Timothy & Countering The Culture (part 3)

If one does not operate from within an awareness of the patron-client system of the ancient world, one will undoubtedly miss what would have been obvious to the witnesses of these things and to those to whom these stories came, whether in oral or written form.  That is not to say that it will not be possible to understand the overarching Gospel message (Jesus is Lord), but rather, that readings and the ability to apply that which is gleaned and learned from those readings will be richer by orders of great magnitude if one approaches the Scriptural text within appropriate historical and contextual boundaries. 

Moving forward then, it is incumbent upon an observer to realize that the world into which the Gospel narratives were introduced would have been more than well-versed in the dynamics of the patron-client relationship, as would those that came to identify themselves as Christians.  This cultural dynamic would certainly be put to good use, especially since, in that time, it was very much the case that all positive relationships with any god were rooted in the perception of the patron-client relationship. 

So, even though it may seem quite extraneous to a perusal of a letter of Paul, it is quite important to have a strong grasp of this underlying cultural principle of the patron-client system so that it is possible to correctly hear what Paul is communicating to Timothy.  As indicated by the title of this study, there is a strong counter-cultural bent in the first letter to Timothy, as is largely the case for Paul; and the patron-client system seems to be a useful jumping off point.  To that end, said system will continue to be explored, with that exploration providing a few more details that can serve as cultural keys in an exegesis of the letter. 

A client was a loyal supporter to a high standing Roman family, and it is the head of that higher-standing family that would ultimately be known as “patronus,” or “patron.”  The clients of the patron functioned as an extended family to the patron---something like a clan.  They would be expected to loyally support him (offer fides or pistis) in any venture upon which he chose to embark, be that military, political, or commercial.  Meanwhile, the patron would aid his clients through representing their political interests through the office that he held, or by defending them in the courts as their advocate if such became necessary. 

This bond between patron and client was one of the bedrock foundations of Roman society.  This reciprocal loyalty (again, fides or pistis) was a highly prized virtue, and it served to hold together families while serving as the unifying nexus of the social order.  The loyalty of the client would be expected to extend beyond the patron and to the patron’s family as well.  If a patron were to die, a client would be expected to offer the patron’s heir the same loyalty as had been offered to the original patron.  Likewise for the client.  Should the client die, his heir would be expected to stand in for the head of that family, continuing the clientele loyalty to their benefactor. 

Speaking In Tongues (part 4)

Not only did the church not have to explain a new phenomenon, but they were simply able to employ a term already in use to describe a relatively widespread and known practice, with the term adequately conveying, for the Christians, the same information it would have conveyed on behalf of non-Christians---speaking in tongues while possessed by a god.  Glossolalia did not describe something new that originated with or in the church, but was merely adopted and adapted by Christians, as an accepted religious practice for many that was already full of meaning and richly symbolic.    

It is undeniable that what can be seen in the church today bears a heavy resemblance (identical?) to the occurrences of ecstatic tongues that took place in these ancient cults well before the day of Pentecost, to which is generally looked as the time of the outpouring of the Spirit that has, since then, enabled the ecstatic speech of Christians, though there are marked differences between both Christian, non-Christian, and pre-Christian speaking in tongues from what is recorded in the second chapter Acts. 

In all cases of speaking in tongues, based upon the facts of history, the one performing the action is said to be doing so under the influence of their god.  It cannot be said enough that speaking in tongues is not a uniquely Christian practice by any means.  A large number of studies have revealed the fact that speaking in tongues is present in non-Christian religions all around the world.  It is practiced quite distinct from the church in China, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Siberia, Arabia, and Burma, just to name a few locations.  Glossolalia can be heard among Eskimos, in Japanese séances on the island of Hokkaido, from the shamans of the Zar cult in Ethiopia, in Haitian Voodoo, and quite extensively in African tribal religions.  In each case it functions differently for the group, though it will generally sound the same.      

With an understanding that speaking in tongues was present in Paul’s world and elsewhere before Pentecost, attention can now be turned to one of the most important societal constructs in the world of Paul’s day, which is the construct of honor and shame.  It was the system of honor and shame that governed relationships in the ancient world.  One that was desirous of pursuing honor, while also being able to function at an honor-pursuit level within society (not a child, woman, slave, leper, etc…), would take great pains to perform public actions that would not be damaging to one’s accrued honor, while carefully avoiding activities or associations that would tend to bring shame.  Honor equaled prestige in the ancient world.  Honor was also considered to be a limited good, in that if one gained honor for themselves, it came at the expense of another person’s honor.  More honor for one equated to more shame (or simply less honor) for another, and one could certainly gain honor for self by shaming another person.  Speaking in tongues was certainly a component of this system.  

