1. Introduction
It seems fitting that at a time when democracy is under attack and in the place where democracy was born we should devote some consideration to the question raised in the title of this paper: how democratic was the Pauline ekklēsia? Several recent studies have argued for the relevance of the ‘civic assembly’ as a context for the adoption by Paul of the term ἐκκλησία as a designation for the Christ groups he established in the cities of Greece and Asia Minor.Footnote 1 Other studies have insisted upon the importance of democratic ideology for a proper understanding of the issues and debates reflected in Paul's Corinthian correspondence.Footnote 2 These studies stand in tension with older scholarship which emphasised the role of patronage in the structure and dynamics of the house churches that made up the ekklēsia of Christ-believers at Corinth.Footnote 3 The emergence of this new perspective coincides with and builds upon recent research into the political sociology of Greek cities in the early Empire, which highlights evidence of the continuing vitality of democratic assemblies (ekklēsiai) in the first and second centuries, despite the limitations imposed upon local autonomy by Roman rule.Footnote 4
This paper will first summarise the arguments of some of the principal contributors to the new perspective on the democratic character of the Pauline assemblies. Then, we shall briefly examine the vocabulary and topoi of Paul's epistles for evidence of a democratic ideology that Paul may have shared with some members of his Corinthian audience. We shall focus attention upon a handful of incidents in the life of the Christ groups at Corinth that seem to attest a lively democratic practice. Alongside these indications of democratic conventions, we must place other pieces of information that permit inferences about the organisation and leadership of the Christ groups at Corinth. Whatever inferences may seem warranted must be evaluated in the context of first-century Corinth, whose political institutions and social relations were those of a Roman colony, so as to ascertain whether the politics of the Christ groups mimicked those of the city in which they were located or represented an alternative. With due caution, we shall seek to determine the origin and function of the democratic sentiments on display at several points in the Corinthian epistles. Was Paul the auctor of democracy in the Christ assemblies at Corinth? Or was Paul the agent, the spokesman of a group of Corinthians whose understanding of the politics of community decisively shaped Paul's rhetoric? In conclusion, we shall employ a working definition of ‘democracy’ derived from historians of popular government in the Greco-Roman world, in order to assess whether the ekklēsia of Christ-believers at Corinth in the time of Paul was truly democratic.
2. Some Recent Studies
In 2012, George van Kooten published an essay in which he took issue with the scholarly consensus that the term ἐκκλησία as used in the Pauline epistles derived from the Septuagint as a translation of the Hebrew qahal in reference to an assembly of persons for a religious purpose.Footnote 5 Instead, van Kooten argued that the political meaning of ἐκκλησία as the ‘people's assembly’ of Greek cities in the Roman Empire was determinative for Paul's adoption of the term as a designation for the communities he established.Footnote 6 By calling the Christ groups ἐκκλησίαι, Paul wished to portray his communities as alternative organisations existing alongside the Greek civic assemblies.Footnote 7 Van Kooten's essay went beyond a lexical study of the term ἐκκλησία, delineating a series of functional parallels between the Pauline communities and the civic assemblies: both were places of moral instruction; both were characterised by factional strife; both privileged rational discourse over mania; both were accessible to the public.Footnote 8
Young-Ho Park's 2015 monograph, Paul's Ekklēsia as a Civic Assembly, seeks to determine what Paul intended by using the term ἐκκλησία to designate the groups of Christ-believers that he established, and what the word may have meant to the first Christians.Footnote 9 A major contribution of Park's study is a detailed history of the ekklēsia in the Greco-Roman world, outlining the scope and power of the democratic assembly, and tracing the development of the institution from its origins in classical Athens to the Hellenistic period and the early Empire.Footnote 10 To be sure, the scholarship upon which Park relies for his account of the continuing vitality of the assembly in the post-classical Greek city (principally Dmitriev's City Government in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor) had already informed van Kooten's essay.Footnote 11 But Park's study adds detail and nuance, analysing the ambiguous status of the ekklēsia under Roman rule, as reflected in the writings of Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom.Footnote 12 Turning to Paul, Park argues that Paul utilised the political potency of the word ἐκκλησία to create a ‘symbolic universe’ in which he hoped to achieve two purposes: the formation of his readers as ‘honorable citizens’ of a Christ-confessing community, and the integration of his congregations into a trans-local network, a form of organisation analogous to the koinon, or confederacy of Greek cities, in Roman provincial administration.Footnote 13
