CHAPTER 9
Paul starts this one off very defensively, beginning with a
series of rhetorical questions: “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have
I not seen the Lord?” And then he
answers his own questions but appealing to his own authority: “Although I may
not be an apostle for others, certainly I am for you, for you are the seal of my
apostleship.” That’s interesting, but I
don’t know quite what to make of it. Corinthians II, however, will feature Paul
even more defensive, having to justify his authority.
Mostly, Paul has to justify being given privileges as an
apostle to the others. He defends
himself by noting how he goes about always preaching the gospel, and winning
new followers to the Lord. I
think. I’m not fully able to follow
this section. But he is on the
defensive, trying to justify himself to the congregation. This is peculiar. Maybe he was writing the letter – had gotten halfway through –
and more news came from Corinth. So
far, he’s seemed a lot more self-assured than he does here.
This leads us into one of the more personal parts of the
book, a part where we get a sense of Paul as a person. He confesses that he’s felt the need to act
as all things to all people. With Jews,
he’ll by a Jew and follow the law. With
Gentiles, he’ll act as a Gentile, and not worry about the law. He adapts his behavior in order to win as
much support for his cause as he can.
What he really cares about is spreading the good news of Christ. And since he thinks the old laws have now
been negated, he feels free to ignore them as he needs to. If he’s around Jews he can follow the laws –
because hey, if the laws don’t really matter, it doesn’t actually hurt to
follow them.
Paul then makes a comparison to athletics. If you look at a race, many run, but only
one can win. “Run so as to win” Paul advises the Corinthians. I wasn’t expecting a sports metaphor in the
Bible, but there you go.
CHAPTER 10
Paul warns against idolatry and against overconfidence. Most notably, he takes a strikingly harsh
line against sacrifices, saying that when Israelites sacrifice, “they sacrifice
to demons.” Ouch. OK – that negates
what I just said last chapter, doesn’t it?
If sacrifice becomes sacrifice to demons, then it is bad for Paul to
follow the law. Well, maybe he just
means this for rhetorical effect.
Actually, Paul better mean that for rhetorical effect. Think back to Acts of the Apostles for a
second. There, James Christ tells Paul
to purify himself and offer a sacrifice at a synagogue, and Paul agrees. He’s only prevented from doing it because
he’s arrested in advance. According to
what he says here, that sacrifice would’ve been very bad.
In fact, Paul clearly and explicitly goes against James
Christ’s original instructions. In
Acts, James said it was OK for Gentiles to avoid circumcision, but they must
keep the laws. Here, Paul says, “East
anything sold in the market, without raising questions on grounds of
conscience.” In other words – screw
kosher laws. Paul is doing his own
thing in this religion.
CHAPTER 11
Paul shifts from theology to behavior; specifically how
people should behave in church.
Much of this deals with women in the church. Short version:
they should wear veils. Men don’t need
to, for: “man did not come from woman, but woman from man; nor was man created
for woman, but woman for man.”
Ooph! Oh Paul, and you’ve
normally been so surprisingly progressive on gender relations. Well, he’s still doing good for his time
anyway.
Mostly Paul talks about the Lord’s Supper. It sounds like some people in Corinth are
missing the point. Some are not being
given bread to eat. Others are imbibing
is so much of Christ’s blood that they’re getting drunk. Yeah, that ain’t the point, gang.
CHAPTER 12
This chapter focuses heavily on speaking in tongues. It’s a common practice in the early church
and a sign the Holy Spirit has come to someone, but Paul thinks people are
overdoing it. Oh yeah – it’s not
bad. Oh yeah – feel free to speak in
tongues. But don’t focus so much on
that one gift of God that you ignore and minimize all other gifts from god,
like prophecy or being able to understand someone speaking in tongues. (Heh.
If no one can understand someone speaking in tongues, aren’t they just
speaking gibberish then?) All these
things play a part and have their role, and Paul things people are missing
that.
