1 cor 11.17-34 - holiness and justice

7/28/2019 1 Cor 11.17-34 - Holiness and Justice

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[JSNT19 (2000) 51-60]

HOLINESS AND JUSTICE:EXEGETICAL COMMENTS ON 1 CORINTHIANS 11.17-34

Luise Schottroff

Universitt Gesamthochschule Kassel, Fachbereich 01/Theologie,Diagonale 9, D-34109 Kassel, Germany

1. Paul 's Account of the Supper and Jesus ' Last Supper

No great distance in time separates the account Paul gives of the Lord'sSupper in his first letter to the community in Corinth from Jesus' LastSupper: we can date Jesus' death to c. 33 CE, and Paul's letter to c. 55CE. When Paul says that he 'received' the account of the Supper(11.23), we may certainly suppose that this happened during his firstpositive contacts with Christian groups at the time of his so-called conversion. Thus, this account by Paul brings us closer to the life of thehistorical Jesus than almost any other traditions in the New Testament.We should not conclude from this that Paul's wording is more authoritative than the Gospels' accounts of the Supper (Mt. 26.26-29; Mk 14.22-25; Lk. 22.15-20); rather, the breadth of variations in the transmission shows that oral and written traditions were still flowing vigorously towards the end of the first century. Paul's version offers a veryold snapshot of the oral tradition of the first generation of Jesus' followers. In theological terms, however, this means that immediatelyafter Jesus' death, the Lord's Supper was already the action that createdthe identity of the groups that were coming into being, and hence alsothe locus of belief in the resurrection. The account of the Lord's Supperin the Didache (community regulations from 110-20 CE) shows that the

account of the Last Supper, whether drawn from Paul or from theGospels, did not form part of the celebration of the Lord's Supper in the


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52 Journal for the Study of the New Testament 79 (2000)

meals The ritual character is determined basically by the prayers of blessing over bread and wine, it is in this context that the reference toJesus Christ is expressed

The brief mention of the blessing of bread at 1 Cor 11 24, and theeven briefer mention of the blessing of the cup at 11 25 ('likewise'includes the blessing of the cup too), show that Paul takes for grantedhis own familiarity and that of the Corinthian community with Jewishmeals and the prayers which these involved Paul 's verbal quotations inhis account of the Supper concentrate primarily on the reference toJesus Christ, which had been linked to the blessing prayers of theJewish tradition

According to Jewish tradition, the prayer of blessing over bread (andimplicitly over all the food consumed in the course of the meal) oftenran as follows 'Blessed be you, O Eternal One, our God, king of the world you bring forth bread from the earth' ' The meal is followed by aprayer of thanksgiving over the cup of blessing, Paul assumes that thistoo is well known, and writes only about that part of this prayer that isrelated to Christ Both prayers of blessing are accompanied in theJewish tradition by ritual actions According to a custom discussed in

rabbinic literature, the host or hostess lifts up the bread and shares itamong the table fellowship after the blessing, the cup of blessing islifted up and held slightly above the table during the prayer

2 The Conflict in Corinth

Paul quotes the Last Supper narrative in order to protest against themanner in which one group of Christians in Corinth celebrated the

Lord's Supper This conflict is not between Paul and 'the Corinthians ', but between groups within the Corinthian communi ty (11 18, 19)Paul 's letter takes up the cudgels for one side in this dispute The imageof the apostle and his Opponents' which has left its mark on the history of the exposition ot his letters is ecclesiogenetic it takes for granted asmoothly flowing continuity between a 'correct' Pauline church andtoday's church on the one hand, and a pattern (then and now) ot

1 See Leo Hirsch Judische Glaubenswelt (Basel Victor Goldschmidt Verlag1978) 63 here he provides further information about Jewish meals One should

t th t thi i l d h th f l B 6


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SCHOTTROFF Holiness and Justice 53

'opponents', 'sectarians' and 'splinter-groups' on the other hand. Thisdualistic antithesis fails to do justice to the plurality of communitypraxis in early Christianity; besides this, it attributes to Paul in absoluteauthority which he did not possess at that period, an authority to whichhe did not even lay claim. He was one teacher and apostle among manywomen and men who lived the gospel together and engaged in discussion and dispute about the correct interpretation of Torah in theirsituation.

