THE LETTERS TO CORINTH
The first letter to the people of Corinth was written about the same time as the preceding letter--again, only thirty-five years or so after Jesus died.
In the beginning of this letter, we find something interesting for our purposes:
"But please, brothers and sisters, in the name of our Master Prince Jesus, come to a consensus in what you say, and do not have factions; agree together in what you think and what you feel is true. I am saying this, my brothers and sisters, because I have a report from Chloe's family that you keep arguing with each other; that is, that one of you will say he is Paul's man, and another that he is Apollos', and someone else that he is Cephas', and another that he is the Prince's.
"Is the Prince in pieces? Was Paul hanged on a cross for you, or were you bathed in Paul's name?"
What this indicates rather forcibly is that there were not, at least where Paul was, definite "communities" of people only under the influence of one preacher. The early Emissaries were going around the world telling people the Good News, and they evidently didn't stake out definite territory that was "theirs," which no one else was to invade (though Paul seems to wish this was the case, in the second letter to Corinth, written a year or so after this one--even though he himself doesn't follow the rule, as can be seen from the letters to Rome and Colossae). And, of course, the Christians themselves seemed to be hungry to hear any information they could get from anyone who came by.
So the likelihood is small that there was a "Matthean community" that was responsible for Matthew's Report and a different "Lucan community" that was responsible for what we have as Luke's Report, and so on, as if these had only minimal contact with each other. Luke went around with Paul, for one thing. In all probability, there would be a main preacher responsible for most of the conversions in a given community, but others were welcome to embellish the original teaching; though there seems to have been an attempt to have a basic consensus on what was supposed to have been taught. This is attested, among other things, by how widespread Paul's letters were in early Christian communities, in spite of the fact that they were written to definite cities.
Again Paul repeats what his preaching was, and indicates the kind of reception he faced:
"And precisely because the Judeans want proof of the Prince's authenticity and the Greeks are looking for scientific evidence, our proclamation deals with the Prince hanging on a cross, which is shocking to the Judeans and ridiculous to the Greeks; but to those of you, Judeans or Greeks, who have been called, the Prince is the power of God and God's wisdom. . . .
"And when I came to you, brothers and sisters, I didn't come with fancy language or sophisticated reasoning to deliver the message to you about God's secret. I decided that the only thing I was to know while I was with you was Prince Jesus--and Prince Jesus hanging on a cross. And I was feeble and scared and shaking in my bones while I was in front of you; and what I said and the proclamation I was delivering had nothing intellectually persuasive about it; but it was a demonstration of Spirit and power--and so your belief rested on God's power and not human wisdom.
"Yet what we say is in fact wisdom to those who have reached the goal; but it is a wisdom that is not the wisdom of these times, or the wisdom of the doomed leaders of these times; what we say is the wisdom God kept as a secret. . . .
"A man who is living a natural life will not accept God's spirit; it is stupidity to him, and he can't recognize it, because God's spirit reasons spiritually. But a spiritual person can reason in both ways, and can't be out-reasoned by anyone."
So the only really important thing about Christianity was, at this early point in its history--at least in Paul's mind--Prince Jesus hanging on a cross, "which is shocking to the Judeans and ridiculous to the Greeks." And it has "nothing intellectually persuasive about it," though it is a demonstration of God's power. Paul, in spite of the impression we have of him from his letters, was apparently not a very good speaker, and he knew it, as indicated from this passage. There is a passage from the second letter to Corinth that confirms this:
"'Ah, yes, his letters,' you say. 'They're so stern and forceful; but when he's here with us in the flesh, he's a weakling, and the way he talks is a disgrace.' The people who are saying this had better consider that we will be in practice when we get there the kind of people we say we are when we send letters to you."
So Paul was perfectly aware of what he was up against, and yet felt constrained to make the core of his teaching the very thing that made him look most ridiculous-- evidently because he believed that it was true. Later in this first letter, he sums up what the essence of Christianity is.
