Abstract
When I first saw this book, I thought it would be mildly interesting and, knowing the author a little, imagined it would be well researched and engagingly written. I did not imagine that it would tackle an issue which leads to the heart of the place of ethics in theology, and debates about the interpretation of Paul. My mistaken assumption highlights a key issue which this book addresses—the separation of theology and ethical action which bedevils Western Protestant readings of Scripture.
The book as a whole is the fruit of many years’ study of this subject by Longenecker, a New Testament specialist, and some of the chapters are adapted from articles that have been previously published. But the book as a whole puts together a compelling argument that Paul has a clear commitment to the care of the poor as an integral part of his teaching, and that this was a hallmark of the Jesus-groups which he founded, taught, led and wrote to.
The reason why this is so significant is multifold. In the first place, one of the key arguments about Paul’s theology and teaching is that it has been believed to lack a central element of Jesus’ teaching which was caring for the poor. If Longenecker is right, then this moves Pauline theology back much closer to the historical teaching and mission of Jesus (and of James). This in turn suggests that Pauline theology has much more continuity with Jewish concerns for the poor as acts of ‘righteousness’, and makes Christian ethics central to the task of Christian theology, rather than secondary to or derivative of it. Thirdly, this understanding challenges the focus on atonement as being primarily concerned with the relationship between the believer and God, and at least as much focused on relationships between believers or (in first-century context) between members of the Jesus-groups. (For a contextual angle on this, see Corneliu Constantineanu’s recent LNTS volume The Social Significance of Reconciliation in Paul’s Theology.) This in turn challenges the ‘interiorisation’ of much Protestant theology, and the persistent division between belief and action in relation to Christian discipleship.
So how does Longenecker go about making his case? His opening chapter offers something of a devastating critique of earlier commentators on Paul and his views on poverty, and refreshingly clears the air. As with other sections of the book, this is written in an engaging and well-structured way, and highlights the problem with great clarity.
The book then falls into two halves, the first looking primarily at the first-century context and academic understanding of it, and the second half looking at texts in Paul and how we might understand some of the economic implications of Paul’s teaching. Chapter 2 explores the nature of ‘advanced agrarian culture’ as understood by macro-sociologists, and quite interestingly links this to scriptural denunciations of the acquisitiveness of the economic elite, something that was clearly a social and economic reality. Chapter 3 looks at the models of socio-economic scaling in the first century, and the vexed question of exactly what proportion of the population were at subsistence level. Here Longenecker appears to be engaged with the key discussions, and although all such models are tentative, he offers a robust critique of Steven Friesen’s model, one of the most influential in recent debate. Overall, Longenecker wants to move away from the ‘binary’ approach of Friesen and others, arguing for the kind of nuanced gradation put forward by Peter Oakes from his analysis of houses in Pompeii (Reading Romans in Pompeii). Then follow chapters on charitable initiatives in the Graeco-Roman world, and a parallel analysis of the same within the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Without fundamentally questioning the scholarly consensus, that charity was not a notable feature of Graeco-Roman religion but was, by contrast, a central feature in the Judaeo-Christian, he nevertheless wishes to add some nuance to this while also giving it a sure foundation.
In the second half, Longenecker’s focus switches to the Pauline communities and the Pauline texts. A significant part of this section derives from his work on Galatians and in particular the injunction in Gal. 2:10 to ‘remember the poor’. Longenecker argues (convincingly, in my view) that this was not a cipher for the (poor) Jerusalem church, but did indeed refer to the poor in general. Perhaps the most fascinating chapter in this second section is chapter 10, where he takes information about some named characters in the Pauline letters, and tries to locate them on the economic scale he has constructed in dialogue with Friesen and others. But the most important, in terms of his argument, is the exegesis contained in chapter 12, which explores where we can find concern for the poor within Paul’s theology. As Longenecker summarises in his conclusion, Paul was concerned about the poor in the urban contexts in which he worked, and while this was not his sole interest, ‘care for the economically needy was a matter that he deemed to be characteristic of the identity of Jesus-followers’.
Overall, this volume is a convincing exercise in reading Paul in context—in the context of a key area of Judeao-Christian concern, in the context of social realities of his day, and reading particular texts in their wider context within Paul. It is well written, and a good read, and on the whole the structure of argument, with good introductions and summaries throughout, make it an easy book to navigate.
I have a few small quibbles. The discussion of some of the named individuals (such as Phoebe, Priscilla and Aquila, and Erastus) is quite brief in comparison with the literature on these characters, and I wondered if Oakes’s argument in relation to housing was dismissed a little too quickly (p. 247). The reconstruction of the ‘economic profile of a typical urban group of Jesus-followers’ (pp. 294-95) was acknowledged as highly speculative, and I am not sure it added much to the exegetical argument which had preceded it. While most of the book was well structured and clear, there were some sections which were rather long and could have done with more subheadings.
But these are small quibbles in a book which is persuasive, written accessibly and with touches of humour, and addresses what is now a key issue in Pauline studies.