Blasi - Social Construt of Paul CHS1-6-7

8/8/2019 Blasi - Social Construt of Paul CHS1-6-7

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MAKINGCHARISMAThe Social Constructionof Paul's Public Image

Anthony J. Blasi

ransaction PublishersNewBrunswick (U.S.A.) and London (U.K.)

Blasi, Anthony J. Making Charisma: the Social Construction of Paul's Public Image.

New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A.: Transaction, 1991. Print.


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Copyright 1991 by Transaction Publishers,NewBrunswick, New Jersey 08903All rights reserved underInternational and Pan-AmericanCopyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproducedor transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic ormechanical, includingphotocopy; recording, or any informationstorageand retrieval system, without prior permission in writingfrom the publisher. Allinquiries should be addressed toTransaction Publishers, Rutgers-The State University, NewBrunswick, NewJersey08903.

Library at Congress CatalogNumber: 90-44868ISBN: 0-88738-400-5Printed in the United Statesof America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-PublicationDataBlasi,Anthony J.Making chadsma : the sodal construction of Paul's publicimage i Anthony J. Blasi.

p. em.Includes bibliographical references and index,ISBN 0-88738-400-51. Paul, theApostle,Saint-Public opinion. 2. Bible. N.T.Epistles of Paul-Criticism, Interpretation, etc. 3, Bible.N,T, Acts-Criticism, interpretation, etc. 4. Sociology,

Biblical. 5. Charisma(Personality trait) 6, Churchhistory-Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600. l. Title.BS2506.H45 1990225,9'2-dc20 90-44868ClP

,

ContentsList ofTablesAcknowledgmentsL The Social Construction ofCharisma2. TheActual Paul3. What Did Luke Know about Paul?4, Luke's Changing of the Image of Paul5. Paul the Legend6, Behind the Image7, Reconceptualizillg CharismaBibliographyIndex

viiix1

23397589117143153161


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x Making Charismafrom Jacob Neusner and coming to terms with the perspective ofDonald Wiebe. Moreover, Fabio and J6 Dasilva and DorothyRiddell provided hospitality at critical times during the researchfor the work.Ironicallv-{)r characteristically, for scholars-manyofthe peopie named ~ a b o v e would want to distance themselves from significant aspects of the present work. Wherever exception may betaken, I must take responsibility.

1The Social Construction ofCharisma

Sociology and the Study of Early ChristiauityThe past several deeades have witnessed a heightening of interest in the sociology of biblical societies. The general reader or thespecialist in biblical studies may want to read an introduction to

the sociology of religion before evaluatingworks from the body ofrecent books on the sociology of early Christianity. Some of theseworks are sociological only in a loose sense, though that fact alonedoes not reflect upon their merit. But an informed reader eanmore quickly see what any given, specifically sociological, workaccomplishes when sensitized to the objectives of the discipline ofsociology.! While helpful, such a preparation is not absolutelynecessary for reading the present work; I endeavor to explain thesteps I use and the concepts I develop as I go along. However, theliterature in the field is growing, most of it produced by biblicalscholars. Some of it is actually quite good from a social scientificperspective and merits an informed reading. Similarly, the generalreader and the sociologist who is interested in inquiries into theearly Christian movement should read a contemporary introduction to New Testament studies before going too far into the field.2The two disciplines differ sufficiently that even broadly educatedreaders are unlikely to avoid pitfalls of interpretation in at leastone aspect of a study such asthe present one.The interdisciplinary nature of the sociology of biblical erasocieties poses problems for those of us who pursue this genre ofwork as well as for the reader.lAtost scholars are specialists whohave training in one field all.d a broader education tha t onlysuperficially addresses a s e c o n ~ When a matterof interest crosses

1


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2 Maldng Charisma The Social Constructionof Charisma 3d i s c i p H n ~ boundaries, it is difficult to accompany it through thefrontier.Q:et it is of the very nature of knowledge that problemsshould challenge, not excuse; an interdiscipHnary inquiry must bebased on two or more disciplines, not on a lack ofdisciplin;;]In ,thecase of early Christianity, it is quite proper that the phenomenonbe studied by both literary and social scientific means, since it isknown to us by literary evidence but was known in its own time asa social reality. Hence it is superficial and unfair to dismiss, assome do, the interest in sociology on the part of New Testamentscholars as a fad; what they have been doing for some time now issimply intellectually honest. I t would have been easier not toventure across the academic frontiers that separate the study ofreligious literature from the social sciences. It is not superficial orunfair, however, to be wary of the mixing of problematics-forexample, forcing ancient textual evidence into the preexistingcategories of contemporary sociology or looking to sociologicalanalysis only to produce an exegetical "payoff."I think it is important to clarify theki)atter of problematiIfromthe outset: What kind of knowledge or accomplishment is aninquiry designed to produce? What is the objective of this kind ofwork? One kind of objective is the gathering of backgroundinformation with which to interpret texts. Such an effort would beancillary to biblical studies; it would use the techniques of socialhistory to illustrate typical ways in which the people of a giventime and place organized their lives. The outcome of such workwould be a social hermeneutic in which the biblical scholar canbetter a p p r e c i a t e t e x t s . ~ T h j s w o u l d not be a mere matter ofclarifying obscure references to social ways and customs that turnup here and there in passages, but of seeing texts in context.\Asocial hermeneutic of a biblieal text would thus be analogous tomusicology, wherein the environment providing the structuringprinciples of a musical text becomes a matter of interest. Thus,placing a composition in the context of other works against whichthe composer meant i t to stand in contrast, or with which thecomposer meant it to be identified, requires a prior familiaritywith that context. So, too, placing a biblical text in the sociocultural world of alternative hopes, claims, cosmologies, and identitiesthat the author of the text knew requires a prior famj]jarity with

that world. This objective and problematic is most commonlyreferred to as socialhistoriJA second objective is the comparative conceptualization of different religions in terms of their typical embodiment in contrastingforms of social organization. This is one approach in the sociology ofreligion. It is often said that sociology is inherently comparative inthe sense that it looksat the differences that oceur in social organization because of varying systems of belief and practice, and exploresthose differences that oceur in beliefs and practices because ofvarying forms of social organization. In this approach the comparison is brought into view by looking at two or more traditions (forexample, Buddhism and Islam) or at two or more denominationswithin a tradition (for example, Orthodox, Conservative, andReform Judaism). For instance, one famous study found that Protestant Christianity in Detroit in the 1950s was organized associationally (one's fellow congregation members may not be one's workmates and family friends) while Catholicism was organized communally (one's fellow parishioners were likely one'swork mates andfamily friends).3 In the case of early Christianity, we can askwhether itwas really the same genre of religion as the "new religiousmovements" of the twentietll century.4A third possible problematic, also proper to the sociology ofreligion, is makingcomparisonswithinone religion or one denomination. The comparison would be made by focusing on differentstatusgroups within the religiousgrouping; for example, do clergybelieve in the same doctrines as do the laity? Or the variation maycome from background factors, so that the religious ways ofdifferent social classes or strata, or of different ethnic, gender, orage groupings, may be compared. The var iation may also besupplied by context-for example, the beliefcommitment ofCatholics in Northern Ireland versus that ofCatholics in South Boston.Finally, the variation that makes a comparison possible may occurover time as a result ofsome process ofchange; for instance, has aschismgrown old or a reform become entrenched as a resultof thesocial dynamics of conflict, partisanship, or bureaucracy?The present study draws comparisonswithin one religious tradition, albeit a young one--early Christianity. The Christian movement had at least the appearance of being one religion at the point


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4 MakingCharisma The Social Construction of Charisma 5where we take up its literature, but it ended up with a schism overMarcion's hyper-Paulinism, and Jewish Christianity was seemingly moving further and further away from the rest of the movement. Judging from the literary evidence, we will attempt to seewhat, by way of social organization and stance, changed.al?ngwith the vicissitudes of Paul's posthumous charisma. This IS astudy in the sociology of religion insofar as it is a religious institution that is undergoing change and insofar as religious stances asexpressed in texts are our observables. But it is also a s o e ~ o l o g y ofliterature insofar as the focus is on a hterary constructIOn-thewritten embodiment of Paul's charisma. Furthermore, it is anexercise in the sociology of knowledge, since we will ask at onejuncture why certain kinds of charisma were engendered by people at one time and not at another.5

Charismaand Its ConstructionWe all know charisma when we see it. A comedian, politician,athlete, or singer; a soloist, leader, organizer, or commentator istrusted with our attention. We sometimes see the public fooled bypeople who are said to have char,i@1a, charmed into acceptingimage where substance is needed.lJ:Ye know of personages who

