Although gift exchange serves vital social functions as a “catalyst and outward sign of elective affinities,”1 it also plays darker, socially divisive roles.2 Natalie Zemon Davis demonstrates that “the ambiguities, dependencies, and exaggerations of unceasing obligation” entailed in gift exchange could be unfavorably compared with the clarity and impersonality of the legal contract by a Montaigne, and that gifts may serve as a form of coercion, calculated to ensure the compliance of a donee.3 Economic anthropologist Jean-Sébastien Marcoux indicates that people sometimes turn to the market to escape the sense of indebtedness, obligation, and “emotional oppression” that may accompany gift exchange, especially in situations in which commensurability is difficult to attain.4 According to Mauss, among Polynesians of the early twentieth century, the refusal to accept a gift was tantamount to a declaration of war.5 For all their socially integrative functions, gifting practices also bear significant potential to effect social disintegration.
It is not, however, only modern theorists who have commented on the antisocial potentialities inherent in gift exchange. Seneca pointed to the sense of shame engendered when one was unable to reciprocate a gift6 and the hostility that could be evoked when one was given a gift that was beyond one’s means to repay, effectively reducing one’s status to that of an indebted client: “sometimes, not merely after having received benefits, but because we have received them, we consider the givers our worst enemies.”7 Cicero ruminates on the fragility of friendship. The refusal to accede to the request of a friend, he observes, can quickly transform a sociable relation into one of alienation and friendly relations into open hostility. In one of Cicero’s fictitious dialogues, Gaius Laelius, a Roman general of the late third and early second century BCE,8 recounts the insights of Publius Scipio, the general who captured Carthage and Numantia and famed friend of Laelius.9 Scipio is credited with the observation that, when one refuses to accede to the request of a friend, “it is charged by those to whom the compliance was denied that the laws of friendship [ius . . . amicitiae] have been disregarded. . . . By their ceaseless recriminations not only are social intimacies destroyed, but also everlasting enmities are produced.”10 It is a virtual “law of friendship” that one must accede to the request of an amicus; the failure to observe this law risks turning friends into enemies.
Like Seneca and Cicero, Paul experienced firsthand the socially divisive aspects of gift exchange. Some members of the early Christian assembly in Corinth rejected the claims advanced in 1 Corinthians that Paul’s mode of missionary self-support, which allowed him to preach his gospel “free of charge,” rendered his missionary labor a “gifted commodity” offered freely to the assembly.11 He was forced to defend the practice again in 2 Corinthians. Paul’s mode of missionary self-support—working as a craftsman to make a living (1 Thess 2:9; cp. Acts 18:3)—entailed a refusal to accept an offer of hospitality that had apparently been extended in Corinth.12 His refusal may be inferred from 2 Cor 11:11, where he counters the idea that he lacks “love” for the Corinthians,13 and 12:13, where he asserts that he has not “wronged” the assembly by failing to accept its support.14 Both references occur in contexts in which financial support is at issue. Rather than accepting Paul’s suggestions in 1 Corinthians that his apostolic labor on their behalf constituted a “gifted commodity” freely offered, some members of the assembly understood Paul’s refusal to accept their hospitality as an egregious breach of the laws of friendship: some, formerly friends, had turned hostile.15 This hostility, and Paul’s subsequent attempts at reconciliation, hinged on the issue of classification: was his mode of self-support a “gift” to the Corinthian assembly or a sign that he did not wish to enter into friendly relations with its constituents? Paul attempts to resolve the classificatory issues raised, and in so doing to reconcile himself to the estranged community members, in a series of letters now known collectively as 2 Corinthians.
Although 2 Corinthians now appears as a single letter, there is general—though hardly universal—agreement that it actually consists of a compilation of anywhere from two to six individual letters or letter fragments that have been stitched together by an anonymous editor of Paul’s correspondence.16 The letters were probably written sometime between 54 and 56 CE, not long after 1 Corinthians, which was written between 53 and 55 CE.17 The bulk of Paul’s references to the classification of his apostolic labor occur in 2 Cor 10–13, to which he would later refer as a letter written “with many tears” (2 Cor 2:4). This “tearful letter” was originally an independent correspondence in which the apostle portrayed in anguished terms his ruptured relations with the Corinthian community.
