Type v. Rights

When Paul lived among the Thessalonians, he wasn’t a layabout and didn’t ask them for any necessities. He paid for everything he got (2 Thessalonians 3:7-8).

Paul did have the right (exousia) to ask for food and shelter. He brought spiritual gifts, and could have expected material gifts in return. He deliberately gave up his rights for pedagogical reasons, so that his conduct could serve as a “model” (tupos) for the Thessalonians to imitate (memeomai). As elsewhere in Paul, the implication is: In the Spirit, Paul mimics the Son who mimics the Father, and the believers among whom Paul ministers who share the same Spirit imitate Paul. The typology flows from the Triune God to the apostle to the churches.

Paul wants the Thessalonians to give up their exousia, live with discipline, and work for their bread (cf. vv. 10-11).

Important ethical premises are embedded in this little exhortation. First, following Jesus means renouncing rights. Second, one of the reasons we renounce rights is because we want to serve as models for others to follow; we are to types that will stamp their image on others. 

Which means, third, that ethical behavior cannot be simply doing good in isolation. The premise seems to be that our conduct always impresses itself on others: Ethics is always typological. Had Paul demanded his rights, he would have been impressing a tupos of a different sort on the Thessalonians.  Ethical behavior always involves looking to the effect we are having on others. We always offer models for others. We are called to offer good models, and also to be aware of what sort of model we are presenting.

Yet, on the other hand, fourth, Paul’s entire exhortation has to do with independence: Paul refused to receive hand-outs from others, pulling himself out of the rounds of gift and reciprocity by paying for everything he got. He was an “economic” actor among the Thessalonians, rather than an actor within a “gift” cycle. In Paul’s exhortation, in short, there is a intriguing integration of enmeshment with others (typos, mimeomai) and autonomy/independence (paying for bread), focused on the sharing of goods.

It is worth noting, finally, that the term rendered as “right” is the Greek word for “authority.” There might be quite revealing things to spin out from that – differences between ancient and modern notions of rights, the notion of rights-as-exercises of authority, the contrast between demand for rights/authority and acting as a model, the Christological foundation of the whole thing, since for Paul the great type of giving up rights is Jesus Himself, who did not hang on to equality with God, though He had every authority to do so. 

What might this say, for instance, about parental behavior: When might we give up authority/rights to set a model for our kids? And what might it imply about Christian political conduct?