INTRODUCTION TO SECOND
CORINTHIANS STUDY: “Reconciling Paul” by Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty
I was asked to speak to the Presbyterian Women of the
Presbytery of Detroit, to do the annual introduction of the Presbyterian Women
Horizons Bible Study for the upcoming year.
What we didn’t know when we scheduled this: the book wouldn’t be published by the time I
would be giving the presentation. So I
found out what I could about the author and her perspectives and focus and did
some general research on Second Corinthians.
What follows is my notes for the presentation in 2014.
INTRODUCTION
When I was asked if I’d do an
introduction to the new PW study on Second Corinthians, we didn’t know that the
study wouldn’t be available until afterward the meeting date.
So—full disclosure—I haven’t seen the book. I’ll just do some background for you on Second Corinthians
and how we might go about interpreting it.
It’ll be a big-picture approach, and I’ll highlight a few things.
As I started looking at what kind of resources I had on Second Corinthians, I was reminded of some
conversations I’ve had recently with one of our newer members, who’s been
excited to hear a different approach to biblical interpretation than what he’s
been used to.
If you check out commentaries and other biblical
resources, you’ll see some very significant differences in some of what's been
written during the past thirty years or so and much of what was written
before then. For one thing, almost all the biblical
and theological scholars we read earlier were European or European-American
white males.
That was changing when I went to Princeton seminary back in
the late 1980’s. In my Introduction to
Theology Class, we were required to read Latin-American, African-American, and
Asian liberation theologians, as well as feminist and womanist theologians,
and we were challenged to read the Bible
through the eyes of third-world and marginalized peoples, and not only through
the eyes of those who are more privileged.
In studying the Bible, it's important to understand the literary genre of the particular biblical text and
the historical and cultural context.
So that’s how I approached what I would do today, since I
couldn’t read the new Bible study. I found
out what I could about the author, Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty, who is chair of the Department of
Theology at Bellarmine University, associate professor of theology, and
co-director of the university’s program in peace
studies. The advance information tells us that “her passions in life and her
research interests include social gospel theology, Christianity and social
justice, wealth inequalities, poverty issues, and theologies from the
margins.” So that gives us some idea of
her hermeneutical approach to Second Corinthians.
An important part of faithful Bible study is learning to
ask good questions of the text. So…let’s
begin:
FIRST, WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE CITY OF CORINTH?
The
City of Corinth was an important and relatively wealthy city in the first century.
Corinth had a strategic location on the shoulder of an isthmus that stands between the
Corinthian Gulf and the Saronic Gulf.
To avoid shipping all around the coast of southern Greece, which was a
long and dangerous trip, goods were carried overland from one gulf to the
other, across the Isthmus of Corinth. All
overland trade had to pass through the city and the surrounding land it
controlled.
In
146 BCE, Corinth had been sacked and destroyed
after a battle with the Romans.
Julius
Caesar re-founded the city as a Roman colony in 44 BCE. It seems that veterans of the Roman army and
an overflow of Roman freedmen settled there. The city’s success in commerce and arts, such
as bronzes and pottery, attracted other immigrants.
In
the first century, Corinth enjoyed great status,
as the capital of the Roman province of Achaia.
At the time of the founding of the church
in Corinth, it was a bustling, important city with people from many lands and ethnic
groups, and a long Greek history, now with an overlay of a Roman upper-class.
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE
CHURCH AT CORINTH?
Early in the year 50 CE, some 20 years after Jesus’
crucifixion and perhaps seventeen years after his own call to become an
apostle, Paul arrived in Corinth and preached the gospel, and a community of
believers developed. Paul stayed in
Corinth for about a year and a half, nurturing the church.[1] In the late summer of 51, Paul crossed the
Aegean to Ephesus, where his mission prospered.
(1 Cor 16:9)
The congregation at Corinth was a cross-section of the
socio-economic and religious makeup of the city—and
probably much of the Greco-Roman world.
A few wealthy people were on
top of the social pyramid and enjoyed
some financial and social stability.
Most were poor. There was no middle class as we know it.
The
Christian community in Corinth contained slaves and freed-persons as well as
free people, and perhaps some Roman citizens.
Most
of the Corinthian believers were Gentiles.
Paul describes the Gentile Corinthians
as having been devoted to idols (12:2).
