Woe to the Rich

“In the same way,” he says, “their fathers treated the prophets.” What a shape-shifter Marcion’s Christ is! One moment the destroyer of the prophets, the next their advocate. He destroyed them as their rival, by taking over their disciples; he took up their cause as their friend, by denouncing the men who persecuted them. But in so far as a defense of the prophets could never sit consistently in the Christ of Marcion, who came to abolish them, just so far does it suit the Creator’s Christ to denounce those who persecuted the prophets — since in everything he carried out what they had foretold. And again, it is more like the Creator to reproach sons with their fathers’ sins than it is like that god, who punishes no man even for his own misdeeds. [a]

But you will say: He cannot be counted a defender of the prophets simply because he wanted to establish the wickedness of the Jews for the godless way they treated their own prophets. Well then — in that case no sin at all ought to have been charged against the Jews. They rather deserved praise and approval for manhandling the very men whom Marcion’s supremely good god, after all that time, at last bestirred himself to destroy.

I suppose, though, that by now he had stopped being the supremely good god. He had been living alongside the Creator for a good while, and was no longer the god of Epicurus pure and simple. Look how he changes — far enough to curse, and to show himself capable of taking offense and of anger! He actually pronounces a woe!

A question is raised against us here about what that word means, as though it carried less the force of a curse than of a warning. But where is the difference? Even a warning is not given without the sting of a threat behind it, especially when it is soured with a woe. Besides, warnings and threats alike belong to someone who knows how to be angry. Nobody forbids a thing by warning or by threat except the man who means to punish it if it is done; and nobody would punish who was not capable of anger.

Others do admit that the word carries a curse, but they will have it that Christ pronounced the woe not out of any feeling of his own. The woe, they say, is the Creator’s, and Christ wanted to set the Creator’s severity out in front of them so as to show off his own patience in the blessings all the better. As if the Creator, who is pre-eminent in both his characters, as the good God and as the Judge, were not entitled to make kindness the opening of his blessing and to put severity at the close of his curses — developing his discipline fully in both directions, following through on the blessing and guarding against the curse. Long ago he had already said, “Look, I have set before you blessing and cursing.” That statement was in fact pointing forward to this very temper in the gospel.

Besides, what sort of being is it that recommends belief in his own goodness by setting the Creator’s severity spitefully over against it? A recommendation propped up on running somebody else down is worth little. And in any case, by displaying the Creator’s severity he was declaring the Creator to be someone to fear. And if the Creator is to be feared, he clearly deserves to be obeyed rather than slighted — so Marcion’s Christ begins teaching in the Creator’s interest.

Then again, on the admission just mentioned: since the woe that has to do with the rich is the Creator’s, it follows that it is not Christ but the Creator who is angry with the rich, while Christ ratifies the rich man’s case — I mean his pride, his display, his love of the world, his contempt for God, the very things that earn him the Creator’s woe. But how is it that the condemning of the rich does not come from the same God who had just before expressed his approval of the poor? Everybody condemns the opposite of what he has approved. So if the woe pronounced against the rich is charged to the Creator, the promise of blessing on the poor must be claimed for him too — and then the whole of the Creator’s work falls to Christ. And if the blessing of the poor is credited to Marcion’s god, the cursing of the rich must be laid on him as well — and then he becomes the Creator’s equal, good and judicial at once. In that case no room is left for the distinction that makes two gods; and once the distinction is gone, what remains is the truth: the Creator is the one and only God.

Since, then, “woe” is a word that indicates a curse, or at least some unusually harsh exclamation, and since Christ utters it against the rich, I shall have to show that the Creator too despises the rich, just as I have shown him to be the poor man’s advocate. That way I can prove Christ to be on the Creator’s side in this matter — even in the case of his enriching Solomon. But with Solomon, since he was given a choice and preferred to ask for what he knew would please God — wisdom — he went on to earn the riches he had not preferred. Making a man rich is not in itself out of keeping with God. Riches comfort and support even rich men, and by means of them many a work of justice and kindness gets done. Still, there are serious vices that come with riches, and it is on account of those that woes are pronounced on the rich, even in the Gospel. “You have received your consolation,” he says — from their riches, of course, in the pomp and display of the world that money buys them.

