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Chapter 5: A “Normativity of the Future” Model
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A “New Intellectual History” Model 153 people. By preaching it, he instructs his audience to do the same. The resultant stereotypes can be devastating for those who would fall under the category “unrighteous poor,” for it becomes all too easy at that point to chalk up their poverty as a consequence of personal faults and failure. Even admiration for the righteous poor yields to admiration for the wealth and virtue of the righteous rich. All the while, Asterius retains the moral high ground for having seen the world so “clearly” in the first place. It seems Asterius’s moral clarity has, in fact, laid the foundation for a new brand of righteous injustice, where Christians find a moral excuse for not attending to the needs of the poor. Asterius betrayed the depth of the problem in his own attempt at enforcing socioeconomic class discrimination against the poor. Asterius was explicit in telling the poor they are not to want more than they presently have. “It is clear that the Scripture accounts that poor man happy who bears his hardships with a philosophic mind, and shows himself nobly steadfast in the face of his circumstances in life, and does not wickedly do any evil deed to gain for himself the enjoyment of luxury.”60 Asterius then tied the beatitude of Jesus, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Mt 5:3), to the financially righteous poor in his own population matrix. It is unimportant that the beatitude says “poor in spirit,” not “poor in money.”61 We have seen this argument throughout now. Asterius has argued for a balanced life—not only in terms of how one uses wealth, but also in terms of an equilibrium between the soul and the body. The intertextual reading of Matthew 5:3 and Luke 16:22 serves Asterius’s purpose in articulating that the need for a balanced life applies equally to the poor as it does to the rich. The attitude of the poor toward money, the manner in which the poor acquire money, and the decisions of the poor in regards to how they spend their money each are indicative of the spiritual mindset and balance of the poor. Thankfully, the poor have Asterius who, presumably, knows their needs better than they themselves. Asterius happily extends his authority in offering himself as their financial counselor. In sum, application of the new intellectual history model to this homily reveals an author with an agenda for controlling the lives of 154 Patristics and Catholic Social Thought its readers, particularly the financial lives of its readers. Asterius presumes to know best what is and is not the right use of wealth. Such matters are not to be left to personal conviction stemming from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Not only this, Asterius overlays his own socioeconomic class discrimination scheme upon the existing , traditional social class problems of the Greco-Roman culture. This empowers him to decide just what members of each class division are obliged to do, what they are obliged to give, and how they are obliged to relate toward one another. Recall that in chapter one, a distinction was made between CST and Catholic social thought, the latter including the broader world of activists concerned not only to carry on the work of social justice, but also concerned to keep the harbingers of CST honest. In the hands of the new intellectual history model, Asterius’s homily is a perfect example of why CST must continue to keep the holders of power accountable to the real needs of people in the world. APPLICATION OF THE MODEL TO JEROME’S HOMILy 86 Earlier models raised the suspicion that Jerome’s homily was at least equally interested in the ascetic experience as he was in the rich/poor dynamic of the biblical text he was expositing, if not more so. The application of the new intellectual history model to Jerome’s text, however, reveals the ascetic agenda was the only agenda with which Jerome was concerned. In Jerome’s hands, the biblical story was not a contrast between rich and poor people; it was a contrast between unrighteous poor and righteous poor people, the latter of whom were those who had chosen the ascetic life. Already discussed under our previous models is the explicit claim at the end of the homily that Jerome saw the face of Lazarus in the face of those who choose voluntary poverty. Yet, since it comes at the end...