Abstract
Ethical leadership is not divorced from contexts. Instead, the anchors of creation and eschatology help to provide lenses for appropriate use and modification of leadership models in given contexts. 1 Timothy is analysed as a document that contextualizes and appropriates leadership models from wider Greco-Roman culture for Christian, therefore ethical leadership. Revelation is also studied for its implications on political leadership and the use of power efficiently.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
Private ownership is already a kind of fiction—a very useful one—but not one that can be completely enforced. “A landowner can exclude the public from his land, but cannot…exclude his land from the public. His field is everyone else’s scenery; his factory is everyone else’s civic building” (O’Donovan and O’Donovan 2004, 305).
- 3.
I believe I am indebted to my colleague Dr. Patrick Eby and his wife Ruth for this phrase.
- 4.
See, e.g., Mark 3:20–35 and Luke 2:41–52.
- 5.
Ramachandra (2008) writes, “But every personal religious conversion implies also a reorientation of political loyalties” (63). We will explore this more fully below under the church .
- 6.
While I am keeping this in the framework of Jesus , I am leaning explicitly on Volf’s (1996) differentiation . He writes, “The children of Abraham are not strangers pure and simple, however. Their ‘strangeness’ results not from the negative act of cutting all ties, but from the positive act of giving allegiance to God and God ’s promises future ” (53).
- 7.
Space precludes a full unpacking of this theology , but a start might be to see the intimate relationship between the Father and the Son in Matthew 11, followed up with Jesus ’ promise of rest for the weary (Matthew 11:28–30), which is reminiscent of Isaiah 40:29–31 and the work of God .
- 8.
Space precludes a considerable discussion of this topic now, but I suggest the following to get a sense of what some mean by culture and how Christians engage with it. Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (2008), Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon, Resident Aliens (1989), James K.A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (2009). The preceding is quite limited—and limited culturally in that I haven’t explored multiple cultures. Because “culture ” is better understood as “cultures,” then you will want to be sensitive to your own cultures and others to get a varied sense of how different cultures understand the dynamic between culture and Christian faith in their culture .
- 9.
For a very helpful discussion of religious faith and culture that pushes beyond the sketch I can offer here, see Timothy C. Tennent, Theology in the Context of World Christianity (2007), especially Chapter 8, “Ecclesiology : Followers of Jesus in Islamic Mosques.”
- 10.
To put this in ecclesiological language—the language of the church : “[M]odels of the church must not be dictated by cultural reality , but they must be voiced and practiced in ways that take careful account of the particular time and circumstance into which God ’s people are called” (Brueggemann 1991, 128).
- 11.
Oliver O’Donovan uses the phrase “eschatological sign” of the tribe of Levi (O’Donovan and O’Donovan 2004, 309), which I will develop below.
- 12.
“To talk of the provisionality of the church , therefore, does not suggest that its faith is relativistic, but rather that its faith is large enough to be made relevant to any time and place” (Britton 2009, 100). Britton goes on to describe the importance of asking questions. One of the best roles that allegiance to God can take is asking gentle, but informed questions of cultures. Leadership involves asking questions, not from ignorance, but in humility, seeking the others answer genuinely, but critically. I quickly follow up with an affirmation of Christian leadership : The “significance of Christian leadership is that it contains enough truth to make it relevant in any context and yet enough flexibility to use the inherent truths to build upon any context” (Huizing 2011, 69).
- 13.
Beeley (2009) points out how the church can make sense of its more explicitly religious and saving work : “The divine economy includes all of God ’s dealings with creation , including the world of creation , redemption, and consummation. It is not, therefore, merely an economy of salvation, even if our present condition requires salvation in order to experience the fullness of our creation and final knowledge of God ” (Beeley 2009, 20, n. 19). The liturgy of the church is meant to orient the church to God in order to see the world and God ’s work in the world rightly in that local church ’s place: “True theological leadership …involves a disciplined and thoughtful reflectivity about how we are to minister God ’s word and sacraments in the unique particularities of each time and place” (Beeley and Britton 2009, 7).
- 14.
This is why the local church is so important, because it gives real people outside our limited and immediate culture (s), like family and work , to serve and by whom to be served in what Scharen (2015) calls the “daily realities of the actual church in the real world in all its beauty and brokenness” (14).
- 15.
Volf (1996) writes, “But the solution for being a stranger in a wrong way is not full naturalization, but being a stranger in the right way” (39–40).
- 16.
