The theme of I Corinthians 8:1-13 is the matter of food offered to idols. In context, this is the first of four parts in this letter dealing with Christian freedom. Paul even begins by stating his theme: 1Now concerning (Περὶ δὲ) for which see also 1 Corinthians 7:1, 25; 12:1; 16:1, 12; 1 Thessalonians 4:9; 5:1. The transitional phrase serves both to introduce a new topic for discussion and to signal one of the several matters the Corinthians had raised in their correspondence to the apostle, the listing of which begins at 7:1. The topic isfood sacrificed to idols. The single Greek word translated "food sacrificed to idols" refers specifically to meat left over from pagan sacrifices. Scholars find the word used only in Jewish and Christian writings from the period. In the first century, edible portions of these sacrificed animals are a common source of meat for Gentile butchers to sell at market. Interestingly, Paul will not appeal to the council decision in Acts 15:20, 29, where it prohibited eating food offered to idols. The discussion of food offered to idols is extensive, beginning here at 8:1 and extending until 11:1. Meat ordinarily was part of a sacrifice in the ancient world, and not a regular feature of the ordinary person's daily diet. That the Corinthian Christians would regularly continue, at least for a period, to be present at pagan worship, even though they had converted to Christianity, one should not wonder at, since such occasions served important social, domestic and economic functions as well as religious ones. Moreover, based on passages from the Mishnah, the meat left over from pagan sacrifices was routinely available for merchandising afterward. The cultural context of this issue is important: The partial sacrifice of meat before consumption was a virtually universal practice in the ancient Mediterranean region. The Corinthians were not doing something different from their neighbors. Human life and nourishment always were uncertain, subject to the vicissitudes of nature and the gods. They considered meat from animals a pre-eminent gift from the gods, and so they offered the animal in sacrifice and thanksgiving by different forms of ritual slaughter. They burned some of the animal on an altar (for the god) and the rest they distributed among the participants or the local community. This was by far the most common way of acquiring meat. One can see, therefore, why the Corinthians, living in a diverse city of many peoples and many gods, had questions about the application of their new monotheistic views. New Testament scholar J. Paul Sampley explains that the tradition in Greece was to sacrifice an animal to a pagan god, burn some of the flesh on the altar, and then eat the rest of the meat in a festive meal. Like a worship service followed by a barbecue. That is not all. They then sold the remainder of the sacrificial animal to the meat market, and merchants would turn around and sell it to the public. For most residents of Corinth, this was no problem. Nevertheless, for Christians who did not worship pagan gods, there was serious discomfort about eating a top sirloin that pagan priests had sacrificed to idols. Unfortunately, these rump roasts popped up all over the place: In the market, in the homes of non-Christian neighbors, and in public festivals that were important places to make personal, political and business connections.
While the issue may have been unavoidable and unavoidably complex because of the social milieu in which the Corinthians were living, the reason Paul devotes such attention to the subject is its underlying theological issue, which is of far greater moment to Paul: the nature and appropriate exercise of Christian freedom. The freedom granted to the Christian from, on the one hand, the Jewish law, and, on the other, pagan superstition, required an enormously skillful balancing act on the part of Paul if he were to convey its true meaning to the first Christian churches. It was primarily for this reason, and only secondarily to address the issue of idol offerings, that Paul devotes so much of this letter to the topic.
Paul will take the specific issue and elevate into a discussion of Christian principle and community. In the process, Paul will tackle one of the most delicate and difficult issues in the Christian church: whether to eliminate voluntarily from one's behavior, regardless of one's beliefs, those actions that, committed by other, weaker members of the Christian community, would constitute sin. Two issues form the crux of Paul's argument: the subjective nature of sin and the indispensability of building up the community of faith. Both issues were topics Paul addressed repeatedly in his correspondence. Faced with another source of division among the Corinthian Christians, Paul offers counsel that underscores unity while clarifying the essential moral issue at stake.
