Paul and the Church at Corinth

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Paul and the Church at Corinth
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Who was Paul?

• Pauls Judaism
• Pauls hellenism
• Pauls Christianity
• Pauline (and pseudo-Pauline) epistles

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Pauls Judaism

• Prior to his conversion, Paul had been in the
  pharisaical/developing rabbinical school.

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Pauls hellenism

• As an educated, privileged man, Paul would have
  enjoyed the cultural fruits of hellenism, a
  general Greco-Roman worldview that would have
  included some familiarity with ancient philosophy
  (possibly Platonism, possibly Stoicism.)

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Pauls Christianity

• Converts after the crucifixion of Jesus, but
  before the writing of Mark.
• (False notion that we have freedom and grace in
  the gospels, but then by the time we get to Paul
  we see the intitutionalizing of Christianity.)

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Undisputed letters of Paul

• 1 Thessalonians
• 1 and 2 Corinthians
• Galatians
• Romans
• Philippians
• Philemon

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Disputed Letters of Paul

• Colossians
• Ephesians
• 2 Thessalonians

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Almost certainly not Paul(pseudo-Pauline)

• Pastoral Epistles 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus

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1 Corinthians and the Body
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At issue the relationship between

• The Christian community (the ecclesial body of
  Christ)
• Jesus resurrected body (the ascended body of
  Christ)
• Christs presence in the Lords Supper (the
  eucharistic body of Christ)
• The bodies of individual believers.
• Never settled the church still discusses all of
  these.

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Thesis

• That Pauls depiction of the interplay between
  the strong and the weak in the church body at
  Corinth, must be understood in light of Christs
  bodily resurrection. Thus understood, Pauls
  message to the Corinthians relativizes both the
  preoccupations of the weak and the spiritual
  pretense of the strong. It also has
  applications for our own culture and how we think
  about bodies - both physical and social.

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Additional sources

• Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven
  Yale University Press, 1995).
• Peter Brown, The Body and Society (New York
  Columbia University Press, 1988).

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1 Corinthians in a nutshell

• Date mid-50s (probably late 56, early 57)
• Audience Mixed church of Jews and Gentiles
• Authenticity Considered authentic
• Source- and redaction-critical issues May be two
  or more letters that are interwoven. (Disputed by
  scholars.)

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Life in Corinth

• An aristocratic minority - probably leaders in
  the church - claiming certain spiritual
  freedoms and privileges unveiling of women,
  spiritual ecstasies, special knowledge/revelation,
  eating food sacrificed to idols, etc.
• A lower-class majority who were more concerned
  about things like pollution, uncleanness, etc.
• Sets the stage for the many other divisions of
  which Paul speaks.

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Unlearning modern dualisms

• Body/soul
• Body/mind
• Physical/spiritual
• Natural/supernatural

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The body to the Corinthians(3 points)

• 1. Mind, spirit, spiritual, etc. and
  body, matter, etc. were not seen as examples
  of entirely different realms of reality.

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The body to the Corinthians(point 2 of 3)

• 2. The weak - based upon other historical
  sources as well as 1 Cor. - were likely to
  understand the body as porous, vulnerable to
  pollution, unstable a reality where different,
  and sometimes dueling, forces churned and clashed.

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The body to Corinthians(point 3 of 3)

• The strong -- those who were more likely to be
  familiar with Greco-Roman philosophy -- likely
  saw the body as a hierarchical reality,
  invulnerable so long as it was well-ordered, with
  mind or soul at the top, doing the governing
  and the rest of the body falling in line.

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Gee, project much?

• For both groups, their theoretical understanding
  of the physical body mirrored their experience in
  the social body
• The weak really were more vulnerable they got
  caught in the crossfire of social and political
  forces.
• The strong really did have it easy so long as
  the rest of society stayed hierarchically
  organized, with them at the top.

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3-5 minute writing exercise

• Agree or Disagree? This same pattern holds true
  today. The dominant culture in our society has a
  very divided understanding of the physical body
  On the one hand, a nice or strong or sexy
  or high-performing body is seen as the mark of
  a worthy person. On the other hand, theres a
  competing strand of thought that says my body is
  just something I have, and isnt really me.
  If we scratch the surface of this apparent
  conflict, it reveals corresponding divisions in
  our understanding of the social body, the
  community.

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Pauls response

• What some people think Paul does.
• What Paul actually does.

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What some people think Paul does

• Paul exhorts the strong, as part of their
  high-status responsibility, to condescend to and
  accommodate the weak, for the sake of proper
  hierarchy and the harmony of the community.
• Paul is thus being the consummate hellenistic
  cosmopolitan thinker 1 Corinthians follows
  recognized the form of homonoia, a rhetorical
  appeal for civic harmony or concord based in
  Greco-Roman philosophy.

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What Paul is actually doing

• To the weak Christ already chose you and
  identified with you, the weak. All of the
  concerns about pollution are beside the point.
• To the strong Yes, you have freedom. No, you
  dont need to worry about pollution. But you
  want to talk hierarchy? Christ became weak.
  Therefore, you too should identify with the weak.

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Pauls subversion

• There is a hierarchy, with Christ at the top.
• But this is not a simple analogy where
  bodymind churchchrist weakstrong
• Christ became weak to shame the wise. (ch. 1)

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How does this relate to the resurrection? (1 of 2)

• The resurrection of Christs physical body
  entails the glorification of Christs ecclesial
  body. (Remember, physical and social bodies were
  not thought of as separately as they were today.)

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How does this relate to the resurrection? (2 of 2)

• 2. Its already been done, through Christs
  becoming an embodied human being who died and was
  raised. Its happened. Its accomplished. Its
  not something we have to work out by means of
  food purity (the weak) or proper church
  governance (the strong). You want to see your
  model for church governance? Look at Christ, who
  became foolish to shame the wise, and weak to
  shame the strong.

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All the behavior business of 1 Corinthians
follows

• Claiming special spiritual lineage 1 Cor
  112-13 I mean that each of you is saying, I
  belong to Paul, or I belong to Apollos, or I
  belong to Cephas, or I belong to Christ. Is
  Christ divided?
• Ostentatious displays of spirituality that would
  be shocking/offensive to the weak.
• Divisions of eucharistic table fellowship, with
  the strong eating first

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Discussion of writing exercise

• How can Pauls close connection between Christs
  resurrected body, and the church body, convict,
  edify, and inspire the church today?
• How does Pauls emphasis upon the resurrected
  body give the lie to the disordered ways in which
  our dominant culture imagines the body?