Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 54:216 (Oct 1897)
Article: The Church Fathers On The Nature Of Property
Author: Henry Huntington Swain

BSac 54:216 (Oct 1897) p. 677

The Church Fathers On The Nature Of Property

Henry Huntington Swain

The fathers of the early church were not economists. They could not even be said to be, in the modern sense of the term, social philosophers. They sought to reform society, but it was rather through the leavening influence of moral principles than by means either of elaborate “programs” or scientific study of the elements of social organization. Thus few of them have declared themselves unequivocally on the nature of property, and their views can be inferred only from their acts or pieced together from fragmentary allusions sparsely scattered through their writings.

With reference, first, to their acts, we have no evidence that any of them set about establishing any movement toward a change in the institution of private property. It may, perhaps, be alleged that certain heretical sects included community of property among their tenets. Such sects were freely denounced by the fathers, however. Indeed, we are dependent mainly on the testimony of their enemies for our knowledge of communistic tendencies among the heretics, and in some instances where independent evidence is available, the charge is found to be false. We must not therefore give too much weight to these reports, and the very fact that charges of communism are so freely hurled at heretical sects, is good evidence that those who made the charges were themselves opponents of communism.

BSac 54:216 (Oct 1897) p. 678

Augustine, it is true, at one time formed, with some of his associates, a plan for a select communistic family of ten men; but, before the plan had very far matured, it was abandoned, on account of the wives which some had and others (including Augustine himself) “hoped to have”1 It would be utterly unwarranted to assume that this fanciful dream of an hour, devised apparently to enable a coterie of well-to-do friends to enjoy each other’s society and escape the irksomeness of industrial exertion by living on the aggregate accumulations of former years, had its origin in any scruples about the institution of private property.

Nor is there evidence that the fathers themselves were disposed to disregard the “sacredness” of property rights. Augustine, after his conversion, reproaches himself bitterly for having, as a boy, committed a wanton but very petty act of thievery.2 In fact, this trifling lapse which, from the vividness with which it impressed itself upon his memory, must have been a rare if not a solitary instance, seems to have caused the saint much keener remorse than some of his early practices which, judged by modern standards of morality, seem f...