Anyone reading 1 Corinthians for the first time quickly recognizes that Paul, apart from other considerations, was writing to a very troubled church and was attempting to get them to put things right. Commentators have often made the comment that it is the most 'occasional' of all Paul's letters, i.e, it was written to meet a set of very specific needs. So, what are these?
NB - If you have not already done so, we suggest you take the time to read through the entire letter at least a couple of times to get a "feel" of where things are going before you continue with this article.
It is obvious from such a reading that in Chaps 1-4 Paul was responding to the news he has heard—he mentions the household of Chloe's family as a source (1:11)—of quarrels and divisions in the church in Corinth. Such a reading also cannot miss the fact that the most pervasive words that appear in these four chapters are "wise" (10x; out of 31x in the NT) and "wisdom" (17x out of 52x in NT) and their antonyms, "foolish" (2x, out of 22x) and "foolishness" (6x, out of 7x). Repeated readings suggest that the divisions and quarrels have much to do with the Corinthians' enamour with the subject of wisdom. The age of Greek philosophical greatness was past, not passé, and—so it seems—some of the Corinthian Christians fancy themselves wise after the ways of the Greek philosophers, with their emphasis on polished and disciplined rhetorics and eloquence, which Paul apparently lacked, and so his authority and his teachings have now come under challenge. If it was only a superficial matter of style of preaching, we can be sure, Paul would have been quite contended to leave things be. But it was not. It had led to quarrels and divisions in the church that were fighting to see which party was the top dog. It threatened the very integrity of the gospel, as if matter of life and faith was a question of who had the greatest number of votes.
These quarrels and divisions, however, had an even more sinister lining to them. Though Paul seems to take a swift change in direction in 5:1 when he raises the case of a man who is sleeping with his mother-in-law, "a sexual immorality of a kind that does not occur even among pagans." But this change of direction only leads back to the problem of quarrels and divisions in the church, as Christian brothers take Christian brothers to court (6:1ff.) and so on when Paul ends Chap 6 again with sexual immorality. Immorality, litigations and divisions always follow upon a breakdown of authority.
Chap 7 obviously opens a new route, "Now for the matter you wrote about" (v1). Responding to matters that the Corinthians Christians have written to ask Paul about takes up the chapter (about marriage) but also Chaps 8-11 (about food sacrificed to idols and participation in pagan festivals, and propriety in worship), Chaps 12-14 (spiritual gifts and their proper use in worship). Everything that Paul had discussed and that had been the source of the church's ills and troubles can be traced to a warped understanding of the gospel. So, in Chap 15, Paul wraps up the thrust of all that he has been saying by "reminding [them] of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand" (v1). Central to this 'reminder' is an exposition of the resurrection of Christ and the dead, and what it means for the life of faith: "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable" (v50). Before he concludes the letter with some personal requests and greetings (16:5-24), Paul takes up the matter of the collection for "God's people" (16:1-4), something that seems to have been a matter of on-going discussion from some time back.
Here, then, is a summary of what we have looked at.
I. Prescipt, 1:1-9.
A. Greetings, 1:1-3.
B. Thanksgiving, 1:4-9.
II. Paul's Response to the Divisions in the Church and Its Challenge to His Apostolic Authority, 1:10-6:21.
A. The Church Divided Internally & Against Paul, 1:10-4:20.
B. Immorality, Litigations and Divisions Follow From and are a Reflection of Breakdown of Authority, 5:1-6:21.
III. Paul's Reply to the Questions Raised by the Church, 7:1-16:12.
A. Marriage & Related Matters, 7:1-16.
B. Food Offered to Idols & Participation in Pagan Feast, 8:1-11:1.
C. Propriety in Worship, 11:2-34.
D. Spiritual Gifts, 12:1-14:40.
E. Reminder of the Gospel: the People of God and the Resurrection, 15:1-58.
IV. Conclusion: The Matter of the Collection, Paul's Personal Requests and Final Greeting, 16:1-24.
A. About the Collection for God's People, 16:1-4.
B. Paul's Requests to the Church, 16:5-18.
C. Final Greetings, 16:19-24.
This is already—and quite literally—a bookful. But this is only the outline. In a teachable church, none of these cannot be resolved by proper teaching. More difficult to define and a great deal more difficult to deal with in real life are the intangibles that we hear in Paul's voice: their pride and arrogance, their high-minded opinion of themselves, their love for sophistry, their moral insensitivity, their lack of practical love for one another, and, perhaps, most important of all, their low regards for Paul as an apostolic authority. Most pastors of such a church would have quitted. Paul persevered. It was the church of God; whatever he may say to them, he would not give up on Him. Or for Him.
