Jonathan Teubner: Almsgiving and the economy of salvation in Augustine's en. Ps. 51

Almsgiving is a generative topic of theological reflection for Augustine in the 410s. The questions ‘who are the rich?’ and ‘who are the poor?’ were not only socially defining but were also soteriologically significant. It was often through the unexpected reversal and subversion of these categories that Augustine sought to address the social aspect while also pointing the rich and poor to their union Christ. Peter Brown’s Through the Eye of a Needle (Princeton 2012) has highlighted almsgiving as the theme through which Augustine explores these topics. But Brown underappreciates the soteriological thrust of almsgiving. In this short communication, I propose to analyse en. Ps. 51 as an example of Augustine's soteriological use of almsgiving. In this sermon, Augustine uses 1 Tim 6:17-19 to ‘talk back’ to Matt 19:24. 1 Tim 6:17-19 shifts the stress from the moral status of wealth and poverty to a problem of avarice, which both the rich and the poor can evince. Through the practice of almsgiving both the rich and the poor will pass through the eye of the needle. This seemingly rich-friendly approach recalls Robert Markus’ famous phrase ‘Christian mediocrity’ (Markus, 1990). In contradistinction to Markus' claim, I will conclude that Augustine’s soteriological discourse manifests not so much abandonment of moral rigourism, but a growing soteriological commitment to sustain the hard-won unity of the North African church through, in this case, the concept of avarice. This short communication will strengthen our understanding of the social and theological valence of money in Augustine’s sermons.