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Greeting and Recognition: 1:1-9

In this opening section of the letter, Paul greets and recognizes the Corinthian church. Paul names Sosthenes as a co-author of the letter. Sosthenes could be the person referred to in Acts 18:12-17, which recounts events that occurred when Paul was first in Corinth:

When Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews with one accord rose up against Paul and brought him to the judgment seat [in Corinth], saying, “This fellow persuades men to worship God contrary to the law.” And when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said to the Jews, “If it were a matter of wrongdoing or wicked crimes, O Jews, there would be reason why I should bear with you. But if it is a question of words and names and your own law, look to it yourselves; for I do not want to be a judge of such matters.” And he drove them from the judgment seat. Then all the Greeks took Sosthenes, the ruler of the synagogue [in Corinth], and beat him before the judgment seat. But Gallio took no notice of these things.

It appears from Acts 18 that some members of the synagogue in Corinth became irate because of Paul’s teaching about Jesus and then resorted to violence against a synagogue leader they considered too tolerant when they could not get the civil authority to intervene. If this is the case, Sosthenes may have accompanied Paul after he left Corinth, or Paul could have been in contact with Sosthenes in Corinth about the contents of the letter before it was delivered. Other scholars think this is not the same Sosthenes who was the ruler of the Corinthian synagogue mentioned in Acts 19.

Paul’s greeting in verses 1-3 is theologically rich. In verse 1, Paul says he is “called to be an apostle of of Christ Jesus by the will of God.” An “apostle” is a messenger, a person sent on a mission. Paul’s status as a messenger of “Christ Jesus,” he claims, comes from being “called . . . by the will of God.” These are extraordinary claims!

In verse 2, Paul identifies his audience as “the church of God that is in Corinth.” We hear the word “church” and we think of a denomination and a building, but the word ekklésia has a richer meaning not necessarily tied to one building or place. Paul then offers some attributes of the ekklésia: its members are “sanctified in Christ Jesus” and “called to be saints.” “Sanctified” and “saints” are part of the same group of words meaning “holy” or “sacred” (hagios). Paul further extends the greeting of this letter beyond the ekklésia at Corinth: “together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” Paul thereby unites the ekklésia at Corinth with a broader concept of an ekklésia that goes beyond any one place.

In verse 4-9, Paul gives thanks for the Corinthians and notes that they have been “enriched [in Christ], in speech and knowledge of every kind” and “not lacking in any spiritual gift.” But as we’ll see in a moment, Paul will soon criticize the Corinthians for abusing their speech, knowledge, and gifts. This part of the introduction might serve at least two purposes: it may “butter up” the Corinthians a bit for the criticism that will follow; but it also may suggest that what the Corinthians need to heal their divisions is already present within them (see verse 8: “He will also strengthen you to the end. . . .”).

Some discussion questions on this section:

• What strikes you about Paul’s calling and title? Are there still “apostles” today?
• What do you seen in Paul’s “ecclesiology” — his vision of the church? How are we still “the church” today? What does it mean for us to be “the church?”
• What do you think is the purpose of Paul’s positive words to the Corinthians in verses 4-9? Could you hear Paul saying something similar to us today?

The Appeal: 1:10-16

Starting in verse 10 Paul turns to his appeal for unity. Paul has heard “from Chloe’s people” — probably servants (slaves) of a wealthy woman who was one of the leaders in the Corinthian church that had been dispatched to visit Paul in Ephesus — about divisions and quarrels in Corinth. In the Introduction to our study we noted the conflicts Paul was facing with Peter (Cephas) and Apollos. Paul says he does not want to be the leader of a faction, which is backed up by the fact the he did not personally baptize any of the Colossian church members except Crispus and Gaius — but then he also recalls he baptized the household of Stephanas and maybe some others. Some commentators suggest that Paul is being intentionally dismissive here — “who cares who I baptized, that’s not what I care about, it’s not about me.”

Epistemology and Community of the Cross: 1:17 to 2:5

In 1:17-25, in the context of disputing claims of the various Corinthian factions to superior knowledge, Paul offers an extraordinary epistemology — an understanding of “knowledge” — centered in Christ. He couples this epistemology with a vision of community rooted not in power but in weakness.

Verse 18 says “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.” (NRSV). As the NRSV correctly translates, the words “perishing” and “saved” here are in the “middle” or passive voice. The action is occurring to the subject now, not something that happened in the past, nor something that will happen only in the future.

Where the NRSV and NIV use the word “message” here, the Greek word is logos. For those of you who were part of our Gospel of John Bible study, this word should resonate! Paul is not directly paraphrasing John 1 here, but it’s fair to see a common theological theme present in Pauline and Johanine literature, even if there was no actual cross-fertilization within these texts. The logos, the “word” that causes everything to be, the logic of all of creation, is Christ.

Paul says “it is written” that God “will destroy the wisdom of the wise” and thwart “the discernment of the discerning.” (1:19). This is a reference to the Greek version of Isaiah 29:14. This text in Isaiah speaks of God renewing Israel by raising the humble and destroying the proud:

Shall not Lebanon in a very little while
    become a fruitful field,
    and the fruitful field be regarded as a forest?
 On that day the deaf shall hear
    the words of a scroll,
and out of their gloom and darkness
    the eyes of the blind shall see.
The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord,
    and the neediest people shall exult in the Holy One of Israel.
For the tyrant shall be no more,
    and the scoffer shall cease to be;
    all those alert to do evil shall be cut off—
those who cause a person to lose a lawsuit,
    who set a trap for the arbiter in the gate,
    and without grounds deny justice to the one in the right

Isaiah 29:17-21 (NRSV)

Paul says that to the supposedly wise, the knowledge of Christ is “foolishness.” To the supposedly strong, the knowledge of Christ is “weakness.” In a great rhetorical flourish, Paul asks “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” (1:20).

In 1:26-31, Paul ties this epistemology to the social status of many of the Corinthian church members, and in 2:1-5, he ties this epistemology to his own weakness and fear as an apostle.

Passages such as this were important to the Protestant Reformer Martin Luther. Luther often spoke about a “theology of the cross” in contrast to a “theology of glory.” The “theology of glory,” for Luther, was about a person’s own power and good works, while a “theology of the cross” was a theology of a person’s weakness and need. Luther also emphasized how God is “hidden” in weakness, not least in the weakness of the crucifixion. Of course, Luther was not the first to notice these themes — they are present in many great earlier Christian thinkers and mystics.

There is an important stream of contemporary theology that takes up Luther’s idea of the “theology of the cross” and the “hiddenness” of God to ponder one of the central mysteries of our faith: the problem of evil. Why does a good God, creator of everything, allow evil? A theology of the cross doesn’t answer this question — in fact, a theology of the cross would say that any merely philosophical answer to this question is bound to be foolish. But a theology of the cross does suggest that the cross of Christ is somehow at the very heart of creation. This means creation’s suffering is known intimately to God and participates in the power of God’s salvation. Creation’s suffering, our suffering, is not meaningless, and is not the last word. (If you want to dig a little deeper into these themes, here are some reflections on how they show up in the theology of one of my favorite theologians, Karl Barth.)

Some discussion questions on these sections:

• How would you define “knowledge?” Does Paul’s epistemology in this section challenge your definition?
• What does it mean that we are in the process of being saved — or, alternatively, that there are people who are in the process of perishing? What does it mean to live as a person, or a community, that is arriving but has not yet arrived?
• Does Luther’s idea of a “theology of the cross” in contrast to a “theology of glory” resonate with you? How can a “theology of the cross” help us in our present suffering through this pandemic?

This short section is incredibly theologically rich. Paul refers to a theme that appears often in his letters: the contrast between God’s kingdom and the “rulers of this age.”

Paul and Apocalyptic

In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, Charles Campbell notes that, in chapter 1, Paul developed “a dynamic apocalyptic theology of interruption.” In this “dynamic apocalyptic” theology, God breaks into the present with a new and very different future, but that future is not yet fully realized. As a result, Paul pictures a “liminal, threshold space between the ages, in which the church is being saved as it lives in the tension between the old age and the new.” (Campbell, 43 (emphasis in original)). This liminal space is explored further in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 (remember that the entire text is a letter — there were no “chapters” or “verses” in the original text).

The word “apocalyptic” here might call to mind a grim end-of-the-world scenario, particularly during these times of pandemic. It’s true that the genre of “apocalyptic” literature in the Bible often supplies fearsome imagery of judgment. There was in fact a significant amount of “apocalyptic” literature produced in Jewish communities in what historians call the “Second Temple” period, between about 516 BCE to 70 CE. A little bit of history helps put this literature in perspective.

The first Temple was the Temple of Solomon that existed in Jerusalem until it was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE. Construction of the Second Temple was begun by groups of Jewish exiles who were allowed to return to Jerusalem from captivity in Babylon under a decree by the Persian King Cyrus issued in 538 BCE. The Second Temple was modest at first, but it was made into a magnificent structure by Herod the Great, ruler of Judea at the time of Jesus’ birth.

Herod was declared “King of the Jews” by the Romans, who controlled Judea. Jewish purists believed Herod and his sons had corrupted true Jewish worship and the true Jewish state. This tension is reflected among the various parties referred to in the Gospels, including the Pharisees, and in the ironic title “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews” placed over Jesus on the cross. Herod’s sons were eventually replaced by Roman governors and the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in CE 70 under the Emperor Titus after a failed Jewish revolt. There was never a “Third Temple.” The Jews were dispersed (the “diaspora”) and the practices of Rabbinic Judaism centered on the local synagogue, without any King, Priests or central Temple, continued to develop, including into forms we are familiar with today.

The Second Temple period apocalyptic literature, then, can be viewed as a way in which different Jewish communities expressed the hope that the oppression of Greek and Roman rule, and the perceived compromise with wealth and power made by some other Jews, would come to an end through God’s judgment, and that a new and more just Jewish kingdom would be established under God’s rule. Some this apocalyptic literature, such as the book of Daniel, is found in the canon of the Hebrew scriptures. Some of it, such as 2 Ezra, is in the “apocrypha” — writings that only some Christians think are part of the canon of scripture or that some Christians think are valuable but not part of the canon. Many of the texts in the famous “Dead Sea Scrolls” are apocalyptic and other texts relating to a sectarian community that existed during Jesus’ time, some of which are part of the canon of the Hebrew scriptures or the apocrypha and some of which are not.

Paul began his career as a Pharisee, before his calling as an Apostle of Jesus, so he certainly was familiar with some of this literature and with the spirituality it reflects. Paul himself seems to have anticipated a sudden end to the present order in an act of Divine judgment. So, we shouldn’t be surprised to find echoes of this kind of thinking in Paul’s letters. Of course, we also find Christian versions of apocalyptic in the New Testament outside the Pauline corpus, most notably in the Apocalypse of John (Revelation), and there is plenty of Christian apocalyptic literature dating from the first few centuries after Christ that was not incorporated into the Biblical canon.

Unmasking the Powers

Although some apocalyptic imagery in the texts we have been discussing seems strange and violent to us today, in a broader sense, “apocalyptic” is a form of unmasking the pretenses of the present in the hope of a better, truer future. In 1 Corinthians, this way of thinking appears in Paul’s stark contrast between “God’s wisdom” and “the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish.” (1 Cor. 2:6 (NRSV)).

The word “age” in Greek here is aiōnos, and the word “rulers” is archontōn. You might notice some English words that have been derived from these Greek words (by way of Latin): “eon” from aion and the ending “-archy” from arkhḗ (as in “patriarchy,” “oligarchy,” or “anarchy”). “Eon” in English means an undetermined, very long period of time. In the New Testament, aion is often used to contrast the present age and the future age, so it is a term that relates to eschatology, that is, to the things to come. An archon in the New Testament can be an individual leader, such as the head of a synagogue, but it also often refers to spiritual rulers or powers. You could translate the phrase “archonton tou ainos” as “powers of this age.”

Paul’s picture of “rulers” or “powers” that are both earthly and super-earthly was consistent with how the Romans imagined themselves. This was a time when the was no “secular” space — everything tangible and visible was impregnated with the spiritual realm. The Romans believed that their society, including its politics, arts, commerce, and social order, depended upon relationships with their gods, including, eventually, a deified Roman Emperor. A claim that the Roman gods were false powers was equivalent to a claim that Rome’s authority itself was illegitimate. The Jews dispersed through the Roman empire made such a claim when they recited the shema — “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” — and they were warily tolerated in Roman cities, though as a people whose center of authority, the Jerusalem Temple, had been razed by Titus. Paul makes the same kind of claim when he says the cross of Christ belies the “powers of this age.” Paul does not rally around the hope of a rebuilt Third Temple against Rome, but he rallies around Christ raised up on a Roman cross.