Published in the same year as Park's monograph, Anna Miller's revised Harvard dissertation, Corinthian Democracy, views the Corinthian church as a democratic assembly, where all members shared in leadership through participation in deliberative discourse.Footnote 14 Miller attempts to reconstruct the perspective of Paul's Corinthian audience through analysis of Paul's rhetoric, arguing that Paul employs democratic topoi in 1 Corinthians because the Corinthians themselves were using such ideas to legitimate their understanding of collective authority.Footnote 15 Miller seeks to make plausible the knowledge of ekklēsia discourse on the part of non-elite Corinthians by arguing that the values and practices of democracy were transmitted through Greek education, calling attention to the popularity of Euripides in the school-text papyri, and highlighting democratic topoi in the progymnasmata exercises of Theon and Libanius.Footnote 16 In three exegetical chapters, Miller argues that Paul cleverly exploited the values and expectations of the Corinthians in order to establish his own authority and to exclude women's speech from the assembly.Footnote 17
All of the studies mentioned above reflect the reassessment of the status of the people's assembly in the Greek cities of the early Empire by a growing number of ancient historians. Starting in the 1990s, scholars began to challenge the consensus, epitomised by A. H. M. Jones, that the role of the civic assemblies in the Roman period was largely formal, and that the affairs of the cities were firmly in the hands of a bouleutic elite.Footnote 18 But careful inspection of the sources for Greek civic politics under the Principate, both documentary and literary, reveals that the δῆμος, voting in the popular assembly (ἐκκλησία), continued to play an active role in political life.Footnote 19 The evidence consists, first of all, of thousands of inscriptions in which decrees of the Greek cities in the Roman east are introduced by the formula ‘the council (βουλή) and people (δῆμος) decide’.Footnote 20 On the basis of extensive research on inscriptions from Ephesus, Guy Rogers demonstrated that the δῆμος of Ephesus was deeply involved in the establishment and functioning of civic projects, from the first century bce to the third century ce.Footnote 21 Similarly, P. J. Rhodes and D. M. Lewis examined Greek civic inscriptions broadly and found that the assembly took part in the decision-making process by commissioning decrees and by electing officers.Footnote 22 Arjan Zuiderhoek's investigation of inscriptions from Asia Minor commemorating public munificence demonstrated that the δῆμος was consistently involved in negotiating the details of benefactions and liturgies.Footnote 23
Literary sources, principally Dio Chrysostom's orations and Plutarch's essays, provide glimpses of the meetings of Roman-era Greek ἐκκλησίαι, and convey an image of upper-class politicians negotiating with, rather than dominating, the popular assemblies.Footnote 24 John Ma argued persuasively for the authenticity of the account of an angry meeting of the ἐκκλησία of Carystus in Dio Chrysostom's Euboicus, adducing in support of this conclusion Dio's own speeches before the assembly of his native Prusa.Footnote 25 Especially revealing is Plutarch's anxiety about young men ‘vociferating in the assembly (μέγα βοᾶν ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ) and ranting round the speakers’ platform, proposing laws and making motions’;Footnote 26 Plutarch asserts that such foolish young men ‘court the mob, deliver harangues and arouse factions’.Footnote 27 Finally, Giovanni Salmeri called attention to the numerous and geographically widespread outbreaks of civic disturbances (στάσεις) attested for the cities of Greece and Asia Minor in the first and second centuries; a number of these disturbances are explicitly said to have resulted from conflict between the council (βουλή), which represented the interests of the upper class, and the assembly (ἐκκλησία) of the lower-class citizens, the δῆμος.Footnote 28
3. Democratic Vocabulary in Paul
In the context of this new appreciation of the vitality of the ekklēsia in Roman-era Greek cities, a number of the linguistic choices and communal practices evident in Paul's epistles take on a new significance. First, obviously, the term ἐκκλησία by which Paul designates the communities he established in Galatia, Thessalonica and Corinth, rather than terms such as συναγωγή, θιασός and ἔρανος used for religious associations.Footnote 29 Whatever the ultimate derivation of the term ἐκκλησία in Paul's epistles may have been,Footnote 30 for city-dwellers in the Greek east, members of Paul's predominately gentile associations, ἐκκλησία would have denoted, first of all, the people's assembly, and would have aroused expectations of the freedom and equality associated with participation in this institution.Footnote 31 In respect to this designation, the Christ groups established by Paul must have seemed more democratic than the Greco-Roman associations, which did not commonly employ the term ἐκκλησία in reference to their assemblies; indeed, only three instances of ἐκκλησία are attested for private associations (and these in the Hellenistic period).Footnote 32
