the interior of sarcophagi to resemble a home, and in the offerings of food and drink placed in the tomb. Quite widespread among Mediterranean peoples was the belief that the dead gather in a great cavity under the earth; the Hebrew sheol, Greek hadis, and Latin inferi were basically the same concept. In earliest times no differentiation was made among the dead, who continued in a shadowy prolongation of human life in the same circumstances they had in human society. The "shades" (rephidim) of the Old Testament are similar to the "souls" in Homer. Orphic teaching modified the old Greek tradition and introduced distinct departments into the underworld.
The souls or shades of the deceased are led by Hermes to the depths of the earth and in a provisional abode await a decision concerning their eternal lot. They cross the river Styx, conducted by the boatman Charon, and come to the court that judges them. The guilty are sent down the road to the left, which leads to dark Tartarus, the place of punishment (Cf. 2 Pet. 2:4); the pious are led down the road on the right to the Elysian Fields where all is bright and beautiful. The Orphics and Pythagoreans gave the specific content to these two places and assigned everyone to one place or the other.
Philosophical thought combined astral religion with the transfer to the abode of souls to the celestial regions to enjoy immortality in the regions of the moon, sun, or stars. Prevalent in early Christian times was the belief that the souls of loved ones went directly to the Milky Way where they became stars. The persistence of the idea of punishment and a separation of the virtuous from the wicked divided the upper atmosphere into upper and lower regions so that the whole of the (former) subterranean world was now conceptualized as located above the earth's surface.
A compromise was finally reached between these views. The celestial world became the home of the virtuous, whose spirits arose through the planetary spheres to the Supreme Being to dwell in luminous bliss, and the nether world became the abode of the wicked, who were cast down to subterranean darkness in order to suffer eternal chastisement. An intermediate purgatory provided a posthumous purification for those stained with bad deeds. Death was defined as the separation of body and soul. The bliss of the righteous was commonly depicted under one of three images: repose or rest, a celestial banquet, or the vision of God. The threefold division of the universe and of souls was transmitted by antiquity to the Christian Middle Ages, providing the framework for Dante's Divine Comedy. Apart from some Jews and the Christians, the only people of the ancient world to believe in a resurrection of the flesh were the Zoroastrians of Persia. Their typical teaching included the appearance of the good or evil conscience after death, the passing over a bridge, the ultimate resurrection of the flesh and the kingdom of righteousness.
I am certain that you can see from the descriptions above that the early church absorbed many of the philosophical theories that abounded in the culture. We will now examine how these
Sunday Adult For u m 2 0 1 7 - 0 4 - 30: P urgatory to Paradise ( Miriam Utter ) P a g e 3 | 7 theories were integrated into Christian theology and doctrine. As always, we will follow the money. We learned last week how wealth was transferred from the earthly cities by the wealthy to the heavenly cities of the church under the persuasive offer to lay up treasures in heaven by donating on earth, cleansing the ill-gotten gains as a gift from God instead of the fruits of evil- doing.
The believer who gave alms to the poor or the church believed that an actual mansion or treasure was being laid up in their name in heaven. Every penny added another brick to the heavenly home. We moderns are embarrassed by the thought that our gifts are literally affecting heaven, but this is an age old belief in many cultures (example: Chinese burning money at a grave). For early Christians, the act of almsgiving allowed the donor to reenact the miracle of God’s grace for the sinner, in a world where the creator would reward mercy with mercy. Also, in an even greater imaginative leap, the tarnished world and the untarnished heavens are joined through unrighteous “mammon”. Almsgiving not only joined the rich and poor in a horizontal relationship, but also evoked a vertical relationship, a bridge built between humans and God.
In the 1st,2nd and early 3rd centuries, most of the early believers were not the immensely wealthy or the desperate disenfranchised non-citizens, but mediocrites- middling or average in wealth and status. Almsgiving, combined with intense prayer played a central role in maintaining solidarity in a fringe community. How did one express this solidarity with the dead? Intercessory prayer was the answer. It bridged all chasms. Relations with the dead echoed the treasures in heaven as almsgiving became part of funerals and memorial meals. The poor were socially dead, as the dead were physically lifeless, but they were connected by the spiritual benefit of alms.
