A response to criticisms leveled by Amy Peeler and Jason Whitlark in their published dissertations.

I have throughout my career been interested in how the social institutions of patronage, benefaction, and friendship – and the associated ethos of reciprocity – might inform our exegesis of New Testament texts and even our re-examination of biblical theology.[1]  These institutions and its ethos were a prominent weave in the social fabric of the Hellenistic and Roman periods and, as such, a potentially important background and resource for understanding how early Christian authors thought about and gave expression to the significance and promise of Jesus’ person and work as well as to the relationship between God and human beings who align themselves with this Jesus and the ethical implications of the same for those human beings.  I have kept returning to this background in large measure, I think, because of its potential importance for re-thinking Christian theology – grace being a central concept in soteriology and the doctrine of justification, in particular.  I find it (if it is allowed to become a starting point for re-examining contemporary theological commitments, as it was, I am convinced, a vital starting point for Christian theology at its inception) to offer the resources for critiquing traditional divisions of justification from sanctification from regeneration and for developing a much more holistic vision for the interconnections between Christian faith and practice, between grace and response, between “belief” and “discipleship.”

            Having invested a great deal of time and effort researching and developing these ideas, I am perhaps understandably engaged when other scholars, reading my material, find what they believe to be cause to sideline, correct, or otherwise marginalize what I have been trying to bring more forcefully to the fore in exegesis and theology.  Every critique provides me with the opportunity to re-examine my positions and discern if these positions need to be refined, if I just have to state them more carefully to avoid misunderstanding, or if counter-claims are being made that, in the end, interfere with hearing the text – counter-claims that must be answered in some arena lest I appear to acquiesce to them as correct by my silence.

1. Amy Peeler

            My first conversation partner here is Amy Peeler, particularly her published dissertation, You Are My Son: The Family of God in the Epistle to the Hebrews (T. & T. Clark, 2014).  I fully agree with her emphasis on the importance of the frame of the father-son relationship that the author of Hebrews to speak of the relationship of God to Jesus for the author’s pastoral strategy in this sermon, and I have developed this at length myself as it pertains, positively, to the assurance it gives the audience concerning the access to God it now enjoys through such a well-placed mediator of God’s favor and, negatively, to the greater pause it gives the audience concerning any course of action that might dishonor, and thus invite the satisfaction of, one whose honor is so intimately embedded in God’s own.  From this statement, it seems clear that I find the topic of Sonship as it concerns Jesus and considerations of access to divine favor to be more closely and directly related that Peeler seems to allow.  I also find myself disagreeing to some extent where she speaks of the importance of the father-children relationship in the author’s presentation of the relationship of believers to God, particularly where she promotes this to the exclusion of other frameworks for this relationship. 

            I wonder about such broad-sweeping statements as this: “When human beings come into his [i.e., God’s] presence, they do so as his children” (p. 183).  While there are passages that foreground a filial relationship between God and the “many sons and daughters,” such as 2:10-18 (though already the language veers toward a “high priest” who “helps” or “provides assistance” in 2:17b-18) or 12:5-11 (though “God is bearing himself toward you as toward sons and daughters” is somewhat less exuberant than Paul’s “you are all sons and daughters of God” [Gal 3:26]), there are vast stretches of text with not a single word invoking kinship relations.  From 4:1 through 10:18 the author speaks of his audience in their relationship to God and to Christ in terms entirely removed from the realm of “family.”  In their relationship with one another, the notion of brotherhood and sisterhood is invoked only in the recitation of Jeremiah 31 (where, however, “brother or sister” appears in synonymous parallelism with “fellow citizen”).  (I except here the language of “inheriting” in 6:12, 17, as I am not convinced that the language of inheritance automatically invokes a framework of kinship.)  If we extend this survey through 11:40, we encounter only the vocative “brothers and sisters” in 10:19 and the mixed metaphor of “a great high priest over the house of God” in 10:21 to remind us of the possible kinship connections between believers and with God. 