. are human despite being somewhat larger than life, who make us.* \attentive to seriousquestions ofthe day p r e c i s ~ by responding to\ ' ~ ' / s u c h problems in their own idiosyncratic waysJAnd we know ofpeople who are little more than media creations, "personalities"whose names are written in lights. These people are all mere

humans, but they are perceived by us as beingother than ordinaryfolk. Even the most commonplace and folksy of them are perceived as being other than individuals. They sense it; they knowthey cannot often be themselves. They feel the pressure.The fact is that the charisma to which we respond is not the realhuman. \fi may belong or pertain to a real person, but it is ourc r e a t i o n ~ W e are social beings with our language, imagery, andexpectations. We transform public persons so that ~ h e y becomeitems of our vocabulary, figments of our collective ImagmatlOn,and fulfillments of our societal needs.! Charisma comes from us asmuch as it is projected by the personages. It is a moment in oursocietal conversation that would be out of place in some other

context. A careful study of such moments can tell us much aboutourselves-what we were about, what we wanted, how we couldbe reached. I t would seem to follow thatwe could also understanda little about an ancient society, group, or movement by looking atthe personages that it created.Charisma has long been an important concept in the sociologyof religion. \According to Max Weber, who first used it in thediscipline, charisma was the basis for a particular kind of authority, an authority that rested "on devotion to the exceptionalsanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person,and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained" bythe i n d i v i d u a l ~ H e n c e in Weber's sociology, there was (1) charisma itself, a relationship between a personage and followers, (2)the appealing ideal or norm proffered by the charisma-endowedindividual, and (3) the subsequent authoritative institution that islegitimated by an appeal to the person or to the ideal. Weberseems to have had in mind something somewhat different from theappeal athletesand entertainers often have, though analogieswiththese have some point. And he did not write a thorough systematic treatise on charisma; consequently, the distinction betweenthese three concepts appears only incidentally in his writing. Hewrote on the.qne hand of the charismaof the individual personality by whid:IJ.he person is "considered extraordinary and treatedas endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specificallyexceptional powers or qualities," and spoke on the other hand ofthe "everydaying" (the "routinization" of the translators) of charisma by its everyday embodiment in traditions and in successorsand bureaucraciei] In the present study, it is personal or person-age charisma that is under discussion, not the authority of anoffice, or office charisma; the latter plays a large role in Weber'sstudies of political and economic organization. -,A charisma, as that term is used here, pertains to a person, but Iit refers to a process that we should understand to be larger than :anyone person. The individual who has a charisma is not only a Iperson but a personage, a public character in a public drama who Ireceives and imparts legitimacy. That public drama is a process \rather than an entity. It not only takes a processual form such as ,narrative, lending itself to reenactment, imitation, and recitation, !but also is a process in the sense of itself having to be constituted \V


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6 Making Charisma The Social Construction of Charisma 7and reconstituted in history. For example, the narrative myth thatembodied the divine legitimation of the pharaohs' role in ancientEgypt is no less narrative today than three thousand years ago, buti t has not in recent times been reconstituted as a legitimacyimparting process in people's minds. The dramatic element itlacks is not that of a narrative text but that of a public's presentinvolvement therein. I t is this second drama to which charismarefers.Once we see charisma being constituted and reconstituted, itbecomes evident that anyone person's charisma, if it is to lastmore than a short time, must be constructed anew for eachgeneration, and perhaps even for a given generation. That is onereason why electoral democracies work better when the electedofficials have a time limit set on their office or mandate, beforewhich they must either retire or run for reelection. It is not merelya matter of their possibly doing something in office of whichpeople may not approve; rarely do electoral campaigns turn ondispassionate reviews of legislative votes and executive actions.Rather, the body politic'changes. Some people have died andothers have come of age since the last election. Some have lostinterest in politics and others have become politicized. Even thosewho are the same people as before may have changed in theirreceptivity toward a given candidate. I t should be obvious that thefact that charisma is constructed entails the possibility that a giveneharismacan change.

I f a given personage's charisma has survived over an extendedperiod of time, it has probably done so by changingwith the times.The changes in question do not imply that the individual hasshifted with every fashion but that the Rublic has remade itsimpression of the personage several timesW a historically durablecharisma suggests that if the individual were to run for an electionafter ten centuries he or she would still be a winner,shances arethat the reasons for the victory would be a bitdifferent.lThisis thephenomenon on which I will focus in this study: "!"he biblicalcharacter Paul had a charisma that won several elections, as itw e r e ~ a 1 1 after his lifetime and before his letters had been fixed ina canon of scripture. What accounts for several generations ofearly Christians being receptive to him in this way?

In order to appreciate the social scientific stance that the studyof charisma requires, it is helpful to recall the "social behaviorism" or, as we more aptly designate it today, the "symbolicinteractionism" of George H. Mead and Herbert Blumer. One or-'\the problems taken up within this scientific and philosophical \perspegtive is that otCexplaining how psychological phenomena \emerge( Mead andBlumer hold that s ~ ! ! . p r o c e _ s , "ipteractiQn,"precedes cognition and cogitation. Mead formulated the argument 111 q the silnplest posslhl.dorm, beginning with the dY3c!icil'l!er:i'l.2tion of presymbolic gestures-the "conversation of gestures" as exemplified in a dogfight. This kind of interchangewould be, according to Mead, a lll!lt l l J & ~ a t e . d kind ofconversa!ion-!l!J.!tfltiQ!l. And imitationwouldin turnbe a material prerequisite for communication ("symbolic interaction") because it occasions the act of imaginativelyputting oneself in the position of an other, a standpoint necessary 1,1for anticipatinghow the other with whom one would communicatewould comprehend ("respond to") one's own symbol presenta- )tion. In imitation (for example, that in which parrots engage), the"imaginative" resembles the purely animal activity of reliving atypical expcriential process, not unlike a dog running in its sleep.In symbolic conversation, one does not stop at such mere imagina-tion but must have ! U ' i J j Q ~ ! l . g ' : ' ! U l : e , have typified oneself "taking" the standpoint of an other , and have typified the other 'sresponse to that kind of gesture, That which is imagined is anensemble or complex processual construct that is depicted ashappening in the other's pole of the I-other dialectic, not insidethe experience of one's own "1."8 For example, in order to speakto an other one must use words that the other can recognize andinterpret, and thus one must be oriented to the other.This specifically human kind of psychological phenomenon isparadoxical in that it is constituted of experiences that are experienced as being proper to an other. Experiences are, of course,subjective; but humans experience things as objects. The abjectness of things is paradoxically present in human awareness asimportable into one's subjective stream of consciousness. Ratherthan dwell on the epistemological implications of this paradox, asdid the phenomenologists (to great philosophical profit), Mead


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8 Making Charisma T he S oda l Consttuclion of Charisma 9focused on the case where t h ~ j e c t in question was a personanalogous to oneself, an o t h e ~ n d much in the manner of thephenomenologists who pointed to the human tendency to accordreality to things known as objects, Mead called attention to thehuman tendency to a c c o ~ q credibility to imagined responses others would give to gesture'llThus did Mead account for the emergence of objective thought, reflection. An d the first specificallyhuman psychological phenomenon that Mead explored in thisperspective was the self, that portion of others' responses that theindividual associated with his or her own subjecth:e experiences.In this way Mead was able to incorporate the I-me dialectic of histeacher William James and the looking-glass self model of hisMichigan associate, Charles H. Cooley, into his own philosophyof the act.9\I n this dialectic one constructs a self-an objectidentified with one's subjectivity-and one also constructs another. The relevance of constructingan otherfor constructing thatother's charisma is patent, but we should keep in mind that thisconstructing the other is an aspect of constructing one's self. I fthere is a different self, there must be a different other defined bythe self-other, subject-object relationship. Hence, if there is adifferent self, there will be a differencein an other's charismalBut there was another phase to Mead's thinking that reminds usmore of the thought of Georg Simmel than of anyone else's.IOTheother of whom one would be aware need not, according toMead,be one or two particnlarothers b u t ~ g e n e r a l other, an anonymousone, because the ability to imagine in typical cases enables one totake up imaginatively the standpoint of a typical othe;] Thattypical other could be modeled uB.Q.n the close-at-hand andfarniliar, and c o u l d J ~ e r e f o r e serve as!!.!actor suggestive of conformityand convention;!.or one could choose models for imagination froma :vi!:leruniverse o falternatives. In a leap beyond the close-athand and familiar, the "In can orient its attention toward moreremote social circles. Of course, this aspect of Mead's workanticipated ' : r e ~ e l l ! ' ( ) l I P ~ _ ! ! 1 . . ~ Q . ~ Y , wherein social psychologists account for one's attitudes in terms of who one's others are;however, Herbert Blumer extended Mead's approach to widersocial proesses than those of the social psychology of attitudeselection.\!>.Qcial movements, social problems, fashions, and racerelatiOns can, as Blumer demonstrated, be conceptualized well as

the importationof the responses by others intoone's own imagination through signit1cant interaction. Thus, in the same way that asymbolic interiCiionlstwould reinterpret an 1.O. scorein terms ofthe importation of a community's discourse into the subject 'shabitualized imagination, one could interpret charisma in terms ofthe community's expresjons of legitimacy into the individual'sawareness of a p e r s o n a g ( : l ~ \ I n both cases, the s.Qial1l..tQf is thoughtto !l9.c()rclthe statusof reality or objectivity to a symbolicconstruc-tion. . . . . .Ifwe go beyond the rather cognitive social psychology of Meadand Blumer, we can consider the consequences of such near andremote social circles for one's sense of confidence. A person whois oriented toward a near sodal elrcle may be fearful of dea:lingwith outsiders, particularly powerful ones. Such a fear may reinforce, if not inspire, otherworldly values that set the narrow socialcircle of people apart from the wider society. Conversely, anindividual who is oriented toward a wide social circle thatembraces remote social actors may be less fearful of dealing withthe same outsiders and even be curious and enthusiastic aboutthem. The cosmopolitan may want to_ lPeet and becomeacquainted with the powerful and famousLTheir broad-rangingsoelability may reinforce, if not inspire, expansive values that helpthe individual adapt to the wider sodal world and becomeempowered on that world's termi} It is pointless to decide whether one'shabitual social circle-narrow or wide....-.eauses one's SOCial fearsor results from them, creates one's values or is created by them;such a d i ~ I J e c t i c of mutual implication need not obtain as a causalprocess.\But the relationship betweeu one's scope of reference

