Mike Whitenton over at Ecce Homo has posted an interesting blog where he advances a thesis that essentially argues that Paul, after his conversation, held to monotheism and did not see Christ as equal to God. One of the key texts he has used to support this is 1 Cor 3.21-23, a passage that I have argued in the comments section of his blog does not suggest this. He has made further argument on this passage in a recent blog which I now intend to address. Whether or not his overall thesis is true or not is up for consideration, but below I would like to explain from a literary grammatical perspective why his argument is mistaken and illogical in its conclusions.
He begins with recapping several paragraphs recapping the genitive, which is appreciated, though I’m sure most who read his blog are familiar with what the genitive does. And if his readers are not able to understand what a genitive does then there really seems to be no reason for the recap because they wouldn’t be able to follow the conversation regardless. Nonetheless, let me skip down to where his argument starts, i.e. the lexico-semantic context.
Lexico-Semantic Context:
Mike says,
Specifically, Χριστοῦ is a figure of a authority in a totally different realm that that of ὑμεῖς, which interestingly includes all Christians, making no social stratification within them. Whether or not this same relationship is played out in the second genitival construction is under question. Beyond that, there’s not much here to note.
What he says is true elsewhere in Scripture (that Christ elsewhere is an authority over man), but this argument is perplexing because all of the statements he makes are not supported in this passage. Christ as a figure of authority in 1 Cor 3.21-23? Isn’t that the question being discussed? Unfortunately there are conclusions already being drawn with out any argumentation for support! Perhaps he should have argued for this last because it is only the literary/grammatical context which can support this.
Literary Context:
Here I have to hand it to him. He indeed has done well to make a case. He found the word for ’servant’ in chapter three, and even found the verb upatasso later in the epistle, and concludes with a cherry on the topic by discussing 4.1 Nonetheless, I strongly disagree. Here’s why:
The entire context deals with boasting in the wisdom of men: Paul, Apollos, etc. Verse 19 addresses this saying:
ἡ γὰρ σοφία τοῦ κόσμου τούτου μωρία παρὰ τῷ θεῷ ἐστιν. γέγραπται γάρ· ὁ δρασσόμενος τοὺς σοφοὺς ἐν τῇ πανουργίᾳ αὐτῶν·
“For the wisdom of this world is folly with God…”
Concerning the thoughts of the wise, well, verse 20 says εἰσὶν μάταιοι (they are worthless).
And so verse 21 concludes (ὥστε):
ηδεὶς καυχάσθω ἐν ἀνθρώποις (Let no one boast in men). Okay, fine. But why should no one boast in men? Paul continues: πάντα γὰρ ὑμῶν ἐστιν. (For all things belong to you) Paul’s logic here is a bit odd and understanding what this statement means is difficult. What is the relationship here between possessing all things and boasting in men? Let’s put this on hold as we examine the rest of the passage.
In verse 22, Paul further defines what he means by ‘all things’: εἴτε Παῦλος εἴτε Ἀπολλῶς εἴτε Κηφᾶς, εἴτε κόσμος εἴτε ζωὴ εἴτε θάνατος, εἴτε ἐνεστῶτα εἴτε μέλλοντα· πάντα ὑμῶν, (Whether Paul, Apollos, Peter, the world, life, death, present, or future, all things belong to you).
Here, Mike Whitenton is arguing rightly for a possessive genitive. However, Mike adds that there is subordination implied. This is perplexing and says much too much. Are Paul, Apollos, and Peter subjugated to mere men, i.e. The Corinthian readers? Is life and death subjugated to mere men? Is the present and the future subjugated to mere men? Mike would have to suggest this because these are defined as being included within the basket of ‘all things.’ I think the point here is clear: there is no hint of subjugation, rather there is some other relationship implied. But let’s continue to verse 23:
ὑμεῖς δὲ Χριστοῦ, Χριστὸς δὲ θεοῦ. (And you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs do you).
