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How ‘Democratic’ Was the Pauline Ekklēsia? An Assessment with Special Reference to the Christ Groups of Roman Corinth

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2019

L. L. Welborn
L. L. Welborn*
Affiliation:
Fordham University, Department of Theology, 441 East Fordham Road, Bronx, New York 10458, USA. Email: welborn@fordham.edu
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Abstract

Several recent studies have argued for the importance of democratic practices and ideology for a proper understanding of the issues and debates reflected in Paul's Corinthian correspondence. This new perspective stands in tension with older scholarship which emphasised the role of patronage in the structure and dynamics of the house churches that made up the ekklēsia of Christ-believers at Corinth. This essay draws upon new research into the political sociology of Greek cities in the early Empire, which highlights evidence of the continuing vitality of democratic assemblies (ekklēsiai) in the first and second centuries, despite the limitations imposed upon local autonomy by Roman rule. Special attention is devoted to the epigraphic evidence of first-century Corinth, whose political institutions and social relations were those of a Roman colony. The essay seeks to ascertain whether the politics of the Christ groups mimicked those of the city in which they were located or represented an alternative.

Keywords

ekklēsiademocracypatronageoligarchydēmossōma Christou
Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , July 2019 , pp. 289 - 309
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

This article was presented as a short paper at the 73rd meeting of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas in Athens on 10 August 2018.

References

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32 I.Delos 1519.1, 5 (Delos, 153/52 bce; IG xii/6.1.133.1–4 (Samos, second century bce); Robert, L., Le sanctuaire de Sinuri près de Mylasa (Paris: De Boccard, 1945)Google Scholar no. 73 (Sinuri (Caria) 350–344 bce).

33 This short list of politically resonant terms that follow might be significantly expanded: e.g. σχίσματα, 1 Cor 1.10; 11.18, cf. Herodotus 7.219; Diodorus Siculus 12.66.2; ἔριδες, 1 Cor 1.11; 3.3, cf. Thucydides 2.21; 6.35; Appian, Bell. civ. 2.2.6; Josephus, Ant. 14.16.1; Plutarch, Caes. 33; ζῆλος, 1 Cor 3.3, cf. Lysias 2.48; Philo Flacc. 41; Plutarch, Lyc. 4.2–3; μερίζω, 1 Cor 1.13, cf. Appian, Bell. civ.1.1; διχοστασία, 1 Cor 3.3, cf. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 8.72; τὸ συμφέρον, 1 Cor 12.7, cf. I.Priene 119.23; P.Oxy. 1409.11.

34 1 Cor 10.29; 2 Cor 3.17; Gal 5.13; Rom 8.21.

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43 This is an inference from the phrase ἐξ ἰσότητος in 2 Cor 8.13: ‘on the basis of equality’. In the first two clauses of v. 13, Paul speaks of ‘others’ (ἄλλοι) – that is, the Jerusalem saints – for whom the collection will be a ‘relief’, and of ‘you’ (ὑμεῖς) – that is, the Corinthian believers – for whom the collection may represent a ‘hardship’. That the reference to ‘equality’ as the ground of the collection is introduced in this way implies that the ‘equality’ of which Paul speaks is an equality between persons. See the exegesis and argumentation in Welborn, ‘Paul's Place,’ 555–8.

44 On 1 Cor. 12.13 as an allusion to the baptismal formula, see Hartman, L., ‘Into the Name of the Lord Jesus’: Baptism in the Early Church (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997) 66–7Google Scholar, 87–8. For the egalitarian implications, see Meeks, Urban Christians, 88.

45 For different readings of the logic of 1 Cor 11.2–16, specifically, whether 1 Cor 11.11–12 represents an egalitarian correction of the arguments for the subordination of women in 11.2–10, or an affirmation of the mutual interdependence of men and women, see e.g. Meeks, W. A., ‘The Image of the Androgyne: Some Uses of a Symbol in Earliest Christianity’, HR 13 (1974) 165–208Google Scholar, at 200 and 208; Martin, D. B., ‘Prophylactic Veils’, The Corinthian Body (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) 229–33Google Scholar, 242–9. With a number of scholars (e.g. Meeks, Urban Christians, 220 n. 108), I regard the paragraph instructing women to ‘keep silent’ in the ἐκκλησία in 1 Cor. 14.33b–36 as a non-Pauline interpolation for the following reasons: (1) the verses disrupt the flow of the argument from 1 Cor 14.33a to 14.37; (2) the instruction contradicts the assumption of 1 Cor 11.15 that women will pray and prophesy in the assembly; (3) the attitude resembles the viewpoint of the deutero-Pauline epistles (esp. 1 Tim 2.9–15); (4) the paragraph exhibits non-Pauline sentiments – e.g., ‘as the law also says’ (14.34b); (5) manuscript evidence indicates that 1 Cor 14.34–5 was a later addition to the text of 1 Corinthians; see esp. Payne, P. B., ‘Fuldensis, Sigla for Variants in Vaticanus and 1 Cor. 14:34–35’, NTS 41 (1995) 240–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Vaticanus Distigme-obelos Symbols Marking Added Text, Including 1 Cor 14.34–5’, New Testament Studies 63 (2017) 604–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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50 BDAG 848 s.v. πολύς 1.β, ‘the majority’. The expression οἱ πλείονες (‘the majority’) implies here, as it does elsewhere in Paul (1 Cor 9.19; 10.5; 15.6; 2 Cor 9.2; Phil 1.14), the existence of a ‘minority’ who were of a different opinion about the treatment of the wrongdoer; so, Windisch, H., Der zweite Korintherbrief (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970) 86–7Google Scholar; Thrall, M., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, vol. i (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1994) 174–6Google Scholar.