Other key terms in Paul's epistles acquire a democratic resonance in the context of communities which have adopted the self-designation ἐκκλησία.Footnote 33 Thus, ἐλευθερία,Footnote 34 which is the fundamental precondition of democracy – both the negative freedom from subjection to another, and the positive freedom to participate in politics.Footnote 35 Then, παρρησία,Footnote 36 ‘freedom of speech’, the privilege guaranteed to citizens under Athenian democracy.Footnote 37 Next, the verb μετέχω,Footnote 38 which denotes the right to participate equally in the politeia of the city.Footnote 39 Then, κοινωνία,Footnote 40 the partnership which, according to Aristotle, finds its highest realisation in the political realm, the life of the polis.Footnote 41 Above all, ἰσότης, ‘equality,’ the fundamental principle of Greek democracy.Footnote 42 In 2 Cor 8, Paul asserts that ἰσότης is the basis of the relationship between Christ-believers.Footnote 43 By appealing to this principle, it seems likely that Paul was invoking the experience of Christ-believers in their baptism: in 1 Cor 12, Paul reminds his readers, ‘For in one Spirit we were all baptised into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free’ – a formula of inclusion that not only affirms unity and diversity, but also posits equality between believers in Christ.Footnote 44
Three passages in the Corinthian correspondence, especially, give evidence of democratic practices in meetings of the Christ assembly at Corinth. First, 1 Cor 11.2–16: however one may assess the aims of Paul's argument in this paragraph,Footnote 45 it is clear that women were praying and prophesying in the worship assembly at Corinth.Footnote 46 By their spirit-filled leadership, the Corinthian women prophets enacted an extension of the democratic–egalitarian ethos that was only imagined as a comic fantasy in Aristophanes’ Ecclesiazusae.Footnote 47 Second, the number and diversity of gifts, services and activities listed in 1 Cor 12, and their unbridled expression in the assembly, give evidence of a highly participatory polity,Footnote 48 and evoke an image of an animated gathering reminiscent of the boisterous meetings of Greek civic assemblies described by Plutarch and Dio Chrysostom.Footnote 49 Third, in 2 Cor 2.6 Paul endorses the decision of ‘the majority’ to discipline an unnamed individual who has done wrong and caused pain: ‘sufficient for such a one is this punishment by the majority (ὑπὸ τῶν πλειόνων)’.Footnote 50 The resolution of the majority seems to have been ratified with some formality, reflected in the technical language of Paul's supplementary proposal in 2 Cor 2.8: that the Corinthians ‘ratify love’ (κυρῶσαι ἀγάπην) for the wrongdoer; the verb κυροῦν is used here in the technical, legal sense ‘to confirm an act or decision’.Footnote 51
But alongside these indications of a democratic ethos in the Christ assembly at Corinth, we must place evidence of a contrary sort, which suggests a rudimentary oligarchic governance and an elitist mentality on the part of some in the community. References to the ‘household’ (οἶκος, οἰκία) of those whom Paul baptised at Corinth (1 Cor 1.16; 16.15; cf. Acts 18.8) suggest that the Christ believers of this city were gathered around the individuals named in 1 Corinthians – Chloe, Crispus, Gaius and Stephanas.Footnote 52 In 1 Cor 16.19, Paul sends greetings to Corinth from ‘the ekklēsia in the house’ of Aquila and Prisca at Ephesus. The locution ἡ κατ᾽ οἶκον ἐκκλησία, which is found in other Pauline epistles,Footnote 53 not only designates the place where the ekklēsia met,Footnote 54 but also distinguishes the individual house-based groups from ‘the whole ekklēsia’ (ἡ ὅλη ἐκκλησία), which also assembled on occasion (1 Cor 14.23; Rom 16.23; cf. 1 Cor 11.20).Footnote 55 The inference of Wayne Meeks still seems valid: ‘The kat’ oikon ekklēsia was thus the “basic cell” of the Christian movement, and its nucleus was an existing household.’Footnote 56
The conclusion that the household was the organisational unit of the Christ groups at Corinth has consequences for our conception of the nature and function of leadership in the ekklēsia. In a hierarchical society such as Roman Corinth, the head of the household would have exercised authority over the group to which he extended hospitality.Footnote 57 In the most concrete sense, the householder would have functioned as the patron of the group,Footnote 58 and may have been expected to provide beneficia, such as legal help, a loan, advice on domestic matters, and so forth.Footnote 59 The householder also probably supplied food and drink for the believers who gathered in his or her house to eat the Lord's Supper.Footnote 60
The role of the leader of a household ekklēsia of Christ-believers seems to find its closest analogy in the Greco-Roman cultic associations in which a single patron provided hospitality for the group which met in his or her house.Footnote 61 For example, an inscription from Philadelphia (in Asia Minor) records that a certain Dionysius gave ‘access to his own house (οἶκος) to men and women, … free people and household slaves’ for celebration of the mysteries of Zeus and Hestia at the beginning of the first century bce.Footnote 62 The leaders of these collegia domestica evidently had sacerdotal functions. Thus, Dionysius of Philadelphia reports that he was instructed by Zeus to perform ‘the purifications, the cleansings … and the mysteries … in accordance with ancestral custom’.Footnote 63
