Important Shifts in the Social Relations, Article Review Example

Horrell (2001): Horrell argues that certain kinship terms found in the genuine writings of Paul indicate important shifts in the social relations that bound together the members of the emergent Christian communities. For the purposes of his article, Horrell holds Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon to be genuine Pauline epistles, Colossians and Ephesians as “early and closely related examples of post-Pauline pseudepigraphy, [and] the Pastoral Epistles as somewhat later additions to the Pauline corpus.”[1] The terms in question are kinship terms, and Horrell’s focus is on how they are used metaphorically, to denote what anthropologists would call “fictive kin”, i.e. individuals who, although not kin by blood or by marriage, nonetheless relate to each other as kin on the basis of some other kind of relationship.[2]

Horrell considers the use in Paul of the word ??????? (adelphos), meaning “brother” in Greek. While it had a literal, straightforward meaning as one’s own brother by blood, it could also be used more metaphorically, to denote some other emotional and social bond. The Hebrew equivalent is essentially the same, and was used in many of the same ways. While not hierarchical, the term is not incompatible with hierarchy. Horrell also considers the usage of ?????/????? (oikos/oikia), which refer to a “house” or “home” both as a physical edifice in which people live, and a household, consisting of members and material possessions. Although the term has a number of different usages and aspects, when it denotes a grouping of people there seems to be a certain amount of stratification and order implied. In ancient households of Paul’s time, such hierarchies might include “husbands and wives, parents and children, owners and slaves.”[3]

Horrell then turns to the authentic Pauline letters in order to examine the usages of this sibling and household language. He observes that Paul frequently refers to his fellow believers as adelphoi, “brothers”, and sometimes refers to individual believers as either adelphos, “brother”, or adelphi, “sister.” This, Horrell argues, indicates that Paul is stressing or promoting the kinship relationship: he is attempting to relate to his fellow Christians as fictive kin. Horrell argues that there seems to be an egalitarian dimension to this, based both on the conventional usages of the kinship language in question and on the context in Paul. In particular, Paul uses sibling language in order to stress the ethical obligations of Christian believers to each other: obligations to act towards each other with love and fellow-feeling, respecting and caring for each other.

In general, the reason Paul emphasizes this in his letters is his perception that the congregation in question needs a reminder on this account, having gone astray from the lesson in some particular. Horrell gives examples such as that of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, wherein “Paul criticizes those among the Corinthian community who are taking their fellow believers to court; indeed, he explicitly aims to put them to shame (6:5).”[4] However, Horrell acknowledges that Paul also uses other kinds of familial language. In 1 Corinthians 4:14-15, 21, Paul refers to himself as the father of his Corinthian church, and to the believers there as his children. Thus, much as in the households of Paul’s own time, the Apostle recognized a certain amount of hierarchy. However, Horrell points out that Paul never uses oikos or oikia to describe the Christian ekklesia, which would seem to indicate a generally more egalitarian social picture than that of the households of Classical antiquity.[5]

All in all, I think Horrell makes a solid case, though I felt a great deal went left unexplored. Horrell correctly pointed out some interesting aspects of the kinship terms used in Paul in the original Greek, and drew connections with prevalent usages and conventions in the world of Paul’s day. This does indeed cast light on how the early believers may have related to each other, and the insights it gives are useful. However, I thought additional evidence, whether from archaeology or history or the texts themselves, might have helped to provide a great deal more context in which to situate the social relations of the church. How did the believers of the Corinthian church, for example, interpret the relationship? Are there other writers from Paul’s own day, or earlier, who used those kinship terms in a setting with strong parallels to the setting in which Paul used them? Such a consideration might lend a great deal of attestation to the world in which Paul and the believing congregations to whom he wrote lived, casting still further light upon their fictive kin relations.

Allard (2010): Allard aims to rebut those scholars who have tended to see Paul as weighted with the “cultural baggage” of his times on such issues as the veiling of women, and other practices which, while common enough in his own time, are now deemed backward and even perverse in the West. The real issue, Allard argues, is Paul’s understanding of what it means to exercise freedom in Christ. In the case of the Corinthian believers—not the women alone by any means—they had embraced the idea of being new creations in Christ, but taken it in directions of which Paul could not approve. Specifically, they believed “that they had been set free from all restraints”, from restraints against eating meat sacrificed to idols, to prohibitions against sexual immorality, to women speaking in divine services and not wearing veils.[6]

