[Lyric] The Corinthian Women Prophets: A Reconstruction Through Pauls Letters Chap. 2: The Rhetoric Characteristic of 1 Corinthians with Implications for the Corinthian Women Prophets (Antoinette Clark Wire)

THE ARGUMENTS PAUL USES repeatedly in 1 Corinthians qualify as textual rhetoric, as argumentative features characteristic of this particular
text. In order to keep the catalogue of Paul's rhetoric in 1 Corinthians within manageable length, the only arguments listed are those that have particular significance for a reconstruction of the Corinthian women prophets. Certain rhetorical features that are not in themselves arguments the rhetorical question, the statement of objections, the various tropes or alterations in word meaning-are mentioned only when they consistently appear within one of these arguments.

Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's division of arguments described previously provides a framework that fits Paul's writing. Arguments that deduce particular claims from an assumed structure of reality are distinguished from arguments that seek to establish the structure of reality from particulars, with the latter including all arguments from example, model, analogy, and metaphor. Two other kinds of arguments are also identified, on one extreme the most strictly deductive arguments of a quasi-logical or commonsense nature, such as arguments from identity and contradiction, and arguments that move beyond positive construction of reality into negative construction on the other. The identification of this last argument by dissociation of concepts is the contribution of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, one very useful in understanding Paul. The catalogue below, even though partial, indicates by its broad distribution of arguments that Paul's persuasion is complex. His strong use of arguments from the structure of reality shows how much he appeals to given authorities in matters related to the women. Even the argument by dissociation of concepts draws on basic cultural oppositions that stand almost beyond question. To clarify this least self-explanatory category of argument, I begin with Paul's arguments by dissociation.

Arguments by Dissociation of Concepts

Argument Dissociating Principle from Practice

6:12a All things are authorized me, but not all things are useful.

6:12b All things are authorized me, but I will not fall under the authority of anything.

6:13a Food is for the stomach and the stomach for food. But God will do away with both stomach and food.

7:lb-2 It is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of sexual immorality, let eac4 man have his own wife, and each woman her
own husband.

8:1b, 7a For we all have knowledge .... But knowledge is not in all.

10:23a All things are authorized, but not all things are useful.
10:23b All things are authorized, but not all things are constructive.

Paul's argument of agreement in principle and qualification in practice only appears m the long central section of 1 Corinthians on sexual immorality and idolatry, but its spread throughout chapters 6-10 qualifies it as part of Paul s textual rhetoric. The first half of each of these arguments may be direct quotation of slogans used by the Corinthians (note RSV quotation marks) that Paul responds to in the second half. Or it may be that Paul is commenting on key statements from his earlier preaching in Corinth, although the absence of the slogans in his other letters makes this less probable. In any case, the persuasiveness of Paul's argument depends on Paul so well reflecting the hearers present views in his agreement with them on principle that they will be open to his qualification in practice.

If Paul were stressing the opening statement of agreement, this would be an argument from the structure of reality. But his point that their authority claims, which he concedes in principle, are not functional for themselves or others. In fact, Paul's agreement masks the extent of his qualification. What is offered as a simple qualification of the principle turns out to be a reversal in terms of advised conduct. Not only are sexual immorality and eating in temples out of bounds, but so are celibacy and acting on one's knowledge where others whose lives are affected do not share the same commitment. Paul would counter that the basic freedom still remains, since it is by an exercise of authority or knowledge that people are asked to limit themselves. Yet the result is limitation. And it is not clear that Paul will respect those who do not think it right to restrict this expression. Note the impersonal form of the opening statements claiming authority: "it is good" "it is authorized" "food is for " If these are Corinthian slogans, they may be imitating a judicial "it is forbidden," the series of permissions functioning as a kind of parody of legal prohibitions, perhaps formulated by those who teach. On the other hand, the claim, "we all have knowledge," with its first-person plural form, suggests another possible origin for the slogans.

All of them are brief, self-legitimating assertions that could have arisen as prophetic legitimating oracles justifying certain conduct or claims. Both the impersonal and first-person forms leave us in the dark about the sex of those who speak. The one statement that refers to male initiative, It is good for a man not to touch a woman," is met by Paul with the response that each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. Since Paul indicates that women are as active as men in making choices in this case, it does not seem reasonable to read a less-inclusive meaning into Paul's understanding of the other claims to authority. This suggests that there are women prophets in Corinth claiming that they have authority to do all things, that they all have knowledge, that they may eat what they like, that they have authority not to be touched by a man. These principles may have been practiced in Corinth and provoked Paul’s dissociation of principle from practice.

Argument Dissociating Thought from Reality

3: 18 If any among you in this age think they are wise, let them become fools that they may become wise.

8:2-3 If any think they know something, they do not yet know as they need to know. But if any love God, they are known by him.

10:12 So let any who think they stand watch out not to fall.

11:16 If any think they want to make an issue of this, we ourselves have no such custom as women prophesying with uncovered heads, nor do the churches of God.

14:37-38 If any think they are prophets or spiritual, let them recognize that the things (I write you about silence in the church) are a command of the Lord. 2 Whoever does not recognize this is not recognized.

This provoking of confident boasts, suddenly to deflate them as mere thought and not reality, is found only twice elsewhere in Paul's letters (Gal. 6:3; Phil. 3:4).3 In 1 Corinthians the argument spans the entire letter, appearing in five separate contexts. The final two uses of this argument come at the end of Paul's instructions about women in worship. His challenges are in the masculine plural, the form used to address men and women together. He anticipates that some people will want to make an issue of the requirement that women cover their heads when praying and prophesying. The words I translate want to make an issue of this," sometimes read "to be contentious," a literally meaning "to be victory-loving," show that Paul is expecting opponents. Women who prophesy are obvious candidates. Immediately after insisting that those who speak in tongues without interpreters, those who prophesy simultaneously, and those who are women be silent in the church, Paul challenges any who think they are l prophets or spiritual to recognize what he says or not be recognized. Women prophets, among others, must be intended.

In this argument and the one described above the same technique is applied to cut off debate, namely a challenge to those who claim to be confident to see that their confidence is based on what they think but not on reality-unless they concede point and restrict themselves. The double use of this argument in contexts where Paul's instructions concern women suggests that women 1 are not only intended among others but could be the focus of his attention. If so, the women within this address consider themselves "prophets" or’ “spiritual," are willing to contest Paul, and they expect to win. The question is whether the first three uses of this argument in these letter, also addressed to "any among you," may be preparing for the final challenges where women who prophesy are explicitly mentioned. In so, the net is intentionally thrown wide. Those who think they are wise are challenged become fools, those who think they have knowledge are challenged to love, those who think they are firmly founded are challenged not to fall. Although Paul concedes they gain their confidence in Christ (1:4-7, 30; 4:10; 8:6), it is rhetorically interpreted as self-assertion in contrast to humble modesty. The basic argument remains the same each} time it is used and indicates, not separate and unrelated problems in the church, but one problem: a wisdom, freedom, and fluency in the church perhaps particularly among its prophesying women-that threatens Paul's
gospel and leadership.

