Luise Schottroff - 1 Corinthians

1:26God had called ( klēsis ) the people in Corinth, God had elected them (1:27, 28). They should look at what God has done, at God’s call and election. In keeping with scriptural usage, »call« and »election« refer to the same act of God (see, for example, Isa 41:9). God’s call sets in motion a process of transformation and gives the called a mission. They are called as Paul himself is called (1:1). In the history of the interpretation of 1:26 the attempt has often been made to interpret the word klēsis statically, so that it locks the congregation member into her or his social status. Anyone poor and uneducated still keeps on being poor and uneducated. 110This interpretation is engendered by the interpretation of the same word in 7:20. In 7:20 the issue is seen to be about being locked into a given social status, which is unchanged when one becomes a member of the body of Christ (New Revised Standard Version e.g. translates, »Let each of you remain in the condition in which you were called«). This translation of 7:20, like the corresponding interpretation in 1:26, serves a political interest in a social status-quo-theology and agrees neither with biblical nor Pauline thinking (see on 7:17–24).

Paul uses three concepts to sketch the congregation’s social compositionin 1:26: not many wise, powerful or privileged by birth. These and similar concepts (see 1:27–28) and their opposites are used in the Bible and elsewhere in various sequences to describe social distinctions. 111For these »opposites« Paul uses uneducated ( mōra ), weak, disadvantaged by birth, despised, »things that are not« (1:27–28).

The terms are imprecise and interchangeable. Here in 1:26–31 the economic angle (rich—poor) is not explicitly mentioned and yet it is implicitly present. It is possible that with these sequences of opposites Paul intends to indicate the contrast between the small upper class, the city’s leaders, for example, and most of the population. The majority lived in poverty, hardly had access to education and medical care and, on top of that, was despised by the ruling elite. 112These imprecise terms of Paul’s can be verified socio-historically. There is no middle class. It is difficult to judge whether a few of the Corinthian elite belonged to the messianic congregation. 113

The living conditions of most of the population in the cities of the Roman Empire are unhealthy and hard. The dwellings of the poor in apartment complexes have no kitchens and no sewage systems, many have no windows. The stinking filth in the streets and the violence of everyday life made life dangerous. Children grew up in the midst of the adults living under such conditions. Only half the newborns reached the age of 10. 114In 1 Corinthians these living conditions are presupposed and can be recognized directly or indirectly. 115

For the interpretation of this text, however, how many people of affluence and education—or relative affluence—belong to the congregation is less decisive than which roles were assigned to them within the congregation. In western exegesis in the 20 thcentury, in the interplay with the ideology of the cold war against the socialist East, a »new consensus« has emerged that suspects that being organized in an egalitarian way leads to a communism prone to violence. According to this »new consensus,« the assessment was championed that in the congregation the poor and the rich lived together. 116In this context the rich and educated are given the role of leading the congregation. In this manner the interpretive pattern »love patriarchalism« arose. It asserts that Christianity was able to survive because it made it possible for rich and poor, men and women to carry on a harmonious and hierarchical life together. Those who are on top in the social hierarchy turn in love to those who in obedience subject themselves to them. 117Since then, the egalitarian structure of early Christian congregations has come into view more strongly. 118

1:27–28In the following two verses Paul sketches the change that living together in the congregation signifies for the social difference between those who are above and below. The humbled are chosen by God, and the wise, strong and esteemed are deprived of their power. What do the verbs mean that Paul uses for this disempowering, kataischynein /shame and katargein /reduce to nothing? Both verbs are related to God’s eschatological judgment (see on 1:7 and the basic information on concepts of time and eschatology), which has not yet occurred but already is changing the present situation. It disillusions and deprives of power the people of privilege in society—including the few who perhaps belong to the congregation. Thereby, a way of deliverance from unjust structures opens up even for them. Paul is standing here in the tradition of the biblical gospel for the poor, advocated, for example, by many prophetic texts and Psalms. His words contain references to 1 Sam 2:1–10 (LXX). In 1 Sam 2:10 LXX the text of Jer 9:22–23 [Eng. Bible, 9:23–24] relates to the Song of Hannah, which sings of the strong losing their power and the exaltation of the lowly. This shows that Paul is echoing Scripture even when he does not explicitly refer to it (that doesn’t happen until 1:31) or quote it. 1 Cor 1:26–31 can be understood as a reformulation of the Song of Hannah applied to the situation in Corinth or in the Roman Empire in Paul’s time.

In 1:28 we are reminded of the creation out of nothing(cf. Rom 4:17): God has chosen the things that are not (1 Cor 1:28); God has called them into existence (Rom 4:17). God makes the dead live and creates life out of nothing. Paul thinks about God’s creative power not only in terms of the creation of life in the past but just as much in the present as well. What happened in Corinth as God connected the city’s humiliated ones to the body of Christ is creation out of nothing, resurrection of the dead, exaltation of the humiliated. This should not detract from God’s past and future activity, but what is happening now should be put into the full light of God’s gracious care. When the uneducated and powerless men and women of the community, united with the Messiah, construct their lives anew, creation out of nothing is occurring, the justification of those entangled in injustice (Rom 4:5). When interpreted in this way, justification is no longer restricted to the individual’s relationship with God but is seen as God’s action for peoples’ lives as part of their world and society. God’s action includes the powerful. They also are put in a new place. 119

In 1:28 Paul also mentions an additional aspect of the social situation of the lowly: they are despised. Here he is clearly referring to the despisingof people who have to earn their daily bread by manual laborby those who boast about their education and opulence. Cicero writes: »[A]ll mechanics are engaged in vulgar trades; for no workshop can have anything liberal about it. Least respectable of all are those trades which cater for sensual pleasures: ›Fishmongers, butchers, cooks, and poulterers, and fishermen,‹ …« 120

In »The Dream or Lucian’s Career,« Lucian tells of two women who appeared to him: »One was like a workman, masculine, with unkempt hair, hands full of callous places, clothing tucked up, and a heavy layer of marble-dust upon her …« 121She is a stonemason, a trade that was common in Corinth. 122A second woman appeared to Lucian in the dream, education ( paideia ). She evaluates the stonemason and advises him not to become one:

You will be nothing but a worker who struggles physically and has to put all the hopes of his livelihood on it, inconspicuous himself, with low and common ( agennē ) earnings, with a low disposition, an inferior person in public […] nothing more than a worker and one of the great crowd who always bows his head before the upright mighty man, shakes before the good speaker, lives like a rabbit and is the prey of the mighty. 123