As for evidence of elitist attitudes among some Christ-believers at Corinth, several statements of the Corinthians quoted by Paul in his response to their letter express views that diverge sharply from Paul's own and echo lively debates within the community: e.g., ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman’ (1 Cor 7.1); ‘All of us possess knowledge’ (1 Cor 8.1); ‘No idol really exists’ (1 Cor 8.4); ‘Food will not bring us close to God’ (1 Cor 8.8); ‘There is no resurrection of the dead’ (1 Cor 15.12). These strongly worded opinions betray no lack of self-confidence! The group which speaks here seems to have regarded it as their duty to ‘build up’ the conscience of ‘the weak’ in the community, so that they would not cling to superstitious scruples (1 Cor 8.10), so that they would aspire to possess spiritual gifts (1 Cor 14.1). Building upon the work of Gerd Theissen,Footnote 64 Dale Martin has demonstrated that the attitudes of this minority group (‘the strong’) correlate with high social status and high educational level.Footnote 65
Paul mocks the pretensions of these elite Christians and condemns their contemptuous treatment of poor community members. In a bitterly sarcastic passage in 1 Cor 4.8, Paul exclaims: ‘Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you reign as kings!’ Paul's use of the expression ‘reign as kings’ is an allusion to the role of some as patrons: ‘king’ (βασιλεύς, rex) is the satirists’ term for a wealthy and abusive patron.Footnote 66 Similarly, in 1 Cor 11.22, Paul asks with biting irony, ‘Or don't you have houses in which to eat and drink?’, seeking to prick the conscience of householders over the humiliation of ‘those who have not’ in the distribution of food and drink at the communal meal.Footnote 67
The above observations, taken together, present a complex and contradictory portrait of the politics of the Christ groups at Corinth. On the one hand, there are indications of a democratic ethos and egalitarian relations in the ekklēsia of Christ-believers, shaped by the language used to identify the group and to nurture its sociality, instantiated in the participation of women, slaves and free poor in the assembly, and upheld by the decision-making power of the majority. On the other hand, we glimpse the outlines of a hierarchical structure in which householders, in the role of patrons, presided over the assemblies, and in some instances engaged in hubristic behaviour. Which, then, of these contrasting images is nearer to the truth? In pursuit of a deeper understanding of the politics of the Christ assemblies, we shall first examine the context of first-century Corinth, in an effort to discern how the contradictory tendencies we have observed in the Christ groups relate to the political sociology of the Roman city. Then, we shall analyse the relations between the various groups in the Christ assembly, in order to determine which factions promoted democratic ideals and which favoured hierarchical principles, in order to comprehend the dynamics of their interaction.
4. Political Institutions in Roman Corinth
Like other Roman colonies, Corinth was given a provincial charter (lex colonia) which incorporated a city council (βουλή), an assembly of citizens (ἐκκλησία) and annual magistrates.Footnote 68 But epigraphic evidence of the existence and function of the civic assembly of Corinth is hard to find. John Kloppenborg asserts that a civic ekklēsia is attested for Corinth, but acknowledges that all of the instances are prior to the destruction of Corinth by Lucius Mummius in 146 bc.Footnote 69 To my knowledge, only one inscription mentioning the δῆμος of Corinth can be dated to the first century ce: a dedication at Epidaurus by ‘the Council (ἡ βουλή) and the People (ὁ δῆμος) of the Corinthians to Titus Statilius Lamprias on account of his virtue’.Footnote 70 Perhaps the paucity of epigraphic evidence for the δῆμος and ἐκκλησία of Roman Corinth is a result of the misfortunes suffered by the city, not only the powerful earthquakes, but also the thoroughgoing destruction of statue bases by the Herulians and the Goths who violently sacked Corinth.Footnote 71 John Harvey Kent laments, ‘it is difficult to think of any other ancient site where the inscriptions are so cruelly mutilated and broken’.Footnote 72 But it is also possible that the δῆμος played a more circumscribed role in a Roman colony like Corinth than in the semi-autonomous Greek cities of the Roman east. Perhaps scholars should have attended more closely to David Magie's observation that the Romans promoted oligarchic constitutions for those Greek cities which they founded, or which they reorganised for various political reasons.Footnote 73
