June 2, 2020
Introduction
If Chapters 5 and 6 weren’t difficult enough, in chapter 7 we find even more confusing words on sex and marriage. As we read this chapter there are some important things to keep in mind.
First, remember that 1 Corinthians is part of an extended correspondence between Paul and the Corinthian church. We don’t have the letter sent by the Corinthians with questions for Paul. In chapter 7, Paul is trying to answer some of those specific questions (see 7:1).
Second, Paul states a number of times in 1 Corinthians that he is offering his own thoughts and not a command from the Lord. The only command from the Lord Paul gives is about divorce (7:10-11).
Third, throughout 1 Corinthians, Paul seems to assume that history is rapidly coming to a close, that the “Day of the Lord,” the day of final judgment, is on the immediate horizon, to be followed by the fullness of the Kingdom of God, which will reconfigure society and the cosmos. Paul’s ethics of celibacy and marriage in chapter 7 is cast in these apocalyptic terms.
Fourth, although Paul does not dismantle the patriarchal / hierarchical assumptions of first century Roman society, he does challenge them at points. His statement about the wife’s rights over the husband (7:4) and about the interior or moral freedom the the slave (7:22) cut against traditional Roman views of authority.
Finally, for all the reasons above, this chapter is a good test case for how we might use scripture in Christian theology, including in Christian theological ethics. Other parts of scripture present marriage as a beautiful gift of creation and something that we should actively seek and support. For example, the creation narrative in Genesis 2 pictures marriage and sexuality as part of the good fabric of creation, and much of the Wisdom literature extols marriage (e.g., Prov. 18:22: “He who finds a wife finds a good thing, and obtains favor from the LORD.”). The standard marriage liturgy of the PCUSA — which I will use to officiate my daughter’s wedding this week! — tells us God gave us marriage as a gift for mutual comfort, the full expression of love, the well-being of human society, a holy mystery, and a new way of life blessed by Jesus Christ and sustained by the Holy Spirit. These are common themes in marriage liturgies throughout the different churches.
So how can Christian theology and theological ethics use a text such as 1 Corinthians 7? We could simply dismiss it or ignore it, but in that case we’re really treating it only as a historical artifact and not as a living source for theology. We should, of course, understand the “world behind the text” and the “world within the text” — the specific contexts the text arises from and addresses, and the literary and rhetorical features of the text, all of which provide texture and context for how the text might speak to use today. But those are only the basis for moving to the “world in front of the text” — the ways in which the text speaks to us in our world, today.
We should also remember that Christian theology treats the whole canon of scripture as a core source of theology./1/ Whenever we try to construct an entire theology out of one verse, one chapter, or one book of the Bible, we’re making a fundamental mistake. This doesn’t mean we should try to flatten out the differences between the various texts that make up the “library” of the Biblical canon. What Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7 really is different from Proverbs 18:22 or Genesis 2. But “canonical criticism” is a way of situating particular texts within the whole arc of Biblical narrative.
There are different ways to understand the whole canon of scripture as a source for theology. Some common phrases are that “scripture interprets scripture” and that “scripture does not contradict scripture.” Such phrases can be helpful if they remind us to step back and take the big picture of scripture into account. They can also be distorting when they try to flatten out or neatly harmonize the genuine diversity of texts within the canon.
Another way to look at it, rather than a kind of “technical” harmonizing, is that the canon of scripture implies on overarching narrative of creation, redemption, and consummation. Again, this can be distorting if we try to jam a text into a narrative framework against the grain of the text. But it can be helpful to remember scripture is not just about itself — it is about what God has done, is now doing, and will do in history. We can see than that throughout and within scripture there are trajectories that develop and that suggest the ongoing, dynamic work of the Spirit.
We could bring this concept of a narrative trajectory of scripture into conversation with the common theme in the Church Fathers that all of scripture ultimately is about Christ. We can call this a Christo-centric or Christo-telic hermeneutic. The overall theme of scripture, from the perspective of a Christian theological reading, is what God has done, is doing, and will do in and through Christ.
7:1-16 and 25-40: Celibacy and Marriage
This section on marriage opens with what is probably a quote from one of the questions in the Corinthians’ letter to Paul: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman.” (7:1.) Paul seems to agree with this sentiment, but makes some concessions to human nature. He says people who are married should freely engage in sexual relations with each other, though not with anyone else. (7:2-7.) He instructs people who are not married that it is better for them to remain single but that they should marry if they cannot control their sexual passions. (7:8-9.) The one command he gives from the Lord — implicitly only to couples where both parties are followers of Jesus (see below) is that a wife should not divorce her husband, or, if she does divorce, to reconcile or remain unmarried, and that a husband should not divorce his wife. (7:10-11.) Then, from himself and not from the Lord — he instructs spouses with unbelieving partners not to divorce them, but also says that, if the unbelieving spouse initiates the divorce, the believing spouse “is not bound.” (7:12-16.)
