Jesus’ Economics: Replacing Patriarchy by Mark Rich
I was at a faculty meeting recently at which the topic of Jesus’ relation to patriarchy came up. I had stated on an ethics test, simply as a matter of fact, that Jesus Christ ends patriarchy. Having studied Jesus’ ethics since my doctoral work, that seemed obvious to me, and I knew it was essential for my students to learn. On the test I then asked students to explain how he did so in relation to marriage, children, and property ownership.
When an external examiner brought up this statement to the faculty, he said “Now we all know that Jesus didn’t end patriarchy”, and almost everyone laughed heartily and knowingly. It was clearly taken for granted as obvious that the idea was simply out of the question. The examiner and the faculty were completely wrong, and I am working on an article to lay out exactly how Jesus does in fact end patriarchy.
Here I’m only going to discuss one key part of the evidence for that statement, the part that deals with patrilineage. Many feminist writers either ignore patrilineage or argue that patriarchy is much more than that. It is certain that patriarchy is much more than property succession. It is a whole social, cultural, and political system. However, patrilineage is a key part of patriarchy, especially in the ancient world but in the modern one as well, and without it the system doesn’t hold. We will look at the key passage in which Jesus changes property ownership.
Mark 10 is the chapter in which the evangelist deals with money and property relations. After the encounter with the rich young man – the one time where Jesus fails to save someone – his disciples are gob-smacked about his statement in v. 24 that, “How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God! … It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” After some more discussion, Peter exclaims in vv. 28ff: “Look, we have released everything and followed you.” Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has released house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age — houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions — and in the age to come eternal life.”
Before we get to the important part for our purposes of Jesus’ saying, we must discuss the translation of aphiēmi, translated ‘left’ in English translations. Aphiēmi is a very powerful and important part of the gospel – in fact, it is a key part. Aphiēmi proclaims the release of debts, slaves, and sins, which is an absolutely revolutionary change in an empire based upon debts, slavery, and sins. It is the word used in the Lord’s Prayer “Release to us our debts as we have released our debtors.” This is an actualization of the debt release proclaimed in Deuteronomy 15 and Leviticus 25, but with the difference that the release is now not limited to Israel and Israelites or Judeans.
Translating aphiēmi as ‘left’ in both Mark 1:18 and 20 and in Mark 10 produces only foolishness. People didn’t just leave or abandon everything in the ancient world anymore than they do now, and if they did so, no one called it salvation or the kingdom of God. The translators do this, even though they know perfectly well what aphiēmi means, because they, like us, are Pietists rather than disciples. The thought that Jesus might actually cause us to do anything, much less anything revolutionary, is anathema to Pietists, so therefore Mark 1:18 and 20 and 10:28ff must be deliberately mistranslated.[1]
What Jesus is describing here is the release of all one’s possessions, and then the receiving of the possessions of all the community who have done likewise. I think it is best described as ‘communitarianism’. The members of the Jesus communities share everything except spouses through this combination of release/receive.
That point aside, the key point I am driving at now is the two lists in Mark 10:29ff. Please note what is present in the first list and lacking in the second one: fathers. Fathers are, of course, both central to and the whole point of patriarchy. They are the most important persons; they are the ones who, above everyone else, must be obeyed, served, loved, honored, and pleased.
Jesus does away with fathers in favor of a community-based form of property possession, use, and descent. God alone is the father – that is to say, the owner – and all the human members of the community are now sisters and brothers sharing possession and use. This is why the slogan exists in Mt 23:9: “And call no man your father on earth, for you have one father – the one in heaven.” It is also the root of all the brother/sister language in the New Testament. It literally means that they share in one inheritance, which is what siblings do.
So please understand: these verses prove to a mathematical certainty that the gospel of Jesus Christ ends patriarchy. It is not possible for patriarchy to co-exist with such a teaching and practice, because you cannot have patriarchy without fathers. There is much, much more evidence of this change in the gospels, and yes, patriarchy does indeed come roaring back in the deutero-Pauline letters (Colossians and Ephesians), but the early New Testament writings are radical and revolutionary – that is, anti-patriarchal.
Quod erat demonstrandum.[2]
I am completing this essay while sitting in a doctor’s office waiting for my young adult son, whose various diagnoses have resulted in his being granted various forms of county, state and federal support, every one of which has been named by legislators as programs that must be cut to balance the budget. These calls for program cuts come after tax cuts that have made balancing the budget more and more a far-off dream. As a parent and a citizen, these realities focus the mind. As I wait, I am looking at the March 12 2018 edition of The Nation. The issue is titled “Monopoly’s New Rules: How corporate giants rigged the game and took over our economy.” Here’s the opening of the front editorial piece, “The Monopoly Menace”:
“More than a century ago, Elizabeth Magie developed two sets of rules for a board game that would become known as Monopoly. There’s the one we know today: you play an aspiring real-estate tycoon, buying up properties to extract ever-larger sums from your opponents; you win when everyone else is destitute. But in Magie’s version, players could agree to switch midgame to a second rule book. Instead of paying rent to a landowner, they’d send funds to a common pot. The game would be over when the poorest player doubled their capital. Magie’s goal was to show the cruelty of monopoly power and the moral superiority of progressive taxation. Her board game was a rebuke to the slumlords and corporate giants of the Gilded Age… In 1906 Magie told a reporter: “In a short time, I hope a very short time, men and women will discover that they are poor because Carnegie and Rockefeller have more than they know what to do with.” Replace Carnegie and Rockefeller with Bezos and Buffett, and Magie’s quote is as true today as it was then. Instead of continuing to play the current economic game, it’s about time we switched to a different set of rules.”
Jesus set out those rules 2000 years ago.
The Rev Dr Mark Rich is an ELCA clergyperson who has served parishes in North Dakota, Illinois, Kansas and Ohio. He has taught at the graduate level in the US, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique and Canada, and Tanzania.
[1] I’m particularly referring to the tendency of Pietists to be politically supine. For more on Pietism, see here.
[2] Literally, “which was to be demonstrated”. For the Google-impaired, see here.