Some discussion questions on this section

• What are some “powers” — “–archies” — you see at work in our world today? How would the cross of Christ defuse those powers?
• Do you think the “powers” at work today are entirely “material,” or do you think there are also “spiritual” powers? How can we in a modern, scientific, secular age relate to Paul’s ancient understanding of a world in which material and spiritual realities coincide?
• Paul declares that the “rulers of this age” are “doomed to perish” against the backdrop of a historical narrative that shaped his life — the history of Israel discussed above. What historical narratives shape us? In what ways does the cross of Christ call those narratives into question?

The Spirit, the Depths, and the Mysteries

In the remainder of chapter 2, Paul dives deeper into the ideas about knowledge and wisdom mentioned in chapter 1. In verse 7, Paul says, “we speak God’s wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory” (NRSV) — or in the NIV translation, “we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden . . . .” The NIV translation captures the Greek word mystēriō, a term often used by Paul to mean something God had not previously disclosed.

Paul offers here a kind of theology of history. God has a plan for the aionon — the ages — that differs from the plans of the “rulers of this age” and that is right, good, and glorious. God has not previously disclosed all of this plan but now it is being made known (or at least, an important part of it is being made known) in the cross of Christ. This plan is not merely otherworldly — a way for some people to “go to heaven.” It is a plan to bring history to a resolution.

The ekklesia to whom Paul is writing — the community centered on the cross of Christ — can perceive how God’s plan is working through “the Spirit that is from God” (NRSV), in contrast to “the spirit of the world.” The word Paul uses for “world” here is “kosmou” (the Greek kosmos, from which we derive our words cosmos and cosmic). Again, what Paul is describing is a temporal, material reality, but also a cosmic reality.

Notice that in the first section of chapter 2, Paul says he came to the Corinthians in weakness, without fine speech, but he quickly moves into this section addressed to “the mature” — in Greek, teleiois, from telos. This word reflects an important concept in ancient Greek philosophy (from which we get our words “teleology” and “teleological”). It meant the end to be achieved, the thing toward which a good person, or a good society, should be pointed. So the teleiois here are those who have achieved that end, who have become ethically perfected in virtue. Paul will go on to criticize the Corinthians, so he doesn’t, in fact, think they have yet “arrived.” Paul seems to be making a rhetorical move towards the disciples of Apollos, who think they are superior to others in the congregation and superior to Paul.

What can be discerned through the Spirit of God seems like foolishness to “the unspiritual” (NRSV) — to the “natural person.” Looking at the Greek words here is interesting again: the “unspiritual” or “natural person” is psychicos anthropos. Psychicos is from psyche — our words psyche, psychological, relating to the mind. For the ancient Greeks, there was no sharp distinction between the “mind” and the “soul,” and the word psyche referred to the “soul,” which included the capacities we today attribute to the “mind” (or perhaps for modern neuroscience, to the “brain”). Paul often contrasts the “spiritual” and the “natural,” what can be known through the Spirit and what can be known by the human mind or “soul” without the Spirit.

Also notice that in this section, Paul has referred to Jesus Christ, God, and the Spirit. Neither in 1 Corinthians nor in any of his other letters does Paul have a worked-out theology of the Trinity. There is no worked-out theology of the Trinity anywhere in the New Testament. Christian theology about the Trinity developed, often contentiously, in the early centuries of Church history, and what is considered “orthodox” thought about the Trinity only began to become codified in 325 CE at the Council of Nicea. I put “orthodox” in scare quotes here, because there is an enormous amount of historical baggage behind what did and didn’t become recognized by the Council, and there never really was, and still isn’t, full agreement about exactly what the doctrine of the Trinity means or how to express it.

But — we do see here the lineaments of Christian thought about the Trinity — a concept that is indeed central to all of Christian thought. Paul’s thought — and any deeply Christian thought — is entirely consistent with the Jewish shema — our God is “one.” And yet, Christian though must account for the person of Jesus Christ and the person of the Spirit as well as the person of God whom Jesus called “Father.” There is already a Trinitarian shape to Paul’s expression in 1 Corinthians.

Some discussion questions on this section

• Do you experience understanding, illumination, or knowledge from the Holy Spirit? How? How does the Spirit shape your psyche?
• How do you think about a “theology of history?” How do you see God at work in the broad sweep of events in the world? How do you see God at work right, now, in the pandemic?
• What liminal spaces are you inhabiting today? What hope do you have for the future? Is there a word of hope we might hear from the Spirit right now?
• Does the concept of the Trinity make any difference to how you see the world?

May 19, 2020

Constructing the Building and Managing the Household: 3:1 to 4:7

In chapters 3 and 4, Paul moves deeper into a discussion about ecclesiology — that is, about the the nature of the church — in response to the divisions in the church at Corinth. Paul pictures the church first as a garden and then as a building. Leaders such as Paul and Appollos might have different roles — planting, laying a foundation; watering, building a structure on the foundation — but in either case they are working together. (The Greek term here is synergoi, from which our word “synergy” derives.) And, in either case, the true foundation of the church is Jesus Christ, so whatever the worker’s role, it is only to build on what Jesus has already done.

Verses 12-15 seem to provide some more mixed metaphors. At first Paul seems to say that, after a day’s work is completed on a building and everyone goes home for the night, the quality of the work might not immediately be evident, but it will become clear the next morning when it is inspected in broad daylight. But he then talks about the work being tested by fire — perhaps by a fire that breaks as the work is being completed, or perhaps as an intentional test of the final construction as a sort of building inspection. Verses 14 and 15 might refer to the wages the builder receives when the building is finished and a fine that could be levied against a builder if shoddy construction causes damage. The phrase “as through fire” was a common idiom, like “by the skin of your teeth.”

Many commentators over the ages have seen references in this part of the text to the final judgment. The “day” in verse 13 could allude to the “Day of the Lord,” a concept often used in the Hebrew Scriptures for to refer to a time of reckoning when God would judge the kingdoms of the Earth. We should be careful, however, about using this kind of text to support elaborate theories of the final judgment. Paul’s overall point here is not about individual judgment but about the church. This is evident in verse 16: the church, to which Paul is writing, collectively, is God’s temple, a temple not comprised of a literal building, but of a community of people. The issue for Paul in this section is how the church will fare when it is tested.

In verses 19-20, Paul reiterates his theme of contrast between the wisdom of the world and the “foolishness” of God. The first quotation here is from Job 5:13, and the second is from Psalm 94:11. If you’re interested in some further thoughts on this, see here.

Verses 21-23 of Chapter 3 offer a kind of lyrical flight encompassing the cosmos that we often see in Paul’s letters: “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world (kosmos) or life or death or the present or the future. All belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” Notice that Paul, Apollos and Cephas are subordinated to the Corinthian church, which in turn is subordinated to Christ, who is subordinated to God.

In the beginning of Chapter 4, Paul introduces an important concept for his idea of church leadership: leaders are “servants of Christ” who are “stewards.” The word “steward” here is oikonomous. The oikos was the Greek household, which was the basic unit of society. The concept Paul employs, then, is of a trusted servant who is the manager of a household.

Paul says he is not concerned about human judgment of his stewardship, and that he does not even judge himself. The only judge is God, and God’s judgment reveals the purposes of the heart, which are often concealed. He tells the Corinthians they likewise should not judge each other but rather should recognize God has given them gifts that are meant to build up the church.

These words about judgment, acquittal, and distinctions all come from the Greek word dikaioó. This is another important concept that shows up throughout Paul’s letters. It is the word from which we derive the theological concept of “justification.”

In his commentary on Chapter 3, Charles Campbell says:

Ministry is a bold and risky adventure in which Christians build as faithfully as we can without fully knowing the quality of our work. Most of us wonder from time to time, ‘What if I’m wrong?’ What if I do the wrong thing or speak the wrong word?’ It is an understandable question as one occupies the space between the ages with a ‘weak’ and ‘foolish’ gospel seeking to discern fitting words and deeds. Paul provides no clear assurances. Maybe we are building with silver and gold. Maybe we are building with hay or straw. All Paul offers is the proper foundation of trust in the Spirit. Ministry remains risky. (Campbell, 68.)

Some questions on this section:

• How does the concept of stewardship inform your understanding of your place in the community of the church? What synergies do you see in your role in the church in relation to others?
• Really listen to these words: “all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the cosmos or life or death or the present or the future. All belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.” How does this make you feel about yourself? What insights does it give you about you role in the church, and in the universe?
• Do you judge others? Do you judge yourself — either negatively, or by seeking to justify yourself in front of others or God? What does might it mean for you to leave judgment to God?

Spectacle and Power — 4:8-21

Paul tells the Corinthians they have become “kings,” even without the Apostles’ help. Remember that the Corinthian congregation was mixed and would have included slaves and common laborers along with some more wealthy members, so in cultural context this is an astonishing statement. Paul then says the apostles have become a “spectacle” and “fools.” The word “spectacle” is theatron. The apostles are like the comic relief in a stage play. Paul then uses some crude terms to describe the apostles, translated “rubbish” and “dregs” in the NRSV, that refer to the scum and crust scraped off of things during a cleaning and thrown out.

But in verses 14-21, Paul’s tone begins to shift. He says the Corinthians might have many “guardians” (paidagogos, teachers) in Christ, but that he, Paul, is their “father” in Christ. Paul says he plans to visit soon and find out “not the talk of these arrogant people but their power.” The kingdom of God, Paul says, “depends not on talk (logo, word) but on power (dynamei).” Verse 21 seems to suggest Paul might come to them with a stick to hit them with, but the term refers to the rod or staff carried by a ruler. Paul seems to suggest, then, that he could assert his authority as an apostle after all.

Some questions on this section:

• As a member of the Church, do you feel like a king? How might it change your perspective to realize that, as a steward of God’s household, you are like a king?
• There is a tradition in some mystical Christian circles of the “holy fool” — a person who does things that seem to make no sense in the oikonomia (economy) of the world. Have you ever felt like a “holy fool,” a player in a theater of the absurd? When is this concept helpful? When is it not helpful?
• Consider these words: “the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power.” How do these words sit with you? As you reflect, remember a key theme of chapters 1 and 2: “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1:25).

A concluding reflection:

What is one way in which anything we discussed could change how you think, pray, or act this week?

May 26, 2020

Introduction

Chapters 5 and 6 are quite challenging. In chapter 1 through the middle of chapter 4, Paul stressed how the “foolishness” of the cross overturns human claims to wisdom and emphasized that within the church we are all “rich” and “kings” without any need to judge each other. But at the end of chapter 4, Paul begins to turn to the problems in the church at Corinth, and in Chapters 5 and 6, he both passes judgment on the cause of those problems and instructs the Corinthians to exercise their own judgment. How can we understand this dramatic shift?

We could say Paul is just inconsistent, and maybe that’s correct, but Paul also obviously is smart enough to see such inconsistency. It’s helpful here to remember that 1 Corinthians is only one piece of correspondence between Paul and the church at Corinth. We’re glimpsing part of a broader dialogue about power, influence, and corruption in the church body. At the end of chapter 4, Paul noted that “some” of the Corinthians had “become arrogant.” (4:18.) In Chapters 5 and 6, he addresses the problems caused by those “arrogant” people.

There are three large problems related to these “arrogant” people: (1) a man is sexually involved with his “father’s wife” (given the phrasing, probably not the man’s biological mother)(5:1); (2) Litigation in the Roman courts between members of the congregation (6:1); and (3) Members of the congregation were using prostitutes (6:15).

All of these problems seem to have related to an attitude or spiritual teaching among some of the Corinthian church members: “All things are lawful for me.” (6:12.) And in connection with that attitude, these seem to have been open and notorious activities, not just secret vices. The people involved in these activities were gravely wounding and dividing the church, asserting what they thought were absolute privileges against other members of the body, destroying the basis for peace.

Chapter 5: The Ecclesial Center

In Chapter 5 Paul addresses the first big problem in the Corinthian church, the man sleeping with his father’s wife. Notice that this is not merely a case of Jewish / Christian moralism: Paul says even the pagans would be scandalized by this kind of conduct. (5:2.) Paul’s judgment is harsh: “When you are assembled . . . you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.” (5:5, NRSV)

“Flesh” (Greek sarx) in Paul’s letters is a term for that which is bound to the powers of the world, which Paul often contrasts with “spirit” (Greek pneuma), a term for the power of the Kingdom of God. The NRSV correctly translates “the flesh,” but it assumes “his spirit” when the article “the” (to) rather than the personal pronoun “his” (autos) is used. This is not necessarily an invalid grammatical assumption, but it can mask that Paul’s concern is not about retribution against this one man but rather is about preserving the ekklesia, the church, against the “powers” of the world.