They wrote to Paul about food offered to idols (8:1) because they had
earlier been free to take part in the religious festivities that were part of
Corinth’s more than two dozen temples, altars, and shrines.
There
were probably some Jews as well.
We
learn from First Corinthians that some of the Corinthians would act boastful
and haughty over what they considered to be their superior wisdom or
spirituality. They could sometimes be
condescending, or inconsiderate and thoughtless.
HIGHLIGHT: THE ISSUE OF ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IN THE
CHURCH
I
really appreciate Dale Martin’s description of the differences in social status
as context to what was going on in the ancient church.[2] For instance, ancient dinner parties were
generally conducted in ways that emphasized differences in social status. Those of higher status could expect to be
given better seats, closer to the head of the table. Different kinds of food and a different
quality of wine would be served to different groups of people: the “friends” of the host, those more his
“equals,” might be served better dishes and wine… the “clients” of the host
might be served something else, and those further down the social pyramid would
get food ad drink of still worse quality.
None of this would have been considered strange to most people of a
Greek or Roman city. It was just how
things were done.[3]
From what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, the Lord’s
Supper was not the sharing of a sip of wine and a tiny morsel of bread the way we celebrate communion, but
rather it was a full meal. In the midst
of the meal, at some point, the “words
of institution”[4]
from Jesus would be quoted and some prayers would be offered, followed by the
distribution and sharing of bread and wine.
But that ritual was surrounded with a full meal that may have been
something of a potluck, or may have been largely provided by the wealthier
Christians.
So Paul had complained in First Corinthians that
different groups were eating and drinking their own private dinners: “Each of you goes ahead with your own supper,
and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.”
(1 Cor 11:21)
Most laborers in an ancient city, whether they were
slaves or other manual and skilled laborers, would have owed their full days to
their employers. Most of the time, they
couldn’t have attended a church meeting until the sun went down unless it happened
to fall on a holiday. So Paul is
describing a situation in which the wealthier Christians, who enjoyed more
leisure and freedom, were arriving early at the church meeting, probably
bringing food and drink for themselves and their households and friends. The poorer people, unless they were members
of the household of a richer church member, were arriving late at the meetings,
after others had begun to eat. So one of
Paul’s solutions to this was to tell those who were able to arrive early to
“wait for” the rest. (1 Cor 11:33)
Paul’s main objection to the way Corinthians are
observing the Lord’s Supper is that they were doing so divided by class and
privilege. The “haves” are ignoring or
despising the “have-nots.” So, according
to Martin, when Paul says that they must “discern the body” before they eat and
drink, he isn’t referring primarily to the host of the body of Jesus in the
bread. Rather, he is referring to the
entire church as the “body of Christ,” as he names it elsewhere in First
Corinthians (6:15-20, 12:12-31). Paul
says that those who have been slighting and humiliating the poor by showing no
concern for their desire to eat and drink have thereby been despising the body
of Christ himself.
Now, we can be pretty sure that the “haves” wouldn’t have
seen things this way at all. They were
just maintaining the cultural traditions.
Those of higher status enjoyed the privileges that came with that, as it
had always been. The poor shouldn’t
expect to be treated equally. So Paul is
turning the status expectations of the Greek city upside-down. He insists that poor people need to be
treated with special honor and regard, precisely because God “chose what is low
and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing the things
that are.” (1 Cor. 1:28)
Paul follows a similar strategy in dealing with the
problem of eating food sacrificed to idols.
Meat was a precious commodity in an ancient city, and most people
couldn’t afford to buy it in the market.
The main time they would eat meat would be at a sacrificial festival
provided either by the city or more often by a wealthy individual who paid for
the festival and its expenses out of his own pocket, in return for the honor he
and his family would gain. The
sacrifices would be made, some of the materials would be burned for the
god—that’s “god” with a small “g”. Some
would be given to the priests or other cult officials, and then the rest would
be distributed to the people for their own feasting with their families and
friends. But participation in these
sacrificial festivals was what Jews and early Christians considered
idolatry.
What’s at stake here is that the poor Christians of
Corinth would have had to attend a sacrificial festival in order to eat meat,
and it would have been meat that had been sacrificed to a deity.