            In these chapters, believers do not approach God “as his children.”  Rather, they “draw near to the throne of favor in order to receive mercy and find favor for timely help” – language much more directly connected with patron-client relationships and exchanges – and this through the brokerage, or mediation, of “a great high priest” (4:14-16).  They approach merely as “those drawing near to God through him” (7:25) or merely “drawing near to God” (11:6), as those who have been cleansed in regard to their consciences (9:14; 10:14), as those who are “naked with their throats exposed before the eyes of him with whom is our accounting” (4:13).   They are identified as “the people of God” (4:9; cf. 8:10; 10:30), as “those who obey” Jesus the Son (5:8), as “imitators of those who through faith and endurance are inheriting the promises” (6:12), as “those who are called” (9:15).  They approach a God who is named as “God” (extensively), as a “rewarder” (11:6), less favorably as a Judge (10:30; 12:23) and not as a “parent” (save in 12:9).  Jesus is known as “mediator” (8:6; 9:15; 12:24) and “guarantor” of a new covenant (7:22), one who appears before God on behalf of those who look to him for mediation (9:24), through whom believers approach God and seek God’s favors (4:14-16; 7:25), all of this language more closely and rather explicitly reflective of scripts of brokerage and not the relationship of an older brother connecting his siblings with their distant father.  He does all this above all in the office of “priest” or “high priest,” a role that, as I have argued at length elsewhere, is given specific significance by the projection upon the sphere of divine-human relations and interaction of the framework of patronage, brokerage, and clientage known from human-human relations and interaction.  None of this is the language of children approaching a father, and nothing seems to me to be gained by privileging this image where the author himself has not. 

It may indeed be true that “deSilva’s commentary falls short of highlighting the prevailing familial theme” (p. 83) as this pertains to the audience in regard to the appearance of the important phrase “many sons and daughters” in 2:10, though I think I highlighted this theme more than appreciatively in my treatment of 12:5-11.  At the same time, it appears to me that Peeler has not allowed enough room for the multiple ways in which the author strategically frames the relationship between God and believers, not least among which is the relationship of beneficiaries to a great patron whose favor is accessed and assured through a Son in his household who has taken the believers into his own network of favor, which is in turn framed in the familiar language of priesthood as brokerage between gods and human beings.

Before leaving Peeler’s work, I would like to address myself to two comments she makes in regard to the warning passages.  First, she writes: “As an example of the gravity lost with DeSilva’s interpretive lens, his treatment of the warning passages describes the author’s argument thus: ‘[h]e therefore makes the addressees aware of the danger through a number of stern warnings designed to arouse fear and dread in the hearers of the consequences of pursuing a course which would provoke their Patron’. To the contrary, the warning passages speak of trespasses against the Son of God (6.6; 10.29) and, hence, elicit the insolence committed against his Father” (p. 184).  The declaration of “to the contrary” here leaves me a bit puzzled, as I had written quite explicitly about “trespasses against the Son of God (6.6; 10.29) and the significance of the implied “insolence committed against his Father” as key disincentives in the author’s rhetoric.  She continues: “To the sin of ingratitude, those described in the warning passages add the sin of parental disrespect. The danger before them is that they might dishonor their Father, an even more dreadful atrocity than the disrespect of a Patron” (pp. 184-85).  If this is true, the author of Hebrews leaves it to be entirely inferred.  At no point does the parent-children relationship appear as frame or motive in these warning passages.  The fact that the author warns against abusing God’s unique Son Jesus Christ is no argument in favor of viewing the divine-human relationship in terms of family versus patronage. 

            Where the audience remains faithful to God in connection with Jesus, they can be addressed as sons and daughters, as partners of the Son par excellence, and so forth.  They remain “God’s house” as they fulfill the conditions of faithful connection (3:6: “we are his house, if….”).  But where they are considered, as in the famous warning passages, from the point of view of failing to respond to God’s gifts secured for them by Jesus – and here I am using language of patronage and brokerage without using the terms themselves – then Jesus remains Son of God, of course, but there is nothing filial, nothing familial in the author’s description of the audience or their changed circumstances or the changed attitude of God toward them and the threatened consequences.    

2. Jason Whitlark

            I would like to turn now to Jason Whitlark’s interactions with my work in his published dissertation, Enabling Fidelity to God: Perseverance in Hebrews in Light of the Reciprocity Systems of the Ancient Mediterranean World (Paternoster, 2008).

            A major feature of Whitlark’s investigation, and a principle that looms large in his critique of my work, is the dichotomy he creates between “ongoing divine enabling of human fidelity” on the one hand and “the dance of reciprocity” or “indebted gratitude” on the other (see, e.g., pp. 2, 129, 145-146, 156, 170, 172, 174-75, 202).  Two theological principles appear to be at stake in this discussion: a commitment to monergism versus synergism (he himself identifies “Pelagianism and Augustinianism” as the two theological trajectories at work here on p. 14) and, as a corollary, a “pessimistic” versus an “optimistic anthropology,” with a pessimistic anthropology linked to an emphasis on divine empowerment and an optimistic anthropology linked to the expectation of reciprocity. 