We don’t know what may have been involved in the community “handing over” the man to “Satan.” “Hand over” (Greek paradidómi) can include delivering someone to military or judicial custody (see Matt. 10:17), betrayal (as in the betrayal of Jesus, see Matt. 10:4), and handing over goods in trust (Matt. 25:20). We might imagine some kind of rite of excommunication in which the man is put out of the assembly, but we don’t know for sure.

If the idea of formally putting someone out of the assembly isn’t difficult enough to our modern ears, the reference to “Satan” is even more shocking. In the Hebrew Scriptures, “the satan” seems to be an angelic being in God’s heavenly court whom God employs to accuse or test people (see, e.g., Job 1). In some of the Second Temple apocryphal literature, a motif develops of heavenly beings or angels who are in rebellion against God, drawn in large part from the strange mention of the nephilim in Genesis 6. Among the characters in the Second Temple literature there’s even a good archangel named “Metatron,” which to our ears sounds like something from a Transformers movie.

Remember that Paul is swimming in this Second Temple Jewish stream, in a Roman culture alive with gods and demons. That is not our culture in the modern global North. It is, though, very much part of many cultures today in the global South. Perhaps our “flat” modern worldview, so tied to our concepts of “natural laws” and physical causes, is missing something here. Perhaps we can imagine that “natural” and “supernatural” causes need not exclude each other, but might represent different facets or lenses through which we understand the phenomena we encounter.

What about the seemingly harsh instruction to exclude someone from the assembly? The fact is that any community requires boundaries. As we are working through this part of the text, we see in our nation right now the protests over the death of George Floyd. I’m sure we all agree that police officers should not use excessive force and should not target black men. I’m sure we also agree that everyone has a right to peaceful protest but not to loot and riot. Abusive police officers must be removed from the force, police officers who commit violent crimes must be prosecuted, and racism must have no home among law enforcers. Looters and rioters must be stopped and people who incite violence must be removed from the streets. Without some boundaries, we can’t have a community committed to the values we hold dear.

This is also true in the community of the church. We are more likely today to think of boundaries for behavior during public worship rather than for what we consider private conduct. Imagine, for example, a person who stood up in the sanctuary and shouted obscenities whenever one of the Pastors began to speak (or in our present circumstance, someone who flooded the Zoom chat with pornographic pictures). We would probably agree that such a person should be kept out of the public worship gathering.

It seems strange to us, though, that Paul would exclude a person for private sexual conduct, even for something as flagrant as sleeping with one’s stepmother. Yet even here, we can consider a contemporary parallel. All the Pastors and Elders in our church recently completed a “Safe Church” training regarding sexual abuse. Sadly, we know that churches are prime ground for child sexual abuse, and that Priests, Pastors, and other leaders often are the abusers. Again, I’m sure all of us would agree that a church leader who is sexually abusing children must be removed from the church and reported to authorities.

In the context at Corinth, Paul connects the problem to arrogance and employs a familiar metaphor: that of microscopic yeast leavening a loaf of dough. (5:6-8.) We all know from experience how quickly a bad attitude can spread through a community. Note how Paul connects this metaphor to Christ, and to the Lord’s supper. The “paschal lamb” is the pascha, the Greek word for the Jewish Passover and by extension for the lamb sacrificed at Passover. Paul wants to celebrate the “feast,” the Lord’s supper, “not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” (5:8.) Later in the letter (Chapter 11), Paul will mention specific problems with the Corinthians’ celebration of the Lord’s Supper: “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.” (11:20-21.)

Note also Paul’s instruction about the list of bad people at the end of chapter 5 — those who are sexually immoral, greedy, idolaters, revilers, drunkards or robbers: “do note even eat with such a one.” (5:11.) Assemblies of the early churches were small, often met in homes, and the Lord’s Supper was part of a communal meal. A person around the table behaving in such ways could exert significant influence over the fragile community. The communal meal was to be a time of unity and fellowship, not of sexual license, drunkenness, or nasty arguments (“revilers” is loidoros, someone who is abusive, insulting, denigrating of others’ reputations).

Perhaps it was even at these gatherings that the man boasted — maybe loudly and drunkenly, from one faction’s table — about sleeping with his father’s wife. Imagine that Paul received a report like this: “Every time we meet for the Lord’s supper, Antipas and his friends sit at their own table. They get to drinking, telling racy jokes, singing drinking songs, and inevitably Antipas begins loudly boasting about how he’s sleeping with his father’s hot trophy wife behind his father’s back. We’ve asked him to stop but he just laughs at us and says ‘Well, I’m not perfect, just forgiven.'” That’s a fictional reconstruction, of course, but maybe not too far from what was happening.

What can a text like this mean for a local church or denominational body today? Is “church discipline” a set of rigid rules through which people are shunned or excommunicated? Is it a kind of judicial process, with a body of canon law that determines appropriate penalties? Should we follow Paul’s instructions here, or Jesus’ example of eating with “sinners?” Should we refuse to worship with anyone who is greedy, who idolizes their work, or who says nasty things on social media? We might find no one left in the sanctuary if that were the case. Our primary take-away from this section of 1 Corinthians, perhaps, should be that the community will always need to discern ways to protect its integrity. We will learn elsewhere in 1 Corinthians about doing so in love and with respect for legitimate differences in belief and conduct.

Another important qualifier in this section is Paul’s comment about judging “outsiders” versus those on the “inside.” Paul says the members of the church are not to withdraw from the world or judge the world. (5:10, 14.) These matters of judgment are for the internal health of the church community.

What about Paul’s statement in chapter 4 that we should not pronounce judgment on others within the church (4:1-5)? Again, this could just reflect confusion or inconsistency in Paul’s thought, but it seems unlikely someone as skilled as Paul would make such an obvious mistake in the span of a few paragraphs. In chapter 4, Paul focuses on the final judgment of whether or not someone’s work has built up the church. In chapter 5, Paul focuses on questions of discipline related to specific kinds of conduct. There seem to be two different levels of “judgment” at work here: a final, broad evaluation of work using different ideas or methods that is within the general scope of the community’s purpose; and an immediate, discrete response to a clear, specific threat to the community. The first kind of judgment Paul says we should leave to God. The second kind of judgment Paul says we must employ when necessary to protect the community’s health.

Some Discussion Questions on Chapter 5

• How would you understand the “natural” and the “supernatural?” How can we modern people in a scientific age relate to the “supernatural” worldview of a text like 1 Corinthians? Are there things about this we can learn from cultures in today’s Global South?
  
• What do you think about the comment above that “any community requires boundaries?” Are the concepts of “welcome” and “boundaries” mutually exclusive?
  
• Do you have a concept of church discipline? If so, how do you think it should function?

Chapter 6: Boundaries, Lawsuits, Cosmic Judgment, and Sex

In chapter 6, Paul introduces a third kind of judgment, that of the secular law courts. Paul’s consternation that members of the church at Corinth are taking their disputes to the secular law courts connects with his discussion of “insider vs. outsider” judgment in Chapter 5. The church community should manage its own affairs, according to its own values and standards. One mark of maturity within a church community, Paul says, is the ability to resolve disputes internally, without airing those disputes before the world, even if one of the parties does not recover all of the money that might be available in the secular courts. (6:1-8.)

This section presents its own challenges in our context. The clerical sexual abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church were abetted by a culture of silence, in which offenders were lightly disciplined internally and governmental authorities were not involved. We are beginning to learn that this kind of problem extended to other church polities as well. Sadly, it is not only a Catholic problem.

If we use this text to justify a church polity’s institutional abuses, obviously, we miss the point. The kinds of lawsuits in the church at Corinth seemed to a claim of financial fraud, and the plaintiff in the case also appears to have been engaged in his or her own fraud (6:7-8.). If you’ve ever been involved in a lawsuit among the owners of a small, family-owned business, you might have a feel for what this kind of dispute is like. That kind of case, among the families in a close-knit church community, is something the community should find a way to mediate before it hits the courts and the newspapers. (Even here, we will find it difficult to draw lines. What about a diamond-studded televangelist who defrauds his followers out of their life savings based on false claims that the money is going to mission work, and who refuses all efforts at mediation?)

Paul also introduces a fourth kind of judgment in Chapter 6, often overlooked in discussions about whether or when Christians should judge each other: an eschatological judgment, but not the kind we might expect. Paul says “the saints” will judge the world (cosmon) and angels. (6:2-3.) Remember that in chapter 4, Paul told the Corinthians they owned “all things,” including the present and the future, and that they were already “kings.” (1 Cor. 3:21-22, 4:8.) And remember that many of the people in the Corinthian congregation were not from the higher classes of society. Paul again dramatically turns the social order on its head, not only the Greco-Roman social order, but also the Jewish expectation of warrior king Messiah in the line of David. This group of common people is so important that the fate of the cosmos and of the angels is held in its hands.

In verses 9-11 Paul recites a list of types of people who will not “inherit the kingdom of God.” These “vice lists” are common in Paul’s letters, as are “virtue lists,” and such lists also were a feature of Greco-Roman Stoic moral literature. Paul says that some of the Corinthian church members used to be people on the vice list, but that they have been “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified” “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.” (6:11).

These terms in verse 11 are theologically rich. The use of the word “washed” in conjunction with the phrase “in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” suggests a baptismal connection, particularly in light of Paul’s discussion of baptism in Chapter 1. “Sanctified,” as we said in our discussion of Chapter 1 (see 1:2), derives from the word hagios, meaning “holy.” “Justified,” as we saw in our discussion of Chapter 4 (4:4), derives from the word dikaioo, which entails righteousness and justice.

Paul tells the Corinthians they have been washed, sanctified, and justified in the midst of his harsh criticism of their conduct. This suggests that there is an already / not yet quality to these terms. By virtue of their baptism and because of the Spirit of God, the Corinthians are already washed, sanctified, and justified, even though their conduct, at present, is not living up to those terms.

There are major, intractable debates among the different Christian denominations, and even within the different denominations, about the precise nature of baptism, sanctification, and justification. With our focus on this particular text in 1 Corinthians, however, we can at least say this: our baptism is a defining event; the “name” of Jesus Christ is a defining name for us; the event and the name are not static or mechanical but are connected to the Spirit of God; and the result is that we actually become clean, holy, and righteous/just, even as we remain in a struggle with sin.

A few aspects of this vice list deserve some special comment. The NRSV translates one of the words “fornicators” and two other words “male prostitutes” and “sodomites.” Some translations have rendered the last two words “homosexuals” or “men who have sex with men.” These are among the “clobber texts” in our current culture wars within the churches about homosexuality.

The word translated “fornicators” is pornoi, which you will recognize is the source of our word pornography. Pornos in the New Testament is a generic term for sexual immorality. Of course, the Jewish culture that gave birth to the New Testament considered any sexual relations outside of marriage immoral. The word translated “male prostitutes” in the NRSV is malakoi, which was a term used for effeminate men. In its broader cultural usage, it does not really refer to male prostitutes or to any specific sexual conduct. The word translated “sodomites” in the NRSV is arsenokoitai, a word that Paul seems to have invented. We can’t be sure exactly what Paul meant by arsenokoitai, although there is a plausible argument that it refers to elements of the Greek translation of a text in the Old Testament about men lying with men. Although it is mentioned only briefly in the Old Testament, ancient Jewish teaching forbade same-sex conduct.

The traditional view is that Paul likewise condemns all same-sex conduct, at least between men, as a permanent moral norm. This is consistent with some even more difficult sayings of Paul about same-sex conduct in Romans chapter 1. But it’s also true that there was no category of stable, inherent “homosexual” identity in the ancient world, nor was there any social structure for same-sex marriages. The same-sex conduct with which Paul would have been most familiar would have involved prostitution and/or abusive relationships between men and boys — often boys who were slaves or under the man’s tutelage. This has led some scholars and church leaders to conclude, given our contemporary understanding of sexual identity, that a Christian sexual ethic can incorporate same-sex marriages. In North America and Europe, this issue currently is dividing many of the churches. (For one good discussion of the hermeneutical question as a matter of corporate discernment, see Oliver O’Donovan, Church in Crisis: The Gay Controversy and the Anglican Communion (Eugene: Cascade Books 2008)).