Even meat sold in a marketplace could have come from some
kind of sacrificial practice. The
officials or cultic priests who were given portions of the sacrificed animals
had the choice of making a bit of money by selling their portions to a butcher,
who would re-sell it to people. So—if
you weren’t rich enough to buy an animal and have it butchered—you could
scarcely avoid eating meat that had been part of a sacrificial ritual. If you were poor and you wanted to avoid
eating meat that had been part of ritual sacrifice, you wouldn’t be able to eat
meat at all.
So that’s some of the context
from First Corinthians that can help us to understand Second
Corinthians.
Ethnic
and cultural diversity. Economic
inequality. Difficult personalities. Conflict. Does this sound familiar?
WHAT DO WE KNOW
ABOUT THE DOCUMENT ITSELF AND WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN?
In what we know as First and Second Corinthians, we find
the most detailed record we have of the apostle Paul’s enduring relationship
with a particular church. They give us a
window into the life of one of the early church and Paul’s continuing
affectionate and sometimes troubled
relationship with its members. They show us that the early decades of the Christian
church weren’t an ideal time of perfection and harmony, but a time of conflict
among followers of Jesus, as they struggled to discern what it meant to follow
Jesus and his way.[5]
By the time Paul wrote First Corinthians from Ephesus, he
had known the believers there for more than three years. He had written them an earlier letter, presumably now lost, about how to maintain
holiness, and they had written him, asking about several issues. At that point, the Corinthians still value
his opinion, and he is still their father in the faith.
After that, some new teachers had come to Corinth, and
these outside agitators had threatened
Paul’s leadership and teaching.
Second Corinthians offers a real-life window on a strained relationship
between a church leader and the people whom he loves. Paul's relationship
with the Corinthian congregation has deteriorated. As
Carolyn Osiek wrote in her introduction to 2 Corinthians in The New Interpreter’s Bible: “the honeymoon is definitely over, and all
the problems of a long-term relationship are evident. The Corinthians have even said of Paul—and it
has gotten back to him—that his letters are strong, but his appearance is
unimpressive, and his speech is definitely a loser.” (10:10)
In various part of 2nd
Corinthians, Paul is writing in order to mend a
broken relationship with the church and to urge them, even though they are
currently hosting teachers who disparage Paul, to remain loyal to Christ, to
Paul, to the gospel Paul preached, and to the promise they have made to provide
for the church in Jerusalem.
NOT ONE SINGLE LETTER
After Paul had left
Corinth and was living and working in Ephesus (see
1 Corinthians 16:8), he exchanged a series of letters with the church at
Corinth. Most scholars agree that Second Corinthians is not
one single letter, but a combination of several letters and letter
fragments. The community in Corinth preserved these letters, and later
edited and combined them into the one
text we know as 2nd Corinthians.
There isn’t a consensus among scholars about the original
parts, but the most common divisions are:
Chapters 1-7, 8-9, and
10-13—but not in that sequence. [See hand-out]
One of the most jarring transitions is from 6:13 to 6:14,
while 7:2 picks up exactly where 6:13 leaves off. And 7:5 seems to follow immediately from
2:13.
Chapters 8 and 9 look like one or two “fund-raising”
letters to encourage the Corinthian Christians to be generous in supporting
collection for the Jerusalem Christians.
The tone of chapters 10-13 is very different from what
went just before. It sounds very defensive.
In 1 Corinthians 5:9-13, Paul is advising the Corinthians
to avoid immoral persons in the church—those who are sexually immoral or
greedy, or idolaters, revilers, drunkards or robbers, and not to eat with
them. The only section of Second
Corinthians that some scholars question was really written by Paul seems to be
related to that section of First Corinthians chapter 5, and it’s the passage
that’s advising the Corinthians “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers” in the
section that seems to be pasted in awkwardly.
If you have your Bibles opened up to 2 Corinthians, let’s
take a look at chapter 6. Paul is
exhorting the community to open their hearts to be converted. In verses 12-13, Paul writes, “There is no
restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide
your hearts also.”
If you read on, verses 14 and following, you bump up
against what looks like a seam, where
it looks like there’s been a cut-and-paste, as we hear: “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers…”
But if you jump over to 7:2, it seems to follow from
6:13: “Make room in your hearts for us;
we have wronged no one…” [Do you see it?]
Chapters 10-13 must have been written immediately after the painful
visit.
Most of chapters 1-7 may belong together, in spite of
various theories that divide them, and are probably later at least than
chapters 10-13.
