Mediated Obligation

The financial maintenance of ministers rests on an obligation of a peculiar kind. On the one hand, Scripture speaks of a real duty that a people owe their ministers: “Let him who is taught the word share all good things with him who teaches” (Gal. 6:6). On the other hand, the one who gives is said to give not finally to the minister but to the Lord. Christ promises a reward to him who receives a prophet because the one who does so receives Christ himself (Matt. 10:40–42). Additionally, the giver who supplies the laborer “sows to the Spirit” rather than to the flesh (Gal. 6:8). The obligation between a people and their minister is therefore genuine but not direct. It is mediated by their mutual obligation to the Lord.

The present author has elsewhere attempted to account for the reality of this mediated obligation, distinguishing licit from illicit giving with the terms ministerial co-labor and ministerial reciprocity.¹Owens, Dorean Principle. While they lack the established authority of the technical vocabulary we have covered in previous chapters, these categories have the potential to simplify a number of the more difficult questions former generations sought to resolve. After briefly establishing this mediated obligation along with the distinction between co-labor and reciprocity, we will demonstrate how they may resolve several of the issues where either agreement or clarity seemed to be lacking.

Co-labor and Reciprocity

This mediated obligation may be pictured as a triangle where people give to the Lord who then gives to his own ministers. This arrangement is pictured the most directly in Numbers 18 where that which is given to the Lord is given to his priests (Num. 18:8). Because the Lord is the priests’ inheritance, they receive from him (Num. 18:20). Paul appeals to this dynamic in explaining the New Testament minister’s financial support (1 Cor. 9:13–14). In fact, every other analogy that Paul employs in the same passage—soldiers, vinedressers, shepherds, oxen—operates the same way. None of them receive out of a direct obligation due from that which yields its fruit. The citizens pay taxes to the king by giving to the soldier, and the ox receives grain from the owner as it treads; the vine and the flock owe nothing to anyone, the arrangement being their owner’s. This accords with the foundational passages of Matthew 10:10 (“the laborer is worthy of his food”) and Luke 10:7 (“the laborer is worthy of his wages”). These do not picture the commercial transaction of a vendor and his customer, but of a worker and his employer. In each of these passages, the employer who supplies pay for his laborers is the Lord of the harvest (Matt. 9:38; Luke 10:2). The one who provides these things, the giver, is himself of the harvest; that which is owned has its duties to the owner of the field.

The term ministerial co-labor refers to the activity that occurs when this dynamic is executed with a proper inward disposition. Both the minister and giver operate with a felt obligation to God, and as each receives—whether it be a spiritual thing or a temporal gift—he understands it as ultimately coming from God. “Co-labor” is a fitting term because in this model, the giver and minister work alongside each other for the same master, accomplishing the same purpose of advancing the work of ministry. Ministerial reciprocity refers to any breakdown in the activity of co-labor. When the minister or giver operates with a sense of direct obligation to the other, or either receives as though the other is the ultimate source of the blessing, a transaction occurs in which God does not have his proper place. At some level, at least one party treats the exchange as a form of direct reciprocation. For example, Hophni and Phinehas bypassed the notion of mediated obligation when they demanded the sacrifices before they were offered to the Lord rather than waiting until after (1 Sam. 2:12–17).

This distinction accounts for what might appear to be inconsistencies in Paul’s financial policy. He refused hospitality in Thessalonica (1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8). He received it in Philippi, however, after Lydia demonstrated her disposition as a servant of the Lord (Acts 16:15; Phil. 4:15). He never received payment from the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:15, 18; 2 Cor. 11:7–9), but he planned to come to them in order to receive their support (1 Cor. 16:6; 2 Cor. 1:16). In each, he refused reciprocity but accepted co-labor. A number of other apparent discrepancies may be catalogued with the same resolution.²See ibid., 74.

Reframing the Tradition

With these distinctions in hand, we may revisit some of the questions we explored in earlier chapters. The categories of co-labor and reciprocity will help us to understand matters where we may otherwise struggle to articulate our concerns. In particular, we will look at three questions: the sense in which a minister’s maintenance may be called wages, how mental simony may be discerned, and the problem of the mendicant orders.

