Factores explicativos de la calidad de la democracia

We have noted that Harrison’s work is a significant study of Paul’s use of Greco-Roman benefaction language in his letters. His analysis of Paul’s letters drawing on the language of grace from the Greco-Roman world is comprehensive; and it illuminates, on a social level, how the context of Paul’s audience influences Paul’s message of the gospel. In other words, our review has shown that Harrison demonstrates how the cultural value of benefaction conventions in the Greco-Roman world was integral to the logic of Paul’s argument.

On the strength of his analysis, Harrison concludes that Paul criticizes and upends the ethos of reciprocity, which is an essential aspect of the Greco-Roman language of benefaction, for his gentile audience. Yet how does Paul’s argument in his letters, as Harrison analyzes it, retain an aspect of benefaction convention without the role the ethos of reciprocity plays in benefaction language? In other words, is it possible to have a system of giving and receiving gifts, namely, benefaction without some sort of reciprocity? From the very beginning of Greco- Roman culture, the feeling is that if a person or a god has done a good deed toward you during your time of need you ought as a sign of gratitude to repay that person or god with the highest

honor befitting the good deed granted to you.189 _{Thus the relationship of benefaction and}

reciprocity that exists between a benefactor and a beneficiary is at the heart of Greco-Roman society.190 _{This relationship is sustained by an ethos of reciprocity because the gift makes the}

beneficiary indebted and obligated towards the benefactor whether the benefactor realizes it or not.191

On this note, we shall propose in the following chapters on the basis of our interpretation of the Letter to the Galatians that Paul’s appeal to Greco-Roman benefaction conventions is more complex than suggesting that he overturns the ethos of reciprocity for his gentile audience. The Letter to the Galatians seems to indicate that Paul expects his auditors to practice reciprocity, although perhaps not exactly as the Greco-Roman world understands reciprocity.

As a result, it seems that leaving out, for a comprehensive analysis, the Letter to the Galatians, perhaps, leaves Harrison with very little choice but to conclude that Paul overturns the Greco-Roman ethos of reciprocity for his auditors. For the Letter to the Galatians reveals that by appealing to his own experience (Gal 1:15–16), the experience of the Galatians (Gal 3:4–5), and the example of Abraham (Gal 3:18), Paul couches his argument in the web of relationships that

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189 _{Martin Percival Charlesworth, “Some Observation of Ruler-Cult Especially in Rome,” HTR}

1(1935) 9.

190 _{Stephen Charles Mott, “The Power of Giving and Receiving: Reciprocity in Hellenistic}

Benevolence,” in Current Issues in Biblical and Patristic Interpretation. Festschrift for Merrill Tenney (ed. Gerald, F. Hawthorne, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975) 60.

191 _{Seneca, Ben. 2.24.4. Ingratitude damages social cohesion and it is a socially disapproved}

behavior. On this note, Cicero in Pro Plancio admits that the power to recognize one’s obligation towards a benefactor is essentially human, while to ignore one’s indebtedness, namely, reciprocal obligation towards a benefactor, violates our humanity. See Cicero, Planc, 81. Harrison’s analysis of the Greco- Roman literature shows that benefaction includes the need for one to reciprocate the favors received. See Harrison, Paul’s Language of Grace, 40–43, 50–53, 75–77, 179–183.

undergird Greco-Roman benefaction conventions and the system of reciprocity. And he proposes for the Galatian Christians a form of reciprocation that is founded on their relationship with God. Suffice it to say, therefore, that Harrison left out of his analysis an important and critical letter of Paul, namely, the Letter to the Galatians. For after the Letter to the Thessalonians, where Paul introduces the language of grace only in the opening (1 Thess 1:1) and closing of the letter (1 Thess 5:28), Galatians is the first letter where Paul mentions χάρις not only in the opening (Gal 1:3) and closing (Gal 6:18) of the letter, but also in the body of it (Gal 1:6; 2:9; 3:18; 5:4). Therefore, to understand Paul’s interaction, on a social level with Greco-Roman benefaction conventions, one must begin from the Letter to the Galatians. Such a fresh look at what provoked benefaction language, especially in the body of the Letter to the Galatians, is called for. How does benefaction language support Paul’s argument in Galatians?

With this in mind, in the following chapters, we shall analyze the Letter to the Galatians for how Paul appeals to Greco-Roman language of benefaction in presenting his gospel message to the gentile Christians of Galatia. In chapter two we shall analyze the letter for benefaction language in the divine-human relationship. Next in chapter three, we shall also analyze the letter for benefaction language in human-human relationship. Finally, in chapter four, we shall discuss how Paul appeals to Greco-Roman benefaction language to draw a contrast between his gospel message and that of his Jewish Christian opponents.

Conclusion

Scholars have engaged the language of grace in Paul’s letters with far-reaching assumptions on the purpose it serves in Paul’s overall argument. To insist on the theological meaning of the term is not an error in judgment. After all, Paul’s letters do offer his auditors a platform to deepen their faith in God, to attain an appreciation of Paul’s role as the harbinger of God’s message of

salvation for humankind, and, finally to embrace its invitation to a new way of life in the world that reflects their ongoing relationship with God and other believers. It is for this reason that most commentaries on the language of grace in Paul’s letters, such as the commentaries we have reviewed, understandably focus on highlighting the theological aspect of Paul’s message.