Indeed, while the possessive pronoun is lacking here, it is implied from the previous sentence. And since subjection was not implied in verse 21, one would be hard pressed in verse 22 to now suggest Christ is being portrayed as a superior person to man and that God is being portrayed as a superior person to Christ. It may very well be true that Christ is superior to man, and God superior to Christ, but such an idea is certainly to suggested here. Paul of course suggests this because they were being prideful in their boasting of Apollos over Paul or Paul over Apollos, etc. But Paul has argued, ‘no, all of man’s wisdom is foolish. Man is merely servants of God, so don’t play favorites.’
In response to this, Mike brings up a good point. He mentions in 4.1 that the text says: οὕτως ἡμᾶς λογιζέσθω ἄνθρωπος ὡς ὑπηρέτας Χριστοῦ (Thus, view man only as servants of God…). Here Mike basically says (and I’m paraphrasing), ’see the word here is ’servant’ and to look at BDAG where it suggests that ‘helper’ typically as an inferior subject.’ True, and perhaps this is why he holds his view, but there are two options in considering this sentence’s relation: (1) either this sentence joined by the conjunction οὕτως relates back to the previous verse, thus implying subjection between the relationships of man, Christ, and Christ to God, or (2) the sentence relates back to the entire concept of chapter 3 that you should not boast in one man because all of these men are only servants of God. I think it is clear from the content of the verse in addition to the grammatical conclusions above that this verse relates back to the chapter as a whole and does not suggest any subordinate relationship between man and Christ, nor Christ and man.
Conclusion
Thus, for one to come to the 1 Cor 3 passage and argue for a perspective that Christ is subordinate to God is grammatically flawed because the context, I think, clearly suggests otherwise as supported by my arguments above. Oh, and I almost forgot, what then is implied when Paul says ‘all things are yours (i.e. Paul, Apollos, present, future, life, death, etc.)? It’s tough to say, but it seems clear that whatever is implied it is not subjugation.
Nonetheless, all in good spirit and good fun. I have appreciated the ongoing dialogue with Mike and look forward to continued dialogue. Perhaps some of you, my blog readers, might chime in and add your thoughts?
[side note: Mike brings up historical context, but I'm not sure why. When he does this he seems to be addressing a different objection of mine. This point I will address in the comments portion of his blog because it doesn't relate to the passage at hand.]
22 comments
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July 25, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Michael
Rob: Everything I wrote in my post had you in mind, including the discussion of the genitive on a theoretical level. I would have hoped for a more congenial, less condescending, response from you.
I’ll leave it to our readers (those who are interested) to sort this out. I’ve made my arguments are clear as I care to.
July 26, 2009 at 2:42 am
John Anderson
Michael, why don’t you ever write a post with just me in mind? Awwww, that would be sweet. (wink)
July 26, 2009 at 3:40 am
Michael
Maybe some time, John.
July 25, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Rob Kashow
Michael,
I’m sorry you took my response as condescending. If you could help explain why you took it this way, I’d appreciate it. I assure you that by no means did I mean to come across condescending in any way. I tried to make clear in closing that it was all in good spirit on my end. It’s unfortunate that you are not going to offer a response, I thought you might give one since you suggested a continuation of the conversation over on your blog. I was looking forward especially to hearing your thoughts oh whether or not Paul, Apollos, etc was subjected to the Corinthians.
The reason I brought up your review of the genitive because I wasn’t sure where you were going with it. If anything, I thought it may have been there for rhetorical reasons. If I offended you here, I do apologize. I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts—perhaps the personal nature of the conversation would best be expressed through an email?
July 25, 2009 at 9:10 pm
Nick Norelli
I didn’t find this post (not blog) condescending for what it’s worth. I also don’t find Christ’s subordination to God as such a controversial topic since in none of the passages that intimate it is there any hint of the later ontological subordination that the Arians would hold to, but that’s another topic altogether. That said, I do think that 1Cor. 3:21-23 is a subordination passage. Paul’s point seems to be that because the Corinthians are of Christ then Peter, Paul, and Apollos belong to them. It all points back to Christ who is of God. Fee calls this a “piece of nice irony” because Paul “has taken their slogans (e.g., “I am of Paul”) and turned them upside down, so that “Paul is of you,” in the sense that all things are yours, since you are of Christ.” (Pauline Christology, 142, n. 143)
July 25, 2009 at 9:31 pm
Rob Kashow
Nick, thanks for weighing in, I appreciate your comments. Of course it’s always nice when someone who weighs in agrees with the arguments from within my post.