When the letters and fragments are arranged in
chronological sequence, they portray Paul’s relations to the Corinthians and
show the range of good times to not so good.
There’s a lot we don’t know. We don’t know if chapters 1-7 in 2nd
Corinthians were a single letter, but we do know that their tone and content
are very different from chapters 10-13.
There’s none of the combativeness, no anger. Rather, as Marcus Borg points out, “we find
some of the most radiant and luminous language in all of Paul’s letters.”[6]
They are about the collection that Paul is taking up for
the Christ-community in Jerusalem. As in
chapters 1-7, the tone is completely different from that in 10-13.
CHAPTERS 10-13
There is no scholarly consensus about the sequence of the
letters that were combined in 2nd Corinthians, but many scholars think
that chapters 10-13 are earlier than the rest.
In these chapters, Paul defends
himself against teachers who have come to Corinth and tried to undermine him
and his message. Some of the Corinthian
Christians had been persuaded by them and became critics of Paul.
CHAPTERS 8-9
Chapters 8-9 seem to be yet another letter or possibly
two letters. They could have been
written anytime in the sequence of letters combined in 2 Corinthians. Their subject matter is the “collection for
the saints” that Paul referred to at the end of 1 Corinthians, Paul was raising
money from his largely Gentile communities for the impoverished Christian
Jewish community in Jerusalem, both as a sign of solidarity and to meet their
need for help.
CHAPTERS 1-7
The first seven chapters of 2 Corinthians may have been
written last. Though they do reflect a situation of conflict, it seems to be in the past and
more or less resolved.
CONCLUSION
The introductory flyer
for “Reconciling Paul” observes that we’re living in a world that is
experiencing a great deal of change. Encounters with peoples representing a
variety of perspectives and cultures—all are aspects of our daily lives.
To quote Dr. Hinson-Hasty: “We can’t avoid seeing the divisions forged
between nature and neighbor and also between neighbor and neighbor along lines
of race, class, gender, and nation.
These divisions impact representation in decision-making bodies, support
exploitation of the earth, exacerbate the unequal distribution of wealth, and
limit access for many to the natural resources we all need to survive and
flourish.”
So… this Bible study on
Second Corinthians-- Reconciling Paul-- is meant to guide us
to learn about the young church at Corinth and their struggles, about Second
Corinthians and that church’s struggles, as well as Paul’s theology and ideas
and his struggles to live and minister faithfully and authentically. The hope is that we will gain insights that
relate to our context, in our time.
An
essential task for us in the church today is to figure out how to be the church
in our time and place, in this time of great change. Like Paul, we need to wrestle with and
question our faith as we try to live as authentically as possible.
The
concepts of shared partnership, power in weakness, healing, reconciliation,
love, and a new apostolate all figure prominently in the author’s reading of
Paul. Dr. Hinson-Hasty says she hopes that participants engaged in the
study will find their own voices among the larger community of interpreters,
discerning together the meaning of these ancient passages for the world in
which we live today.
I’m
looking forward to reading the 2014-15 Horizons Bible Study. It is sure to challenge us all to read Paul’s
second letter to the Corinthians afresh
in light of the current issues and events.
SOME RESOURCES ON FIRST AND SECOND CORINTHIANS:
Marcus J. Borg, Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in
the Order the Books Were Written. Harper-One
Publishers, 2012
John Fitzgerald,
Introduction to Second Corinthians, in The
Harper-Collins Study Bible. Harper
Collins, 2006.
Elizabeth Hinson-Hasty,
Reconciling Paul: A Contemporary Study of 2 Corinthians. Horizons Bible Study, 2014-2015.
Dale B. Martin, New Testament History and Literature. Yale University Press, 2012.
Carolyn Osiek, Introduction to Second Corinthians, in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible. Abingdon Press, 2003.
Mary Hinkle Shore, Second
Corinthians. Enter the Bible website from Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/
[1]
Acts 18:11
[2]
Dale B. Martin, New Testament History and Literature (Yale University Press,
2012), p. 224.
[3]
Dale B. Martin, New Testament History and Literature (Yale University Press,
2012), p. 224.
[4] 1
Corinthians 11:23-26
[5]
Marcus J. Borg, Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were
Written. Harper-One Publishers,
2012, p. 102.
[6]
Borg, p. 101.
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