~ " ' ' ' " ~ . ~ .group and one's fears or lack of fears, and the relat ionship r - between one's scope of reference group and one's values, shouh( .,*not be ignored; indeed. relationships of this kind comprise what-. ' /.are often loosely referred to as "plausibility structures." IThe constituting of personal charisma seems to cntail two imaginative processes. First, there needs to be the transformation of iiliJordinary other, a person, into a personage; not only must people! / ' , ' \know that a person exists in history but they must be cognizant ofV. this person as one having some importance in some larger pictundMost of us would agree, for example, that Abraham Lincoln hadtwo grandmothers-that is, that such persons existed in history-


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but we would also agree that Lincoln was and is a personage in away that theywere not. Lincoln is part of a larger historical dramaby virtue of his being the president of the UnitedStates during theCivil War. His important place in history gives him recognitionthat he would not otherwise have. But however necessary recognition is for charisma, it is not sufficient. We do not commemorateLincoln, stamp his image on coins and print it on money becausewe recognize him; if it were only a matter of recognition, wewould have the birthday of James Garfield commemorated or thebust ofWoodrowWilson on our coins or theportraitof Martin vanBuren on our paper money. The significance of Lincoln over theseothers is not his recognizability or even his great deeds, but thefact that his drama is our drama; what Lincoln is now thought tohave sto.;adfo;:'isdpertinenttoour present experience. I t is necessary on the one hand for Lincoln to meritour recognition, but it isnecessary on the otherfor us to be wide awake to that for which hewas meritorious. Otherwise, his portrai t on our money wouldbecome an anachronism, a relic of past honorifics-something likeGrant's portrait on money.While with psychological phenomena there is the temptation tolose sight of the social, the objective, and to reify importationsmistakenly as inherent subjective properties (e.g., intelligence as"genius"), in sociology there is the temptation to lose sight of thesubjective and to reify extrapolations as social things. The fact of thematter is that[.ocial movements, social problems, social identities,fashions, and charisma are as much extrapolations from typicalpersonal experiences as they are importations of external p r o c e s s ~An appropriate scientific stance toward this kind of phenomenonrequires our not forgetting either pole of the dialectic. Lincolnwould not be Lincoln if he were not revered, but he would not berevered ifhewere not the individualwho became famous.However, we do not yet have an adequate conceptualization ofthe social construction of charisma. A person can be recognizable-that is, bea personage-and be partof a larger present socialstory or drama, but still not have charisma in the sense of imparting legitimacy. Many popular entertainers, for instance, are personages who playa present role in social life, but they are involved

in what is perceived to be the lighter or unserious side of life. Thephenomenon of charisma entails a ~ i f u r c a t i o n of collective lifeinto weightier and lighter realms, a division of the known worldinto major and minor matters] Implied in all this is not only such a- - 'division but at least an inchoate consciousness of this cognitiveinequality; the typical individual not only deems some matters

important and others not, but knows that there are important andunimportant matters. Personages with charisma not only seemimportant but are known to be in contrast with merely recognizable persons. This consciousness of anQLd'ered world of importantand !!.lljmRQrtanLperSQnagesis the product of it seQ.mLp..rQ.e.s.inherent in the establishment of charisma.Without our entering into an elaborate sociology of knowledge,it is worthwhile contemplating the foundation of this..tratififJlJiQn..of sOfial recogniz


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12 Making Charisma TheSocial Construction of Charisma 13tems of charismatic legitimation depend upon the historicity,relevance, and seriousness of the personage having charisma, andare undermined by the castingof doubts upon these.When a personlIl!ll


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14 MakingCharisma The Social Construction of Charisma 15let ters, those letters may have been read aloud regularly afterPaul's martyrdom in the early sixties. However, for th e widerChristian movement the reading of the Pauline letters on a regularbasis may have begun with the general acee.ptanee of the Acts ofthe Apostles as a church history. I use the word "may" in thiscontext because how all this happened is part of what we h op e t oexplore in ou r inquiry. 12Th e Acts of the Apostles is the second volume of a two-partwork, the first part of which is th e Gospel of Luke. A reference toth e Gospel in the prologue of Acts, as well as contrived structuralparallels designed to create a stylistic symmetry in the two-sectionwork, establish their original unity for us, even though th e twoparts are placed apart from one another i n m od er n ChristianBibles. Th e authorship is traditionally ascribed to Luke, a personwho is, in fact , mentioned in Acts itself, but as an insignificantfigure who accompanies Paul on a few of the latter's travels. Lukewas identified as the author by Irenaeus, th e Muratorian Canon,and an Anti-Marcionite Prologue in the second century, and byTertullian and Clement of Alexandria in the following century.Some ancient references maintain t h at h e was from Antioch, butActs seems to associate him with the Christian communities ofGreece andAsiaMinor.13 Wecannot be certain that this Luke wasth e author, or even that another person by th e same name wrotethe two-part work. So when this work refers to Luke, th e reference is simply to the author in question. In Acts 20.17-35, Lukeputs a speech into Pau l' s mouth tha t takes th e form of a quasitestament intended for a post-Pauline Christian community atEphesus; and in Luke 21.24 he has Jesus speak of an era ofGentiles after th e destruction of Jerusalem (hence, well after 70C.E.). In view of all this, Philip Eslerproposes th e place and time ofthe composition of Acts to be Ephesus about 90 C.E.14Acts, as theJil'i.IaJ:Y.l{)cllsjn which the charisma of PaUl, is pr1l1eQ,J.husreflects a setting some twenty-five to tIrlrtyyearsafter the time ofPaul's missionary career, and a place that Paul had used as acenterfor some of his proselytizing activity.

In speaking of Paul as a person endowed with charisma (in th esociological sense of that term), I am suggesting that he was not a

mere second, not a mere banalizer of an original charisma ofJesus. In Werner Stark's terminology, Paul was a "minor founder," a founder who resembles major founders insofar as he wasan ~ g L g J _ m a . J l . . g ! ; l but who was more conservative than theyinsofar as he maintained a basic continuity with what had comebefore him.1S(pauI did something ne w but he did it within analready recogmzable Christian S U b c u l t u ~ 6 Th e literature on thestudy of charisma has generally taken th e social dynamics of thecharisma of "minor founders" such as Paul to be essential\y..Jhesame as those se t into play in the cases of major founders.\MaxWeber, for example, drew "n o radical distinction" between aH 'renewer of religion' who preaches an older revelation" an d aH 'foun..Qs;I of religion'whoclaims to bringcompletely new delivera n c e s . ' ~ j\lJ le Acts of the Apostles is taken to be a 9.9cument in which theposthumous charisma of Paul is established]After exploring th echarisma Paul ha d during his lifetime, we will look in Acts and inthe accompanying volume of the same author, th e Gospel ofLuke, for allusions to the historical Paul. What wewant to know isno t necessarily everything that we can know about Paul but whatcame into the awareness of the author of Acts (HLuke"). Hence,after looking at Paul's charisma during his lifetime, ou r inquirycontinues by lookingfor th e posthumous knowledge of that earliercharisma. Next , we must look in the Lukan materials for th erelevance of Paul to th e ~ . ! ! & J . l r a m a of th e Christian worldknown by LUke; this points to Paul's posthumous charisma. Thenwe will look for comparable constructions of Paul's charisma inother early Christian works. Finally, we will look for the kinds ofsocial and religious organizational structure that the several charisma construction processes suggest.

Construction of Paul's Charisma in th e LifeworldAn appreciation of th e construction of Paul's posthumous charisma requires a sensitivity to just bow subtle ou r everyday awareness is. Ou r grasp of theworld around us holds some impressionsin full view while not deliberately focusing attention on others.


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16 Making Charisma The Social Construction of Charisma 17We can speak of a foreground and background, which takentogether form an ordered lifeworld. It is not that foregroundobjects are more "real" in a metaphysical sense than are backaround objects; we simply pay attention to the foreground andfilter out the background. However, even when we are filteringout a set of impressions, we are inadvertently supporting the.ir .very existence as impressions. Our inattention is an unwittingform of awareness that constitutes objects in our lifeword aseffectively as does our attention. There is indeed a differencebetween the way we are aware offoreground objects and the waywe are aware of background objects; we might call this differencea matter of thematization. When we thematize an object, we notonly import it into our ordered Iifeword but also apply logic to it,think about the relationship between it and ourselves, and make Itthe object of our deliberations. We do not do these things in thecase of unthematized, background objects.