These memorial meals took place in the cemeteries, or catacombs in the case of Rome, which were located outside the city walls. Families would bring picnics to eat among their family dead, with a meal called a refrigerium, a feast of refreshment and good cheer. It mirrored the rest that the departed soul was enjoying. In this early Christianity, the souls were in a state of waiting and rest, with the end of time and the return of Jesus just around the corner.
The living prayed to remember the dead, but they prayed intently to be remembered by the dead. Their understanding of memory differs from ours. We see it as a passive storage unit, whereas memory in ancient times was an act of will. To remember was to assert a bond; to forget was aggressive; it was an act of social excision that severed links. To remember was to intercede. Intercessory prayer wrapped the Christian community in a perpetual flicker of divine power.
As the church became more established, socially acceptable, with wealthy members, the easy- going relationships of the early days hardened into the ruler /subject and patron/ client relationships of the 4th century. Saints were no longer partners in prayer, but patroni or patron saints. The poor also flooded the churches, but they were no longer a neighbor or acquaintance down on their luck, but anonymous faces. Thus almsgiving was no longer a gesture of solidarity but an expiatory action that required no bonding with the faceless poor. Dead and living also drifted apart- as bishops attacked the burials customs of feasting in the cemeteries, and the close relations of living and dead. The only acceptable forms of communication with the dead were almsgiving, prayers and the Eucharist.
Finally, the acceptance of the Platonic ideas expressed by Plotinus, that the disembodied soul was immediately ascended to heaven, gave some the sense that some Christian souls were
Sunday Adult For u m 2 0 1 7 - 0 4 - 30: P urgatory to Paradise ( Miriam Utter ) P a g e 4 | 7 more clearly bound for heaven than others, especially those of the wealthy. Augustine, with his emphasis on sin, made heavenly rest seem even more distant to the average Christian soul, as the journey to eternal rest was beset by demons and evil spirits.
The valde boni altogether good, had no problem reaching heaven, nor did the valde mali altogether bad have a problem getting to hell. It was the middle, non valdes, not altogether good or bad who were stuck in the middle. Such persons could be helped by the prayers and offerings of the living, provided they were qualified by living reasonably good lives.
As Christianity became the majority religion, many more rich people came into the church, and they wanted to know how their earthly treasure could be transferred to heaven for their benefit. Christ’s depictions at this time show him becoming more and more like the Roman Emperor, and he was expected to look like one and act like one, to be the Judge. A famous mosaic, Christos Pantokrator illustrates this image. He was distant from many, but occasionally someone could establish a relationship by kissing his robe, or giving a gift, just as patrons and clients exchanged benefits.
There was also increased questioning of the bishops for their opinions on the fate of the dead, the virtue of prayer, the expiation of sin, by the living.
Last week we talked about the wealthy and their spending on civic projects such as baths, games, and roads that benefitted only their fellow citizens. Poverty did not count, only citizenship. Augustine’s preaching that the wealthy give to the poor undermined the entire traditional model of society. It is moving from a closed to an open universe, from an enclosed society where only citizens count to an open universe, where society as a whole, town and country, are ruled by a single division into rich and poor.
Only a gesture that owed nothing to hometown or fellow citizen would earn the rich treasure in heaven. Sermons preached at this time encourage the rich to think of giving to the poor as loading a ship with treasure for a distant port. God became a debt manager, with sin thought of in financial terms. He could remit the debts of a lifetime of sins with one magnanimous gesture with an adequate down payment of treasure. This may offend our modern sensibilities, but those involved saw it as a metaphor to live by, a God of infinite reward, infinite change, infinite possibility of settling accounts, while the devil was the one with the account book writing down every minor infraction.
Religious giving was part of daily life, because daily life was defined by sin. Since the wealthy accumulated money in dribs and drabs daily, as they also accumulated little sins in dribs and drabs, what better way to expiate the sins than to give away the money?
But what about the soul after death? Can money affect its fate? Especially the souls of the not so good and not so bad. Augustine, struggling with the ideas of sin and expiation, came up with the idea from the letters of St Paul of a time of purgation- the soul does not ascend directly to God, but spends time between eternity , according to its past life, waiting to be cleansed of past peccadilloes. As a Platonist, he yearned for the eternal presence of God, but was unable to fully articulate a Christian doctrine that answered the question of how actions in this world affect the next. Living as he did, in the stable environment of North Africa, he was immune to the storms of conquest that were roiling the Christian communities in Gaul and Spain.
