Sharing Possessions

Overtures to Biblical Theology #9

by Luke Timothy Johnson

s/t: Mandate and Symbol of Faith

Genres: Theology, Faith, Nonfiction

160 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1981

About the author

Luke Timothy Johnson is an American New Testament scholar and historian of early Christianity. He is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Candler School of Theology and a Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University.

Johnson's research interests encompass the Jewish and Greco-Roman contexts of early Christianity (particularly moral discourse), Luke-Acts, the Pastoral Epistles, and the Epistle of James.

Reviews

[Luke Hillier · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was tremendously inconsistent for me, with some real highlights that were unfortunately shadowed by notably lesser moments. Johnson starts off strong with a thorough review of the descriptions of wealth and possessions found in Luke-Acts, and offers a compelling problemitization of the notion that there's a singular, straightforward ethic of possessing to be found in Luke's writing alone, let alone the whole of Scripture. Of course, this isn't grounds for a dismissal of the importance of developing a faithful ethic around wealth and possessions, but is rather a launch point into a much more nuanced consideration. He goes on to adopt a more philosophical and theological orientation around the notions of having and being; the former is something humans are inclined towards and the latter is, in reality, the gift we're given from God. I don't know if this is accurate, but I saw immense influence from Paul Tillich throughout this section; Johnson describes the anxiety of non-being we often turn to accumulation to deter, and offers God as the ground of being who graciously gifts us with, an ultimate concern that is actually ultimate rather than idolatrous. This is a fair point, but one that he for some reason makes over and over again throughout the second chapter...I'm not sure if I was just not missing the added complexity he may have been imbuing with each repetition, but I eventually wrote "BRUH we get it" in the margins.

Continuing with that line of thought, he now turns to the wider expanse of scripture, including the Deuteronomic and Prophetic writings of the Old Testament as well as James and the Gospels to explore teachings around wealth and possessions. On 87, he offers a succinct and powerful articulation of a conclusion he draws from this examination: "we respond to God through our neighbor." Again, I'm unsure if he's actually influenced by him, but I read strong echoes of Levinas in this regard, particularly in this quote: "The way we respond to [those we meet in this world] is the way we respond to God. There is no division between authentic faith in God and genuine love of others. When we reach out to our brothers and sisters in genuine love and understanding, our reach extends our grasp and enters the space where God dwells as the ground of their and our existence" (96). In Johnson's view, to hoard possessions with a closed fist would be either an idolatrous view of those possessions as the things that imbue us with worth and meaning or potentially an idolatrous view of ourselves as one’s who have acquired our possessions without God’s involvement. Ironically, under this view, our possessions are ultimately what posses us, holding us captive to the constant resistance of the threat of non-being. There is freedom, then, it recognizing that our being is a gracious gift from God, which enables us to abandon our own self-project and to extend an open hand to others in need, in a way participating in or recapitulating God’s generous gift-giving. However, how this actually looks is not, and necessarily cannot be, a simplistic universal mandate, but rather requires creative fidelity in constant discerning of how one engages in sharing.

Beyond frustrating bouts of redundancy, I was appreciating the book well enough, but the final (and arguably climactic) chapter is where he really lost me. He endeavors to undermine a "community of goods" model for sharing possessions, a Christian ethic inspired by the teaching in Acts 4:32 that "All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had." He makes some fine arguments here, insisting that such communities require a problematic ideal of unity, a concerning amount of social control, and ultimately an oppressive authoritarian structure. Reading between the lines, he's implying that this model produces strict separatist cults at the local level and, when they have evolved beyond this, tyrannical regimes. He goes on to list more critiques in a shotgun style, concluding with the admission that "Not all these critical comments may be valid," which is at least honest (126).

While I'm too much a lefty to cede to his sweeping conclusions against any possibility of a successful community of goods model, I was open to valuing his more thoughtful critiques and especially welcoming a different model. However, his discussion on such an alternative, almsgiving, felt truncated and cut off, especially after spending so many pages critiquing the other model. And while almsgiving certainly has a practical appeal of meeting the needs of those in one's community, it totally fails to ask why there are members of one's community that have consistent needs. He attempts to answer this, saying that there will always be poor people because, for example, orphans and widows will always exist, his solution doesn't demand a reckoning with why orphans and widows have to be poor and dependent on almsgiving. In his staunch resistance to any kind of utopian thinking, he seemingly forgets that this leaves huge swaths of people stuck within a dystopic existence. And ultimately, that seems to be the failing of the book: It's written to those with in concern for the crucial question of how they are called to share with those without in such a way that maintains that binary rather than seeking to disrupt it.

[Will Waller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed this book tremendously. Rarely do I get so much pleasure from reading something that is theological, and yet it works because it works on multiple levels. The first level, which surprised me about a book like this, is that it talks about possessions of the body vs. soul. That we believe we have a soul but do not have a body. I have a body but I am a soul. That's a possesiveness that must reckon with so that we may understand how deep our possesiveness is. It works on a Biblical level which is important to me. And it works on a sociological level--to understand possessions there too.

I will return to this again and again. Because I know how deep my idolatry vs. faith battle runs, I know that I must also deal with it again and again.

[Theresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sharing possessions is mandate of (religious) faith. "But the shape of the mandate is as diverse as life's circumstances and requires not an ideology but hard thinking about the inevitable symbolic shape of our lives." I think the teaching in Scripture is difficult to sort out, and Johnson, one of my favorite contemporary theologians, does a great job of it in this book. It is still a big challenge.

[Jeremy Randall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Again, thanks to waiting on call for a lot of today, I got to read through a book that has been on my shelf for almost a year unfinished. Luke Johnson (one of my high school friends name) does a great job of thinking about and making the reading come alongside him as he goes through what it is to OWN and to BE when it comes to things. We have a body, but we also are a body. And we can have a car, or you can have a car, but depending on how we see this car, the car has boundaries to that ownership. And is utopia made up of a community's ability to share that car as a rule, as an ideal, as permission given by a leader or owned by the one and given away at their pleasure? And what does ownership mean to the community and to the person? Are we better, can we be equal, is there a political shape we can take on so that everyone is forced to be equal or does it need to be chosen.
He weaves in and out of historical examples and his own thoughts and concludes with a chapter on almsgiving. The act of giving out of one's pocket to others in need. And then he discusses what need could mean, who are the downtrodden and what is our responsibility or what could our response be to others in need even when we are in need.
I like how this guy kept going in and out of "maybe I am wrong but if I am right how obviously beautiful is this?" I like his reference to the mystery of people and how possessiveness and life circumstance means that our interaction with "the lowly" whatever that means is a continual mystery that changes like the wind. As needs our reactions to be.

[Jared Korver · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good. Certainly thought-provoking. Moments of slogging punctuated by real insight. I appreciate the author’s serious critique of “communities of possessions” and the ideological rather than theological bases for them which often devolve into authoritarian regimes. The treatment of almsgiving within the Jewish tradition was the best part of the book and would have been well served to have a more primary place.

[Zachary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well worth reading; a little problematic in his chapter denouncing socialism.

[Meredith · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoughtful meditation on what it means to say we possess something in the context of biblical thought.