Charisma in Greek Mythology

The conception of charisma can be traced back to ancient Greece.⁸¹³ In Greek mythology, the three daughters of Dionysus and Aphrodite, known as the Charis or the Charites (the derivation of the term charisma, which is Greek for “Graces” ), are the goddesses of charm, beauty, nature and human creativity.⁸¹⁴ Though, as personified concepts, the Charites are said to embody these same wholesome qualities—and even “purity and altruism”⁸¹⁷—the Charis goddesses are also often associated with Hades, the underworld, and the cult of the Eleusinian Mysteries—secret initiation ceremonies which “included promises of divine power.”⁸¹⁵

Charisma in the New Testament

Saint Paul of Tarsus (often referred to as Paul the Apostle) also played a vital role in the early conceptualization of charisma. The Apostle Paul, who was at once a well-educated Roman citizen of the first century (who lived until circa 64 or 65 A.D.) who studied under the renowned rabbi Gamaliel⁸¹⁸ and who was also an authority on the Greco-Roman culture and language, was one of the foremost authors of the epistles in the New Testament.⁸¹⁹ Paul, who wrote extensively in the New Testament on the concept of grace and the “gifts of the Holy Spirit,” and whose “writings come to us clothed in the Greek language,”⁸²⁰ adopts the term charisma (with its’ mythological origins821) to explain extraordinary and supernatural gifts of divine origin.⁸⁴⁷ Paul was also the first, in an effort to secure his own apostolic credentials, to hold up charisma as a legitimate source of authority; effectively avowing that there exists no more elevated source of holiness than the spiritual gifts of grace.⁸²³ Thus, riding on the coattails of the early Christian church and its rapid expansion in the Roman Empire, the conceptualization of charisma as a supernatural gift of grace, and the prima facie divinely legitimate source of authority, comes to full life.

The Dark Side of Charisma

Nonetheless, even bathed in the “Good News” of Christianity, the concept of charisma does not shake the early revealing allusions to a darker side found in Greek and Roman mythology. One such reference, for example, can be found in a terse comment in The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia (1930) which states: “It may be added that in later Greek charis also had the sense of force or power. It could be a spell, or demonic force, affecting human life with supernatural influences.[emphasis added]”⁸¹⁶

Charismatic Authority in the Church: Rule by the Holy Spirit

The importance of the topic of charisma does not surface again until the end of the 19th century with the writings of  Rudolf Sohm (1841–1917), a German jurist and member of the faculties of law at a few of Germany’s most distinguished universities, including Göttingen, Freiburg, and Leipzig.   Sohm, as a law professor of some renown (and a bit of a church historian), enters into the controversy of the authority of the early church with the publication of Kirchenrecht (Canon Law) in 1892 in which he builds on Martin Luther’s distinction between the “Two Kingdoms.”⁸²⁴  In Sohm’s endeavor to preserve the “invisible church” (the body of Christ) from the political powers of the state (which often infiltrate through the “law of the church” or the church as an “external institution”),⁸²⁵ he revives the term charisma from the heritage of Paul’s epistles and ends up advocating for a kind pneumatocracy (rule by the Spirit).⁸²⁶ Though Sohm hopes to safeguard what he sees as the legitimate authority of a Spirit-centered charismatic community from descending toward a legalistic institution and, in due course, devolving into what has been described as “a worldly, secular authority and organization, a second state, as it were, exercising legal control, including coercion, over its members;”827 the upshot of Sohm’s interpretation is uncertain. It may be, as Smith (1998) suggests, that Sohm further concretized a type of  authoritarian charismatic leadership which is entirely closed and impervious to the will and voice of the people.828  However, Sohm was far from the final influence over the meaning of charisma.

Charisma Takes Root: Weber as the Starting Point of Charismatic Leadership

Though the Janusian origins of the term charisma are relevant to the purpose of this research and may offer some insight into the nature of thought behind the concept and its tendency to evoke confusion and controversy in the research; it is not until the writings of Max Weber (1864-1920) that the theory of charisma becomes a more fully fledged area of theoretical and practical interest.⁸⁶⁰ Indeed, Weber is the customary starting point for those writing on the topic of charisma⁸³⁰ (with more than a few authors erroneously suggesting that Weber coined the term).⁸²⁹ Though the two men traveled in the same circle of friends and intellectuals and Weber openly credits Sohm in his work,⁸⁴⁴ Weber’s ideas and writings were in some important ways at odds with Sohm.⁸³³ Weber writes: “It is to Rudolf Sohm’s credit that he worked out the sociological character of this kind of domination; however, since he developed this category with regard to one historically important case—the rise of the ecclesiastical authority of the early Christian church—this treatment was bound to be one-sided from the viewpoint of historical diversity.”⁸⁶³ And though Weber’s modified conceptualizations were not universally well-received they clearly have much broader appeal.