We might also ask some broader questions about Christian sexual ethics. We think of marriage ideally as a union between two adults who have fallen in love and who both freely and equally enter into the union. In the ancient Roman world, things were more complicated. There were different marriage and divorce rules and norms practiced by the Roman elite and common people. Marriage among elites often involved property, political status, and family alliances rather than romantic love. Among the elites, celibacy was discouraged and sometimes penalized because marriage was considered a duty to the state (marriage produced children, who were new subjects of the state, and increased taxes). Roman women enjoyed a relatively greater degree of freedom than in other parts of the ancient world, but they were still considered subordinate to men. A Roman married man could indulge in informal polygamy with slaves and prostitutes without adverse legal or social consequences. In the Jewish subculture during Roman times, people likewise married young (usually between puberty and the age of 20) and with help from community match-making.

Even though Paul does not completely reject the Roman-Jewish view of marriage, he does say a number of counter-cultural things about the marriage relationship in 1 Corinthians, particularly in Chapter 7, where he advocates celibacy. In Chapter 11, Paul reiterates traditional Jewish and Roman views about the priority of the man / husband, but there and in other letters he also emphasizes the man’s dependence on the woman. This emphasis also may have been somewhat counter-cultural, or at least drew out themes from Jewish and Roman sources concerning the mutual interdependence of the man and woman / husband and wife that were often ignored in practice.

Perhaps the over-arching point we can take from this vice list is that in matters of sexuality no less than in matters of honesty and commerce, there are forms of behavior that foster the kind of community God desires and forms of behavior that destroy such community. To “inherit the kingdom of God,” now and in the eschatological future, is to be part of God’s peaceable community. It’s not a list of arbitrary rules that we must keep on pain of exclusion, but the relationships truly matter, and sex is a foundational element of deep human relationships.

Paul makes this connection clear at the end of Chapter 6 in his discussion of members of the Corinthian community who were consorting with prostitutes. The “body” metaphor for the church is important to Paul and he will come back to it later in the letter (Chapter 12). If we are united to God by his spirit, we in our bodies are the temple of God (6:17-20). Paul has already employed the “temple” metaphor in Chapter 3, in connection with the community as a whole (3:16-17). The individual body, the individual temple, is interwoven with the corporate body, the corporate temple, the church. This kind of personal sexual sin, then, hurts not only the individual involved, but the corporate body.

Some feminist commentators have observed that Paul pays no attention to the plight of the prostitute — a good point. In the ancient world, like today, women who worked as prostitutes usually had little choice, because they were enslaved or impoverished. We can also suggest that using prostitutes is a moral problem because it so often involves a terrible power dynamic, in which a man exploits a woman. Of course, as in the ancient world, today there are male prostitutes as well as female, and, as in the ancient world, today some people choose to engage in sex work without physical or economic coercion. The broader issue of prostitution / sex work is more complicated than a single moralistic statement can capture.

Nevertheless, with whatever careful qualifications we might make about our cultural differences from Paul’s context, a Christian sexual ethic will emphasize the proper place of sex within marriage. This is not because we’re prudes but because we value the unique commitment of marriage and the gift of sexuality that seals this commitment. When we abuse the gift of our sexuality we move ourselves and our community away from the kingdom of God.

Some Discussion Questions on Chapter 6

• When, if ever, do you think it is appropriate for Christians to bring other Christians before the secular law courts? Have you ever thought of the secular law courts, and the temporal law, as a locus of “power” that can conflict with the kingdom of God?
• How do you understand your baptism? How do you think Paul’s concepts of “washed,” “sanctified,” and “justified” relate to each other?
• What do you think is the significance of Paul’s eschatological comment that we (the church) will judge the cosmos and judge angels?
• How can we express, and live, a Christian sexual ethic in our culture?

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.

June 9, 2020

Introduction

Chapter 8 continues the discussion of issues raised in the Corinthians’ letter to Paul. The major concern in this section is whether to eat “food sacrificed to idols.” This was a divisive issue for Christian churches in the first century, which was part of a complex of disputes between Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus. Eating meat sacrificed to idols is prohibited in Acts 15:28-29 and is referred to as an improper practice in Revelation 2:14 and 20. A first century Christian manual of church order called the Didache says “concerning food, bear what you are able; but against that which is sacrificed to idols be exceedingly on your guard; for it is the service of dead gods.”

To understand this problem we need to remember that in the ancient world there was no “secular” space. Political, economic and social activities were all related to the gods. Gentiles from the higher classes who wanted to cultivate business contacts, celebrate important events, or have a say in public policy would often do so over meals adjacent to a temple. Sometimes these feasts were publicly visible so people could observe society’s leaders performing their charitable and civic duties, not unlike a televised event today such as the Oscar awards. As Richard Hays notes in his commentary on 1 Corinthians, for example,

The sanctuary of Asclepius in Corinth comprised both an area for cultic sacrifice and several dining rooms that opened onto a pleasant public courtyard. The wealthier Corinthians would have been invited to meals in such places as a regular part of their social life, to celebrate birthdays, weddings, healings attributed to the god, or other important occasions. Examples of such invitations have been preserved. For example: “Herais asks you to dine in the room of the Serapheion (= Asclepieion) at a banquet of the Lord Seraphis tomorrow the 11th from the 9th hour”

Hays, R. B. (2011). First Corinthians : Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: Vol. Pbk. ed. Westminster John Knox Press.

It would have been difficult, then, for a higher-class Gentile to avoid meals where meat sacrificed to idols was offered. Further, many of them likely thought of the sacrifice as a formality. Although there was no secular space and the gods were everywhere, people were not necessarily more pious than they are today. Much like the opening prayer offered by the local Priest, Pastor, or Rabbi today at a Rotary Club beefsteak fundraising dinner, many attendees probably greeted the dedication to the idol with polite indifference.

As Hays also notes, however, meat was not usually available at all to lower-class Gentiles. They may only have received meat on special festival days when there was a general distribution of leftover food from the sacrifices. Hays suggests the poor might therefore have viewed the sacrificial meat with a special kind of awe rather than with the cynical shrug of the wealthy. Or, perhaps, we might suggest the poor just wanted something to eat and didn’t give a thought to any religious implications.

Pious Jews living in the Roman diaspora, of course, would have viewed eating meat sacrificed to idols as an idolatrous act, on top of other dietary prohibitions in the Jewish law concerning non-kosher meat. Pious Jews could organize their business and social affairs with their own celebrations related to their own places of worship. While this kind of separatism often created tension with surrounding communities, it was usually cautiously tolerated, so the cost of avoiding meat sacrificed to idols for them was not as immediate as it would have been for an upper class Gentile.

Acts 15 tells us that these disputes “brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate” with a group of Christians who were Pharisees and with others who wanted Gentile Christians to keep the Jewish law, including the requirement to be circumcised. These questions were addressed by a council of church leaders, which included Peter and Paul. Acts 15:12 says “[t]he whole assembly became silent as they listened to Barnabas and Paul telling about the signs and wonders God had done among the Gentiles through them.” Eventually the council agreed that the Gentile Christians would not be required to keep the Jewish law, except for “the following requirements: You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things.” (Acts 15:28-29). Some messengers were chosen by the council to accompany Paul and Barnabas to Antioch to deliver a letter with this ruling.

As the narrative proceeds in Acts, Paul continues his mission and eventually arrives in Corinth. (Acts 18.) Acts 18 describes conflict Paul ran into with the Jewish leaders in Corinth. Acts 18:11 says Paul stayed in Corinth for a year and six months. One of these disputes led to the beating of Sosthenes, an official in the Synagogue, who might be the same Sosthenes listed as co-author of 1 Corinthians (Acts 18:17). Paul then left for Syria and subsequently Apollos began his ministry — the Apollos with whom Paul contends 1 Corinthians (Acts 18:18-28).

It’s difficult to know for sure whether the events narrated in Acts 15-18 occurred before Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, although the references in Acts seem to suggest that was the case. If so, this would be particularly interesting, because Paul’s instructions about meat sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians are not nearly as clear cut as the restriction in the Jerusalem Council’s letter, which Acts 15 tells us Paul himself delivered to Antioch! This raises all sorts of text- and historical-critical questions about the purposes of the authors and editors of these possibly differing texts. Perhaps the account in Acts captures a bit less of the nuance in favor of a more straightforward report? Or, it may suggest that Paul took the message from the Jerusalem Council and sought to interpret it broadly for the Corinthian congregation. In any event, the depiction of Paul’s argument on behalf of the Gentiles before the Jerusalem Council fits his effort to bridge and contextualize the core Gospel message, which developed in the Jewish setting, for the Gentiles. Paul makes similar arguments in Romans 14 and in Galatians 5-6.

Paul’s “Soft” Rule: Chapter 8

Notice that, instead of stating a rule, Paul returns to the theme of “knowledge” that he introduced in Chapters 1-2. The more sophisticated members of the congregation at Corinth knew that idols are nothing. Perhaps their first phrase — “no idol in the world really exists” — reflects what they really thought even before they became Christians, when they had to listen to what they though were boring and silly invocations before digging into the lamb shank at the feast. Now they add to that an even more sophisticated twist from their new faith: “there is no God but one.” (8:4.) This phrase references the foundational Jewish prayer, the shema, “Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.” Perhaps Apollos, the highly educated Jewish Christian teacher, had helped them make this connection.

Paul does not deny this knowledge, but he reminds the sophisticates that others in the congregation will lack it. He encourages them not to use their liberty in a way that will become a “stumbling block” to the weak. (“Stumbling block” is proskomma, literally a stone against which someone strikes their foot, used figuratively in moral literature as something that gets in the way or causes offense.) Notice that Paul also returns to the theme of ecclesiology — the nature of the church — that he surfaced in Chapters 1-2. To act without sensitivity to a weaker member of the community is not only a sin against that individual. Paul says that “when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ.” (8:12.)

Some Discussion Questions on this Section

• Are there any social / cultural / economic practices in our context today that you think are analogous to eating meat sacrificed to idols in the first century Roman world? What is your ethical stance on those things?
• Imagine you are in fellowship with another Christian who believes it is idolatrous to salute the flag, stand at attention for the National Anthem, or take an oath in a judicial proceeding (many Anabaptist Christians hold such views). Imagine further that you personally think these practices are at best culturally valuable or at worst indifferent. Should you refrain from those practices entirely?

Paul’s Example: Chapter 9

In chapter 9, Paul continues the argument about forbearing the exercise of personal rights in favor of building up others. The example Paul uses seems odd and even a bit whiny. Paul says that as an Apostle he could demand the right to payment from the congregation for his work and to travel with a spouse. (9:3-6.) Paul seems to snipe at some of the other Apostles, including Peter, for traveling in what he views as a higher style than he and Barnabas.

But Paul also acknowledges that, like the Priests in the Jewish Temple, “the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel” (9:14). This text has often been used to argue for paid professional clergy. The nature of this professional status was disputed during the Reformation. Martin Luther, in particular, railed against Catholic monks who had taken vows of mendicant poverty, whom he viewed as pests and interlopers. In the Radical Reformation branch of the Reformation — against which Luther also railed! — some pietist movements began to argue against a separate paid clergy altogether, a view the persists in some such churches today. The Plymouth Brethren church I grew up in until my teen years taught that professional paid clergy were a distortion of the pure first century church. The pulpit and other pastoral ministries were entirely supplied by lay Elders. They argued that Paul’s tent-making example should be followed rather than his apparent statement about paid preachers.

The centerpiece of this section is a famous Pauline text:

For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God’s law but am under Christ’s law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.

1 Cor. 9:19-23

This is followed with a sports metaphor for the spiritual life: “Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win it. Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one.” (9:24-25.) Paul, and other New Testament texts related to Paul, often employed sports and military metaphors of this sort. (Cf. Heb. 12:1, Phil. 2:16, Gal 2:2, Eph. 6:10-18, 2 Tim. 4:7.) The sports metaphor might have appealed particularly to the Corinthians because Corinth hosted the Isthmian Games, held regularly the year before and year after the Olympic Games. Perhaps the sports metaphor connects with the question of meat sacrificed to idols, since the Games would have been accompanied by feasts.

The sports metaphor concludes with an odd statement: “So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified.” (9:26-27.) This text has at times been used to support ascetic spiritual practices. These can include benign, traditional practices such as occasional fasting, but they have also included extreme measures such as self-flagellation with whips. There was an infamous outbreak of flagellantism during the Black Plague in 14th Century Europe.

Some Discussion Questions on this Section

• We often hear that it is unhealthy and unwise to try to be “all things to all people.” Yet, that is exactly what Paul gives as an example! What do you think Paul means by this? In what way (if at all) is it a model for us today?
• Paul makes some rapid but subtle comments about “law” in the “all things to all people” text. How would you understand what Paul is saying here about “law?”
• Paul’s comments about the “rights” of ministers of the Gospel is not really the point of this chapter, but nevertheless, it is a touchstone for debates about the place of the clergy in the church and in society. Our Presbyterian polity takes a strong view of the Offices of the Church, and generally reserves that of “teaching elder” — Pastor — for trained professional clergy. Do you think this is a good model? What role do you think professional clergy can or should play in society more broadly?
• Presumably Paul’s sports / training metaphor was not meant to induce extreme practices such as those of the flagellants — or was it? Do you think the flagellants read Paul incorrectly? How might we apply this kind of metaphor to ourselves today?