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52 The intensive καί in the phrase ἐβάπτισα δὲ καὶ τὸν Στεφανᾶ οἶκον in 1 Cor 1.16 implies that Paul baptised the households of the individuals named in the preceding verse (1 Cor 1.14) as well – Crispus and Gaius. For Chloe as a Christian householder at Corinth, see Theissen, G., The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982) 92–3Google Scholar; Meeks, Urban Christians, 59. On the household structure of the Christian community at Corinth in general, see Judge, Social Pattern, 30–9; Theissen, Social Setting, 55–6, 83–7, 89; Klauck, H.-J., Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1981) 39Google Scholar; Meeks, Urban Christians, 29–30, 57–8, 75–8, 134.

53 Phlm 2, Rom 16.3–5 and the deutero-Pauline Col 4.15.

54 Klauck, Hausgemeinde, 21, 40–4; Meeks, Urban Christians, 75; Weissenrieder, A., ‘Architecture: Where Did Pauline Communities Meet?’, Paul and Economics (ed. Blanton, T. R.; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017) 125–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 149–51.

55 Theissen, Social Setting, 89; Klauck, Hausgemeinde, 39; Meeks, Urban Christians, 75; Balch, D., ‘Paul, Families, and Households’, Paul in the Greco-Roman World (ed. Sampley, J. P.; Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2003) 258–92, at 260Google Scholar. The attempt by Last, R. (The Pauline Church and the Corinthian Ekklēsia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019) 56–60)Google Scholar to blur the distinction between ἡ κατ᾽ οἶκον ἐκκλησία and ἡ ὅλη ἐκλησία fails to convince: first, because he minimises the evidence that the former was a fixed expression in Paul's usage, whose import was known to his Corinthian readers (1 Cor 16.19); and second, because his interpretation of the latter depends upon the problematic argument that its function in both 1 Cor 14.23 and Rom 16.23 is rhetorical, rather than referential.

56 Meeks, First Urban Christians, 75.

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59 On the ‘benefits’ expected of a patron, see e.g. Cicero, Off. 1.15.47; De or. 3.133; Mur. 70–2; Horace, Ep. 2.1.102–7; Seneca, Ben. 7.22.1, 7.23.3; cf. R. Saller, Personal Patronage under the Early Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982) 7–39, 120–34.

60 Schmeller, Hierarchie, 26, 33–6.

61 Schmeller, Hierarchie, 60, 71.

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66 E.g. Horace, Ep. 1.7.37–8; Juvenal 5.14, 130, 137, 161; 7.45; 10.161.

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70 IG iv².1.676 (40–2 ce): ἡ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμ[ο]ς ὁ Κορινθίων Τίτον Τειμοκράτους υἱὸν Λαμπρίαν ἀρετῆς ἕνεκεν. Other instances are from the second century ce: Kent, Corinth viii.3, no. 226 (reign of Antoninus Pius); no. 267 (ca. 162 ce); no. 306 (ca. 170 ce). I gratefully acknowledge the assistance of Fordham University PhD candidate Steven Payne for bringing these inscriptions to my attention.

71 Kent, Corinth viii.3, 17–18; Engels, Roman Corinth, 20–1.

72 Kent, Corinth viii.3, 17.

73 Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor, 641.

74 Engels, Roman Corinth, 17.

75 Engels, Roman Corinth, 17, 198 n. 27; similarly, Kent, Corinth viii.3, 23.

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79 Engels, Roman Corinth, 18. For the involvement of the councillors in nomination in cities of the Greek east, see H. W. Pleket, “Political Culture and Political Practice in the Cities of Asia Minor in the Roman Empire” in Politische Theorie und Praxis im Altertum, ed. W. Schuller (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1998) 204–16, at 206 with references.

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83 West, Corinth viii.2, nos. 86 and 90.

84 West, Corinth viii.2, 75.

85 West, Corinth viii.2, no. 68.

86 As Zuiderhoek (‘Political Sociology’, 419–22) argues it was for the Greek cities of Asia Minor, where the assemblies were involved in negotiating the details of benefactions.

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118 Zuiderhoek, ‘Political Sociology’, 425–31; Brélaz, ‘Democracy’, 5 §3.

119 Zuiderhoek, ‘Political Sociology’, 418–25, 436–40; Brélaz, ‘Democracy’, 3 §§2–6.

120 Nor do other Greek political thinkers under Roman rule. Telling is the absence of the term dēmokratia from Plutarch's Precepts of Statecraft. Even Greek cities avoided the term dēmokratia as a description of their form of government, preferring expressions such as patrios politeia (‘ancestral constitution’). Typical is SEG li.1832, a dedication from Lycia in Asia Minor thanking Claudius for his help in ‘recovering the ancestral laws (πάτριοι νόμοι)’ and in ‘transferring the government (πολιτεία) from the thoughtless multitude (πλῆθος) to the councillors selected from among the best (ἄριστοι)’. Brélaz (‘Democracy’, 4 §2) regards the absence of the term dēmokratia from Greek political thought of the Roman Imperial period as symptomatic: ‘Dēmokratia started to be seen as a potentially subversive word in the Roman Imperial period and, for that reason, Greek cities, as well as Greek political thinkers, culled this term from their vocabulary and restricted its use to very specific contexts, namely references to the past and fictional rhetorical exercises.’

121 Ober, Athenian Revolution, 117.

122 Ibid.

123 Ibid.

124 Ibid.

125 SEG vii.87; Raubitschek, A., ‘Demokratia’, Hesperia 31 (1962) 238CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

126 Ober, Athenian Revolution, 118.

127 Ibid.