LECTIONARY NOTE

Unlike the Epistle to the Romans, 1 Corinthians does not aim to set out Paul's understanding of Christian fundamentals. On the contrary, much of the letter deals with a series off issues, such as the nature and timing of the resurrection of believers, whether or not it is permissible to eat meat that had previously been sacrificed in pagan worship, how to behave in matters of sex and marriage, and so on. Together with the first major discussion, about the nature of true wisdom, it is clear that that these issues arose out of disagreements within the Corinthian church and are related to previous correspondence between Paul and the Christians there (e.g. in 1 Corinthians 5.9. Paul refers to a previous letter of his, and in 1. Corinthians 7.1. he refers to a letter from them to him). We are thus somewhere in the middle of an ongoing discussion and presumably ongoing disagreements.

In today's passage, however, the divisions within the church appear to be somewhat different, to do with which apostle or church leader to whom different groups feel they owe allegiance. So, v.12: ‘Each one of you says

“I belong to Paul” , or “I belong to Apollos”, or “I belong to Cephas” or “ I belong to Christ”.’

Paul then (v.13.) goes on ‘Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?………’

Whether, if at all, these leader-loyalty groups have much to do with the issued discussed in the rest of the letter, we cannot be sure.

Apollos was an eloquent preacher from Alexandria and quite an important figure in the Acts of the Apostles; by the time of this letter, Paul does not appear to find his view of things inadequate (see 16.12) and there is no reason to suppose they differed on important matters. Paul, of course, we know a great deal more about, though how the Paul-supporters differed from others, we can only guess. ‘Cephas’ is the Aramaic equivalent of ‘Peter’, and the fact that Paul refers to him in a letter to presumably largely Gentile Christians, may hint that the Cephas-group were distinctly Jewish-Christian.

The last apparent group, those who say “I belong to Christ”, are a real puzzle. Surely everyone was able to say “I belong to Christ”? Was there a distinct Christ-party in Corinth, and if so how did they differ from everyone else? One could only make more or less plausible guesses, for there is virtually no straw with which to make bricks.

The suggestion which I rather like, despite the objections of some notable scholars, is that there never was a distinct Christ-party, and there should be a full stop after “I belong to Cephas”. We then start a new sentence running on into v.13: ‘However I (Paul) belong to Christ; is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?’

Thus on this view ‘I belong to Christ’ is not party no. 4 but Paul’s answer to all parties, including his own. It is true that in most translations and in the Greek text as it is usually printed, it does look as if there was a Christ-party. Nevertheless we have to recall that in the original manuscripts there was no punctuation, and as all letters were capital letters, there was difficulty knowing where a new sentence began.

Where does that leave us? It reminds us that in dealing with an ancient text we sometimes cannot be at all dogmatic about what a passage is saying in detail. As in this case, however, we may be quite clear about the general drift of what is being said: Christ is not divided, nor should Corinthians be divided. Clearly they have not been divided enough to separate one from another. The letter assumes they are all going to hear it read, which surely means that they are still united enough to meet together.

The same assumption applies to the remainder of the letter; there is a diversity of view on many subjects but not total rupture, even where there is outright immorality (Chapter 5.) Today’s lection underlines Paul’s view that while other things may matter, and matter enough to spend a lot of time dealing with them, these other things must not interfere with the fundamental belonging together to the one Lord Jesus Christ. So we may disagree about things, even things that matter, but they cannot matter as much as what unites us.

John Ziesler