After a brief section on other aspects of religious and social status, Paul returns to marriage in verse 25. He again stresses that the unmarried should remain unmarried but that marriage is not a sin. This instruction is because of the “present crisis” (7:26.) The NRSV translates this “impending crisis.” “Present” is probably the better translation here because of the present grammatical tense of the Greek root verb enistémi in this verse. But in verse 29, Paul says “the appointed time has grown short” (NRSV). “Appointed time” is one Greek word, kairos, a rich word in the New Testament meaning a season or time in which something important is set to happen. “Grown short” is also one Greek word, from systelló , a conjunction of the words sýn (“with”) and stello (to arrange, prepare, gather up, or restrain). Interestingly, the only other place this word is used in the New Testament is in Acts 5:6, where it refers to wrapping up the body of Ananias.
Paul’s instructions to married people within the church are in one sense conventional: sex should not be withheld by one party because “the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does.” (1 Cor. 7:4.) But in the same breath, Paul’s instructions are deeply counter-cultural for the Roman context: “likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.” Paul recognizes that sexuality in marriage is mutual and inherently affirms female sexuality. It’s true that he does so a bit grudgingly — “I wish that all were as I myself am,” that is, unmarried and celibate. (7:7-8.) /2/ There is no doubt that Paul promotes celibacy above marriage, at least in the kairos he perceives the Corinthian church inhabits. But he also acknowledges that celibacy requires a special gift from God that not everyone possesses. (7:7.)
With this background, we might plausibly reconstruct the conversation Paul is having with the Corinthian church about marriage like this: Paul and the Corinthians believe they are living in a momentous time. The small seeds of renewal and change they see in the ekklesia are about to burst onto the cosmos with full, glorious power. The old order of things will be judged by God, and a new order, the Kingdom of God, will be established. This process is already happening within their experience in the ekklesia but it has not yet spilled out to overtake the world. In the meantime, there are troubled marriages within the ekklesia — maybe even because the new order that is already present within the church is straining patriarchal social conventions. There are also people who have joined the fellowship but whose spouses are not interested and perhaps even annoyed by or hostile to their husband or wives’ new friends and new ideas. Finally, there are young people in the fellowship reaching marriageable age. In ordinary times, their families would be working to find them suitable marriage partners. Perhaps there are some young people already betrothed who want to be married even if their parents think they world as they know it is about to change dramatically.
In this heady mix of expectations and problems, Paul has one command from the Lord: people with troubled marriages within the church should try to work things out, and if they can’t, there shouldn’t be remarriages within the church. Otherwise, Paul improvises solutions that try to reflect the already-not-yet tension of the kairos this congregation perceives itself to inhabit.
This theme of “improvisation” has become popular among some Christian theological ethicists. (See Samuel Wells, Improvisation: The Drama of Christian Ethics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2018)). It draws on the pattern seen here in 1 Corinthians, but also in other places throughout the Biblical narratives. For as long as we, the ekklesia, inhabit a cosmos that is not yet fully enveloped by the Kingdom of God, we inhabit a liminal space: a kairos in which the powers of sin and death have “grown short” but in which life as we otherwise know it goes on. This reality relativizes every social and political institution — even those we properly revere, such as marriage. We can understand this not as a denial of the inherent goodness of creation, including the inherent goodness of structures so basic to human nature as sex and marriage, but rather as a freedom to explore creative ways in which the Kingdom of God can be brought to bear even now, with the secure hope that God will soon bring that work to completion.
Some Questions on These Sections:
- If you are married how do you hear Paul’s instructions here about marriage? If you are not married, how do you hear them?
- Paul’s notion that “it is better to marry than to burn [with passion]” (7:9) reflects a theme of “self control” in Paul’s ethics. This theme became very important to the early Church Fathers, who picked up on similar themes in Roman (Stoic) and Greek (Platonic) sources regarding “indifference” (apatheia) and the “passions” (pathos). Today we can also see similar themes in Buddhist practice and ethics. Do you think there’s a place today for renewing this kind of concept — concerning sexuality, but also concerning other things? How could be helpful and how might it be damaging?
- Does the idea of Christian ethics as “improvisation” in kairos moments resonate with you? If we “read” our times as kairos, what do you think the present moment — a moment of political division, pandemic, and protest over racial injustice — suggests?
7:17-24: Interlude on Circumcision and Slavery
In verse 17-24 of chapter 7, sandwiched within his discussion of marriage, Paul turns to other religious and social divisions within the Corinthian church. Again, remember that this comes in the context of Paul’s response to questions raised by the Corinthians. Some of them were Jewish followers of Jesus, for whom circumcision was a fundamental mark of religious and cultural identity; some were not. Should the Gentiles receive circumcision? (7:17-20.) Some were free, and some were slaves. Should slaves be freed? (7:21-24.)
Paul’s answer regarding circumcision, within the Jewish context, was a bombshell: “circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but obeying the commandments of God is everything. Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called.” (7:19-20.) You can imagine the Jewish members of the congregation shouting, “but circumcision is God’s commandment!” Paul’s implied response to that outcry is that circumcision for the Jews did not anticipate the full and equal participation of the Gentiles in the community of the Kingdom of God. Now that God has given Gentiles that full and equal participation, we have to come up with something new for them.