I f we were to put all the objects ofwhich we are aware in order,beginningwith objects we fully thematize and endingwith impressions of which we have only a faint awareness, we would have theuniverse of our personal objects arranged in different levels. Tospeak of levels is metaphorical, of course; the metaphor is that of adeep pond. Think of looking downward into the pond; objectsfloating on the surface are clearly visible while objects suspendedin the water, well below the surface, are less clearly visible. Wenotice the former readily, whilewe may have to be looking for thelatter to notice it at aiL I f we were to arrange the objects of oursocial world into such levels of depth, we would find ecologicalphenomena-urban and rural scenes, for example-at the surlacelevel and the general values of our society at a much deeper level,A famous French sociologist of Russian origin, Georges Gurvitch,suggested the following scale of typical levels of depth, beginningwith the surface and proceeding to the leastobvious:1. The morphological or ecological2. Organized social manifestations .3. Social models, inclUding collective signs, cues, and even rules4, Collective conduct having a certain regularity, but extendingbeyond the organized manifestations .5. The nexus of social roles

6. Collective attitudes7, Social symbols8. Effervescent collective conduct, innovations, and creativities9. Collective ideas and values10. Mental states and collective psychic acts. ISWhat is interesting about such levels as these is that a given socialprocess may be manifested at more than one level, The charismaof someone like Paul is obviously a phenomenon of the thirdlevel-the social model, including collective signs. But thedynamic that made the early Christians ready to confer s:,ch acharisma upon someone like Paul may well have been an elghthlevel phenomenon-an effervescent collective conduct, innovation, or creativity. The suggestion is tha{i:sociallife was going on,a life thatwas differentfromwhat went before it, and that this factwas less forearound and more background in quality than wererecognized s,;'cial modeQConsequently, the social process thathad much to do with engendering the construction of Paul'scharisma was less thematized, less spoken of and written about,than was the charisma itself. If there is anything to this, ourreading of the evidence cannot be both easy and adequate, sim-plistic and accurate. l ' ~ - .In striving for adequacy and accuracyi.!!.e need to conSider theoperative social processes that embodyeach level of depti!l In thecase of the surlace level of morphology and ecology, we need torecognize that Pauline Christianity developed in cities with urbansocial ecologies and attendant urban processes. Cities receiveimmigrants and travelers. Consequently, in cities one finds ethnicand religious diversity. I t is also the case that diverse people are IV!not only juxtaposed in cities but that they are eognizant of one ' J I )another, cooperate and compete with one another, appreciate andreject one another, and in general must include one anotherwithin their respective social horizons. This means that the earlyurban Christian could not simplyhave a private interestin Jesus ofNazareth but inevitably came to acquire a social identity as aChristian. Such a person not only becomes one of a ~ n i z a b l etype in the life of the city but begins to recognize others in the city; n ' t ; ; ~ m s of their orientations toward Christians. The constructionof such social identities-both the identity of the Christians and


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identities of kinds ofnon-Christiansacting towardChristians--is apart of u r ~ a n life. It is obvious that ascollective identities develop,c ~ a n s m a t l c personages can emerge as e.!!1Q!sllnatic . ! L e . I ~ Q J ) L f i S . l ! , "JIQ.I.! o f t l I o _ s ( ~ . ! l e y ; id",ntities.

A an only slightly less surface level there are organized socialmamfestatlOns. In termsof early Christianity, thesewere religionsmembership groups in which people conducted religious ritualss ~ c h as baptism and the Sunday breaking of bread. The Septuagmt Greek versIOn of the Jewish scriptures and various Christianwritings were used as lectionarymaterial in these services. Moreover, a resident hierarchy of bishops with deacons and presbytersand embryonic Christian schools was replacing the religion's earlier transient religiousworker pattern of organization.J9While thismeant that ChrisJianitywas achieving a modicum of stabilityin thecity households;,it,also meant that the religion would experience atradition crisis, insofar as the religious traditions originated in adifferent kind of structure from that which carne to embody them!,a structure that had lacked formal positions and membersll lpreqUIrements. ThIs changewould require considerable reformulation in the urbanized Christianity.At a more profound level, the social model, including signs,cues, and even rules, had to emerge. The doctrine of early Christiamty held Jesus to be the principal model, but Jesus never facedthe practical problems involved in an organized Christianitv,especially one in which he was not presenting himself but r e l y i ~ gon disciples whom he had never personally known. The newsituation needed model disciples. The early Galilean disciples

would not do, since they were obscure and in some cases not. "partIcularly. sympathetic to the kind of Christianity that emergedm the gentile world. Beyond social models, the Christian eultictraditions appeared to be developing their own universe of signs,cues, and rules. .Signs, cues, rules, and models hardly tell the whole story ofeveryday religion. There is also the n e ~ s a r y process of socializing every.generation into the tradition.me very process of handmg a subject-dependent "commodity" such as religiO!L?ver to !'L.new set of people changes that commodity profoundly.\For the Inew generatIOn, the experience is not one of conversioff1o some- I

thing exotic but of maintaining a continuity with the collective',}

identity of one's social group; one is not becoming an a p o s t a t e - ' ~from the family's belief system in order to become a Christian but \remaining faithl'ul to the family religion. And one is not creating \the local expression of something that came in from Palestine b U l . - ~ tsupporting the local church and its local leaders. The pattern ofreligious life, beyond the formal organization of it, involves socialpsychological dynamics quite different from those experienced bythe first local Christians. It is no longer the family rebels, innova-tors, deviants, and black sheep who are Christians but those whoconform, retain received ways of acting, go along with the others,and maintain the organization.Given the newly settled pattern of Christianity, it is no longer amissionary or traveler who is the Christian leader. Rather it is alocally influentiaiperson-probably a head of a relatively prosperolliillousehold.Sucha person is also likely to be a father, smallbusiness operator, consumer of intellectual products, and arbiterof dependents' causes. In the first-century context, this wouldmakeChristian leadership a largelymale endeavor,whereas at theoutset this was not likelyto have been the case.Once these urban Christians had a social identity, they wouldhave a propensity toward we-group feelings; they would viewthemselves favorably, and their competitors and thosewith whomtheymight be in conflict unfavorably. Their specifically collectiveatt itudes would have a we/they aspect that delineates groupboundaries. Moreover, this social boundary would not only separate Christian from non-Christian but also one 's own kind ofChristian from other kinds, since it is lone's own kind as a socialpresence in the city that occasions the-collectivity's i d e n t i ~ J Tneimplications of this for the sort of person who would be endowedwith charisma by these people are obvious, and the charisma inquestion would have to be one that would lend itselfto furtheringthis particular social boundary.Typical actions or objects that would externalize the Christianreligiosity in a way that would fit this social circumstance wouldgain symbolic value. Such actions and objects would make thereligion itself an object appropriate for the scene, and they couldbe used for socializing new generations of Christians. Pitirim A.Sorokin called such typical ~ _ 2 . I 5 ) J t i ~ ( ; f S _ . ~ ~ Y ~ h i ~ 1 ~ . s .."2o Henoted that such vehicles are necessary because of the social ineffi-

18 Making Charisma The Social Construclion of Charisma 19


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20 Making Charisma The Social Constructionof Charisma 21

cacy of telepathy; \Values, meanings, and beliefs simply do nottravel from one peiS,0n to another without being pu t into publiclyrecognized symbols.Vn the present context, we are interested inthe typical depictionsthat weremade of Paul.We have already suggested tha t the construction of charismaappears at the rather deep l e v e l ~ q t effervescentcollective conduct,of innovation and creativity. \JEese are "deep," far from thesurface of social reality, in the sense that people do not deliberately arrive at the conclusion that they are ripe for effervescence,innovation, and creativitDThat would be like overp lanning aparty. There are some things in everyday life which only succeedspontaneously; they fit into a very specificcontext as apprehendedfrom within that context. Humor and rhetoric, wisdom and classiness, taste and insight are occasion-dependent. Constructing charisma similarly succeeds when undeliberated and, hence, whenapprehended with a significant element of surprise and enthusiasm. There is nothing particularly mysterious about this, butnothing particularlv predictable, either.Yet more p r o f o ~ n d l y ; \ . i ! i e r e must be a culturally shared idea ofwhat a religion is before a particular religion, such as Christianity,can thriVe,} To a great extent, the nonChris ti an religions andphilosophies of the era, especially Hellenistic Jewish religion,were responsible for the ancient world 's having a basic idea ofreligion commensurate to Christianity. This basic idea is not only,or even primari ly, a concept but a value, a basic intui tion thatplaces other ideas into a perspective . This idea-unlike someother supernaturalist systems of the day-earried a cer ta in pri macy with i t; it would take prior ity over other concerns in theminds of adherents. Residing behind this, at an even deeper level,may be a mental state-religiosity. Both the idea of religion andthe mental state of religiosity are prereflective, and hence evenmore protean and undeliberable than are effervescence innova-tion, anc tc r e a t ivT tY . '

Notes1. I have written a brief survey of approaches in the sociology ofrehglOn: Anthony J. Blasi, "Coming to Terms with Ultimate Realityin the Sociology of Religion," Ultimate Reality andMeaning 10, no.4(1987): 272-81. For a history of the subdiscipline, see Anthony J.BlaSI and MIchael W. Cuneo, "Introduction. The Sociology of

