Part One: The Genuine Pauline Epistles
Chapter Two The Pauline Epistles Part One: The Genuine Pauline Epistles This section reviews the work of recent N e w Testament scholars who have employed sociological methodology in their study of the churches represented by the genuine Pauline epistles (Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon).1
First, we shall locate Paul's churches in a sectarian milieu. A discussion of the house church setting of the Pauline sect will follow. Finally, we shall attempt to identify the leaders of the local communities.
The Early Pauline Churches as Sectarian Recent students of the N e w Testament have become increasingly aware of the benefits of treating early Christianity as a sectarian movement. The term "sect" has been applied to N e w Testament communities in various ways. Christopher
Rowland in his book Christian Origins, for example, entitles the section in which he discusses the development of early Christianity, "The Emergence of a Messianic Sect."2 Rowland uses the term appropriately to place the earliest Christian groups in a milieu of Jewish religious plurality, i.e., as a sect among sects. This is one possible use of the term. But it has also been employed to describe the selfdefinition of early Christianity vis-à-vis contemporary Graeco-Roman society.3
Applied in this way, the early church is placed not only in the context of its more defined religious environment, but also in a broader and more general societal one. A decade ago, Robin Scroggs contributed to the consideration of the earliest church as a sect by identifying the use of the term in contemporary sociology, and by showing how sociological models of sectarianism can help to illuminate certain aspects of the early church.4 More recently two scholars,
Elliott and MacDonald, have successfully applied Bryan Wilson's typology of sectarianism to 1 Peter and the genuine Pauline letters.5 They have shown that Wilson's sect typology helps to situate early Pauline communities in their contemporary environment and to identify and account for certain challenges which confronted them. In the following discussion we shall present Wilson's
Notes to this chapter appear on pp. 47-54.
The Social Setting of the Ministry sect type and show how closely evidence from early Pauline communities is in accord with it.
According to Wilson, sects typically possess many of the following features:
The sect is a clearly defined community; it is of a size which permits only a minimal range of diversity of conduct; it seeks itself to rigidify a pattern of behaviour and to make coherent its structure of values and ideals, and against every other organization of values and ideals, and against every other social context possible for its adherents, offering itself as an all-embracing, divinely prescribed society. The sect is not only an ideological unit, seeking to enforce behaviour on those who accept belief, and seeking every occasion to draw the faithful apart from the rest of society and into the company of each other....
The sect, as a protest group, has always developed its own distinctive ethic, belief and practices, against the background of the wider society; its own protest is conditioned by the economic, social, ideological and religious circumstances prevailing at the time of its emergence and development.6
Whilst we must be careful not to force first century social phenomena to fit contemporary sociological models, there are many aspects of the earliest Pauline communities which reflect several of the characteristics listed by Wilson.
Judging by Paul's language, an event of profound significance for members of the communities he founded was baptism. As an initiation ritual, baptism probably served as a preeminent boundary-creating and community-defining symbol. In 1 Cor. 12:13 Paul states that baptism marks entry into "one body," and in 6:11 this is presented as a washing which has sanctified and justified community members. He uses the language of life and death in Rom. 6:3-4 to indicate the radically new life which the baptized have begun to enjoy. Paul's reference to "outsiders" (ot εχω) in 1 Cor. 5:12, 13 and 1 Thes. 4:12 indicates a consciousness of being "inside." And the terms he uses to describe his fellow
Christians as "saints" (άγιοι), or a predestined and called elect (Rom. 8:30), also arise from an awareness of being a group separate from the world. The language of separation is present where Paul contrasts the present state of the baptized with their former lives of worldly vice (1 Cor. 6:9-10). Lists of virtues and vices, such as those found in Gal. 5:19-25, define what attitudes and behaviour the person who has new life in Christ is to avoid and pursue. The apostle exhorts the sect not to be "conformed to this world" (αιών — Rom. 12:2). And he contrasts the true monotheistic belief with the corruption and deceit of pagan polytheism; in Rom. l:18f., the creation of gods by humankind is linked with immorality and disobedience toward the true God. The former pagan beliefs of Christians are presented as a form of bondage (Gal. 4:8).
Members are exhorted to control their relationships with outsiders. In 1 Cor.