In his study of Roman Corinth, Donald Engels concedes that the ἐκκλησία of Corinth did not have legislative functions, but insists that it ‘retained the right to elect the magistrates of the city up until the third century ce’.Footnote 74 The latter conclusion reflects the assumption that the division of the citizen populace into tribes (the names of twelve tribes are attested) was for the purpose of voting in the ἐκκλησία.Footnote 75 Even if this is a valid assumption, the epigraphic and numismatic record makes clear that the magistracies of Roman Corinth were in the hands of an entrenched elite, a political oligarchy that perpetuated itself over generations.Footnote 76 From the foundation of the colony to the end of the Julio-Claudian era, the names of sixty-nine duoviri are known, among whom only thirty-three families seem to be represented.Footnote 77 For example, the Spartan Euryclids, enfranchised by Octavian, contributed a father-and-son pair to the Corinthian magistracy: C. Julius Laco was duovir quinquennalis probably in 17/18 ce, while his son C. Julius Spartiaticus was duovir quinquennalis twice, most likely in 47/48 and 52/53 ad.Footnote 78 If there were popular elections in Roman Corinth, it seems likely that the councillors drew up the list of candidates.Footnote 79 The maintenance of this oligarchic system was facilitated by the fact that membership in the βουλή was for life, unless a councillor was expelled for legal reasons, or for failing to meet the property qualification.Footnote 80 The occasional admission of a new man to the ordo on the basis of wealth and connections actually served to strengthen the system by legitimising the principle of the rule of the few.Footnote 81
In contrast to the paucity of evidence for the involvement of the Corinthian δῆμος in the decision-making processes of the city, numerous inscriptions attest the role of the tribes in bestowing honours upon elite individuals who made gifts of various kinds to the colony. For example, ten inscriptions have been found honouring Ti. Claudius Dinippus, who held all the high offices at Corinth in the middle of the first century ce and was appointed to the post of curator annonae.Footnote 82 In the two inscriptions in which the names of the dedicators are preserved, they are individual tribes – Atia and Aurelia.Footnote 83 None of the monuments erected to honour Dinippus mention the involvement of the comitia tributa (ἐκκλησία) in the dedications; on the contrary, the letters EX D D (ex decreto decurionum) show that the inscriptions honouring Dinippus were authorised by a decree of the local Senate.Footnote 84 A second example is an inscription honouring C. Julius Spartiaticus, ‘because of his virtue and eager and all-encompassing munificence towards our colony’, dedicated by the members of the tribe Calpurnia, who proudly proclaim him their ‘patron’.Footnote 85 Thus, in Roman Corinth, euergetism cannot be taken as a proxy for the political activity of the ἐκκλησία,Footnote 86 since the δῆμος does not seem to have been involved in negotiating the details of benefactions. Rather, the fact that tribes acted individually to approve honours of benefactors points to a strengthening of the connection between euergetism and patronage.
In sum, the inscriptions from first-century Corinth make clear that a dominant elite of rich citizens monopolised the magistracies and controlled the council, while the δῆμος participated in politics only through individual tribes which related to elite benefactors as clients to patrons. The political regime of Roman Corinth seems to warrant the term that Cédric Brélaz recently coined to describe the politeia of Greek cities under Roman rule: ‘oligarchic republics’.Footnote 87
5. Democratic Impulses
When the politics of the Christ groups (insofar as these can be known from Paul's epistles) are set in the context of first-century Roman Corinth, whose political regime was increasingly oligarchic, the democratic character of the Christ assemblies appears more pronounced and unmistakable. For even if the household was the organisational unit of the Christ groups, and even if the householders functioned as de facto patrons, Paul never explicitly acknowledges their role as leaders, and the case of the Corinthian women prophets demonstrates that some members were unwilling to be subordinate. The single instance in which Paul urges the Corinthians to ‘submit’ to the authority of a householder – namely, Stephanas in 1 Cor 16 – is restricted to his role in a special service: the phrase ‘appointed themselves to the ministry to the saints’ (εἰς διακονίαν τοῖς ἁγίοις ἔταξαν ἑαυτούς) in 1 Cor 16.16 employs the same vocabulary used elsewhere by Paul in describing the collection for the poor in Jerusalem (1 Cor 16.1; 2 Cor 8.4; 9.1; Rom 15.31), suggesting that Stephanas and members of his household had ‘appointed themselves’ as Paul's agents in this undertaking at Corinth.Footnote 88 In any case, in 1 Cor 12 Paul makes clear that the Spirit apportions gifts, services and activities in the ekklēsia, prompting Adolf von Harnack to characterise the polity of the Pauline church as a ‘pneumatic democracy’.Footnote 89