Argument Dissociating Private from Public
7:2, 8-9, 36 Due to sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband And I say to the single and widows, if they cannot exercise self-control, let them marry. And if anyone thinks he is acting improperly toward his virgin ... let them marry.

10:25 Eat [privately] whatever is bought in the market without any
considerations of conscience because the world is the Lord's and all that
is in it.

11:5a But every woman who prays and prophesies [in church] with uncovered head shames her head.

11:21-22a, 34a Each one goes ahead in eating his or her own meal with this one hungry and that one drunk. Have you no houses for eating and drinking? If anyone is hungry, let him or her eat at home so that you do not gather to be judged.

14:18-19a, 28 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than you all. But in church I would rather say five words with my mind in order to instruct others. If there is no interpreter, let [the speakers in tongues] be silent in church and speak rather to themselves and to God.

14:34-35 Let the women be silent in the churches. And if they want to learn, let them inquire of their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

16:2 On the first day of each week let each of you put something aside at home and save up whatever you can so that collecting will not be necessary when I come.

At several points Paul proposes that the Corinthians do at home activities that he considers disrupting or difficult when they gather. His argument dissociates the private from the public sphere of life and locates the church in the public sphere. Home is the place to satisfy hunger and thirst, not church. Even idol food bought in the market can be eaten at home without question. The money for the poor in Jerusalem is to be saved up at home. There are also kinds of speech that do not belong in church. Speaking in tongues is not to be permitted in church when there is no one on hand to interpret. This speaking should be done in private, "to self and to God," as Paul claims he does "more than you all." Finally, "If the women want to learn, let them inquire of their husbands at home." In order to keep the church undefiled, Paul seems to be making the home into a buffer zone for the people's energy, a place conceded to their lively interest in such things as food, sex, unveiled prayer, money, inquiry, 1 and ecstasy. All these matters, including money, are volatile, liable to stir up feeling and differences of opinion, and Paul may be trying to cool off the communal situation by sending these activities back to each home.

This would not mean defiling the homes to Paul since he understands the pollution to be located less in the act than in the threat of individual confidence to the community at large. Certain implications of this argument suggest further testing for women prophets. Paul's argument assumes that the Corinthians know the distinction of public and private but do not practice it in his sense. They may classify the church as a home, certain women's homes having become home to others. Paul's advocacy of marriage to prevent immorality only makes sense if many have chosen to live without marriage. Women, as the more socially restricted sex, would have particular advantage in taking on the less sex-specific roles within a community that included many single) people. Paul's directive would threaten this.

Paul's interest in sending the community meal home would also have particular impact on the women who were responsible in Greece for family food preparation. That he thinks money should be saved at home indicates that money once gathered is prone to be spent, possibly by women for food or drink. Paul's regulations of worship? conduct and speech as public behavior are particularly telling for the women, beginning as they do with his demand for their head covering and ending by silencing their voices in the community. They do not cover their heads whom praying and prophesying, probably are active in speaking in tongues with or without interpretation, and are not asking their own men questions at home. Paul's dissociation of private from public spheres suggests that the yeast Paul wants cleaned out of the church could be female. Or, to change the image, he may be trying. to send back home a Pandora's box of women's spiritual and physical energy that has given the church the richness and disruptiveness of a home.

Argument Dissociating Self-Benefit from Community Benefit

1:10; 3:3 Brethren, I beg you through the name of Jesus Christ our Lord that you all agree and that there not be schisms among you, but that you be restored in the same mind and the same knowledge. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and living in a human way.
8:9-11 Watch out lest your authority itself become a stumbling block to the weak. For if someone should see you who have knowledge seated in an idol's temple, will that one with a weak conscience not be encouraged to eat food offered to idols? So by your knowledge the one who is weak is lost, the brother for whom Christ died.

9:22 To the weak I have become weak so I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people so that in all ways I might save some.

10:24, 28-29a, 32-33 Let no one seek what is for himself or herself but what is for the other. But if someone should say to you, "This food has been offered to idols," do not eat it due to the one who pointed it out and to conscience. And I mean not your own conscience but the other person's Cause no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to God's church, as I myself please all people in all things, not seeking my own benefit but that of the many so they might be saved.

11:21-22 Each one goes ahead in eating his or her own meal with this one hungry and that one drunk. Have you no houses for eating and drinking? Or do you despise God's church and shame those who have nothing?

12:7, 24b-25 To each is given the manifestation of the spirit for the common benefit. But God has so arranged the body, giving greater honor to the lesser part so that there might be no schism in the body but that the parts might have the same care for each other.

13:5b [Love] does not seek its own benefit.

14:3-4, 12 Those who prophesy speak to people to build up and encourage and strengthen. Those who speak in tongues build themselves up, but those who prophesy build up the church. So you yourselves, since you are zealots of the spirit, seek the up building of the church in order to excel.

The argument dissociating self-benefit from community benefit is developed most explicitly in the two parts of 1 Corinthians "concerning idol food" (8:1-11:1) and "concerning spiritual gifts" (12:1-14:40). In each case it appears that Paul has picked up an exclamation of their God-given strength from the Corinthians' letter. They know that idols are nothing and demonstrate it in public eating of idol food. They exercise spiritual gifts and show that they are spiritual people. Paul affirms both their knowledge and gifts, but he wants to subordinate them to the common good. If by their knowledge a fellow believer reverts to idol worship, or by their gifts another person is discouraged or confused, then the church is not built up, the community is not served, and God's purpose for giving the knowledge and spirit is not realized. Instead each one is serving him or herself, which Paul's dissociation takes as the opposite of serving the common good . Paul makes the s.ame distinction more indirectly in two other sections of the letter.

He has heard of conflict within the church concerning leadership and the Lord's meal (1:10-4:21; 11:17-34), and he charges them with mutual jealousy and preference for their own meals with the implication that this is not for the common good. Paul does not dissociate self and community in other matters such as sexual offenses, marriage decisions, head covering, and resurrection. This is worth noting because Paul's argument from the common good in 1 Corinthians has sometimes been overdrawn, as if it were not one argument \among others but an objective description of the situation. Then he appears to be addressing a clique of egomaniacs flaunting their powers against ill cowering majority. Paul's dissociation of self-benefit and community-benefit would be no use to him if the people he addresses were not committed to the community. They probably see their freedom from food restrictions as a sign of their common new identity-as Paul does in other contexts (Gal 2:11-21; 3:27-28; 5:1-3) and their simultaneous prophecy and tongues as God's empowering of the community. Here they conceive the common good differently than Paul. He sees the common good served in Corinth by people restricting their self-expression of God's Spirit to prevent offenses.