6:lf., for example, they are admonished not to seek the legal advice of outsiders to solve problems within the group. How can saints seek the advice of the unrighteous outsider? How can those who are to judge angels rely on the world's judgments? Another example is the advice concerning marriage with outsiders. Paul does not encourage divorce when only one member of a married couple is a believer (1 Cor. 7:12-16), but he forbids marriage with an unbeliever. In 2 Cor.
6:14-15, Paul supports his advice by piling up an extraordinary series of opposing descriptions to portray the differences which exist between believers and unbeliev-
The Pauline Epistles
ers: righteousness — iniquity, light — darkness, Christ — Belial, the temple of God — idols. "Come out from them, and be separate from them" Paul quotes
(v. 17). The Pauline sect is constituted by people who have broken with the world.
The baptized belong to a new community, where distinctions between slave and free, male and female, Jew and Greek — normative indices of contemporary society — are relativized in the face of a dynamic new communal identity (Gal.
3:27-28). To be "in Christ," a favourite expression Paul uses to describe the identity of members of the community, implies a whole new set of relationships — not only the destruction of old significations of status and social identity, but also the creation of new ones. Paul's description of members as brothers and sisters and his description of himself as father (1 Cor. 4:15) or mother (Gal. 4:19) of the community are examples of what Meeks has called the language of belonging.7 Entry into the community implies inclusion in a new family — new social patterns, which, if not entirely supplanting the old ones
(e.g. 1 Cor. 11:2-16; 7:21-22), reconstructs them according to the new life in Christ.
Wilson further identifies seven subtypes of sectarianism within his more general sect type. Each subtype represents a different pattern of sectarianism arising out of different characteristic responses to the world. The "conversionist sect" is a type which Elliott and MacDonald employ in their discussion of 1 Peter and Paul. By defining further the sectarian pattern adduced from Paul letters, they are able to assess more accurately challenges to the sectarian identity of the group and its place in the contemporary society.8 Wilson defines the conversionist sect as follows:
The world is corrupt because men are corrupt; if men can be changed then the world will be changed. Salvation is seen not as available through objective agencies but only by a profoundly felt, supernaturally wrought transformation of the self. The objective wilt not change but the acquisition of a new subjective orientation to it will be salvation.
Clearly this subjective conversion will be possible only on the promise of a change in external reality at some future time, or the prospect of the individual's transfer to another sphere. This is the ideological or doctrinal aspect of the matter, but the essential sociological fact is that what men must do to be saved is to undergo emotional transformation — a conversion experience.
This is the proof of having transcended the evil of the world. Since it is a permanent and timelessly valid transcendence, some future condition of salvation is often posited in which objective circumstances come to correspond to the subjective sense of salvation, that he is saved now. Thus he can face the evil of the world, the processes of change that threaten men with decay and death, because he is assured of an unchanging condition and feels this. This response is the conversionist response to the world.9
If any person be in Christ, Paul says in 2 Cor. 5:17, "he or she is a new creation." The central parallel between the conversionist type and the Pauline sect is the emphasis which Paul places on the transformation or conversion of the members of the community because of their belief in Christ. The burden of Paul's argument in Romans 6-8 is to show that belief in Christ represents a transformation of the individual, no longer under the constraints of the Law,
The Social Setting of the Ministry but renewed with the life of the Spirit. This is a divinely wrought salvation.
"God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!* "
(Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15-16). This salvation is in the present tense: "Behold now is the acceptable time; behold now is the day of salvation." (2 Cor. 6:2) But if now, there is also a vital element of "not yet." What believers have begun to experience now foreshadows the more complete state of salvation which is imminent. Creation groans for the eschatalogical adoption of the sons and daughers of God and its freedom from decay (Rom. 8:19-25). If some of the sisters and brothers have already died before the full revelation of the sons of God, there is no cause for alarm; the "children of light" are to remain vigilant and wait with eager expectation for their destined salvation (1 Thes. 4:13-5:11).
Wilson warns that it is a futile exercise to use a sect typology merely to classify; it is necessary to move beyond classification and to see how the type helps to illuminate "the expectable logic of the social arrangements of a given genus of phenomena."10 In the remainder of this section we shall indicate briefly how
Wilson's conversionist sect type helps to enlighten our understanding of tensions within the Pauline communities, a topic to which we shall return in subsequent chapters. The pressure to evangelize and to draw others into the fold raises particular difficulties for the conversionist sect, and these will be discussed in more detail in our treatment of the Shepherd of Hermas. But it is enough to state here that the tension between reaching out to and separating itself from the world is intensified in the conversionist sect. MacDonald has cast light on tensions which arose within the Paul's churches as a result of their sectarian identity and goals.11 For example, the organization of the mission around the households of well-to-do patrons not only contributed to the success of Paul's mission, but also resulted in a certain ambiguity about group boundaries.
