Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity (a book review)

Recently I taught a Sunday school lesson based on David deSilva's book Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture. People seemed very interested in learning more about the culture of the New Testament world, and I remember finding this book fascinating. I gained insights from it that helped me appreciate the New Testament, as well as the beauty of God's love, at a deeper level. That can never be a bad thing.

While in seminary, I wrote a review of deSilva's book. If you're interested in learning more about New Testament culture, read the book. But for a quick synopsis (and review), here's this (written 2006):

Clay Brackeen. Review of David A. deSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000).

Modern readers of the New Testament tend to collapse the cultural and historical distance between themselves and the text by approaching it as if it were written with their specific context in mind. In Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity, David A. deSilva attempts to alert the modern reader as to how much she is missing if this tact is taken. He explores four important aspects of first century Jewish and Greco-Roman culture and then demonstrates how understanding the cultural context sheds much needed light on the meaning of New Testament passages. DeSilva argues that without an understanding of the views that were held concerning honor, patronage, kinship, and purity, one cannot fully appreciate the New Testament’s Christian witness. He goes on to show how Christians can appropriate these concepts in today’s context.

The book’s title provides a blueprint of deSilva’s treatment of four key cultural elements. He first examines the way that first century Jewish and Greco-Roman culture viewed honor. Honor and shame, explains deSilva, provided a touchstone for all of society’s values. Honor was both ascribed at birth due to one’s lineage and conferred by society through acting in a way deemed noble. The approval of others was thus greatly desired and served to keep people in line. At times, however, various groups espoused competing values, and a minority culture would promote an alternate “court of reputation” (40) from which its members were to seek approval.

Christians, one such counter-cultural minority group, encouraged the seeking of honor from a source other than the culture-at-large. In the face of being shamed by the “upside-down mentality of the society” (53), New Testament authors urged the faithful to seek the lasting honor that God alone could bestow. They pointed to Jesus and to Old Testament examples who endured hostility from ignorant outsiders who were often committed to wickedness. Rather than losing heart in the face of such opposition, Christians should rejoice and use the opportunity to display their loyalty to God. God’s approval, reinforced by the community of faith and the testimony of Scripture, was to be enough. As God’s people, Christians were to honor and care for one another. The community of faith promoted right behavior by using honor and shame, refusing to tolerate sin but confronting and restoring the wayward with love and gentleness. The church of today, says deSilva, needs to define itself as a counter-cultural movement, seeking honor through God’s approval rather than via status symbols such as wealth, education, possessions, and achievements. Modern Christians also need to recover a healthy sense of shame, allowing one another to be held accountable by being a community of honesty and openness and by confronting one another in love.

DeSilva next examines the first century concept of patronage. Although western society values self-sufficiency, New Testament culture valued the “giving and receiving of favors” as a normal and useful practice. In society, one often used relationships to obtain money, appointments, or access to influential individuals. The person in need, called the client, would seek out a patron and enter into a binding reciprocal relationship of give and take. The patron would provide the needed goods or service and would be owed a debt of gratitude in return. Ideally, the patron would give generously with no thought of return. Thus, it was an act of grace. The client, on the other hand, would show his or her gratitude by promoting the reputation of the patron, remaining loyal to the patron through thick and thin, and returning favors to the patron whenever possible. In short, the client was to demonstrate a “desire and commitment to return grace for grace” (118).

New Testament authors made use of this fundamental relationship to show what God had done for humanity through Jesus Christ. As the patron par excellence, God chose enemies to be the beneficiaries of His grace. Not only does He give life to all, but in Jesus He purchases salvation for all who will become His clients. Jesus, then, is seen as a mediator to God’s favor. He died voluntarily for our benefit, nobly giving His all, and thus we seek God in Jesus’ name. The Christian response to such generosity includes thanksgiving, a willingness to promote God’s honor by testifying to what He has done, a life of good works, loyalty, trust, obedience, and generous service to others.

A third element of first century culture that deSilva explores is that of kinship. In a very real way, one’s family of origin defined a person. Blood relatives worked together and promoted the common good of all. They could trust one another. They shared ideals and possessions, hid each other’s shame, and readily forgave one another. Cultural roles within the household were well defined, and the family unit was committed to loving and helping one another.

In the New Testament, deSilva explains, kinship was defined as being part of the “household of God” and the ethos of kinship was the “standard for interpersonal relations” in the church (199). Christians are described as being adopted by God Himself, born of the Spirit into the family of God. Although the world does not recognize the honor that has been given to believers, the New Testament reassures that the world failed to recognize Jesus as God’s Son as well. Jesus is “the critical link in the construction of this family” (200). Christians must trust the witness of the Spirit that they are God’s children and trust that their true identity will be made manifest to all at Christ’s second coming. In the meantime, they are to treat one another as sons and daughters of the King and as kin. The mutual love required of any family should show itself in the way Christians share their resources, maintain their unity, and honor one another. In their commitment to a separate ethos, they maintain a clear division from the world. At the same time however, they reach out to outsiders in love and remain open to receiving new converts. One point of Christian kinship that deSilva urges modern believers to take to heart is this: “to honor Christ by saying his blood is more important than our own in determining who shall be our family” (238). The “fictive” kinship of God’s family takes precedence even over the “natural” kinship of physical relatedness.