June 16, 2020

Introduction

In chapter 10 Paul continues the discussion of eating meat sacrificed to idols. This chapter can be a bit confusing because it seems in some ways to pull back from the more flexible approach to this problem in chapters 8 and 9. Remember, though, that this is a letter, not a philosophical treatise. Even though it’s a special form of correspondence, much more formal than a dashed-off note, it does sometimes contain streams of thought that meander, connect, and trail off in various places.

At the same time, we can also see an improvised principle in chapter 10 that ties things together: eating meat sacrificed to idols in the context of certain kinds of religious-cultic practices should be avoided, but eating meat purchased in the marketplace at a private meal is a matter of indifference, even if that meat had been previously sacrificed to an idol. The reticence about cultic practices is consistent with, and rooted in, Paul’s figural use of the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish confession of one God. The freedom to eat any meat bought in the marketplace, however, was a radical break from Jewish practices. In this way, Paul connects the Corinthian church — and by extension, the church wherever both Jews and Gentiles meet together — to the story and heritage of Israel, while also acknowledging the new character of a community that incorporates the Gentiles.

“Our Ancestors” and Our Story

One of the most significant aspects of Paul’s ethical improvisation about meat sacrificed to idols is easy to miss. In 10:1, Paul refers to the Hebrews as “our ancestors.” For Paul and other Jews, this was of course core to their identity. Yet Paul is writing not only to Jews, but also to Gentiles in the church at Corinth. By identifying the Hebrews as the ancestors of everyone in the church, Paul plays on one of the central themes in the theology of all of his letters: Israel is the root and the Church is the branch. Between Jews and the ekkelesia of Christ, there is no fundamental division. Israel and the Church are one people.

This theme is more implicit than directly stated in 1 Corinthians. It is stated most plainly in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Romans 1-11 has often been misunderstood as a tract about the problem of individual sin and as a statement about God’s election of some individuals to salvation. Themes relating to individual sin and salvation are present in Romans 1-11, but that is not the main point of Paul’s argument there. In that text, Paul, a pious Jew, agonizes over why most of his fellow Jews have not recognized Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah. His conclusion is that God has allowed Israel’s heart to be hardened for a time so that the Gentiles could be incorporated into the community of God’s Kingdom. Paul’s arguments about election in Romans 1-11 are primarily about corporate election, and Paul’s ultimate conclusion is that, in a way that God has not yet fully revealed, Israel will come to recognize Jesus, so that — surprisingly — God’s eschatological Kingdom will include both the Jews and the Gentiles./1/

There are at least two important conclusions we can draw from Paul’s theological vision concerning Israel and the Church. The first is that Paul’s theology does not entail supercessionism — in fact, Paul’s theology entails exactly the opposite. “Supercessionism” is the notion that the Church replaces Israel in God’s economy of salvation. Paul would respond to such a claim with a stock phrase he often used: me genoito! No way! May it never be!

Unfortunately supercessionist theology has a long history in the Church, from the early church through the Reformation and into modern times. The Holocaust, including the complicity of much of the German church in the Holocaust, prompted a reappraisal of this tradition, including contemporary scholarship about the Jewishness of both Jesus and Paul. For Paul, the Gentile Church is grafted in as a branch onto the root of Israel. For Christians to persecute Jews is literally to shoot ourselves in the heart.

Of course, significant differences remain between the community of Israel that does not (yet) recognize Jesus and the Church, both Gentile and Jewish, that does acknowledge Jesus as Lord and Christ. We can’t pretend that difference doesn’t matter — and it definitely mattered for Paul. But as between these communities, this is an intra-family difference, not a fundamental division. And, from the perspective of Pauline theology, it is a difference that we in the Church should fully expect will one day be mutually overcome, joyfully and peaceably.

The second theme we can draw from Paul’s theological vision, which is explicit in 1 Corinthians 10, is that Israel’s story is our story. At the start of chapter 10, Paul draws on the story of Israel’s exodus from Egypt as a figure of the Church’s current circumstances. This kind of figural reading of the Hebrew Scriptures is a common motif in Paul’s letters. (See Richard Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press 1993.)) Theology is a form of narrative, and the stories of Israel provide the basic narrative themes through which the Church can identify itself and shape its corporate life.

You can see how closely, and idiosyncratically, Paul uses the exodus narrative in verse 4: “For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.” Paul here refers to a story that is only partially present in the canonical sources of the Pentateuch (Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy). The Jewish sages wondered how the children of Israel found water to drink when they spent forty years wandering in the desert after leaving Egypt and before entering the promised land. In Exodus 17:6, God provided water when Moses strikes a rock with his staff. The sages concluded that God had miraculously caused this rock to follow the people from place to place as they wandered. Paul picks up on that story and then embellishes it further by identifying the rock with Christ!

Paul’s identification of the wandering rock (or well) with Christ is not meant literally. Paul doesn’t suggest that the rock was an early incarnation of Christ. He does, however, suggest that in God’s provision for Israel Christ was already spiritually present and active in Israel’s story. The story of redemption unfolds in history but is already present before it is fully known.

Some Discussion Questions on this Section:

• Does it change your self-understanding as a Christian to know that Jews and Christians are really one people?
• What are some elements of the narrative of the exodus from Egypt that you think might be figures for our times? (One thought: this narrative was very important in black spirituality during slavery and is central to liberation theologies today.)

The Narrative Crisis: Idolatry

The arc of any compelling narrative involves a central crisis. A central crisis in the narrative of the Hebrew Scriptures is idolatry. The first commandment on the tables given by God to Moses is “you shall have no other gods before me” and the second, third, and fourth commandments relate to making idols, misusing God’s (YHWY) name, and keeping the sabbath. (Exodus 20:1-8; Deut. 5:6-16.) These commandments, often depicted as residing on the “first tablet” of the law, are the foundation for the commandments on the “second tablet” concerning murder, theft, false testimony, adultery, and coveting. (The fifth commandment to “honor your father and mother” has been viewed as a transitional commandment that links the first and second tablets.)

The foundation for all of Israel’s ethics therefore was the recognition that God alone was God. This foundation is reflected in the central Jewish prayer, the shema: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord is one.” (Deut. 6:4.) In Deuteronomy 6, the shema is followed by the basic commandment that precedes all the other detailed provisions of the law: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.” (Deut 6:5.) Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, from the exodus all the way through the exile, the Hebrews often fail to keep this central commanding principle and thereby lose God’s blessing and incur God’s judgment./2/

Paul alludes to four such episodes in verses 6-10. One is the golden calf. (Exodus 32.) Instead of waiting patiently for Moses to return from the mountain with God’s instructions, the people, led by Moses’ brother Aaron, create an idol, a golden calf, and worship it. Exodus tells us that after building the idol, “they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.” (Exodus 32:6.) The fallout from this event was fierce: according to Exodus 32, Moses made the people drink water with bits of the ground up idol, and then, under Moses’ command, the Levites (the Priestly tribe) who had not worshiped the golden calf, killed 3,000 of the people (a civil war? Exodus 32:19-29.) The other three involve times when the people complained, pushed against Moses’ leadership, or engaged in syncretistic practices with other tribes, resulting in severe plagues and violence. (Numbers 16:41; 21:6; 25:1-9.)

Paul connects this central theme in Israel’s story to the Corinthian church in relation to eating meat sacrificed to idols. In chapters 8 and 9, Paul focused on why the “stronger” members should refrain from eating idol meat if it would hurt the “weaker” members. In chapter 10, Paul asserts a prohibition against eating idol meat because to eat such meat is to practice idolatry.

But Paul has already agreed with the “stronger” members of the Corinthian church that the gods represented by the pagan idols are not real. If that is the case, and the “stronger” members in their wisdom know this, how can they be charged with idolatry? Paul warns them that even in their strength they will be tested. God will give them the strength to endure the testing, but they should not presume they are above the possibility of failure. (10:12-13.)

The test of idol meat, Paul says, is dangerous because the reality behind the pagan idols are not gods by “demons.” (10:20.) To participate in these rituals therefore is a particularly gross form of idolatry — one that twists what should be worship of God into worship of demons. The parallel is even more important because the form of worship is a meal. The meal of the demons in eating pagan idol meat is a horrible perversion of the meal of the Lord’s supper. (10:21.)

The reference to “demons” here is unsettling for modern readers. As we previously discussed concerning Paul’s reference to “satan” (5:5), Paul lived in a world in which there was no “secular” space. There were elaborate angeologies and demonologies in some of the Jewish Second Temple literature, but Paul does not get into that kind of detail here. He simply asserts that the pagan temple feasts are devoted to “demons.”

Paul then shifts gears from concerns about idolatry and demons to a more conciliatory mode. He returns to the basic principle of chapters 8 and 9: “do not seek your own advantage but that of the other.” (10:24.) He then gives permission to eat any meat purchased in the market, even at the home of an unbeliever, and even if the meat may have previously been sacrificed to an idol. The only admonition is to avoid eating if someone raises the questions whether the follower of Jesus should be eating such meat. (11:23-30.) Otherwise, the principle of conscience is that someone else’s conscience should not provide the measure of judgment.

The notions of “conscience” and “liberty” (or “freedom”) here are important in Paul’s thought, in earlier Greek philosophy, and in the history of Christian ethics. “Conscience” is synderesis and “freedom” is eleutheria. You shouldn’t think of synderesis merely as some kind of feeling. The concept is much broader. It entails the innate human capacity know the first principles of right action prior to discursive reasoning. That innate human capacity is not, at least for the Greek philosopher Aristotle and later for the Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas, just an abstract impression. Rather, it is a capacity to form habits of life that enable a person to perceive the right course of action. Eleutheria in ancient Greek thought was the personification of liberty, associated with the goddess Artemis. But the concept meant primarily the status of not being a slave. It was used in connection with Greek political philosophy of democracy to denote a citizen of the commonwealth. (See, e.g., Mogens Herman Hansen, Democratic Freedom and the Concept of Freedom in Plato and Aristotle, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 50:1-27 (2010)). This was not a libertarian concept of freedom, meaning merely the freedom to make one choice rather than another. It was a concept tied to membership in the commonweal — a freedom “for” as much as a freedom “from.”

Even with these qualifications about the concepts behind synderesis and eleutheria, this is a major concession to the “stronger” members, who also must have been among the wealthier classes if they were able to attend meals in homes at which meat was served. In fact, we could imagine that the person raising a concern might be a servant (slave) who was also part of the ekklesia and who was horrified that another, wealthier member of the ekklesia was eating this food. Alternatively, or in addition, we can imagine the Jewish members of the ekklesia objecting — for them, eating meat from the market that was sacrificed to an idol was not kosher and was as much a participation in idolatry as participating in a pagan temple feast. For the Jewish members, the Torah gave commands on these points that could not be qualified by appeals to synderesis and eleutheria./3/

Paul concludes this section with a summary principle: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” (10:31.) This principle entails giving no offense to anyone and always seeking the welfare of others — in imitation of Paul, but even more basically, in imitation of Christ. (10:22 – 11:1.)

In light of this broader principle as it relates to the question of idolatry and conscience, it could be helpful to remember that the temple feasts were public or semi-public events that connected to the Roman elites’ understanding of what held their culture together and gave their place in society legitimacy. Whatever exactly Paul had in mind by his reference to “demons,” throughout his letters he pictures the “powers” of this world in contrast to the Kingdom of God. For a follower of Jesus, a worshiper of the God of Israel, to partake in a public temple feast, was to engage in performative rituals that gave legitimacy to a system of powers that opposed the peace and justice of the Kingdom of God. A meal in a private home, however, was simply an act of friendship. This was what Jesus himself did — he ate with “sinners.” Participating in a public ritual that stands against God’s Kingdom dishonors God and is idolatrous; participating in a private friendly meal enacts God’s Kingdom and glorifies God. That, at least, seems to be what Paul had in mind.

Some Discussion Questions on this Section:

• We return to the question of the “powers” and idolatry: where do you see the “powers” actively tempting us to idolatry today? What would it mean for us to emphasize the problem of “idolatry” to the same degree as the Hebrew Scriptures, and as Paul does here?
• 1 Cor. 10:13 is a famous text: “No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.” How have you experienced “testing?”
• 1 Cor. 10:31 is also famous text, often seen on posters and the like: “whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God.” What does it mean for you to “do everything for the glory of God?”
• How do you see the concepts of “conscience” (synderesis) and “freedom” (eleutheria) in Christian ethics?
• In his famous treatise “The Freedom of a Christian,” Martin Luther said “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.” How does this statement of Luther’s sit with you?