The first issue Paul will lift up is that of knowledge. Thus, he grants that “all of us possess knowledge.” The Corinthians who were on one side of this issue may have quoted Paul in support. However, he qualifies the statement by adding that knowledge puffs up (φυσιοῖ or creates pride as a transient condition in individuals). The image is that of an object puffed up with wind, which might appear grand, but which has no real substance. Knowledge clearly played a significant role in the Corinthian community, both in the ordinary sense of the city's cosmopolitanism, and in the more specialized religious sense, which would appear to be the sense intended here. The text reflects a Gnosticizing minority, evidenced in use of "Knowledge." Among Paul's numerous opponents and competitors were the Gnostic Christians, whose claims to esoteric knowledge (Greek gnosis), provided one of the earliest challenges to Pauline orthodoxy. Such claims to privileged knowledge also proved extremely divisive in early Christian communities (and still do), as evidenced by Paul's strenuous efforts to curtail them (see, e.g., 4:6, 18-19). Paul warned earlier in this letter about the dangers of being "puffed up" with pride (4:6) and repeating the warning in other Pauline literature (e.g., Colossians 2:18; I Timothy 3:6). In contrast, love, the higher principle, builds up (a lasting condition of a community). Here is the statement of principle. Paul reiterates this point with an intriguingly unbalanced comparison between love and knowledge. Knowledge comes out on the losing end. Love is the determining factor rather than what you know.Love results in an increase in stature founded on a firm structure. 2 Anyone who claims to know, where we see that Paul is hinting that they do not know what they think they know. The claim to know something reveals that one does not yet have the necessary knowledge. Full knowledge is not possible because even people who think they know all do not know all that is necessary to know. However, 3 anyone who loves God also knows God. Paul unites love of God with knowledge of God. True knowledge is love of God. Love is more valuable than knowledge. In fact, knowledge of God can occur only when there is love for God. We have the rare reference in Paul to love for God, seeing such love as a mark of believers. The verb tense is awkward (as is the syntax). The sense, where one expects the active mode of the verb ("anyone who loves God knows him"), appears to be what the Protestant reformers would later express as "prevenient grace": that the ability to love God is evidence that God knows us as individuals. The problem was that knowledge does not produce consideration. He places knowledge within the demands of love. Knowledge is not absolute. It must coexist with love. He also reminds them of varying degrees of Christian maturity. Concern for fellow Christians must temper knowledge. This requires less thinking of one's own knowledge and freedom. This means self-imposed restraints, but this is a small price to pay for the edification of the church.
The Corinthian Christians remind me of Episode 1002 of South Park. I do not watch the show, but my sons do, and for some reason, it entered our conversation. In “Smug Alert!” (first aired March 29, 2006), we see what happens when people who love hybrid cars are more concerned about other people knowing they are adherents of the whole progressive and environmental movement, that they insist on buying hybrids that have that ugly hybrid shape. Gerald buys one and moves his family out of South Park after finding that he just cannot live with non-hybrid people. They end up in San Francisco, surprise, where he and his family find many other smug people, and as the association grows, the smugness grows to such an extent that soon there is a smug problem, which leads inevitably to periodic “smug alerts.” Paul is issuing a “smug alert.”
If one is right without love, one has gained nothing. Abraham Lincoln was convinced he was right. The union needed to be preserved. Slavery was wrong. It led to the war that to this day killed more Americans than any other war in our history. Yet, someone came to him and joyfully told him that three hundred confederate soldiers had perished in battle. He wept. The one who told him asked him why. Lincoln said, "Sir, you have a very small heart." Yes, love builds up community rather than surrender to the forces of disintegration.