Understanding Ministerial Wages

In Chapter 8, we surveyed several ways one might regard what a minister receives. To construe it as pure charity does not accord with Scripture’s insistence on the laborer’s worthiness; to construe it as the purchase of his spiritual products would be manifest simony. Many then concluded that those who give pay a minister for his labor; yet we noted a strain of the tradition that found even this formulation in need of correction. Spiritual labor is a spiritual thing, so its sale does not escape the charge of simony. As was observed,³See Chapter 8, ↗. no one who pays a laborer truly desires the labor itself, but the thing that labor produces. In terms of modern economic theory, we might frame these medieval observations as a subjective theory of value contending with a labor theory of value.⁴A labor theory of value holds that a good is worth the labor required to produce it, so that price tracks the quantity of work that went into a thing. A subjective theory holds that worth lies in the estimation of the one who values, so that the same good is worth different amounts to different people and nothing at all to one who has no use for it. Those who denied that one rightly should give to a minister as a purchase of his labor argued instead that one ought to give for his sustenance.

Alternatively, we might ask whether a ministerial stipend is for the worker or the work. The question so posed, however, turns on an ambiguity in one word. The preposition “for” carries two distinct senses: it may mean “in exchange for,” as in the price one pays for a purchase, or it may mean “in support of,” as in a financial contribution to a campaign. The notion of mediated obligation supplies clarity here. To give in support of the worker is co-labor; to give in exchange for the work is reciprocity. Both may be called wages as both are in some sense payment for labor; but in the one model, the wages issue from the Lord while in the other they come directly from a human client.

This was precisely the concern of Hus, Paludanus, Durandus, and others who objected to any simple formula of selling labor.⁵See Chapter 8, ↗. Tuckney and Keach, for their part, granted that a minister’s maintenance might be called wages, yet denied that it could be called base wages.⁶See Chapter 8, ↗. What is this distinction but a recognition of the mediated shape those wages must take? In each case the aim was the same: to deny that a people stand in direct reciprocity with their minister.

Discerning Mental Simony

Several of the thornier cases considered in previous chapters came down to questions of mental simony.⁷See Chapter 6, ↗. When outward sales of spiritual things were uncertain, canon law imposed certain regulations as protective measures. Where such sales were absent, theologians described features of the conscience that might betray a simoniacal disposition. The distinction between co-labor and reciprocity offers clarity for both of these, anchoring a myriad of heuristics for the detection of simony that might otherwise remain disconnected.

Consider the place the medieval writers gave to the existence of a “pact.” On the one hand, there is some utility in the notion, because in a pact direct obligations are formed between men. Typically, the giver exchanges directly with the minister, and the minister binds himself in direct obligation to an individual, acting under compulsion rather than eagerly (1 Pet. 5:2). On the other hand, it does not take much creativity to identify pacts that seem perfectly acceptable, such as that agreement by which a pastor agrees to care for a congregation as they financially provide for him. Rightly understood, this latter pact places minister and congregation under no immediate obligation to each other; it holds each to account in their respective duties to God—i.e., co-labor. The minister will continue to labor in the service of God so long as he is able by their support and the people will offer to God by supporting his minister so long as that minister is faithful in the work.

The tradition named marks by which a licit gift is known, each conceived as antithetical to a pact: it is offered spontaneously (spontanee), voluntarily (voluntarie), and only out of gratitude.⁸See Chapter 7, ↗. But each, however useful for outward discernment, leaves the underlying question unasked. To give spontaneously is to give without prior agreement, but one may spontaneously give out of a felt obligation to the minister as the source of the spiritual things in which he labors. The same applies to the notion of voluntary giving. The Corinthians, after all, were already supporting other teachers and would have given to Paul voluntarily in exchange for his preaching (1 Cor. 9:11–12), but he never entertained the transaction (1 Cor. 9:15, 18; 2 Cor. 11:7, 12). Apart from specifying its object, gratitude fares no better. Is the gratitude to man as the immediate source of the spiritual thing or to God? Paul’s interaction with the Philippians is instructive here, as he identifies their gift in Philippians 2:30 as a due service to him, and in 4:18 as a sort of payment to him but a sacrifice to God. Their relationship is one of partnership, co-labor (Phil. 1:5). Thus, while the epistle is occasioned as a letter of thanks, Paul says remarkably little by way of gratitude toward the Philippians rather than to God.⁹For this reason, scholars have described Paul’s epistle to the Philippians as a “thankless thanks.” See Peterman, `Thankless Thanks'.