Purity is the final cultural norm that deSilva introduces in his book. The first century saw certain places, people, and times as being holy—set apart from the everyday and filled with power. Purity had to do with how people ordered the world. It was thought that one did not approach God blithely, for the holy was filled with power that contained a “combination of potential danger and potential blessing” (247). Various rituals provided the means by which one could become pure and whole and thus approach the holy without fear of reprisal.

DeSilva states that the New Testament presents Jesus as redefining purity codes. Jesus Himself provided the ultimate sacrifice that cleansed His people from impurity once and for all. He clarified that what truly makes a person unclean was not external pollutants but rather internal impurity that springs from one’s heart and mind. He taught that true holiness entails love and mercy and that “acts of compassion are never out of season” (290). Jesus’ body replaces the temple as sacred space, and the Church as Christ’s body becomes sacred as well. Christians are to treat the assembly of believers and their own individual physical bodies with reverence because the Spirit of Christ now dwells there. The Church is now set apart from the ordinary, sanctified for God’s service, and must extend God’s love to the world while remaining distinct and holy.

In my estimation, deSilva succeeds in capturing and conveying four important elements of first century New Testament culture. He paints a clear picture of the role that honor, patronage, kinship and purity played in that society. He then makes logical connections to the ways that New Testament authors incorporated such cultural understandings. The insights that deSilva provides are much more than interesting tidbits. They are essential for gaining a true appreciation of what New Testament authors are trying to convey when they use terms like honor, grace, gratitude, family, sacrifice, and purity. The book’s format—that of presenting a chapter on a sociocultural category’s larger cultural context followed by a chapter on its treatment in the New Testament—is very effective. DeSilva’s modern day application’s for the Church are right on target as well.

In summary, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture is a good example of how an appreciation of cultural context unlocks a deeper understanding of the New Testament message. DeSilva summarizes several important aspects of Greco-Roman and Jewish culture with which the original writers assume their audience is familiar. This book guards against the modern reader’s natural tendency to superimpose his own worldview onto the text. DeSilva bridges the cultural gap and provides the understandings that are needed to more fully and correctly grasp the New Testament authors’ intent.

All Saints' (13) Jean-Pierre de Caussade

"All we need to know is how to recognize his will in the present moment. Grace is the will of God and his order acting in the center of our hearts when we read or are occupied in other ways; theories and studies, without regard for the refreshing virtue of God's order, are merely dead letters, emptying the heart by filling the mind. This divine will flowing through the soul of a simple uneducated girl, through her suffering or some exceptionally noble act in adversity, carries out in her heart God's mysterious purpose without thought entering her head. Whereas the sophisticated man, who studies spiritual books out of mere curiosity, whose reading is not inspired by God, takes into his mind only dead letters and grows even more arid and obtuse."

--from The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Are Christians Justified in Claiming to Know that Christianity is True?

I've been too busy to blog lately, so with apologies I'm taking the lazy way out and posting something I wrote during my first semester here at seminary. I paid enough for this experience...might as well try and share some of it with anyone who'll take the time to read!

(written for Jerry Walls' Philosophy of Christian Religion class, Fall 2005)

Modernity would claim that in order for someone to say that he “knows” something he must be able to prove it. Theists cannot, in my opinion, offer empirical proof that God exists, but this limitation does not defeat their contentions. The very claim of the evidentialist that “to know something is to be able to prove it” is self-referentially incoherent. This statement cannot be proven to be true and thus, by its own standards, cannot be “known.” Beyond this difficulty, however, is the absurdity of human attempts to weigh, test, and judge God as if He were the object of a science experiment. If God does exist, is it not brazen of the created to set up their own terms for accepting the Creator?! Anyone who attempts to measure God by human, scientific methods will complain that He is not verifiable in the way other objects are. This is only to be expected (Peterson et al., Reason & Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 3rd ed., 119). We should not be surprised when we sense and experience God in different ways than we sense other objects. A purely spiritual subject does not submit to physical measures.

While we cannot offer empirical proof for God’s existence, by no means should this suggest a dearth of evidence. There is ample evidence for God’s existence: the ontological, teleological, moral, cosmological, kalam and other arguments, religious experience, God’s past and present self-revelation, and more. All of these combine to form a powerful cumulative case for God. The question, however, is whether such evidence is even necessary for faith. If God exists, the fact that we believe in Him may simply be appropriate and natural. If He created us for relationship with Him, as Christianity claims, the fact that we have a sense of the divine is perfectly understandable. This “sensus divinatus” is to be expected, according to Alvin Plantinga, and our belief in God may be seen as properly “basic” as it is the rightly functioning awareness of God (Peterson et al. 122). That many do not experience such an awareness of God points to the improper conditions (motives, attitude, setting, providence of God) that accompany one’s orientation toward God. Regardless of whether a belief in God is basic (and needs no supporting facts) or is built upon accumulated evidences, faith can be seen as reasonable.

