The Eastern Christian Fathers (A.D. 350-400) on the Redistribution of Wealth

In the second half of the fourth century A.D., the Eastern Christian Fa-thers developed some interesting economic ideas and suggestions, scattered throughout their religious texts, the majority of which fo-cused on solving the problem of the extreme maldistribution of wealth. Though they blamed the institutional malfunction of the econ-omy for this problem, they did not develop drastic measures for a rev-olutionary reconstruction to transform the existing institutions, or turn against the market norms. Instead, they tried to convince individuals to increase their altruistic behavior and to prove that such behavior would increase the general welfare. The Fathers, by incorporating eth-ical judgments in their economics ideas, developed commandments, propositions, and exhortations, justified on religious and economic grounds, in order to reduce the consequences of the unequal distribu-tion of wealth. Their aim was to prove that such a distribution was contrary not only to Christian teachings but also to the economic inter-ests of both rich and poor citizens. These various ideas, arguments, and suggestions are discussed in the following manner. Section 1 exposes the Fathers ’ views on the Correspondence may be addressed to Assistant Professor Anastassios D. Karayiannis, De