Exegetical discussions interpret in very monochrome terms theconflict among Christians in Corinth (mostly presented as a conflictbetween Paul and his Opponents'). In keeping with Hellenistic-Romancustom, people bring their own food for the meal. However, there existwide social distinctions in the community (cf. 1 Cor. 1.26), and thosewho are well off have better food and other customs at table than thehired workers and slaves. The rich do indeed understand themselves aspart of the community, and they come to its assembly, but on the wholethey separate themselves from the others and eat what they havebrought as a private meal (11.21, 23). They show no consideration forthose who are worse off, who cannot bring much, and whose food is

also of poorer quality. This results in inequality: some go hungry, whileothers are drunk (11.21, 22). The rich justify their behaviour by appealing to the hunger they feel (11.34, 22).

Other members of the community see this as contempt for the community and for the poor, and Paul shares this view (11.22). It alsowounds the holiness of the body of Christ (11.29). This meal must havebeen a humiliating situation for the poor, whose dignity as children of the one Creator of all human beings was called into question.

3. Holiness and Justice

Paul writes at 11.30 that this praxis, which he and others criticize, hasalready led to illness and death in the community. Modern thought findsalien the idea that wrong behaviour in the community and in the sightof God can be dangerous, or even lethal, not only for the individualwrongdoers, but also for all the members and for the whole community;but if we are to understand the early Christian meal, it is decisivelyimportant that we trace the importance of holiness for what went on inthe community.


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sanctified by God, has common property (, Acts 2 44, 4 32) consecrated to God The conceptual antithesis to common property is'private ' property (, Acts 4 32, 1 Cor 1121) Both forms co-exist,for example in the sense that one who possesses a field and becomes amember of the community continues to be the possessor of his field, but with a fundamental willingness to sell the field and add the proceeds to what is held in common, if the community so decides The aim of thecommunity is to prevent individual members from landing in economicdistress, and to even out economic disparities The community is to be afellowship in holiness, and jus tice is an essentia l dimension of this

According to both Acts and 1 Cor 11, the basis of the common meal

was this holiness and just ice The better-off in Corinth have behavedexactly like Ananias and Sapphira they have treated common property,consecrated to God, as if it were private property More precisely, they have treated it as private property at a time when it was already common property, consecrated to God They have "misappropriated"something consecrated to God (Acts 5 2), thereby risking illness anddeath It would have been possible for them to continue to keep their private property in their own possession (Acts 5 4), by eating at home

( 1 Cor 11 22, 33), but this would have meant their withdrawal from thecommunity and trom its holiness Sharing in the meal signifies sharingin just ice, holiness and fellowship ( ) both among themselvesand with Christ 'Wounding the integrity of a community presumes a

break between the human being and the divine '

Our modern mentality finds the death ot Ananias and Sapphira just asobjectionable as 1 Cor 11 30 But even today one can understand theidea that human beings throw away their own lives or put them at risk

when they destroy the correct relationship to other human beings and toGod

Paul's text is silent about participation by women, but we can assumethat they took part on an equal basis, as acting subjects Society (bothHellenistic-Roman and Jewish) knew conservative ideals that excluded women from sharing in a meal , 4 but reality in general did not corre-

2 On this et Ivoni Richter Reimer Women in the Acts of the Apostles A

Feminist Liberation Perspectne (Minneapolis Fortress Press 1995) pp 6 113 Richter Reimer Women 11 with reference to Acts 5 1114 O thi i K thl E C l Pi t W P bli M l S i l C