So in Deuteronomy Moses says: “When you have eaten and are full, and have built fine houses, and your herds and your flocks have multiplied, along with your silver and your gold, do not let your heart be lifted up then, and do not forget the Lord your God.” In the same way, when king Hezekiah grew proud of his treasures and boasted of them rather than of God in front of the men who had come as an embassy from Babylon, the Creator leaps on him through the mouth of Isaiah: “Look, the days are coming when everything in your house, and everything your fathers have stored up, will be carried off to Babylon.” Through Jeremiah he said the same: “Let not the rich man boast in his riches; but let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.” He rounds on the daughters of Zion in the same way through Isaiah, when they had grown haughty over their display and their heaped-up riches — just as in another place he issues his threats against the proud and the highborn: “The place of the dead has stretched itself wide and opened its mouth, and down into it will go the distinguished and the great and the rich” — this will be Christ’s “woe to the rich” — “and the human being will be brought low,” meaning the man who exalts himself with riches, “and the man of rank will be dishonored,” meaning the man whose rank comes from his wealth. About the same people he says again: “Look, the Lord of hosts will throw the pompous into confusion along with their strength: those lifted high will be cut down, and the lofty will fall by the sword.” And who are these but the rich? For it is out of their wealth that they have had their consolation, their glory and honor and high position.

In the forty-eighth Psalm he also turns our concern away from such men and says: “Do not be afraid when a man is made rich and when his glory is increased; for when he dies he will carry nothing away, and his glory will not go down with him.” So too in the sixty-first: “Do not set your desire on riches; and if they do shine on you, do not set your heart on them.” Last of all, this very same woe is pronounced long ago by Amos against the rich, who were awash in luxuries as well. “Woe to those,” he says, “who sleep on beds of ivory and sprawl at their ease on their couches; who eat kids out of the flocks of the goats and suckling calves out of the herds of the heifers, while they chant to the sound of the harp — as though they thought they would last a long while and were not passing away; who drink their strained wines and rub themselves with the costliest perfumes.”

So even if I could do nothing more than show that the Creator warns people off riches, without at the same time first condemning the rich in the very terms Christ used, no one could doubt that the threat against the rich in that woe of Christ’s was added on the same authority — the authority from which the warning had first come against the raw material of their sin, that is, their riches. A threat like that is the necessary sequel to a warning like that.

He inflicts a woe also on the full, because they will go hungry, and on those who are laughing now, because they will mourn. Answering to these are the opposites we saw above in the Creator’s blessings: “Look, my servants will be filled, but you will go hungry” — precisely because you have been filled; “look, my servants will rejoice, but you will be put to shame” — that is, you who will mourn, who are laughing now. For as it is written in the psalm, “Those who sow in tears will reap in joy,” so it runs in the Gospel: those who sow in laughter, that is in joy, will reap in tears. The Creator laid these principles down long ago, and Christ has renewed them simply by setting them out sharply, not by changing anything in them.

“Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you! For their fathers did the same to the false prophets.” With just as much force does the Creator, through his prophet Isaiah, censure the men who go after human flattery and praise: “My people, those who call you happy are misleading you and throwing the paths of your feet into confusion.” In another place he forbids putting any trust in man, and equally in man’s applause — as through the prophet Jeremiah: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man.” Whereas the hundred and seventeenth Psalm says: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man; it is better to trust in the Lord than to place hope in princes.” So everything that people chase after is sworn off by the Creator, down to their good word. Condemning the praise and the flattering words their fathers heaped on the false prophets belongs to him just as much as condemning the harassment and persecution those same fathers dealt out to the true prophets. Just as the injuries the prophets suffered could not have belonged to any god but their own, so the applause given to the false prophets could not have displeased any god but the God of the true prophets.