Notes

/1/ An important point of clarification here: “Israel” means the ethnic-cultural-religious-political community that can be identified as heirs of God’s covenants in the Hebrew Scriptures with Moses, Abraham, and David. From the time of the early church through today, this means the disapora of Rabbinic Judaism in all of its forms. It does not mean the modern nation-state of Israel. Whatever other views one might hold about the modern nation-state of Israel, the “Left Behind” type of Zionist theology that identifies the modern nation-state of Israel with Biblical “prophecy” is bad Biblical exegesis and bad theology.

/2/ From a historical-critical perspective, these strong statements about idolatry and the oneness of God likely were drawn out and emphasized within the canonical texts of the Hebrew Scriptures as they took their final shape during the Babylonian Exile. Worship among the early Hebrews might always have been more syncretistic than the commandments suggest. In various places even in the canonical texts, God (YHWY) does not always seem to be depicted as the only “god.”

/3/ We should not, however, imagine that pious Jews viewed the Torah without any flexibility at all. The Rabbis engaged in extensive debates that provided glosses on the Torah and made distinctions based on specific cases. These debates formed the mishnah, or oral law, which was later redacted and incorporated into the Talmud.

Head Coverings: 11:2-16

The first part of chapter 11 is another part of 1 Corinthians that can be difficult for modern readers. The first thing to remember, as always, is that 1 Corinthians is a letter that responds to specific concerns questions raised by the Corinthians. The question addressed in 11:2-16 is about whether women can participate in the worship services with their heads uncovered. The cultural background here seems to involve the way a respectable woman in Roman society during this period was supposed to wear her hair.

The question likely is not about wearing a hat or a veil. The NRSV uses the words “unveiled” and “veil” in verses 5 and 6, but the operative Greek word is katakaluptó meaning “covered up,” which does not specifically refer to a veil. Roman women did not ordinarily wear a veil, but they did wear their hair up. (See the portrait from a home in Pompeii at the top of this post.) If a woman’s hair was unkempt and left hanging down, she was presumed to be at best uncultured, or at worst, a prostitute.

It seems that some of the women in the church at Corinth were, literally, “letting their hair down” during worship services. Note that 11:5 presumes that women are prophesying and praying during public worship. The problem was not that they were participating in an open and equal manner during the service — a fact that, in both the Roman and Jewish contexts, would have been provocative enough. The problem, it seems, was that some of the women, in the freedom of the ecstatic worship that accompanied this new social leveling, were acting in ways that other members of the congregation felt were getting far out of hand.

For one possible contemporary parallel, imagine this: some of the members of the Presbyterian churches in Northern New Jersey begin shedding their clothes and dancing naked during worship. (During the contemporary service, of course!) These folks argue that God has set us free from arbitrary social conventions and that this kind of worship better reflects the innocence of our original embodied human nature. Others in the churches, however, are quite disturbed by this practice. Some feel it is difficult to concentrate on worship, and to avoid inappropriate thoughts, when a naked fellow congregant dances by. Others feel that the practice is distracting from the church’s hospitality and mission in a culture in which public nakedness is so far from the norm. Yet others worry that the practice will be misconstrued as a form of sexual license even if that is not the intent.

We could imagine some interesting local Session and Presbytery meetings about this problem! Perhaps the folks engaging in this practice have some valid points, and perhaps even there is some time, place, and manner in which they could pursue it. Maybe in some other cultural context, it wouldn’t present such a big issue. But most of us likely would agree that, in our context, it’s good to have a general rule that requires everyone to keep their clothes on during worship.

This is probably how we should imagine the question of “head coverings” in ancient Corinth. Paul’s solution is at one level broadly consistent with his approach to other divisive and culturally sensitive issues, such as meat sacrificed to idols: the dignity of worship should be maintained, and for everyone’s benefit, the questionable practice should be avoided.

If this were all there was to Paul’s advice, this section of 1 Corinthians might not be so disturbing. The broader difficulty is that Paul connects the requirement that women keep their heads covered to a number of different but equally confusing and somewhat inconsistent arguments: one from the order of “headship,” a second from the order of creation, another concerning “the angels,” yet another from “nature,” and a final one from custom.

Misuse of these arguments has led the church historically to claim that women should be subservient to men, both in the home and in the church. Even today, the official teaching in many of the churches reflects aspects of this view, particularly in closing off ordained leadership roles to women. Obviously, we do not hold that view in our church. So how can we relate to what Paul says here?

The order of “headship,” Paul says, is God → Christ → Man → Woman. Although the NRSV translates “husband” and “wife,” there is no separate term for “husband” or “wife.” The words are simply “man” and “woman” and the context must determine whether “husband” or “wife” is meant more specifically. Here, the context suggests Paul is speaking broadly about women in the Corinthian congregation, not just about married women. Some commentators have suggested that the word translated “head,” kephalé, can also mean “source,” but this is a stretch. The word literally means “head” and is used metaphorically to refer to refer to that which has prominence. Paul therefore seems to provide a theological justification for his Roman and Jewish cultures’ hierarchical gender roles.

On closer inspection, however, Paul’s example of “headship” is confusing. In fact, by later standards of Christian thought about Christ and the Trinity, Paul’s comment about God being the “head” of Christ could be considered “subordinationist” — that is, technically heretical, because it would deny the co-equality and divinity of the Son and the Father.

Paul did not have a fully worked out theology of the Trinity, and we could write several books about how exactly Paul understood the figure of Christ in relation to God (for Paul, to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), without reaching a firm conclusion. We can say, though, that Paul did not intend to demean Christ. Paul’s vision is of a community under God’s gracious rule, through Christ. In his own patriarchal context, he still conceives of men having some kind of ontological priority over women, such that for the woman to worship without her head covered would disgrace the men in the congregation. But men and women are together both under Christ and therefore under God, so the ultimate “head” to which both women and men are accountable is God. The overall point in context, despite the patriarchal cultural baggage, is that both men and women have responsibilities to preserve good order in public worship.

Paul’s second argument, from the order of creation, is equally hard to follow. Paul suggests that the story in Genesis 2 of Eve being created from Adam’s rib establishes an ontological priority of the man in creation. In fact, Paul goes beyond the Genesis 2 text and appears to echo a common Rabbinical gloss of the time that the “image of God” was breathed only into Adam and that Eve received the image secondarily from Adam. (11:7.) Genesis 1, however, establishes that God created humanity, male and female, in his image (Gen. 1:26-27.) Paul seems to recognize this, because in verses 11-12 he appears to backtrack: women are not independent of men, men are not independent of women; women come from men, men come from women; and both women and men come from God.

To make the argument from the order of creation even more perplexing, Paul tosses in a sub-argument: women ought to wear a “symbol of authority” on their heads “because of the angels.” (11:10.) Where the “head covering” in relation to men in the congregation seems to place women in some way under men, here the head covering is a symbol of authority for women. This seems to mean not that the women are under under the authority of the angels, but rather that the women have authority over the angels.

The “angels” could refer to the nephilim of Genesis 6. The origins of the Genesis 6 story are obscure, but in subsequent interpretation, the nephilim were thought to be wayward angels who mated with human women. This interpretation was picked up in the Second Temple period to create an elaborate scenario involving fallen angels called “Watchers.” (See Angela Kim Harkins, Kelly Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, S.J., eds, The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press 2014.)) Women with loosely flowing hair might have been considered a temptation to the angels, whereas women who presented themselves properly might have been thought to be in control over these angels’ desires. Alternatively, Paul might be suggesting that, when the community engages in worship, the angels are also present, and take a role under both the men and the women in the congregation.

Paul’s final argument from “nature” is that women naturally have long hair and men naturally have short hair, so a requirement that women bind up their hair as a “covering” is self-evident. This argument seems even less convincing than the others. Men, of course, can grow out their hair naturally as well as women, and if a woman’s long hair is her “glory” it’s not clear why she should follow a cultural norm of tying it up instead of letting it flow.

It seems Paul recognizes that he’s casting about for a good argument, and in the end, appeals to custom. Requiring women to wear their hair up, he says, is just how things are done in all the churches.

Paul is searching for a way to diffuse something that obviously was causing some distress in the Corinthian congregation, which in our cultural context simply is not an issue. The overall point we might take away, despite patriarchal cultural baggage, some slippery exegesis of Genesis 1-2, the obscure reference to the “angels,” an argument from “nature” that makes little sense, and an unsupported appeal to custom, is that men and women each have responsibilities to preserve good order in worship.

The Lord’s Supper: 11:17-34

In this section Paul returns to one of the big causes of divisions in the Corinthian church. Some people are abusing the Lord’s Supper by drinking too much and excluding other members of the congregation. Remember that during this period the churches often met in homes and that the Lord’s Supper was a more extended meal. It’s likely that the homes that served as meeting places belonged to wealthier members of the congregation, simply because poorer members, including those who were common laborers and slaves, would not have owned homes. The major problem of a man sleeping with his father’s wife, as we saw in chapter 5, was in some way also related to dissension at the Lord’s Supper. This problem, then, struck at the heart of congregation’s fellowship.

Verses 23-26 are words of institution that churches have used through the ages in eucharistic liturgies. Verses 27-31 emphasize the importance and holiness of the communion meal, to the point of suggesting that participating in the meal without first engaging in some kind of practice of self-examination can lead to judgment, including illness and even death.

Notice that the words of institution are words Paul says he received “from the Lord,” which are words of Jesus himself. Paul is not claiming that he has received some kind of direct revelation, but rather that he is passing on the early tradition of Jesus’ words. The words Paul recites are similar to those in Mark 14:12-25 and Luke 22:7-38. The Gospels had not yet been compiled when Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, but this shows that there was an early Jesus tradition that Paul received and that was broadly consistent with the passion tradition in the synoptic Gospels (and, indeed, that likely informed what was written in the Gospels). In this part of 1 Corinthians, Paul recites Jesus’ words of remembrance (anamnésis), new covenant (diathéké), and proclamation (kataggelló). Paul also connects Jesus’ statements about the bread — “this is my body” — to the warning that before partaking participants must “discern (diakrinó) the body.”

The nature of the communion meal has been a point of division at various times in church history. The institutional church from the Patristic period through the middle ages developed an elaborate theology of Christ’s “real presence” in the elements of the blood and wine. The question of the “real presence” was disputed during the Reformation. Martin Luther believed adamantly in the real presence, while Ulrich Zwingli believed the meal was entirely symbolic, and the two men argued bitterly about this difference. John Calvin developed a kind of mediating position, in which Christ was spiritually but not literally present during the communion meal. The pietist groups we call the “Radical Reformation,” which were the forebears of modern Baptist, Anabaptist, and other “free church” movements, tended to view the meal as Zwingli did, that is, as entirely symbolic.

What Paul writes about “discerning the body” he is most likely referring to the assembly of the church as the body of Christ, rather than to any theory of Christ’s real presence in the elements of the Eucharist. However we might understand the presence of Christ at the communion table, the Lord’s Supper is the place at which the ekklesia, the body of Christ, remembers Christ’s sacrifice for it, reaffirms the covenant that binds the community to God through that sacrifice, and proclaims the benefits of that sacrifice and covenant to the world. The Lord’s Supper is simultaneously and inward-focused event, at which the church recognizes and receives its meaning, and an outward-focused, missional event, from which the good news of the Gospel proceeds into the world. It is therefore simultaneously joyous and serious, not unlike a wedding, which should not be treated lightly. It should be preceded by sincere self-examination and confession and followed by moving out into the world to live and make known what has been received — a breathing, or flowing, in to the table, out to the world, in to the table, out to the world.

Some Discussion Questions on Chapter 11

• What do you think good order in worship might mean today? How do we navigate different styles and cultural expressions of worship while remaining true to a principle of good order?
• How might we think about a theology of gender today? Paul picks up on a theme that is present in the Biblical creation narratives of a created gender binary of male and female. How can we understand this today when we know that gender identity and sexual orientation are not merely rigid binaries?
• How do you experience the presence of Christ in worship? Have you ever experienced the presence of Christ in a special way at the Lord’s Supper? In what ways do you experience the church worship service as a “proclamation,” a sending out of the church body into the world?

Spiritual Gifts: Chapter 12

In chapter 12, Paul begins to pivot from the specific concerns raised by the Corinthians back to the broader themes of knowledge, wisdom, and the church that he previewed at the start of the letter. This section of 1 Corinthians is one of the richest texts on ecclesiology — the nature of the church — in the New Testament. It does concern individual spiritual gifts, but the focus is on the collective body of the church, not on the individual.