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spondto these conservative regulations. Accordingly, we should assumethat Paul's theology, which oppresses women by postulating that only the man is God's image (1 Cor. 11.7), existed alongside a completely different praxis. But while we may take it for granted that womenshared in the meal, we must ask what their role was: were they servantsresponsible for the domestic work, or were they equals with the men?Paul tells us nothing about this. But Jesus' manifesto on this question(Mk 10.42-45 parr.) demands that all and this means, in particular,free menshould share in the work of looking after others at home(). This precept was held in great honour in early Christianity,even when it led to conflicts (Lk. 10.38-42; Acts 6.1-6). We may

certainly therefore assume that free men shared in cooking and theother work involved in preparing the meal at Corinth, as elsewhere, andthat the community likewise behaved justly when it assigned work to women and slaves. 5

The conflict about food in Acts 6.1-7 should be seen in connection with the conflict in Corinth. At the heart of the dispute about the widows lies the act of serving () during the community meal,that is the eucharist. This conflict is not provoked by class differences,

but by the refusal of Hebrew-speaking men to serve one group of widows. Thus it is caused by the societal definition of the identity of free men: even when these men belong to the lower classes, they never serve, but are always served. It is clear that the group of widowsinthe spirit of Mk 10.42-45 parr.had demanded that their role shouldnot only be that of serving. They should also be served, even by men.From today's perspective, the solution to the conflict seems a rather unconvincing compromise, viz. separation of service of the Word from

the service of tables, with the latter assigned to seven Hellenist men. IsMk 10.42-45 parr, no longer valid for all men, but only for volunteers who are given a specific commission for this service? However, theeffort involved in resolving the conflict in Acts 6.1-7 shows that thecommunity meal or eucharist was the place where just relationships were tried out, and where the attempt was made to overcome classdivisions and patriarchal gender boundaries, not only at Corinth, but inall the early Christian communities.

The patriarchal structure of the established pattern of meals, which

5 O thi f L i S h tt ff L di ' I ti t Si t A F i i t S i l


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assigned to the master of the house or father of the family the centraltask of praying and distributing the bread, gave rise to problems of ahierarchical nature. It is the father of the family who appears as thegiver of bread, while women are dissociated from their work for thebread which is the raw material of life: they have toiled in the fields andturned the mill for the sake of this bread, and they have baked it (Mt.24.41 par. and Mt. 13.33 par.), but their work is rendered invisible. Thisis why one must pose a critical question about Jesus' role as familyfather in the tradition of the Last Supper. The rite of sharing bread ismeant to express the participation in the body of Christ of all theparticipants in the meal, men, women and childrenthat is a table

fellowship with a non-hierarchical structure. To emphasize the role of Jesus as family father is to contradict his own anti-hierarchical manifesto (Mk 10.42-45 parr.; on this, see above). Besides this, women took on the role of leading the meal both in the Jewish tradition and in earlyChristianity, as one may see for example in the depiction of a meal inthe catacomb of Priscilla. 6

4. Eating and Sacrament

Both the sacramental praxis of Christian churches today and the separation in the early church of community meal and cultic meal meanthat our customary ideas of the Lord's Supper in early Christianityseparate sacramental eating from a normal meal taken to satisfy one' shunger. There is an increasing awareness that the Lord's Supper as acultic rite was linked to a normal meal, as Paul clearly assumes (11.25:'after you have eaten'), but scholars still tend to make a distinction

between a normal evening meal and the ritual of the Lord's Supper, forexample by suggesting that only bread and wine were consumed at thecommunity meal, which was simultaneously the eucharist. In theJewish tradition, however, the blessing over bread embraced all thefoodstuffs that were on the table. Above all, we must bear in mind thecontinuity between the Christian community meal and the Jewish tradition of community meals; an increasing detachment of normal mealsand the eucharist from one another in Christianity means a decreasing

6. See Joseph Wilpert , Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms (Freiburg:H d 1903) I ill i 15 O hi D h I i Th Mi i f


