A Spiritual Economy

Abstract

Utilizing theories of gift exchange from Seneca to Marcel Mauss and beyond, Thomas Blanton explains the operation of the gift economy at work in the letters of Paul of Tarsus. The book shows how Paul adapted discourses and practices of gift exchange to motivate the transmission of goods and services based on an ethic of reciprocity. In an economy of symbolic goods, Paul posited that gifts proceeding from the god of Israel could be incompletely reciprocated through the donation of money, material goods, labor services, or the extension of hospitality: “spiritual” benefactions were reciprocated by the donation of material goods and services. But the idea of “spiritual gifts” was also instrumental in orchestrating sociopolitical hierarchies. Paul claimed a relatively high status as an “apostle,” or mediator of heavenly gifts, and was able even to effect an inversion in the “normal” system of social evaluation whereby wealthy and educated persons held higher status than did manual laborers and craftsmen, such as Paul himself. Overturning some of the conventions associated with patronage, Paul asserted that the material goods supplied by patronal figures could only inadequately reciprocate the “spiritual gifts” that Paul mediated. In this way, he was able to lay claim not only to material goods and labor services but also to a relatively high status as a mediator of gifts that were valued highly within early Christian groups. The book’s development and elaboration of theories of gift exchange are pertinent to the fields of anthropology, sociology, and religious studies.