In Christ, in Colossae: Sociological Perspectives on Colossians

Copyright © 2011 Derek J. Tidball

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First published 2011 by Paternoster

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Contents

Preface

Abbreviations

Map 1. Asia Minor: Major Trade Routes

Map 2. Lycus Valley

1   Why Sociological Perspectives on Colossians? Introduction and Orientation

Getting Our Bearings

Previous Studies on the Sociology of Colossians

Margaret MacDonald

Clinton Arnold

Colossians Remixed

The Authorship and Dating of Colossians

Conclusion

2   Colossae: Its History, People and Church

Colossae and the Lycus Valley

Colossae and Its History

Colossae and Its People

General orientation

Jewish population

Named individuals in the church

The barbarians and Scythians

Other factors

Conclusion

3   Conversion: How and Why People Became Christians in Colossae

The Religious Milieu in Colossae

Sociological Understanding of Conversion in the New Testament Period

Recent sociological discussions about the nature of conversion

The value of structuration theory

Application to Colossians

‘This you learned from Epaphras’ (1:7)

‘He has rescued us … transferred us’ (1:13)

‘As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord’ (2:6)

‘Put to death … clothe yourself with’ (3:5,12)

Why Did Christianity Prove Attractive to Converts?

Conclusion

4   Identity: The Construction of Personal and Social Identity

The Construction of Identity in Contemporary Sociological Thought

Application to New Testament Studies

Social Identity in the Greco-Roman World

Colossian Christian Identity: Unimportant Factors

Colossian Christian Identity: Important Factors

The problem and the strategy

The only category that matters: ‘in Christ’

A different perspective: the proposal of Van Broekhoven

Conclusion

5   Theology: The Social Construction of Belief

The Sociological Perspective

The Social Construction of Belief

Initial Application to the Apostolic Gospel

Application to Colossians

The maintenance mechanisms of Colossian theology

The construction of Colossian theology

Conclusion

6   Institutionalization: From Charisma to Institution

From Max Weber to Bengt Holmberg

Max Weber

Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann

Thomas O’Dea

Bengt Holmberg

Institutionalization in the Pauline Churches: The work of Margaret MacDonald

Application to Colossians

Charisma

Sect

Ritual

Doctrine

Ethics

Conclusion

7   Household: Its Significance for Ethics, Mission and Organization

The Significance of the Household in the Greco-Roman World

Households in the New Testament and at Colossae

The Colossian Household Ethical Code

Its originality

Regressive or progressive?

The Social and Missionary Implications of the Household in Early Christianity

Implications for mission

Implications for conversion

Implications for social integration

Implications for leadership

Conclusion

8   Culture: Values and Arrangements

Honour and Shame

Patrons, Brokers and Clients

Social roles in the early Mediterranean world

Application to Colossians

The Body: Physical and Symbolic

Purity: Clean and Unclean

Limited Good

Reading

Conclusion

9   Concluding Comments

Bibliography

Endnotes

Preface

As I write a younger brother has just been unexpectedly and controversially elected to lead the British Labour Party, when it was widely anticipated that his older brother would assume the role. Colossians and Ephesians strike me as brothers, and until recently Colossians has been comparatively neglected in favour of what is often considered to be the more theologically mature (though not chronologically older) letter to Ephesians. But younger brothers have a way of capturing attention and recently Colossians has been well served by commentators, and rightly so. Colossians contains some of the richest theological concepts and practical insights to be found in the New Testament.

Most commentators, however, live almost exclusively in the realm of ideas and are content endlessly to discuss the philosophic background to the so-called problem that is addressed in Colossians and that of the high theology that the letter adopts. Many lose sight of the fact that this letter was written to farmers and traders in wool who would have had no formal education and many of whom would have been illiterate. The readers were ordinary people – not post-Enlightenment theological graduates – eking out an existence in a precarious world. They did not read it in a vacuum but as people who had been shaped by the realities of their social lives and moulded by the social forces and currents at work in their culture. There is room, then, to shed light on the letter by reading it through sociological eyes and that is what I seek to do in this book.