Paul’s answer regarding the status of slaves seems more conventional: if you’re a slave, don’t worry about it, but instead use your status as a slave to serve Christ. (7:21-22.) Part of Paul’s answer, however, is subversive: the slave is internally freed in Christ, and really belongs to Christ, not to any human master. (7:22-23.) Followers of Jesus who are not slaves are, in fact, slaves of Christ, so they should not think of themselves as masters. (7:22.) Given this subversive track, we want Paul to say plainly: “So, masters who follow Jesus, free your slaves, and work together in the Kingdom of God; So, you slaves whose masters won’t free you, run away!” — but he doesn’t. In the end, Paul suggests slaves should remain as they are. (7:24.)
This text, and others like it in the Pauline corpus, was a key to theological debates over slavery in the United States in the Civil War era. The Civil War was a political crisis, but it was also a theological crisis. (See Mark Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press 2015). The notion that God had providentially arranged for black Africans to be enslaved by white Christians was commonplace in many parts of early American Christianity, including among our Presbyterian forebears. (See Richard A. Bailey, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press 2011). The Southern Presbyterian Robert Louis Dabney argued that
The scriptural argument for the righteousness of slavery gives us . . . this great advantage: If we urge it successfully, we compel the Abolitionists either to submit, or else to declare their true infidel character. We thrust them fairly to the wall, by proving that the Bible is against them; and if they declare themselves against the Bible (as the most of them doubtless will) they lose the support of all honest believers in God’s Word.
Robert Louis Dabney, A Defense of Virginia, and Through Her, of the South, in Recent and Pending Contests Against the Sectional Party (1867),
Abolitionists responded that passages such as this one in 1 Corinthians, and other parts of the New Testament, suggested a trajectory away from slavery, even if Paul was not prepared to condemn the institution in the realities of his own cultural context.
Some Questions on This Section:
- If part of our kairos today is about the wounds of slavery and racial injustice, what can we say about Paul’s treatment of the subject here in 1 Corinthians? What does this question say about how we use the Bible in public theology — in debates about current pressing social questions?
- What does Paul’s attitude about circumcision suggest about religious constructs and the Kingdom of God? If baptism and the Lord’s Supper are core sacraments of the Christian churches, is there anything in this text that relates to how we think about these sacraments (“signs”)?
Notes
/1/ The “canon” of scripture is the set of texts recognized as part of scripture, in contrast to other texts that might have varying degrees of worth but that are not part of scripture. The canon of the Hebrew Scriptures is the set of texts recognized as canonical by Rabbinic Judaism in the first or second century CE. The canon of the Christian scriptures, which incorporates the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, was developed during the early centuries of the Church’s history from among many different Christian texts in circulation. This was a long and not always formal or consistent process, and the lists of canonical books did not always agree. The criteria for judging a text canonical included whether it was written by an Apostle, whether it cohered with the “Rule of Faith” (the basic story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus), and whether it was consistent with the teaching of other texts recognized as canonical. Even today, the Roman Catholic Church, the various Protestant churches, and the various Eastern Orthodox churches differ about whether some texts should be included in the canon based on criteria such as these.
We also know today that the criterion of Apostolicity — whether the text was written by an Apostle — is difficult, not only because some New Testament text bear no attribution at all, but also because of textual and redaction criticism. Textual and redaction criticism shows that many of the texts at least have a significant editorial history beyond what any Apostle might have contributed and that some texts attributed to an Apostle (including some letters attributed to Paul, though not 1 Corinthians) likely are pseudepigraphic, that is, written in the Apostle’s name but not by the Apostle himself. (I say we know this “today,” but in fact, many of these difficulties and questions about authorship and editorial history were also recognized by the early Church Fathers.)
Any sort of “canonical” or “narrative” approach to scripture, then, also implies a belief that the Holy Spirit has worked in and through the Church to highlight certain texts that relate to the teaching of the Apostles and that point us to Jesus, even if this process entails some human uncertainty and messiness. This might stretch us, since we know the Church throughout history has been far from perfect, and indeed, has often strayed far from Jesus’ teachings. At the same time, it reminds us that, when we approach scripture in a church context such as this Bible study, we’re not just engaged in an academic exercise. We come to the text as the “church’s book,” alive and active in our ongoing journey of faith. All of this also shows that theology is a “web” of interconnected concepts. Theologies of scripture, the Church (ecclesiology), the Holy Spirit (pneumatology), Christ (Christology), the trajectory of history (eschatology), and so-on always are all at work when we try to understand what any part of the Bible might mean for us today.
For a good source on the NT canon, see Craig D. Allert, A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic 2007). For a good source on the narrative of scripture, see N.T. Wright, Scripture and the Authority of God: How to Read the Bible Today (SanFrancisco: Harper One 2013). For a good source of a contemporary Protestant theology of scripture, see John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press 2003).
/2/ We have no evidence whether Paul had previously been married and had been widowed or divorced. Remember from our Introduction that 1 Corinthians is probably written about 10 years after Paul’s Damascus Road calling by Jesus. Given that Paul was previously a Pharisee and a Rabbi, it seems unlikely he would have been unmarried and celibate his entire life.