Paul’s “tearful letter” was written as a defense against accusations raised by members of the Corinthian assembly that he lacked legitimacy as an apostle, due among other issues to an alleged dearth of skill as a public speaker, and—an unforgivable sin for an orator who would lead masses—his failure to project a commanding personal presence (2 Cor 10:10; 11:6). It is evident that the Corinthian assembly, or some of its members, were comparing Paul unfavorably to a group of early Christian missionaries who, like himself, had been active in Corinth (10:12) and whom he vituperatively labels “false apostles” and “servants of Satan” who disguise themselves as apostles of Christ (11:13–15).18 Such overheated rhetoric can hardly be taken as an objective description. As Cicero observes, in legal proceedings, character assassination is often a more effective means of winning support for one’s cause than the sober elucidation of the facts pertaining to the case.19 Paul’s self-defense operates according to the same logic: the best defense is a good offense.
Among the issues that distinguished Paul from the group of apostles vituperatively depicted in 2 Cor 10–13 was the issue of apostolic support. It appears that, unlike Paul, the missionaries with whom Paul was being unfavorably compared had accepted the hospitality of wealthier patrons within the Corinthian assembly. Since he indicates in 2 Cor 11:12 that he would continue to refuse support from the Corinthians in order to deny any opportunity to his missionary rivals to declare themselves his equals, it may be inferred that the missionary group had received support from the Corinthian assembly during their stay.20 Larry Welborn has convincingly demonstrated that Paul depicts the principal figure among this group as a “pompous parasite,” a stock character lampooned in comedy. The “parasite” is one who serves as a client in the household of a wealthy patron and is portrayed as possessed of a voracious appetite, a quick wit, cunning intelligence, and impudence.21 The character is described as eating his fill of the comestibles offered in his host’s household, taking pains to maximize opportunities to receive lavish gifts, and, in an inversion of roles evocative of the Saturnalia, attempting to elevate himself to a position of honor and authority even above that of his patron.22 Welborn argues that Paul assimilates the leader of the rival missionary group to the pattern of the parasite in describing him as follows: “For you put up with it when someone enslaves you, when someone eats you out of house and home, when someone plunders you, when someone puts on airs, when someone strikes you in the face” (2 Cor 11:20).23 Although obviously a caricature, such a depiction would have had little point had its object not been the recipient of the hospitality of a wealthy patron in Corinth.
The acceptance of early Christian hospitality by the missionary group in Corinth raised afresh the issue that Paul had earlier addressed in 1 Corinthians—that of his mode of self-support. But in the “tearful letter” of 2 Cor 10–13, new issues emerge. In 2 Cor 12:14, Paul assures the members of the assembly of his “love” for them, and in 11:9 he indicates the reason why such an assurance was necessary: he has refused to accept the hospitality of the patronal households in Corinth, or, as he politely phrases it, he has refused to “burden” them. The refusal of the “gift” of hospitality, however, was interpreted by some members of the community—not least the patron who had extended the offer—as a refusal to enter into the give-and-take of a friendly relationship: a refusal of friendship itself.24
Even as Paul asserts that he is indeed a “friend” to the Corinthians, he deflects any implication of parity that a “friendly” hospitality relation might imply. Suggesting that his relation to the Corinthian community is more intimate even than friendship, he utilizes the language of fictive kinship: Paul serves as “father” to the assembly.25 He asserts that children need not sequester resources to be expended on their parents; parents, however, typically did so for their children.26 As fictive parent, Paul indicates that he ought to store up and expend resources on behalf of his Corinthian “children” and not the other way around: “Look, this third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not burden you [ou katanarkēsō], for I seek not what is yours [ta hymōn], but you. For children ought not store up [thēsaurizein] for their parents, but parents for their children” (2 Cor 12:14). By invoking the fiction of his parenthood with respect to the Corinthian assembly, he both counters the charge that he has rejected friendly relations by rejecting the “gift” of hospitality from the assembly and discursively constructs an asymmetric relationship between himself and the assembly, placing himself in the superior position.27 Although it was a “law of friendship” that one ought not refuse a gift offered in good faith, it was not standard practice for parents to squander their children’s resources. In cases in which filial gifts would deplete household resources, it would only be fitting, Paul suggests, for parents to refuse such gifts. By analogizing himself to a parent in such a situation, he effectively exonerates himself for refusing the Corinthian offer of hospitality.
