Of Mastery & Property

No Debts, No Masters...

‘All things are yours.’

Here are another four transfixing words. They are so obviously and absurdly untrue, and yet something in me has always inwardly lit with laughter whenever I've heard them. I think this is because all the glaring facts that make these four words untrue are themselves fictions, made up things, perhaps even lies. This gap between what is felt in the gut and what is in fact possible, is a realm of truth that can only be discerned by a willingness to lose the plot a little, as they say. Who, after all, writes the plot?

In my experience, words like these in the Bible tend to be read as texture and effect. They’re a triumphant flourish from the brass section, and then we're on to the next thing. I've never heard them considered thoughtfully, or in fact at all, as words reaching for any kind of truth that might be reconciled or lived or embodied. To do so might be very dangerous.

These four words came in response to a question. A community was wrangling with itself. From whom would it take its lead? Who would it follow? Who would be its masters? Some said Paulos. Some said Apollos. Some said Cephas. They began to tribalise along the lines of difference they perceived between these very important men. In Roman culture, patronage held the social fabric together. In order to become an important man, it was the done thing to gain following, fealty and honour by being a benefactor of the town. The patron would put the town in their debt by gestures of generosity; by gifts of wealth, wisdom and power. Naturally, mastery belongs to those who had much over those who had need. The master was the one to whom all else were indebted.

Paulos refuses the whole structure, with his usual snorting verbosity. “Let no one boast about human leaders, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you.”

In the Roman empire the first patron was, of course, Caesar himself. And in this direction Paulos speaks of “the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing…” If they had understood anything outside this prison of power relations, they would not have crucified that peasant messiah, he says.

The thing that is particularly fascinating for us here is the link between mastery and ownership. This community, naturally, sought to repeat the Roman pattern of patronage, in which the master owns the wealth, the power or the wisdom, and the followers are thus indebted. 

Paulos turns the thing upside-down. It is he who belongs to them. He would refuse, I believe, to belong to anyone in particular, because he belongs to everyone. He would refuse to owe anything to anyone, besides the debt of love, which he owes to everyone. Even if he had nothing he would possess everything. And so he suggests they do not assign for themselves any masters, nor place themselves in the power or belonging of any gurus. Instead, they should live as siblings, as though all things belonged to them as much as anyone else, and indeed they to all things.