PAUL'S SECRET POWER AND AUTHORITY

I recently received two advance copies of scholarly papers written by my friend Dr. Scott Bartchy.

Having already written about one of them earlier - Our Cultural Blind Spots -  I wanted to make sure to share what was in the second paper with you.

This paper deals with Paul’s statement in 1 Cor. 4:21 where he says:

“What would you prefer? Am I to come to you with a stick, or with love in a spirit of gentleness?”

The context of the statement is that Paul’s authority among the Corinthian Christians was being challenged, and Paul certainly felt that his grip on these people was slipping away as some of them began to follow other teachers.

Bartchy’s interest here is in the phrase “Am I to come to you with a stick..?”

Why? Because he’s curious what sort of “stick” Paul may have had when it came to exercising authority over the ekklesia.

As he points out, in a former life Paul [Saul] certainly knew what it was to carry the stick. He was once empowered by the Jewish authorities to knock down doors, arrest men and women, and even threaten them with death for blasphemy [as we see with the stoning of Stephen where he was an eye-witness to that event].

So, we know that Paul was well-acquainted with the power of a stick to motivate people by fear and even by harsh rebuke. However, Paul has gone to great lengths to distance himself from that former frame of mind, even to the changing of his own name, as an indication of just how completely he has become a new person in Christ.

Bartchy quotes from Kathy Ehrensperger’s book, “Paul and the Dynamics of Power” to support his contention that Paul did not seek to maintain power over his disciples, pointing out that Paul “only has authority in relation to them in as much as he is building them up.”

Ehrensperger also argues [per Bartchy] that Paul “did not aim or claim at establishing a position of domination or control,” and notes that Paul “repeatedly left behind the house churches he had founded. While later keeping in touch with many of them through letters and colleagues, he pushed on to the West.” (See Romans 15:14-29) and separated himself from his converts in the hope of their continuing empowerment by God’s Spirit in Christ.” [pg. 199]

Bartchy continues: “What hold do we imagine that Paul had on his converts, such that his disapproval, however expressed, could make a serious difference in their lives? What price could he make any of his converts pay for not obeying him? What do we suppose Paul could have done, if indeed he had come to the Corinthian covnerts ‘with a stick’”

This is the focus of the paper, and a fascinating question to ask. One that I have hardly heard anyone ever pose before, to be honest.

Later, in the second epistle to the Corinthians, Paul even warns them that he will “not be lenient” when he comes to them again (2 Cor. 13:1-4) and that he hopes he “will not have to be severe in using the authority” that the Lord has given him (v. 10).

But, Bartchy wonders, what exactly did Paul have in mind here? What would they have expected this to mean? Would Paul shout at them, or single people out to be banished, or would he just come to them with a bad attitude?

Well, we do see that Paul made a point to say that he did not want to shame anyone, (see 1 Cor. 4:14), so that removes a few options from our list, but what did Paul mean to suggest?

Bartchy notes: “Whatever means of punishment Paul thought to use, would he, by his own example, have been inadvertently hindering the transformation of his converts by the Spirit? If he came to them with a stick, even in view of the harshness and thrashings for which [teachers] could be known…would not such a negative example of interpersonal relationships have placed an unintended but significant barrier between his converts and his own goal of changing both their convictions and their behavior?”

What became apparent to me as I considered Bartchy’s questions was that Paul’s authority over these Christians in Corinth was quite obviously very loose. In other words, the very fact that the Corinthian Christians challenged Paul’s authority over them testifies to their freedom. They did not feel the “wrath of Paul” might come down on them for listening to other teachers. In fact, Paul’s “stickless” authority over them is, in itself, partially why they could entertain other ideas without feeling the need to run everything by Paul first.

Bartchy correctly notes that, when it comes to authority in the new testament, “it does not exist until it is granted by those who willingly give that power over them [to others]. While power can coerce, authority results from gained assent.”

