Dives theTax-Evader
ANGUS SIBLEY
This article first appeared in New Oxford Review, June 2006
The parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16, 19 - 31) has puzzled and worried many an interpreter. It drew from St. Gregory the Great (1) the wry comment that here it is cleverly suggested that guests at a banquet can scarcely celebrate without blame. But that could hardly have been the intention of Him who provided such abundance of wine at Cana.
The strangest feature of this parable is that Abraham does not accuse Dives of any sin, or commend Lazarus for any merit. The text indicates that Dives was a man of greedy and extravagant habits who cared little about the poor; it tells us nothing about the character of Lazarus. Yet from what Abraham says about their conditions in Hades, they would seem to have been judged simply on the basis that one had a splendid time in this world and the other the opposite. The emphasis falls not on their character or conduct, but on their earthly circumstances.
This curious twist in the argument suggests that the main purpose of the parable is to ram home the message that exorbitant inequalities are, in themselves, offensive in the sight of God. But why blame an individual for a general social problem?
Jesus' hearers belonged to a society that had a well-established system for alleviating poverty. They would doubtless have recognised in Dives the kind of person who is untroubled by glaring inequalities and unwilling to play his part in the task of mitigating them. He failed to help Lazarus, who presumably stayed only briefly at his gate since, according to the Vulgate (2), no-one gave him anything. But that, I would suggest, was just one example of Dives' habitual disposition.
According to the principles of Jewish almsgiving (tsedakah), the support of those in need should not depend mainly on voluntary charity, but is more in the nature of a legal obligation. To refuse handouts to beggars is not necessarily wrong, since the common alms-fund should be sufficient to provide for the genuinely needy. But failure to pay one's fair share into the fund is entirely unacceptable. Unlike secular notions that see charity only as an act of free will, under Jewish law individuals are obligated to provide for the needy writes Alan Avery-Peck (3) in The Encyclopedia of Judaism. The French historian Martin-Doisy (4) tells us that the extinction of beggary was a precept of Jewish legislation.
The principles of tsedakah imply that everyone who can is required to contribute to an alms-fund or kuppah, out of which provision is made for anyone in serious need, including even the normally rich who fall temporarily on hard times, and generally in accordance with the social position of the claimant. Tsedakah is not about merely providing basic subsistence to the destitute. It envisages a broader smoothing-out of inequalities. We see here much in common with the modern concept of the welfare state.
Moreover, though tsedakah is often described by Jews as alms-giving or charity, it has traditionally been seen not simply as a religious duty, but essentially as a tax. In the words of the great medieval Jewish theologian Maïmonides (5), if anyone refuseth to bestow Alms, or if he giveth less than becometh him, the Sanhedrin shall use compulsion, and shall inflict upon him the Stripes of Rebellion until he giveth that which he hath been adjudged to give. If Dives managed to contribute nothing to the kuppah, he must have been an accomplished tax-evader.
There is a clear analogy between the attitude of Dives and that of many people today, who object radically to the welfare concept. Free-market economists and their followers denounce the very notion of tax-based redistribution and publicly-funded benefits. They argue that assistance to the poor should be purely a matter of voluntary charity. However, over the course of history, that has never proved to be adequate; which doubtless explains why the practical Jewish tradition regards almsgiving as a formal, tax-like obligation.
Those who favour the "minimal state" are unwilling to pay substantial taxes into common funds for the support of the needy, not to mention other public-good projects. They go to great lengths to minimise their taxes, for example by investing offshore, a practice condemned (6) in Pope Paul VI's encyclical Populorum Progressio. They apparently see nothing wrong with huge inequalities. Such attitudes are popular with wealthy "conservatives" in America and elsewhere, even though many of these claim to be devout Christians. But the parable underlines the strong case in Jewish and Christian tradition against their argument.
The text from Maïmonides quoted above comes from a translation published in London in 1840 by J. Watts Peppercorne. It is dedicated to Philip Henry Stanhope, fourth Earl of Stanhope, the strenuous opponent of the new-fangled doctrines of Political-Economists, and of their heartless and sordid schemes for degrading and crushing the poor; and for converting English labourers into machines or packhorses…... Peppercorne's aim was to demonstrate that early nineteenth-century England, under the influence of dogmatic free-market economists, had fallen far behind the standards of ancient or mediaeval Judaism in its treatment of the perennial problems of inequality and poverty.
Around the world the struggle continues against economic theories which generate and tolerate excessive inequalities. In the more advanced economies, this battle had been largely won by the mid-twentieth century. America had her New Deal; European countries had well-established welfare systems. Sadly, we are unwilling to learn from past experience. Today, the same battle is having to be fought anew, against opponents of the very same kind as those faced by Peppercorne and Stanhope.
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References
1 Gregorius, Ubi solerter intuendum est, quia celebrari sine culpa convivia vix possunt: Moralium lib. I
2 Lazarus, qui iacebat ad ianuam eius....et nemo illi dabat: Luke 16, 20 - 21
3 Martin-Doisy, Assistance comparée dans l'ère païenne et l'ère chrétienne, suivie de l'exposé de l'assistance juive, Paris 1853
4 Maïmonides, The Laws of the Hebrews trans. J. Watts Peppercorne, London 1840
5 It is not permissible for citizens who have garnered sizeable income from the resources and activities of their own nation to deposit a large portion of their income in foreign countries for the sake of their private gain alone: Paul VI, encyclical Populorum Progressio (1967) #24