According to Allard, Paul’s argument is that the Corinthians need to understand what freedom in Christ means: freedom within the context of one’s relationships to God and to other people. While Allard does not suggest that Paul viewed women not wearing veils as somehow on par with sexual immorality, he points out that the Apostle spends a fair bit of time in 1 Corinthians telling his congregation not to, in essence, abuse or insist on their rights in ways that might impair or in any way hamper their ability to shine as lights for God. Thus, even if it is not immoral in essence for women to go unveiled or talk in church, Paul nonetheless counsels the Corinthian women to recognize that exercising these freedoms might, in the context of the society in which they lived, impair their ability to communicate the truth of the Gospel to others. Freedom, in Paul’s world, is not “for” one’s self alone: it is also for others, and can only exist in relation to others.[7]

Paul, Allard explains, also talks about “headship”, using a term that is rather ambiguous, with a number of meanings. The Greek word kephal?, “head”, can mean authority, but it can also mean “source” and “foremost.” But for Paul, the connotations of authority are present in a new way: through the framework of submission in order to do service to others. Thus, Christ, as kephal? of every man, in a sense ‘submits’ to and ‘serves’ every man, and the same for every husband and his wife. This in turn has ramifications for such customs as the veil, which was rooted in the cultural traditions of the Mediterranean Greco-Roman world of which Corinth was a part. These traditions saw the veiling of women in terms of “honor” versus “dishonor”, and so it was of considerable importance.[8]

Moreover, Paul explains, the women of Corinth need to wear the veils for themselves, too. In 1 Corinthians 11:10 he does something interesting: he refers to the veils using the word exousia, instead of the word kalupt? as in other parts of 1 Corinthians. The word exousia, Allard explains, means “authority.” Thus, here Paul seems to be saying that the veil is a symbol of women’s authority. Drawing on other usages of the word exousia, Allard makes a compelling case that Paul is saying the women of Corinth have the right not to wear their veils, but they should refrain from exercising that right and instead make the choice to keep wearing their veils, on account of their neighbors.[9]

Paul’s overall vision, Allard explains, is one of interdependence. Yes, the women of Corinth had been set free in Christ from having to wear their veils. However, out of love for their neighbors, he asked them to wear them anyway. By refusing to insist on their rights to do as they wished, Paul explained, the women of Corinth would be setting a good example for their neighbors, an example of Christ’s love. This is the essence of what ‘freedom’ is really about in Paul: interdependence, relying on and helping others, not independence from others and an insistence on one’s “rights” to do as one wishes.[10]

All in all, Allard makes a compelling case. His linguistic evidence from the Scriptures is sound, and his comparative analyses demonstrate the veracity of what he says. He shows the true cultural and ideological context in which Paul lived and wrote, and in so doing enables the reader to take a second look at Paul, specifically with regard to the Apostle’s supposedly archaic and hidebound views on women. Viewed as Allard views him, Paul was a remarkably insightful thinker, one who went well beyond our contemporary notions of “progressivism” versus “conservatism.” This enables the reader to understand Paul not as an unfortunate manifestation of his time, but rather someone who was not just ahead of his time, but beyond his time, and ours too. What Paul was advocating for was interdependence, with people serving each other and helping each other. This creates a very different ethical vision, and very different meaning of what it really is to be “free”: service to God and others. Allard brings this to life beautifully, with a sound methodology and a rich cultural and historical context.

Bibliography

Allard, Robert E. “’Freedom on your head’ (1 Corinthians 11:2-16): A Paradigm for the Structure of Paul’s Ethics.” Word & World, 30.4 (2010): 399-407.

Horrell, David G. “From ??????? TO ????? ????: Social transformation in Pauline Christianity.” Journal of Biblical Literature 120.2 (2001): 293-311.

[1] David G. Horrell, “From ??????? TO ????? ????: Social transformation in Pauline Christianity”, Journal of Biblical Literature 120.2 (2001): 293-295.

[2] Horrell, “From ??????? TO ????? ????”, 295.

[3] Horrell, “From ??????? TO ????? ????”, 296-298.

[4] Horrell, “From ??????? TO ????? ????”, 298-300.

[5] Horrell, “From ??????? TO ????? ????”, 300-304.

[6] Robert E. Allard, “’Freedom on your head’ (1 Corinthians 11:2-16): A Paradigm for the Structure of Paul’s Ethics”, Word & World, 30.4 (2010): 399-401.

[7] Allard, “’Freedom on your head’”, 401-402.

[8] Allard, “’Freedom on your head’”, 402-403.

[9] Allard, “’Freedom on your head’”, 402-403.

[10] Allard, “’Freedom on your head’”, 403-404.