Are patrons to leave off from their business associations, indeed their business ventures, or are the sect's values and identity of separation to be compromised?
Paul's inconsistent remarks regarding the consumption of meat offered to idols reveals a similar tension: in 1 Cor. 6:12-20, where Paul focuses on the moral purity of the Christian sect, he seems to discourage the consumption of food offered to idols. But in 1 Cor. 8 he offers a more liberal interpretation (cf. also the differing statements on this issue in 1 Cor. 10:1-22 and 23-33). As Theissen has shown, the rough and tumble of daily life in the world dictates that the more prosperous members of the community be permitted to indulge in banquets where meat offered to idols is inevitably served,12 Ambiguity in group boundaries is even promoted by Paul when he advises spouses of non-believers not to seek divorce. Instead, they are to use their relationship as an opportunity for evangelization (1 Cor. 7:16). Comparison of such group challenges with the more specific tensions which contemporary conversionist sects undergo, has enabled scholars to show that Paul's teaching was not formulated as an exercise in doctrine, but as a response to particular social situations.
The Household Context of the Christian Sect N e w Testament scholarship is increasingly recognizing the Graeco-Roman household as an important element in the rise, growth, and institutionalization
The Pauline Epistles
of the early Christian church.13 Malherbe argues that we will never really understand the early Christian church unless we attempt to understand it from within, and the fact that this statement occurs in a chapter entitled "House
Churches and Their Problems" indicates that he thinks house churches are the place to enter.14 He is correct. Writing nearly fifty years ago, Floyd Filson stated that although early Christian worship was indebted to Jewish practices the house church made possible "a distinctly Christian worship and fellowship from the very first days of the apostolic age."13 We shall try to understand the growth and organization of the Pauline sect by analysing the role of households and household leaders in the apostle's mission.
Hospitality and Gospel Transmission In an article contemporary with that of Filson, D. W. Riddle noted that the spread of the Gospel in the early church depended upon the hospitality of householders who received Christian missionaries and permitted them to use their homes as bases for their work.16 The portrait painted of Paul in Acts presents the apostle as a traveller who converts households of the relatively well-to-do and then stays with them for varying periods of time (Acts
16:14-15,40; 17:1-9; 18:5-8).17 Luke's portrayal of Paul as a man on the move shows him relying on the hospitality of fellow and sister Christians (Acts
18:1-4; 20:6-12; 21:4,7,8; 21:15,17).
A similar picture emerges from Paul's letters.t8 In Rom. 16:23, Paul mentions Gaius, "host to me and to the whole church." Again, he asks Philemon, another host of the church (Phlm. 2), to prepare a guest room for him (v.22); Paul evidently is planning to lodge with him. A similar reference to hospitality is probably behind Paul's reference to Phoebe as his "patroness" (προστάτις — Rom,
16:2).19
There is other indirect evidence that household hospitality played an important role in the life of the earliest church. Theissen correctly argues that hospitality is part of the social backdrop assumed in Paul's vilification of the "superapostles" in 2 Cor. ÎO-12.20 In short, Paul's opponents were itinerant Christian missionaries who had taken literally Christ's injunction to leave all and follow him, and so relied for their livelihood on the hospitality of members of the Corinthian community. Letters of recommendation gained them welcome and access to the community's resources (2 Cor. 3:1; 10:12).
The conversion of households with their dependants also helps to account for the growth of the community. The references in Acts to the salvation or baptism of entire households (10:2; 11:14; 16:15, 31-34; 18:8) are in accord with Paul's reference to the household (oÎKCa) of Stephanas as the first converts in Achaia (1 Cor. 16:15; cf. 1 Cor. 1:16 where οίκος is used to define the family).
