Elsdon / Olhausen Transformed in Christ

1 Corinthians
1. Auflage 2021
ISBN: 978-1-68359-482-6
Verlag: Lexham Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Reihe: Transformative Word

Is your faith countercultural?When he wrote his first epistle to the church in Corinth, Paul wanted to address two cultural issues that the Christians in the city were wrestling with: prosperity and entertainment. He urged the young believers struggling in the midst of Graeco--Roman society to live lives shaped by Christ. Believers today are not immune to these same worldly temptations the Corinthian church was facing.In Transformed in Christ: 1 Corinthians, Ron Elsdon and William Olhausen show us how Paul uses the cross to define the distinctive patterns of life and behavior which Christians are called. The transformation that comes from cross--shaped wisdom is not a singular moment in a believer's life, but a continual process of refinement. The result is a living, countercultural faith marked by discernment, wisdom, and love.

Ron Elsdon is a retired former rector of St. Bartholomew's Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He has written and lectured for many years on the subject of creation and care for the environment. William Olhausen studied theology at Wycliffe Hall in Oxford and has been ordained in the Anglican Church since 1998. Since 2011, he has served as a parish minister in the Diocese of Dublin, Ireland.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Elsdon

Elsdon, Ron

Olhausen, William

Leseproben

2

I ONCE WAS BLIND BUT NOW I SEE

One evening the doorbell rang. Two visitors from a local church stood outside. We chatted for a few minutes, and I (Ron) mentioned that I was an ordained Episcopalian minister. There was a pause, and then the predictable question: “Are you saved?” My doorstep visitors were hoping for a particular kind of conversion experience: date, time, and place. What testimonies often lack, however, is what flows from that experience. The book of Acts has three accounts of Paul’s conversion, often called the Damascus road event (see Acts 9; 22; 26). Their minor differences should not surprise us; if they were exactly the same, they might appear stereotyped. Luke’s three accounts testify to the huge impact of the Damascus road event on the course of Paul’s life. It led to a revolution in his thinking, which became centered on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul describes it in different ways in his letters (for example, Gal 1:15–16; Phil 3:12). Such a radical event manifests itself in a richer way than could be expressed by a limited number of words—notably “repent” (metanoeo) and “turn” (epistrepho), which Paul uses sparingly. We converse in phrases and sentences, not in isolated words. Some recent sociological studies of religious conversion have identified a number of “rhetorical indicators” that employ a wide and rich vocabulary, pointing to the impact of conversion on the believer.8 These indicators (described below) testify to the magnitude of the Damascus road event in the course of Paul’s life.9

1. Biographical reconstruction. This involves rejecting aspects of one’s past life, redefining others, and reassembling the pattern in a new way. This leads to two particular aspects of the convert’s testimony: admitting to a mistaken former way of life (“Once I thought … now I know”), and highlighting pre-conversion sinfulness to emphasize the power and value of the conversion experience.

2. Adoption of a master attribution scheme. This means attributing to one’s own sinfulness problems previously blamed on a range of external factors, including the behavior of others. The song “Amazing Grace” offers a good example of this: “Amazing grace (how sweet the sound) that saved a wretch like me.”10

3. Suspension of analogical reasoning. We often use analogies to compare objects. Typical of conversion, however, is the language of uniqueness. Such iconic language—the language of contrast—expresses the sacredness of the conversion event: “I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.”11

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.” —C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in The Weight of Glory

4. Assumption of a master role. Converts see their primary identity within their religious group, and they willingly embrace the attendant tasks as central to their life. This is in contrast to other situations, where role adoption is assigned by other people (for example, with respect to race or sex). Many people with conversion experiences have gone on to full-time church ministries, some making considerable financial sacrifices on the way.

The Impact of Paul’s Conversion as Witnessed in 1 Corinthians

Paul’s epistles, including 1 Corinthians, abound in examples of these “rhetorical indicators” of conversion. They reveal a powerful self-portrait of a man whose conversion led to a complete transformation in his life and thought. Examples are not hard to find.