The insufficiency of these categories shows plainly in the modern practice of “suggested donations,” wherein one who receives some spiritual service—typically a form of teaching—is prompted to spontaneously and voluntarily give out of gratitude. Yet, in specifying a value to the recipient himself, a price is essentially set on the service provided. The justification of encouraging charity differs little from the rationale once offered for indulgences.¹⁰See Chapter 5, ↗. This is not to say there is no room for specific pastoral guidance in giving, but categories of co-labor and reciprocity have the capacity to frame the giving as a partnership rather than a direct exchange.

Medieval writings on simony analyzed a number of scenarios with a consideration of whether anything spiritual is given with the hope of some benefit in return. This approach to identifying simony is, once again, insufficient apart from the distinction between mediated and direct obligation, co-labor and reciprocity. For example, mutual exchanges of spiritual benefit were alternately permitted or forbidden,¹¹See Chapter 7, ↗. yet justifications between the two were often lacking. Considering the examples surveyed, why should an agreement to pray for each other be reckoned licit, and an agreement to baptize each other not? While we might offer our own objections on the proper administrators of baptism, using the categories of co-labor and reciprocity, the difference is simply that mutual prayer is generally understood as a shared partnership in serving the Lord, while the other arrangement suggests an exchange of spiritual services. In 2 Corinthians 9:13–14 the apostle Paul even commends charity with an eye to the prayers the recipients will offer on the giver’s behalf, regarding the scheme as a form of partnership (κοινωνία).

Medieval theologians likewise attempted to articulate the senses in which preaching for the sake of a good commendation might be distinguished from the simoniacal motivation of receiving man’s praise.¹²See Chapter 7, ↗. A commendation is not a price, since the esteem a hearer gives is not his to withhold as payment; it is granted in a shared service to God.

Categorizing Mendicant Support

In Chapter 9, we traced William of Saint-Amour’s insistence that sustenance from the gospel is owed only to one who holds church office, particularly from those under his care.¹³See ↗. Apart from a special commissioning, one has no right to such support, and even to request it is an act of simony. Some readers may find it difficult to determine whether William’s position truly arises from a contextual understanding of the passages to which he appeals or whether he demands more than they will allow. However, his arguments are in substance an appeal to the biblical notion of mediated obligation. Those who have been properly commissioned by the church as ministers or evangelists may require support as an act of co-labor, while the mendicants may only do so as reciprocity.

The simony of the mendicants may be considered by how it collapses each side of the triangle of obligation. First, it communicates giving as a reciprocal exchange, such that the hearer gives directly rather than to God. Of course, the friars explicitly denied such a thing, but as their opponents observed, to request money before or after preaching is effectively to suggest an exchange of temporal things for spiritual.¹⁴See Chapter 9, ↗. The call for support suggests hearers are immediately obligated to the preacher on account of receiving the message preached. Second, the practice of the mendicants completely bypasses the second half of mediation, where God gives to his minister. If God himself really is at the center of this triangle, mediating financial support, we must have a sufficient account for his desire for these funds to be granted to the one who receives. He commanded that priests receive from the altar and that ministers receive from the people whom they serve (1 Cor. 9:13–14), but named no one else to be provided for similarly. If the New Testament minister receives after the pattern of the Old Testament minister, then he may not take that office to himself autonomously or by virtue of the approval of a different institution (Heb. 5:4).

One commissioned by the church, such as an evangelist, receives his funds from those who send him. This follows from both ends of the triangle once again. To receive from those he is sent to would be to suggest reciprocity, but if those who wish to send him bear his costs, they give to God by provisioning a servant with whom they co-labor. The apostle John observed the same dynamic: evangelists are worthy of support when they do not receive from those to whom they are sent, and those who support them become fellow workers for the truth (3 John 7–8).

Modern Concerns

We have seen how the notion of mediated obligation untangles questions that former generations answered with the doctrine of simony. But the benefit runs the other way as well: the older doctrine can remedy misunderstandings of mediated obligation that are distinctly modern.