Paul is directing us to a problem of the human heart that can be profoundly disruptive to all human relations. Pascal said that human beings never do evil so cheerfully, as when they do it from religious conviction. Self-righteousness may well be the curse of all human relations. It blocks our capacity for self-criticism, destroys humility, and undermines our sense of oneness with others. Self-righteousness is at the heart of many religious atrocities, whether crusades, hatred of Jews, or Islamic militancy. In many ways, the worst pleasures are spiritual. We might think of the pleasure of putting other people in the wrong, the pleasure of power, and the pleasure of hatred. Human beings have a battle within. Yes, we may give in to the “sins of the flesh” that receive so much attention. Yet, the cold, self-righteous prude or killjoy who goes regularly to church may be nearer to hell than the prostitute. Of course, spiritually, it would be best to be neither. C. S. Lewis, in The Great Divorce (1946), had a wonderful image of the afterlife. His main character, in a dream, is on a journey of the afterlife. He is on a bus, about half full, with everyone arguing with each other. He seeks a space where he can be alone, but someone sits next to him. He explains that people in this place can imagine anything they want, and they can have it. It sounded nice. Later, he would discover the place is hell. Eventually, he mentions some historical persons, and comes to Napoleon, the nearest of the older persons who had come here. Some people visited him. He built himself a house, all empire style, away from everyone. They looked through the window and saw him parading up and down the great hall, declaring that the reason for his defeat in battle was his officers, Josephine, the Russians, or the English. Yet, in his self-centered approach to life, Napoleon got what he wanted. Imagine a world where you get everything you want. It sounds like heaven. However, it might be hell.
Second, in verses 4-6, Paul agrees with the knowledge that the gods do not exist. Paul is asserting fundamental Jewish and Christian theology. 4 Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “no idol in the world really exists,” (see Isaiah 46) quoting what Paul said, and that “there is no God but one,” (see Deuteronomy 6:4) another quote from Paul. In context, Paul states the case for Christians being at liberty to consume such food. From this perspective, eating meat left over from sacrifices is a neutral activity that is neither equivalent to, nor an endorsement of, worshiping idols. The conclusion to such affirmations would be that it should not matter if someone offered the meat as a sacrifice to something that does not exist. Because of their new monotheistic conviction, the panoply of Greek and Roman temples seemed no more than an illusion. 5 Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and many lords in the minds of their worshippers — 6 yet for us there is one God. The statement is unique in the writings of Paul in the sense that he distinguishes one God “for us” in distinction from non-Christians. Usually, such a statement is universal, whether acknowledged or not. Such a statement implies a parochial understanding. This uniqueness may arise from the subjective nature of sin that Paul will express here. This God is also the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. We should note that such a confession of Christian faith involves some notion of fellowship between God and Jesus as the Son. It assumes distinction within the Trinity, even if the third person of the Trinity has no mention here. Further, Paul now turns to the role of Christ in creation. If we think of the divine sonship of Jesus as having its origin in the eternity of God, then we need to think in terms of the participation of Christ in creation.
Third, in verses 7-13, Paul expresses his solution to the issue about which the people of Corinth wrote him. He acknowledges that 7not everyone has this knowledge. Since some have become so accustomed to idols until now, they still think of the food they eat as food offered to an idol. Therefore, if people within the community act on the knowledge that the idols are not gods and eat the meat that others offered to idols, the action defiles their weak conscience. Thus, not everyone has the knowledge Paul has. He stresses that Christian freedom is not a license to disregard others. The weakness of some in Corinth is that of giving moral value to what is morally indifferent. 8 “Food will not bring us close to God.” Paul may have said something like this to them. Therefore, we are no worse off if we do not eat, and no better off if we do. In principle, Paul had no objection to eating meat on any of these occasions if one did not participate in the actual cultic meal to the god, as in 10:20. Food was an “indifferent” category in the popular Greco-Roman ethics of the time (derived mainly from Stoicism), and Jesus himself taught that “whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile ... It is what comes out of a person that defiles” (Mark 7:18-20). 