Although it comes from a letter that was originally independent of 2 Cor 10–13, Paul’s notice in 2 Cor 2:17 that he is not to be characterized as a “huckster of God’s word” portrays remunerated apostolic labor—even though that remuneration generally took the form of the “gift” of hospitality—as a commodity.28 Paul’s attempt to distance himself from “the many” who, in his view, “sell cheaply” or “huckster” (kapēleuein) the gospel may be directed at the group of missionaries otherwise in view in 2 Cor 10–13.29 Echoing a theme of 1 Cor 9:18, he indicates in 2 Cor 11:7 that, unlike those who receive remuneration for their preaching, he himself “proclaimed the gospel of God free of charge” (dōrean to tou theou euangelion euēngelisamēn).
To the theme that Paul’s mode of self-support, which allowed him to donate his missionary labor “free of charge,” functioned as a “gifted commodity,” he adds another: that of intimate relations who do not wish to impose a financial “burden” on those to whom they are related, whether by bonds of friendship or by blood. The metaphorical use of terms denoting “burdens,” heavy weights that must be carried by human or beast, to refer to significant financial obligations is common in Greek and Latin literature.30 Two representative examples may be cited. In response to a request to the Senate by Marcus Hortalus, grandson of the orator Hortensius, for funds to cover his family’s living expenses, the emperor Tiberius reportedly stated: “The deified Augustus gave you money, Hortalus; but not under pressure, nor with the proviso that it should be given always. Otherwise, if a man is to have nothing to hope or fear from himself, industry will languish, indolence thrive, and we shall have the whole population waiting, without a care in the world, for outside relief, incompetent to help itself, and a burden to us [nobis graves].”31 In the Lives of Eminent Philosophers (5.4.65), Diogenes Laertius quotes a maxim attributed to the third-century BCE orator Lyco, son of Astyanax of Troas: “A heavy burden [bary gar phortion] to a father is a girl, when for lack of a dowry she runs past the flower of her age.”32 Lacking a dowry and past her prime, such a girl is construed as a burden inasmuch as ideally, she would have been married and transferred to the virilocal household, where her sustenance would have been provided. Conversely, the woman with no marriage prospects continues to consume the resources of the paternal household. Financial obligations, especially those that divert resources that would otherwise be utilized for the maintenance either of the body politic or of one’s immediate household, are often compared to a heavy load, difficult to bear. Paul’s letter in 2 Cor 10–13 draws on the same metaphor.
In 2 Cor 12:13–16, for example, he writes:
In what way have I slighted you33 in comparison with the other assemblies, except that I have not burdened you [egō ou katenarkēsa hymōn]? Forgive me this wrong! Look, this third time I am ready to come to you, and I will not burden you [ou katanarkēsō], for I seek not what is yours [ta hymōn], but you. For children ought not store up [thēsaurizein] for their parents, but parents for their children. But I will gladly spend and be spent [dapanēsō kai ekdapanēthēsomai] on your behalf. If I love you more lavishly, am I to be loved the less? Let it be so: I have not burdened you [egō ou katebarēsa hymas].