This may be interpreted as evidence that Stephanas and his dependants were baptized together. But there is also evidence that entire households were not always baptized; Philemon's runaway slave, Onesimus, was probably not a Christian at the time of his escape from his master (Phlm. vs. 11, 15-16).21
L. M. White argues with justification that the extended household community provided a network for further expansion into the community, a factor which helps to account for Christianity's rapid spread throughout the Roman
The Social Setting of the Ministry Empire.22 Judge speaks of "networks" in this regard — namely, social factors such as patronage networks arising from the conversion of well-to-do householders. 3 The conversion of such a householder allowed access to members of the extended household community, which in turn provided opportunities for contact with other networks.24 Three such networks in Corinth, for example, were probably the extended households of Gaius, Crispus, and Stephanas — all very likely well-to-do patrons whom Paul baptized (1 Cor. 16:15-16).25
Household units similar to those associated with these three members also help to explain the tendency of the apostolic church to split into factions 2 6
Interpreters may be claiming too much when they argue that the followers of Apollos, Peter, and Paul represented various household groups (1 Cor. 1:12),27 but we will see in later chapters that the household setting of the early church helps to account for community schisms.28
Hospitality was important not only for the initial proclamation of the Gospel; willing hosts also provided the necessary locale for the continuation of the group during Paul's absence. In fact it is with reference to the establishment of house churches that Theissen and others have called Paul a "community-organizer" or "founder" or "minor founder."29 Paul's references to churches in the homes of certain individuals suggest that he laid the foundations of his churches in the household. This is indicated in Rom. 16:5, 1 Cor. 16:19, and Phlm. 2, where he links the church by use of the phrase κατ' οίκον εκκλησία to the household of particular hosts. In Rom. 16:23, a similar association is implied.
Scholars have inferred the presence of other house churches in Paul's communities from further passages: the reference to Phoebe as "patroness" of Paul and the church in Cenchreae (Rom. 16:1);30 Paul's recommendation of Stephanas and his household as devoted to the service of the saints (1 Cor. 16:15);31 greetings to various groups in Rom. 16:14 and 15.32
The number of house churches in a given locale is a topic of debate.33 Klauck, for example, argues that the preposition κατά in Rom. 16:5, 1 Cor. 16:19, and Phlm, 2 should be understood distributively, i.e. "die sich hausweise konstituierende Kirche."34 Gielen, however, argues that Klauck and others are guilty of eiscgesis. Contemporary papyrological evidence, as well as the fact that the formula occurs in the context of a greeting, indicates that the preposition should be interpreted simply as έν, i.e., "the church in the house of X."35 Gielen is correct to point to some form of common meeting in Corinth, as the reference to Gaius as ό χ έ ν ο ς . . . ολης της έκκλησίας would seem to imply, but this does not exclude the possibility of further meetings or even eucharists in Corinth. Afanassieff's contention that only one eucharist could have been celebrated because of Paul's theology of the church reads concerns of a later period into his ecclesiology. Both Gielen and Afanassieff fail to account successfully for the greetings in Rom. 16:14-15, where separate groups seem to be indicated, as well as the evidence concerning the household of Stephanas in 1 Cor. 16:15. In our view, while there were probably meetings of the whole community in some places (e.g. Corinth), in other places this may not have been the case (e.g.
Rome36).
The Pauline Epistles
Wealth, Patronage, and the Pauline House Church The traditional picture of the early Christian church as a movement consisting solely of the dregs of society has been challenged in recent scholarship.37 Both
Acts and Paul's letters contain evidence which indicates that a small number of relatively wealthy individuals belonged to churches associated with Paul.
Theissen identifies four criteria with which to assess the degree of wealth of individuals mentioned by Paul: to be active in a civil or religious office; to possess a house; to have served Paul or the church or both; to be able to make a journey.38 (Theissen notes that the last two criteria of themselves do not point to wealth).
