Paul's Idea of Community

Spirit and Culture in Early House Churches

Banks, Robert J.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781493421589
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

This highly readable investigation of the early church explores the revolutionary nature, dynamics, and effects of the earliest Christian communities. It introduces readers to the cultural setting of the house churches of biblical times, examines the apostle Paul's vision of life in the Christian church, and explores how the New Testament model of community applies to Christian practice today. Updated and revised throughout, this 40th-anniversary edition incorporates recent research, updates the bibliography, and adds a new fictional narrative that depicts the life and times of the early church.

1
The Sociocultural and Religious Settings

Paul: A Man of His Times

It is not possible to understand people and their activities apart from the times in which they live. This is especially the case with Paul. In responding to the call of Jesus, he did not withdraw from the world about him; rather he found himself thrown more violently into it. As a consequence he crisscrossed vast tracts of the Mediterranean region several times in the course of thirty years. In doing so, he met people from a variety of racial and national backgrounds, among them Jews from the Dispersion, homeland and immigrant Greeks, Romans at the heart of the Empire, Cypriots and Macedonians, local inhabitants in different parts of Asia Minor, and even small groups from Egypt, Crete, Malta, and Scythia. On these travels, he encountered competing philosophical schools, particularly Stoicism and Epicureanism, and alternative religious traditions from traditional Greek city-state cults and imported Oriental mystery religions. At different points in his journeys he also came into conflict with a wide range of civil and political authorities and experienced firsthand the repercussions of various legal processes and judgments. In these ways Paul was extensively involved in, and affected by, significant tendencies and tensions of his day, and he cannot be studied in isolation from them.

There is a further reason for insisting that Paul be approached in this way. He did not merely encounter the ideas and institutions of the people among whom he moved; he engaged with them and developed a variety of responses to them. Depending on their character and his context, at times he accommodated them, at times opposed them, at times transformed them, and at times regarded them as indifferent. This flexibility comes out most clearly in his first letter to the Christians at Corinth: “I have become all things to all men,” he says, “that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor. 9:22).

This does not mean that Paul compromised his basic beliefs to attract an audience. He always starts from these beliefs—summed up for him in the word gospel—for he discerns how they can be best communicated to, encouraged in, and embodied by those around him. Wherever he can do so, he acknowledges the validity of other approaches and incorporates them into his own (Acts 17:22–34). Where he cannot, he asserts the superiority of his approach and explains how it fulfills the aspirations others have misguidedly directed elsewhere (Col. 2:8–23). His main goal in all this is to make the gospel relevant to any culture and every person. He breaks it out of its initial Jewish wrappings and becomes its fully multicultural representative.

Another reason Paul should be studied in the context of his culture is his frequently expressed engagement with the social attitudes and structures of his day. On some occasions he calls these attitudes and structures into question and contradicts them by his own statements or behavior (1 Cor. 6:1–6); other times he insists they be carefully noted and followed (11:14–15). Where accepted conventions come into conflict with a basic implication of the gospel, he does not doubt which must give way (10:14–22). Where less central implications of the gospel are concerned, and where there is the likelihood of causing offense to those outside the Christian group, even legitimate practices should be avoided (8:7–13; 10:23–30). In these ways the values and structures of the wider society had to be taken into account by his converts in fashioning their own lifestyle, even aspects of their internal, as well as external, activities.

Many treatments of Paul’s view of community are inadequate in this respect. Instead of seeing Paul’s views in their historical setting, these treatments discuss them independently of the wider context in which they emerged. This results in a primarily doctrinal study of Paul’s outlook, unrelated to many of the circumstances that played a part in its development. Only through interaction with the society about him, as well as involvement with his communities, did Paul develop his views expressed in his letters; it was not just through theological and ethical contemplation removed from the cut and thrust of daily life. This is why his letters have the stamp of reality about them and are so full of vitality and practicality. Paul’s understanding of community is never static or codified. It is a living thing, always open to refinement and aimed at relevance.

The Greco-Roman World: Changing Conceptions of Community

The Greco-Roman world in the middle of the first century was characterized by great variety. Although Rome now dominated the whole of the Mediterranean region, and Greek culture had penetrated to the farthest reaches of the Empire, local patterns of rule and life continued to survive, and new types of social organization began to flourish. Traditionally there had been two main types of community with which people associated—politeia, the public life of the city or state in which they lived, and oikonomia, the household order into which they were born or recruited. For some, involvement in communities of both types provided genuine satisfaction. For others, including many slaves, some dependents, and floating members of the society, this was not always the case.

