Heavenly Treasure and Sin as Debt: A Critique of Recent Studies of Debt in Luke (and Matthew)

Anthony Giambrone’s 2017 book Sacramental Charity, Creditor Christology, and the Economy of Salvation in Luke’s Gospel seeks to elucidate the topic of financial imagery in Luke by comparing Luke’s content with Jewish charity discourse.¹ His work is situated in a relatively fresh stream of scholarship which begins with Gary Anderson’s work on the meaning of “sin” in the Hebrew Bible and early Christian writing.² In brief, Anderson argues that the dominant metaphor for sin shifts from sin as a burden (a weight to be lifted) to the metaphor of debt (an account to be ecompensed).

Anderson’s suggestion that debt is the dominant metaphor acts as the launching pad, not only for Giambrone’s Economy of Salvation in Luke, but also the methodologically similar work of Nathan Eubank on debt imagery in Matthew.³ This paper analyses Giambrone’s argument paying close attention to his use of Second Temple literature and his exegesis of some of the Lukan parables. Several deficiencies will be observed with attendant implications for the assumed cogency of Anderson’s proposals and the parallel work of Eubank.