Paul likens the financial obligation that would be incurred by the Corinthian assembly offering him hospitality to a “burden” that he spares the assembly having to bear on his behalf. He assures members that he does not seek access to their resources (“what is yours”) and points to the expense that would be incurred if the community were to support him. He indicates that, instead of having the community spend for him, he would rather “spend and be spent” in their service. Although the terms katanarkan and katabarein (both translated “to burden”) are generally held to be synonymous,34 the use of the former term may indicate that Paul’s acceptance of Corinth’s financial support would “disable” or “knock out”35 his addressees by diverting for his sustenance the resources that would otherwise contribute to their own welfare.36
The line that opens the quotation above, “In what way have I slighted you in comparison with the other assemblies,”37 indicates that Paul’s actions in Corinth were being assessed in relation to his practices in other locales. It had apparently been revealed that, unlike his practice in Corinth, Paul did accept economic support in various forms from the assembly at Philippi, in eastern Macedonia (cp. 2 Cor 11:8–9). In a letter to the assembly there,38 he recounts in glowing terms a relation of friendly gift exchange. He indicates that he views himself as existing in a “partnership” (Phil 1:5) with the assembly; it is only the Philippians, he writes, with whom he shared a relationship of “give and take” (dosis kai lēmpsis) in the earlier phases of his itinerant mission (4:15).39 Although the phrase that he uses to characterize the exchange relationship is borrowed from the mercantile sphere, it was often used among friends to describe ongoing relations of mutual gift exchange.40 He refers to goods that he had received from Philippi, whether in the form of currency or food and clothing he does not say (4:18), during one of his stints in prison.41 He also mentions “gifts” that were sent to support him as he preached in the city of Thessalonica (4:16–17).42 His depiction of a friendly “partnership” based on the “give-and-take” of gift exchange in Philippi contrasts sharply with his refusal to “burden” the Corinthians by acceding to their own offers of hospitality. It was likely his refusal to enter fully into “partnership” with Corinth that was perceived as a “slight” to the assembly there (2 Cor 12:13).43
An equally sharp contrast is to be made between Paul’s characterization of his exchange relations with Philippi in his letter to that assembly and the characterization of the same in 2 Cor 10–13, where he ironically depicts the relation, not as one of “partnership,” but of theft. He writes, “I robbed other assemblies [allas ekklēsias esylēsa] when I received a wage [or ‘provisions’: opsōnion] in order to serve you, and when I was present with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who had come from Macedonia supplied what I needed” (2 Cor 11:8–9). The unnamed “brothers” had likely been sent as a delegation from the Macedonian city of Philippi.44 The eleven-hundred-kilometer journey from Philippi to Corinth required nine to fourteen days of sailing and overland travel.45 In light of the time involved, it seems likely that the opsōnion—the “wage” or “provisions” that Paul received—was sent in the form of currency rather than comestibles, which would have been bulky and subject to spoilage.46 This was probably not a regular, scheduled wage, however, but a series of sporadic “gifts” offered to meet his needs.47 Paul’s ironic reclassification of the Philippian “gift” as “theft” is to be viewed alongside his redescription of hospitality as a “burden” to the community (2 Cor 11:9; 12:13, 14, 16) and his invocation of the parental duty not to squander household resources (2 Cor 12:14). In each case, he portrays the expenditure of community resources for the maintenance of missionaries in quite negative terms in an attempt to persuade the members of the Corinthian assembly that he had not “wronged” them by refusing to accept their support (2 Cor 12:13).