This conclusion lends urgency to the question of the origin of the democratic impulses that are apparent in the lively exchange between Paul and the Corinthians. We may begin by observing that the most radically democratic sentiments expressed in the Corinthian correspondence are found in those passages where Paul is responding to the attitudes and behaviours of the ‘strong’, those who are confident in their possession of intellectual and spiritual riches. In 1 Cor 1.26 Paul reminds his readers of their social condition at the time of their ‘calling’: ‘not many of you were learned by worldly standards (σοφοὶ κατὰ σάρκα), not many were powerful (δυνατοί), not many were nobly born (εὐγενεῖς)’. Unless this statement is a rhetorical exaggeration, the majority of the Christ-believers at Corinth were uneducated, poor and low-born.Footnote 90 But Paul's studied use of litotes in this passage (οὐ πολλοί for ολίγοι) reveals that a few, if only a few, possessed the advantages that belonged to persons of higher social status: education, wealth and birth.Footnote 91 In paradoxical contradiction to the values of these elite Christians, Paul asserts: ‘But God chose (ἐξελέξατο ὁ θεός) the foolish of the world, in order to shame the wise, … the weak of the world, in order to shame the strong, … the low-born of the world and the despised, things that are nothing, to nullify the things that are’ (1 Cor 1.27–8). As a contemporary philosopher (Alain Badiou) has observed, this is ‘the most radical statement’ in the history of the West.Footnote 92 As an affirmation of the election and prerogatives of the common people, Paul's assertion is more fundamental than the principle that grounds the power of the multitude in Herodotus’ account of the ‘constitutional debate’: ‘in the many lies the whole’ (ἐν γὰρ τῷ πολλῷ ἔνι τὰ πάντα).Footnote 93
In 1 Cor 12–14 Paul counters an overvaluation of spiritual gifts which has introduced a disruptive hierarchy into the community: namely, ‘the tongues of angels’, which communicate with God, rather than human beings.Footnote 94 Paul appropriates the society-as-body metaphor from Greco-Roman political discourse, where the figure functioned to urge concord between the classes.Footnote 95 In the well-known fable of Menenius Agrippa, the Roman senator compared a strike by the common people to a revolt of the hands, mouth and teeth against the belly, resulting in the death of the body.Footnote 96 In ancient politics, the body analogy was essentially conservative, portraying the established order as ‘natural’.Footnote 97 But Paul uses the metaphor subversively to question elite assumptions about status and honour. Paul reverses the values of oligarchic political rhetoric, which figured the parts of the body representing the ruling class, such as the head and the belly, as the most honourable and indispensable. Paul claims, scandalously, that the weaker parts are actually more indispensable and honourable, and that we acknowledge this fact when we clothe these private parts (1 Cor 12.22–3). Paul insists that ‘God has arranged the body’ in this paradoxical manner, ‘giving greater honour to the inferior member’ (1 Cor 12.24).
Such passages give the impression that Paul himself was the principal advocate of democracy at Corinth, over against a minority of educated elite. Some years ago, Dale Martin argued that in 1 Cor 9 Paul makes use of the ‘demagogue topos’, portraying himself as a populist leader who identifies with the interests of the common people.Footnote 98 Anna Miller suggests that Paul manipulates the topos of the unskilled speaker in 1 Cor 1–4 to appeal a non-elite audience which understood itself as a democratic ekklēsia, all the while covertly working to establish his unique authority as the mediator of divine wisdom.Footnote 99 But if the democratic sentiments expressed in 1 Corinthians are a rhetorical pose, a calculated strategy to appeal to the lower classes, then Paul paid dearly for his demagoguery. Paul's critics, the educated elite, regarded him as ‘weak’ and ‘foolish’ for taking the side of members of the lower class.Footnote 100 Paul's portrayal of himself as a befuddled orator in 1 Cor 2.1–5 earned him the critical assessment quoted verbatim in 2 Cor 10.10: ‘his bodily presence [that is, his self-presentation by voice and gesture] is weak and his speech is contemptible.’Footnote 101 Paul's appeal to the principle of ‘equality’ (ἰσότης) as the basis for partnership in the collection for the poor in 2 Cor 8 so profoundly contradicted conventional assumptions about relations between benefactors and beneficiaries that it engendered the accusation that Paul aimed at embezzlement of the Corinthians’ resources (2 Cor 12.16–18).Footnote 102
But before we award Paul the title of the ‘father of democracy’ at Corinth, we should take note of the fact that Paul's most stridently democratic pronouncements are connected with the arrival of reports from Corinth, and that his informants evidently represent lower-class members of the Christian community. In 1 Cor 1.11 Paul states that it has been ‘made known’ (ἐδηλώθη) to him ‘by Chloe's people’ (ὑπὸ τῶν Χλόης) that there are ‘dissensions’ (ἔριδες) among the Corinthians. The expression οἱ Χλόης (literally, ‘those of Chloe’) denotes her slaves or freedmen, or both.Footnote 103 The information that they bring had evidently been omitted from the official correspondence of the ekklēsia (cf. 1 Cor 7.1; 8.1; 12.1; 16.1, 12).Footnote 104 Further, the news that divisions (σχίσματα) had erupted when the Corinthians came together ἐν ἐκκλησίᾳ to eat the Lord's Supper is described by Paul as an oral report (ἀκούω), whose bearers he discreetly shields with anonymity (1 Cor 11.18).Footnote 105 That anyone other than lower-class Christians would have reported to Paul on the hunger and humiliation of ‘the have-nots’ at the communal meal is hardly credible. Finally, the report about women who were praying and prophesying in the assembly is likewise anonymous.
