111 - Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting & Pauline Partnership in Christ: Christian Community and Commitment in Light of Roman Law & Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles

Paul's Idea of Community:
The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting
By Robert Banks
Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1980. 208 pp. $5.95 (paper).

Pauline Partnership in Christ:
Christian Community and Commitment in Light of Roman Law
By J. Paul Sampley
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1980. 144 pp. $9.95.

Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority
in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles
By Bengt Holmberg
Philadelphia. Fortress. 1980. 240 pp. $14.95.

These three studies of community structure and authority as seen in the Pauline corpus highlight current interests of laity, clergy, and biblical scholars. They treat such contemporary issues as house-church vs. institutional church, Christian attitudes toward the dominant culture, and the locus of authority in the church. All readable and well-informed, they differ in style and disagree on substantive questions.

The first focuses on the experience of community. Paul's role is that of a charismatic leader of a task force, "a sort of mobile commune" (p. 162) by which evangelistic work is carried forward and which functions as "essentially a service organization" to aid and strengthen the local communities. Though he stresses cooperation and rejects any hierarchical position for himself, his apostleship is a charismatic gift from his personal experience of Christ, who also provides him with the paradigm of sacrificial service from his apostolic role (p. 189). The inclusiveness of the community, and especially the importance of women in its life and work (pp. 151 -160), are revolutionary for first-century society.

The author suggests that Paul may have been the first to formulate an idea of community not built on an ethnic or familial base, leaving out the rise of savior-cult groups in this epoch. Within the community, the terms episkopos and diakonos were used strictly for functions, not for formal posts. Priestly roles are assigned to the community as a whole. Paul has no place for ordination; only in Acts and the Pastorals does this institutional process appear. All responsibility is corporate, although Paul's charismatic force tends to dominate the scene. He is clearly ambivalent about the Pauline origins of the Pastorals, but he suggests

112 - Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting & Pauline Partnership in Christ: Christian Community and Commitment in Light of Roman Law & Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles

that Paul may have initiated the trends more fully developed there, in the direction of ordination and hierarchical structure.

The historical reconstruction is provocative, though not fully persuasive. By mingling conservative critical judgments and a selective use of sources, Banks makes a coherent case for congregationally-organized non-hierarchical churches, which the book cover suggests is the kind of church enterprise in which the author is himself engaged. It is a well-organized, skill fully-written apologia.

The second volume is a carefully investigated account of some of the ways Paul has drawn on social and legal practice and terminology of his day to depict Christian communities and prescribe for their common life. The result is an admirable demonstration of the value of currently, renewed interest in the social context of early Christianity. Central for Paul is koinonia, or rather the Latin equivalent, societas, a significant phenomenon in Roman society. This kind of partnership, consensual rather than hereditary, was outwardly fragile but functionally strong as a consequence of deeply-rooted social patterns in Roman society, and because the obligations of societas were legally binding. Participants contributed "property, labor, skill, or status": all shared in obligations and benefits through "mutual trust and reciprocity.

Adapting this social structure to the needs of the churches, Paul entered into several different partnerships: the mutual agreement reached at the Jerusalem Conference; the special relationship with Philemon and Onesimus, transcending the slave-master barrier, and the partnership with the church at Philippi by which they agreed to contribute financially and share otherwise in Paul's evangelistic and church-building efforts. His strained relationships with the Corinthian Christians prevented him from developing societas with them, and hence from accepting their financial support. Central to this commitment to mutuality, is the repeated exhortation "to be of the same mind" (phronein), together with Christ as the paradigm of the self-giving servant of God (Phil 2). This illuminating study of partnership is modestly described by Sampley as only one of several Pauline images for community.

The third volume is also most ambitious of these studies on community. Originally submitted as a doctoral thesis (at Lund), its methodological base is the sociological insights of Max Weber (especially on charismatic leadership and institutionalization) and the sociology-of-knowledge approach of Alfred Schultz and Peter Berger (who seek to reconstruct the life-world assumed by, a thinker or writer). The author investigates "the structure of authority in the primitive church as reflected in the Pauline epistles" (p. 3). Rather than concentrating on theological statements or concepts, the author explores the assumptions that underlie what Paul writes about authority. In the process, he traces the routinization of charisma" by which the church moved from pragmatic, improvisatory operation to institution.

The results of this detailed (at times, sociologically technical) study

114 - Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Historical Setting & Pauline Partnership in Christ: Christian Community and Commitment in Light of Roman Law & Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles

are important for New Testament interpretation, both for specific insights about Paul and for the illumination that sociological methods provide for biblical study. That is, to pay attention to ideas alone in analyzing the dynamics of Paul's struggles over authority is to omit essential features of the historical picture. Thus, Paul's conflict with the Jersusalem leaders is the first stage in the transformation of apostleship for a primary institution comprised of Jesus' personal followers to a secondary stage, which became dominant and even normative, once the first-generation of the Jesus group had disappeared. Paul's willingness to discuss and to provide a rationale for his apostleship helped to foster the institutionalization of the apostolic office. On another issue, the tacit dominance of Gentile churches by a thin stratum of the wealth and powerful, as at Corinth, in spite of a public principle of egalitarianism, furthered the institutionalization process.

Of fundamental importance for the historical and interpretive tasks are Holmberg's conclusions that: (1) to concentrate on ideas alone is a fallacy-there must be a continuous dialectic between ideas and social structures: and (2) historical research and hermeneutical inquiry cannot be limited to tracing the development of phenomena, but must ask about the social factors at work in these phenomena.

Studies of this kind do not make the New Testament relevant. They demonstrate its relevance for the church today.

Howard Clark Kee
Boston University
Boston, Massachusetts