27 March 2024
Our authors begin the third level of examination of western confusion, the iceberg deep below the waterline. This is the final section of the book. While I mentioned this previously, they now start to talk about apparent self-contradictions in the Bible. Start with this guidance:
Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
lest you yourself also be like him.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
lest he be wise in his own estimation. (Proverbs 26:4-5)
R/OB don't tell you: Context is everything here, as it always was in Hebrew. Both are proverbs that were commonly used in the Hebrew culture, each coming in a different context. At a minimum, the first suggests that fools can't discern sarcasm, but sarcasm was very important in Hebrew culture. The second suggests that you lead a fool to the logical conclusions of his folly, likely by asking leading questions as if taking him seriously.
Proverbs also says that the lamp of the wicked is snuffed out, while both Job and Asaph (in Psalms) say quite the opposite -- if you read it in English outside the Hebrew culture. Paul tells the Galatian Gentiles that following the circumcision route means Christ died for nothing. Yet, Paul had Timothy from Galatia circumcised. He told the Galatians God shows no favoritism, but then He loved Jacob and hated Esau before they were born.
They note that we tend to read "we" statements in the Bible with "me" and even teach it as a doctrine about how to understand Scripture, but it promotes an unbiblical individualism versus the Hebrew collectivism.
Chapter 7 is about rules and relationships. It's a good thing for us to believe that God is Creator and remains intimately involved in His creation. He performed many miracles that seem clear to us as asserting His will against the natural order, to include raising Jesus from the dead. In other words, He set up rules, but they don't bind Him by any means.
The Enlightenment set loose a spirit of denial for this. Even while we believe and teach these things, our society has rejected it. As men learned more and more about the apparent mechanism of things in our universe, they concluded that, while God may have been quite the genius, He's no longer involved in His creation. This led to scholars seeking to discern the "Laws of Nature" regarding human relationships, as well. Lots of research went into what we now call "social sciences" and how humans should act in this world by these objectively discovered natural laws.
And we all have been so brainwashed by this outlook that, even when we teach against it, we still have a host of unconscious reactions guided by what amounts to Deism. We cannot imagine God playing favorites. Didn't He make the rules? Doesn't He abide by His own truth? Isn't truth simply a reflection of who He is? We have a bunch of imaginary ideas about God that aren't in the Bible, but we read them back into it.
In the Bible, relationships define reality, to include the rules, not the other way around. We think we can figure out the rules, but that's only the part of the iceberg that we can see above water. This iceberg has dangerous projections hidden in the murky depths. The authors note that this gave some real surprises when dealing with Indonesians on the field, as their culture was like the Hebrew in the matter of relationships defining the rules and expectations. Contracts had no meaning to them; you were embracing a family when you chose to work with someone on any basis. The only question is what role you played, and that it's binding for life, and into the succeeding generations.
The concept in the Roman Empire of patron-client was also familial and lifelong in nature. Too many people, even those who seem to be aware of the existence of patron-client relationships in the New Testament, look at them "forensically" the authors say. They read back into it a cynicism that was quite rare in those days. R/OB offer an extended story based on the probabilities of what we could know about how the patron-client relationship worked. There were no rules anywhere, no contracts, just a deep and lasting personal bond with common social expectations.
Paul said that this was the nature of God's Kingdom and His feudal lordship over His family. This explains why he didn't accept charity in Corinth, but worked for his own keep. He wanted to avoid being bound by such expectations. His letter to Philippi mentions a gift that he claims was an offering to God so it voided any patron-client connections to them. God is Paul's only Patron.
By this same relationship so common in the Roman Empire, Paul ties the churches like Corinth, who took up a famine offering, to the Hebrew Christians in Jerusalem.
Some words we think of as Christian doctrinal terms were in use in the patron-client system before Paul was born: grace was a patron gift, faith and loyalty were what the client returned. This informal feudalism still stood even as Rome attempted to squelch the more formal eastern traditions of feudalism, such as in the Law of Moses.
Comments
Jay DiNitto
Here's a short essay in how Roman patronage affected the Corinth. I think some of his thinking is wrong, though, since he's coming at it with a modern egalitarian worldview.
https://www.julianspriggs.co.uk/Pages/Patronage
CatRez
Yes, there is a tone of disapproval for the patron-client system, as if it were somehow un-Christian. Funny how the author misses that this is fundamental to the Kingdom of Heaven. However, he gets right the misapplication of this system within the church community.
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