How should we understand the relationship between Paul and the lower-class believers who repeatedly informed him of their concerns about conflicts in the ekklēsia? Perhaps an analogy from political history will prove useful: namely, the event that gave birth to democracy at Athens in 508/507 bc. Cleisthenes the Alcmaeonid is generally regarded as the founder of Athenian democracy because of the constitutional reforms he introduced.Footnote 106 But Josiah Ober has observed that Cleisthenes had been expelled from Athens and was not present in the city when the multitude of the Athenians banded together and laid siege to the Acropolis, in order to drive out the archon Isagoras and his Spartan patrons.Footnote 107 After the people had taken control of affairs, Cleisthenes returned and enacted his reforms, reorganising the citizen body of Athens into 139 local units called ‘demes’, thus undermining the old channels of influence of a few powerful families, and placing power in the hands of the people.Footnote 108 Whether Cleisthenes, a member of an aristocratic family, should be viewed as a cynical realist who enlisted the δῆμος on his side, or an altruistic idealist who embraced a vision of a new society, it is clear that the special relationship that Cleisthenes developed with the δῆμος resulted in the creation of the first democracy.
Might the relationship between Paul and the lower-class members of the ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ in Corinth have developed along similar lines? When Paul came to Corinth, he preached a gospel of Jesus the Christ crucified and risen (1 Cor 1.18; 2.1–5; 15.1–4). He made converts, mainly among the lower classes (1 Cor 1.26–8). But it seems that at Corinth the Pauline mission also succeeded, for the first time, and for reasons that are not entirely apparent, in winning a few adherents from the wealthier and better-educated circles.Footnote 109 Paul initiated these new believers with the baptismal formula echoed in 1 Cor 12.13: ‘We are all members of one body in Christ, whether Jew or Greek, whether slave or free.’ Consequently, women, slaves and the free poor – groups normally marginalised in the society of Roman Corinth – embraced their new identity in Christ and began to participate as equals in the Christian assembly.Footnote 110 Then came the report of divisions in the body of Christ: ‘the have-nots’ were being humiliated at the Lord's Supper; the women prophets were being criticised for behaviour which appeared insubordinate and unnatural; the free exercise of spiritual gifts was being restricted by the imposition of a destructive hierarchy. In response, Paul intervened in the conflict on the side of the disenfranchised, making himself the spokesman and defender of the lower classes.
We may never be certain about Paul's motives. Did Paul seek, like a Greek politician, to ‘enlist the δῆμος on his side’Footnote 111 in the struggle with the educated elite, who judged him to be weak and foolish? Or was he seeking to defend and expand the promise of equality implicit in the baptismal formula, by extrapolating the consequences for the life of the community? If Paul himself is to be believed, his rationale was theological. The logic of the crucial paragraph in 1 Cor 1.26–31 seems to be this: the sociological fact that the majority of those who experienced the ‘calling’ of the gospel were uneducated, poor and low-born led Paul to the conclusion that God had chosen the multitude of the nothings and nobodies.Footnote 112 In language strongly reminiscent of the principle upon which Greek democracy was founded, Paul assures this multitude of nobodies, ‘all things are yours’ (πάντα γὰρ ὑμῶν ἐστιν, 1 Cor 3.21).
