Abstract
Part of the excitement of reading Paul’s letters is that one is present at the point where the Christian movement is beginning to shape its beliefs and practices. Often such development is prompted by local controversies.
In 1 Cor 8 the question is: should members of the church in Corinth accept an invitation to dine in one of the many temples in the city where meat served would have been sacrificed to ‘idols’. Some members of the church had been spotted by other members, eating food offered to spirits, gods, goddesses, idols. And this had proved very disturbing.
Here Paul is forced to deal with the practical challenges faced by a new, monotheistic religion as it develops in a context still dominated by animistic beliefs in spirits and gods and goddesses.
He deals with the matter in a somewhat exploratory manner. He first sets out a confident monotheistic belief: we know that ‘no idol in the world really exists . . . there is no God but one.’ Then, quite surprisingly, he interjects: ‘even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods and lords’. But he’s still not finished. He wraps it all up in a strong statement of Christ-centred monotheistic faith: ‘for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and one Lord, Jesus Christ through whom are all things and through whom we exist.’
So, should they eat food offered to idols or not? Paul asks those who deny the reality of such spirits and therefore have no scruples about eating meat in the local temples to consider the consequence of their actions for other ‘weaker’ members with deep roots in animistic belief. What if their carefree attitude towards meat sacrificed to idols were to undermine the nascent faith of those who had grown up in a world peopled by spirits?
Paul is clear: ‘if food is the cause of their falling, I will never eat meat, so that I may not cause one of them to fall.’ His verdict is pastoral and pragmatic. However correct your beliefs about the non-existence of evil spirits, if the way you behave is causing others to falter in their faith, stop it!
It is fascinating to see how Paul works here. There is no doubting the depths of his theological convictions: God, the one God, source of all reality has revealed Godself to us through the Son, the source of all compassion, consolation (2 Cor 1:3–7) and renewal (2 Cor 5:17). Equally he allows that there are more things in the world than that might suggest: there are dark forces of evil, ‘spirits and idols.’ Faced with difficult decisions, what will ultimately count is the sense of God’s compassion and love, God’s care for the weak and vulnerable.
Alongside the conviction, there is a provisionality about the way Paul expresses himself. 1 Cor 8:1–3 he talks about different kinds of knowledge. ‘All of us possess knowledge, but knowledge of itself is not necessarily good.’ Knowledge puffs us up, can make us proud, complacent and inconsiderate. What we need is love which ‘builds up’. ‘Everyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by God.’
One might have expected that sentence to end: ‘anyone who loves God really knows God’; but that could suggest (heaven forbid!) that the person who knows God has all the answers. Those who love God, open themselves up to God, to experiencing God’s love, to being known by God. That’s the beginning of a never-ending quest. Paul is not simply dishing out the truth as he has received it.