Chapter 12 bears a notably Trinitarian shape (recognizing, again, that Paul does not offer a worked-out Trinitarian theology). It is the Holy Spirit, Paul says, that enables anyone to recognize and proclaim Jesus as Lord (kyrios). The Spirit imparts gifts within the church; the service (diakoniōn) rendered according to those gifts is rendered to the Lord (Jesus); and God “activates” (energōn) the gifts. The gifts each person receives are a “manifestation of the Spirit for the common good (sympheron).” (12:3-7.)

It’s not good practice to play with word etymologies, but the resonances of the Greek here are too rich to ignore, and those resonances do have a history in subsequent Christian theology and spirituality. A service — diakonia — is the term that relates to the office of Deacon. Not everyone in the local church holds the office of Deacon, but everyone is called to perform some diakonia. God’s “activation” — energōn — is the “energy” within the church. The Eastern Orthodox tradition speaks of the Divine “essence,” which is ineffable and insrcutable, and the Divine “energies,” which are the tangible, knowable presence of God. God’s energetic presence moves the church forward in service. The manifestation of the Spirit by the gifts is for the common good — sympheron — a “symphony” of different tonalities and different parts coming together to produce a beautiful, textured, unified performance.

Some of the specific spiritual gifts Paul mentions seem familiar to us, while others seem odd. Paul mentions healing, miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, and speaking in and interpreting “tongues” (glōssōn). Some of the odder-sounding gifts, including prophecy and discernment of spirits, may not seem as challenging to us if we contextualize them: “healing” can include a calming, healing presence; “prophecy” is more about forth-telling than fore-telling; and “discernment of spirits” is a sensitivity towards problems and motives that might not appear on the surface. On the other hand, while “tongues” could refer to the ability to speak different human languages, which is what happened according to Acts 2 when the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, here and in other of Paul’s letters it seems to refer to ecstatic speech, not ordinary human languages (we will come back to this when we study chapter 14). And “miracles” — dynameōn — are works of power, relating to “the powers.” As we have discussed before, this kind of text challenges the flat, mechanistic worldview of the Global North.

The middle section of Chapter 12 further develops the metaphor of the church as a “body.” Each part of the human body, including those that are “less honorable” (i.e., the parts that eliminate waste), is vitally important. Every spiritual gift within the body of Christ likewise is vitally important, even if it is a gift that does not usually receive public accolades.

The final section of Chapter 12 — verses 27-31 — however, offers a kind of hierarchy of gifts, with Apostles at the top and tongues at the bottom. Since Paul has just eloquently stated that every gift is vital, this paragraph cannot be meant to denigrate any of the gifts themselves. Instead, this paragraph hearkens back to the related theme throughout the letter of proper order. Each of the gifts is vital, but different giftings entail different roles within the leadership of the congregation. It is right to recognize and respect different offices and roles within the congregation, and it is right to seek the “greater gifts” — that is, to explore your own potential for leadership. At the same time, verse 31, as a hinge into the great “love” chapter (Chapter 13), points to “a still more excellent way”: none of the gifts or offices mean anything if they are not united by love.

Some Discussion Questions on this Section

• “Missional” theology emphasizes the Trinitarian shape of God’s mission in the world and of the mission of the church. How do you understand the relation of God, Jesus, and the Spirit within the life of the church? Does the metaphor of a “symphony” resonate with you?
• How do you understand your own spiritual gifts? (You are participating in the life of the church — so you have been given spiritual gifts!) How might you discern your spiritual gifts?
• What place do you think “supernatural” spiritual gifts have in the life of the church today? Can we speak about “supernatural” spiritual gifts without quickly sliding into abusive practices or quackery?

A Still More Excellent Way

1 Corinthians 13 — the love chapter — is one of the most famous passages in the Bible. Even beyond the Bible, it is a classic text in the history of literature and spirituality.

Paul’s discussion of “love” is not sappy or sentimental. “Love” in this chapter is the Greek agape. Other Greek words that could be translated love include philia, a fondness or appreciation found in friendship, and eros, a passionate, intense desire. (For a good discussion, see Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Philosophy of Love.”) In ancient Greek thought, agape does not exclude eros and philia — indeed, agape “draws on elements from both eros and philia in that it seeks a perfect kind of love that is at once a fondness, a transcending of the particular, and a passion without the necessity of reciprocity.” (IEP, above.) Although Paul is not writing Greek philosophy as such, this is a good summary of the concept of agape in the New Testament generally and in Paul.

Chapter 13 is the pinnacle of Paul’s plea against the divisions in the Corinthian congregation. All of the apparently virtuous acts Paul mentions verses 1-3 are things that gave some person or group in the Corinthian congregation a claim to superiority: speaking in tongues, prophecy, mystical understanding, knowledge, faith, acts of charity. All of the virtues Paul mentions in verses 4-6 are things Paul found lacking in some person or group in the Corinthian congregation: patience, kindness, humility, faith, hope, and endurance. Notice that the substantive virtues in verses 4-6 overlap with the facially virtuous acts of verses 1-3. These virtues are also referred to as the “fruit of the Spirit” in another of Paul’s letters (Galatians 5:22-23).

Paul suggests, then, that virtue is not just about action — it is also, and primarily, about motivation and inner character. Without the motivation and inner character of love — agape — a seemingly virtuous act is really nothing — a “noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” This reference to the “noisy gong or clanging cymbal” refers back to Paul’s discussion of idolatry and eating meat at pagan temple feasts, which would have been accompanied by this kind of ceremonial action, perhaps at the moment of sacrifice./1/

Verses 8-13 shift to the theme of epistemology Paul raised at the beginning of the letter, tied also to the apocalyptic themes woven throughout the text. The apocalyptic principle is found in verses 8 and 13: “love never ends [fails]”; faith, hope, and love “abide”; and love is greatest. The gifts we use now — tongues, knowledge, prophecy — will one day become inactive because they will no longer be needed. They are needed now because we only see “in a mirror, dimly [ainigmati — an enigma, a riddle]” and because we “know only in part.” But “then [at that time] we will see face to face” and we will “know fully even as [we] have been known.” Paul thereby ties his epistemology of of the cross, of weakness and partial knowledge, to the current time the church inhabits, while looking forward to a time when a different epistemology of perfect seeing and knowing. We will see in chapter 15 that Paul’s apocalyptic hope springs from the resurrection of Christ, which secures victory over death and the promise of our resurrection and transformation.

Some Discussion Questions on this Section

• How do we discern if we “have” love? From where do we “get” love?
• In verse 7, Paul says love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all tings, endures all things.” (“All things” in Greek is just the word panta, all — panta stegei, panta pisteuei, panta elpizei, panta hypomenei — these phrases can serve as a kind of contemplative prayer.) What things today are you finding beyond your ability to bear, beyond the capacity of your faith / belief (pisteuo), beyond hope, beyond endurance? How can “love” (agape) provide the capacities you need in these circumstances?
• Verse 12 refers to seeing your reflection in a mirror. In the ancient world, mirrors were made of polished metal, not glass, so the reflection was imperfect. Below are examples of some ancient mirrors in a museum. What do you take from these statements of Paul’s about our present and future knowledge? How does knowing, and being known, relate to seeing, and being seen? Do you ever feel unknown, or unseen?

• The apocalyptic vision of this chapter is not how we usually think of the word “apocalypse”: what remains, and what triumphs, is love. Does this change your concept of “apocalyptic?”

Tongues, Prophecy, and Other Gifts

In Chapter 14, Paul applies his discussion of love and the spiritual gifts to the question of speaking in tongues. Apparently this was another point of tension in the Corinthian congregation. The group that claimed to be wiser and more spiritual seems to have used the practice of speaking in tongues as evidence of their superiority.

There is little doubt that the “tongues” here refers to ecstatic speech, presumed to be a heavenly or angelic language, and not to an ordinary human language. The practice of uttering ecstatic speech would have been familiar to the Corinthians. It was a common feature of pagan worship.

Paul does not condemn the (Christian) practice of speaking in tongues, and in fact, claims that he is its foremost practitioner (14:18). Nevertheless, Paul sets limits on the use of tongues in public worship, to preserve order in worship and to show unbelievers who are present that this is not just another pagan mystery cult.

Paul’s preference is for the Corinthians to develop the gift of “prophecy.” This is not so much a reference to telling the future — foretelling — as it is to telling the truth about the way things are and about how they need to change — forthtelling. It is plain speech, not esoteric oracles, that demonstrates God’s presence even to unbelievers (14:25). Even prophecy, however, should be exercised within proper order (14:29-33). Note that Paul says anyone can offer a word of prophecy, as well as a hymn, a lesson, a revelation (Greek apokalypsis), a tongue, or an interpretation, not only a professional minister.

Chapter 14 also includes another difficult passage on women in the church (14:14-15). Many scholars consider these verses a later interpolation — that is, not part of Paul’s original letter to the Corinthians — because they disrupt the flow of the argument, refer to “all the churches” rather than to the Corinthian situation, and contradict the direct mention in 11:5 of women praying and prophesying in the assembly. This view is taken by noted New Testament scholar Richard Hays in his commentary on 1 Corinthians. As Hays also notes, however, even as an interpolation, this segment is part of the canon of scripture, and it echoes (probably intentionally) later deutero-Pauline texts in the canon such as 1 and 2 Timothy (deutero-Pauline means that those texts were sent in Paul’s name but probably not written by Paul himself). For Hays, this shows that the diverse texts of scripture usually give principles for ethics and practice, which must be assessed in cultural context, rather than timeless, legalistic rules.

Others suggest that, like the references to head coverings in Chapter 11, these verses refer to some cultural circumstances in the early church. In the Synagogue, women and men sat on different sides of the assembly, and this practice also obtained in some parts of the early church. If we imagine an ecstatic assembly, in which various people are speaking in tongues and prophesying all at once, with some women letting their hair down in culturally shocking ways, and other women shouting across the aisle towards their husbands, perhaps this set of instructions makes a bit more sense, even if we would not state them in the same way today. The idea then would be not an absolute prohibition against women speaking in the assembly, but an instruction addressed to the particular problem of some women in the Corinthian assembly often speaking or shouting over others.

Some Questions on this Section

• Do you think our Reformed tradition emphasizes good order at the expense of the full exercise of gifts within the congregation?
• What might the gift of “tongues” or “prophecy” look like today? Does our renewed interest in Christian contemplative practices open space for thinking about this question?
• Can you think of some powerful examples of “prophetic” speech? Are there any such examples that have impacted you?

Notes

/1/ The reference in verse 3 to “hand over my body so that I may boast [or, in some manuscripts, to be burned]” is unclear and has prompted much discussion. “So that I may boast” is likely the more authentic text, and “to be burned” is probably a later change, although this is not entirely clear. If “so that I may boast” is the correct text, it might refer to committing one’s self to slavery in exchange for the manumission of someone else — a practice that apparently sometimes happened in the early church.

If Chapter 13, the “love chapter,” is one of the greatest texts in the New Testament, Chapter 15, the “resurrection chapter,” is one of the most theologically weighty.

The Gospel

Paul first reminds the Corinthians of the “good news” — the euangelion, the gospel — he proclaimed to them and that they received. Paul says the gospel he passes on is the same one he received. Notice that “the gospel,” verses 3-7, is the story of Christ’s death “for our sins” and of his resurrection, all “according to the scriptures.” “The gospel” is not a theory of the atonement — of how exactly Christ’s death is “for” our sins. Nor is “the gospel” a theory of the mechanics of conversion. Of course, “the gospel” invites contemplation of theories of atonement, and even more, the gospel invites our grateful response of faith. But “the gospel” itself is simply the story of Christ according to the scriptures.

When Paul uses the phrase “according to the scriptures” here he is not referring to the New Testament, which had not yet been compiled, and certainly not to his own letters, which he probably did not think of as “scripture.” He was referring to the Hebrew Scriptures. For Paul, then, the story of Christ was already contained in the Hebrew Scriptures. But the Hebrew Scriptures, read within their own original frame of reference, do not clearly predict the “Christ” Paul describes, at least not when read before Christ Jesus’ advent. Jesus himself, and the church that bore witness to Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, saw the narratives and prophetic and wisdom texts of the Hebrew Scriptures with fresh eyes in light of their experience. Jesus Christ is the interpretive principle. Jesus Christ is the gospel.