But the classification of Paul’s mode of support and the discrepancies in his practices in different communities were not the only items on the Corinthians’ list of grievances. It appears that some members of the assembly had accused him of malfeasance in the matter of a collection of funds that he had organized. As early as 1 Corinthians, he had asked members of the assembly to set aside weekly donations that were eventually to be collected and transported to Jerusalem to be presented to the assembly there (1 Cor 16:1–4). The early Christian assembly in Jerusalem was an influential one, as the apostle Peter and Jesus’ brother, James, were stationed there (cp. Gal 1:18–19). Before writing 2 Cor 10–13, Paul had sent to Corinth his assistant, Titus, along with an unnamed “brother” to oversee the collection efforts (cp. 2 Cor 8:16–24), and in 2 Cor 12:16–18 he alludes to that event, now past:
Let it be so: I did not burden you—but, crafty man that I am, I took you by deceit. Surely I did not defraud you through any of those whom I sent to you, did I? I urged Titus and sent along the brother; surely Titus did not defraud you, did he? Have we not conducted ourselves in the same spirit? Have we not followed in the same footsteps?
Through the use of an ironic statement (“crafty man that I am, I took you by deceit”), Paul appears to respond to a charge lodged against him in Corinth that he had “deceived” and “defrauded” the assembly there. Welborn has recently argued that this accusation was made by the patron Gaius and constituted the painful “wrong” that Paul had suffered during his second visit to Corinth (cp. 2 Cor 7:12).48 Alfred Plummer colorfully elucidates the charge: “[Paul] and his friends collected money for the poor saints [in Jerusalem], and some of it stuck to his fingers.”49 Paul was apparently accused of misappropriating funds earmarked for use by others. In this way he appeared “crafty” and “deceitful” to at least some of his Corinthian addressees: while on one hand, assuming the posture of an adult with his children, he refused the support and hospitality of the Corinthian assembly, on the other, he allegedly planned to divert funds from their “gift” to Jerusalem for his own personal use. Paul was caught in a web in which transactions involving material and monetary resources, as well as the terms used to classify those exchanges, were weighed in the balance: was he friendly or hostile, a magnanimous giver or a deceitful fraud? Exchange, classification, and social relations had become inextricably tangled. Should he fail in his epistolary attempts to define the terms under which his affairs in Corinth were to be understood, he risked provoking the ongoing hostility of the assembly there and suffering the loss of that site as a base of his continued operations in the region of Achaia.
The “tearful letter” now contained in 2 Cor 10–13 was transmitted to Corinth by Paul’s emissary, Titus (cp. 2 Cor 7:6–8).50 The arguments contained therein appear to have had an effect on his addressees. Their response is characterized in a subsequent letter, written by Paul after Titus had left Corinth and returned to Macedonia to report the outcome of his visit. Like 2 Cor 10–13, it was later incorporated into the “letter collection” of 2 Corinthians. The contents of the epistle, sometimes referred to as the “letter of reconciliation,” appear in 2 Cor 1:1–2:13; 7:5–16; 13:11–13. The letter indicates how the assembly received Titus, “with fear and trembling,” and declared their “zeal” for Paul (2 Cor 7:7, 12, 15). The ringleader of the Corinthian opposition to Paul had been subjected to disciplinary action by the assembly (2 Cor 2:5–7). The remaining members wished to reconcile themselves with Paul (2 Cor 7:5–16). Paul warmly accepts the assembly’s overtures at reconciliation, declaring again his “abundant” love for its members (2 Cor 2:4).
But it is not only Paul’s “letter of reconciliation” that testifies to the restoration of positive social relations between Paul and the Corinthian assembly. The concerns that he may have planned to embezzle funds from the collection for Jerusalem were apparently assuaged, as he is emboldened at a later date to write another letter, now contained in 2 Cor 9, calling for the resumption of efforts to complete the project (2 Cor 9:1–5). Additional evidence for the restoration of positive social relations occurs in Rom 16, which commends Phoebe, a patroness from Corinth’s port city of Cenchreae,51 to the early Christian assembly in Rome and includes greetings from the notable Corinthians Gaius and Erastus. On the basis of the references to known individuals, it is generally inferred that Paul’s letter to the Romans was written in Corinth, perhaps in 57 CE, not long after the crisis in his social relations with the assembly had erupted and had subsequently been resolved.
