CULTURAL STUDIES IN 1 CORINTHIANS

I told Steve there is no way to articulate what I want to write about without just straight copying Bailey!  Pages 429-436 are absolutely awesome. It has been a challenging mental gymnastic routine to meditate on the resurrection during the advent season... I suggest you try it! Some of my favorites from the chapter........  "Why did the early church, at this very early stage, conclude that the death of Jesus was different from the death of John the Baptist?"   N.T. Wright answers the question this way.... "Without the resurrection, there is no reason to suppose that Jesus' Crucifixion dealt with sins, or with sin.  But with the resurrection, the divine victory over sin(s), and hence over death, is assured."  "Herod surmised that Jesus was John, who had been raised from the dead, but he was mistaken, and no one saw John alive after his murder.  Jesus, however, appeared to the disciples after the cross, and that made all the difference.  The fa...

“The Corinthians were introducing various self-destructive ethical practices and identity-damaging theological stances that were not in harmony with that received tradition. He wanted to call them back to the fixed tradition that gave the church its identity, an identity that in the early fifties of the first century had already taken a recognizable able shape. Again, Paul did not start a movement, he joined one. His method was to compliment his readers for their steadfastness in remembering and keeping the tradition, and at the same time slowly present larger and larger sections of that tradition. In essay five, the tradition is the climactic center of the opening homily.” This paragraph from Bailey highlighted for me the idea that tradition can serve as a valuable filter when encountering ethical/sociological change. Paul’s anchoring (pun intended) new ideas and new ethics with the “received tradition” brought to mind for me our culture point of Discipline.  Our writing ...

At the cross the world discovered that you cannot beat brokenness. I do not wish to wait for hindsight to treasure and cherish the power and wisdom of God in broken scenes such as the nativity and the cross (often times in hindsight we are more apt to receive blessing. If only we were to receive it now!) Paul combats the prideful boasting of the Corinthian church. They have no seeming sense of humility, as observed about and written by Dio Chrysostom: “shouting and reviling one another...fighting with one another, many writers reading aloud their stupid works, many poets reciting their poems...jugglers showing their tricks...peddlers not a few peddling whatever they happen to have”. I can’t help but completely and utterly relate to the Corinthians. I have very recently realized how much I seek to boast in how I manipulate the way people view me, and I reflected back on what Bailey said about how the Corinthians were guilty of considerable boasting. In my initial nots on that co...

I grew up in a setting where all folks, male and female, played prominent roles in leadership as deacons, elders, preachers, teachers etc.   The church where I grew up honored God and made a significant impact in our community with this approach to leadership. Since I experienced first hand during my formative years a church setting where God did big things regardless of gender I naturally (as you’d expect) enjoyed Bailey’s positioning of Paul, scripture, and the 1 st century church as seeking to create a setting/structure where all folks, gifted in leadership, play a prominent role as elders, preachers teachers, etc. My bias is that gifted folks should lead and Mr. Bailey (God bless him) communicates to my bias so, of course, I had great affinity for Chapter 4!!   -- Lot of Amens and Preach it brother!! I dumped a lot of ink on this chapter with highlights.   To spare you hours of reflections I’ve narrowed down dozens of highlights to just two…. Highlight ...

Like Reid and Steve, I was thinking so much about Sonshine through this reading. Specifically, I was thinking of our culture point of SENSITIVITY. “He creates everything ‘by his hands’ and all created things are ( lo ) for him. The world is his.” By this, there is no doubting that meat offered to idols is still the Lord’s! How could it belong to anyone else when He is the Creator to whom the whole Earth belongs?! And yet…we cannot divorce love and knowledge. Beyond being modest in what we know, there is also required a sensitivity to the contextual practice of our knowledge. Chapter 3.3 also rattled me. Bailey writes that “enormous skill is required to maintain that delicate balance between freedom and slavery”. To be all things to all people, Paul exerted incredible energy and discipline to cross intercultural barriers and to act in accordance with the gospel that he preaches. He does not preach from a position of power, but chooses to live among ...

4.1 - I really enjoyed the section on "Delivered and Received" and the tradition that is behind those two words.  So much life on the docks flows out of the tradition of "Delivered and Received."  As a father, I find myself all the time delivering the Jesus tradition to my children as I have received it from others who have passed it down to me.  4.2-4.7 - I have wrestled with what I wanted to write about this section and have decided to let Bailey speak for himself.  "Such a reading of the text is of great antiquity and has dominated large parts of church life for centuries.  But does it represent what Paul intends?  As elsewhere, this dense and mysterious passage does not reveal all its secrets to anyone.  No interpretation can satisfy every reader. Yet, some things can be understood and some errors corrected.  I will do my best." I really encourage everyone to read this section 4.1-4.7 over and over again.  Bailey does such a wonderful...