The Social Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings of Hermas, Clement and Ignatius (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Social Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings of Hermas, Clement and Ignatius Thomas M. Finn Harry O. Maier . The Social Setting of the Ministry as Reflected in the Writings of Hermas, Clement and Ignatius. Dissertations SR Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1991. Pp. 230. $25.00. Completed at Oxford under Maurice F. Wiles, Maier's study is the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion's first offering in their new series, "Dissertations SR." They have chosen well, for Maier looks at the vexing problems surrounding the rise of authority structures in early Christianity through lenses ground by sociologists interested in religion. Max Weber, Bryan Wilson, Clifford Geertz, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann are the best-known experts among them. Hardly a new venture, by any means. Nor is the point of entry new: the early Christian community as shaped by the structure and dynamics of that fundamental social institution, the Greco-Roman household. Indeed, he freely [End Page 322] avails himself of the work of Jack Elliott, Wayne Meeks, and Michael White, among others. Nor are his target documents new grist for the mill. Two of his three texts, 1 Clement and the letters of Ignatius, have been the victims of post-Reformation polemics about polity for almost all of this century. So, what's new? For one thing, the sustained use of legitimation as a heuristic device for reading Clement and Ignatius, about which more in a minute. For another, reading Ignatius as a charismatic leader. For still another, understanding Hermas' principal concern as an attempt to maintain the boundaries of Christianity as a sect in Rome. And last but not least, Maier's attempt to use a social-world approach to untangle the thicket created by those greats of the past—among them, Harnack, Bauer, and von Campenhausen—who have read a theological agenda into the target texts. Maier's thesis is disarmingly straightforward: The household church is the social setting for the development of early Christian structures of leadership and authority (4). The trajectory of development begins with Paul and extends to Rome, Corinth, and the Asian communities of Ignatius. Although it can embrace a wider horizon, Maier wisely keeps the trajectory modest, for it permits the focus to be sharp. His conclusion is also modest, and all the more compelling for its modesty: the early ministry in the communities of Hermas, Clement, and Ignatius can be adequately understood only if one takes account of 1) the power wielded by relatively wealthy household owners who hosted the church in their homes, and 2) the fact that the authors formulated Christian belief in a way that maintained the household setting (199-200). The introduction lays the groundwork with detailed attention to the models he intends to employ, the chief being Berger and Luckmann's concept of legitimation, a process that explains to individuals the inherited institutions which affect them, even though they had little or nothing to do with constructing them. Maier uses social models to provoke insight rather than to impose them on data or reader. They are heuristic means for getting his texts to disclose the evolving leadership structures. Fundamental to his work is the primary institution that shaped Greco-Roman civilization, the household, which he explores in the first chapter with special attention to mystery and foreign cults, philosophical schools, collegia, and synagogues. To this reviewer, at least, he makes his case for the nuts-and-bolts centrality of the household in the rise of Christian ministry. Then he looks with care at the Pauline corpus, applying Bryan Wilson's "conversionist sect" type, availing himself of the primary position of the household virtues of hospitality and love-patriarchalism, and concluding to pater familias as the line authority that emerged, succeeding to the place of Paul and his apostolic intimates. In short, very early (even before Paul) the household setting shaped the identity and governance of communities established by Paul. For it was the hosts who had the wealth and initiative to invite the church into their homes and, as patrons, held important leadership responsibilities (47). In this section he follows with telling effect the work of Meeks...