What Paul received, and what he passes on, is a witness to the event of Jesus Christ. Paul says he “proclaimed” (euēngelisamēn) the gospel (euangelion) and the “word” (logō) (15:1), that the story of Christ’s resurrection is “proclaimed” (kēryssetai) and is a form of “proclamation” (kērygma) (15:12, 14), and that Paul and the other Apostles’ “testify” or bear witness (martureó) (15:15) to the resurrection. This constellation of terms, all collected in one place, demonstrates that the gospel Paul passes along is a well-known, foundational narrative that runs from the first Apostles through Paul to the Corinthians — and to us (15:11).

The Resurrection

Despite the central narrative of Christ’s death and resurrection, it seems some in the Corinthian congregation did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. (15:12.) Perhaps some of these Corinthians were Jewish Christians who believed in a general resurrection of the dead at the end of history, as did the Pharisees and other Second Temple Jewish groups, but questioned why the Christ, the Messiah, would rise first.

It seems, though, that the people Paul addresses here do not think the dead can rise at all. Perhaps, then, some of these Corinthians were gentile skeptics about the possibility of a bodily resurrection, like those Paul encountered in Athens (see Acts 17:32). The Greek philosopher Plato believed in the immortality of the soul (or at least, of parts of the soul), and thought the soul was subsequently reborn in different bodies. Aristotle believed in the soul but it is not clear that he though the soul was immortal. Greek skeptics did not believe in the immortality of the soul at all. None of the Greek philosophers or their Roman heirs believed in the resurrection of the body.

Paul states that Christ is raised from the dead, “the first fruits (aparché) of those who have died.” And the resurrection of Christ is central to the gospel, because “death” (thanatos) is the consequence of sin. (15:21-22). The gospel is good news because it changes the reality of death.

In verses 21-22, Paul draws a parallel between Christ and Adam. Adam, a human being, introduced sin and death; Christ, a human being, introduced resurrection. Adam was the firstfruits of death; Christ is the firstfruits of resurrection. We should not press this metaphor into a theology of “original sin,” which is not really present here or elsewhere in Paul, and we certainly shouldn’t take this is a some kind of modern “scientific” statement about human origins. The point is that humanity, at its root, from its deepest origins as humanity, embraces sin and death. Having been given the gift of our created being, we choose to de-create ourselves. But Christ, the true Adam, re-creates us, through the power of his resurrection, which defeats death.

Notice that “death” here is personified as one of the powers. The resurrection of Christ is an apocalyptic event that inaugurates the end of present age, which culminates when Christ subjugates all of God’s enemies — and “the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” (15:26.) At the end of history, everything, including the Son Paul says, will be subject to God the Father, “so that God may be all in all.” (As we have discussed before, there are Trinitarian themes in Paul’s thought but he did not have a worked-out theology of the Trinity. This statement about Christ being subject to the Father by later standards would be considered subordinationist.)

In verses 25 and 27 Paul alludes to some of the “scriptures” he mentioned earlier. In verse 25, the reference is to Psalm 10, which says:

The Lord says to my lord:
“Sit at my right hand
until I make your enemies
a footstool for your feet.”
The Lord will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying,
“Rule in the midst of your enemies!”
Your troops will be willing
on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy splendor,
your young men will come to you
like dew from the morning’s womb.
The Lord has sworn
and will not change his mind:
“You are a priest forever,
in the order of Melchizedek.”
The Lord is at your right hand;
he will crush kings on the day of his wrath.
He will judge the nations, heaping up the dead
and crushing the rulers of the whole earth.
He will drink from a brook along the way,
and so he will lift his head high.

The reference in Psalm 10 to Melchizedek brings forward an obscure figure from Genesis 14, the King of Salem, who blessed Abram (Abraham) after the battle of the Kings and thereby performed a priestly function — although he was not an heir of Abraham and there was as yet no nation of Israel and no Jewish Priesthood.

Melchizedek features in some of the eschatological texts of the Second Temple period. Jesus is compared to Melchizedek in Hebrews 7, also using quotations from Psalm 25. It seems, then, that in the Second Temple period, the notion of Melchizedek, or a Melchizedek-like figure, appearing or reappearing as a priestly figure who recalls the nation to purity, was a known motif, and that this motif was connected to Jesus in early Christianity.

In verse 27 the reference is to Psalm 8, which says:

Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants
you have established a stronghold against your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens,
the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which you have set in place,
what is mankind that you are mindful of them,
human beings that you care for them?
You have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
and crowned him with glory and honor.
You made him ruler over the works of your hands;
you put everything under his feet:
all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.
Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Notice that this Psalm echoes Genesis 1 and 2, in which humans are given charge over caring for creation. There is an echo of a connection here between Adam and Melchizedek, both as mystical figures who perform kingly and priestly functions — one at the beginning of creation and one at the beginning of the Hebrew people. For Paul, then, the resurrection of Christ is the fulfillment of the purposes of humanity and of the mission of Israel, culminating in the restoration of creation itself.

Starting in verse 35, Paul begins to respond to an objection from the skeptics: if the dead are raised, what kind of body do they possess? No one would want to be raised in a rotten corpse. Even more, although ancient people did not understand chemistry or microbiology the way we do, they knew that over time bodies decompose and are consumed by other creatures. If a person’s body is thrown into a river and consumed by fish, does the person become a fish in the resurrection? (A version of this very question was, in fact, answered in the Medieval period by Thomas Aquinas — so it remained a live question!)

Paul says the question is foolish because the present body is like a seed that becomes something greater. In verse 44, Paul says “it is sown a physical [natural] (sōma psychikon) body, it is raised a spiritual (sōma pneumatikon) body.” This leads some interpreters to suggest that Paul does not believe in a material, bodily resurrection, but rather moves the concept of the resurrection entirely to the spiritual realm. But there are several reasons why this is not what Paul is doing.

First, Paul is responding to some of the Corinthians who are skeptical of the resurrection of the body because of their Greek dualism. The skeptics might accept the immortality of the soul, but not the resurrection of the body. If Paul’s response is that the resurrection is spiritual and not bodily, he would be agreeing with the skeptics.

Second, the phrase sōma psychikon translated from the NRSV above as “physical body,” does not really contrast a “physical” body to a “non-physical” one. Paul quotes Genesis 2:7 in verse 45, because Adam is the example of the “physical” or “natural” body. In that text, in the Greek translation (the LXX) quoted by Paul, Adam became a psychēn zōsan — a “living being.” In the Hebrew the word is nephesh, sometimes translated “soul,” but meaning the vital center of life, personhood, passion, desire, and appetite. So Paul is not contrasting the “physical” with the “spiritual.” In both cases — the present sōma psychikon and the future sōma pneumatikon — Paul is referring to a kind of sōma, a body.

Third, Paul’s metaphor of the seed that produces wheat assumes a continuity between the present state and the future state. A wheat germ is not precisely the same thing as a mature wheat stalk, but there is a numerical continuity between the germ and the stalk: this germ, planted in the soil, produced this stalk. Of course, this is only a metaphor, so we shouldn’t press it too far, and Paul didn’t know anything about how a wheat germ becomes a wheat stalk at the molecular or genetic level. But the metaphor does tie into Paul’s overall discussion of how our present bodies relate to our bodies in the resurrection.

At the same time, Paul does say that our bodies in the resurrection will differ significantly from our present bodies. In Paul’s mind, the resurrection is not a zombie-fest of reanimated corpses. He does not attempt to explain how our resurrection bodies will differ, nor does he offer any details about their material constitution. It is something that will happen by God’s power “in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” (15:52.)

The result, Paul says, is that Death no longer holds final power over us. In verses 54 and 55, Paul quotes a line from Isaiah 25 and another from Hosea 13. Isaiah 25:6-8 reads as follows:

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.

Is. 25:6-8

And Hosea 13:14 says:

I will deliver this people from the power of the grave;
I will redeem them from death.
Where, O death, are your plagues?
Where, O grave, is your destruction?

By quoting these texts Paul again connects Christ’s resurrection to the eschatological hope of the prophetic literature in the Hebrew scriptures — a hope for a restored nation and a renewed creation.

Excursus on Universalism

What precisely is the scope of Paul’s eschatological vision of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15? The mainstream of Christian eschatology envisions a dual outcome: some, maybe only a few, go to Heaven, and some, maybe many, go to Hell. There are important scriptural reasons for this view, including a number of sayings of Jesus in the Gospels and the vision of judgment at the conclusion of the book of Revelation. But there have always been voices in the Christian tradition who imagined an outcome in which every person is eventually saved, a view called apokatastasis. Some, such as the great Third Century theologian Origen of Alexandria, were later censured by the institutional Church at least in part for these views, while others, such as the Church Father Gregory of Nyssa, were always held in high esteem.

Today, both in academic theology (evidenced, for example, in the work of Eastern Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart (That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (Yale Univ. Press 2019)) and in popular writing (evidenced by Rob Bell’s Love Wins (HarperOne 2012)), there is a renewed interest, and often fierce argument, over the possibility of apokatastasis. Two verses in 1 Corinthians 15 are important to that debate. These are verse 22: “for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ”; and verse 28, which states that, in the end, God will be “all in all.”

There is no ambiguity about the words Paul uses in these verses: “all,” panta, literally means “all.” Here and elsewhere in Paul’s writings, there is a universal logic and universal language in his eschatological statements. At the same time, however, Paul repeatedly warns that not everyone will inherit the kingdom of God. (E.g., 1 Cor. 6:9-10.) And even in 1 Corinthians 15, there is a hint that some of the unrighteous dead need some help, in the cryptic reference to baptisms for the dead (15:29).

In his interesting and challenging book Pauline Dogmatics: The Triumph of God’s Love (Eerdmans 2020), Duke Divinity School Professor Douglas Campbell suggests that, like many Second Temple period Jews, Paul probably believed in a resurrection only of the righteous. At the “Day of the Lord,” the last day, the righteous dead would be raised and the righteous living would be transformed. The unrighteous dead would be left dead, and the unrighteous living would be annihilated. Some Second Temple apocalyptic literature included a dual resurrection and a judgment of annihilation or exclusion (“Hell”) for the unrighteous living and dead, but Paul seems uninterested in that concept. There is no suggestion in Paul’s writing of an eternal dual outcome: what is left after the end is only God and God’s people.

At the same time, Campbell notes, the universalistic logic of of texts like 1 Corinthians 15 seems to stand in tension with Paul’s apparent assumption that only the righteous will be raised or transformed in the last day. The parallel between people “in Adam” and “in Christ” seems particularly powerful here. There can be no sense, in Paul’s logic, in which any human being is not naturally “in Adam,” and it appears likewise that there should be no sense in which any of humanity is not ultimately “in Christ.”

In my view, we press texts like 1 Corinthians 15 too far if we suggest they are dogmatic statements about apokatastasis. Paul is not writing systematic theology. When his focus is on Christ and the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection, his language is universal. When his focus is on the realities of human sin, his language warns of exclusion.

We do best to take the full Biblical narrative, in all its diversity, together. Sin is judged. We are warned of the possibility of exclusion from God’s kingdom — even by Jesus himself. These warnings for us must remain live. They must spur us to repentance and faith, and to prophetic and faithful witness in a world that seems to oppose God’s peaceable reign. And yet, while we see only through a glass darkly, we know Jesus himself is the interpretive principle. The logic and goal of creation is the resurrection of Jesus. Death is not the last word; death is destroyed. Love bears, believes, endures, and hopes all things. In the end, love remains, and God is all in all. Even God’s judgment, whatever it will be, is a judgment born of love.

Some Questions on this Section

• What do you understand as some of the implications of “the gospel” Paul describes at the start of this chapter?
• What does it mean to you that Jesus’ resurrection defeats “death” as a power or enemy?
• What is your eschatological vision — your hope for the future?

Concluding Remarks

In chapter 16, Paul offers some concluding personal remarks to the Corinthians. He returns to the theme of the collection he is taking for the church in Jerusalem. He promises a future visit, identifies Timothy as his emissary, and offers gratitude for a visit from Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus, Greek converts who apparently were working among the various congregations in Greece. (Based on their names, Fortunatus and Achaicus — “Lucky” and “From Achaias” — were probably present or former slaves of Stephanas.) He also makes a kind of off-handed (passive aggressive?) reference to Apollos.

At the very end of the letter Paul appends his own hand-written greeting. Paul would have dictated the body of the letter to an amanuensis, a kind of professional scribe. This personal greeting in Paul’s own hand was akin to a personal note someone today might add to a typed official letter. We see in that short note the same parts of Paul’s personality we saw throughout the letter: a word of exclusion (anathema) on anyone who does not love the Lord, a common early Christian exclamation in Aramaic– maran atha — and a concluding word of grace and love.

Final Question:

• What thoughts, impressions, or feelings does our study of 1 Corinthians leave you with?