They apparently see the common good served by freely celebrating their own empowerment and drawing others into this orbit. If so, they would no dissociate the community benefit from their own benefit It is remarkable that Patil nowhere uses the argument from the common good explicitly to defend or restrict women. The sexual offenses are never seen to be 'against women, nor to be committed by women against the good of others. Women's head covering is not said to benefit the church nor their bare heads to harm the church. Even the silencing of women, which appears within the argument preferring prophecy to tongues for the common good, is defended on other grounds. The closest thing to it, Paul's challenge to the women, "Did God's word originate from you? Or did it reach you alone?" (14:36) is more likely an argument against the Corinthians originality, when compared to his original preaching in Corinth and beyond Corinth, rather than a call for those who prophesy to hear each other in the community. It may not have been credible to argue direct that the restricting or silencing of women was a benefit to the community.

Argument Dissociating Shame from Honor

1:27-29~God chose the world's foolish things to shame those who are wise. God chose the world's weak things to shame those that are strong God chose the world's common and despised things, even things that are nothing, to make nothing those that are something, so that no human being might boast before God.

4:10, 14 We are fools for Christ's sake but you are-intelligent in Christ, we are weak but you strong, you are honored but we disgraced I write these things not to shame you, but to warn you as beloved children.

11:3-7 But I want you to know that of every man the head is Christ and the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. Any man who prays or prophesies with his head covered shames his head. And woman who prays and prophesies with her head uncovered shames her head, for it is one and the same as being shaven. For if a woman is not covered, let her even cut her hair. But if it is shameful for a woman to cut her hair or shave herself then let her be covered. For the man should not shave his head since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man.

11: 13-15 Judge for yourselves. Is it proper for a woman to pray to God uncovered? Or does nature itself not teach you that if a man has long hair, it is a disgrace to him. But if a woman has long hair, it is an •honor to her. For long hair was given her as a covering.

11:21-22 Each one goes ahead in eating his or her own meal with this one hungry and that one drunk. Have you no houses for eating and drinking? Or do you despise God's church and shame those who have nothing?

12:23a And the parts of the body we consider more disgraceful we clothe with extra honor.

14:34-35 Let the women be silent in the churches since it is not fitting for them to speak, but let them be subordinate as the law itself says. And if they want to learn anything, let them inquire of their husbands at home, for it is shameful for a woman to speak in church.

l 5:42-43a Even the resurrection of the dead is like this. It is sown perishable it is raised imperishable. It is sown in disgrace it is raised in honor.

In other letters Paul speaks of shame when denouncing shameful sins (Rom.1:26; 6:21; 2 Cor. 4:2; Phil. 3:19), or he speaks in the first person about not being ashamed of his work or the gospel (Rom. 1:16; 5:5; 2 Cor. 7:14; 9:4; 10:8; 11:21; Phil. 1:20). In 1 Corinthians he dissociates shame from honor to warn that it is possible to forfeit the dignity befitting a certain I human station. Sometimes the contrast is explicit and the word "disgrace" (atimia) is used- Paul is disgraced while they are honored; the disgraceful body parts are clothed with honor; long hair disgraces the man and honors the woman the body disgraced in death is raised in honor. Otherwise Paul uses the word "shameful" (aischros) or the transitive verb "to shame someone" (kataischunein, entrepein) and the focus shifts from the contrast with honor to the act that brings shame on a person. God actively chooses those not wise, powerful, or privileged to shame the wise, powerful, and privileged by not respecting the honor befitting their station (1:26-29).

Yet there is no sign that Paul sees this as a reversal of stations, because later he comes close to shaming the Corinthians for claiming just such honor for themselves (4:10-14). Although Paul does not conceive that those who are weak could become strong, he thinks that they should not be shamed by having their weakness exposed. So the poor should not be shamed into begging by others eating in front of them who would do better to eat at home if they are hungry, leaving the community to eat together what all eat (11:21-22, 33-34).


Likewise women should not shame themselves by being shaven, by praying or prophesying with head uncovered, or by speaking in the church (11:5-6; 14:34). This seems to reflect received views of how a woman should not expose her weakness and bring herself into shame: "Judge for yourselves, is it proper for a woman to pray to God uncovered?" (11:13) But even in the Mediterranean context this argument may have had little force, because 'Paul goes on to bolster it with various amplifications of the same argument: a woman's praying uncovered is no better than cutting or shaving her hair; praying covered is as natural as the long hair that naturally covers her. Intimations of homosexuality in men with long hair and perhaps men with covered heads also seem to be brought in as an indirect sanction against women who put off the head covering. Why women's head Shaving or male homosexuality is shameful is not investigated, there , being more persuasive force from the untested assumption that femininity is a weakness not to be exposed.

Paul thinks it possible to shame another by association: "every woman who prays and prophesies uncovered shames her head" (11:5), since "the head of woman is the man" (11:3). Paul even fears the women will shame the angels as well and "should have authority on the head because of the angels" (11:10). This reversed meaning of the words "have authority" suggests that Paul is reinterpreting these women's claim to have the right to prophesy uncovered: "to have authority on the head because of the angels" as they honor the angels by speaking in angels' tongues (11:10; 13:1).

Argument Dissociating Human from Divine Flesh from Spirit,

2:12-15; 3:la, 3b Yet we have not received the spirit of the world but the spirit that is from God so we might know the things given us by God. And we do not speak in words taught by human wisdom but taught by the spirit, determining spiritual things among the spiritual. But the ordinary person do not receive the things of God's spirit, for they are foolish to the person who is not able to know them, since they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person, on the other hand, discerns all things but is not discerned by anyone .... I myself, brethren, cannot speak to you as spiritual people but as fleshly. As long as there is still envy and strife among you, are you not fleshly and living in a human way?

6:15-17 Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Will I then take members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Impossible! Or do you not know that the one who joins himself with a prostitute is one body with her? For it says, "the two will be one flesh." But the one joined to the Lord is one spirit with him.

7:32b-34 The unmarried man is worried about the Lord's affairs, how to please the Lord. But the man who has married is worried about the world's affairs, how to please his wife, and he is divided. The unmarried woman and also the virgin is worried about the Lord's affairs so that she may be consecrated in body and spirit. The woman who has married is worried about the world's affairs, how to please her husband.

10:21-22 You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of daemons. You cannot partake in the table of the Lord and the table of daemons. Or are we to provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?

11:7 For the man should not cover his head since he is the image and glory of God. But the woman is the glory of the man.

11:20-21 When you come together it is not the Lord's meal that you eat. For each one goes ahead to eat his or her own meal with this one hungry and that one drunk.