I suppose in the grand scope of things the subordination to Christ to the Father is not necessarily a controversial topic if referring to the personhood. However, since the distinction here is between Christ and God (not Christ and the Father), I think any such construal needs to be challenged. Perhaps this is where I came off in the wrong way because I think it is a serious topic that deserves serious questioning in this given passage. Would you agree, Nick?
July 25, 2009 at 10:14 pm
Nick Norelli
Rob: Well let me say this: if I based my understanding of this passage on grammar alone then I think you’ve made a pretty good case. I don’t think that the grammar in and of itself necessarily points to subordination, and if we were just dealing with the grammar than your counter-examples in the comments to Michael’s original post are effective.
Now concerning Christ and the Father vs. Christ and God I’d say that for Paul ‘God’ is synonymous with ‘Father’ so when he uses one he just as much means the other. This doesn’t in any way preclude him from holding a fully divine Christology, in fact I think he does so presuppositionally, but the subordination I find in Paul is one pertaining to salvation history. I think where Michael erred in his original post was that he seems to be viewing Christ’s being of God as a sort of subordination that would place Christ on the creaturely side of the Creator/creature divide. I welcome correction if I’ve misunderstood him (although I don’t know how I could have when he’s compared Christ to exalted/principal agents in what seems to be a 1 : 1 correspondance).
So I’ve rambled on about all this to say that yes, I would agree that a serious topic such as this deserves serious questioning.
July 26, 2009 at 12:07 am
James McGrath
I think I’d agree that the grammar of this passage doesn’t in and of itself prove subordination. But neither is it incompatible with it. And if one reaches the conclusion based on other passages (such as 1 Corinthians 15:27-28) that Paul viewed the relationship of Christ to God as one of subordination, presumably there would be nothing inappropriate, after making that case, of revisiting chapter 3 and understanding it as compatible with Paul’s more explicit statements later on.
July 26, 2009 at 6:41 am
Rob Kashow
James, thanks for chiming in. I appreciate the fact that you’ve acknowledged my grammatical argument. I do want to push back a bit, however. I’m not so sure I understand the logic here. If 1 Cor 3 grammatically argues one thing, why not let it speak what it says. Let the other passages, e.g. 1 Cor 15 argue what it says. You can’t force the grammar of other passages into the interpretation of 1 Cor 3. I appreciate you giving credence to the grammatical arguments I advance, but I don’t think one can have it both ways. It either grammatically argues as I suggest or it doesn’t. I indeed encourage entertaining the thought of Christ’s subordination, but to go to 1 Cor 3 doesn’t seem to have a grammatical leg to stand on.
July 26, 2009 at 12:21 pm
James McGrath
I don’t think the grammar here points decisively in a different direction to subordination. It simply doesn’t point to it with the same ambiguity as other passages.
If our aim is to clarify the meaning of this passage in abstraction, I suppose I’d have to agree with you. But if the aim is to understand the meaning of the passage as part of a letter of Paul, and the letter as expressing the theology of Paul, then taking other passages into account seems appropriate. Although we ought to at least allow for the possibility that Paul’s thought was not entirely consistent or that it developed, when dealing with two passages in the same letter that seems to me less likely.
I’m not sure what you mean by “reductionistic”, but presumably it has something to do with the fact that the differences between Lutherans and Presbyterians is far more radical than the differences between Pharisaic and Messianic Christians in the early decades of the Christian movement?