My friend Jon Zens has phrased it as: “Authority is something you grant, not something you demand.”

So, the authority that Paul has is only that which has been granted to him by the people in the Body of Christ. In the beginning, they freely granted Paul authority to teach and to care for their spiritual health. Now, for some reason or the other, Paul feels that this authority may have been revoked, or perhaps even stolen, by other teachers.

Bartchy’s main thesis is that Paul would not likely come to them “with a stick” because to do so might play into their expectations of authority [as they might have been used to in their own previous experiences with so-called “leaders”]. Instead, Bartchy argues, Paul would have taken another approach – a “cruciform” authority.

As he notes: “Paul must have known that the key to his success in this regard was his own Christ-like, Spirit-filled behavior. As one who had been raised according to the dominant values and social codes in ancient Mediterranean culture, Paul must also have known that he had undertaken a super-human task as he sought to lead the Corinthians into a less arrogant, less competitive, less envy-filled way of acting.”

Just before the “stick” reference, Bartchy notes that Paul said: “When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we speak kindly.” [1 Cor. 4:12-13]

“Such counterintuitive responses make clear that Paul himself as a Christ-follower had been undergoing a very serious, Spirit-led re-socialization process, in sharp contrast to the values by which his parents and other significant adults had raised him.”

Then? Paul urges his converts to follow his own example and to imitate his Christ-like character. [See 1 Cor. 11:1]

So, why even mention the possibility of coming to them with a stick at all?

Bartchy suggests that Paul did this “…to stress in sharp contrast the alternative values that he had consistently lived by when he was among them…Was he assuming that some of them would really have preferred him to act ‘the old-fashioned way’ and thus ironically reminding them that he really did not have a stick anymore?”

Paul has already stressed his lack of power by saying: “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak but you are strong. You are held in honor but we are in disrepute.” [1 Cor. 4:10]

Bartchy says: “Paul’s stress in this passage is on his refusal to retaliate and use power for himself is unambiguously the behavioral context in which Paul urges his converts to imitate him…’not seeking his own advantage but that of many’.”

Interestingly, Paul does not play the “Spiritual Father” card. We know that he easily could have, but he does not.

In 1 Cor. 4:15 Paul reminds them that “they did not have many fathers [pateras]” in Christ and that “indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel.”

Yet, the word often rendered as “Father” in our English translations betrays the reality of what Paul is saying here. He does not use the term “father” (Pater) in this sentence. Rather, what Paul wrote was “in Christ Jesus through the gospel I begot you” (egennesa).

By using this term, Paul carefully avoids claiming the title of “Father” (Pater) for himself. He also avoids the use in the letter to Philemon but again used the term “egennesa” instead to suggest that Paul wanted only to emphasize the nurturing caretaker side rather than the authoritative position of dominance typically associated with the term “Pater”.

If Paul had wanted to leverage the “Fatherly” aspect of his relationship with them, as one with an inherent authority over them, he could easily have done so by using the word “Pater”, yet he carefully avoids it and simply says that he has cared for them like a loving father-figure whose only authority would be granted in love by a child who reciprocated and appreciated that loving care.

As Bartchy notes: “What Paul did not do is claim ‘because I am your father you must obey me!’ In that sense, Paul never played his culture’s well-known ‘father card.’”

If anything, Paul appeals more to a motherly metaphor by comparing himself to a nursing mother [1 Cor. 3.2] and in other epistles used similar motherly images to refer to himself [see 1 Thess. 2:7; Gal. 4:19-20]

This comparison with a maternal figure automatically defers any and all paternal authority that Paul might have claimed for himself, and this is most obviously by design.

Bartchy closes his paper by saying: “No matter how weak his opponents perceived him to be, Paul knew that his strength was based on acting with agape love ‘in a spirit of gentleness.’ Paul at his best, according to his own transformed values, was indeed ‘stickless’ in Corinth.”