But how did Paul actually draft the letter? 1 Cor is a very long letter; the NIV has about 250 words short of ten thousand. With having to work as a tent-maker to support himself, and a very busy missionary schedule, imprisonment and getting into other troubles, as well as a heavy pastoral watch over the other churches he had planted (which, no doubt, including writing other letters as well), where does Paul find the time to reflect on the Corinthians' need and to draft such a long letter as 1 Cor?
The most likely answer is that he wrote it in installments, snatching whatever free time he had to write, spreading the writing of the letter over a period of time, with periods of inactivitiy in between. This, some commentators have supposed, accounts for the 'inconsistencies' and volte face they see in the letter. These include:
a. 4:19 where Paul says that he "will come to you very soon" and 16:5-9 where he seems now to say his visit will be delayed somewhat.
b. 8:1-13 where he takes a rather lenient view of eating food offered to idols to 10:1-22 in which he is rigorous against it and back to a 10:23-11:1 in which he takes a rather lenient view of it agains.
c. Chap 9 where he takes up the subject of his rights as an apostle when the matter seems to have been settled in Chap 4.
These observations have led to a number of hypothetical reconstructions of a "story" by partitioning up these different "inconsistent" passages and rearranging them in a manner that makes sense to the reconstructionists (on this see footnote #2 under The Corinthians Correspondence). Paul's apparent change of mind about going to Corinth again may be explained by the long period of time it took to draft the letter; a great deal could have changed between writing Chap 4 and Chap 16 that required a change in plan. The other two points noted above, however, makes perfect sense as they are, especially with the insights afforded by rhetorical-criticism; these will be taken up when we deal with these passages in detail in the commentary.
If it is true—as is likely—that Paul wrote the letter in installments, separated in practice by periods of time, it is also important for us who exegete the letter in its present form not to expect tight coherence and consistency in the flow of his arguments as he moves from one issue to another as, perhaps, we may expect from a letter like Romans.
We can hardly go wrong with the outline above. It is one that is more or less the dominant way of viewing how the letter was put together. Any quibble has only to do with the details. In 2011, however, Kenneth Bailey, a biblical scholar who has taught for many years in the Middle East and well acquainted with Arabic and Middle-Eastern traditions, published Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes. Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians, which provides an alternative view of how Paul had organized his letter, one that does not contradict what has been said above, but provides an alternative view and, thereby, enrichening our appreciation of Paul and his letter.
Bailey begins with an often noticed problem with the customary view of Paul's letter, that is, the often "labored and convoluted" arguments Paul uses to make his points. Bailey argues that
the entire book has a carefully designed inner coherence that exhibits amazing precision in composition and admirable grandeur in overall theological concept. . . . that the outline of 1 Corinthians is as precise as any of Paul's letters and that it falls into five carefully constructed essays, which themselves showcase a discernable theological method, both internally as individual essays and together as a collection. (p25).
The five essays are organized, according to Bailey, as a chiasmus:
I. The Cross and Christian Unity, 1:5-4:16.
II. Men and Women in the Human Family, 4:17-7:40.
III. Food Offered to Idols (Christian and pagan), 8:1-11:1.
IV. Men and Women in Worship, 11:2-14:40.
V. The Resurrection, 15.
It is, of course, impossible to go very much beyond this summary of Bailey's highly—and rightly—praised book, and we hope to learn more from Bailey as we work through the letter in the commentary. It is certainly a worthwhile thing to study Bailey's book for yourself.
Low Chai Hok
©Alberith, 2020