July 26, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Rob Kashow
I think your response helps clarify a bit, thanks. I agree with you to some extent with other passages helping clear up ambiguous passages, but I don’t think that applies here. Typically such a validation helps understanding when comparing grammar with grammar or theology with theology. Here I believe comparing 1 Cor 15 to 1 Cor 3 would be comparing theology (1 Cor 15) with grammar (1 Cor 3). And if the theology of the epistle does, as you mentioned, argue for subordination in 1 Cor 3, this resolution would have to say that the use of the genitive in verse 22 implies subordination which I just can’t see as a possibility.
If anything the passage may be ambiguous, but I think where it is clear is that it is not referring to subjugation. That is, the passage is not saying Paul, Apollos, Peter, life, death, present,and future are not subject to the Corinthian readers. Nor is it arguing that the Corinthian readers are subject to Christ, nor Christ to God. Putting it all together is a bit ambiguous, indeed. But because of verse 21 and how it is syntactically tied to 22, I just can’t see it any other way.
When I said ‘a reductionist argument’ I meant that it was really simplifying the issue. I wouldn’t use the adjectives “far more radical” but you are catching some spirit of what I’m saying. Here’s a question maybe you could shed some light on which would help me understand better: Aside from classifying how great a shift took place when Paul shifted sects, what is the extent of teaching and theological nuancing that took place as implied by Gal 1.11-17? For me to ask this question of course presupposes a belief in the metaphysical and spiritual, but feel free to say upfront if these presuppositions make our argument incompatible from the start. And that’s an honest comment by the way, since the blogosphere is fully of theological diversity where I simply can’t know where everybody stands on such issues.
July 26, 2009 at 6:38 pm
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July 27, 2009 at 2:56 am
James McGrath
I’m not entirely sure if I understand the question at the end. I think Paul was “converted” in the sense that he went from being a Jew who was convinced that Jesus was not the Messiah to being a Jew who was convinced the he was called to proclaim Jesus as Messiah. My point (which is the standard one made in raising the question of the appropriateness of “conversion” terminology) was that he wouldn’t have understood himself to be converting “from Judaism” to something else.
Does that clarify the point I was trying to make?
July 27, 2009 at 4:03 am
Rob Kashow
My question is a Christological one. It seems Mike has received part of his argument from your book. So okay, let’s drop the terminology of ‘conversion’ because we’re saying the same thing just using different terminology. Paul is now following the sect of Judaism that considers itself a ‘follower of the way.’ The question is how distinct is this sect from the rest of Jewish monotheism and can there be room for two persons of one Godhead in this new sect? I’ve gathered that you are arguing that Paul’s ties to Judaism would not allow this. My question then is why not? If its recorded in Galatians that Paul received further revelation and instruction it seems to me in some way his theology was nuanced. Considering what the Christ did, there was a great nuancing of his theology. My point then is Paul may have very well understood Christ in such a way that the orthodox understood him in later centuries at least in the sense that Christ is God in essence. One might say, no Paul was a monotheist because of his background, but again, was his theology not nuanced when he started following ‘the way’ and received further revelation (to borrow the description in Gal 1.11-18).
July 27, 2009 at 12:57 pm
James McGrath
My conclusion in the book (perhaps you could persuade a local library to get a copy, rather than discuss my views piecemeal as a I summarize them in comments?) is that Paul was a monotheist in the sense that many of his Jewish contemporaries were, indeed he was on the more conservative end of the spectrum, recommending avoidance of involvement with sacrifice to other “so-called gods” while denying that they had any real existence in a way that was not universally the case among Jews in this period.
What he wrote about Jesus was certainly claiming the most exalted status it was possible to attribute to any figure other than God. Paul preserves monotheism, not by “splitting the Shema” (Wright, Bauckham and others) or “including Jesus in the unique divine identity” (Bauckham) but by subordinating him to God (Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:26-28).
I’m going to be reviewing Bauckham’s book Jesus and the God of Israel on my blog soon. It offers quite brilliant arguments and interpretations in places, but ultimately fails to persuade me because it doesn’t do justice to some things that the New Testament authors themselves wrote. That’s the danger of coming to the New Testament hoping to find, if not the Christological understanding of the later church, at least something that made the Christological understanding of the later church inevitable, merely a natural outworking of what is there in the New Testament. I approached the subject that way for a long time. And although I’ve tried to do my best in the book to acknowledge where New Testament authors don’t seem to be answering the questions we today are asking, I’m sure I have not altogether avoided the pitfall either.