15:50 But I say this, brethren: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor can the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Paul's rhetoric in 1 Corinthians again and again stresses the dissociation of divine and human, spirit and flesh. Using accumulation in argument and the shock tactics of the rhetorical question, antithesis and negation, he contrasts two kinds of conduct in Corinth. Whatever is not of the spirit is of the flesh and is antithetical to it. Envy and strife are human so they are not spiritual, one's own meal cannot be the Lord's meal, the man's glory cannot be God's glory, the perishable cannot be imperishable. In these arguments Christ is not a mediating figure but represents the divine side of the disjunction. To participate in Christ excludes participating in anything human or fleshly or semi divine (as the Greeks saw daemons to be).

Paul does not give arguments to support this dissociation but assumes it and appeals to it by attacking certain Corinthian conduct. This suggests that he could be appealing to a dissociation they already are making when claiming to be spiritual. Yet their understanding of spirit and flesh, Christ and world, has led to conduct different than Paul's view supports. In the leadership struggle and in the practice of the Lord's meal, they are able to tolerate more variety of opinion and practice than Paul. They do not expect the Lord's spirit to produce resolution of the leadership struggle or an ordered meal in contrast to strife, disorder, and arbitrary spiritual experience in the world. Rather, the spirit seems to be known for generating multiple authorities in contrast to a world of stated authority. In sexual practice, some Corinthians abandon marriage while others form irregular alliances and no one adjudicates. In prayer and prophecy they exhibit the spirit without distinguishing gifts or determining proper dress. Paul meets this by requiring marriage where necessary to block the greater threat to men of the prostitute's flesh, and by requiring the woman to cover her head because she is the glory of the male over against God's glory reflected in Christ, man's head. At these points Paul's male perspective associates human from divine by taking woman as the fleshly or dangerous side of man that must be spurned or tamed before God. But there is no sign that the Corinthians see women as less spiritual or take the wealth of the spirit among them as competing with God's glory. On the contrary, they may claim m their prayer and prophecy to mediate between God and-1 humanity so that through the spirit the perishable does inherit imperish-ability and the primal dissociation is breached

Quasi-Logical Arguments

Argument from Definition

1:18 For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to. us who are being saved it is the power of God.

11 :3 But I want you to know that of every man the head is Christ, and the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.

13:4-8a Love waits patiently; love shows kindness; it does not envy love does not, boast; it does not exalt itself, does not act shamefully, does not seek its own advantage, does not provoke, does not count up evil, does not rejoice in injustice but joins those rejoicing in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

14:33 For God is not the God of disruption but the God of peace as in all the churches of the saints.

Definition as an argument depends less on correspondence with them empirical reality than on its own claim that something logically or universally has a certain character. So Paul does not seem to justify his definitions with evidence. But defining seldom happens where meanings are not contested, and competing definitions are at least implied. Paul's definition argue for themselves indirectly by incorporating as much common sense and folk wisdom as can be combined with his point, and the definitions cited previously also confirm themselves by defining the term in more than one way. Paul’s definition of "the word of the cross" takes from the apocalyptic worldview the image of one group perishing and another being saved to show that the cross can be both the world's foolishness and God's power. The triple definition of "head" leans on common views of Christ being both Lord of the believer and son of God, sandwiching between them the phrase on woman. The parallel statements about men and women that follow depend on the definition and seem to confirm it. "Love" is defined by a long series of verbs that tell what it does, in contrast to statements telling what knowledge, tongues, and prophecy do.

Finally, even "God" is defined antithetically so that God's standard association with peace turns out to require the absence of the disruption that Paul wants to silence. There is no direct evidence showing that the Corinthian women or men used definitions that Paul is reworking or that they reworked his lf definitions, although some of this is almost unavoidable in verbal confrontations. Paul's definitions do indicate that those he is trying to persuade do not share his views. They do not consider the cross as God's foolish wisdom and God's weak power. Yet he assumes they possess a basic knowledge that Christ was crucified and some cultural understanding that crucifixion means execution and shame. To them the weakness and foolishness of the cross more likely represent the obvi.ous weakness and foolishness of human life, the life out of which God raises Christ and those who are in Christ. Paul's definition of ''head" indicates that they do not see Christ as one who links woman through man to God in a chain of dependency or subordination. The opposite view must, in some way, take Christ as an effective mediator of divine presence and as an agent of human participation in this mediating. The self-humbling that Paul extols in his definition of love would not have been their mode as much as the self-expressing possible in tongues, knowledge, and prophecy with which he contrasts it. If God is praised among them as the God of peace, it would have been in a different sense than the peace kept by restrictions to prevent disruption. Definition is a powerful rhetorical tool because it gives universal warrant to affirmative claims. The way it accomplishes this provides not a precise pinpointing but a general indication of the views that are being denied

Argument from Justice

3:5-8 (continued in 9-15; 4:1-6, 15) What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord gave to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused growth. 'He who plants and he who waters are equal and each will receive his own reward according to his own labor.

7:2-4 (continued in 10-11, 12-14, 16, 28, 32-34) But due to sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife and each woman her own husband. Let the man give what he owes to his wife, likewise also the wife to the husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but the husband does. Likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body but the wife does.

9:5-6 Do we not have the authority to have our sister-wives travel with us, as do the rest of the apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas? Or do Barnabas and I alone lack the authority not to work for a living?

11:4-5a, ll-12 Any man who plays or prophesies with his head covered shaves his head. And any woman who prays and prophesies with her head uncovered shaves her head .... But the woman is not apart from the man nor the man apart from the woman in the Lord.

For just as the woman is [created] from the man, so the man is [born] through the woman, and all things are from God It is logical that identical treatment be given in identical cases and equivalent treatment in equivalent cases. Rhetoric calls this the rule of justice. Paul combats divisiveness in Corinth by comparing himself and Apollos to coworkers who are both due respect. Since cases are never exactly equal, Paul manages to draw out of the argument from justice the conclusion that he has a greater claim on them. He argues for his right to have church support from the rights given the other apostles-though he later refuses to use this right and claims an advantage from this refusal (9:1-18).

From these two arguments we learn that the Corinthian women and others in Corinth do not see their itinerant leaders as equivalent. They apparently value some leaders more than others and may show this financially. In the other two passages the equivalence is between men and women. Paul invokes the argument from justice ten times in his discussion of marriage. What is expected of the men is also expected of the women and vice versa. This could show Paul's respect for the Corinthian women in a culture where there is no equivalence in marriage. But this does not explain the repetition and amplification of parallel clauses so far beyond what would be necessary to make the point. The handy word, "each other," used only once in the chapter, could have made the same point more quickly. Paul may be dramatizing equivalence in order to gain support from those whom it would most benefit-the women.

But why an appeal to them? It may be that the women are less ready than the men to return to the marriage commitments that Paul now widely advocates in the wake of sexual offenses in the church. The fact that the rule of justice may be used to give two groups equally" what one group wants or takes for granted and the other group is not want can be seen in the argument on. head covering. The different in its of view of the two parties are clearer because the equivalence is only rhetorical. Each party is said to shame his or her head when praying prophesying. But a foregoing definition and several following explanations use the form of equivalent speech to argue its exact opposite, namely the different head covering is a sign of one group being subordinate to the other.

