Peter, Paul, and the windfall tax

Taxing energy companies to fund household bills looks like a fiscal policy designed by Robin Hood. Opponents will say that the policy is bad, because robbing the rich still qualifies as robbery. To which supporters will retort that the money disgorged from corporate coffers was filched from householders. Energy companies have been the real robbers.

Helping out the poor with their cost of living is not simply a legal or fiscal issue. Another dimension is moral.

How to deal with poverty was one of the most urgent challenges facing early Christianity. Jesus had said, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.” He could not have been more clear. But although Jesus had said what ought to be done, he had not said how. The debate over that “how” pitted early Christianity’s two leading protagonists, Peter and Paul, against each other. Christians lacked workable poor relief precedents, either Roman or Judaic.

The Roman Empire was a model of administrative efficacy. Poor relief, oddly, was not one of its remits. To be sure, there were free meals for Romans in the empire’s capital. But eligibility depended on citizenship rather than need. Cicero expressed the prevailing Roman view when he wrote that to show misericordia (mercy or compassion) was flighty and dumb.

Christians could look to another role model, the Jews, who did have welfare policies. Jewish collections were mandatory and took place weekly. Jesus too had paid his dues, even if he did so only reluctantly. He told in private Peter he was motivated to pay the temple tax “lest we offend them (Matt 17:27)”. Just how deep were the reservations of Jesus against mandatory levies became clear when he visited the Temple. He broke the tables of the moneychangers, who charged fees from worshippers.

Peter, the leader of the Christian community in Jerusalem, seemed inclined to copy Jewish practices.

The Acts of the Apostles related that Christians of Jerusalem were “of one heart and one soul” and “had all things in common”. But not for long. One couple, Ananias and Saphira, who had sold their property and made a donation, had roused Peter’s wrath because they had not declared they were keeping back some of the proceeds. Peter chided them, with a reproof so severe that the couple gave up their ghosts. Even erudite theologians have struggled to explain the moral of this bizarre episode.

The prevailing view is that Peter railed against the couple’s secretiveness. If so, the punishment they suffered seems excessive. And there remains an open question: why would the couple be expected to make any disclosure in the first place? But, even setting that point aside, it is irrefutable that Peter thought it made sense to sell capital assets to pay for welfare.

Paul, on the other hand, took a different approach.

Paul travelled to communities throughout the Mediterranean and in several locations copied the Jewish practice of weekly collections. However, he wrote that, “God loves a cheerful giver.”(2 Cor 9:7) Not only would Paul not endorse payments that were mandatory; in addition, he took issue with liquidating assets that deprived a giver from his means of future income: “For if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that a man hath not.” (2 Cor 8:12).

Peter and Paul did not settle their dispute. And arguably, Christians have been debating it ever since.

The tension between the right to keep one’s property and the duty to provide for the poor was the nub of disputes between the followers of two of the most influential thought leaders of the Middle Ages, Francis of Assisi and Thomas Aquinas. Francis posited that a treasure laid up in the next world was the only treasure that mattered. Thomas countered that without a treasure laid up in this world, society would collapse.

To return to the windfall tax.

Peter and Paul likely would be found in opposite camps: Peter endorsing sales of assets, quite possibly pursuant to a mandate; Paul, on the other hand, preferring contributions to be voluntary. Peter was interventionist; Paul backed free will.

Political and economic factions of all stripes and colours, from red hot Corbynistas to deep blue Libertarians, from Keynesians to monetarists, will no doubt be galvanised to debate the windfall tax and cost of living grants. It would be well to acknowledge that the issues involved are not only political and fiscal. At their deepest core they are moral.

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