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awareness of the Jewish roots of the eucharist. The dualistic separationbetween eating and holiness, between daily life and the cult, does notdo justice to early Christianity: the transformation of bodies intotemples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6.19) means precisely that holinessembraces daily living, the bodily relationships of human beings, theirwork and their meals. The strength of the early Christian communitieswas the way they shared with one another this kind of communityaction in daily living. Eating and praying, union with Jesus Christ, sanctification of the community by God, experience of justice in theirmutual relationships: all this flows together into the fellowship meal of the communities. If we read 1 Cor. 11.17-34 together with Acts 2.42-45; 4.32-5.11; 6.1-7, we see clearly that the Lord's Supper, in thissense, was centrally significant in the emergence of the Christian communities. This could also suggest decisive impulses for a new form of the Lord's Supper today, but above all for a new ritual praxis of dailyeating in fellowship, with prayers that praise the Creator and keep alivethe memory of the resurrection.

5. This Is my Body

Paul quotes the Last Supper narrative in order to make clear the holiness of the community meal in the face of a praxis on the part of somepersons in Corinth that destroyed this holiness. He presupposes Jewishmeal customs and concentrates in his quotation on the reference toJesus Christ, which entails a new expansion of the Jewish prayers of blessing. By eating the bread, the community receives a share in thebody of Christ, and is the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12.12).

The words of the blessing over the bread are accompanied by theaction of breaking the bread and distributing it to the entire table fellowship; they are expanded as follows: This is my body for you. Dothis in memory of me.' At this period, the wording of this interpretativeformula is not fixed; as the vitality of the tradition shows, it is continually shaped anew. There is a great variety of interpretations of theLord's Supper in early Christianity, as can almost always be recognizedin the various versions. We are not interested here in hypotheses aboutthe reconstruction of some oldest form of the eucharistie words, orabout how Paul may have changed the wording that had been handedon to him; rather, we wish to make clear the variety of levels of inter


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(in the sense of 1 Cor 15 3-5, Phil 2 6-11) who has opened up, by means ot his martyr 's death, a path out of violence for the people of Israel and for all human beings The word k Lord' does not reproducethe meaning ot , which signifies, in relation to Jesus Christ, thatone speaks about him with reverence for Jesus' closeness to God and with enthusiasm over the transformation of one's own life by taith

His death, as a martyr's death 'for you', must be understood in political and theological terms in the sense of the Jewish martyr traditionThrough the death ot women and men martyrs, the sin ot the people,the violence directed ad intra, is expiated, and this renders powerlessthe violence that comes ab extra, the violence inflicted on the people by toreign political lords These lose their power

One Jewish-Hellenistic text trom this period between Pompey and Vespasian helps us to understand the New Testament interpretation otJesus' death as the liberation ot the people trom sins in relation to GodHere we are told about the martyrs

They are consecrated tor the sake of God and are now honoured notonly with this [heavenly] honour but also because it is thanks to themthat the enemies lost their power over our people the tyrant was punished and the fatherland cleansed They are as it were a substitute for thesoul of the people which is [stained] by sin Divine providence savedIsrael which was in such dire straits through the blood of those piousones and their expiatory death (4 Mace 17 20 22)

Through their death, the martyrs purify and sanctify the soul of thepeople, which is stained by sin Ancient ideas of sacrifice, where the blood of the sacrificial beasts brings about the purification of the people, find a secondary application here, which helps to interpret the

reality God is once again united to his people, and the foes have nomore power ovei this people, since it did not remain silent

The anamnesis of the martyr's death draws attention to this death, which now lies in the past, and to the act of resistance it signified, at thesame time, attention is directed forwards, to the path into the future

which God opens up foi the people In the context of the Romanempire, the remembrance of Jesus 1 death signifies a clear act of political resistance and solidarity as well as the willingness to take this path

which Jesus had taken This following of Jesus on the path of the cross was the object of controveisy in eaily Christianity, because many weiebl h ( h h d) G d h ld h


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lives should be a terrible fear of death and perhaps even death as amartyr.