Argument from Divine Reciprocity or Retribution

3:16-17 (cf 6:18-20) Don't you know that you people are God's temple and God's spirit lives in you? Anyone who corrupts God's temple, God will bring down to corruption. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

5:1, 4b-5, 13b It is even heard that there is sexual immorality among you, and such immorality as is not even practiced among the Gentiles, so that someone has his father's wife. When you are gathered with my spirit in the power of our Lord Jes us, such a man as this is to be delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh in order that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord "Cast the evil one out from among you!"

10:7-10, 14(continued 10:19-22) Do not be idolaters as some of them were, as it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and stood up to play." And let us not be sexually immoral as some of them were and twenty-three thousand fell in one day. Nor let us test the Lord as some of them tested the Lord and perished by the snakes. Nor conspire as some of them conspired and were destroyed by the Destroyer. Therefore, my loved ones flee idolatry!"

11:20, 27-30 So when you come together it is not the Lord's meal that you eat .... Therefore whoever eats the loaf or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily is guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. But let the people all test themselves and in this way eat from the loaf and drink from the cup. For those who eat and drink without discerning the body seal their own sentence with eating and drinking. This is the reason many among you are weak and sick and several die.

Divine reciprocity or retribution for human acts appears in 1 Corinthians in two ways. On the one hand, the "divine passive" is used to state that God reciprocates and surpasses all human knowledge of God: "If any think that they know something, they do not yet know as they need to know. But if any love God, they are known by him" (8:2-3). "Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I have been known" (13:12b). Whoever does not recognize this is not recognized" (14:38). In the last of these Paul uses God's withholding of recognition as a threat against any prophets who do not recognize as valid his silencing of uninterrupted tongues, simultaneous prophecy, and all women's speech in the church.

The full citations above show a second kind of argument from divine reciprocity or retribution in which a sentence of death is announced for violating God. After Paul indicates that some leader in Corinth, perhaps Apollos, has been building with materials that will burn at God's judgment though he will be saved "as through fire" (3:12-15), he concludes by saying that .whoever corrupts God's temple, which they are, will go down to corruption in the grave. Later Paul uses the same image of the body as the spirits temple to warn the Corinthians against associating with prostitutes (6:18-20). Here he does not explicitly threaten them with death, but this could be implied in his first pollution warning, "Flee immorality!" In the case of the man living with his father's wife, Paul almost moves out of the realm of argument by announcing the sentence of destruction as a self-fulfilling curse. 4 But a careful reading reveals that Paul understands that the judgment he has passed depends on their communal) execution. of it. The sentence he gives is part of his effort to persuade them and remains an argument in the form of a proleptic curse.


Paul's second pollution warning, "Flee idolatry!" shows that he opposes their eating idol food, not so much because it offends others but because it ,violates God (10:1-22). The Israelites in the desert are taken as the type or model of idolatry, and for their conspiring they are said to have been destroyed by the Destroyer. The problem Paul sees for the Corinthians at the daemons tables is that they worship nonexistent daemons in place of God and provoke God's jealous retribution. The same critique is applied to their common meals which, in Paul's judgment, are not the Lord’s meal. Because “some are hungry and some drunk" they do not discern the body m the loaf, making them guilty of Christ's death so that "many are weak and sick and several die" (11:21-30). These deaths come from a sacral violation of God's exclusive claim on them as a body, which is identified as the Lord's body in the meal. In these arguments from retribution, the primary group addressed is not the Corinthian women, but they are included because Paul attacks the community at' large for being "bloated" by claiming that "we all know" and that "all things are authorized" (4:8; 5:2, 6; 8:1; 6:12; 10:23). Apparently they do not see God on the defense, vindicating the divine glory by capital punishment, but on the offense, giving people gifts whose exercise glorifies both themselves and God. Twice Paul draws on the threat of divine retribution when trying to control the Corinthian women's speech. He requires head covering for the women because he sees them reflecting the glory of men, thus competing with Gods glory worship (11:5-10). Does Paul avoid threatening destruction because women are too weak and the threat of shame should be sufficient .or because women in this community are too strong? Paul's words after silencing the women, "Whoever does not 'recognize this is not recognized (14:38), do not explicitly call down death, but they function much like his earlier words handing over the man "for the destruction of the flesh" (5:5).

Arguments Based on the Structure of Reality

Argument from What ls Written
Quotations stating part of an argument

14:21 In the law it is written, "In strange tongues and with foreign lips I will speak to this people and so they will not hear me, says the Lord." Therefore tongues are a sign not to believers but to unbelievers.

5:13 You are supposed to judge the insiders, are you not? But God judges the outsiders. "Cast the evil one out from among you." See also 1:30-31; 2:9; 15:54; and without formulary introductions 10:20; 14:25; 15:32, 33.

Quotations confirming an argument already stated

9:4, 8b-10a Do we not have the right to food and drink? Or does the law not also say these things? For in the law of Moses it is written, "Do not muzzle the threshing ox." Is it the ox that God is concerned about? Does he not rather speak completely on our account?

10:7b, 11 Do not become idolaters like some of them were. As it is written, "The people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play." But these things happened to them typo-logically and were written down as a warning for us upon whom the end of the ages has come. See also 1:19; 3:19, 20; 6:16; 10:26; and without formulary introductions 2:16; 15:25-27.

Allusions to particular written traditions
5: 7b For our Passover has been sacrificed, Christ.

10:5-6 But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were strewn out in the wilderness. But these things have become prototypes for us, in order that we not become people who crave evil as those people craved.

11:7-9 For a man ought not to cover his head, being the image and glory of God, but the woman is the glory of man. For man is not from a woman, but woman from man. And man was not created on woman's account, but woman on man's account.
See also 10:21, 22; 11:25; 13:5; 15:45, 47; possibly 11:3, 10.

Appeals to the written tradition or the law in general

4:6 But I have applied these things to myself and Apollos on your account, brethren, so you might learn by our example the principle of not The Rhetoric Characteristic of 1 Corinthians I 29 going beyond what is written and so no one of you become bloated in favor of one against the other.

14:34 Let the women be silent in the churches, for it is not fitting for them to speak, but let them be subordinate as the law itself says. See also 7:19.

Quotations are less frequent in 1 Corinthians than in the letters where Paul works out the new believer's relation to Israel, but he nonetheless often appeals to written authority. Once he cites an unknown text (2:9) and once the poet Menander (15:33). But his basic authorities are the Jewish law and writings that he quotes on matters from the community's moral, financial, and worship practices to the most general truths and signs of the time. Paul not only applies these texts to Corinth but claims they were written down precisely to warn and encourage God's people in the present final days (9:10; 10:11). The accent is on warning. Paul primarily uses the Scripture as a rein on the Corinthians, including the women. He thinks that they have abandoned the principle of not going beyond what is written when they become bloated in, favor of one leader over another (4:6).