He concludes from his analysis of members described in the Corinthian epistles that the persons in leading positions (such as Gaius, Crispus, and Stephanas) were well-to-do, and from this he infers that Paul actively sought to convert the relatively wealthy, who could then provide a house large enough to act as a base for a church and also act as leaders in his absence. The instances of the wealth of Gaius and Crispus are relatively straightforward. Gaius was presumably wealthy enough to own a house of a size sufficient to accommodate a meeting of the whole community (Rom. 16:23), and, assuming that the description of Crispus in Acts 18:8 as an αρχισυνάγωγος is accurate,39 it is probable that he too was wealthy.40 But Malherbe criticizes Theissen's interpretation of Stephanas' social status. He doubts that Stephanas was the patron of a house church and this leads him to question wealth as a criterion for leadership in Paul's churches.41 The cumulative weight of the evidence with respect to the wealth of Stephanas, however, is against him, and, as we shall see, the case for wealth as an important determining factor in local leadership is stronger than
Malherbe admits. It is true that Paul does not state directly that the church met in Stephanas' home, but the fact that Paul singles out Stephanas with Crispus and Gaius in 1 Cor. 1:14-16 as the only individuals whom he baptized — both wealthy and one certainly offering his home as a meeting place, combined with his reference to Stephanas' household as devoted to the service of the church — makes Theissen's interpretation of the role of Stephanas as a housechurch patron compelling. Because Paul mentions Stephanas' household twice
(1 Cor. 1:16; 16:15), refers to the service of Stephanas' household to the community, and exhorts the local church to be subject to individuals such as him,
Meeks locates Stephanas' social status "fairly high on the scale of wealth."42
How did the presence of relatively wealthy members affect life in the sect?
Research into the status of the members associated with Paul's churches has led scholars to conclude that Paul did not seek to upset existing household and patronage arrangements. He certainly relegated them to a secondary position when he sought to define the identity of the sect: in the light of the imminent return of Christ, for example, Paul urges wives to live as though they had no husbands, and those who have dealings with the world to act as though they had none (1 Cor. 7:29-31). This is one face of Paul. But there is also a more conservative one: earlier in the same chapter he instructs slaves to remain in their servile state (v, 21),43 elsewhere he tells women to cover their heads as a sign of submission to men (11:2-13), and he respects the rights of the slave-owner
Philemon over his slave Onesimus (Phlm v. 14). If in Christ there is no longer
The Social Setting of the Ministry male nor female, slave nor free, the expression of this in the community is not to deny the validity of these distinctions, but to transform them into vehicles of community cohesion. Philemon is not only the master of Onesimus, but also his brother (Phlm. v. 16). Theissen, following Ernst Troeltsch, names Paul's community ethic "love patriarchal ism." He writes: love patriarchalism takes social différences for granted but ameliorates them through an obligation of respect and love, an obligation imposed upon those who are socially stronger. From the weaker are required subordination, fidelity, and esteem. Whatever the intellectual sources feeding into this ethos, with it the great part of Hellenistic primitive Christianity mastered the task of shaping social relationships within a community which, on the one hand, demanded of its members a high degree of solidarity and brotherliness and, on the other, encompassed various social strata.44
While this was a laudable ideal, it was fraught with difficulty, as one may imagine if one tries to conceive how a slave could also be a brother or sister. But for all its attendant problems, it continued to be invoked, as we shall see when we discuss the Shepherd of Hermas and 1 Clement.
The ideal of love patriarchalism is well illustrated by reference to Paul's advice regarding meat offered to idols (1 Cor. 8:9f£; 10:25ff.). Here, in the face of status-specific behaviour, Paul's advises wealthier members to accommodate their behaviour to less prosperous Christians, while at the same time preserving the factual privileges of their status.45 Similarly, the conflict surrounding a eucharist at Corinth (1 Cor. 11:17-34), where, again, class-specific practices seem to have disrupted the esprit de corps of the Corinthian community, is not resolved by denying that wealthy members are entitled to privileges, only by his insistence that they are not to exercise them at the common table.46 And more generally, the pattern of leadership exercised by a well-to-do householder is in accord with this pattern. It is to this topic of leadership that we now turn.
House-Church Leadership If the Graeco-Roman household was the backdrop for the daily life of the Pauline communities, which members occupied roles of leadership? This is a topic which has continued to occupy the attention of N e w Testament scholars. But more recent studies have noted that important roles of local governance are to be found in the household leadership offered by house church patrons. Filson foreshadowed the contemporary discussion when he noted that the host of a house church, "almost inevitably a man [sic] of some education, with a fairly broad background and at least some administrative ability," was a likely candidate for local leadership 4 7 Much earlier, in 1909, Ernst von Dobschütz identified ten types of actions a local house church patron undertook on behalf of the local church:
(1) Hergeben des Lokals fiir die Gemeindeversammlung, (2) vielleicht auch Herstellung der nötigen Ordnung dabei, (3) Vorbeten, (4) Vorlesen, (5) Vorsingen, (6) Gewährung von Unterkunft und Unterhalt fur zureisende
Brüder, (7) von Unterstützung für Arme, (8) Stellung von Kaution (vgl.
Jason Apg.