CHAPTER 13
This is a short chapter, but it’s a wonderful one. It’s all about one thing: love. All else means nothing if you don’t have
love. You must love your fellow
man. (This reminds me of the words of
Pope Francis, and helps explain just why he’s been so well received).
I don’t have much to say about this chapter, but it’s so
nice I feel the need to quote the full thing verbatim: “If I speak in human and
angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing
cymbal. And if I have the gift of
prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so
as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away everything I own, and if I
hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Let me pause here.
First – isn’t that wonderful? It
goes back to Paul’s earlier emphasis of faith over law. It’s what you feel within that matters. Your outer actions matter too, but they must
flow from your inner belief. If you
just go through the motions giving alms or whatever, then can you really be
said to have the Holy Spirit within you?
Earlier, I compared Paul to Jeremiah. They are similar in several ways, but I can
never imagine Jeremiah saying the above.
In fact, the above is arguably an indictment of Jeremiah. He very much was someone who had the gift of
prophecy, but did not have love. Thus,
for Paul, he’d be nothing.
Paul continues: “Love is patient, love id kind. It is not
jealous, [love] is not pompous, it is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not
seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over
injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all thins, hopes
all things, endures all things.”
If Paul weren’t already engaged as a prophet, he’d make some
good money for himself at Hallmark writing Valentine’s Day cards. OK, that’s too smug/smarmy a response. And that’s especially unfortunately because
again – what a wonderful, heartfelt statement Paul makes right there.
Paul concludes the chapter thusly: “Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be
brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be
brought to nothing. For we know
partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes, the partial
will pass away. When I was a child, I
used to talk as a child, think as a child; when I became a man, I put aside
childish things. At present we see
indistinctly as in a mirror but then face to face. At present I know partially, then I shall know fully, as I am
fully known. So faith, hope, love,
remain, these three, but the greatest of these is love.”
Impressive, isn’t it?
And in the middle to his peon to love – he gives us that famous line
about how “when I became a man, I put aside childish things.”
CHAPTER 14
As great as Chapter 13 was, it seems to interrupt the flow
of things. Paul was talking about
speaking in tongues in Chapter 12, and he’s back at it here in Chapter 14. His point here is that as nice as speaking
in tongues is – and Paul claims to do more of it than anyone in Corinth – that
prophecy is better.
Tongue speaking is when the Lord reaches out to you, but
prophecy is when you reach out to others to tell them of the Lord. Tongue speaking is more self-centered –
well, that sounds harsh. But what I
mean is that it focuses on the self – you’re the one experiencing it, and no on
else can necessarily understand it. But
prophecy focuses on others. (I guess
Chapter 13 might fit in then after all – it stresses love of others, after
all).
Paul gets in a nice dig at the mania for speaking in
tongues. Imagine if some unbelievers
were to walk in a congregation all doing it at the same time? “Will they not say that you are out of your
minds?” Heh – that’s exactly what
they’d say! But if you were all
engaging in prophecy – well, that would impress the person no small amount.
Oh, and then Paul goes on to discuss some rules of order,
including the maybe the most infamous thing he ever “wrote” (I’ll explain the
quotation marks in a second). In
discussing the role of women in church, Paul tells us the following, “women
should be kept silent in the churches, for they are not allowed to speak, but
should be subordinate, as even the law says. But if they want to learn
anything, they should ask their husbands at home. For it is improper for a woman to speak in the church.”
OUCH! And to think –
earlier I praised Paul for being progressive on gender relations. How could he
say such a thing?
Simple – he didn’t.
Paul almost certainly didn’t write that. The above quote was inserted later on by a scribe copying the
info – and adding his own slant to it.
In the earliest copies we have of Corinthians I, that quote
isn’t always there. When it does
appear, it jumps around. Sometimes it’s
a little higher up. Sometimes it’s a little lower down. But it isn’t always in the same place. That indicates the quote may originally have
been a scribal notation in the margins, and then it took a while for people to
figure out where to put it exactly.