I should point out that Paul had a streak of what might be called humble conceit about him, as can be seen from the end of the passage that follows. For our purposes, it indicates that he was not the kind of person who would go out of his way to look foolish unless he felt there was nothing he could do about it.
"Now then, brothers and sisters, let me review the report of the good news I delivered to you, that you accepted, that is the basis of your lives, and that is the source of your rescue--provided you preserve it as I delivered it to you; because if you don't, then your belief is pointless.
"What I reported to you is what I had reported to me: that the Prince died because of our sins, as Scripture predicted; that he was buried, that he came back to life on the third day after his death, also as predicted by Scripture, and that he was seen by Cephas and afterwards by the Twelve. Later, he was seen by more than five hundred brothers at the same time, a great many of whom are still alive, though some have died; and after that he was seen by James, and then by all the Prince's emissaries--and last of all, as if I had been born at the wrong time, he was seen by me.
I" am the lowest ranking emissary; I don't even deserve to be called an emissary from the Prince, because I tried to destroy God's community. I am what I am by God's free gift--and his gift to me has not been wasted; I have worked harder than everyone else. But not even this is my doing; it is God's gift with me that did it.
"Anyway, what difference is it what I did or they did? This is what our proclamation says, and this is what you believed."
That is, the whole sum and substance of the Good News is that Jesus died as Scripture predicted and came back to life; and this is supposed to be confirmed because people who were there actually saw it happen; and (Paul says) if you don't believe me, go ask them, since I saw him at the wrong time, in a sense.
Again there is not the slightest hint that the sayings of the wise Jesus are of any real importance. Paul has still not given any of the strange commands that you find in the Reports, like turning the other cheek. He did allude in this letter to letting yourself be cheated by others; but it was in a context where he did not say that this was a command from Jesus, but only as a contrast to the practice of some Corinthians of cheating other members of the community, so that those other members felt constrained to sue them in pagan courts.
But the passage that immediately follows this is extremely revealing:
"But if the proclamation says that the Prince came back from being dead, how is it that some of you claim that corpses don't come back to life? If corpses don't come back to life, then the Prince didn't come back to life; and if the Prince didn't come back to life, then the proclamation is meaningless and what you believe makes no sense; and we turn out to be perjurers before God, because we have given testimony sworn before God that he brought the Prince back to life, which he didn't do if there is no bringing dead people to life again. If a dead body can't come back to life, then the Prince didn't come back to life; and if the Prince didn't come back to life, your belief is useless; you still have your sins. Not to mention that those who have fallen asleep in the Prince no longer exist. If we are people who have hope in the Prince only in this life, we are the sorriest human beings there are.
"But the fact is that the Prince did come back to life, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."
Evidently there were some members of the community in Corinth who could have taken lessons from our contemporary Theologians. They were clearly saying, "But you must understand this business of 'coming back to life' properly! It doesn't mean that his corpse actually got up and started walking around; corpses don't really come back to life. This is just a symbolic way to represent the 'newness of life' we have because of Jesus' generous sacrificial act for us; and how his life is renewed in us, and so he lives again beyond his grave as we believe that he gave his life for us." Paul says to this, "Poppycock! When I say, 'came back to life,' I mean that his corpse literally got up and walked around. That's what I and all the other emissaries and witnesses mean; and we swear that it's a fact. And if it's not a fact, but is just something symbolic, then the whole of our religion is a simple waste of time."
Now if this passage were one isolated instance in Paul's writings, you could argue that this literalist sense (which on the face of it is fantastic) couldn't be what he intended. But it is simply a clarification of the whole tenor of what we have already seen, just in case someone might try to take the far-fetched reading of the earlier texts that Paul didn't literally mean what he said.
What this and the preceding letter reveal is that right from the beginning there were three aberrations of Christianity: First, there was an attempt to interpret Christianity as a new kind of "mystery religion" along pagan lines--a tendency which developed into Gnosticism in the next century. Secondly, there was the attempt by the Jews to make Christianity a new kind of sect of Judaism, failing to recognize the radical break with the Old Treaty because of the crucifixion and Resurrection. And thirdly, there was the attempt of the sophisticates to view Christianity as a symbolic representation of a philosophical world-view.