17:9), (9) Vertretung vor Gericht (Patronisieren!), (10)
The Pauline Epistles
gelegentlich vielleicht eine Reise im Interesse der Gemeinde, kurz alle Pflichten, sie später dem Vorsteher, dem Bischof zufielen, aber alles als freiwillige Leistung, ohne rechtlichen Auftrag, ohne gchaltsmässige Vergütung....48
Holmberg, a contemporary scholar, comments that with the exception of points 3 to 5 these functions are recognizable in Paul's letters and Acts. Stephanas, for example, owns a house (probably 1 and 2), he makes a journey on behalf of the church (10), and he serves the church in various ways (probably 6 and 7). And he argues further, that apart from functions 3 to 5 all these listed tasks presuppose a certain degree of wealth and social standing.49 Similarly, Elliott argues that the heads of the households where Christians met for worship were the most obvious candidates to assume the responsibilities of the management of community affairs because of their already existent social status and economic resources.50
Bryan Wilson has commented that newly emerging religious sects are often marked by a surprising versatility and fluidity of institutional structures. In the case of the earliest Pauline communities, there is evidence that at least one church (Corinth) was challenged by certain religious manifestations which threatened to undermine the solidarity of the group. Even if Corinth was a "problem church" (it is probably for that reason that we learn so much about it, not because Paul saw in it an ideal "charismatic church order" as many German scholars are wont to interpret Paul's corrective statements in 1 Cor. 12 and 14),51 we should not underestimate the power of various social manifestations, such as those demonstrated by the πνευματικόι (1 Cor. 12:1), to steer the community down new paths. But having stated this, one should also note that Paul recommended certain individuals as leaders within the communities he founded and recognized the legitimacy of their oversight. Most easily identifiable among these are the apostles, prophets, and teachers mentioned in 1 Cor.
12:28.52 But alongside these there are also other leaders who are mentioned in 1
Cor. 12:28 and 16:16, Rom. 12:8, and 1 Thes. 5:12, and Phil. 1:1. In 1 Cor.
12:28, Paul mentions κυβέρνησις as a gift, and when he mentions a προϊστάμενος in Rom. 12:8 he probably has a similar function in mind. When one compares the use of this term in 1 Thes. 5:12, it seems likely that προϊστάμενοι were in some position of leadership. Paul exhorts the Thessalonians to "respect" (RSV; ειδέναι) those "over them."53 If one compares the RSV translation of προϊστάμενος in Rom 12:8 and 1 Thes. 5:12, one discovers different nuances of the same term. In the former passage the term is translated as "he who gives aid," where "aid" refers to material help.54 In the latter passage, however, the translators emphasize the aspect of the term which indicates leadership. In fact, in contemporary usage the term connotes meanings of both patronage and leadership.55 If we interpret the term keeping both of these nuances in mind, then a probable inference is that those who act as patrons are in some sense also involved in the governance of the community. The evidence which we have concerning Stephanas is in accord with this interpretation. Paul urges that the Corinthians submit themselves (ύποτάσσεσθαι) to men like
Stephanas, who have devoted themselves to the ministry of the community (1 Cor. 16:15). The exhortation to submit to "such men" (οί τοιούτοι) is a general description and is not necessarily restricted to patrons (Paul may also have
The Social Setting of the Ministry in mind apostles, prophets, and teachers, for example56), but the evidence listed above suggests that one group he was probably referring to was the community's patrons. As Meeks notes, the evidence of 1 Thes. 5:12, 1 Cor. 12:28 (and, we add, 1 Cor. 16:15) indicates that "a position of authority grows out of the benefits that persons of relatively higher wealth and status could confer on the community."57 Similarly, Holmberg cautiously su^ests the following summary of the evidence presented above, in most of Paul's churches we have a group of persons who teach, guide, transmit divine revelations, expound the scriptures and formulate God's will in concrete, everyday life, and here we find the prophets and teachers
Beside this group we find another, not so clearly defined, consisting of people with sufficient initiative, wealth, and compassion to care for the sick and poor, to receive travelling missionaries and other Christians, to be able to accommodate the worshippers and the communal meals of the church in their own houses, sometimes travelling on behalf of the church and generally taking administrative responsibility.58
In the case of the reference to έπίσκοποι and διάκονοι in Phil. 1:1, the reference is too general to determine whether these leaders fit into this pattern. But in our discussion of the Pastoral epistles we will see that in that community, overseers were probably wealthier members of the community. The cumulative evidence permits one to speculate that a similar situation prevailed in Philippi.
