Review of David E. Briones, Paul’s Financial Policy: A Socio-Theological Approach

RBL 06/2015 David E. Briones Paul’s Financial Policy: A Socio-theological Approach Library of New Testament Studies 494 London: Bloomsbury, 2013. Pp. xiv + 258. Hardcover. $112.00. ISBN 9780567623782.

Julien M. Ogereau Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin Berlin, Germany This book is a (slightly) revised version of a doctoral dissertation written under the supervision of J. M. G. Barclay at Durham University and completed in 2011.1 The aim of the volume is to illuminate Paul’s financial policy, a topic that has hitherto never been the subject of a monograph and that, according to Briones, has thus far been treated sporadically, succinctly, and, quite often, tendentiously, in modern scholarship.2 Briones’s effort to offer a “sustained, balanced, and narrowly focused thesis” (1) on the question is therefore a welcome, and indeed important, contribution to the issue. Regardless of whatever disagreements Pauline scholars might have with certain aspects of his exegesis and overall argumentation, they should find themselves grateful to Briones’s groundbreaking and stimulating work. Briones endeavors to answer two major questions that have long puzzled New Testament scholars and that, according to him, have been answered “erroneously” and “insufficiently” (1–2): “(i) why did Paul refuse pay for the gospel (1 Cor. 9; 1 Thess. 2), 1. David E. Briones, “Paul’s Financial Policy: A Socio-Theological Approach” (Ph.D. diss., Durham University, 2011). 2. Briones omits Dachollom C. Datiri’s interesting dissertation, which was, unfortunately, never published: “Finances in the Pauline Churches: A Socio-exegetical Study of the Funding of Paul’s Mission and the Financial Administration of his Congregation” (Ph.D. diss., University of Sheffield, 1996).

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but gladly accept financial support from the Philippians (Phil. 4:10–20)?; and (ii) why did he accept from the Philippians and others (2 Cor. 11:8–9), but stridently refuse from the Corinthians, despite the offence this caused (2 Cor. 11–12)?” (1). In other words, Briones proposes to offer a coherent solution to Paul’s seemingly inconsistent attitude vis-à-vis monetary support. He purports to do so by conducting a sociotheological and exegetical examination of selected passages and by developing a three-dimensional model to construe Paul’s relationships with God and his disciples. Thereby, Briones seeks to correct what he perceives to be lopsided treatments of the question, which have omitted key sociocultural aspects, such as ancient rules of (gift) exchange, and/or have developed anachronistic interpretations of these texts. Briones begins his investigation by offering, in a first chapter, a critical review and appraisal of the most influential approaches to the question so far, approaches that he divides into five main categories (psychological; economical; moral/ethical; theological; sociological, which is itself divided into four subcategories). Briones’s lucid and critical engagement with former interpretations sets the scene nicely for his own contribution, highlighting unresolved difficulties and biases and providing cogent arguments for a sociotheological perspective that would seek to “account for the sociological dimensions of Paul’s theology as well as the theological dimensions of Paul’s sociology, with a particular focus on giving and receiving” (19; see 19–23 for further justification of his methodological approach). In a second chapter Briones endeavors to locate Paul and his communities in their sociocultural and ideological milieu in order to “enlarge our understanding of his theology of giving and receiving in the economy of χάρις” (25). He undermines the dominant view that Paul related to his disciples within a patronage model and challenges modern, and therefore more or less anachronistic, understandings of ancient gift exchange. Meanwhile, he introduces an oft-overlooked pattern of exchange in the ancient world: the “patron-broker-client” relationship, which is characterized by a “three way bond between a source (patron), a mediator (broker), and a beneficiary (client)” (39), which alters the classic features of patronage. Briones then proposes to turn to Seneca, whom he deems to be “a suitable dialogue partner on the obligation and self-interest in giving” (23), thus an insightful comparative point of reference to shed further light on Paul’s economic exchanges with the Corinthians and Philippians. Briones’s nuanced and culturally sensitive analysis of the real purpose and dynamics of Roman patronage brings a refreshing perspective to a debate that has often indulged in grossly delineated definitions of patronage, benefaction, and reciprocity. His presentation of the variegated forms of social reciprocity and gift exchange in antiquity is also helpful and a good reminder of the diversity of options (of socioeconomic relations) available to