While other issues might be raised, we will address two in particular, one institutional, the other semantic. First, what do these things mean for parachurch institutions, especially those that would charge for teaching? Second, given that we mean to regulate finances surrounding instruction in the word rather than other charitable activities, how should we then speak of “ministry”?

The Rise of the Parachurch

Parachurch organizations, designed to perform ministry tasks outside of the government of any particular church, have a long history.¹⁵See Scheitle, Beyond the Congregation, 19–32; White, The Church and the Parachurch, 35–58; Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion; Carpenter, Revive Us Again. At the turn of the eighteenth century, Thomas Bray founded both the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701), associations respectively designed to distribute Christian literature and send, equip, and maintain missionaries.¹⁶Scheitle, Beyond the Congregation, 21. Over the following century, Britain produced several missionary, Bible, and tract societies, and American counterparts were soon modeled after them.¹⁷Ibid., 22–23. In the 1960s, several forces combined to create an explosion of these institutions.¹⁸Wuthnow, The Restructuring of American Religion, 115; White, The Church and the Parachurch, 55–58.

In erecting structures of their own that remain outside any meaningful governance by the church, these institutions bear a marked resemblance to the mendicant orders.¹⁹See Chapter 1, ↗. This similarity naturally extends to their fundraising. A local church depends on the weekly giving of the saints; the parachurch organization, lacking any such congregation, must cultivate a distinct generosity among its supporters or else resort to sales. Such organizations are various,²⁰For a breakdown into sectors see Scheitle, Beyond the Congregation, 60–61. and many of them raise no more concern than any other charity, but those designed to perform the church’s primary functions of preaching and teaching are open to the objections William of Saint-Amour and John Wycliffe raised against the friars.

Applied to our own day, the antifraternal arguments yield a surprising implication. Parachurch organizations are forbidden not only to charge for teaching and preaching but even to receive gifts voluntarily given on account of such activity. That is, unless those within these institutions are actually commissioned by their own churches they do not qualify as the sort of laborer that is worthy of his wages, authorized to receive from the Master. Those who minister have a right to receive from the altar (1 Cor. 9:13–14), but those who have no formal ecclesial office have not been entrusted with any such stewardship. And even if such a man does indeed labor under a proper calling—e.g., a pastor teaching in a seminary—he should be supported by his own church, or those that would truly partner with that church, rather than soliciting funds from those whom he serves.²¹See Chapter 9, ↗.

None of this settles the appropriate shape of a calling or commission; even within the Reformed tradition, that question has a number of answers. Neither does it settle what sorts of donation-supported organizations may rightly assist the church in her work. Regardless, whoever seeks to do justice to the nature of mediated obligation must wrestle with the nature of these institutions, especially insofar as they are designed to establish those who would be materially sustained on account of spiritual labors. The church is a pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15), and no other institution has been appointed to it.

The Vocabulary of Ministry

The concerns of mediated obligation relate to the notion of ministry, that particular stewardship of the mysteries of God (1 Cor. 4:1). The word “ministry,” however, has grown ambiguous in contemporary use. Our own day has seen an increasing number of movements blending the secular and the sacred, and the term now stretches over nearly any endeavor undertaken with a Christian intention, whether it be the labors of a pastor, charity to the poor, or the operations of a Christian-branded bike shop. Rather than referring to a definite stewardship of spiritual things, “ministry” now names little more than a pious purpose.

Exegetically, the question primarily comes down to the proper rendering of Ephesians 4:12, which describes the purpose for which Christ gave the church its apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers: “for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body of Christ.”²²πρὸς τὸν καταρτισμὸν τῶν ἁγίων, εἰς ἔργον διακονίας, εἰς οἰκοδομὴν τοῦ σώματος τοῦ Χριστοῦ. Two translation decisions determine whether “ministry” here names the work of these particular officers or the work of all believers. First, should we render the three tasks as a coordinate series or remove the first comma, binding the work of ministry to the saints rather than to the officer? Second, should we render καταρτισμός “perfecting” or “equipping,” which implies a preparation for some further activity—i.e., ministry?