(Source: “Misquoting Jesus, by Paul Ehrman).
OK, but the above doesn’t necessarily mean it wasn’t in
Paul’s originally. Scribes might’ve
goofed up and put it in the wrong spot sometimes, which could explain its
floating nature. Yeah – but there are
other problems. Aside from location,
this goes clearly against what Paul says in other parts of the Bible.
Look back just three chapters ago. There Paul said women must wear a veil in church – but he also
noted them praying in church. It was
taken for granted there that they’d pray in church. That isn’t necessarily keeping silent. What’s more, he’ll periodically thank leading Christians in the
communities he’s writing to, and some will be women. That doesn’t jibe with the fully subservient role he calls women
to have in Chapter 14 in Corinthians I.
Look back to Romans for the best contradiction of what happens
here. There, in Chapter 16, he begins
by thanking Phoebe – a minister of the church. Paul was fine with female ministers! That really goes against what he says here.
And look at how he justifies his position here. He says, “as even the law says” to justify
his position. Since when did Paul care
about that? He’s gone out of his way
here and in Romans to say the law no longer applies. Oh, can I point out those two verses actually interrupt the flow
of what he is talking about? He’s
discussing prophecy just before and just after this diatribe. It doesn’t fit.
Guess what? Paul didn’t write this bit. GOOD.
CHAPTER 15
As we near the end, Paul gives us a nice, long chapter about
Jesus. Apparently some in Corinth are
questioning if the resurrection of the dead is real. For Paul, you may as well question if it’s a good idea to drink
water.
The resurrection of the dead is central to Paul’s theology.
He begins by going over what made Christ important: He died, was raised,
appeared to his followers, and then to Paul.
If the resurrection of the dead isn’t real, then Christ couldn’t come
back from the dead. If he didn’t come
back from the dead, then all their religion, all their faith if bunk.
There are several things I find fascinating about this. First, this is a bit removed from modern
Christianity. OK, there is talk of
Judgment Day and the End of Times, and plenty of hardcore Christians believe in
it – but by and large people’s religious thoughts aren’t based on all the dead
rising. They don’t expect that to
happen, they expect to go to heaven or hell.
Those concepts are almost entirely absent from Paul’s theology. He expects Christ to return SOON. He even once said that the world he’s living
in is already dying and making way for the new. Sure, people now thing that Christ will
return soon – but it’s different for Paul because it’s so soon removed from
Christ. He thinks the world as we know
it will end in the lifetime of those who knew Christ. That’s why there is less need for the holy afterlife if you’re
Paul.
Also, please note that – once again – what matters about
Jesus to Paul is not what he said or did in his own lifetime. For Paul, that’s completely off his
radar. The Last Supper, the
crucifixion, and the resurrection – that’s why Christ matters. Everything prior to then? Not Paul’s concern.
Finally, it’s interesting when Paul goes over the
resurrection. He says Christ appeared
to: first Cephas, then the apostles, then 500 followers, then James Christ,
then the apostles again – and finally to Paul.
Yeah, Paul includes himself.
That’s interesting, because Paul saw a bright light and heard a
voice. At least that’s the story in
Acts of the Apostles (which Paul didn’t write). So what was Paul’s experience with Christ? Also no one else ever claims that Christ
appeared to 500 all at once, and Paul isn’t familiar with Mary Magdalene at
all.
Oh, and Paul also tells us that he persecuted Christians for
a while. So that lines up with Acts of
the Apostles.
CHAPTER 16
Paul winds down the letter with
the typical so longs. He also tells
them that he wants to raise funds for a church in Jerusalem, promising to
return to Corinth soon when he gets a chance.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
These letters are easy to ignore, because theology is
always more boring than stories, but when you dive in, these things can be very
interesting. You also get signs that
even in the utopian years of Christianity that things weren’t always so
wonderful. This community in Corinth
appears to be something of a mess. That shouldn’t be too surprising. It takes a while to solidify theology and
practice.
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