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Our Cultural Blind Spots

NOTE: Recently, my friend Dr. Scott Bartchy – Professor Emeritus of Christian Origins and History of Religion at UCLA – sent me two documents to examine. Both of them contained more than enough insight to fill up this blog for the next few months. This blog is one of many to come based on these new insights.

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Due to our own lack of awareness about first century Jewish culture, we have been blinded to several key nuances found in the New Testament texts. 

As Bartchy points out, “Their values are not our values. Unless we learn otherwise, both professional exegetes and naïve readers naturally assume that our own social experiences and the cultural values with which we were raised have been generally characteristic of socially-approved human life across time and space. Regrettably, this assumption has encouraged readers…to interpret our ancient (NT) documents in ways that ignore or misunderstand the prevailing structures of fundamental human relationships in Jesus’ social world.”

He then goes on to point out that these areas of misunderstanding include concepts like kinship, marriage, patriarchy and manliness.

His paper, “Jesus, The Pharisees and Mediterranean Manliness” – which is scheduled to appear as chapter 16 in a book entitled “Teaching the Historical Jesus: Issues and Exegesis”, edited by Zev Gerber – goes on to masterfully demonstrate how several of Jesus’ commands and teachings are typically misunderstood by modern commentators and bible teachers. The main reason for this blind spot, he says, is our lack of understanding the “Shame/Honor” values inherent within first century Jewish culture.

The tension that arises between Jesus and the Pharisees, Bartchy says, is primarily caused by Jesus’ subversive teachings and actions that sought to undermine the prevailing culture of the day, which the Pharisees were deeply entangled with.

In this shame/honor culture, Jesus seeks to redefine what makes for honor and shame in His Father’s Kingdom, or “When God rules all things”.

In short, Bartchy’s point is this: The way the Pharisees – and every other male in the first century – behaved was normal behavior. When they sat at the place of honor at the table, it was what they were all trained to do since birth. When they asked their Rabbi if they could be given the honor to sit by his side, this was totally acceptable. When they sought to be recognized by others for their wisdom or authority, this was how everything was supposed to be.

Simply put, the first century Jewish culture of Jesus’ day was based on shame and honor. Males were trained early on to bring honor to themselves – and therefore to their family name – at all costs. They were also trained to avoid being shamed for the same reasons. Every male of Jesus’ day was either working to be seen as honored or striving to avoid being placed in a position of shame.

When we see Jesus rebuking the Pharisees flaunting their honor in the marketplace and praying in public, for example. This is what everyone in that culture would have expected them to do. It was not seen by anyone at that time as prideful, arrogant or rude. That is, not by anyone other than Jesus, of course.

Jesus shows up and right away challenges this status quo. It was Jesus who was seen as rude for condemning these men of honor for behaving normally. It was Jesus who was seen as behaving oddly when he rebuked the Pharisees for inviting honorable people to their banquets rather than the lame, the blind, the poor and the sick.

Jesus was the one that everyone in that culture would have perceived as being rude, arrogant and yes, possibly even prideful. Or at least they would have seen him as someone who had little authority to point to those who had honor and claim that in reality they had none.

“The goal of male socialization,” says Bartchy, “(was) to add honor to the family name. (Because) honor was by far the most highly prized possession. How much honor anyone deserved depended on one’s peers’ perception and their public acknowledgement of one’s authority, gender status and reputation.”

Bartchy goes on to describe two forms of honor in this early culture: Ascribed honor and Acquired honor. The honor inherited from one’s family was the ascribed honor one was born into. The honor one might receive by competing with other men in the culture was acquired honor. Both were very important to have and to cultivate.

“Thus, seeking greater honor for oneself and one’s family was the fundamental life task of every adult male, and traditional male socialization produced human beings who were programmed to pursue a neverending quest for greater honor and influence,” says Bartchy.

It is in this context that Jesus’ words to his disciples – “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant” – rang out like nails scraping loudly down the world’s longest chalk board.