Religion," in Issues in the Sociology of Religion: A Bibliography(New York: Garland, 1986), pp. x i x ~ x x i i i . An excellent book-lengthsurvey is Roger O'Toole, Religion: Classic SociologicalApproaches(Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1984).2. For example, David L. Barr, New Testament Story. An Introduction(Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1987).3. Gerhard Lenski, The Religious Factor: A Sociological Study ofReligion's Impacton Politks, Economics, and Family Uf e (GardenCity, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961).4. AnthonyJ. Blasi, Early Christianity as a SocialMovement (Bern andNew York: Peter Lang, 1988).5. Werner Stark, The Sociology of Knowledge. An essay in Aid of aDeeperUnderstandingof the History of Ideas (London: Routledge &Kegan Paul, 1958), 106-7, formulates a description of the kind ofsociology of knowledge that I have in mind.6. Max Weber, Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Soci-ology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1978,215.7. Ibid., 241 and 246-54. John G. Gager, Kingdom and Community.The Social World of Early Christianity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice-Hall, 1975),66-92, approaches charisma in earlyChristianity from this kind ofWeberian perspective,with charisma playing anoriginary role and being preserved in texts and institutions as well asmitigated by them.8. George H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1934); Herbert Blumer, Symbolic 1nteraetionism.Per>pective and Method (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall,1 9 ... William James, Psychology (Briefer course) (London: Colher-Macmillan., 1962), chapter 12; Charles Horton Cooley, HumanNature and the Social Order (New York: Schocken, 1964), 196ff.Mead seems to have had the idea of the self concept prior to hisacquaintance with Cooley; the latter supplied the felicitous phrase"looking-glass self."l(), See Georg Simmel, "Group Expansion and the Development ofIndividuality," in Georg Simmel on IndiViduality and Social Forms,ed. Donald N. Levine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971),251-93--from Georg Simmel, "Die Erweiterung der Gruppe unddie Ausbildung der lndividualitat," in Soziologie (1908); Mead,Mind, Self, and Society, 154ff.11. See Andrew J. Weigert, J. Smith Teitge, and Dennis W. Teitge,Society and Identity. Toward a SociologicalPsychology (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress, 1986), 11D-13. .12. Reinhard Bendix, "Umbildungen des personlichen Charismas. EineAnwendung von Max Webers Charismabegriff auf dasFriihchristentum," in Max Webers Siehl des antiken Christentums. Interpretationund Kritik, ed. Wolfgang Schluchtcr (Frankfurt am Main:


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22 Making CharismaSuhrkamp, 1985), 404-43, addresses the charisma of Jesus Christand places Paul within the spread of that charisma, r a t h ~ r thanfocusing On Paul's charisma per se. This is simply a different use ofthe concept from mine. John Howard Schutz, Paul and the Anatomyof Apostolic Authority (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1975), 264ft. applies the concept more directly to Paul, speaking ofPaul;s charisma. Schutz's focus is on Paul's charisma in his own timeas expressed in the authentic Pauline leiters. .

13. See JosephA. Fitzmyer, S. J., TheGospelAccording to Luke (I-IX)(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981), 35-41. Fitzmyer, 35-36,observes that the end of the gospel in p75, a papyrus codex datingfrom 175-225 C.E. is fonowed by the title euangelion kata Lou/am.14. Philip F. Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1987),26 and 28.15. Werner Stark, The Sociology of Religion, Vol. 4, (New York:FordhamUniversity Press, 1970), 84.16. Paul cites numerous Jesus logia in his letters; see Blasi, EarlyChristianity as a Social Movement, chapter 2. Texts of Christianhymns and creeds and references to ritual practices also appear inthe authentic Pauline letters.17. Weber, Economy and Society, 439-40.18. Georges Gurvitch, "Problemes de sociologie general,"in TraUt! deSociologle I, seconde edition corrigee, ed. Georges Gurvitch (Paris:PressesUniversitaires de France, 1962), 153-251, at 157-71-19. On the transient religious worker pattern of religious organization,see Anthony J. Blasi, ';Role Structures in the Early HellenisticChurch," Sociological Analysis 47, no. 3 (1986): 226-48, or Blasi,Early Christianity as a SocialMovement, chapter 5.20. Pitirim A. Sorokin, Society, Culture, and Personality: Their Structure and Dynamics (New York: Cooper Square, 1969),52. Sorokinknew of the work of his fellow Russian emigrant, Gurvitch, but hedid not organize his writings around more and less visible levels ofphenomena in themanner ofGurvitch.

2The Actual Paul

It will be useful to make a simple distinction between whatevercharisma Paul may have had in his l ifet ime and that which wasconstructed after he had been executed, The focus in all of theother chapterswill be on his posthumous charisma; but, as alreadyobserved, that charisma was not based on total fiction but ratherwas a response to Paul's actual life as that life was known throughtradition and his writings. Posthumous charisma is like historyinsofar as i t is grounded in real events but constitutes somethingnew-a later understanding or interpretation of those events.Whenever we read a history that was written well before our ownera, we notice how quaint it seems, how it uses dated perspectiveshighlighting things thatwould be passedover today and neglectingwhat we now find important . I hope to look at the construction ofPaul's posthumous charisma in the decades following his execut ion in much the same way, as ifi t were a quaint history from thelate first century and early second century. But to see what wascreated in those decades, it is necessary to see how Paul seemed topeople in his own lifetime, so that his later charisma would not beconfused with what he already had.For tunate ly , we are no t entirely dependent on secondarysources from the ancient world for a knowledge of Paul's life.Ancient secondary sources are quite unlike our histories; theyblend factual accounts with legends and even with images whichare created out of whole cloth. In the case of Paul, we haveprimary sources: a number of his own let ters , most of which hewrote in the fifties, in which he sometimes tells us about himself,In addition, incidental information, of no apologeticvalue, is to behad from Luke's book that is largely about Paul, the Acts of theApostles. Using this information careful ly, we can construct a


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116 Making Charisma24, Translation by Francis X. Glimm in The Apostolic Fathers, ed.Francis X. Glimm (New York: CIMA, 1974).25. Translation by Glimm, ibid. , .26. Karl Herman Schelkle, Die Petrusbriefe, Der Judasbnef (Frelburg:Herder, 1980), 179, dates Second Peter at the end of the firstcentury or beginning of the second; C.E.B. Cranfield, I & II Peterand Jude. Introduction and Commentary (London: SCM, 1960),149, estimates the date of composition as some time in the first halfof the secondcentury.27. J.N.D. Kelly, A Commentary on the Epistles of Peter and Jude(London: Black, 1969), 370. .28, On Marcion and his impact, see R. Joseph Hoffman, MarcLOn: Onthe Restitution of Christianity. An Essay on the Development ofRadical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century (Chico, California: Scholars Press, 1984), At issue in Marcion's time was not thestatus of the Jews as a nation; that was not under discussion inChristian literature. Rather, the issue was about Jewish religion.Justin Martyr (Dialogue with Trypho, #8 and #46), circa 135, hasJudaism spoken of as circumcision, Sabbathobservance, feasts, newmoons, and ritual purifications.29. On the prior existence of the Theda episodes as folklore, seeVirginia Burrus, Chasity as Autonomy. Women in the Stories ofApocryphal Acts (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1987),31-66. OntheActsof Paul and Thelea, see W. Schneemeleher, "Acts of Paul,"in E. Hennecke, New Tesmment Apocrypha, Vol. 2, ed. W.Schneemelcher (London: Lutterworth, 1965),322-51, followed byan English translationof the work, 352-90.30, Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Legend and the Apostles. TheBattle for Paul in Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster,1983).31. Ibid., 18-21.32. Ibid,,21-23.33. Ibid" 23-26.

6Behind the Image

Our initial exposure to the l iterary data suggested that thestabilization of the gentile church had been antecedent to theconstruction of the posthumous charisma of Paul, even thoughPaul' s own career as a missionary had been antecedent to thestahilized gentile church. That is to say , it became obvious to usthat the actual historical sequence was a) Paul' s career, b) thestabilization of t he gentile church, c) the construction o f the

f iQ ..sthumous charisma of PauL Hence, in the introductory chaptert ~ . : e referred to charisma not as MaxWeber had presented it, withthe appeal and authority of a personage coming to be made aneveryday matter in an institutional apparatus, but in terms of asociology of knowledge, in which an institutional framework elicits the. construction of a legitimatory charisma of a foundingfigur.