The latter choices for each decision are recent novelties. Chrysostom, a native speaker of Greek, assigned all three works to the officers themselves,²³Of the officers of the church, “each one edifies, each one perfects, each one ministers.” Chrysostom, Homiliae in Epistolas ad Galatas et Ephesios, hom. 11 (p. 218). and all older translations whether English or otherwise seem to be agreed on the matter.²⁴See Barcellos, The Christian Ministry in the Church, 7–8. Westcott and Hort were perhaps the first to punctuate the Greek text to indicate ministry as the activity of all believers, omitting the comma after “the saints” (τῶν ἁγίων),²⁵Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, Eph. 4:12. but from about 1940 the reading was promoted by the ecumenical lay-ministry movement, and later especially by the World Council of Churches’ Departments of the Laity and Evangelism and by D. T. Niles.²⁶Barth, Ephesians, 479n265; cf. Mayes, “Equipping the Saints”?, 9. For the slogans related to this movement, see Gordon, “Equipping” Ministry in Ephesians 4?, 69. Despite receiving pushback since 1980,²⁷See Barcellos, The Christian Ministry in the Church, 21–22. almost every major English Protestant version since 1960 has both removed the first comma and traded “perfecting” for “equipping” or a near synonym.²⁸The first edition of the Revised Standard Version (1952) was the last major version to render the three phrases as coordinate; the New American Standard Bible (1960) dropped the comma. See ibid., 8–9.

All of this would be irrelevant if the newer reading could be maintained on the text’s own terms. However, to carry it, three things must be shown at once: that the parallel purpose clauses take different implied subjects, that καταρτισμός is properly translated “equip,” and that ἔργον διακονίας denotes not acts of service in the general sense but the Christian ministry itself.²⁹See Gordon, “Equipping” Ministry in Ephesians 4?, 70. None of these have been demonstrated. T. David Gordon judges the lay-ministry reading “so contrary to the natural grammar of the passage, and so strikingly contrary to the teaching of the remainder of the NT, that we cannot account for its popularity on the basis of careful Biblical study.” Its appeal must instead be credited to “the egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, populist Zeitgeist.”³⁰Ibid., 77, appealing to the work of Nathan Hatch, Hatch, The Democratization of American Christianity. What presents itself as exegesis is—at least in part—a remaking of Christianity in the image of the age.

We may reframe this modern confusion with the triangle of mediated obligation. For any activity performed by man for some benefit to another, we may regard it in one of two ways. First, we may regard God as the special source of that benefit, rendering the recipient directly obligated to God. Second, we may regard God as no more the source of that action than of any other, in which case the recipient is directly obligated to man. Once every earnest endeavor is “ministry” and every believer a “minister,” we must descend into either legalism or license. If “ministry” equally describes the administration of the Lord’s supper as well as it does a Christian travel agency, then either one must offer for free all work accomplished with noble intentions or it may all be sold. Modern Christianity has drifted toward the latter, treating more as salable and withholding less from sale. This is the natural result of expanding the definition of “ministry” so that it marks off nothing in particular. As the saying goes, if everything is holy, nothing is holy.

The doctrine of simony helps here by providing the category of spiritual things. Distinguishing between things of created spirits and things of the uncreated Spirit, we may identify what benefits render man directly obligated to other men or directly obligated to God. Even apart from restoring a narrow conception of the word “ministry,” this distinction restores the triangle where it should be, identifying man’s reception of supernatural gifts from God through one who stewards these blessings.

Conclusion

The obligation between a people and their minister is genuine but mediated. Within this framework, giving in relation to the ministry of the word may be categorized as either co-labor or reciprocity. These categories help us to understand issues raised by the older writings on simony: ministerial wages are properly co-labor, mental simony may be discerned by reciprocal cues, and mendicant support essentially functions as a form of reciprocity, even when posturing as co-labor.

Similarly, when combined with the historical doctrine of simony, this framework helps us to understand matters of our own time. Parachurch organizations designed to establish teachers of the word encourage a reciprocal fundraising similar to that practiced by the mendicant orders. Additionally, the twentieth-century inflation of the term “ministry” flattens the triangle of obligation and removes the categories by which the doctrine of simony was able to flourish, and by which it may be able to flourish once again.

A doctrine of simony recovered in these terms not only restores the discernment older generations possessed but yields a refined clarity. More than that, it may be established so as not to be lost again. Combined with the notion of mediated obligation, the doctrine of simony may be employed to positively describe the nature of ministerial maintenance rather than merely confront contemporary ills. As such, it has the capacity to outlast any corruption it eradicates.