All through all his letters, Paul rails against all three misinterpretations; he is constantly exhorting the communities--and preachers like Timothy--to stop "speculating" and trying to turn Christianity into some kind of "science"; he is constantly restating his credentials as someone who knows Judaic teaching; and he keeps telling people that Jesus is greater than all the powers of the universe.
The fact that there were people going around even at this early stage decrying Paul and claiming that one or another of these aberrations was "true Christianity" (as the second letter to Corinth shows, they almost succeeded there) clearly indicates that there was a pressing need for there to be a consistent, coherent case to be built up for Jesus as he was historically known to be, indicating that he was indeed the Son of God, that he died and came back to life, that this was predicted by the Jewish Scriptures, and that it meant rescue from our sins.
Let us table this for a moment, and note a couple of other things in the first letter to Corinth. Paul expands (in Chapter 12) on the notion that he introduced in the letter to Galatia that our belief (here, the Spirit) makes us cells in Jesus' body. In this letter, the identification is much more literal:
"It is the same as in a body. The body is one thing, but it has many organs; and even though there is a multiplicity of organs, they are all only one body; and this is how it is with the Prince. When we were bathed in one spirit, we all were bathed into a single body, whether we are Judeans or Greeks, or slaves or free; we have all drunk the same spirit.
"But the body is not one organ; it is many of them. And if a foot were to say, 'I am not a hand, and so I don't belong to the body,' that wouldn't make it not belong to the body; and if an ear were to say that because it wasn't an eye, it didn't belong to the body, that wouldn't make it not belong to the body. If the whole body were its eye, how would it hear? If the whole thing were an ear, how would it smell? No; the fact is that God has put the organs, each of which is a unit, into the body in the way he saw fit. If all of them were one organ, where would the body be? So there are many organs, but only one body....
"And you are the Prince's body; you are parts that came from a part of it. And God has put these parts together in the community: first the Prince's emissaries, second the prophets, third the teachers, next wonder-workers, then those with the gift of healing, helpers, guides, and speakers of different languages."
There is, then, a literal identification with Jesus. This is significant for my thesis, which, if you recall, is that because of the rejection that led to the crucifixion, we must work out our happiness through suffering by joining in the suffering of Jesus. What Paul is saying here is that the New Treaty has joined us literally into a new body Jesus has, because we share his life. He is not now, as he presumably would have been, our King, but in a sense our very self--or perhaps better, we are his self, somehow.
Does this imply that we relive his crucifixion in our own lives? It isn't indicated in this letter.
The second letter to Corinth seems to me obviously to be two letters, the first of which is from Chapter 10 on, which begins with "Autos de ego Paulos paraklo humas . . ." "I, Paul, appeal to you . . ." and continues with a long justification of his conduct which--in the first part of the letter as we have it--he says he is not going to start doing again; and in that first part he also refers to a letter in which he did just that, rejoicing at how successful it was. Scholars have made much of the incoherence of this letter; but it seems to me to make perfect sense if you imagine a salutation before Chapter 10, read that until the end, and then read the letter from the beginning to the end of Chapter 9, and add a closing there. It would be perfectly understandable for the two letters to get joined together this way if the letter that was at the beginning was the one that originally got circulated because Paul didn't want the other one to be read outside of Corinth on the grounds that (1) it was between Paul and Corinth alone, (2) it would be embarrassing to the people of Corinth, and (3) there was so much bragging in it. People, however, probably demanded to see it because the circulated letter didn't make sense without it--at which point, it was appended to the "second" letter.
The main thrust of this letter (or rather, both of them) is to show that what Paul has been preaching is the simple truth as he learned it, and that
"Of course, we have never 'interpreted' God's word to fit our own ideas; we have said what we said in the Prince out of sincere hearts, as if it came from God and was said in God's presence. "
But he says something very interesting for our purposes in Chapter 5:
"So we don't pay any attention from now on to anyone in material terms. And if we once even thought of the Prince as a political prince, we don't think of him that way any longer. And so if someone is in the Prince, he is a new creation; what is old has vanished, and suddenly has become something new.
