Ethics

A Report of Immorality (1 Corinthians 5:1-5)

Paul has a kind of zero-tolerance policy for divisions in the church, the issue covered in the first four chapters 1 Corinthians. In chapters 5-6 he deals with a series of related issues which cannot be tolerated. Sexual immorality may have been part of civic banquets at temples, gluttony and drunkenness lead to lawsuits harsh words, etc.

The main problem, however is the same as the divisions within the church. The Corinthians are still thinking like pagan Romans, not like Christians. Garland points out the connection between arrogance at the end of chapter 4 and the “puffed up” in 5:2. Paul wonders how the church can consider itself as spiritual if they tolerate this kind of sin in their congregation.

In 1 Corinthians 5, Paul affirms a similar zero-tolerance policy on immorality in the church. For Paul, there is no reason for a person who is openly committing immorality to continue to fellowship with the believers in Corinth. More than this, the church continues to boast about their own spirituality even though the immoral man is a part of their church.

This case of immorality in the church is a very serious: Paul invokes the authority of Jesus Christ (both the name and power) as well as his own authority (twice), and he describes the sin as like leaven, growing throughout the entire loaf. The danger is so great, Paul commands the Corinthians six times in this one chapter to expel the sinful man from their church!

ShamedThe sin celebrated by the Corinthian church was shocking (5: 1-2). This behavior is a sexual sin and is a punishable offense by Roman law. But as Bruce Winter points out Roman laws were not administered with impartiality. Those who were rich and powerful were able to avoid penalty. This is an on-going affair that is known to both the church and the community of Corinth. It does not appear from the grammar that the father is dead, nor that the father or the step-mother are Christians. Paul’s concern is only with the young man, who is presumably a Christian.

The Romans would have ignored at an older woman having an extra-marital affair with a younger man. Despite it being against the law, in some circles it was expected and a husband pressed charges against his wife would be considered strange. But a relationship with one’s stepmother was illegal in both Roman law and Judaism (Lev 18:7-8, 20:11; Deut 22:30). In the Mishnah, there is a list several categories of sexual offense that merit stoning: He who has sexual relations with (1) his mother, (2) with the wife of his father, (3) with his daughter-in-law, (4) with a male, and (5) with a cow; and the woman who brings an ox on top of herself.

The Institutes of Gaius date to the mid second century, about 100 years after Paul writes. In 1.63 Gaius states “Moreover, I cannot marry my former mother-in-law or daughter-in-law, or my step-daughter or step-mother. We make use of the word ‘former,’ because if the marriage by which affinity of this kind was established is still in existence, there is another reason why I cannot marry her, for a woman cannot marry two men, nor can a man have two wives.” The particular combination of things in this situation was an adultery and incest, there would likely have been no mercy under the law, both the man and woman would have faced exiled and forfeit of all property.

Paul’s zero-tolerance policy for immorality is an important principle for modern church discipline, although in modern American context most people who are caught in a sin like this will simply move on to another church before it comes to the point of expulsion. Paul’s concern is the on-going health of the church, a sin like this will have a grave effect on the spiritual life of a congregation. There is simply no room for toleration in this case!

 

Love Your Neighbor (Galatians 5:14)

Paul alludes to Leviticus 19:18: the Law is fulfilled in one commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal 5:14). This verse is the most quoted verse from the Pentateuch in the New Testament, despite the fact it is almost never referred to in first century Jewish texts. Perhaps this is because Jesus himself stressed love of neighbor as a fulfillment of the law.

There was a lively debate in the first century on how to sum up the Law. When a teacher of the Law asks Jesus what the greatest command is, he responds “to love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:34-40). Jesus says the Law and prophets “hang” on these two commandments.

Love Your NeighborHowever, defining just who was included as a neighbor was also a hotly debated topic. Prior to the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37), Jesus is asked by an expert in the Law to define “neighbor.” The man likely understood the word “neighbor” to refer to his fellow Jews, since that is what neighbor means in Leviticus. But Jesus expands “neighbor” to include anyone who is in need.

It is possible Paul has fellow-Christians in mind here, given the context of factions within the church (5:15, 26), but he will expand the doing of good in 6:10 to everyone, but especially the “household of faith.” Paul’s point is not, “if you want to keep the Law, love your neighbor.” He has said repeatedly that the age of the Law is done and over with and the one who is in Christ is free from the Mosaic Law.

After arguing that Gentiles do not have to keep the Law, it is ironic Paul now says when they love their neighbors they “fulfill the Law.” It is as if Paul is saying, “If you really want to keep the Law, love your neighbor.” Like a prophet from the Old Testament, Paul tells his readers their observance of rituals do not mean anything if they do not do the heart of the Law, namely, love of God and love of neighbors. If one is loving one’s neighbor, then they are already doing the “spirit of the Law.” By walking by the Holy Spirit, the believer is already fulfilling the whole law.

