Moving Beyond Meeks: The Social Function of Emotion 176

As I have earlier mentioned, the aspect of Meeks’ work that I want to focus on for the purposes of my study has to do with how he correlates the social experiences of the Pauline Christians with the structures of belief that were integral to their resocialization as members of a new social organization. The dialectical relationship that Meeks identifies between patterns of belief and patterns of life is extremely helpful in opening up the question of the social force of doctrine in relation to the formation of a

distinctively Christian identity at both the individual and group level. Yet I wish to suggest that Meeks’ account would be enriched, and perhaps to no small degree, if it incorporated an explicit consideration of the function of emotion in the socialization of these new converts, especially given what recent developments in cognitive science and in social-scientific research suggest about the nature and construction of emotion (see section 1.3 above).

774 _{For a concise summary of the reactions to Meeks insofar as they relate to methodological}

considerations, see David G. Horrell, “Whither Social-Scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation? Reflections on Contested Methodologies and the Future,” in After the First Urban

Christians: The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later, ed. Todd D. Still and David G. Horrell (London: T&T Clark, 2009), 7–8. On the debate over Meeks’ approach to social profiling, see Longenecker, “Profiling,” esp. 38–45.

775 _{See esp. the essays in Todd D. Still and David G. Horrell, eds., After the First Urban Christians:}

The Social-Scientific Study of Pauline Christianity Twenty-Five Years Later (London: T&T Clark, 2009).

776 _{Horrell, “Contested Methodologies,” 8. See 8–11 for a useful overview of key developments in}

To be sure, at a number of points in his study Meeks seems to acknowledge that emotion has some sort of role in this process, at least in connection with the use of language. For example, in his discussion of the formation of the Pauline communities, Meeks stresses that boundaries were drawn to help the groups identify themselves as groups and as a broader movement. These boundaries included “aspects of language, practice, and expressed sentiments and attitudes that gave the group internal

cohesion”;777 and among the aspects of language that Meeks highlights is the emotionally-charged, fictive use of kinship terms within the group—which he

understands to play a role in cementing a believer’s new identity and thus in reinforcing the communitas of the Christian groups, especially when such use is accompanied by special terms for “the outsiders” and “the world.”778 _{Noting the extremely unusual}

frequency and intensity of affective phrases in the Pauline corpus when compared to other ancient letters, Meeks cites several examples from 1 Thessalonians and

Philippians and concludes that “[t]he Pauline letters are unusually rich in emotional language—joy and rejoicing, anxiety, longing.”779 Nowhere, however, does Meeks treat emotion independently of language as a separate aspect of the resocialization of the new believers.

Thus, later in his study (and still with reference to the function of language) Meeks makes the observation that

“not just the shared contents of beliefs but also shared forms by which the beliefs are expressed are important in promoting cohesiveness. Every close-knit group develops its own argot, and the use of that argot in speech among members knits them more closely still.”780

In his discussion, Meeks has in mind such things as in-group jargon and special nuances, syntactical patterns of speech, slogans, and ritual language.781 But while his wide-ranging focus on the function of language as a repository and carrier of belief is salutary, one wonders if his conclusions might be reinforced by an exploration of emotion itself as a site for the expression—linguistic or otherwise—of shared beliefs. Elsewhere, Meeks concludes in his analysis of 1 Thess 4.13–5.11 that the function of Paul’s apocalyptic language here and in the letter as a whole is to reinforce the sense of uniqueness and cohesion of the community, which in turn produces a disposition to act

777 _{Meeks, Christians, 85.}

778 _{Meeks, Christians, 85–86, 94–95; see also 88–89.} 779 _{Meeks, Christians, 86–87 (quote from 86).} 780 _{Meeks, Christians, 93.}

in a way appropriate to its well-being. Meeks sets out what such appropriate behaviour is: it “includes internal discipline and obedience of leaders (5.13–22), a quiet life that will seem benign to outsiders (4.11f.).”782 While it seems right to think that it is not Meeks’ intention to be exhaustive here, it is still rather surprising that a properly

Christian response to the untimely death of other believers is omitted from this rehearsal of appropriate behaviour patterns—for after all, it was the issue of grief which

precipitated the writing of 1 Thessalonians in the first place. Furthermore, as we have seen earlier, Paul takes painstaking care to bring consolation to them because, left untreated, such grief—which stemmed from a deficient understanding of eschatology— would surely rupture the self-identity and thus the well-being of the believing

community. Again, it seems to me that attention to the function of emotion would further strengthen Meeks’ fine arguments concerning the socialization of Paul’s new converts.

My point, however, is not so much to try to identify gaps in Meeks’ approach as to use it as a kind of launch pad for my suggestion that there is much to be gained in placing emotion alongside belief when asking questions about the ways in which the early Christians were formed into communities, and into a movement, and about how these social structures acquired such stability and longevity. What can be added to what we already know about the socialization of new believers in the first century milieu of Pauline Christianity through a considered exploration of the role of emotion? I suggest that like the beliefs with which they are associated (and like the structures of language and ritual within which such beliefs are encoded), emotions as Paul sees them play a crucial role in staking the boundaries, personal as well as corporate, between believers and the world around them, and therefore in reinforcing the internal social cohesion of the Christian groups. Emotions are able to perform this role because, as we shall see, they can have a socially integrating or a socially differentiating function. The patterns of feeling that Paul seems to want to promote are related closely to the patterns of belief that mark out what it means to be a Christian.

It is at this point that I wish to introduce, from recent social-scientific thinking, the notion of the “emotional regime” as an analytical framework for our heuristic engagement with emotion in Paul. Our reading of what he says about joy and grief and consolation in two of his letters has demonstrated that there is very clearly a social

dimension to these states of emotion: they are socially generated and socially expressed, and they also influence and shape Christian sociality itself. As such, a tool that can help us to investigate in comprehensive terms the social dimensions of emotion, without losing sight of the fact that emotion is at the same time something intrinsic to the individual, will be very useful; and in what is to follow I will describe the sociological concept of the emotional regime (first introduced at section 1.3.2) in some detail.