Back To Virtue by Kreeft Peter

Author:Kreeft, Peter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ignatius Press
Published: 2009-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHT

Giving Mercy vs.

Getting Things (Avarice)

AVARICE

Its old name was “covetousness”. Its new name is “greed”. Christian tradition ranks it even ahead of lust and second only to pride in the list of all-time spiritual villains. Saint Paul calls it “the root of all evil”. It is avarice, the love of money, “the immoderate desire for temporal possessions which can be estimated in money”, as Saint Thomas defined it in the Summa.

Money is ubiquitously tempting because of a kind of umbrella principle, covering everything money can buy. It also is (or rather falsely promises to be) a security blanket against change. It apes divine self-sufficiency.

Avarice is not desire as such, or even desire for temporal possessions as such, but the immoderate desire for them; for it is natural to man to desire external things as means, but avarice makes them into ends, into gods. And when a creature is made into a god, it becomes a devil.

However, creatures are good in themselves. In a biblical, creationist world view, things are good, all things are good, being as such is good (ens est bonum). There are only two categories of being. All being is either the supremely good Creator or else his creation, which he himself solemnly pronounced “very good” after creating it. Nevertheless fallen man worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator. “In this sense,” says Saint Thomas, “covetousness is the root of all sin. . . as every sin grows out of the love of temporal things. . . [and] every sin includes an inordinate turning to a mutable good.”

God seems to have considered avarice especially important as early as Moses’ time, for the only two of the Ten Commandments that deal explicitly with inner attitudes of spirit rather than outer actions are the ninth and tenth, which forbid avarice. (“Thou shalt not covet. . . . ”)

Jesus spoke more about avarice than about any other sin. Just count the times He talked about money—“riches”, “possessions”, “mammon”. His attention, unlike ours, was not fixated on lust or violence but on the more socially respectable (and therefore the more hidden and dangerous) sins. He scandalized his disciples with many hard sayings about detachment from worldly goods and about how hard it would be for a rich man to enter his Kingdom.

James discovered the root of war in avarice when he wrote: “What causes wars and what causes fightings among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war” (4:1-2). How many long and learned diagnoses of war and peace say as much as these two simple little verses?

Avarice has two parts: greed to get what we don’t have and greed to keep what we have. Thus the two opposites of avarice are (1) contentment, voluntary poverty, and (2) liberality, generosity, having mercy on others.

(1) Saint Paul says that “godliness with contentment is great gain”, and “I have learned in whatever state I am to be content.

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