July 27, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Rob Kashow
So what I’m hearing in this:
You’re finding your conclusion that Paul viewed Christ as subject to God from Scriptural investigation and the reason for this his Jewish monotheistic background?
This I would be okay with, because the Scriptural interpretations are assessed as objectively as possible and then only after finding your conclusions do you proceed to understand them from historical context.
But what I’ve been reading at Ecce Homo is a presupposition of Jewish monotheism which then helps you interpret the Scriptures in a certain way resulting in an interpretive conclusion that Christ was subjected to God. This methodological approach seems flawed from the beginning because the question still unknown is how nuanced is Paul’s theology since he began following ‘the way.’ If you presuppose monotheism before you actually interpret the various texts, then you begin forcing your conclusions into the text. Again, I think the best approach is the first.
Do you see the distinction between the two approaches? Yes, I will pick up your book and read it shortly.
July 27, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Michael
Rob:
Just to clarify: what I find in the Jewish background about monotheism, I also see in Paul. I am not attempting to fit Paul (kicking and screaming) into some historical construct that is detached from the evidence of his actual writings. If I did not make that clear in my own post, perhaps I could have done a better job.
(I just looked back on the post, and I can see how you could have come to that conclusion. I should have been clearer. My bad.)
July 27, 2009 at 3:40 pm
Rob Kashow
Mike,
When you say “what I find in the Jewish background about monotheism, I also see in Paul,’ do you see this in Paul’s Christology or just Paul’s thought in general?
If you see it in Paul’s Christology based on your assessment of the Scriptures, then okay. Though I might not agree with the exegetical conclusion (i’m not saying I in fact disagree because I continue to wrestle with the issues), I at least appreciate the approach.
If you mean you see it in Paul’s thought in general then I would still have the same concerns because Paul may share much with Jewish monotheism but it doesn’t mean his view of God couldn’t change to Two Persons of the same essence – that for me would be determined by Paul’s works. Which is why I have been raising the object ‘you simply don’t know if his thought was nuanced here by conversion to the new sect of Judaism i.e. following ‘the way.’
You mentioned you understood how I have misunderstood… within the misunderstanding perhaps my questions make much more sense? (aside from our grammatical disagreement in 1 Cor 3)
July 27, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Michael
Rob,
Based on the way you’ve articulated my choices, I’d go with the former (Paul’s Christology, not Paul’s thought in general).
Paul obviously stands in a largely unique sect of Second Temple Judaism. It’s not completely disparate from the rest of the them, but there are quite a few differences, including the approach to the Law and the place of circumcision.
Paul also accords Jesus a more explicitly exalted place that anybody else aside from God Most High in STJ, with the possible exception of the Parables of Enoch, which seems darn close, if not on par. But despite the fact that Paul exalts Jesus higher than others sects do intermediary agents, he does so in a way that is shockingly similar to his contemporaries. This leads me to wonder (wonder! I’m not sure) whether Paul’s Christology has more in common with STJ than with Nicea.
Does that make sense?
To answer for last question: Yes, this clears up your nagging repetitious rants about my methodology.
July 27, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Rob Kashow
When you say,
“Paul also accords Jesus a more explicitly exalted place that anybody else aside from God Most High in STJ, with the possible exception of the Parables of Enoch, which seems darn close, if not on par. But despite the fact that Paul exalts Jesus higher than others sects do intermediary agents, he does so in a way that is shockingly similar to his contemporaries,”
I’m taking it to be your assessment from Scripture, so then yes it makes sense in that I understand your argument.
I’m glad my ‘inquiries’ now make better sense (not rants – a good example of a rant is my most recently posted blog which is not against you).
August 18, 2009 at 2:05 am
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October 16, 2009 at 9:50 am
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