First Corinthians 1–4

In 1:18–31, the opening statement, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God,” portrays mutually exclusive responses to the cross. There is also an autobiographical element: the coming of Christ caused Paul to see himself as formerly a member of the “perishing” rather than of the “saved.” This is more than a general theological statement; it has to do with the gospel entrusted to him, to which he has already referred in verse 17 (“Christ did not send me to baptise, but to preach the gospel”). Verses 22–24 make an absolute distinction between seeking after “signs” and “wisdom,” and the death of Christ, starkly depicted in the construction “Christ crucified.” He links this with the two categories of verse 18; those who are “being saved” and those who are “perishing” see the cross in totally different ways.

The section 2:6–16 is full of contrasts: between those who can and cannot receive God’s revelation, between the spirit of the world and the spirit that is from God (2:12), and between wisdoms which are human or Spirit-taught (2:13). That the contrast is absolute is clear in verse 14, where one group cannot receive what is from God because it is, again, perceived as “foolishness.”

In 3:10 (“By the grace God has given me, I laid a foundation as a wise builder, and someone else is building on it”) the term “grace” could be a general reference to God’s prior act of grace in Christ or, alternatively, to the apostolic task of founding churches. Paul repeatedly refers to this as his apostolic calling (4:15–17; 9:1, 2; 2 Cor 3:1–3; 10:12–16; also see Rom 15:20) flowing from his meeting with Christ on the Damascus road.

First Corinthians 5–16

One of the rhetorical questions in the beginning of 1 Corinthians 9 (“Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?”) refers again to the Damascus road event. Commentator Gordon Fee notes the “vigor” of the rhetoric and the highly personal and emotional nature of verses 15–18.12 He also points out that the statement “I am compelled to preach” (1 Cor 9:16) is not about psychology but points to Paul’s new calling revealed in the Damascus road event (Gal 1:15–16).13 These words may also echo Christ’s “seizing” of him, as he describes the Damascus road event in Philippians 3:12, or God entrusting him with the gospel (1 Cor 9:17; Col 1:25; 1 Thess 2:4).

In 10:33, the phrase “even as I try to please everyone in every way … so that they may be saved” only apparently contradicts his refusal to please men (Gal 1:10; 1 Thess 2:4). It shows the centrality in Paul’s life of proclaiming the gospel. This argument also repeats what he has already said in 9:22 (“I have become all things to all people so that by all possible means I might save some”), where his flexibility reflects the single-mindedness of a convert in sharing his new beliefs with people wherever possible.

In 15:8–10, Paul defends himself against criticism by pointing to his meeting with the risen Christ on the Damascus road (“last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born”). Two further features of this passage point powerfully to his conversion. Firstly, there is the contrast between his self-designation in verse 9 (“For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle”), and the result of the grace of God (“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect”). Secondly, the Christ he had previously persecuted was now his Lord, and he received a new commission to preach the gospel. So in verse 10, he compares his own efforts with those of the other apostles; he compares rather than contrasts because he has no intention of denigrating them. His description of his own ministry testifies to a single-mindedness that demands all his effort and devotion: “I worked harder than all of them.”

Paul’s Radical Reevaluation of Judaism

Elsewhere, Paul describes his former life as a scrupulously orthodox Jew (for example, Gal 1:13–14; Phil 3:4–6). How much remained intact after his conversion? Two texts show that his orthodox Jewish monotheism was radically transformed at an early stage in his apostolic career.

First, the “fiercely monotheistic”14 text Deuteronomy 6:4 (“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one”) is reconstructed as: “For us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (8:6). Paul has adapted this key Jewish creedal statement with Jesus at its core, an adaptation described by one commentator as “astonishing.”15

Second, in 10:1–15 Paul deals with the grumbling in the Corinthian church by drawing an analogy with the wilderness wanderings described in Exodus. He refers to the miraculous drinking from the rock and comments: “They drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ” (10:4; see Exod 17:1–7; Num 20:2–13). As with 8:6, Paul has transformed Jewish exegesis in christological terms. Thus Ben Witherington comments:

The universe of Paul’s thought revolved around … Jesus Christ. Paul’s christology illumined his thought in its entirety, sometimes shedding light on aspects of his thought that one might have expected would have gone relatively untouched by christology. For instance, who would have expected Paul … to tell his Corinthian listeners that the rock that gave forth water to the Israelites … was...