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the institutionalization of that language in their societylicuke wasnot confoJ:rping to preexistent practice but participating in aninnovati0;!.:1What he did was not lacking continuity with whatwent before him, but it also was not mere imitation and conformance. Moreover, a st.rjctly Marxian approach does not seem toaccord with the data;[Marx would have symbol systems emergefrom social relationships-he advocated a sociologism of sorts-, ~ __ but he accorded a primacy to the relations of p r o d u c t i o ~ In the\ caseof theconstruction ofPaul's charisma, the social relationships

I entailed in the organization of cultural associations (churches)'I--seem .more r e ~ e v a n t than the relations ?f production.! What wehave m mmd m the present context IS SImply a meaning congruence between a social fact and a viewpoint; if one adheres to acultural association such as a gentile Christian church, and evenmore so if one belongs to a communal religious grouping, theworld makes more sense if one's chureh. or churches like it hadbeen founded by a great person than if it had been f o u n d ~ d bysomeone lacking in holiness, intelligence, effectuality, and presence.Thc construction of the charisma of Paul appears to be analogous to the making of that of the sages who are named in theMishnah. The individuals in their own lifetimesmay have thoughtof their own authority as extendingno further than the persuasiveness of their own arguments, but the authors of theMishnah citedthe sages as authorities and, evidently, fictively attributed arguments to them that they had never entertained. Moreover, asubsequently formulated preface, Avot, presents a successionfrom Moses down through the centuries to these named rabbis.Later the Palestinian Talmud places these authoritative sages on apar with the written Torah, the Scriptures. Thus, Jacob Neusnerrefers to the Judaism represented by the Mishnah, Talmuds andrelated literature as the "Judaism of the dual Torah."2 What isanalogous to the charisma of Paul is the. establishing of thesepersonages over time as a u t h o r i t i e s ' ~ In this'-kind of process charisma is conferred posth\!mously. Paul undoubtedly claimed someauthority for himself, as is evident from his let ters, but thatauthority pertained to the genuineness of his g o ~ p e l , to the claimthat his teaching was suftlCleriTiiiidciidnotnee


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united in a theocratic constitution. The religious body ispervaded by a stance that favors the political constitutionand possibly the individual incumbents of political office.Denomination-There are plural religious bodies of signifieance, which are not even approximately coterminous withthe polity in its entirety. Nevertheless, each denomination

is pervaded by a stance that favors the political constitutionand possibly the individual incumbents of political office.The several denominations differ from one another in thecontent of their traditions or in their internal systcms ofgovernance and adherence.Sect-The religious body is pervaded by a stance that opposesthe political constitution in some importantway or opposesother religious bodies because of their favorable stancestoward the political constitution.Cult-An oppositional stance toward the host society pervadesa cult, by virtue of some belief or practice that cannot be

reconciled with thewider culture, and hence thrives withinlimited interaetional frameworks in which virtuosi renderfor clients services of an individual nature.Anyone familiar with contemporary studies in the sociology ofreligion knows that few aetual organized religions correspondclosely with any of these types. The types themselves are "puretypes" that give more or less elaborate meaning systems to traitsthat appear in real cases only as themes or dimensions. Nevertheless, such types serve as useful points of departure for purposes ofmaking comparative studies or, minimally, saying in what respecta given religious grouping is exceptional. For present purposes, itwill suffice to observe that the types focus on relationshipsbetween religions and their host societies-favorable and unfavorable stanees toward the politieal constitutions and cultures of thehost societies.These particular types do not promise to be very useful formaking analyseswithin the context of the Roman Empire and forfocusing on significantaspects of the nascent Christianitywithin it.I have shown elsewhere that there are important differencesbetween early Christianity and the twentieth-century new religious movements, which are appropriately designated cults.3 In theinstance of the Roman Empire of the first century CE .. the divide

121ehind the Imagebetween government and society was important enough that itbecomes necessary for us to specify whether it is Rome or theHellenistic environment toward whieh a stance is favorable orunfavorable. For example, a Christian living in a rebellion-pronecorner of the Empire would not be taking a seetarian stance inregarding the capital city as a whore of Babylon-only using anon-mainstream allusion to a eonqueror of Judah. On the otherhand, a Christian may go to some length to argue that theChristian religion is compatible with Roman governance and thatit is likely to inspire law-abidingness among its adherents, and bythat fact alone be at odds with the more proximate and sociallymore relevant rebellious host society.It is particularly important for us to reeall that the Romans hadcome to an uneasy accommodation with the Jews, who may havemade up some ten percent of the Empire's population. Quite incontrast to this government policy, people in the Empire hadoften been hostile toward the Jews, rioting against them andformulating literary attaeks upon them. When Jews in Judea andGalilee rebelled against the Romans in the year 66, a Jewishleadership group such as those Pharisees who allied themselveswith Johannan ben Zakai at Javneh understandably favoredRome even while rejecting mnch else in the Hellenistic environment. It hardly captures the essence of the situation to speak ofthe Pharisees as a denomination because they favored Romanorder , or to speak of the Christians as a denomination and thePharisees as a cult because the Christians were more Hellenistthan were these Pharisees. We need to frame the context ratherdifferently.The Christianswere more Hellenist than were theprotorabbinicPharisees, but that does not mean that they were more favorablythan unfavorably disposed toward the outside Hellenistic environment. Both offspring of Second Temple-era Judaism found muehin the world of the first century that they could not accept-morallaxity, idolatry, magic, brutality. And after the separat ion ofChristianity from Javnean Judaism had become an accomplishedfact, the Christians found themselves in the anomalous situationof being opposed to the hellenistic culture without haVing aUtaditional culture to give a sense of permanence and naturalnessto their distinctive wavS/ Without Judaism thev had no roots. The;;, .-i ..

Making Charisma20


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-avnean Pharisees could elaborate the TOUIP as \!!J idealizedframework and as a new governmental system,[but the Christianshad little tradition as a counterpart to this:::.only some Jesuslegends such as these collected in Mark, and some logia. Moreover, the Christians had Jesus taken away from them well beforethe Temple had been taken away from the Jews. In a fluid worldsuch as that of first- and second-century Hellenism, the search fortradition was a live issue; intellectuals wrote books about theantiquities of peoples. This kind of quest would seem to be anurgent matter for the Christians.The typological matrix that would serve as a useful point ofdeparture for the study of early Christianity would not be that ofchurch, denomination, seet, and cult, but one based upon stancestoward imperial Rome and biblical Judaism. At least, these seemto be the variable stances suggested by the literary material inwhich the charisma of Paul is constructed[Rather than generatefour novel sociological terms of art, let US s i m p l ~ m b o d y the fouralternatives in a conceptual table (see Table6-1)jSimply because these four cells represent p ~ _ t y f l . . " $ , they willnot by themselves serve as adequate descriptions of any fourfirst-century phenomena. Nevertheless, they indicate attitudinalthemes or stances that characterize, I think, much of the conductof the early Christians during different phasesof their history. Weneed to create and use types such as these rather than mechanically apply the fourfold church-denomination-sect-cult typologyfrom later times becausetllie attitudes of the .J:ipt-century peopleare not commensurate with those of m o d e r n ~ No types will befully commensurate with any set of cases, but the more adequatethey are, the more useful they will be for purposes of interpreting

123ehind t h e I m agethe evidence, of seeing coherence rather than confusion where thesocial actors themselves saw coherence rather than confusion. 4The figure of Paul lends itselfto the two dimensions with whichwe construct this typology-an att itude toward Rome and onetoward Judaism. Paul never rails against Rome; indeed, he wouldhave Christians be lawabiding citizens. Nevertheless, he hadbeen arrested several times, had at one point been a fugitive fromDamascus, had to defend himself in court, and eventually wasexecuted. Paul was a Jew who kept many if not all of the obseilvances of the Torah, judging from the "we" sections and other!passages in the Acts of the Apostles. He did not reject the ;observance of Torah prescriptions on the part of Jewish Chris- Itians, and he frequently alluded to the Hebrew scriptures in his iletters. Nevertheless, he encouraged gentile converts to Christian- Iity to remain gentile, and he argued that Torah observances did!not constitute a means of salvation. He rejected "the Law" as a !constitutive element of Christian faith and practice.\rh.us., .. J h ~ . lfigure of Paul, as available immediately after his death, was'ambivalent regarding both Rome and Judaism;\iibsequent Christians could e m R h a i w - O ) ; . . l J l i u i ! U i < : ~ . the tension between Paul andRome and between Paul and Judaism.CellI: AccommodateRome, OpposeJudaismNone of the literature we have examined here appears tocorrespond to this first cell from Table 6-1. One can make a casethat the historical Paul, the author of the authentic letters, heldthis position. In First Thessalonians, written soon after he hadbeen ! ! 1 . ~ g g ~ C l b y s ( ) m e ~ r i t i s t1:Qlj1iJ.s}'!1!lgQg\lJ;;, he seems il ldisposed toward religiQ.!!sl!l\l:'s (1 Thess. 2.14-16). In Galatians heexplicitly opposes those who would have gentile Christians adoptJewish observances, and in Romans he attempts to persuadeJewish Christians to accord gentile Christians equal respect. Nevertheless, Paul never rejects Jewish tradition as a whole; he oftencites Jewish scripture and, according to the "we" sections of Acts,he regularly kept Jewish observances. I f Paul has one foot in cellI

of the table, he has the other in cell 2. As for the Romangovernment, as already mentioned, he encourages obedience to itand the payment of taxes to it, in Romans. 5

4

STANCETOWARD ROMEAccommodate Resist or withdraw from

TABLE 6-1Pure Types for First-Century Christiauity

MakingCharisma

Accept morethan oppose~ ~ - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Opposemorethan accept

122

Stancetowardbiblical Judaism


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124 Making Charisma Bebind the Image 125Cell2: Accommodate Rome, Accept JudaismIt is Luke whose writings most closely correspond to this cell.