Rather than writing a sociological commentary, my aim has been to explore, from a critical standpoint, a number of sociological themes, models and perspectives that are relevant to Colossians. Since the discipline of sociology is still a largely unknown field among New Testament scholars, although better known that it was, little prior sociological knowledge is assumed and I have made the deliberate choice to introduce the various perspectives in some detail before applying them to Colossians. I hope this fulfils the general aim of whetting the appetite and showing the relevance of reading the New Testament sociologically, as well as the particular aim of illuminating Colossians. Because I have adopted a thematic approach and sought to make each chapter stand alone, there is some overlap on occasions even though I have sought to keep this to a minimum.

The book has been gestating for some time. It was probably supervising Jonathan Green’s MA dissertation in 2002 that put it on my agenda. It was only after writing my manuscript that I looked again at his dissertation and realized what a subconscious influence it must have exercised on my thinking. Thank you, Jonathan! I owe a debt of gratitude to Mike Lowe who produced the maps with great efficiency. I am grateful for the use of the libraries at Spurgeon’s College, St John’s College, Nottingham, and London School of Theology and also, once more, to Jenny Aston for her detailed eye on my script. My other debts are numerous but I have tried to acknowledge my scholarly debts where I was conscious of them and apologize for any that I have inadvertently missed. In spite of those debts, the responsibility for what is written, as authors now customarily say, is mine.

Derek Tidball, Leicester, September 2010

Abbreviations

Asia Minor: Mojor Trade Routes

Lycus Valley

1

Why Sociological Perspectives on Colossians? Introduction and Orientation

Getting Our Bearings

‘Colossians could fairly be described as the most intriguing of the Pauline letters.’¹ This verdict by James Dunn would be shared by many for several reasons. First, the short letter to the Colossians sets out some of the most developed theology in New Testament literature. Its exposition of the person of Christ as a cosmic ruler and of the Christian believer as being already ‘raised with Christ’ (3:1) advance Christian understanding beyond its previous limits and anticipate the even grander claims of its companion letter to the Ephesians. Second, it is written to warn its readers that their belief in ‘the gospel’ (1:23) is in danger of being corrupted by false teaching, though it presents us with only a tantalizing glimpse of the nature of the threat which they face, with the result that much ink has been spilled trying to identify those who would destabilize the Colossians’ faith. Throw into the mix, third, the thought that the style and vocabulary of Colossians² have suggested to some that it is not written by the apostle Paul but originates after his time, and it is easy to see why it has been subject to a great deal of interest among scholars.³

For all the intrigue, however, attempts to interpret Colossians often seem to suffer from a two-fold failure. First, there is what might be called the ‘ideational fallacy’ whereby ideas are seen to have a life of their own and come into being as a result of intellectual discussion and then become determinative of belief.⁴ Stephen Barton has rightly pointed out that this is a reductionist approach to theology which leaves our understanding deficient.⁵ The theology of Colossians did not emerge as a result of pure intellectual debate but developed, as did all the other New Testament letters, as a result of the apostles grappling on the front line of missionary advance with the urgent pastoral questions thrown up by the churches they planted.

Second, and not unrelatedly, many scholars fail to bear in mind the original readership of the letter and convey the impression that its recipients were high-flying students in the theological faculties of the world’s best universities. They see the readers as if they were made in their own image. In doing so they commit what has been called the ‘docetic fallacy’ and strip the readers of their real humanity, show little understanding of the social context or of ways in which the social norms, the community’s needs and real-life conflicts are managed.⁶

One of the most intriguing aspects of Colossians is that its highly developed theology was addressed to people who were farmers, shepherds, wool dyers and market traders – ordinary men and women, concerned to make a living (probably it would be correct to say, ‘scrape a living’) so they could survive in a very precarious world.⁷ This is not to say that they were unintelligent. Some of the most intelligent people I have known were not formally educated but self-taught coalminers who developed a thirst for learning as a result of their Methodist roots. It is rather to comment on the sort of intelligence they would have had and the nature of the world in which they lived. It was a practical intelligence. The grand ideas with which they would have wrestled in the church in Colossae would have involved a thoroughly ‘downto-earth’⁸ approach to the practical issues of everyday living. Unless we take the readers and their circumstances into account our interpretation is liable to miss the significance of what is being said.