6. Conclusion
In the final analysis, how ‘democratic’ was the Pauline ekklēsia? If we take as our definition of democracy the usage current in fifth-century Athens, then dēmokratia means ‘the monopoly on political power held by the ordinary citizens’,Footnote 113 the rule of the δῆμος, the mass of the poor.Footnote 114 Judged by this standard, the Christ groups of Corinth qualify as democracies only in a limited sense, owing to the patronal role played by the householders. But perhaps the meaning of democracy should not be reduced to the case of fifth-and fourth-century Athens, which was exceptional and radical in many ways.Footnote 115 Aristotle speaks of various forms (εἴδη) of democracy, including one in which access to offices was based upon property qualifications.Footnote 116
Among scholars who are seeking to comprehend the political sociology of Greek cities under Roman rule, there is a growing recognition that no single term is capable of encapsulating the complex structure and dynamics of these hybrid Greco-Roman regimes; rather, what is essential is to determine the relations between the elite and the common people, and to assess the respective influence of the notables and the multitude upon civic life.Footnote 117 A regime may be said to be more ‘oligarchic’ in which a relatively small number of wealthy citizens monopolised access to public offices, and in which the participation of common people in civic life was eroded in various ways.Footnote 118 On the other hand, a regime may be said to be more ‘democratic’ when the common people were able to exert pressure on the notables through their popular assemblies, and to negotiate a place for themselves in the social and political structures of the city.Footnote 119
When evaluated in this context, the ekklēsia of Christ-believers at Corinth appears to have been exceptionally ‘democratic’, insofar as it was constituted as a politeia in which members might pursue resolution of tensions arising from social inequality on the basis of the principle of equality ‘in Christ’. This impression would be reinforced, if one were to assume that the democratising principles inherent in Paul's advice to the Corinthians were actually implemented: that is, if ‘the have-nots’ were included in an equitable distribution of food and drink at the communal meal, if the free expression of diverse gifts, services and activities were permitted and affirmed, and if the Corinthians contributed out of their abundance to alleviate the poverty of the saints in Jerusalem, ‘so that there might be equality’ (2 Cor 8.14; cf. 2 Cor 9.15; Rom 15.26–7).
To be sure, Paul never uses the word dēmokratia,Footnote 120 and never refers to the Christ-believers as a δῆμος. At the same time, as scholars have recently emphasised, Paul designated the Christ groups that he established at Corinth and elsewhere using the politically potent term ἐκκλησία, thus evoking, and subsequently fulfilling, expectations of participation in the life of the community. Should the absence of explicit reference to the idea of democracy in the Corinthian epistles be regarded as a discrepancy in Paul's thought and practice?
Perhaps a final analogy from Greek civic politics will assist us in explaining this apparent inconsistency. Ober has observed that ‘the primary meaning of dēmos to the Athenians was not “Assemblymen” (ἐκκλησιασταί) but “the whole of the Athenian citizen body”’.Footnote 121 This latter meaning, which Ober characterises as ‘capital-D Dēmos’, was ‘an ideological construct’.Footnote 122 ‘This Dēmos was real, in that there were indeed some 30,000 individuals living in fourth-century Attica who enjoyed full citizen rights. But Dēmos could not be perceived by the senses. No one had ever seen Dēmos; it was too big even to gather in one place.’ Therefore, ‘the Athenian Dēmos was … an “imagined community”’.Footnote 123 This imagined Dēmos was, however, ‘a fundamental and vivid political concept, which could be personified’,Footnote 124 as on a fourth-century stele with a relief showing Dēmokratia crowning Dēmos.Footnote 125 ‘This imagined Dēmos was the d ē mos assumed in the word dēmokratia – the entity that held power in the state.’Footnote 126 Meetings of the Athenian ekklēsia were open to all citizens, and those who attended constituted the dēmos in a narrower institutional sense. Decisions made by the citizens in the assembly expressed the will of the dēmos. ‘But’, Ober concludes, ‘the participants at a given assembly were not identical to Dēmos.’Footnote 127
I submit that an analogous relation obtained between the ekklēsia and the ‘body of Christ’ in Paul's thought. The ἐκκλησία τοῦ θεοῦ was the assembly of Christ-believers in each city, both when it met in the houses of individual patrons and when it assembled as a whole to eat the communal meal. At any given meeting of this assembly, participants might pray and prophesy (1 Cor 11.2–16), might utter a word of wisdom or a word of knowledge, might share their faith, or might speak in tongues (1 Cor 12.4–11); those who assembled might decide as jurors to discipline a deviant member (1 Cor 5.1–5), or the majority might vote to punish a wrongdoer (2 Cor 2.5–11). But participants at any given assembly were not identical to the ‘body of Christ’. Like δῆμος (with a capital Δ), the σῶμα Χριστοῦ was an ideological construct, an imagined entity that was the source of identity and community for all Christ-believers. It was into this σῶμα Χριστοῦ that believers were baptised (1 Cor 12.12–13); it was this σῶμα Χριστοῦ that must be discerned, if believers were to preserve equity in their relations (1 Cor 11.27–33); it was this σῶμα Χριστοῦ that must not be divided into factions (1 Cor 1.13). As Paul wrote in his last epistle, a letter written from Corinth: ‘We the many (οἱ πολλοί) are one body in Christ (ἕν σῶμά ἐσμεν ἐν Χριστῷ), and according to one, members of one another’ (Rom 12.5).