While faith in God can be shown to be entirely reasonable, one who relies on reason and proof alone to lead him to God may never get there. Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli recount Justin Martyr’s process of discovering God in the second century. First he “seeks the truth by the unaided effort of reason, and is disappointed.” Next, “it is offered to him by faith and he accepts. And, having accepted, he finds that it satisfies his reason” (Handbook of Christian Apologetics 40). A later saint, Anselm of Canterbury, said something similar in his work “Proslogion: Fides Quaerens Intellectum.” He stated, “I am not trying, O Lord, to penetrate thy loftiness, for I cannot begin to match my understanding with it, but I desire in some measure to understand thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand in order to believe, but I believe in order to understand” (Hugh Kerr, ed. Readings in Christian Thought 83). Rational inquiry helps us better understand what we believe by faith.

Now that the reasonable step of faith has been taken, the question becomes “Is my faith rational?” The belief in God based on available evidence is every bit as rational as the atheist’s refusal to believe. After pondering the supports for faith, Ravi Zacharias states incredulously, “ In short, both David Hume’s own test and Bertrand Russell’s plea for evidence force one to wonder who has to have more faith. Is it the Christian who uses his mind to trust in God, or is it the one who, without any attempt to explain how his mind came to be, nevertheless uses that mind to demand a sign and disbelieves in God?” (Jesus Among Other Gods 65-66) God confirms the step of faith through experience. Through various means of grace, He reveals Himself in a more personal way. These experiences (whether they be a sense of communion with Christ, of the living Word, of the Holy Spirit’s power, or of the conviction, love or forgiveness of the Father) supply a certainty to one’s faith. Knowledge becomes more than factual certainty but relational reality. We know God intimately rather than merely knowing about God. Kreeft and Tacelli (elaborating on Aquinas’ thoughts) put it thus: “It is not our faith but its object, God, that justifies our certainty” (38).

At this point, many will say, “But what about the experiential claims of other religions? Your appeal to knowing God can be made by many other groups that claim to know Him exclusively.” The single greatest piece of evidence in the Christian’s arsenal is the person of Jesus Christ Himself. His life is without parallel. The claims He made, His teachings, His prophecies, His fulfillment of prophecy, the miracles He performed, His sinless life, His love and authority, the lives that were transformed after encountering Him, the Resurrection, His appearances to many over a forty day period, the witness and martyrdom of the apostles, the spread of the early Church in the face of persecution—these all provide powerful testimony to the truth of Christianity. Just as Christianity has to answer the challenges of other religions, so they have to answer the challenges of Christianity.

Christianity is rooted in history. It explains the nature of God, the meaning of existence, and the future of human destiny in very satisfying ways. Christians revel in God’s love and mercy and rejoice in the doctrines of Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and Resurrection. We have an incredible hope. “And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” (Romans 5:5, NIV).

Even if one refuses to accept Christianity due to a perceived lack of evidence, the question of faith presents a “genuine option” in which belief is justified (Peterson et al. Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings 2nd ed. 86). William James asserts that if a decision is forced, living and momentous it constitutes a “genuine option.” The conclusion one comes to about who Jesus is constitutes such a decision. In the end, it comes down to a choice. Will one make the effort to investigate the claims of Christianity or will he prefer to conveniently disbelieve? If he will trust in the Light, he will find that Christianity is reasonable, rational, experiential, historical, transformational, basic (sensus divinatus), spiritual, fulfilling, communal…in a word—true. While it cannot be proven in the modern sense, too much is at stake to leave it untried. Pascal’s Wager does not make a case for Christianity as much as it points out what is at stake. If eternity is on the line, no one can afford to ignore the claims of Christ.

In summary, I believe a Christian is justified in saying that he knows Christianity to be true. In sensing the reality of God, he is led to faith. His faith is fostered and supported by the cumulative case for Christianity. Personal experience and knowledge of the Trinitarian God confirms his decision to trust God. He continues to use reason to understand his faith and engage disbelievers. The Christian worldview makes sense of the world, even with all of its problems and shortcomings. A Christian is transformed as he lives in communion with God’s Spirit and God’s people. He is renewed and forgiven. His faith, hope and love grow. He is not lost in dead-end wishful thinking. “No, the Christian’s faith is not a leap into the dark; it is a well-placed trust in the light—the Light of the World, who is Jesus” (Zacharias 63-64).

Works Cited
Anselm. “Proslogion: Fides Quaerens Intellectum.” Readings in Christian Thought. 2nd ed. Ed. Hugh T. Kerr. Nashville: Abingdon, 1990.
Kreeft, Peter and Ronald K. Tacelli. Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions. Downers Grove. InterVarsity, 1994.
Peterson, Michael, et al. Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings 2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2001.
Peterson, Michael, et al. Reason & Religious Belief: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2003.
Zacharias, Ravi. Jesus Among Other Gods. W. Publishing: Nashville, 2000.