“The vast majority of commentators…have ignored the cultural appropriateness (when James and John ask to sit at Jesus’ side in the Kingdom) seeking honor,” he says.

As a result, most everyone has missed the incredible forcefulness of Jesus’ teaching as it cut against the grain of acceptable masculinity in the first century Mediterranean cultures.

One also must take into account how little of this honor Jesus himself had – from both ascribed and acquired varieties: The identity of his birth father was questionable. His family standing was automatically in doubt due to where he had grown up (“Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” John 1:46).

Normally, a young male in this situation – with so little ascribed honor – would feel immense pressure to work for acquired honor in the eyes of everyone around him. “Yet…rather than seeking honor for himself,” Bartchy notes, “Jesus was prepared to be humiliated rather than to compete for honor and play the traditional male game of one-upmanship.”

Beyond this, Jesus went further to teach his own disciples to ascribe honor to others and to work to help those without honor to acquire it.

With all of this in mind, listen as Jesus stands on the mount to preach a sermon that proclaims honor upon those who are humble, and those who give comfort to others, and those who practice mercy, and those who make peace. Listen as Jesus defies the honor-seeking culture of His day to declare that God only honors those who have none, and those who don’t want any, and those who only work to bring honor to those people around them who will never, ever earn – or even deserve – honor in their own society.

Bartchy also points out that one New Testament scholar, K.C. Hanson, “forged a major breakthrough in understanding the famous ‘Beatitudes’…when he applied his knowledge of both ancient Mediterranean cultural values and Hebrew and Greek philology to his translation of the Greek word “macharios” (traditionally rendered “blessed”)..(as) “honored.”

Therefore, Jesus’ words, “Honored are the merciful. Honored are the poor.” Etc. take on new and fantastic implications for us. Now we see that Jesus is rewriting the rules and creating a brand new set of cultural values that stand in direct contrast to those considered normative in his day. By saying that the poor are honored, and the peacemakers are honored, Jesus is saying that God uses a totally different set of values for deciding who receives honor and who receives shame. God’s Kingdom honors the humble, not the proud. His Kingdom honors the poor and the outcast, not the rich and the influential.

What must be stressed is that there is nothing specifically “Pharisaical” about seeking honor for oneself during Jesus’ day. Everyone operated under these rules. It was the status quo and no one questioned it.

No one except Jesus, that is.

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SCOTT BARTCHY INTERVIEW (PART 2 OF 2)

NOTE: This is the second part of the 2-part interview with UCLA Professor Scott Bartchy conducted by Keith Giles

PART 2-

Scott Bartchy is a scholar, professor, writer and historian. He has spent a lot of time studying the early Christian Church. His studies have resulted in a personal paradigm shift that has impacted the way he personally looks at Jesus, the Church, and the practice of the Christian faith.

Having spent several years on the conference speaking circuit, Bartchy soon abandoned the business of faith for the more practical, and appealing, practice of the faith.

PERSONAL JOURNEY
Bartchy’s personal spiritual revolution came when he was attending a church-related liberal arts college in eastern Tennessee. “I had some great teachers that one year and I was preaching at a church full of farmers, mostly, in the early sixties when the Cold War had really set in. People were holding Christ Against Communism Crusades and things like this. So, the elders in my church asked me if I would preach a sermon against communism. I was still idealistic enough that I thought I’d rather preach for something rather than against something so I literally stumbled over Matthew 25. I had never paid much attention to it before. I had never heard a sermon on it. I had gone to church-related undergraduate schools and had never heard of this passage before. So, I decided to preach on that text and the elders and the rest of the people came to me and said they had no idea that was in the Bible. I never did preach that sermon against communism,” he says.