I have difficulty going where he leads for a number of reasons.  First, I find first-century authors whose significantly pessimistic anthropology does not lead to excusing human beings from fulfilling their reciprocal obligations toward God: honoring his favor manifested in creation, in making ongoing provision for life, and in supplying knowledge of the path to life in a greater sense by their worship, loyalty, and obedience.  I would point those interested to my 2014 JSNT article on 4 Ezra and Paul to follow up on this.  Second, I would regard “ongoing divine empowerment” as part of the fabric of reciprocity that preserves the relationship, just as I would regard reciprocity on the part of disciples as a consequence of (not a necessary consequence, but a consequence made possible by) divine empowerment.  It is specifically by approaching the throne of favor through the mediation of Jesus the high priest, receiving mercy, and finding favor for timely help (4:14-16) that the audience can be expected to continue metaphorically to bear the suitable vegetation for those on whose behalf God has cultivated them that receives further blessing (6:7-8).  The agricultural image here seems to me quite expressly to hold together divine empowerment (“the rain that often falls upon it,” referring to the wave after wave of gifts the hearers had experienced, recalled in 6:4-5) and reciprocity (“brings forth vegetation suitable for those on whose behalf it is cultivated”).  Conversely, as they fail to reach for the assistance available to them in the present, the likelihood that they will act ungratefully toward God through the defection that holds the Son of God up to public contempt, and thereby incur God’s wrath, increases.  For the record, I have never said otherwise.

            Whitlark suggests that, in my commentary, I have placed a disproportionate emphasis on gratitude, comparing my “hundreds of uses of the term gratitude” (p. 141) to the author of Hebrews’ single use of χάρις to mean gratitude in 12:28 and a possible reference to reciprocity in 6:10, which Whitlark attempts to disqualify.  He writes: “This is obviously disproportionate and gives the impression that Hebrews is being forced into a mold of Greco-Roman benefaction” (p. 141).  Perhaps.  But I would suggest that the importance of a grateful response is advanced by the author’s warnings concerning the disastrous consequences of making an ungrateful response, clearly the dynamic of 6:4-8 and 10:29-31.  I would also suggest that the author’s connection of what the audience “has,” which in every case is something that results from something being “given” them or from someone working on their behalf, with actions that the audience is therefore to take, which impels them in the direction of looking to God for ongoing help, remaining loyal in their profession of hope, and continuing to invest in one another’s perseverance, is based on the logic of reciprocity and gives instructions for operationalizing gratitude (I am thinking chiefly of 4:14-16 and 10:19-25, alongside 12:28-13:16).  That these occur in two sections that have been found to be pivotal in the structure of Hebrews seems to me to underscore the importance of this operationalizing of gratitude for the author’s strategy.

            Two other dichotomies that I would suggest are false dichotomies seem to me to impede Whitlark’s analysis of Hebrews and of my own work.  In regard to Heb 6:10, Whitlark debates whether to “filter this through the lens of Greco-Roman benefaction,” in which case “we might hear that God is not an ungrateful deity but gratefully repays those who honor him” or “through the lens of a Jewish and Christian eschatology that expected a final reckoning by God,” in which case “God, in this verse, is declared to be a just judge who judges every person impartially (i.e., he is not ἄδικος) according to his or her deeds” (pp. 130-31).  Whitlark favors the latter. 

            The dichotomy I am objecting to here is “Greco-Roman benefaction” versus “Jewish and Christian eschatology.”  I would suggest that the author of Hebrews clearly expects eschatological judgment to be executed on the basis, at least in part, of how people have responded to God’s gifts and, perhaps more especially for the author, to the Son’s self-giving (6:4-12; 10:29-31).  The just judge (the one who is not ἄδικος) recognizes that faithful disciples have engaged in just action vis-à-vis his benefactions and renders a verdict on their moral behavior accordingly (and still impartially).  I regard it as highly problematic that in the above-quoted passage Whitlark replaces the author’s language of justice on God’s part with language of gratitude on God’s part.  Even I would never suggest that God, upon whose initiating grace all life depends and therefore, as Paul says, whom no creature can ever indebt (Rom 11:35-36), “gratefully repays.”  It is enough that the author of Hebrews says that God is not “unjust.”  If recipients of God’s favor have proven themselves noble recipients of God’s earlier benefits, investing themselves in accordance with the value and purpose of those benefits, God will ensure that they come to the blessing rather than the experience of curse just mentioned in 6:7-8.  I would agree with Whitlark that “the context determines the specific nuance of this term” (ἄδικος), but the context of 6:4-8, with 6:9-10 specifically applying the agricultural analogy of 6:7-8 to the audience in a way that is both encouraging and that encourages ongoing investment in one another, clearly establishes grace and grateful response as the frame of reference here. 