This historical and theological explanation of the sacrificial Chris-tology which interpreted Jesus' death as expiatory, tracing this back tothe history of the martyrdom of the Jewish people, does not render thefeminist critique of such a Christology void. On the contrary: one canno longer justify the dogmatic use of affirmations about sacrifice and anexpiatory death, detached from any specific context, since these reducethe status of women and other oppressed persons to that of chattels. Thefeminist critique 7 implies consequences for today: the correctness of this critique must become visible, and the remembrance of the torturedand risen body of Christ must also make visible the bodies of womenand men as they experience violence and healing.

The liberation of the people and of humanity is understood escha-tologically: 'the new covenant through my blood'. The eschatologicalmyth which can be recognized in the hints of the words from the LastSupper is the myth of the New Testament and of early Christianity as awhole: God will make the earth arise anew, God alone will be king.God is close at hand, and his judgment of the earth will take place soon.

Christ will come as judge of humankind; Christians do not fear thiscoming in judgment, but yearn for it. The community holds the meal inyearning and firm hope, 'until he comes' (1 Cor. 11.26). God's judgment will establish justice on earth, and bring about peace and the fullness of life on earth and in heaven. In this myth of hope, ideas of arenewed creation coalesce with ideas of an end to the political violencewhich some inflict on others. The 'new covenant' began when Jesus themartyr died and his resurrection brought forth the beginning of new life

for human beings. Every holy meal held in common by the adherents of Jesus Christ lets the community see the new covenant afresh. They liveout of this hope, and work for this hope.

The eschatological idea gives us the key to the ecclesiological levelof interpretation of the Lord's Supper. Ifas so often happenstheeschatological image is subordinated to ecclesiology, this produces theidea of a church that already is the new covenant of God. This ecclesi-

7. On this, see especially Doris Strahm and Regula Strobel (eds.), Vom Verlangen nach Heilwerden: Christologie in feministisch-theologischer Sicht (Fribourg:Edition Exodus 1991); Eveline Valtink and Renate Jost (eds ) Ihr aber fr wen


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ology, which places the kingdom of God in human hands, is blasphemous, since it does not preserve the proper distance from God. Besidesthis, it results in anti-Judaism, positing an antithesis between the newcovenant with the church and the old covenant with the people of Israel.

The ecclesiology of the words in the Lord's Supper is present in theform of address that is used: the community that eats the Supper isaddressed. Through its memorial meal, it proclaims the death of Christas the beginning of God's new covenant. It repeats the Supper in itsdaily living and constitutes each time anew the fellowship of the saintswhich even now practises justice. The framework of the Supper inCorinth, so difficult to grasp and so incompletely related by Paul, prevents modern interpreters from separating the meal, as ritual, from thepraxis of the community's life. In its common holiness and justice, thecommunity eats the body of the risen Jesus. This is not associated withthe idea of eating flesh and drinking blood; what is involved is the ideathat the bodies of the believers are united with the body of Christ. Thisconcept is already present in 1 Cor. 6.15 ('your bodies are limbs of Christ'), and this bodily fellowship is not meant only as a metaphor.The consequence of the unity of the bodies of the believers in their

fellowship is that they as a fellowship are the body of Christ (cf. alsoICor. 10.16-17).

ABSTRACT

The Pauline tradition of the Last Supper is understood here as the handing on of affirmations of hope and remembrance related to Christ, which are inserted into theritual of Jewish meals The early Christian celebration of the Lord's Supper is a fullcommunity meal which follows the Jewish rite The conflict in Corinth was generated by the attempt of well-off members of the community to consume their ownfood and drink during the community meal, separated from the poorer majority of the community In the view of Paul and other members of the community, thisaction involves a social injustice which wounds the holiness of the body of ChristJust as eating and sacrament are linked in the early Christian Lord's Supper, so tooare holiness and justice linked


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1 cor 11.17-34 - holiness and justice

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