This system of social interaction and order can be seen to have been at work in the records of the life and ministry of Jesus.  When Jesus is challenged, in addition to these challenges being akin to rabbinic debates, they are also contests of honor and shame.  If His challengers can defeat Him through their questions, thereby asserting their superiority or demonstrating potential flaws in His reasoning or grasp of the law, then they will have shamed Him while gaining honor for themselves.  This shaming could very well have served to stem the tide of His kingdom movement.  However, Jesus, who attracted crowds and prestige, did not seek honor for Himself.  He as presented as one that accrued honor but did not seem to care for the workings of the system.  In fact, He is presented as being only concerned with His Father’s honor.  

...Like A Gentile Or Tax Collector (part 1)

If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church.  If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him like a Gentile or a tax collector. – Matthew 18:17  (NET)

Stern words from Jesus.  The context, of course, is relationships between covenant brethren.  Jesus has said “If your brother sins, go and show him his fault when the two of you are alone.  If he listens to you, you have regained your brother.  But if he does not listen, take one or two others with you, so that at the testimony of two or three witnesses, every matter may be established” (Matthew 18:15-16).  The introductory verse to this study follows from this statement, presenting something resembling a system for dealing with intra-Jesus-community conflicts. 

So how are these words generally interpreted?  Upon first reading, is there a thought of something along the lines of “Yes.  That’s right.  If the necessary efforts have been made, and if the response is not correct (meaning, the response is not that which the community wishes to see), then that individual is to be marginalized and ostracized---treated as a Gentile (or a pagan) or a tax collector, for he is unrepentant and beyond reach”?  

One could venture to say that, instinctively, especially in light of an often all too parsed reading of Scripture, that such thoughts do indeed tend to present themselves.  In general there is a custom, especially within the church world, to the creation of an “us vs. them” mentality, with the “us” being those inside the church, and the “them” being the pagans, heathens, and veritable Gentiles and tax collectors that stand outside of and presumably opposed to the church and its claims on behalf of the Christ and His cosmic and unquestioned Lordship of all.  This treatment, though probably stemming from a customary reading of the text, would also and unfortunately be patently incorrect. 

Without going into too much detail, it is worth recounting that the Jews, in recognizing their role as the Creator God’s elect and chosen covenant people, and according to the prescriptions of the Mosaic law and the rather large assortment of traditions grafted on to that law, kept themselves separate from Gentiles.  Purity laws, and especially those encouraged by the strictest of the orthodox in the days of Jesus the Matthean community, demanded that there be no mixing with Gentiles.  For them, and painting with an extraordinarily broad brush, Gentiles were those people that stood against the claims of their Creator God, while also functioning in an ongoing role of oppressors (very much an us vs. them mentality). 

Tax collectors, of course, were the hated group (often of their fellow countrymen) that collaborated with their Roman oppressors to continue their ongoing exile from the place and situation that it was believed their God had promised to them.  This disdain went well beyond the general disgust that is almost universally felt towards those that collect taxes, as their presence and their role were constant reminders of Israel’s covenant failures, and their God’s ongoing punishment of them as His covenant people. 

If these basic facts are taken into consideration, then it would seem rather odd to say that an assessment of Jesus’ statement that affirms an isolation and ostracizing of unrepentant individuals through treating them as Gentiles or tax collectors is an incorrect statement.  Still, that statement stands, and this study resolutely denies that Jesus came anywhere near to implying that an unrepentant individual should be isolated, ostracized, or condemned.  At the same time, His statement is unquestionably affirmed, and said individual should absolutely be treated like a Gentile or a tax collector.

Corinth's Communion (part 8)

Looking at Paul’s discourse concerning the communion in this way---in the larger context of what precedes it in the eleventh chapter and in consideration of the general tone of the letter (Paul’s constant focus on the church body/body of believers) while also holding on to the reality of a general and public reading to the group rather than an individual and private reading, prompts an observer toward a better way of coming to terms with what follows.  The twenty-seventh verse reads “For this reason, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord” (1 Corinthians 11:27). 

When isolated from what prompted Paul to write about that which he is said to have received from the Lord, this verse prompts all types of interesting thoughts concerning what it means to take in an unworthy manner.  When one goes on to hear “A person should examine himself first, and in this way let him eat the bread and drink of the cup” (11:28), an even larger range of potential interpretations come into view. 

In fact and unfortunately, it is proof-texting that almost immediately comes into view.  Accordingly, and rather than considering the statement from its own context, a separate statement from what is presented as Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, that of “Put yourselves to the test to see if you are in the faith; examine yourselves!” (13:5a) is brought into service, so as to aid the unsure reader of the first letter in their comprehension.  That won’t do at all, of course, as ideas communicated in the second letter would have little to zero bearing on the way the hearers of the first letter are meant to understand Paul’s directions.  As a matter of logic, the recipients of letter one would not have letter two in order to provide an interpretive matrix when they first hear letter one.  This would seem to be rather obvious, but is sometimes lost to view in an effort to create a coherent systematic theological system that would not be of any help to this particular church body.  