In his classes at UCLA, Bartchy will often take the Religion section of the Los Angeles Times and hold it up for the class to look at. As he reads aloud the advertisements for slicker worship services, dynamic youth ministries, and other goods and services offered, he points out that the early church would never have participated in anything like this. They were too busy caring for the poor and loving their neighbors and living out the Gospel to put energy and money into attracting newcomers. Most students are stunned. Some of them wonder silently about how we got so far away from what Jesus originally intended.

WHAT WENT WRONG?
Bartchy contends that Constantine’s apparent conversion to Christianity in the fourth century, and his subsequent liberation of the Church from persecution was less a blessing and more a curse in disguise. Bartchy contends that Constantine’s brand of faith became polluted by his misunderstanding of who God really was. “How much more can you begin to add in before your idea of God has become imprinted on the historical Jesus? Did things get distorted with Origen? I don’t know yet, exactly what that tipping point was,” he says, “But what I do know is that the title of this book I might write one day is ‘The Betrayal Of Jesus At Nicea’ because I think the irony is that, at the point where Jesus is said to be ‘God of God and Light of Light’, at least from the point of view of Constantine himself, the God they were talking about was no longer the God that Jesus had been talking about.”

According to Bartchy, the major shift in the Christian faith of today and that of the early church took place under the rule of the newly converted dictator, Constantine. “We’re still trying to get out from under the cloud that he put over the Church,” he says. “Basically, Constantine decides in the fourth century that he’s going to become the sugar daddy of the Christian faith because there have been four waves of attempts to get rid of the Christians up to his reign, which involved fierce persecutions. So, if you and I were alive at that time we would have all known somebody who had been under persecution by the Empire. Constantine shows up and says he’s going to stop all of this and, of course, we have to wonder how else he could have done this without God’s Spirit being at work on his heart? Be careful, though. I would caution you not to believe him until he puts his sword away. Personally, I don’t think Constantine ever got it,” says Bartchy. “I don’t think he ever really understood Jesus.”

To Bartchy, one of the most fundamental ironies in the history of culture occurred at the Council of Nicea. “This was the first time the leaders of the Christian movement are called together for this big ecumenical meeting. They’ve been doing fine for hundreds of years without having any such meeting, but Constantine wants to know who wears the white hats and who wears the black hats.

So, Constantine calls all of these people together and he makes the first speech, stating namely that Jesus is the very same essence and substance of the Father. Nobody had ever talked that way before, but he wants an ideology, he wants unity, he wants to tie the Empire together, which has been divided. He makes sure that Christians are the glue that hold it all together and he wants what they think about God to be united.”

One of the things that’s largely not known is that Constantine himself was already a Monotheist previous to his conversion to Christianity. “He’s not leaving Polytheism to become a Monotheist when he decides to become favorable to the Christians. Before that he worshipped one God whom he was willing to call, along with the other traditional names of the high God, either Zeus among the Greeks, or Jupiter among the Romans. But Zeus and Jupiter are both kick-ass gods. In any case, that’s who he worships and so when Constantine stands up and says that Jesus is God he’s saying that Jesus is the son of Zeus, a kick-ass god. We still haven’t recovered from this. That’s why we still have people thinking it’s appropriate to kill people in the name of God,” says Bartchy.


HOW DO WE GET BACK?
If Bartchy is right, and the original essence of the Gospel that Jesus came and died to proclaim has been diluted, how can we ever hope to recover the essential power and truth of the Gospel for today? “I’ve asked myself numerous times what it would take to bring a restoration of this original concept of the Gospel to the modern church, about five thousand times,” he says. “I think what I am sure of is that a model is worth a thousand or more words and that our preaching is about a hundred years ahead of our action. So, I think we have to model it out. We’re not going to get young guys who’ve been corrupted into thinking that in order to be important or successful they’ve got to build a church building. I don’t think we’re going to be able to persuade those people not to do that. But what I think we can do is to do more of what I think Jesus did, which was grass-roots work.” This sort of grass-roots work, in Bartchy’s mind, begins in the home, not ironically, where the early church itself began and flourished. “I think there needs to be more networking between the house church movement. Some people respond to that and say it’s pretty fragile and you know, they’re right. It is pretty fragile. Not to go back on what I said earlier, that it can’t be stopped, but it can die out and then flare up again later. It has to be based on the quality of the interpersonal relationships between the people of God and we have to have ways of life that maximize the possibility and the necessity of these quality, interpersonal relationships that the Holy Spirit has been trying to get us into.”