But it was not only the Corinthians who made significant changes to their practice in order to restore ruptured relations with Paul; he appears to have made concessions of his own. In 2 Corinthians (54–56 CE), he had adamantly declared that he had not accepted support from Corinth in the past, nor would he do so in the future (2 Cor 11:9–10, 12):
When I was present with you and was in need, I did not burden anyone, for the brothers who came from Macedonia supplied what I needed, and in every way I kept myself from being a burden to you, and I will continue to do so [kai en panti abarē emauton hymin etērēsa kai tērēsō]. As the truth of Christ is in me, this boast of mine will not be silenced in the regions of Achaia. . . . And what I do, I will also continue to do.52
However, the situation appears to have been quite different in 57 CE, when Paul wrote his letter to the Romans from Corinth. By that time, he appears to have reversed his policy of refusing Corinthian support, as he indicates in Rom 16:23 that the wealthy paterfamilias, Gaius, was at that time functioning as his host: “Gaius, host to me and to the whole assembly [ho xenos mou kai holēs tēs ekklēsias], greets you.” It is generally agreed that Gaius’s role as xenos, “host,” implies that he provided food and lodging for Paul and that his household served as the meeting place for the “whole assembly” in Corinth.53 According to Acts 20:2–3, Paul overwintered for three months in Greece in 56–57 CE, and it is usually inferred that the precise location was Corinth.54 It is likely during those months that he wrote his letter to the Romans and stayed as a guest in Gaius’s household. Gaius’s role as “host” (xenos) parallels Philemon’s, whom Paul asks to prepare him a “guest room” (xenia) in his household (Phlm 22). Despite his protestations throughout 1 and 2 Corinthians that he would not accept the hospitality of the Corinthian assembly (1 Cor 9:1–18; 2 Cor 11:7–11), that his refusal of support gave him a competitive advantage over rival missionaries who accepted it (2 Cor 11:12; cp. 2 Cor 11:20–21), and that his self-support constituted positive grounds for boasting (1 Cor 9:15; 2 Cor 11:10), Paul seems to have reversed his position, finally accepting the hospitality of a relatively wealthy member of the assembly in Corinth as he had already done in other communities.
The restoration of friendly social relations between Paul and the Corinthian assembly entailed more than the community’s commitment to subject itself to the apostle’s authority, as the “letter of reconciliation” might imply (cp. 2 Cor 2:9; 7:15). Paul himself made significant concessions in the interest of amicitia, or “friendship,” not least by ceding the ground for boasting constituted by his earlier refusal to accept hospitality in Corinth. Paul’s classificatory endeavors in the “tearful letter”—his attempts to portray himself as magnanimous donor of commodified labor, parent who does not wish to squander household resources, and friend who does not wish to burden the community—apparently exerted some effect on the Corinthian assembly, as the “letter of reconciliation” attests. Even so, friendship’s insistence that it be instantiated not only in discursive, but also in material form—in the form of the unreserved “give-and-take” of goods and services—could not be ignored. And it seems to be a friendship consisting both of discursive (i.e., classificatory) and of material elements that finally prevailed in Paul’s relations with the Corinthian assembly.55 In the end, he seems to have conceded that a one-sided friendship in which one party continually plays the role of donor and the other, chronic recipient, is no friendship at all. Despite his earlier protests, the apostle was finally persuaded to enter fully into the dance of the Graces by accepting the hospitality of a wealthy member of the Corinthian community.56
As Margaret Mitchell has recently pointed out, Paul’s letters were not simply “witnesses to” ongoing social relations in Corinth, but themselves constituted attempts to influence those relations.57 As much as the sending of his envoy, Titus, and his own periodic visits to the city, Paul’s letters played a significant role in shaping sociopolitical relations within the assembly, as the Corinthians’ reaction to Paul’s “tearful letter” (2 Cor 10–13) suggests. Issues of classification played a central role at each stage of Paul’s dealings with the Corinthians: whether he was to be classed a friendly partner in gift exchange (1 Corinthians) or a hostile individual who refused reciprocal ties with Corinth and used trickery and deception to defraud them (2 Cor 10–13). By the same token, the leading figure among the group of missionaries with whom Paul