Nevertheless, to focus just on the theological meaning of Paul’s appeal to grace alone impedes their effort to discuss the broader meaning this term invokes in Paul’s letters.

James R. Harrison has expanded the debate on the meaning of grace in Paul’s letters by focusing not only just on the theological aspect of the term, but also on its social meaning in the context of Paul’s gentile audience. His insightful work places Paul’s letters within the broader Greco-Roman ideology of benefaction. On the basis of Harrison’s work, we see a strong

influence of the Greco-Roman system of giving and receiving benefaction, a commonplace value for Paul’s auditors, in Paul’s letters. Even before Greco-Roman benefaction motifs began to influence Christian beliefs through the writings of Paul, it already had made a significant inroad in Judaism of the first-century CE, as Harrison’s extended discussion of the benefaction motif in Judaism shows.

To leave out the Letter to the Galatians for detailed analysis, as we have indicated, affects the conclusion that Harrison draws from his research. Galatians is a critical letter on how one should understand Paul’s initial appeal to the Greco-Roman language of benefaction beyond the opening and closing of his letters. Therefore, Paul’s preliminary appeal to the Greco-Roman language of benefaction beyond the prescript and the postscript of his letters demands a critical consideration of the Letter to the Galatians.

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CHAPTER TWO

LANGUAGE OF ΧΑΡΙΣ IN DIVINE-HUMAN BENEFACTION Introduction

The argument of the Letter to the Galatians is an invitation to Paul’s auditors, on account of the gospel Paul proclaimed to them, to take a particular cause of action, namely, to embrace his message about the intimate bond of friendship between God and themselves as believers. Paul’s persuasive strategy, therefore, is in large part an appeal to their experience of God’s benefaction in divine-human relationship when he proclaimed the gospel to them (Gal 3:1–5), which also is the basis of their experience of benefaction in human-human relationship. We shall focus here only on Paul’s appeal to their experience in divine-human relationship and how the cultural context of the Galatians, namely, the Greco-Roman world supports Paul’s arguments. He seems, as I will show, to describe divine-human relationship using the conventions of the relationship of benefaction from the Greco-Roman world. By appealing to the benefaction system of the Greco- Roman world, Paul outlines his understanding of the gospel of faith in Christ without the

obligation to observe the Law.

We shall show how the benefaction system of the Greco-Roman world is the background of Paul’s portrait of God. The surest proof of the divinity of a deity in Greco-Roman religions is the experience of the favor of a deity by a suppliant. In turn, the suppliant reciprocates the divine favor received either in the form of votive sacrifice, thanksgiving, or a combination of both. Seen in this way, the suppliant depends on the power of the deity to grant favor, while the deity relies

on the act of gratitude of the suppliant for a recognition of the deity’s famed place in the

pantheon of Greco-Roman religions. In other words, the deities of the Greco-Roman world retain popular devotion among the people is because the divine favors they granted are reciprocated by their devotees.1 _{This understanding of benefaction of a deity in the Greco-Roman world provides}

a significant background for Paul’s argument in Galatians on God’s benefaction. We shall draw examples from the Greco-Roman world to support our proposal on how Paul’s appeal to the Greco-Roman language of benefaction works.

Our investigation will show that Paul draws from the Greco-Roman language of benefaction in discussing his own experience of God and Jesus Christ (Gal 1:15; 2:9), the experience of Abraham (Gal 3:18), and finally the Galatians’ experience of God, Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Spirit (Gal 1:6; 3:1–5). Paul draws from these experiences to support his use of the language of benefaction. We have already discussed in the Introduction that χάρις in Greco-Roman relationship of benefaction is the favor that a benefactor grants to a beneficiary; and also, it is whatever a beneficiary does in gratitude for the favor received. On this note, we shall often use the term “favor” to translate the Greek word χάρις, rather than the more common translation “grace.”

Accordingly, we shall argue that the gentile Christians of Galatia would have recognized that just as benefaction conventions in their social context are institutionalized and maintained in the practice of reciprocity, so too Paul calls their attention to the importance of reciprocity in their experience of God’s gratuitous gift of divine favor. The examples that we shall draw from the Greco-Roman world will serve to support our claim that Paul uses the conventions of

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benefaction in Galatians. Also, these examples will illuminate that just as the relationships of benefaction in the Greco-Roman world demand reciprocation, so too Paul expects the gentile Christians of Galatia to practice reciprocity in their relationship with God. In other words, Paul expects them to show gratitude for the gratuitous gift of God’s favor that has been granted to them. We shall show that the invitation “to walk by the spirit” (Gal 5:16), their experience of freedom (Gal 2:4; 5:1), and their fidelity/faithfulness/loyalty to Christ underscore the need for reciprocation of the favor they have received in their relationship with God. By using the terms χάρις (favor) and πίστις (faith, trust or loyalty) in the argument of Galatians, Paul uses the basic terms usually associated with the conventions of benefaction from the Greco-Roman world of his gentile audience.