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Dr. Jennifer Quigley

My research lies at the intersections of theology and economics in New Testament and early Christian literature, and I hope that my work can help religious leaders and communities embrace rather than avoid conversations about economic justice, personal and communal financial practices, and the pursuit of human flourishing rather than exploitation.

In my first book, Divine Accounting: Theo-Economics in Early Christianity, I argue that persons in antiquity would have encountered the divine as an active participant in the economic sphere. Much of my work engages with evidence from archaeology, which reveals that whether a person was buying oil at the local market, or changing currency, or signing a lease for a field, they would have encountered the gods. The earliest followers of Christ would have been familiar with the economic systems of local cults, as well as the ordinary ways the gods could be found in the day-to-day transactions of their lives. Reading with this vibrant range of possibilities in mind offers new ways to understand familiar texts such as the Letter to the Philippians, on which much of my first book focuses.

This reading strategy has two significant benefits. First, I think it matters what material we read and think with alongside New Testament texts, especially when it comes to economic themes. The earliest followers of Christ were members of the 99%, to echo the Occupy Wall Street movement. Too often biblical scholars only read elite literary sources. To take a single example, when dealing with a topic such as the language of charis “gift/grace,” some biblical scholars read a text from Seneca called De Beneficiis, to think about what Paul might have meant by this language. The problem, of course, is Seneca was a wealthy, elite philosopher who was an advisor to the emperor. This is not a good parallel to the earliest communities in Christ, which included enslaved persons, laborers, and tradespeople.

And this is even more important when we think of a text like the Letter to the Philippians. The Philippian community was among the poorest (if not the very poorest) of the Christ communities with whom Paul exchanged letters. Paul acknowledges the hardships they have undergone when he writes to them. But this community knows what it means to offer mutual aid, so much so that Paul uses the example of the Philippians’ generosity despite their poverty to shame the Corinthian communities into giving more in 2 Corinthians 9. And this is the community that Paul turns to for help when he is in jail; Philippians, after all, is an example of prison correspondence. Reading this way helps to avoid treating the poor as objects of study but rather to take seriously the vibrant range of theological and economic possibilities these ordinary earliest Christ followers had.

Second, this reading strategy helps us to find new models for community. To take a single example, Philippians 1:5-7 reads a little differently when attention is paid to the financial valences of the text.

[I give thanks]…because of your venture (koinōnia) in the gospel from the first day until now. I have confidence in this, that the one who began a good work in you will complete it by the day of Jesus Christ. Even as it is right for me to think this way about all of you because I have you in my heart, both in my imprisonment and in my defense and warranty of the gospel, since all of you are my joint-shareholders in grace.

The word koinōnia is incredibly important in this rich passage; it occurs six times in a very brief letter, and it is the primary way in which Paul and the Philippians describe their community together. Koinōnia, often translated rather vaguely as “fellowship,” has significant financial valences, and is frequently found in contracts and other financial documents. It carries the sense of a venture, of shared risk and reward. Thus, when Paul thanks the Philippians for their koinōnia in the gospel, he frames work in the gospel is framed in terms of mutual aid and investment, of shared risk and reward.

Koinōnia in Philippians imagines the community as a financially-bound body. Koinōnia describes a divine-human financial and theological entanglement that includes the Philippians, Paul, his co-writer Timothy, Epaphroditus, whom the Philippians sent to aid Paul, Christ, and God. There is a venture in the gospel, overseen by God and due by the day of Christ, to which all can contribute. This community, despite its poverty, understands itself as abundantly participating in the divine-human project of the gospel through mutual aid and support of their colleague Paul in prison.

When we pay attention not only to elite literature, but to material objects and mundane texts, like the formulaic wording of a contract, we find new ways to understand New Testament texts. Attention to economic themes helps us to notice the ways in which the Philippians and Paul understood themselves in a koinōnia, as financially bound and mutually invested in the work of the gospel, with God overseeing that work. And we can begin to see the alternative economies Paul and these early Christ followers imagined when they described mutual support for an imprisoned person as part of a prosperous gospel.

Especially if you are current and future leaders in local faith communities or advocacy groups, you need to get comfortable talking about money, you need to be comfortable preaching a stewardship sermon or balancing a budget or running a fundraising campaign. It’s also important to notice the ways in which economic language seeps into our theology, and to be attentive to the ways in which our interpretations of scripture can either reinscribe exploitative harm or help us to imagine alternative possibilities for human flourishing. I know this is a challenge for religious leaders; I have taught small groups in churches where folks were more comfortable talking about sex and the Bible than about money in the Bible.

But it is of urgent ethical import for individuals and communities given wealth inequality, health gaps, predatory debt, and other pressing economic justice concerns. However, vibrant alternatives are possible; we have one small example from a low-income community in a marshy city in the mid-first century CE, where folks pooled their resources and sent help to a person in prison, understanding that, despite their poverty, they were abundantly participating in God’s economy.