Nevertheless, herein lies much controversy, as rightly introspective Christians grapple with what it means to take the bread or cup in an unworthy manner, or with what it means to examine oneself in light of the fact that Paul continues on to write “For the one who eats and drinks without careful regard for the body eats and drinks judgment against himself.  That is why many of you are weak and sick, and quite a few are dead” (11:29-30). 

Naturally, judgment, weakness, sickness, and death are ends to be avoided.  Unfortunately, large numbers of Christians, down through the centuries, have not only looked at the words of these verses and attempted to understand them in isolation from the larger picture into which they are painted, they have also looked at them from within the overarching idea that the goal of the Christian life is simply to achieve heaven and avoid hell. 

Therefore, words such as “guilty” and “judgment” are associated with the proverbial and everlasting fires of hell.  In addition, individualistic concerns and notions of personal salvation, and the corollaries of heaven and hell (as the ideals of salvation and judgment) have further colored the interpretation in a way that simply would not have been in the minds of Paul’s original hearers, especially if they had already been well-instructed by him in the fundamentals of all that was implied by the kingdom of heaven, and by concepts such as justification (the means by which one enters into the kingdom of heaven). 

Wide & Narrow Ways (part 1 of 2)

Enter through the narrow gate, because the gate is wide and the way is spacious that leads to destruction, and there who are many who enter through it.  But the gate is narrow and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it. – Matthew 7:13-14  (NET)

These words are drawn from Jesus’ famous “Sermon On the Mount”.  Though there can be little doubt that Jesus spoke these words on more than one occasion and in various places, the setting in which Matthew sets them forth, as Matthew goes to great lengths to make the point that Jesus is a new Moses, has Jesus sitting on a mountain and teaching His disciples (5:1)---offering a different set of commandments from a different mountain (the implicit reference to Moses and Sinai).  At this point, the record of Matthew shows that Jesus has only called to Himself four of His chosen twelve, but that “large crowds followed Him” (4:25).  Additionally, we find that the crowds, which seem to be referred to as His disciples, would be “amazed by His teaching, because He taught them like One Who had authority” (7:28b-29a). 

It is important for us to remember that the words of our text are presented in the context of a continuous series of thoughts that make up chapter five through seven of Matthew.  Now, there is a reason that it is generally referred to as a “sermon,” and that is because it presents a series of ideas that press towards a conclusion.  We find that conclusion as the seventh chapter comes to a close, when Jesus says, “Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, but it did not collapse because it had been founded on rock.  Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not do them is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.  The rain fell, the flood came, and the winds beat against that house, and it collapsed; it was utterly destroyed!” (7:24-27) 

Jesus’ entire discourse built to that point, as in His teaching, as He farmed the fallow grounds of the Galilee (from whence revolutions in Israel sprang) to form His new and revolutionary group (though a different sort of revolution) He began to set Himself apart from those that had come before Him.  There had been numerous people before the time of Jesus (including numerous messianic claimants) that had drawn crowds to themselves, with John the Baptist being one of those that had drawn significant audiences (without any messianic claims, though it is possible that there were those who looked to John as a messianic figure as he proposed a new exodus movement as symbolized by his baptizing in the Jordan); but inevitably, they pointed to the prophets or to Moses or to some person of renown in order to lend them credibility and legitimacy.  Jesus, on the contrary, seems only to point to Himself and His words, providing His own credibility.  This was unique.  Obviously, with such poignant words, undoubtedly offered over and over, we can surmise that Jesus intended His teachings to be taken seriously and to be accurately understood and applied by His hearers.    

When we hear a sermon, or a speech of any kind for that matter, we do not expect the speaker to flit about from topic to topic, offering up disconnected thoughts that have nothing to do with what comes before or after; but rather, to present, with minor digressions useful for making or elaborating points, a unified system of thoughts and ideas.  However, for some reason, when we come to these words of Jesus concerning wide and narrow gates and ways, and the destruction and life attendant upon those ways, we have a strange tendency to disconnect it from its larger context.  Doing that, we put these words into Jesus’ mouth as some type of amorphous and ambiguous statement, lacking in substance, that is just sitting there waiting for us to fill it with the content of our subjective musings concerning what it is that constitutes sin.  How ridiculous, presumptuous, and short-sighted.  Rather than look for what it is that Jesus is communicating, we project on to Jesus’ statement nothing more than our own opinions about what actions should be described as “wide gate” actions that lead to destruction, and “narrow gate” actions that lead to life.