We have seen that Luke ~ ~ t a i . ! that show conflictbetweenChristians andcivil authorities, and that he minimizes the. . . . . . . . - - - - - _ ~~ Q U h ~ R Q m a n s i n J . b . e . p ! ! ! ! j b m l ; ! ! . t l n f L e ; K e C u t i o n Q J l \ ' ; . s . l l i , "andeven a cursory reading of his gospel reveals a tendency to cite andquote the Jewishscriptures. Moreover, Luke is the most favorableamong the evangelists toward the Pharisees, finding points ofagreement between them and the Christians.6Cell3: Resistor Withdrawfrom Rome, AcceptJudaismThis kind of stance can be expected once the imperial government approved of the persecution of Christians. The pseudepigraphic Pauline letters appear to assume this stance when they focuson Paul the prisoner and when they argue for orthodoxy. -Since the

earlier Christian message contained Jewish content, an insistenceupon orthodoxy would result in the acceptance of at least someofJewish tradition.Cell 4: Resist orWithdraw from Rome, Oppose JudaismThe Acts ofPaul and Theda does not fall squarely in cell 4; theauthor has little to say about either the Romans or the Jews. Hefocuses on Paul's martyrdom, and thereby presupposes the hostili ty of Rome, and he manages to ignore Jewish traditions. If wewere to do justice to this work typologically, \ic would have to

multiply cells b ~ i s t i n g u i s h i n g more and less Hellenistic culturalp r e s u p p o s i t i o n ~ i t h its high estimation of celibacy, this work isclearly more Hellenistic than the pastorals, for example. Whatmay fall more squarely in this cell is the stance of Marcion, whoapparently encouraged a mystical withdrawal from the socialworld and who wanted to eliminate the Old Testament from theChristian canon.?What we can see from the application of this fourfold typology

to the Christian literature pertinent to the construction of Paul'schariSma is that over time there was a movement from cell I (Paul

himself) to cell 2, then to 3, andfinally to cell 4. The progression isnot perfect; for example, Colossians may have been writ tenbefore the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, and theActs of Paul and Thecladoes not seem tofit squarelyinto anyoneof the cells. Nevertheless, the typology is a useful point of departure. Specifically, it enables us to see the times o fLuke and the;:seudepigraphic or deutero-Pauline authors as the times in which\!!1e quest for tradition was most urgei!i--since it is in these timesthat there was a favorable stance toward Jewish tradition. And itenables us to see the times of the pseudepigraphic letters--andperhaps the places in which they were written-as the times andplaces of official persecution. In these contexts, we can understand Luke's construction of Paul the practicingJew and innocentcitizen, and in the pseudepigraphicPauline works the constructionof Paul the prisoner. These images, dwelt upon in the Christianliterature, were not mere accidental facts of history (though theymay have been that as well) but meaningful and understandableconstructs in the early Church.

Particular Institutional ContextIn the sociological study ofmodern religious groupings, it is notenough to identify a given religious organization as a church,denomination, sect, or cult; the study becomes more interestingwhen dynamic relationships occur between the pervasive stancesthat sueh terms suggest and other aspects of thesocial order. Doessectarianism predispose people toward authoritarianism in theworkplace, the family, and the political arena? Is denominational

ism more compatible with educational and economic individualism than is a traditionalist prolongation of churchlike conduct?Does cult participationlead people away from the wider society orback into it? These kinds of inquiry have long characterized thesociology of religion within the framework of the church, denomination, sect, and cult typological scheme.Similarly in the study of first-century Christianity, which in-.volves here the use ofa different set of types oforganized religion,it is not enough to match various phenomena with different types,as we have done earlier in this chapter. Such typological work is auseful point of departure but not a satisfactory terminus. Having


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Accommodate Rome, AcceptJudaismWe have seen that this stance characterizes the Lukan writings.Persecution by the Romans either did no t occur in Luke'simmediate world, or Luke hoped to minimize i t by preventing attitudes'from hardening. Since Luke wrote some fifteen to twenty year_

afterthe destruction of theTemple in Jerusafemandthe scattering~ f ' t h e Christian community from there, Jewish-Gentile conflictswere probably no longer of relevance to gentil e Chris ti anchurchesu"uke's stancecouldhave reflected eithera real situationof s o c i ~ l peace within the church or one for which hope wastenable.\ However, it is hardly enough to say that it had to havebeen possible for Luke to gravitate toward such a stance; he had tohave wanted to. We should probably th ink of Luke and hisintended readers as talented Christians who fil led posit ions ofresponsibility in their social world, people who worked with andunderstood Romans and JewsWr1:JalJepecml.e who could appreci-

?\)\'


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Luke's books about things that most elders deemed best forgotten, Why did old Luke have to get the youngsters all stirred upabout that Paul character anyway? And no wonder that Lukeneglects to pay much attention to his own generation. whichimitated Paul and Jesus! -'aul would laugh last, but it would be a mistake to think Lukewas concerned about that. Luke simply does not dwell on personalities. It was those who had neglected Paul who had been guidedby ancient clashes. Luke may well have been favorably disposedtoward Paul on a personal basis and may well have cherished hismemory in a way that many others did not, but his books are.guided by a less personalist consideration: Paulmade eonverts and~ u n d e d churches,IHe laid the foundations on which others builtJLAnd it was Paul's accomplishment that the new generations ofChristians fO\Llld in place as a permanent, as it were natural.religious world,J The very way that Luke deemphasized the personal attributes of Paul and his converts reinforces the receivednaturalness of Christianity for these generations, The foundational conversions would be seen as elicited by the mission and itsmessage, not by the trivial vicissitudes of personal networks andinfluence. It should not surprise US that Luke does not write aboutthe ~ c a r j ! Y " Q f J J 1 " , J m m q l l J i 9 I 1 ~ and the necessity for Paul toinstruct the first converts in the most basic matters of morality; ifthat which should go without sayingwere to be shown to have hadto have been said, itmay be undone,Luke's literary program required earliest Christianity to havesettled upon something similar to that known to thenewer generations, Their religion would not seem to have been founded at all ifit deviated markedly from the original. Thus, Luke sought precedents for Pauline praxis in the prehistory of Jerusalem Christianity, found continuities between the theology of Jesus and that ofPaul, suppressed obvious errors sueh as Paul's datina of the'"Second Coming, and depicted Paul as a fully authorized apostle,Paul was a founder figure who, like Abraham, was a model offaith. He also faeed official opposition with eloquence and courage, according toLuke. Did Luke see persecution coming? Did hehope to leave his readers where his narrative leaves Paul--on thethreshold of Caesar's court? Who but Paul would provide pre-

Resist or Withdraw from Rome, Accept Judaism

cisely the kind of inspiration needed by the next generation ofChristians?

129ehind the Image

In contrast to Luke, who minimizes any tensions between theChristians and the Roman government, the pseudepigraphic letters of Paul make a point of portraying Paul as the innocentprisoner. However, that serves as comment enough for ~ h ~ s eauthors: we do not find them condemning Rome or deplctmgemperors withmonster images, There seems to b an inward focuswith these writers; they are most concerned With such mterIl"Ichurch matters as q u a l i ~ i c a t i ( ) I l for offic!, aj1(j Q r t ~ 9 ( \ ( ) x y , Colos' s i a n ~ ; ' f ; ; l ' e x a m p l e , focuses on Paul's ministry and office and hiSconcern for orthodoxy, Hebrews--or at least that portIOn of Itdesigned to make Paul seem to be the. ~ u t h o r - m a k e s Paul anadvocate for the particular doctrinal posItion and theological stylethat the work exemplifies. In the pastoral epistles Paul is made todelegate a responsibility for order and orthodoxy to Timothy andto Titus. All of these presuppose the developmentof fixed eccleSI-astical offices and structures, and a certain amount of internalpolitics over filling positions and certifying theological formula-tions._ The prison letter genre indicates uot only t e n ~ i o n ~ i t h thegovernment but also a need for roots, When Paul IS dep:eted aswriting from prison, he is absent in a way analogous to bemglongdeceased, yet he can still be imagined to wnte. Composmg apseudepigraphic letter of this kind thus looks back to the foundmgaccomplishment much as Luke's double b ~ o g r a p h Y does. B ~ unlike Luke thesewriters present Paul as a literary figure. Paul sauthentic le;ters had not been neglected in their churches, or hadbegun to be read again as a result of interest i Paul, p e r ~ a p sstirred up in part by Luke's books. Thus, ColOSSIans, EpheSians,First and SecondTimothy, Titus, and SecondThessalomanswereexplicitly authored as pseudepigraphic Pauline epistles, andHebrews was adapted to beeome one. Furthermore, as we haveseen, other works refer to Paul as aliterary figure-First Clement,

jI

Making Charisma28


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130 Making Charisma Behindthe Image 131Polycarp to the Philippians, and SecondPeter. All of this suggestsa concern over literary material to be used in the churches. Again,this is an inward focus, less the lifeworld of the cosmopolitan andl/.!0re that of the local.\}rIters who are .c2ncerned wIth orthodoxy relish the culturalmaterials of tfaditioll! fn the case of early Christianity, this meantretaining aspects of the Jewish symbol system (but not circumCision, feasts, and ritual purity observances) in which Christianityfirst developed and avoiding overtlyHellenisticinnovations. SinceJudaism had itself been influenced by Hellenistic culture, we caneasily lose ourselves in definitional quandaries in the course ofdescribing this; suffice it to say that the writers had thought somebeliefs to have been vintage Christianity and others to have beenGreek speculation. Here the issue for the writers is not Judaismitself but beliefs that are more continuous with Judaism than withspeculative heresies. The writers do not tell us which beliefs are inquestion, but the Johannine letters suggest that some peopleangelized Jesus in a fashion thinkable only within the context ofHellenisticfoibles over matter (see CoL 2.20-23; I Tim. 4.1-3).The Letter to the Hebrews presents us with a most interestingcase. The author seems to be addressing Christian Jews, arguingthat the heavenly Christ sitting at the right hand of the Fatheraccomplishes what the Temple cult had accomplished in the past.Il is hard to ascertainwhether thiswas intendedas a consolation inthe aftermath of the destruction of theTemple or as a welcome onthe part of gentile Christians. The argument takes the form of aHellenizedJudaism, with a heavenly liturgy paralleling the earthlyone, and ultimately superseding it. This, of course, is only aJudaism of sorts. The fact that the author cites Jewish scripturedemonstrates some desire to maintain continuity with Judaism. Areading of the FirstLetter of Clement, "''litten by a Roman bishopon behalf of the church in Rome, shows a similar tendency to relyon the Jewish scriptures.The place of Judaism in Christianity had clearly changed fromPaul's day. There appears to be no question of requiring Jewishobservancesof gentileChristians (CoL 3.11) or ofmaintaining anysubordination to the Jerusalemchurch. There seems to be no needto encourage Jew and Gentile to respect one another's customs.fnsteadJudaism takes the form of the Old Testament , the pre-