In connection with this passage, I would question the accuracy of Whitlark’s observation: “The author does not try to call to mind all that God has done for them or try to exhort them to repay their debt to God so that God will then continue to be gracious to them” (p. 144).  In point of fact, he does in Heb 6:4-10 – though, of course, not with the objectionable language of “repaying a debt.” The author overtly reminds his audience of past gifts from God to motivate present gratitude, service, and loyalty; proving to have been “fruitful soil” for God’s abundant past favors is presented as prerequisite to the ongoing experience of favor.  Conversely, failing to value these gifts appropriately leads to exclusion from future favor and even the threat of judgment (2:1-4; 6:4-8; 10:26-31; 12:15-17). (As an aside back to Peeler’s dissertation, the assurance the author offers the hearers in 6:10 is not assurance based on their filial relationship with God, but on faithful enactment of gratitude, on being that “fruitful soil” in which God’s benefits brought forth a pleasing crop in response to the multiple showers of his favors.) 

            A final dichotomy that I would wish to dissolve concerns “the primary motivation for faithfulness to God in Hebrews,” with Whitlark arguing in favor of “fidelity [being] motivated by faith in a promised future” rather than by “indebted gratitude that arises out of past benefits given” (p.143).  Neither component is neglected in my own work, as Whitlark acknowledges, but, as he puts it, while “DeSilva recognizes that the author attempts to ‘stimulate a forward-looking attitude’ and seeks ‘perseverance in faith’, … he does not grasp the discord such statements have with his primary emphasis on faithfulness that springs from indebted gratitude, which is a backward-looking attitude” (p. 144). I find it unhelpful to force a choice between the two, or even to consider the two as essentially distinct movements of the human spirit.  Gratitude towards the Giver in regard to past benefits conferred aligns with trust regarding promised benefits yet to be conferred; ingratitude towards the Giver in regard to past benefits conferred aligns with exclusion from promised benefits – and this quite clearly in Hebrews (6:4-12; 10:26-31). Indeed, as a person born and bred into the Greco-Roman world of reciprocity relations, I know that my investment in a grateful response best positions me for the enjoyment of the future benefits for which I hope.  To persevere in gratitude is to persevere in faithful trust; to persevere in faithful trust is to persevere in gratitude. 

            Hebrews 13:12-14 strikes me as a good encapsulation of how past benefits and hoped-for benefits alike motivate ongoing “forward” movement (and that into the margins of this world’s social networks).  Jesus’ costly investment of himself in benefiting others (“Jesus, in order to sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate”) is invoked to stimulate a reciprocal movement and investment on the part of those benefitted (“therefore, let us keep moving out toward him outside the camp, continuing to bear the reproach he bore”).  A second rationale for this response, however, appeals to the future benefits promised but not yet enjoyed (“For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the coming one”).   A “backward looking” and a “forward looking” response to God’s benefits work together quite well, moreover, in a number of Second Temple Jewish and early Christian texts, something well worth a specialized study.

An important issue for Whitlark, which is connected closely to his (and a general) allergy to “synergism,” is the question of whether our response merits further favor from God, and the larger question as to whether “merit” plays any role in God’s or Jesus’ determination to show favor.  Whitlark analyzes Josephus’s conception of the divine-human relationship as one in which “God’s people respond with worthy gratitude demonstrated primarily through obedience to God thus meriting further favor” (p 135).  The question of a potential beneficiary’s merit is indeed an important one in ancient discussions of patronage and beneficence, and an important point of differentiation between the practice among human beings and Paul’s celebration, for example, of God’s lavishing of the most costly benefits upon the least deserving recipients (indeed, those who were “by nature children of wrath”), so I fully understand where this is coming from. With this lens in place, he takes sharp issue with my reading of Heb 2:13a, in which I suggest – admittedly against the grain – that the context will lead the audience to understand the recitation placed upon Jesus’ lips, “I will be confident in him,” to refer to the confidence Jesus places in the believers when he “is not ashamed to call them sisters and brothers” (2:11-12), when he owns them as “the children God has given me” (2:13b).  Whitlark suggests that “deSilva affirms that Jesus’ benefits are based upon his estimation of the believers’ worth and reliability to make an equitable return for benefits received” (p. 141, emphasis mine). 

