Saturday, June 27, 2020

Polycarp on the Salvific Efficacy of Almsgiving

In a prior post, Polycarp vs. Sola Fide, I provided excerpts from Polycarp's Epistle to the Philippians refuting Sola Fide. Another text from this short epistle that refutes Sola Fide is chapter 10, "Exhortation to the practice of virtue":

 

Stand fast, therefore, in these things, and follow the example of the Lord, being firm and unchangeable in the faith, loving the brotherhood, and being attached to one another, joined together in the truth, exhibiting the meekness of the Lord in your intercourse with one another, and despising no one. When you can do good, defer it not, because "alms delivers from death." Be all of you subject one to another "having your conduct blameless among the Gentiles," that ye may both receive praise for your good works, and the Lord may not be blasphemed through you. But woe to him by whom the name of the Lord is blasphemed! Teach, therefore, sobriety to all, and manifest it also in your own conduct. (ANF 1:35)

 

The note following the quotation in bold reads “Tobit iv. 10, Tobit xii. 9.” Let us quote from these texts from the book of Tobit:

 

For almsgiving delivers from death and keeps you from going into the Darkness. (Tobit 4:10 NRSV)

 

For almsgiving saves from death and purges away every sin. Those who give alms will enjoy a full life. (Tobit 12:9)

 

There is a variation in the Greek of Tobit 12:9. The NETS (S) renders the verse as:

 

For almsgiving delivers from death, and it will purge away every sin. Those who practice almsgiving and righteousness will have fullness of life.

 

It is clear that Polycarp is teaching that almsgiving is an instrumental means of God purging away our sins, all the more strengthened by the use of Tobit which explicitly teaches this. This flies in the face of various formulations of Sola Fide!

 

For an excellent book on almsgiving and the efficacy thereof in early Christianity, see:


David J. Downs, Alms: Charity, Reward, and Atonement in Early Christianity (Baylor University Press, 2016)  (cf. 1 Peter 4:8 and the Didascalia Apostolorum)