Mishnah Torah-Prophets-Writing. This literary world provided acosmology that was quite different from that of the Hellenisticphilosopher, and this difference would soon mark a dividebetween orthodox ChriMianity and its gnostic cousins. This isquite important becaustUtshows " l ! ~ a religious collectivity intentupon maintaining a group identitx:!The alternative would havebeen to encourage a host of separate personal spiritual and speculative quests of a more individualistic character. Thus, while theChristianity of these writers may have looked i n ~ a r d ~ a t h e ~ . ! ~ a noutward, it was not confining itself to P ; ~ I ! ~ l l l 1 t e : r I O [ l t y Llhesocial organizing of the religion was itself of interesLaJ,ld value,and it was not the mere occasion of interior experiences. \

" " ~ :

Resist orWithdraw from Rome, OpposeJudaismAs previously noted, we do not have a good example of thisstance within early Christianity. Marcion and his followers havenot leftus much literarymaterial, and the Acts of Paul andThecladoes not seem to fit squarely into this cell on our typological table(Table 6-1). It is worth our while, however, to observe that withthe Acts of Paul and Thecla we have a work tha t is Hellenisticrather than Jewish in spirit. Thecla is presented not only as a virginwho has no desire to live a life subordinated to that of a husband,but as a religiously proactive individual who baptizes herself.S ~ would be a very un-.Je\Vishwoman of her time. And Paul ispresenteciasan ascetic who draws the,icofsociety ingeneral, notmerely the Roman goyernment. What this work makes plain forus is that whether tht! C h r i s t i ! m ~ were to be socially conventional

or to be a curiosity wasat issu5J.;The presbyter who authored thiswork preferred a curio Christianity; the church authorities of hisday preferred conventionality. What would be distinguishingChristian lifestyle from the rest of its social world would be thetraditional Jewish morality inherited from an earlier day, not theeccentricities of the kind of religious deviance evinced by Paul theadventurer and Thecla the feminist. And the Christian organization was trying to remain in the world rather than retreat into thedesert with the more speculatively inclined gnostic cousins. Moreover, while Luke and the authors of the Pauline pseudepigraphasought to associate their works with real or imagined historical


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The Elementary Formations of CharismaConstruction

133ehind the Imagenomena in the lifeworld of the social actors involved in theactivities under examination.

Meaning Variables\ ~ e a n i n g variables are interpretive alternatives that, in thepresent case, the s ! l ~ i f l I p a r t i c i P f l n . t ~ in tb1e construction of Paul'sposthumous charisma were able to e l e c t . , . ~ T h e s e participants may

or may not have been articulate about the alternatives; if theywere sociologists they would have been inclined to speak aboutthem and become articulate about them. Since the early Christians are not known to have any sociologists among their number,we have to settle for grounding our formulations on the literaturethey left for us to read. One such meaning variable that seems

Uninteresting Causal ExplanationsI will not, as said above, dwell upon invariant "causes." I willmerely point to them because they set the stage for the moreimportant factors. There is first the social fact of generations.People of different generations inhabit different lifeworldstogether. In the case of the construction of Paul's charisma, anearlier generation did not need or want it constructedwhile a laterone did. Again, while the later generation constructed a foundercharisma, the one after that constructed a criterion-of-canon charisma. I f there were no generations, there would have been noconstructions and reconstructions; but pursuing that point wouldbe a trivial exercise. It seems to be far more interesting to look atthe variations among the successive constructions. Similarly, it

would be true to say that there would be no literary constructionsof charisma if there were no literature; but that would not tell usmuch. It is not the fact of literarv text that is interesting but thefact that some texts were received as scripture (the Old Testament) , others as a foundational double history (the Gospel ofLuke and the Acts of the Apostles), o thers as an author itat ivecorpus (the authentic Pauline letters, at least after a time), andstill others as works taking their literary inspiration from a constmcted charisma'undergoing reconstruction (e.g., the Paulinepseudepigrapha and theActs of Paul and Thecla).

Making Charisma32

Our analysis has come to the point where it can tell us something about the construction of charisma. We have proeeededinductively , ~ i n n i n g with a general problematic taken from thesociology of knowledge, reviewing the literary evidence, andQ.!;ganizing the evidence with a relevant typologD Now we can

~ ~ o l a t e the process of constructing charismawithin the frameworkof the organized evidence! In doing so it will be useful to distinguish between two kindsOf factor--causes and meaning variables.Causes are constants that canbe used to explain social phenomenain uninteresting ways. For example, all religious P Q ~ n o m e n a are,in a sense, results of caloric intake and output; and\


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pertinent tOi,their construction of Pa\ll,'s charisma is that of theoutward versus the inward orientation\ By an outward orientation, I mean a propensityto understandone's religion as compatible with the wider social order and the wider social order ascompatible with one's religion, I proposed that Luke, for example, was a capable person into whose hands responsibilities wereplaced and who consequently had to come to terms with officialdom, A person whose place in the world could be so describedwould tend to have an outward orientation, and people withoutward orientations tend to receive responsibilities, By an inward orientation, I mean a propensity to understand one'sreligionas reaching sufficiency and closure in one's local worship community, irrespective of its compatibility or incompatibility with thewider social order. The religious horizon of the outward orientation iswider, that of the inward less tested,A second relevant meaning variable is that invoking traditionversus that of breaking with tradition, Tradition implies a continuity across generations; but precisely because the lifeworlds ofgenerations differ, the thi!!gs which would be continuous aregrasped in different ways,\The comprgmises of one generationcompose the constitutions of the nex1\, Continuity in traditiontherefore requires change, even if only a change of the perceptionof where the continuity is found in the matter of tradition, Thebelief in the divinity ofJesus ofNazareth, for example, would be abold innovation to one generation anda received truth to another.For one generation to set aside much of the Jewish Torah and tokeep only its moral code and prophetic spiritualitywas a breaking

of tradition; it was a religious revolution, Those who did that werenot simplyneglecting an aspect of an earlier religious heritage butcalling their new pattern of conduct religious; that was a seriousdeparture, But for a subsequent generation to materially retainthat same pattern of conduct is not breaking with the immediatetradition but maintaining it, although being at odds with a moreremote tradition, Thus, the second-generation Christians had toadopt a far different social psychology-maintaining what wasreceived rather than breaking with it-in the course of upholdingthe same religion the first generation had upheld,

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4, Criterionfor anewcanon

Behind the Image

2, Legitimator

A Typology ofCharisma Construction Processes

OutwardorientationInwardorientation

Using the two meaning variables just discussed, we can d e v e ~ o pa four-part typology that shouldbe informative about constructmgcharisma. Since these variables seemed relevant to the construction of Paul's posthumous charisma, we cannot expect them to beuseful in outlining the most important features of the constmctions of the charisma of other personages, Moreover, we cannotassume that there are not aspects of the history of developingPaul's charisma that this typology does not address, But thiStypology of alternatives should point to some of the ~ h o l c e s thewriters in question made when they constructed Paul s chansma(see Table 6--2), The social actors m questIon elected to lookoutward toward the wider society or to look mward mto the localchurch community; this electionmay have been elicited or. encouraged by their social locations, but they were notforced',Slmliarly,the social actors elected to invoke parts of JeWIsh traditIon or tobreak with those aspects of it that had formerly been accepted.Each of the types of Pauline charisma entailing these electIonsthus represents a process of construction that involved at least twochoices--one choice about whether to look outward or Inward,and one choice about theearlyChristians' Jewish heritage, ,In creating the founder charisma for Paul, Luke depicted hImasfavorably disposed toward both the political world and the JewIshheritage, This is rather surprising since Paul was, as mentIonedbefore, tried and executed by the Roman government and SIncehe argued against requiring Torah observances of the gentile

TABLE 6-2Types of Pauline Charisma- - - - - - - - - - - ; I ; - : n ~ v o k i n g Breakingtradition tradition

----,1',P"o=un=der ------,-3,'IvK.fa=r=ty:;::re;;id mm --innovator

I

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converts. Luke emphasizes, however, that Paul was innocent ofany offense against the Romans, that he was even a Romanc

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