The reason the Galatian believers are to submit to the Law of Love in Christ is that their current behavior is going to destroy the church. They are biting and devouring one another (5:15). Paul describes the factions in the Galatian churches as wild animals. They are like “mad beasts fighting each other so that they went up killing each other” (Betz 277). Wild animals are commonly used as metaphors for bad behavior in the Greco-Roman world, so this is a metaphor the Galatians would have immediately understood.

There is a danger in keeping the Law, but Paul says here there is also danger in factionalism. The body of Christ functions best when there is unity in local churches (Phil 2:1-4). The problem Paul must address is therefore “how do I serve my brother and sister in love?”

How does Paul describe the life of service to one’s neighbor in Galatians? What does this “look like” in a contemporary setting?

James and Paul

The relationship of James and Paul has generated a great deal of literature since Martin Luther made his famous declaration that the letter of James as an “epistle of straw.” Luther’s objection to James was his belief that Paul’s doctrine of “justification by faith” was in opposition to the “dead legalism” of the Pharisees. For Luther, James represents Judaism, Paul “real Christianity.” As is well-known in the post-New Perspective world, Luther read Paul in the light of his own struggle against the Catholic theology and to a large extent understood the legalists and Pharisees as Proto-Pelagians, and Paul was a good Protestant against that legalism.

james-and-paulThere are a number of problems with this, not the least of which is that Luther misunderstood the Judaism of the first century as a “works for salvation” religion. It is not that Luther was misguided, but the study of the Second Temple period only developed in the second half of the twentieth century. The discovery of the DSS and the collection of Second Temple period documents into convenient collections made access to this vast literature possible for New Testament scholars.

Luther’s view was strengthened by protestant liberal readings of Paul in the nineteenth century. F. C. Bauer understood the early church as a division between a Pauline (Gentile) Christianity and Peterine (Jewish) Christianity. Bauer only accepted Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, and Galatians as authentically Pauline, skewing Paul’s theology and over-emphasizing the problem of Gentile salvation. He also dismissed Acts as an accurate source for history, considering it to be written quite late, yet accepting the Pseudo-Clementines as having considerable value. This served to make the divide between Paul and James even greater, since the Pseudo-Clementines record a violent disagreement between the two men which is not recorded in Acts. For Bauer, James is a late pseudonymous letter attempting to find common ground between Paul Gentile Christianity and Peter’s Jewish wing of the church. It is almost axiomatic that Bauer’s views were extreme and are almost universally rejected in modern New Testament studies.

“Loosening the Pauline Connection.” Perhaps Luke Timothy Johnson is correct in his Anchor Bible Commentary on James, where he recommends scholars “loosen the Pauline connection.”  He points out that only 12 of the 108 verse in James have anything to do with Paul. By over exaggerating the importance of those verses, both James and Paul are distorted.

James and Paul Making Up

The reason for this is the natural attraction of simplicity – two theologies in dialogue are much easier to integrate into a systematic theology than the broader, wide ranging early church and the many varieties of Second Temple Judaism. Christian theology has developed almost entirely as a result of the study of Paul’s writings. Johnson argues that we ought to therefore take the Pauline debate out of our discussion of James and let James stand on his own as a representative of Jewish Christianity which may (or may not) be in dialogue with Paul. “What is it that James says?” should be the question.

Johnson also argues that “conflict models” need to be rejected. This begins by recognizing that the legendary elements which are found in the Pseudo-Clemetines are in fact legendary and have no basis in fact. Johnson also advocates a more realistic assessment of the book of Acts, regarding it as generally historical in most details.

Once these two basic decisions are made, then Galatians, Acts and James are not to be seen in great conflict with one another, but generally in agreement. The Jerusalem church (as represented by James) agrees with Paul’s theology of “no law for the gentile.” There is no reason to assume a violent conflict between the two. Diversity does not require conflict – although this too needs to be tempered since there is eventually a degree to which diversity can no longer be tolerated. Within the New Testament, no writer goes beyond what is required to be faithful.

Johnson is correct that we must avoid “anachronistic readings” of James and Paul based on later theological structures. Keep Calvinism out of the discussion and present James, Paul and the Pharisees along a continuum of Second Temple period Judaism!

Proper Treatment of the Poor in James

A central aspect of the ethical teaching in the book of James is proper treatment of the poor. James 1:27 commands the care of widows and orphans, in 5:15 he commands the elders to care for the sick in their churches. James warns his readers that the wealthy ought not treat the poor with contempt or insist on special privileges (2:1-9). In fact, James 5:1-6 is a stunning condemnation of the wealthy who store up treasure on earth and abuse those who work for them.

Begging in ChurchJames’ concern for the poor accords well with the situation in Judea just prior to the Jewish revolt, John Painter points put that in the years leading up to the revolt there were increasing tensions between the wealthy Aristocratic Priests and the poor priests and Levites who served in the Temple (Just James, 250). Since the aristocratic priests were likely Sadducean, few (if any) from this level of society joined the Jesus movement. The poor Pharisees, however, may have been attracted to Jesus as a messiah, teacher of the law, and had no problem with the idea of resurrection.