But other writers, struggling with the same issues, stepped into the fray.
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Salvian, a bishop in Gaul, saw that the leadership of the churches was passing into the hands of the local nobility. How to persuade them to give up their vast fortunes to the church? He conjured up a gripping vision of the other world, where ranks of angels and demons waited to judge the soul. Only generous donations to the church would give a soul the flicker of hope. These visions of hell came directly from the ascetic monasteries of Egypt, where figures such as Simon of Stylites, who spent 30 years living on a pillar in the desert captured the imaginations of the faithful. The mortification of the flesh arose from the theory that our spirits existed before birth, were embodied in sinful flesh when we were born, and then were set free at death. In order to lessen the burden of sins of the flesh, the body needed to be starved or punished, so the soul could then arise to heaven more quickly. There was also free-floating anxiety in the atmosphere at the time, driven by social and political changes that were out of anyone’s control.
These dramatic changes brought about equal changes in the idea of penance and expiation. As we explained above, Augustine believed in a little almsgiving daily to purge the little daily sins that all committed. In Gaul, dramatic scenes of renunciation by the wealthy, with the funds going to support the church and the poor, gave the renouncers spiritual clout to demand more from the wealthy. The wealth of the church was not like other wealth: it connected the two paradoxical poles of the Christian imagination – the socially dead (poor) and the physically dead (souls of the departed.) The increasing wealth of the church was sacrosanct- untouchable because both the beneficiaries of it – the poor and the dead were virtually invisible. The ultimate money laundering scheme.
The wealthy became the dependents of God, who was seen as their patron, reflecting the hierarchy of the day. To keep on His good side, they had to give gifts, as they did in real life with powerful men. Constant sermonizing on hellfire and damnation, kept congregations in a state of constant fear and tension as they approached the Last Judgment.
The logical explanation for all the ills of late antique society, the plagues, famines and wares, lay in sin. Society as a whole had to repent. The newly consolidated post-Roman kingdoms of Gaul took over the responsibility of enforcing Christian morality. Kings became emissaries of God on earth, entwining otherworld and this world, with moral policing of the population. They were responsible for maintaining God’s kingdom on earth.
The saints and martyrs, whose tombs and shrines were visited by pilgrims seeking miracles, were intercessors for the average soul as it set out on its perilous journey in the afterlife. God would grant amnesty, much as a Roman emperor did, after the soul had a brisk dip in the fires of hell. In the gospel of Matthew, the last judgement was Christ separating the sheep from the goats, who were sent into eternal punishment. The judgement was final. But for the bishops of Gaul, it was the day for the goats, the sinners who had one last chance to reverse God’s judgement by pleading for mercy, as though to a Roman emperor or a Frankish king. The saints would also intercede for the sinners. Giving money to the church for the poor or for an endowment meant that one’s soul was protected during the last judgement. The poor were victims, just as Christ was a victim, so if wealth was given to the church to help the poor, then attacking the church was attacking Christ. Gifts to the church were not simply meant to support rituals performed by priests and monks to affect the afterlife, but to support Christ through the poor.
What then was the fate of the average soul as it navigated the perilous afterlife? Can heaven and earth be joined by human agency? Inevitably that agency is money. In visions of the afterlife, common in the 7th and 8th century, the sins that prevented the soul from reaching heaven were those of avarice. The model of the universe had changed from the delineated
Sunday Adult For u m 2 0 1 7 - 0 4 - 30: P urgatory to Paradise ( Miriam Utter ) P a g e 6 | 7 ancient version, with the souls of the good on top in the Milky Way, with the flawed souls lingering in the dark world beneath the moon. The moral universe matched the physical universe.
Now, the universe was a moral one, with the souls of the dead needing the prayers of the living to free them from the bondage of purgation in the afterlife, to speed them on their way to the realm of God. The alms of the living, given at the shrines of the saints, would set souls free. Money and wealth donated to the church became the key to eternal life, as souls weighted down with the many tiny sins of daily life, strove to rise to heavenly kingdoms.
We will next focus on the cult of the saints and relics, as we lead into the abuses of power and wealth that led to the Protestant Reformation.
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