How "official" were the various functions of leadership in Paul's churches?
David Moberg's model of contemporary sect development, used heuristically, helps us identify various forces which encouraged and retarded the institutionalization process in the early Pauline churches.59
Moberg calls the earliest stage of institutionalization of sects "incipient organization." This term describes the earliest days of the community, in which the group is dominated by a "charismatic, authoritative, prophetic leader"60 and structures are relatively formless. The second stage, "formal organization," refers to a period of increased efforts by leaders to consolidate the membership through the formulation of ethical codes, the definition of belief, or the development of rituals.61 N o w the evidence of the New Testament indicates that Paul's churches were probably somewhere between Moberg's first two stages of institutionalization. Holmberg and, more recently, MacDonald argue that Paul was a "charismatic" (using the term sociologically) leader and that, as long as he was alive and available to the churches he founded, there was no fully fledged institutional structure of the type we find developing within a generation after his death.62 Paul's letters bear testimony to the authority he enjoyed even while absent and to the fact that he continued all the time to be the primary source of direction. While Paul does recommend certain individuals as leaders, there is good reason to suppose that local authority structures were relatively fluid while the apostle was still alive: the fact that he feels obliged to call for obedience to particular people; the variety of nomenclature he uses to describe what were probably similar functions of governance in 1 Thes. 5: 12, 1 Cor. 12:28, Rom.
12:8 and Phil. 1:1; the variety of functions in the Corinthian church; the lack of division between local leadership, leadership for the maintenance of contact between different churches, and leadership for evangelization.63
The Pauline Epistles
However fluid institutions may have been, Paul looked to local members to solve internal disputes; there must have existed individuals in a position to expel immoral members from the meetings (1 Cor. 5:1-5), or to help resolve antagonisms between members (1 Cor. 6:1-5). He does not give precise instructions concerning how these tasks are to be accomplished; he assumes they will be done, and presumably relies on the community to take the appropriate steps. He is a parent (e.g., 1 Thes. 2:7; 1 Cor. 4:14) and, consonant with the paternal metaphor, he expects his children to grow up and take control of their own affairs
(1 Cor, 3:1-4). In a situation like this we may assume that institutions would have quickly developed to provide the kind of community governance necessary for the continuation of the church.
H o w did leaders arise? Paul states that Stephanas and his household appointed themselves (έταξαν εαυτούς) to the service of the saints (1 Cor.
1:15), Did Paul appoint them as leaders, or did they volunteer their services?64
This question has been a topic of much debate.65 And it has tremendous significance for one's interpretation of ί Clem. 42:4 and 44:2, where the community's first leaders are treated as appointees. But perhaps the way the question is traditionally phrased is misleading. For even if Paul did not establish formal leaders when he left communities, those who acted as leaders nonetheless gained their legitimacy from recognition by the apostle.66 It is fair to argue that in Paul's presence, as in his absence, household leadership emerged "from below" in the community and was legitimated "from above" by the apostle.67
The evidence in Paul's letters, then, suggests that the process of institutionalization68 was relatively open while Paul was still alive. Whatever authority householders possessed, it is unlikely that there was a single leader of the community. The openness with which Paul expects instructions to be carried out in 1 Cor. 5:5, 6:5., and 16:3 suggests that at this date the Corinthian church did not possess an integrated body of leaders. We cannot expect that all communities developed in the same way; Phil. 1:1 may indicate that in some communities more patterned organization developed more quickly and perhaps with less turmoil. But the evidence generally suggests that while Paul was still alive the process of institutionalization was in its early stages. The passage of time, the growth of the group, the physical absence of the apostle, the repeated action of certain members — all these factors encouraged the development of organizational patterns, however informal.69 Some positions, such as those of apostles, prophets, and teachers, were relatively well defined. Others, such as household leaders, though identifiable and possessing a degree of permanency, were probably not functionally discrete. But because house-church patrons provided the group with relative continuity in a period of development and with structure in a time of flux, it seems likely that their position was an important focus point, even if not the only one, of relatively rapid institutionalization.71 Their administrative talents, the practical benefits of their hospitality, and their natural position in Graeco-Roman culture favoured their emergence as leaders in Paul's absence and their increasing importance with the passage of time.72