"And all this comes from God, who is transforming us to himself through the Prince, and giving us the service of transforming others, in this sense: because God was the one who transformed the world to himself in the Prince, and no longer keeps records against people of the rotten things they do, he has put in us the words that do the transforming.
"What this means is that we act as official representatives of the Prince, who is, so to speak, God talking to you through us; and we beg you, in the Prince's name, be transformed to God. He made over into sin the one who knew no sin, so that we could become God's virtue in him."
The force of this is masked by the usual English translation, which says that God is "reconciling" us to himself. "Reconciling" in English implies that friends have had a falling out and become friends again. But the Greek word means an alteration, and an alteration on the part of one party only. Further, there is no "again" notion in the Greek verb at all, as there is in the "re-" of the English. As far as the Greek is concerned, we have never been previously in anything like the state this verb implies. Hence, what it says is that we are changed or altered from our condition heauto to or for himself, (the dative), and then to theo to or for God.
We have an indication here that what Paul is thinking is that Jesus is no longer to be looked at as a King, but as someone who has transformed the world. We are a "new creation" in a much more literal sense than was thought. God is, by giving us the very life of the Prince, transforming us into YHWH through the identification we saw earlier with him; and his emissaries perform the act by which he effects the transformation.
Up to this point, Paul has called Jesus the Son of God, but not God himself. He doesn't spell out what this transformation means as yet, but there is a hint that he is toying with the idea of our divinization because of our identification with Jesus.
The letter to Rome tells us another couple of things. It is a kind of summary of what Paul has written so far: that we are the true descendants of Abraham, that this comes because of our belief, and therefore the Law does not apply to us any more. But (as he said to the people of Corinth) this does not mean that we can do what the Law used to forbid, but now the motivation is not because it is forbidden but because a person doesn't act against himself.
In Chapter 6, we find this:
"And what should we conclude from this? That we should stay sinners, so that the gift can be complete? Of course not. How can those of us who died to sin still live in it? Don't you realize that those of us who were bathed into Jesus the Prince were bathed into his death? We were buried with him by the bath into death we took, so that in the same way that the Prince came back to life by the glory of the Father, we too are to base our conduct on the newness of our lives.
"That is, if we have become of the same nature as the Prince by a death like his, we will also be the same in a return to life like his. And we know this much, that the old human being we used to be has been crucified with him, so that the sinful body can disappear and not any longer be a slave to sin--since a person who dies is released from sinning.
"So if we died with the Prince, we believe that we will live with him, because we know that now that the Prince has come back to life, he will not die any more; death no longer has any mastery over him. The one who died to sin, died only once; and the one who is alive, lives for God. And in the same way, you are to consider yourselves dead to sin and living for God in Jesus the Prince."
So the bath of Baptism bathes us "into his death," and because of this we will come back to life with Jesus. The identification, then, with Jesus includes the identification with the crucifixion and through the crucifixion the Resurrection--which is the thesis of this study. It is because of the crucifixion that this identification occurs, and because of the identification that we win through to eternal life by going through the Master's death.
But there is something else very significant for the thesis included in the letter to Rome:
"And did you know that there is a longing in creation for the revelation of God's sons to occur? What happened is that creation got trapped into pointlessness, not by anything it did, but because of the one who made it that way; but it had the hope that creation itself would be free from slavery to decay and would find the freedom of the glory of God's children.
"That is, we know that every creature has been in pain and anguish along with every other one up to now; and not only that, but we too, even though we have the firstfruits of the spirit, are having pain until we are adopted as sons and our whole body is set free."
So this pain and anticipation of future glory is not only true of human beings; it is something that is a characteristic of every creature. This is exactly consistent with the thesis of this study, that evolution, since it was caused by the eternal God, took into account the two rejections of him by the human race, and must, like us, work out its final fulfillment through pain and suffering.
Next