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Patristic Sources and Catholic Social Teaching 25 Virtue expressed by apatheia.19 This concern for virtue and its ethical implications had Stoic precedents, so no one should read patristic social thought without Seneca, among others, in mind.20 Yet, it would be unfair to the Fathers to characterize their thought as simply a repackaging of Stoic thought. Indeed, patristic social thought had a number of distinctive theological underpinnings that are discussed in the next section of this chapter. One important theological support was Christology. Since the second century, Christians taught that a recapitulation of the world order was initiated with the Incarnation.21 There is nothing to be left untouched by the restorative hand of Christ and of his servants. There is to be no separation between homo spiritualis and homo politicus, or between homo spiritualis and homo oeconomicus. All of life is to be in concert with the restorative work of Christ, and at its most basic level is care for the poor and the sick. The poor were seen as embodiments of Christ, in accordance with Matthew 25. There could be no greater testimony to one’s love for Christ than one’s love and care for the poor and needy. Another theological support for the Fathers was their anthropology . A common refrain in the Fathers is that the poor are “fellow slaves” with those who are not poor. Clement of Alexandria argued that rich and poor persons share a common humanity since both come from a mother and a father. It could be argued this was just a nice platitude, a repackaging of Paul’s claim in Galatians that in Christ there is “no Jew or Gentile, no slave or free, no male or female” (Gal 3:28). True, this passage comes up often in the Fathers. However, the Fathers embraced this anthropology not because of a scriptural maxim, but because of their eschatology. Christians looked ahead to a new world order, one in which the prelapsarian state of humanity would be restored.22 The incarnation was understood to be a significant step forward in the movement of God’s plan for that restoration, revealing some of what the glorified state would be, but the expectation of the eschaton demanded a certain set of responsibilities in the present age. The Fathers taught Christians to live in accordance with God’s commands and his ultimate design for humanity. This meant not being so attached to worldly goods, to the politics of this world, 26 Patristics and Catholic Social Thought to this world at all.23 The distinctions humans make among themselves are the making of this world, not of the world God intended or of what he has planned in the eschaton. For this reason, Christians best express their hope in a resurrection and in the eschaton when they make no distinction between persons in the present age. It is also clear that the Fathers’ concern with the eschaton went deeper than expressing their anthropology. It also revealed their understanding of divine judgment. For those who love this world, who are attached to this world, and who live as though there is no eschaton or day of judgment, the Fathers were unequivocal in their promise of divine judgment and associated wrath.24 God will vindicate in the eschaton those Christians who watched their neighbors grabbing whatever they could as they moved with reckless abandon through the economic, judicial, social, and political fields of this life. Ultimate justice is to be found only in the eschaton, for only then will God rule directly over a new heaven and a new earth. Until that time, Christians are to be defined by patience, contentment, and self-discipline.25 We may also surmise that Christian ecclesiology functioned as a helpful, although less obvious theological, underpinning to patristic social thought. Of course, the Fathers’ teaching was generally distributed to the Christian masses in the form of preaching, a constitutive element of the weekly services. However, the earliest Christian apologies reveal that Christians gathered not only to hear apostolic teaching, but also to receive the eucharist and to prepare a financial collection. From the example of Paul’s collection for the poor believers in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16:1–2), Christians by the late second century had begun collecting funds for their poor fellow Christians as well as their poor non-Christian neighbors. Christians did not collect funds in those early days to pay a salary for their ministers, or to maintain youth programs...

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