When the church doesn’t do “Christian”: pastoral care case by case in First Corinthians
From looking at Paul’s most carefully and tightly argued letter, we turn to one that is almost a ragbag of collected problems, First Corinthians. These problems are either ones that the Corinthians have written to Paul about, or ones he has heard of from others. Here, even more than usual, we are aware as readers that we only have half a conversation. The lectionary leaves out most of the passages in the middle of the letter where Paul is seeking to legislate for the community: issues of incest (ch. 5), settling community disputes (ch 6), provisions for marriage, celibacy and divorce (ch 7), and eating food offered to idols (ch 8). One of the losses in this is that we miss the details of how an early (probably largely Gentile) Christian church faces the problems of reimagining Jewish community organization. What happens when you transplant Jewish tradition into Greek soil without the framework of Torah to shape it? What does following the example of the rural Palesti...