My actual comment on this demi-verse, however, was this: “This indicates that Jesus’ beneficence toward the hearers is accompanied by Jesus’ estimation of them as people of worth, judging them to be suitable beneficiaries and reliable clients who will not disappoint or bring shame upon him” (Perseverance in Gratitude, 115).  The sentences that immediately follow this one in my commentary would make it clear that I do not regard Jesus’ beneficence to be “based upon” the merit of the recipients: “This is not to suggest that Christ died for us because we ‘deserved’ it, but the fact that Christ died on our behalf does indicate the value that he attaches to us.  That Jesus esteems the believers highly enough to associate with them as sisters and brothers would … deepen their sense of gratitude and obligation to the Son who has treated them with honor beyond their deserving” (Perseverance, p. 115).

The replacement of my “accompanied by” with “based upon” changes the dynamics and meaning entirely.  I would call it a misrepresentation, as is Whitlark’s interpretation of “suitable beneficiaries and reliable clients who will not disappoint or bring shame upon him” as “[people able] to make an equitable return for benefits received.”  My point in regard to 2:11-13 is that the author suggests that Jesus has shown considerable faith in the disciples by associating himself so closely and openly with them before his Divine Parent (and before the world), such that it is now incumbent upon the disciples not to put Jesus to shame for having had such faith in them.  This is the pastoral strategy of saying: “Don’t let Jesus down after he’s shown such esteem and trust toward you.” 

            I consider the proper understanding of grace – not only the points of differentiation between God’s favor and a disciple’s response, on the one hand, and the everyday ethos of favor and response in the lived world of the Greco-Roman Mediterranean, on the other hand, for which so many theologically-minded scholars clamor, but the points of similarity, overlap, and continuity between the two that have the power to reform our theological understanding, and that continue not to be recognized or admitted – to remain a foremost “critical theological issue in the Epistle to the Hebrews.”

[1] I first presented this in regard to the Letter to the Hebrews in Despising Shame: Honor Discourse and Community Maintenance in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Society of Biblical Literature Dissertation Series 152; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995; rev. ed. Studia Biblica 21; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008) and in a related article, “Exchanging Favor for Wrath: Apostasy in Hebrews and Patron-Client Relations,” Journal of Biblical Literature 115 (1996) 91-116.  It became an important theme in my commentary, Perseverance in Gratitude: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), and has continued to feature in my treatments of Hebrews in reference works and Study Bibles (see also The Letter to the Hebrews in Social-Scientific Perspective [Cascade Companions; Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2012], 95-138).  At the same time, I have tried to be attentive to how this background can inform our reading of the New Testament more broadly, for example, in chapters 3 and 4 of my Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000) or my New Testament Themes (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2001), and of Second Temple Jewish texts as diverse as 4 Maccabees (4 Maccabees [Guides to the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha; Sheffield: SAP, 1998], esp. 127-131; 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text of Codex Sinaiticus [LXX Commentary Series; Leiden: Brill, 2006]) and 4 Ezra (“Grace, the Law, and Justification in 4 Ezra and the Pauline Letters: A Dialogue,” JSNT 37 [2014] 25-49).  It plays a significant role in my more recent thinking about Pauline theology in general (see my Transformation: The Heart of Paul’s Gospel [Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2014]) and Galatians in particular (Global Readings: A Sri Lankan Commentary on the Letter to the Galatians [Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011; Sinhalese translation, Kohuwala, Sri Lanka: CTS Publishing, 2015]; “Appeals to Logos, Ethos, and Pathos in Galatians 5.1-12: An Investigation of Paul’s Inventio,” pp. 246-64 in Stanley Porter and Brian Dyer, eds., Paul and Ancient Rhetoric [Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2015]; “‘We Are Debtors’: Grace and Obligation in Paul and Seneca,” forthcoming in Joseph Dodson and David Briones, eds., Paul and Seneca in Dialogue [Leiden: Brill, 2017]; Galatians [NICNT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, forthcoming).