The Benefaction Convention. Bruce Winter created something of a stir with the publication of his book, Seek the Welfare of the City (1994),[1] named for the Jeremianic exhortation to an exiled Israel: “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf; for in its welfare you will have welfare” (Jer. 29:7 NASB). Winter mines literary and epigraphic evidence from as early as the third century B.C.E. and into the latter part of the first century C.E. documenting the custom of the public honoring of benefactors. Winter shows that in the Greco-Roman world, it was considered one of the responsibilities of local rulers to reward well-to-do benefactors—whose benefactions contributed to the general welfare of the city—with public recognition. Typically, a council would convene and a benefactor would be named for possible recognition. The kinds of benefactions the public recognized included “supplying grain in times of necessity by diverting the grain-carrying ships to the city, forcing down the price by selling it in the market below the asking rate, erecting public buildings or adorning old buildings with marble revetments such as in Corinth, refurbishing the theatre, widening roads, helping in the construction of public utilities, going on embassies to gain privileges for the city, and helping the city in times of civil upheaval” (37). Such benefactors would be recognized publicly in a pompous ceremony, in which the benefactor is crowned, named honorable and noble, and in which an inscription would be erected for public viewing, which would name the benefactor and detail “the benefaction” (ton agathon) in his honor. In Athenian society, there were even laws about where and how the ceremony must take place—specifically, it was required to take place at the theater, and only at a noteworthy, populated event. Winter argues that the kind of good work that was conventionally rewarded thus is precisely the kind of good work (ton agathon) Paul is encouraging in 13:3-4.

His thesis certainly has some explanatory power. Cranfield marveled how Paul could with such “absolute assurance” promise the good doer the praise of the civil authority (1979: 655, n.1). The only way Cranfield was able to explain Paul’s “absolute assurance” we have already noted in our section on the Stoic Interpretation: by allowing the “for your good” of verse 4 to include the most heinous injustices. Winter’s explanation, conversely, has some sense about it. Winter provides primary literary evidence which indicates how firmly established this custom of the public honoring of benefactors was in Greco-Roman society. The sources show that

great importance was attached to meeting the obligation with gratitude. Some saw this obligation not simply as a cultural convention but as ‘a law.’ Benefactions could be called ‘loans’ which were to be repaid with gratitude or, if not properly acknowledged, reclaimed with monetary compensation. Such was the expectation of the benefactor that due recognition would be given in the appropriate way. Others saw failure to acknowledge public works adequately as a sin. (29-30)

In one instance, the famous benefactor Demosthenes had to wait six years to receive a public ceremony on account of an opposition group that raised legal objections to his being recognized after he was recommended for recognition by the “Council of the People.” Demosthenes submitted a complaint of personal injury contingent upon the possibility of his never being recognized, despite the fact that this would not be the first time he had undergone the ceremony (32-33).

For Winter, the rigid legalism in which this custom was fixed is the only possible explanation for what Cranfield called Paul’s “absolute assurance” that the doer of the agathon would be praised by the civil authorities. “It demonstrates that the semantic field from which these words come was that of public benefactions,” and further proves that Paul was “on very secure ground promising Christian benefactors public recognition” (36). Moreover, Winter argues that the agathon of 13:3 could not be merely a general upstanding morality. “In writing to the Christians in the vast city of Rome, how could Paul expect the emperor or those in authority to observe their good works, if the reference is simply to unspecified good moral conduct” (36-37)?

Finally, Winter sees the shift from the plural “you” in v. 3 to the singular “you” in v. 4 as an indication that Paul has gone from addressing the Christian community as a whole, to the individual Christian. This switch is vital for Winter’s argument, in fact, because one of the chief objections many of his critics have raised has to do with the economic capacity of the early Christian communities even to be able to contemplate engaging in the kind of benefaction that merited the attention of the civil authorities and the recognition of the city (e.g. Walters 1996: 537). Winter anticipates this problem when he writes that “the cost of a benefaction was very considerable and beyond the ability of some, if not most, members of the church” (37). Unfortunately, the acumen evident in his anticipation of the problem does not recur in his solution to it: “There must have been Christians of very considerable means to warrant Paul’s injunction in verse 3” (37). The reasoning is circular. Winter recognizes a challenge to his thesis and dismisses it simply by reasserting the thesis.