9 But Paul urges his readers to take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak. A popular saying suggests that just because something is true does not mean you have to say it. Context is everything when we consider proper Christian behavior. The liberty of some could become an obstacle to the spiritual growth of others. He makes a similar argument in Romans 11:9, 14:13, and I Corinthians 1:23. Jesus will give similar advice in Mark 9:42, Matthew 16:23, and 18:7. Like circumcision in 7:19, eating or abstaining from sacrificial food is of no consequence to the standing of the believer before God. However, some other Corinthians must have disagreed with this argument (or at least been confused about it). They witnessed their Christian brothers and sisters dining with non-Christians on food obviously sacrificed to Demeter, or Zeus, or some other deity. In addition, they saw the matter differently. Thus, the problem for cosmopolitan Christians was that non-Christians had partially offered and consumed virtually all meat to some deity besides the God of Israel. How should a Christian receive hospitality in the home of a non-Christian? Alternatively, how should an upper-class Christian attend any public banquet, participation in which was indispensable to their social status? The significance of the issue lies only in its effect on other members of the community. The starting point for unity is Paul's recognition that exercising liberty to eat and observing scruples against eating are equally valid practices concerning the consumption of meat from sacrifices. The matter then turns to what most edifies and sustains the Corinthian church in the midst of differing viewpoints on sacrificial food. Here, Paul lays an extra measure of responsibility upon those who know their Christian liberty. Paul then offers an extreme example. 10 For if others see you, who possess knowledge, eating in the temple of an idol, might they not, since their conscience is weak, be encouraged to the point of eating food sacrificed to idols? Twin dangers attend this counsel. First, Paul acknowledges that there are Christians who, as a matter of conscience, believe that eating meat left over from sacrifices is tantamount to condoning idolatry, if not indirectly practicing it. At the same time, the Christian who refrains from eating meat sacrificed to idols may reinforce the idea in some that idols are real, which Paul denies categorically. Scholars make equally strong cases for identifying those who oppose eating meat from sacrifices as either (1) Jewish Christians unwilling to give up long-standing religious prohibitions against food associated with idol worship or (2) Gentile Christians trying to avoid any temptation of returning to their former idol worshiping practices. Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity, says the strong were wealthy Christians who could afford meat, and the weak were the lowborn, uneducated, and poor of the community who did not eat meat often and for whom the experience of eating meat was strange. 11 So by your knowledge those weak believers for whom Christ died are destroyed. Second, the other danger is that by eating such meat, other Christians, for whom such an act would feel sinful and, as beginners in Christian maturity, be part of the destruction of their faith. The issue, on both sides of the problem, is that members of the community may misunderstand the actions of one another. 12 But when you thus sin against members of your family, and wound their conscience when it is weak, you sin against Christ. Thus, Paul underscores the seriousness of such misunderstanding when he declares that such harmful misunderstanding injures a member of the family and therefore injures Christ. We can see here how profoundly believed that the Christian community is the body of the risen Christ in the world. The ecclesiology of Paul has its basis and understanding in his Christology, which is itself an understanding of the love of God for us (Romans 5:8). 13Therefore, if food is a cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.Here Paul enters the most difficult aspect of his argument, namely, the advice to some Christians to refrain from exercising their freedom in Christ in order to prevent other, weaker Christians from sinning. One may be on the right side theologically. However, how one uses that knowledge and even power is instructive.
O! it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.
The essential moral issue at stake, then, is not so much a question of whether to eat sacrificial food per se as it is pursuing Christian conduct in a manner that upholds members of the body of Christ. Sure, Corinthian Christians in principle are free to eat sacrificial food. Nevertheless, if doing so causes a falling away from Christian commitment either by offending the religious sensibilities of some or by tempting others to revert to idolatrous ways, then one has not applied the notion of Christian liberty properly. Put another way, if eating sacrificial food is a matter of indifference to you but refraining is a matter of conscience for others, you are still free by respectfully refraining when in the presence of those with scruples. You are just as free to refrain respectfully as to indulge rightfully.