This concern also resonates with the book of Acts and the letters of Paul. Paul’s concern for the “poor saints in Jerusalem” is well known, from the earliest mention of Paul in Acts he is delivering a gift to Jerusalem because of a famine. In the letters of Paul there are several references to the collection from the Gentile churches to help support the Jerusalem church. There were some wealthy members of the Jerusalem church, such as Barnabas, who sold property to help the community survive. But the wealthy did not make up a large percentage of the Jerusalem church and potentially exhausted their wealth supporting the community.

This may mean that the church in Jerusalem was living in a kind of self-imposed poverty, perhaps because they were modeling their lives after Jesus. Just as Jesus had no home or possessions to speak of, the members of the Jerusalem church shared their possessions and lived in anticipation of the return of their Lord. If this is the case, they may have been despised by the aristocracy, who understood wealth as a sign of God’s blessing. This somewhat perverse misunderstanding of the Blessings of the Law would have led to the assumption that the ones living in poverty were under God’s curse.

The letter of James therefore gives us a bit of insight into the social conditions of the Jerusalem church in the middle of the first century. Just as care for the widow and poor is typical of the prophetic message of Hosea or Amos, James takes up the cause of these undefended members of the community.  Karen Jobes points out that James 5:1-6 is a “prophetic denouncement” of the rich, people who accumulate wealth by abusing the poor (Letters to the Church, 170).   She sees James’ attack on the rich as an attack on an “evil arrogance which is incompatible with spiritual maturity.”

To what extent is the danger about which James is concerned a problem in modern churches?  Is there favoritism in the church? Is there an “evil arrogance” which is evidence of our spiritual immaturity?  I think that perhaps there is….

Bibliography: John Painter, Just James. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999; Karen Jobes, Letters to the Church.  Grand Rapids, Mich. Zondervan, 2011.

Philippians and the Unity of the Body of Christ

Paul’s letter to Philippi is often mined for theological statements on Christology, but that was not the main purpose of the letter.  Certainly Phil 2:5-11 is perhaps one of the most foundational statements on the nature of Christ, but the reason Paul included the words of this hymn in his letter is to serve his point that the followers of Christ ought to be unified.

Early in the letter Paul praises the church at Philippi for being his “partners” in the preaching of the Gospel (1:5).  This word has certainly been over-used in corporate America and (sadly) as a ministry description.  I hear ministry leaders say “we are partnering with another ministry” as a way of describing the joining of material resources to get some particular job done.  The Greek κοινωνία (koinonia) does have the sense of pooling resources, but that is not the sense in Philippians.  Notice that in Phil 2:1 the church has “fellowship with the Spirit.”  This is not an even-handed sharing of resources, the church is completely dependent on the power of the Holy Spirit.

Paul’s point is that within the Body of Christ, there must be some basic unity.  In 2:1 he says that all believers ought to “think the same thing” or “be of one mind.”  This is indeed the goal of much of the ethical teaching which follows and the point his the example of Christ’s humility in 2:5-11. The humble service of Christ, who set aside the very nature of God and took on the nature of human flesh, is an example to the members of the church of how they ought to serve one another.

That unity, however, obviously does have some boundaries since Paul does identify some people (perhaps) within the church who are “outside” what it means to be a Christian.  These “dogs” and “evildoers” pervert the Gospel and therefore are condemned as a destructive influence.  We can comb through all of Paul’s letters and find many examples of “false teachers” which are condemned as being outside of the “unity” of the Body of Christ.  The one who perverts the gospel no longer is”in fellowship” or “in partnership” with the Church.

I have often had discussions with students about the potential Unity of the modern church.  Usually this comes down to doctrinal statements and denominations.  The modern (Protestant) church has doctrinal statements in order to draw lines around their group and define who is “in fellowship” and who is not.  Some doctrinal statements are brief, such as the Evangelical Theological Society (basically Inerrancy of Scripture and Trinity).  Others are rather detailed historic Confessions with detailed arguments supporting theological statements.  Maybe a group uses the Nicene Creed plus their own “special” emphases.

I have the sense that there are two “minds” of the modern college student.  One group wants as “light” a doctrinal statement as possible in order to draw people to Jesus.  The model is Jesus, who turned no one away but ate and drank with all sorts of sinners.  In fact, I have the sense that some people would spend more time defining how worship ought to happen and describing the social interactions within a church than defining doctrine.  In this model, just about everyone can be in fellowship with the church.

On the other hand, there seems to be a solid movement among the twenty-somethings to “return to the Reformation” and define doctrine rather precisely.  Consequently I see occasional stereo-typical angry young Calvinists with copies of John Piper’s latest book declaring people to be heretics for not being Calvinist enough.

Obviously I am painting this picture as two extremes, most people fall in between.  Paul did push for unity, but Paul also called people “dogs and evildoers” and urged his churches to put people out if they did not “have the same mind.”  How can we have unity in the church and guard doctrine and practice?