In actuality, however, the transition from the plural in v. 3 to the singular in v. 4 is much better explained with reference to a rhetorical transition to the diatribe style, as Paul does elsewhere, such as in 1 Corinthians 7:21, 27-28 (Towner 1999: 166). But there are additional problems with Winter’s thesis.

Winter believes that Romans 13:3-4 is so similar linguistically to inscriptions honoring benefactors that the particular agathon in 13:3 must be a reference to public benefaction, but, as Walters points out, the vernacular (agathon, epainos) “is also typical of Greco-Roman moral exhortation. Therefore, limiting the usage to inscriptions honoring benefactors requires compelling reasons” (1996: 537). Walters concedes that if Paul had made specific reference to the kinds of good deeds Winter has in mind, or if Paul had referred to the “council and the people” as those who bestow honor on the benefactor, the referent of agathon would be unmistakable. However, 13:3-4 is situated in a parenetic context (12:1-13:14), and because 13:3a clearly refers to good and bad conduct in general, a more general, moral sense of agathon in 13:3b is more likely (537-38).

Another problem for Winter is his assumption, embedded in the title of his book, that “the good work” of 13:3 is to be performed for the welfare of the politeia. What Winter does not address is the fact that Paul clearly saw the ekklesia as an alternative politeia. Paul speaks elsewhere of doing “the good,” but specifically locates those good works within the reciprocity of the Christian polity. Although outsiders are not excluded, it is the “household of faith” that is specifically targeted (Gal. 6:10). And although Paul is often about the business of fundraising for economic relief, there is not one instance in any of his letters or in Acts in which Paul is raising money for the city. In every case, the object of the benefaction Paul is advocating is some local body of believers (e.g. 2 Cor. 8). Paul indeed advocates benefaction, but in specifics, he only ever does so within the politeia of believers. Although I am sure Paul would not discourage a benefactor from seeking the welfare of the city, we do not have extant a specific example of Paul’s having encouraged it.

In fact—and perhaps this is an unfortunate fact—the evidence for early Christian social work, outside of Christian circles, is scant indeed. It is evident from both pagan and Christian accounts that the peculiar attraction of Christianity in the first few Christian centuries had nothing at all to do with public benefactions, and everything to do with the welfare provided within the Christian community (cf. Kreider 1999: 10-20). Winter reads into texts like Romans 13:3-4 and 1 Peter 2:14-16 a sort of apologetic strategy.[2] He argues that the “public acknowledgement of a generous Christian benefactor by crowning him as a noble person and the permanent reminder of the benefaction on an inscription would be the means of refuting unfounded rumours against a Christian as being a man of ill-will or a threat to the peace and welfare of a city” (39). Yet when the first Christian apologists appealed to the good works of Christians against charges of sedition, the “benefactions” Winter envisions are conspicuously absent from their apologies:

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. The course of conduct which they follow has not been devised by any speculation or deliberation of inquisitive men; nor do they, like some, proclaim themselves the advocates of any merely human doctrines. But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers. They marry, as do all [others]; they beget children; but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven. They obey the prescribed laws, and at the same time surpass the laws by their lives. They love all men, and are persecuted by all. They are unknown and condemned; they are put to death, and restored to life. They are poor, yet make many rich; they are in lack of all things, and yet abound in all; they are dishonored, and yet in their very dishonor are glorified. They are evil spoken of, and yet are justified; they are reviled, and bless; they are insulted, and repay the insult with honor; they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers. When punished, they rejoice as if quickened into life; they are assailed by the Jews as foreigners, and are persecuted by the Greeks; yet those who hate them are unable to assign any reason for their hatred. (Epistle to Diognetus 7:3-9)

It is noteworthy here that the writer of the epistle blatantly contradicts Romans 13:3 when he writes that “they do good, yet are punished as evil-doers.” What is noteworthy about it is that the good conduct described here is the very same kind that marked Paul’s life (not public benefactions in the conventional sense), as is the punishment for it, even prior to the writing of Romans.