THE POWER OF DEFINITION
In the American Church, there are two words that are used over and over again that are not very well-defined and therefore people can pour into them whatever meaning they need.

Those two words are ‘God’ on the one hand and ‘Salvation’ on the other. Bartchy believes that we need to return to a fundamental agreement about the definitions of these words. “So, do we mean by ‘God’ what Jesus meant? Do we mean by ‘Salvation’ what Jesus meant? Is ‘Salvation’ saving your spiritual butt, or is it salvation from meaninglessness, despair, from being a part of the people who opress others? I think salvation is a daily matter. I think what Heaven means, at least to me, is that some of the struggle that I’m involved in against so many people in powerful places, who live by a completely different set of values, is going to be over, and I’m going to have a chance to relax and play more music and talk with more friends and read all those books I’ve never had time to read and not spending all my time fighting against the principalities and powers.”

In the second chapter of the book of Acts, verse forty-two, its says that “The Lord was adding daily those who were being saved”, who were in the process. There’s two different ways, in the Greek, two different tenses, of putting things in the past. One is just like saying it happened and it’s over, and the other is about things that are ongoing, which is the imperfect tense. It’s imperfect because it hasn’t finished yet, so it’s an ongoing thing, in the Greek. That’s the tense you have in this passage which underscores the concept that salvation is a process," he says.

CHALLENGING THE MODERN CHURCH
Bartchy wants to challenge the modern church to look itself in the face and ask itself what it’s actually communicating with respect to the words ‘God’ and ‘Salvation’. "What I mean is, to do something that was hard for me to do initially. Something that happened to me when I was in Grad School, as I was seeing people who were coming to Jesus and at first they were really hot, and after a year they were pretty tame," he says. "What happened was they looked around and found out that the words didn’t have the same meanings within the church that they first thought. Just like little kids, they watch what the grown-ups do when they use certain words and they figure out what things really mean."

It was a course in the Sociology of Religion that helped Bartchy to re-think some of the cultural aspects of the Christian Faith in a critical way. "This course didn’t just rearrange the furniture in my head, it put me on a different boat. Finally I was forced to say, in order to be an honest human being, is that for any religious institution, what really counts is what actually comes out at the end of the pipe. I had to ask myself, ‘Is this good for people or not, is this fantasy land?’, and I have to have the courage to look at the answer and not look away from it. Can Christianity be used in such a way to make you sick? Absolutely. Can it be used to turn you into an enemy of God? Yes. But people don’t want to admit that. They have a very magical idea of the words that if you just say the right words then of course everything is going to come out alright in the end, even though it’s not coming out alright now, you just continue to act like it is."

This University course challenged Bartchy to either sacrifice his intellect on the altar of faith or to admit the truth about his faith. "I didn’t think faith meant trusting blindly, it means believing that Jesus is right about God and not anybody else," he says.

As a professor in a secular university, Bartchy has students in his office all the time who ask “Do you believe in God", and his answers always stun them. "I say, with a smile on my face, that I have no idea what they’re talking about. What I can tell you is that about 80% of what passes in the American media and in public life with the name of God in it, I don’t believe. I’ll be glad to hear who you affirm God to be and then I’ll tell you if I believe in that or not. But at the highest level, the big question is, “Does the Church believe about God what Jesus does and if so then why aren’t we spending our money differently, why aren’t we treating people better, why are we not known as lovers instead of as judges?” and these are questions that have dogged me all my life," he says.

*THIS INTERVIEW ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED HERE IN FEB OF 2007.
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