Comparing them to the Israelites in the desert, they are tempted by the sheer weight of gifts to overestimate their strength and become lost in the wilderness. He warns: "It is written, 'I will wipe out the wisdom of the wise'" (1 :19), and "Cast the evil out from among you" (5:13). Even the positive words written about God s gifts tend to come down on the Corinthians in a restricting way: God has revealed "what eye has not seen," but they are too human to receive it (2:10; 3:1-4); "The world is the Lord's and its fullness," but do not eat the food on account of someone else's conscience (10:26-29a); "Our Passover is sacrificed, Christ," but this means that their yeas~ faith must be cleaned out of the church. If the Corinthians themselves quote what is written, it is more probable they do so to affirm what is taking place among them. Twice Paul appeals to what is written to define roles in the community by telling what women should and should not do (11:3-10; 14:34). The women are to cover their heads when praying or prophesying. As in his warning from what happened to the Israelites in the desert (10:5-10), Paul emphasizes his point by drawing on several topically related stories (Gen. 1:27; 2:18, 22-23; possibly 3:16 and 6:2). The women have not covered themselves in worship and have made something of this that he opposes. The fact that he alludes to these texts without quoting them shows that he thinks they are known in Corinth and also suggests the possibility that the Corinthian women are using them to speak about God's image and glory or in a different way, as a direct quotation of the key text might encourage.

"So God created the human being in his own image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them" (Gen. 1:27). The second time Paul regulates women's conduct he says they are not to speak in the churches but should be subordinate "as even the law itself says" (14:34). Lacking a written text requiring women's silence as traditional in the synagogue, this short, categorical statement may be the best leverage he can get from the law. If there is an exegetical tradition justifying women's prophecy in Corinth, Paul does not want to take it on directly. What he does say shows that women's speech in the Corinthian church is of such significance that his final rule concerning prophecy should be devoted to excising it with the quick, wide brush of the law.

Argument from God's Calling

1:1-2, 9 Paul, called by God's will to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, to God's church which is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those in every place who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, theirs as well as ours. God is faithful, through whom you were called into the partnership of his son Jesus Christ.

1:22-24, 26-27a, 29 Whereas the Jews ask for signs and the Greeks seek for wisdom, we ourselves preach Christ crucified, to the Jews an offense, to the Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For look at your calling, brethren. There were not many wise by human standards, not many powerful, not many privileged. But God chose the world's foolish things to shame those who are wise. so that no human being might boast before God.

7:15-18ab_, 20-21, 24 But if the non-believer leaves the believer, let him or her leave. The brother or sister is not bound in this case. But God has called you in peace. For what do you know, wife, but that you might save your husband? Or what do you know, husband, but that you might save your wife? Only let each person live as the Lord has portioned out to each one, as God has called each one. It is this that I command in all the churches. Was anyone called already circumcised? Let him not reverse it. Let each remain in the calling in which that one was called. Were you called a slave? Do not let it bother you .... Brethren, let each one remain with God in the state that he or she was when called.

In the salutation and opening prayer of thanks Paul sets up the rhetorical situation in terms of God's call. He is called to be apostle to them and they are called to be saints, people set apart, consecrated, and holy. This much is typical of Paul's letters. But in this letter he goes on to stress the communal nature of this call. It extends to all those in every place who call The Rhetoric Characteristic of 1 Corinthians I 31 on Christ's name-Christ is "theirs as well as ours" (1:2)-and it is a calling into the "partnership" of Christ (1:9). This could indicate that the Corinthians affirm their own 4istinctiveness among churches when they speak of God's call. Paul's accent on the wider partnership of Christ serves to remind them of the broad base of his own authority and set the stage for his discipline of them in terms of what other churches does Paul's second point is that God's call reverses all peoples desires and values but not their concrete social status.

The Jews who want signs and the Greeks who want wisdom both find, when they are called, that the crucified Christ is God's power and wisdom. Paul says that not many of the Corinthians were wise, powerful, or privileged and concludes that God chose the foolish to shame the wise and silence their boasts before God. He does not say that the one-time foolish do this by becoming wise. Rather they shame the wise by sharing in God's own foolishness that is wiser than human beings. This argument indicates two things about the Corinthians. They were largely uneducated and without economic power and social standing when they were called. Otherwise Paul s argument OD this basis would not be credible. But at the same time it tells us that they did not stay in this state. Otherwise Paul s argument defending the foolishness of the gospel would be unnecessary.

Everything they are they have become since their calling rich, filled, and ruling; wise, powerful, and honored (4:8, 10; 1:5-7). They may see themselves called out of lowness, not into it. But Paul, who began his life in privilege, made a choice: "I chose to know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was among you in weakness and fear and trembling" (2:2). Here he argues from God's calling that those who had no choice belong in the low station trey had when called. Similarly in chapter 7, Paul charges the "brother or sister" married to a nonbeliever: "Only let each live as the Lord has portioned out to each one, as God has called each one" (7:15-17). This might be taken to mean a general commitment to God, not the need to stay in a social position, were it not for the social examples of circumcision and slavery that follow and reassert the general rule on remaining as called. In the middle of this discussion Paul can only mean that marriage, like circumcision and slavery, should not be a matter of Christian freedom but is given by one's situation when called. The contrary position of the Corinthians must reflect, among other factors, that most of them lacked Paul's social standing when called he same rule would have much less impact on him as a circumcised single, free male - even where he can choose not to use certain rights than on the non-Jewish, married, slave woman.

Argument from Universal Church Practice

4:16-17 I beg you then, be imitators of me. For this very reason I sent Timothy to you who is my loved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus as I teach them everywhere in each church.

7: 17 Only let each one live as the Lord has portioned out, each one as God has called. And so I have directed in all the churches.

11:16 If any think they want to make an issue of this, we ourselves have no such custom [as women praying and prophesying with uncovered heads] nor have the churches of God.

14:32-34, 36 Even the spirits of the prophets are subordinate to the prophets, for God is not the God of disruption but the God of peace, is in all the churches of the saints. Let the women be silent in the churches since it is not fitting for them to speak, but let them be subordinate as the law itself says . Or did God's word originate from you? Has it reached as far as you only?

At least four times in 1 Corinthians, and only in this one of his letters, does Paul cite the conduct of the churches at large as normative for one church. After defending his preaching of the cross for four chapters against what he calls the worldly wisdom of some in Corinth, Paul warns them as a father and points to Timothy as a model. Through him they can imitate Paul's ways that he claims to teach "everywhere in each church" (4:17). Paul is appealing to the whole church in an effort to sanction his way. Of life, which he has described as the burlesque act and scum of the world m contrast to the Corinthians own rich and regal posture (4:6-13). This first use of the argument from church practice indicate the distinctiveness of the Corinthian church and their confidence m their pos1t10n. The argument is used a second time to get the Corinthians to curtail their withdrawals from marriage partners.