Sociologists are quite as capable of committing both the ideational and docetic fallacies as other academics, and of losing sight of real people in their discussion of explanations, in their proposing of models and their development of theories. But, given that the raison d’être of sociology is to seek to understand social relationships and to explain their common patterns and changing nature over time, they, at least in principle, stand a better chance than those who are immersed solely in the realm of ideas of not losing sight of ‘real’ people in their discussions.

Most commentaries on Colossians helpfully begin by describing the town and its history (ground which we will cover in the next chapter) but then do not connect the subsequent exposition of the letter to what has been said in the introduction. By using the tools of sociological analysis we hope to illuminate the text itself and shed light on both what lies behind it and how it functions, always keeping its readers and their situation in focus.

Sociology offers no single perspective in interpreting social relationships but offers a variety of methods, models and theories to explain social behaviour. In recent years a growing volume of literature has applied various sociological approaches to the New Testament with varying degrees of success.⁹ Most valuable, perhaps, has been the work of the ‘Social Context Group’ who, using chiefly the tools of anthropology, have advanced our understanding of early Mediterranean people and their culture, although even this has been not without controversy.¹⁰ They have made a special contribution in challenging the individualistic assumptions we late moderns bring to our interpretations of the text. Yet, the application of some present-day models, such as class, status, or organizational theory, has sometimes proved problematic and needs to be used with care. Social historians have been particularly sceptical, and rightly so, about reading back contemporary patterns to the ancient world and prefer to deal in the particulars of events rather than generalizations. But generalizations have their place. There is value in the close-up photograph presented by the social historian, but there is also value in the more distant, wide-angled photograph presented by sociologists. The latter must be consistent with the former but is not in competition or conflict with it.

No single perspective is ever adequate to explain human behaviour because all human behaviour is complex and multi-layered. Max Weber, the greatest of the founding fathers of sociology, was surely right in seeing that ‘every generalisation was a precarious victory over the infinite complexity of the facts’.¹¹ Generalizations should be treated with a certain amount of caution and no single generalization is ever sufficient. Nonetheless, they have their place and give us a true, if partial, insight into reality. Human behaviour manifestly demonstrates recurring arrangements as well as unique circumstances, common patterns as well as singular actions.

Consequently, the approach taken in this book is to view the letter to the Colossians through various sociological lenses to bring its teaching into focus. They act as filters through which we may interpret its meaning. It uses more than one lens because no single lens provides us with a comprehensive picture. Various models or perspectives are called into play in order that we might gain a variety of insights and a fuller understanding of the church there. Some lenses will provide a sharper picture than others and we may therefore conclude that some are more useful than others.

Previous Studies on the Sociology of Colossians

By the start of the twenty-first century, a variety of sociological theories and models had been applied to the books of the New Testament. Some, like 1 Corinthians, have provoked a wealth of sociological comment and analysis, starting, in this case, with Gerd Theissen’s seminal work, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, which first appeared in English in 1982,¹² up to and beyond David Horrell’s more recent, The Social Ethos of the Corinthians Correspondence: Interest and Ideology from 1 Corinthians to 1 Clement,¹³ with numerous journal articles in between and since. The same could be said of most New Testament books, although Colossians has been less well served than others. As yet, for example, although social-science commentaries have been published on most of the New Testament, including Revelation, a commentary on Colossians and Ephesians, and the General Epistles, is still awaited.¹⁴

There are probably several reasons for the relative neglect of Colossians.

1.  Paul never visited Colossae and was not directly involved in the founding of the church there, and so it lacks the immediacy and even the wider dimension of relationships of some of his other writings.

2.  Colossians yields less sociological data than other letters, especially when compared to the Corinthians Correspondence or Philemon.

3.  Colossae declined in importance as a city after it experienced an earthquake in 61 AD¹⁵ and no longer played the significant role that other cities, such as nearby Ephesus or Laodicea, did.