compares himself in 2 Cor 10–13 was subject to similar classificatory quandaries. Was he, as his patron likely perceived, a friendly individual who had graciously accepted an offer of hospitality in keeping with Jesus’ missionary injunctions or, as Paul would have it, a “pompous parasite” who was eating his patron out of house and home? In both cases, the classification of exchange held significant social consequences: charges that Paul had refused to enter into friendly exchange relations by refusing to accept hospitality and, worse, charges of financial fraud with respect to the collection classed Paul as a hostile individual, to whom the appropriate response would entail the cessation of friendly relations. Conversely, Paul’s self-portrayal as magnanimous giver of gifts, providing his apostolic labor “free of charge,” and fictive “parent,” both “spending and being spent” on behalf of his Corinthian “children,” depicted him as a social intimate, to whom the appropriate response would be the resumption of positive social relations. The anticipated response to Paul’s depiction of his missionary rival as a “pompous parasite” would entail the cessation of the community’s friendly relations with that individual and the group headed by him,58 an outcome not incompatible with Paul’s own claims to serve in a unique leadership role as “father” of the Corinthian assembly (cp. 1 Cor 4:14–15; 2 Cor 12:14–15).
The series of letters that Paul wrote to the assembly in Corinth attests to the uncertainties and ambiguities inherent in gift exchange. They also attest to the importance of cognitive and discursive acts of classification; at stake in each of the letters, from 1 Corinthians to the “letter of reconciliation,” is the way in which Paul’s mode of apostolic self-support is to be categorized, with all of the attendant implications for subsequent social interaction—or its cessation. The data of the Corinthian correspondence support the following conclusions:
1. The classification of an exchange is an integral part of the exchange process.
2. Subject to dispute, modification, and reclassification, the assignation of classificatory category rests not solely on purportedly “objective” features of the goods or services exchanged nor the manner in which they are exchanged, but is based instead on an interaction between the “objective” features and the subjective interests and sociopolitical goals of the classifiers. The “objective” features of exchange—the material aspects of goods or services rendered, and the circumstances under which they are transmitted—may suggest, but do not determine, classificatory categories. Categories are assigned on the basis of negotiation and consensus.
3. Gift exchange involves the potential for the development and maintenance of durable social bonds of friendship and mutual affection as well as hostility and mutual recrimination. When hostility ensues, attempts may be made to restore friendly social relations.
Two further conclusions also seem warranted:
4. Since the classification of exchange carries significant implications for social interaction (whether friendly or hostile, durative or ephemeral), attempts to classify a given exchange cannot be disassociated from attempts to orchestrate sociopolitical relations and, in fact, always serve sociopolitical functions. Orchestration of this sort may or may not entail the conscious recognition of the actors involved that a correlation exists between the classification of exchange and sociopolitical relations; the social effects persist in any case.
5. Since Paul’s relations with the Corinthian assembly apparently remain unstable throughout the Corinthian correspondence, and appear to have normalized only by 57 CE, when he wrote his letter to the Romans while the recipient of Gaius’s hospitality, it may be suggested that friendly social relations are facilitated by a significant material component: the mutual “give-and-take” of goods and services. Assertions of friendship, love, and paternity, when not accompanied by the mutual exchange of goods and services, fail to generate consent. To return again to the statement of Jacques Godbout and Alain Caillé with which this chapter opened, gifts constitute a “catalyst and outward sign of elective affinities.” In the absence of the “outward sign” of mutual gift exchange, assertions of love, friendship, and so on remain just that. In order to be credible, the assignation of a classificatory category must be corroborated by the material form and “outward sign” most appropriate to it. And it is perhaps this recognition that finally prompted Paul to relinquish his stance of self-sufficiency in order to enter fully into the dance of the Graces with the assembly in Corinth.