In a situation where some abstain within marriage and others have left each other or left nonbelievers (7:1-16), he says, "Let everyone live the life that the Lord has portioned out to them in which God has called them. This is my arrangement in all the churches" (7:17). This rule is then grounded in church practice concerning circumcision and slavery, and each example allows him to repeat the rule again. Far from being a digression from Paul's theme, this section is carefully constructed to coin a rule that gives the sanction of. all the churches to the married staying married in Corinth, a rule greatly impacting women in a society where marriage for women was almost universal and quit restrictive. The final two uses of the argument from church practice are directly related to restrictions on women, suggesting- the possibility that it is particularly the Corinthian women's conduct that stand~ out from other churches. Paul ends his string of arguments for women s head covering with words that anticipate opposition, "If any think they will make an issue The Rhetoric Characteristic of 1 Corinthians I 33 of this, we have no such custom, nor do the churches of God" (11:16).

For the third time the authority of what other churches do is identified with Paul's own ways, arrangements, or customs, indicating that what sound like a claim about the church everywhere are more likely arguments based on other churches he has founded. The fourth use of the argument from church practice appears just before Paul's silencing of the women: "Even the spirits of the prophets are subordinate to the prophets, for God is not a God of disruption but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints" (14:32-33). Whether it is the subordination of all the prophets' spirits or God's nature as a God of peace that Paul claims is found in all the churches, this argument from universal church practice claims confirmation from many cities that peace in God's church reigns everywhere else but in Corinth. It justifies the silencing of the women that follows abruptly, this without requiring Paul to claim that everywhere women are forbidden to speak, which he could hardly have made credible. The contrast between Paul's and the Corinthians relation to other churches is evident in his final questions directed to the women in Corinth, "Or did God's word originate from you? Has it reached as far as you only?" The masculine plural form of the final word, "only," shows that Paul cannot mean the women are claiming to be the font of wisdom against the men in Corinth. The context suggests an inclusive masculine in which the women addressed represent all those in Corinth who claim through prophecy to be an independent source and destination of God's word. In contrast, Paul sees the word being carried by people like himself from Palestine to and beyond Corinth, making the Corinthians essentially receivers who should accept and practice the faith in the way he has taught it elsewhere.

Argument from the Lord's Command

7:10-11 To the married I order, not I but the Lord, that a woman not separate from her husband-but if she should disparate, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband-and that a man not divorce his wife.

9:13-15a Don't you know that those who perform the temple rites eat food from the temple, those who serve at the altar partake at the altar? So also the Lord ordered those who proclaim 'the gospel to get their living from the gospel. But I myself make use of none of these things.

14:27, 29, 34, 37-38 If any speak in tongues, let two or at most three speak, and one after another, and let one interpret. And let two or three prophets speak and let others discern what they say. Let the women be silent in the churches since it is not fitting for them to speak, but let them be subordinate as the law itself says. If any think they are prophets or spiritual people, let them recognize that the things I write you are a command of the Lord. Whoever does not recognize this is not recognized.

Paul gives the final weight to an order by citing a command of the Lord three times in 1 Corinthians, and not elsewhere in his letters. 6 On his own authority he has begun to exclude divorce when he substitutes the Lord's I command that wife not separate from husband nor husband leave wife. The L argument that the church must feed its leaders has already been made by analogy, Scripture, and tradition when Paul secures it with the Lord's order that those who proclaim the gospel are to get their living from it. In both of these cases the command is very specific and synoptic parallels confirm that these were known as instructions handed down from Jesus.7 The third instance is Paul's final argument for church order after he has given specific grounds for silencing those who speak in tongues without interpreters, those who prophesy simultaneously, and women who speak in church. He concludes by challenging all who consider themselves prophets or spiritual people to recognize what he has said as the Lord's command.

This challenge to the spiritual suggests that Paul is not referring to some unattested saying of Jesus but to a command he has received spiritually (cf. 2:6; 2 Cor.12:8-9; 13:3; Gal. 1:16).The authority Paul attributes to this command seems to be greater than the authority of the first two words of the Lord that are immediately followed by exceptions. Here the next words are, "Whoever does not recognize this is not recognized." These arguments from the Lord's command apply to the whole church but particularly to the women. The command against divorce is applied to women first and an additional line is spoken about them alone: "But if she should be separated, let her stay unmarried or be reconciled with her husband." Whereas the synoptic prohibitions against remarriage define it as adultery (Mark 10:11-12; Matt. 5:32; Luke 16:18), Paul's conditional clause and positive advice show he wants to draw women back toward their husbands. But to do this the concession of staying single seems to be necessary, a kind of second line of defense where the tide of women leaving marriage cannot be held back by the Lord's word alone.


The command of the Lord to feed those who carry the gospel falls more on the women who do the feeding. Paul does not interpret the order as his obligation to depend on their hospitality (cf. 9:14; Luke 10:4-8; Matt. 10:9-11), but as their obligation to support him. This means that his refusal to take what is his due can be interpreted as an unpaid obligation on the Corinthians' part and a "ground for boasting" on his own part (9:15). Immediately after silencing women in the church Paul appeals to the Lord's command to regulate the prophets. His inclusive masculine address shows he is speaking not only to women but to all who claim to be spiritual including those speaking in tongues without interpreters and those prophesying simultaneously or at length. But because his restrictions on speakers in tongues and on prophets require only some adjustments in their conduct, it is the women's categorical silencing that best explains the heavy sanctions of the Lord's command and the final "Whoever does not recognize this is not recognized." Intent on persuading them, Paul chooses their prophetic mode of challenging with the divine word. In this spiritual showdown he demands that they demonstrate their spiritual insight by recognizing the prophetic command of the Lord that they no longer speak of the community as prophets. They have only two options. They can
capitulate in silence. Or they can take up Paul's rhetorical challenge to all who think themselves prophets or spiritual to test his spiritual judgment of what is and what is not the Lord's command.

Arguments Establishing the Structure of Reality

Argument from the Model of Paul and of Christ

4: 15-17~. Though you have many caretakers in Christ, you do not have many fathers for it was I who gave you birth in Christ Jesus through the gospel. .So I plead with you, become imitators of me. For this very reason I sent to you Timothy, my loved and faithful child in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus.

7:6-7 I say this [about the need for sexual partners] as a concession not as a command. I would rather have all people be as I myself am. At each one has his or her own gift from God, some in this way and some in that.

8:9, 13 Watch lest your very authority become a stumbling-block to the weak. For if food offends my brother, I will never again eat meat so my brother will not be caused to stumble.

