Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting, Revised Edition by Robert J. Banks

Author:Robert J. Banks [Banks, Robert J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Reference
ISBN: 9780801045547
Google: 31ZGngEACAAJ
Amazon: 0801045541
Barnesnoble: 0801045541
Goodreads: 10105211
Publisher: Baker Academic
Published: 1986-12-31T22:00:00+00:00

THE REDIRECTION OF RACE, CLASS,

AND GENDER DISTINCTIONS

This diversity can be demonstrated by considering ways in which the differences between each of these groups continued to play some part in the life of Paul’s communities.

Jews and Gentiles in the communities

Most of Paul’s communities contained a reasonable proportion of Jews. As long as Paul’s preaching in the cities began in the synagogue, this was bound to be the case, though God-fearers probably responded more freely to his message and formed the numerical base of his churches. In some places, such as Philippi, a Gentile Christian community seems to have existed from the start, but this was the exception.[18] Although, as we have seen, the Jews possessed no special advantage so far as acceptance into the Christian community was concerned, Paul can speak of their being favored over others by virtue of their role in God’s program for humanity’s salvation.[19] In this respect Paul does not view the Christian community, with its predominantly Gentile membership, as altogether replacing Israel in God’s purposes.

In the first place, Gentiles have only been “grafted on” to the Jewish olive tree (Rom 11:17). And though they have temporarily become the locus of God’s saving work in the world, he still reserves a future role for Israel.[20] Even in the present, converted Jews play a prominent part in communicating the message of Christ, not only to other Jews but to non-Jews as well (Rom 1:1). All this lends weight to the suggestion that Jewish converts, because of their knowledge of the OT, had an important teaching function in the initial stages of church life.

More general differences also emerged between Jewish and Gentile Christians within Paul’s communities. Converted Jews and Gentiles tended to carry past religious and cultural patterns of behavior into their new way of life. Jews in particular, in the dispersion as well as in Jerusalem, continued to adhere to certain revered customs, such as observance of the Sabbath day and abstinence from particular kinds of food and drink. The distinction Paul draws between the “strong” and the “weak” in Romans probably reflects this difference in lifestyle (chs. 14–15). There he distinguishes between “one who believes he may eat anything” and “esteems all days alike” and the other who “eats only vegetables” and “esteems one day as better than another.” This is not to say that some Jews did not break through to a freer attitude on such matters or that on occasions Gentiles did not maintain habits adopted from the synagogue. The distinction between “strong” and “weak” does not in all respects correspond to that between “Gentile” and “Jewish” Christians, but there must have been a considerable overlap between the two.

Paul allows such cultural differences to coexist within his communities provided each person acts with integrity before God and does not put pressure upon others to conform (Rom 14:20–23). The “strong”—among whom Paul counts himself—have to be particularly sensitive here (15:1). But when Jewish Christians turn what is a matter of lifestyle into a criterion of salvation

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