In the first century, even those who had previously played an influential part in their respective civil and household communities found their freedom to do so dwindling in the face of wider social changes. Political power was gradually becoming concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. This was so even in Rome itself. In the wake of the victorious legions, traditional republics were still created. But independence was never fully granted to them, and authority was generally vested in an often self-protective elite. Disenchantment with the polis, the Greek city-state, grew among both the politically disadvantaged and those who had earlier found some place within it.

To some extent the oikos (the household) was the beneficiary of this trend. What people could not find in their larger community, they sought in their smaller one. Its breadth of membership and proximity of contact lent itself well to this. However, this was too hierarchical and narrow a sphere to meet all aspirations. For these reasons some people’s allegiances tended to drift away from the oikos in another direction. Some thoughtful members of society began to look beyond the public life of their polis toward a more cosmopolitan order. They dreamt of a universal commonwealth, an international brotherhood, in which the basic divisions in society could be resolved. Whether this was viewed as a commonwealth governed by reason (per the Stoics) or as a theocracy ruled by the Messiah (per the devout Jews), such an idea appealed to many at the time.

However, for others these expectations proved too abstract or elitist on the one hand and too militant or utopian on the other. In increasing numbers people began to find their desires fulfilled in a variety of voluntary associations, or collegia, that multiplied in cities all over the ancient world. Though these associations had their precursors among earlier groups formed for various purposes, in the late Hellenistic period they came into their own and attracted a wider following. These groups bound people together on a basis different than that of geography and race or natural and legal ties. Their principle was koinōnia, voluntary partnership around a common interest.

These interests were extremely varied: political, military, and sporting concerns; professional and commercial guilds; artisans and members of crafts; philosophical schools and religious societies. Although only some groups were purely religious in character, a religious dimension was present in all of them, generally through the patronage of a deity and attachment to a shrine. Most were designed primarily to meet the social, charitable, and funerary needs of their members. It was in such voluntary fraternities—whose members could number between ten and one hundred but mostly averaged around thirty—that many people in the Hellenistic world began to experience a level of community that was denied to them elsewhere. Even so, most of these groups still restricted entry to a certain nationality, family, class, or gender. Only a few appear to have opened their doors, in some respects at least, to all.

For our purposes, there were three main types of groups: voluntary associations, religious groups, and philosophical schools. It is important, however, to mention two important qualifications to this categorization. First, some general similarities can be detected between all three of them. This is partly because all institutions of this kind—“intermediate organizations” as they are called today—are bound to contain some common organizational elements. Though on this ground some have sought to blur differences between them, I agree with those who argue that we need to distinguish between primary and secondary, formal and material, general and particular features of such organizations. Second, even though others may view these different types of organizations more uniformly, they were affected by local, civic, or national circumstances.

Disenchantment with Traditional Religion

Among Jews

Bearing in mind the wide range of associations that existed during this period, we need to look more closely at those that were predominantly religious in nature. A word first, however, about the religious scene in general during this time. Among the Jews there was widespread dissatisfaction with the priestly hierarchy in Jerusalem, particularly in view of its collaboration with Roman authorities and its absorption of Greek culture. In reaction, brotherhoods were formed to preserve the purity of the traditional faith, maintain the vigor of its messianic hope, and promote adherence to a strict ethical code. To ensure this, these brotherhoods developed regulations to protect their members from corrupting foreign influences.

Some groups believed that the nation’s official religious leaders and cult were compromised. This forced some to withdraw into monastic communities outside urban areas, or into enclaves within urban environments. This was the case with the Qumran community on the shores of the Dead Sea, and with associated Essene communities scattered throughout Jewish cities and colonies. Others formed fraternities within the society at large to educate and encourage living a holy life in the midst of everyday activities. Such was the practice of the Pharisees, a term that probably embraces a number of like-minded, though not identical, puritan groups in Jewish society. These formed themselves into haburoth in order to maintain rigid standards of purity and celebrate religious meals together.

Apart from the brotherhoods, there was another institution within Judaism that became a center of religious and communal life—namely, the synagogue. Its origin lay several centuries in the past and is partly clouded in obscurity. With the dissolution of the Israelite monarchies in the late eighth and early sixth centuries BC and the consequent exile of the people from the land and temple, a new framework was needed to preserve and nurture the Jewish faith. It was most probably around this time that local Jews began to gathe...