Yet perhaps the most devastating critique of Winter’s thesis has been leveled by Jewett. After noting that Paul had already made clear elsewhere his acute awareness of the disparity between Roman ideology and Roman reality (1 Cor. 2:6-8), what Jewett finds more problematic with Winter’s thesis is that it asks Paul to conform “to the tradition of desiring epainoV (‘praise, commendation’) from human officials.” Jewett points out that in Paul’s “earlier letters, such praise is considered legitimate only if it comes from God, and emphatically not from foreign governmental authorities” (793). Winter’s reading of 13:3-4 fits Paul squarely within the timocratic tradition. It is an appeal to “those who are ambitious for honour” (Winter 1994: 38). Winter even goes so far as to suggest that Paul sees this timocratic arrangement as the fulfillment of Romans 2:10: the ruler becomes the “vicegerent” through whom God lavishes glory, honor and peace upon everyone who does the benefaction (38). It is difficult to see how such a reading does not immediately pit Paul against the Jesus tradition (e.g. Matt. 6, esp. vv. 1-4). Surely, if a reading that places Paul in continuity with the Jesus tradition is exegetically feasible, such a reading ought to be considered superior to any reading that pits Jesus and Paul against one another.

Towner, in dialogue with Winter, suggests just such a reading. While Towner finds Winter’s thesis generally persuasive (1999: 165), he rejects Winter’s claim that Paul is primarily addressing wealthy Christians in 13:3-4 (166). Towner notes that the movement into the first person singular in 3:4 is a movement into the diatribe style, which still addresses all believers; Paul is not singling anyone out. Towner accepts Winter’s locating of Paul’s language within the semantic range of the benefaction convention, but argues that Paul reshapes the convention “in order to apply it to the entire Christian community.” By thus targeting the entire community—rich and poor alike—with the exhortation to seek the welfare of the city, Paul is encouraging a “surprising reversal of values.”

By applying the benefaction matrix to another text in the Pauline tradition, 1 Timothy 6:2, Towner argues that “Christian slaves are called on to serve their believing masters in a way that reverses the benefaction convention and redefines it” (166).[3] Specifically, benefaction is “redefined in resonance with the Jesus tradition” (Luke 22:25-27) which “places a subversive question mark over the social reality of slavery” (167). Significantly, Towner’s position transcends the critique of Jewett, who rightly pointed out that Winter’s reading put Paul at odds with the Jesus tradition which turned the timocratic system on its head. But Towner writes that in “God’s surprising oikonomia slaves serve humbly from the position of power; in fact, nobility and honor, the rewards of benefaction, are accorded here to the slaves” (167).

Towner then proceeds to argue that Romans 13:3-4 represents a similar “co-opting of benefaction.” Here it is not the slave, but the entire Christian community in Rome, that exists in a “(presumed) position of weakness.” According to Towner, “a convention normally associated with the powerful ‘haves’ is co-opted for the ‘have-nots.’” Thus, the concept of benefaction itself, specifically what constitutes benefaction, is radicalized:

The church—powerless, poor, marginalized, and without any official political status in the empire—is directed to participate in the public life of society through humble service, taking the role, again spiritually and in defiance of appearances, of the honorable benefactor. The good it dispenses will be ‘for the welfare of the city,’ but on God’s terms the good goes beyond maintaining the city to transforming it. . . . The call of God directs the church to engage fully in the world in order to bring about transformation of its ways and values. Within that grander missiological and eschatological reality (e.g., chs. 9-11; 15:7-13), benefaction expands to become a responsibility of the church as a whole. . . . Thus Paul’s co-opting of the cultural convention serves to orientate the church in its transforming engagement in the world. (168)

This reading helps to reconcile Paul’s missiology with the fact, noted earlier, of the early church’s relatively isolationist social welfare program. Towner sees Paul as the architect of a sub-politeia that resides within the larger politeia, permeating it, ultimately transforming it as it challenges and subverts unjust structures through counter-formations that put the marginalized at the center. Thus Towner, so influenced by Winter, is nevertheless able to overcome most of the critiques that have, in my opinion, devastated Winter’s otherwise interesting thesis.

Labels: New Perspective on Paul, Paul, Pauline Theology, Romans 13