9:2~-2~ I do :111 things for the gospel's sake in order to become a participant in it. Don t you know that all the runners in the stadium run, but only one takes the prize? So run that you seize it!

10:32-11:1 Be no offense either to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God, just as I please everyone in all things, not seeking my own advantage but that of many, so they might be saved. Become imitators of me as I myself am of Christ.

13:9-11 For we know partially and we •prophesy partially. But when the perfect comes, what is partial will be done away with. When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man I did away with childish things.

14: 18-20 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you. But in the church I would rather speak five words with my mind than a thousand words in tongues. Brethren, do not be children in thought. Rather be children in evil but be mature in thought.

In 1 Corinthians Paul presents himself as a model for one purpose, to encourage the maturity of voluntary sacrifice. He either cannot or will not require them to give up the conduct in question, but he draws them in that direction by holding up his own voluntary sacrifices as a model. In the passages quoted he models for them hardship and shame, celibacy, not eating meat, not using apostolic rights and freedom, not seeking one's own advantage, not settling for the partial knowledge of prophecy, (speaking to the church in tongues. His arguments suggest that those he addresses are wise, confident, sexually active, meat-eating, no disciplined, and self-seeking prophets and speakers in tongues. This may be more caricature than solid fact, but Paul's argument can only work if they are gifted Lin speech and expressive in life style.

In various ways Paul appeals to the structure of reality in order to establish himself as an example for the Corinthians he was their father in Christ, all must serve the community benefit, hard work wins the reward, and maturity is better than childishness. But as a model for them Paul goes beyond these arguments to establish himself as a new structure of reality from which generalizations can be drawn. Through him, he says, they can imitate Christ, the ultimate particular model (11:1). The effectiveness of this argument depends on the hearers and Paul sharing a common understanding of Christ by which he can support the voluntary giving-up that he is advocating. He is apparently thinking of Christ's death as sacrifice "Christ our Passover is sacrificed ";"You were bought at a high price "The brother for whom Christ died"; "This is my body for you" (5:7; 6:20; 8:11; 11:24).

Elsewhere Paul applies this early Christian view more schematically as a model for believers, describing Christ's downward path from equality with God to the cross and God's corresponding act raising him to enthronement as Lord over all creation (Phil. 2:1-11). There are signs that the Corinthians do not share Paul's interpretation of Jesus' death and rising and do not imitate the life he has modeled after it. His strong accent on the crucified Christ as God's chosen foolishness (1:17-2:8) seems to oppose some view in Corinth of Christ as God's exalted wisdom and glory. And Paul's final argument that reserves resurrection as a future hope for the dead, only then including survivors, may be countering a Corinthian affirmation of Christ as the present and expanding life of those who believe. If the Corinthians take Christ's death as their point of entry into identification with him and model their lives on his resurrection as their new and powerful upward path, they would not be persuaded by Paul's model of Christ's voluntary down way-unless Paul were able to generate in them a new experience of Christ according to this model.


Argument by Analogy to Christ's Subordination to God

3:21-23 So let no one boast in human beings. For all things are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or world or life or death or present 0 ; future, all things are yours and you are Christ's and Christ is God's.
11:3 But I want you to know that of every man the head is Christ and the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. '

15:23-2 Each in its own order: Christ, the first fruit, then those who are Christ s at his coming, then the end when he hands the kingdom over to God and father after he has destroyed every rule and authority and power, for he must rule until "he puts all enemies under his feet." The last enemy destroyed is death. For "he subordinated all things under his feet." But when it says that "all things" are subordinated, it is clear that it excludes the one who subordinates all things to him. Yet when all things are subordinated to him, then the son will subordinate even himself to the one who subordinated all things to him, in order that God may be all in all.

Paul speaks explicitly of a subordination of Christ to God only in 1 Corinthians. 8 Three times in this letter Paul takes up a pair of terms in human experience and subordinates one term to the other as lower to higher, the higher term to Christ, and Christ to God. In each context the point being debated is not the relation of Christ and God but the order of the original two terms. This indicates that Christ is being subordinated to God as an argument to confirm distinctive ordering of two other terms, possibly a reversal of their order• in the minds of the hearers. The analogy here does not appeal to a better-known human relation but to a divine relation constructing human reality less by a suggestive parallel case than by an aufuoritative divine case. In the first instance Paul responds to the Corinthians' 'Im Paul's!" 'Im ApoIIos!I'm Cephas! With his own argument and conclusion, "all these are yours whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, but you are Christ's and Christ is Gods (1:12; 3:21-23). He reverses their possessive language by saying that they possess their leaders. He also substitutes Christ as their successor and confirms this subordination to Christ by Christ's subordination to God.

Apparently the Corinthians do not understand their relation Christ through baptism as one of being owned-at least not in a way that conflicts with their allegiance to persons who baptized them. Corinthian prophets may see their baptizers as mediators of the Christ who now speaks prophecies through them. Near the end of 1 Corinthians Paul again speaks of Christ's subordination ~ Go~ in a complex argument against certain Corinthians. He argues that in spite of Christ’s resurrection, they remain subject to death until death is at last made subject to Christ at his triumph, and then ultimately Christ will be made subject to God. Paul's final doxological statement of God's single sovereignty becomes a sanction for this chain of subordinations. This suggests that the Corinthians, whom Paul wants to persuade, do not accept Paul's ordering of the first two terms by which their lives are still seen to be under the power of death. In contrast, they see death having already given way to the life that became theirs through Christ, a dynamic probably expressed differently than in any sequence of.

Subordination Midway in Paul's letter a third argument from Christ’s subordination to God is presented as a triple definition of "head": Christ is man's head, man is woman's head, and God is Christ's' head. By placing woman's subordination to man between the two theological, subordinations, Paul tries to defend it from the opposition he anticipates (11:16). If the pattern seen in the two earlier arguments holds in this instance, and Paul is reversing the Corinthians order of two terms, his subordination of woman to man counters some Corinthian experience of male dependence on w6men. The cultic context of this argument suggests the possibility of some special role of women in worship, perhaps in the mediation of God in prayer and prophecy, the two roles Paul named as requiring head covering. If women's authority is based on their prophetic role, any subordination of others to them would have been functional rather than prescribed by law legitimated by subordination of Christ for God. Paul's appeal to divine subordination in each ,instance shows that the people he wants to persuade already consider Christ as their key link to God. The fact that they do not understand Christ as a middle term between levels of subordination to God raises the question of how Christ is understood. The first argument suggests the model of mediating Christ rather than being owned by Christ, the second, dynamic life rather than assured waiting, the third, women's spoken expression of Christ rather than their subordination. The common element is Christ as God's transforming Presence being extended in and through them. Paul expects them to oppose exchanging this active role for one defined by subordination and exchanging this Christ who is the mediating spirit of God for a Christ who is the cosmic model of submission.