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the ancient. One might regret that Briones spends so little time laying out the main reasons for his considering Paul’s “own version of “mutual brokerage’” as “a more fitting model” than patronage (40), however,3 for it immediately gives the impression that Briones will later approach the key texts with his mind already made up as to what is a more appropriate model (rather than attempt to derive it from the primary sources themselves), notwithstanding his reassurance in a footnote that “the brokerage model … will be extracted from the text itself” (41 n. 85). Briones’s sole appeal to and reliance on Seneca’s De beneficiis, which reflects the cultural codes, values, and ideology of an intensely aristocratic milieu, to reconstruct Paul’s sociocultural environment, which had little, if anything, to do with a Roman senatorial context, is also perplexing.4 Erecting Seneca as the canon of ancient gift exchange always presents the risk of replacing modern biases by ancient aristocratic ones. Yet what is more baffling is that Briones, along with many other New Testament scholars, ignores entirely (to his/their own detriment) the wealth of epigraphic evidence from the Greek East, which, as J. R. Harrison (among others) has magisterially demonstrated more than a decade ago, provide us with a much more concrete and accurate depiction of the inner workings of patronage, benefaction, and social reciprocity at Paul’s own ground level.5 In the remaining three chapters Briones offers a detailed sociohistorical, exegetical, and theological analysis of selected passages such as Phil 1, 2:25–30, 4:10–20 (ch. 3), 1 Cor 9 (ch. 4), and 2 Cor 10–13 (ch. 5). Chapter 3, by far the longest, focuses specifically on Paul’s “positive gift-giving relationship” with the Philippians (58). It attempts to unpack the socioeconomic and theological significance and dynamics of what B. Holmberg once qualified as a “full, trusting κοινωνία” between Paul and the Philippians (58)6 and which Briones redefines as “a mutual relationship that involves finances and suffering” (60), “a mutual sharing in gospel advancement, grace, suffering, and finances” (63). While much insight is to be gleaned from Briones’s exegesis of Philippians, one remains puzzled as to why at this stage he interacts so little with Seneca or with the ancient models of gift exchange and reciprocity he has previously reviewed in introduction, why he hardly explores philologically the economic termini technici Paul deploys in the letter, 3. These reasons were explained in an earlier article by Briones with which readers of the book may or may not be familiar: “Mutual Brokers of Grace: A Study in 2 Corinthians 1.3–11,” NTS 56 (2010): 536–56. 4. Briones’s use of Seneca seems to fulfill a single role: to undermine modern Western understandings of the “ideal” or “pure” gift in Pauline thought (see esp. 56–57), after which Seneca disappears from the picture almost completely. 5. James R. Harrison, Paul’s Language of Grace in Its Graeco-Roman Context, WUNT 2/172 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003). 6. See Bengt Holmberg, Paul and Power: The Structure of Authority in the Primitive Church as Reflected in the Pauline Epistles (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 91.

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and why he settles for what is effectively a very vague definition of κοινωνία (from a philological and sociohistorical perspective). One deduces that Briones understand this κοινωνία to consist of a three-way “patron-broker-client” relationship in which God provides the χάρις commodity, which Paul and the Philippians, as “alternating mediators [and clients, presumably] of his divine beneficence” (115), mutually exchange as need arises (see 93, 98–99, 104, 113–15, 128–30). But one will be very hard pressed to find such an understanding of κοινωνία in the ancient sources. The last two chapters are equally engaging and focus on Paul’s “negative relationship” with the Philippians through an analysis of 1 Cor 9 and 2 Cor 10–13 (primarily). The governing concern remains that of explaining the possible reason(s) and factor(s) of Paul’s refusal of the Corinthians’ gift. Put simply, Briones argues that the sociological, theological, and relational preconditions were not met for a “full, trusting κοινωνία of gift and suffering” to operate and flourish (177–79, 218) and that the Corinthians lacked in spiritual maturity (217). Certain issues arise from Briones’s argumentation (e.g., the “social ethos” of the local Corinthian population, as well as its “celebration of wealth and honour,” is likely to have been very similar to that of the Philippian population, though perhaps superior in intensity; see Hellerman’s omitted study),7 but it is his solution to the conundrum of Paul’s financial policy that should retain our attention, for it is perhaps his most important contribution to scholarship. Briones avers that two distinct stages in Paul’s missionary strategy ought to be distinguished (219–20): (1) Paul enters and preaches the gospel in city A while remaining self-supportive and financially independent (to distinguish himself from sophists, itinerant philosophers, and other teachers and to draw attention to God as the original source of the gospel); (2) Paul moves to city B, where stage 1 is repeated, while he receives material assistance from the church in city A. Thus, Paul’s apparent “double standard” can easily be explained by “an overlapping of the stages” (220). Whatever minor or major disagreements one might still have with other aspects of Briones’s work, his clear and original answer to a vexed question makes his study a worthwhile read, and indeed, an important contribution to Pauline scholarship.

7. Joseph H. Hellerman, Reconstructing Honor in Roman Philippi: Carmen Christi as Cursus Pudorum, SNTSMS 132 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

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