Unless otherwise noted, all references in this section are to 1 Timothy.
- 17.
Some scholarship over the last two hundred years, following New Testament scholar F.C. Baur, has emphasized that 1 Timothy was not written by Paul, as traditionally believed, and instead was a second-century forgery, pointing to a change in vocabulary and style and the developed church organization, among other reasons. Others have suggested that Paul’s use of a secretary, the function of a co-sender, and the presence of non-Pauline quotations in Paul’s letters may all change this perspective (Ellis 1993). I.H. Marshall (2005) noted, although did not argue, that a colleague of Paul’s, shortly after Paul’s death , could have been the author of these letters, carrying on the teaching of Paul faithfully. Regardless of author, the message of 1 Timothy may be examined for the purposes of extending the nature of ethical leadership .
- 18.
- 19.
I have left off the marital requirements because these requirements are not necessarily for all times and places and are for the context of the church , which I want to broaden. My own opinion is that this requirement for marriage lends to the kind of person the leader is meant to be and not a requirement for all persons at all times. For an approach to this text and the Bible as a whole, see Schenck (2016). I also want to point out that women and men had similar expectations for moral propriety in this letter (compare 2:9, 15 for women with 3:2 for men). I also want to note that the word translated “authority ,” when Paul disallows women having authority over a man (2:12), is used only once in the New Testament (Davis 2009), whereas it is used elsewhere in nonbiblical literature both contemporary with and prior to 1 Timothy. In this literature, authenteo had such meanings as “to domineer,” “to murder,” or “to commit a crime.” Only through later generations after the biblical text was written “did the meaning ‘to exercise authority ’ come to predominate” (Davis 2009, 5) the meaning of the word. It is also important to note that had Paul had ecclesial authority in mind, other words were available, such as proestemi (to govern or administer [Johnson 2001]; Davis 2009). Instead, Paul used a word with negative sense in the outside world.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
I direct interested readers to the various commentaries that I have referenced in this chapter for these ancient sources that follow. While I have confirmed the connections in English translations, these insights emerge from and are reaffirmed by various commentaries cited throughout this section.
- 23.
- 24.
“The faith of the New Testament acknowledges not the revolutionary but the martyr who recognizes both the authority of the state and also its limits. His resistance consists in doing everything that serves to promote law and an ordered life in society, even when this means obeying authorities who are indifferent or hostile to his faith ; but he will not obey when he is commanded to do evil, that is, to oppose the will of God . His is not the resistance of active force, but the resistance of the one who is willing to suffer for the will of God ” (Benedict XVI 2006, 21).
- 25.
John also says that the destroying locusts wear stephanoi (9:7). Here, John has linked the locusts with a later portrait of Jesus in order to contrast them: First, Jesus , “one like a son of man ,” wears a stephanos of gold when reaping his harvest (14:14) while the locusts wear “something like stephanoi of gold” (emphasis added). Second, consider the nature of the pictures. In one picture, there is a reaper of harvest, while in the other there are destroyers of crops. John’s purpose here is contrast, not comparison.
- 26.
The Christian development of what has been called “Just War Theory” is a practical application of this tension—using power in search of peace in ways that are faithful.
- 27.
Ramachandra (2008) writes, “The opposite of secular is not the spiritual or the sacred, but the eternal. The saeculum denotes the temporal order that, while incapable of itself to deliver the kingdom of God , is hallowed by creation and incarnation, and called to anticipate God ’s reign in the ordering of human life. It represents a realm in which submission to human authorities, even those that do not explicitly acknowledge the sovereignty of God , is valid but always conditional” (63).
- 28.
See Carl R. Trueman (2016) for a winsome description of aesthetics and argument, from where I am drawing part of this final reflection.
- 29.
This isn’t to deny that outward appearance influences whom we see as potential leaders. Malcolm Gladwell (2005), in typical entertaining fashion, tells the story of President Warren Harding who had a presidential look, but ultimately did not have a highly regarded period of service before dying in office.
- 30.
See The Aesthetics of Organization, edited by Stephen Linstead and Heather Höpfl, especially Chapter 1. Gordon T. Smith (2017) puts beauty in his chapter on creating space (169–170), which reminds readers that everything communicates—the good creation can be enhanced from within to point to the perfecting future coming from God .
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Perry, A. (2018). Culture: Contexts of Ethical Leadership. In: Biblical Theology for Ethical Leadership. Christian Faith Perspectives in Leadership and Business. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75043-9_8
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