4.  Unlike Ephesus and many other New Testament sites, Colossae has only recently begun to be excavated and little has been learned so far from archaeological evidence. We have to rely on evidence from the surrounding area, which almost certainly applies to Colossae as well, but the absence of actual local evidence inevitably creates hesitancy in the claims that can be made.

5.  The uncertainty over the date and authorship of the letter means we can be less confident about the relevance of some sociological approaches than we can be in other contexts.

The relative neglect of this intriguing letter is nonetheless somewhat surprising since what has been published in the area demonstrates the fruitfulness of the field. Two scholars who have contributed significant works for any sociological understanding of Colossians are Margaret Y. MacDonald and Clinton Arnold. Both have laid good foundations for further research.

Margaret MacDonald

Margaret MacDonald published her doctoral thesis in 1988 in which she employed sociological tools to understand the process of transformation that the early church underwent from its formation in the middle of the first century into the second.¹⁶ The theory she chose as her primary perspective was that of institutionalization. MacDonald builds on the work of Berger and Luckmann, who in turn were building on the work of Max Weber.¹⁷ The theory proposes that what begins as a free and unstructured movement, led by a charismatic leader, soon settles into more of a routine and develops structure, as actions are repeated and become typical, in contrast to one-off actions, and as habits (or habituated behaviour) begin to emerge. The questions any such movement faces are not asked de novo each time but, after a time, are met by ready-made answers. The process of institutionalization is advanced by the challenges thrown up when the original charismatic leader either passes from the scene, or merely becomes weary and less active. As this process unfolds, the movement becomes less flexible, less open to novel directions, and more fixed in its structures, customs and patterns of behaviour. This process of a movement ‘ageing’ is known as institutionalization.

The process of institutionalization has implications not only for the ways things are done but also for the attitudes and motivations of those involved. The founding generation are usually very focused and indifferent to personal reward. Those who join later are typically less single-minded and more concerned about rewards and their rights. As time passes questions are also raised about why things are done in a certain way and the rightness of views that are held, leading to a discussion of what is termed ‘legitimation’.

The Pauline churches make an ideal case for a study of institutionalization, especially if you believe, as MacDonald does, that Colossians was written by a disciple of Paul, either just before or just after his death, and that Ephesians and the Pastoral Letters were definitely post-Pauline.

MacDonald divides the Pauline letters into three groups that reflect an early, middle or late phase in the early churches’ life. MacDonald calls the first, which relates to those letters of Paul that all agree to be genuine, the community-building phase; the second, which involves Colossians and Ephesians, is called the community-stabilizing phase; and, the third, which refers to the Pastoral Letters, is called the community-protecting phase of institutionalization. She then examines each phase from the viewpoint of what it says about attitudes to the world/ethics; ministry; ritual and belief. The result is an insightful study with many implications for the study of Colossians, even if it suffers perhaps from being occasionally contrived to fit the scheme of institutionalization.

Subsequently, MacDonald applied her skills to a full-length commentary on Colossians and Philemon, which is distinctive in its approach from other commentaries in that it capitalizes on a sociological interpretation of the letters. She situates this commentary in the context of her earlier study of institutionalization and aims particularly to investigate the changes and development that the letter reveals in the second phase of the life of the Pauline churches. ‘Insights from Weberian sociology,’ she writes, ‘are employed to help us comprehend the challenges faced by the Pauline circle in the face of the imprisonment and death of its central leader.’¹⁸ In fact, a plethora of sociological tools is brought to bear on the text, even if institutionalization remains of primary interest throughout. So in this commentary we encounter concepts of charisma, legitimacy, sectarianism, in-group and out-group, boundaries, rituals, social construction of theology, liminality, symbolism, initiation rites and social roles, alongside a discussion of the social values of patronage, purity, honour and gender.

Given MacDonald’s excellent work, why is another book on the sociology of Colossians necessary? Three reasons might be offered by way of defence. First, given the nature of a commentary much of the sociological insight MacDonald offers is scattered throughout her text and embedded in the midst of other comments. There is a place for a work that makes sociological perspectives explicit, draws them together, and brings them to the front of the