After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change

Trinity Journal, Spring 2003 by Schnabel, Eckhard

Bruce W. Winter. After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. xx 344 pp. $28.00

When Paul left Corinth in A.D. 51, after eighteen months of missionary work in this Roman city in Greece, problems surfaced and disputes arose regarding his teaching and regarding the implications of the gospel for the life of the individual Christian. These kept Paul occupied for several years to come, as the two extant letters to the Corinthian church in the NT prove. Scholars have recognized for a long time that the problems in the church in Corinth were not just theological in nature but were clearly tied to social and cultural issues of the Greco-Roman world in general and of Corinth in particular. There are few people better qualified to analyze and comment on the Corinthian correspondence than Bruce W. Winter, director of the Institute of Early Christianity in the Graeco-Roman world at Tyndale House in Cambridge, England: he has written about matters related to the Corinthian church for several years, consistently with thorough attention to all relevant social, cultural, political, religious, and linguistic questions. This book combines many of the earlier insights and breaks new ground concerning other questions as well.

Winter formulates as the aims of this book "to gather for the first time all relevant extant material about life in the first century in the Roman colony of Corinth from literary, non-literary, and archaeological sources" (p. x) in order to understand the developments in the Christian community of Corinth after Paul left there. The material is organized in thirteen chapters presented in two parts. Following introductory issues, particularly the cultural and social situation of Corinth in ch. 1 ("The Enigma and Cultural Setting of 1 Corinthians," pp. 1-28), Part 1 analyzes "The Influence of Secular Ethics" (pp. 31-211). Eight chapters explore Paul's culturally determined responses to situations that were themselves conditioned by cultural factors. Chapter 2 ("Secular Discipleship and Christian Competitiveness," pp. 31-43) discusses 1 Corinthians 1-4. The author demonstrates that the Christian community was influenced by secular educational traditions and customs of Corinth, in particular the elitist model promoted by the sophists, with serious negative effects upon their evaluation and validation of Christian teachers. Chapter 3 ("Criminal Law and Christian Partiality," pp. 44-57) discusses the issue of incest in 1 Corinthians 5, showing that the church seems to have replicated the secular ethics of cities like Corinth which had different standards in forensic matters for the elite and for the non-elite, as the incestuous relationship of a church member was tolerated. Chapter 4 ("Civil Law and Christian Litigiousness," pp. 58-75) investigates 1 Cor 6:1-8: the vexatious litigation of (powerful, well-born) church members reflects the contest for recognition and power among the elite that was typical of the first century. Chapter 5 ("Elitist Ethics and Christian Permissiveness," pp. 76-120) treats 1 Cor 6:12-20, 10:23, and 15:29-34 and elucidates Paul's arguments aimed at demolishing the theoretical basis for elitist aphorisms such as "[for me] everything is permitted." It was apparently on this basis that Corinthian Christians who belonged to the socially influential minority in the church seem to have rationalized sexual intercourse with prostitutes in the context of banquets on the grounds of first-century Platonic anthropology, philosophical hedonism, and social conventions. Chapter 6 ("Veiled Men and Wives and Christian Contentiousness," pp. 121-41) deals with 1 Cor 11:2-16: some men in the Corinthian church sought to draw attention to their social status by drawing the veil (i.e., their toga) over their head, while certain wives abandoned the readily definable sign of being married by removing the marriage veil when they prayed. Paul tells the men that they dishonor Christ, and he tells the women that they dishonor their Christian husbands. Chapter 7 ("'Private' Dinners and Christian Divisiveness," pp. 142-63) investigates 1 Cor 11:17-34, explaining how some Christians treated the Lord's Supper as a private dinner and did not share their food with the poor members of the church, which was particularly significant if there was indeed a grain shortage in Corinth at the time. Chapter 8 ("Religious Curses and Christian Vindictiveness," pp. 164-83) discusses the "anathema Jesus" statement in 1 Cor 12:3, which may be interpreted on the background of curse tablets found in Corinth in terms of "Jesus grants a curse." Some Christians may have continued their pagan practice of attempting to harm their enemies by invoking Jesus in a curse formula, a practice that Paul condemns. Chapter 9 ("Secular Patronage and Christian Dominance," pp. 184-211) investigates the basic social structures in which social interaction in first century groups played out, particularly the role of the private patron in private houses/families and in civic life. The divisions in the Corinthian church and part of the problematic behavior of some Corinthian Christians was caused by the patronage system. The examples of Stephanas (1 Cor 16:15-16) and of Phoebe (Rom 16:2) show what a patronage system transformed by Christian values looks like-two apparently wealthy Christians in Corinth and in Cenchraea were now "serving people without respect for their persona and their usefulness for any personal political aspirations typical of patronage" (p. 203).