A Study of 1 Corinthians (1)_

Surprisingly, I have never gone through 1 Corinthians in a systematic way as any times as I've explored this passage or that or this issue or that in the letter. So, no time like the present to do it (I'm not getting any younger, as my body reminds me every day!)

I will read this letter with two primary companions: Richard Hays in his Interpretation commentary on 1 Corinthians and Brian Tucker's recent "Reading 1 Corinthians."

I want to be as brief as the texts and issues addressed allows. I also want to add some reflection on what Paul says in addition to trying to explain it as best I am able. I guess I'm trying to sayu there is brevity and there is brevity and one person's brevity may not be another's. This is mine.

Introduction (1)

Purpose

Written in Ephesus in the early 50’s a.d. Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians seeks to help this young Christian movement sort out their identity, ethics, and ethos in a social world dominated by an identity, ethics, and ethos pressed on it inhabitants by the Roman Empire.

Already we can see an extraordinary relevance of 1 Corinthians to American Christian churches. We too badly need help to sort out our identity, ethics, and ethos in Christ from that pressed on us by Uncle Sam. We live in a time of extreme uncertainty and ferment about our identity as Americans so it seems a propitious time to receive apostolic help in negotiating this passage. As Brian Tucker notes, “Corinthian civic identity was in transition in the first century, and that unsettledness, if left uncontested, would ultimately hinder Paul’s gentile mission in that important city.” (Tucker, J. Brian. Reading 1 Corinthians (Cascade Companions Book 36) . Cascade Books, an Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers. Kindle Location: 185) Paul knows the spread of the gospel in Corinth in authentic and fruitful ways depends on “strong identity performance” by the church there. (Barentsen, Emerging Leadership, 100) Few readers will needs to be convinced the same is true for us.

Richard Hays reminds us that “In our reading of Paul’s letter, it will be useful to remember that he was writing to a church in a city only a few generations removed from its founding by colonists seeking upward social mobility. (In this respect there is a significant analogy between Paul’s Corinthian readers and the American readers of this commentary.) (Hays, Richard B.. First Corinthians: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (p. 3). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition) Paul has some very pointed things to say about such strivings which suggests the ongoing power of this drive in Corinth.

Further, issues like sexual promiscuity, marriage, pagan (read alternative) religious practices and spiritualities all vied for at least a piece of every Corinthian’s identity, as they do ours today. Hays agrees with Tucker: “Paul was faced with a major task of reshaping the thinking (Tucker would expand this beyond just thinking) of his Corinthian converts into the symbolic world of Judaism and the emergent Christian movement, in which one God alone was to be worshiped.” (Hays, Kindle Loc.: p.4)

This does not mean that Paul’s responses to the Corinthian’s situation will map on to ours in such a way that we may simply read them as practical guidelines we need to literally adopt. It does mean that as we think along with Paul as he deals with a variety of concerns he is aware or wants to address we may well learn to think better about our own situations and deploy key resources of the Christian faith in learn how to live into “strong identity performances” as Christians in our own place and time.

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