Paul is confronted by a case of sexual misconduct about which the perpetrator brags. Paul has a vision of the gospel community as a fellowship that has purged from its midst such exploitative practices. such misconduct is never an isolated act; it comes with a cluster of self-indulgent practices that are rooted in anxious greed that characteristically culminates in violence. These are the "desires of the flesh" to which Paul contrasts "the fruit of the Spirit" (Gal. 5:16-26). The arrogance about the affront makes cler that the community has compromised the norm that Paul champions and has arrived at a capacity for shamelessness in imitation of a larger society that traffics in shamelessness.
The passage from First Corinthians names the offense, a son who takes up with his father's wife. Adultery with a step-mother, one imagines a much younger woman than the father but Paul doesn't specify. His advocacy of excluding the adulterer from the Corinthian Christian community to avoid spreading the corruption that comes from accepting immoral behavior is something I expect would be considered to be a terrible thing, it being Christians who are at issue but I would guess that if it were a small community of Native Americans or some small community in Africa or Asia or Australia, the same practice of banning would be considered to be just fine with your typical European style enlightenment liberal.
For the nature of the community, Paul utilizes the image of heaven. By this usage he recalls that it was unleavened bread that ancient Israel ate in its hasty departure from Egyptian slavery. The mention of the "pascal lamb" and the "festival" attest that the early church has departed the shameless habits of greed and exploitation that mark the empire of Egypt and belatedly the empire of Rome. The imagery is a reminder that the community gathered around Jesus is indeed an alternative community in which the conduct of its members matters for its testimony to the world. Clearly compromised conduct, when visible in the church, undermines the claim and the news that the church intends to perform for the world to see.
Given this exodus allusion, we may note the somewhat remote connection that the sons of Jacob must return and submit to Egyptian authority for the sake of food. Such bread, with old leaven, is seductive and many talk the community out of its vocation of holiness.
Brueggemann was wise to insert the citation of Galatians here because the passage contains what that vocation of holiness comprises, " . . the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law". Think about whether you'd rather live next to someone who was like that than most other people encouraged to give into their passions and to assert their personal desires. If you found such a person, they would embody the anti-Trump.
* I was listening to a lecture the other day that talked about what Paul said about the Resurrection and what was obviously an anti-Christian questioner in the largely college-student audience said that since Paul was a "murderer" that nothing he said about anything could be trusted. I wish I had been there because I'd have pointed out that everything we know about the sins of the pre-conversion Paul was due to the confession of Paul after his conversion. So his identity as a "murderer" rested in the reliability of his own testimony. Just thought I'd throw that in.
I probably listened to more lectures last year, alone, than in all of the decades before I started using the internet, given by a large range of scholars and speakers in a number of different fields, sometimes several in a row by the same scholar giving different facets of the same topic and with the ability to go back and listen to passages that were unclear. I'm also, in many cases, able to look at books and papers and other things they cite to fact check them. Which is something I wish I had been able to do in my early years. Especially the fact checking. I'd have realized a lot of what I was successfully sold by the play-left was a lie a lot sooner than I had been, a lot of other stuff too.
On the other hand, I've learned a lot more about the depravity of total license through seeing the exposed inner thinking of so many, too. Especially when you throw sex into it. People, the smartest as well as the merely average and stupid go stupid and selfish when you throw sex into it. I think there is nothing we do in life that leaves us so open to evil. I've found out that when you throw sex in, people go stupid and bad at just about the same rate, unless they're extremely careful not to.
Note: Since I know Walter Bruggemann is the kind of Protestant who seems to discourage a belief in a literal afterlife, I thought it was worth going over a point Paul makes in First Corinthians. I think what a lot of them really object to are the evils that come from a belief in original sin,vicarious atonement and eternal damnation and the distortions and evils that come with those. In talking about Paul's encouragement for them to throw the adulterous son out of the congregation, Paul says, "you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus." Which is interesting for what it says about the consequences of sin and seems to give Satan the task of "destruction of the flesh" which is certainly in line with the universalism of St. Macrina the Younger as documented by her brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa in which hell is seen as a purgatory to get rid of the evil that the soul has gathered to itself in life. It more than just implies that that purging is necessary for his spirit to be saved. I'm sure a scholar as old and experienced as Brueggemann must have noticed that, I don't know what he makes of it.
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