Luke's Wealth Ethics: A Study in Their Coherence and Character

The theme of wealth is one of the perennial hot topics in Lukan interpretation, as scholars have often found Luke's teachings on the proper use of wealth to be intractably self-contradictory. Christopher M. Hays addresses the apparent incongruity in Luke's ethical paraenesis. Alternately disputing and drawing upon earlier accounts of Lukan wealth ethics, he argues that Luke's Gospel narrates a spectrum of behaviors which actualize the basic principle of renunciation of all. Undertaking a narrative-critical, ethic description, he shows that in Luke's Gospel the manifestation of a disciple's renunciation depends upon two factors: the disciple's vocation and his or her wealth. The author proceeds to analyze the text of Acts and to demonstrate that Luke displays the Jerusalem community, and to a lesser extent, the Diaspora Church, as faithfully appropriating and enacting Jesus' teachings on possessions.