Many moral issues raised and dealt within the New Testament seem irrelevant today. Whether to eat food offered to idols ranks as one of them. However, what I find important is the principles Paul uses to offer his counsel. Notice first that within the Christian community love is to take precedence over the exercise of individual freedoms. The Pauline ethic is not without principles, but always love for the family member within the body of Christ takes precedence over principles. This means of course that the health of the Christian community becomes a priority. To put it another way, leaders have the responsibility to maintain carefully and deliberately the diversity of the church.
Paul's argument is far more able and demanding than interpreters usually give him credit. Indeed, it may have been simply too challenging for the church in the first few centuries of life--or even today. While Paul lets these strong Corinthians know that he agrees with every assertion they have offered in defense of their position, Paul also introduces completely new criteria that make their conclusions wrong. For him, the focus is not a dietary argument, but the effect of the debate has on the Corinthians community. The strong Corinthians want to make sure they win. Paul wants to make sure no one is lost. What concerns Paul is community, building it up and protecting it from dissension.
Strangely, Paul's voice in this dispute is not the church's voice for the next several generations. Note the Apostolic Decree in Acts 15:29, Revelation 2:12-17 and 18-29, Didache 6:3, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, were all against eating meat offered to idols.
Today, the abiding significance of this discussion is the continuing tension in Christian life between individual and communal considerations. Although the individualistic interpretation of the letters of Paul has been dominant in modern Western Christianity, this passage demonstrates the overarching communal concerns Paul had Paul often exhorts his followers to moral excellence and purity, but one must subordinate individual perfection to communal harmony. Scholars of ancient rhetoric have classified First Corinthians as an example of a letter encouraging concord (harmonia) more than anything else, and the virtue that leads to concord is not knowledge (gnosis) but love (agape). An example of this analysis is in Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation.
Most modern Western Christians do not encounter the conundrum faced by the Corinthian Christians, but interpreters could develop many challenging analogies for exhortation. Each local Christian community may differ as to where the challenge exists. In general, should a Christian participate in an activity that offends against Christian agape but is still common to his or her cultural context? As just one example, how should you receive a gift made by a company that you know traffics in child labor? Most Americans will buy the cheapest form of a textile or food commodity, without considering why it is so cheap — but often somewhere along the way, people are being cheated on a price or working under harsh conditions. Paul was concerned with the building up of local communities, but in our globalized world, today’s disciples must be concerned with the global community. Of course, one could make many analogies in the communal context of each sermon. As a final note, the interpreter should be mindful of how Paul continues the issue of food sacrificed to idols straight through to the end of chapter 10. Careful consideration of Paul’s argument through all three chapters can yield a powerful sermon on the interactions between individual decisions and communal health, between what Christian discipleship permits and what it encourages, and between the basic ideas of freedom and responsibility.
I conclude with a well-known preacher story. A holy man was having a conversation with the Lord one day and said, “Lord, I would like to know what heaven and hell are like.” The Lord led the holy man to two doors. He opened one of the doors and the holy man looked in. In the middle of the room was a large round table. In the middle of the table was a large pot of stew, which smelled delicious and made the holy man’s mouth water. The people sitting around the table were thin and sickly. They appeared to be famished. They were holding spoons with very long handles that someone had strapped to their arms, and each found it possible to reach into the pot of stew and take a spoonful. Nevertheless, because the handles were longer than their arms, they could not get the spoons back into their mouths. The holy man shuddered at the sight of their misery and suffering. The Lord said, “You have seen hell.” They went to the next room and opened the door. It was the same as the first one. There was the large round table with the large pot of stew that made the holy man’s mouth water. The people were equipped with the same long-handled spoons, but here the people were well nourished and plump, laughing and talking. The holy man said, “I don’t understand.” “It is simple,” said the Lord. “It requires but one skill. You see they have learned to feed each other, while the greedy think only of themselves.”
Sampley, J. Paul. "First Letter to the Corinthians." The New Interpreter's Bible. Nashville: Abingdon, 2002, 893-902.
--William Sloane Coffin, Letters to a Young Doubter (Westminster John Knox, 2005), 22-24.
(William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Spoken by Isabella in Act 2 Scene 2)
