Posts Tagged ‘wisdom’

Jesus our mother

August 28, 2021

Pentecost 13 – 2021
John 6:56-69
Marian Free

In the name of God who is always beyond our capacity to fully know. Amen.

On Friday I attended a virtual seminar titled “Speaking of Christ, Christa, Christx”. I imagine that for a great many, if not all of you, the presentations would have been challenging and confronting especially if you were being exposed to these ideas for the first time. Having begun my biblical studies at a time when feminism was beginning to make an impact on the ways in which theology and the bible were studied, I found the day stimulating and refreshing. As the title of the seminar suggests, the papers were based around the idea that just as God is genderless, so too is the Christ. That is, while it is undeniable that Jesus inhabited a male body, the second person of the Trinity represents all humanity, in all its expressions. We affirm this Sunday by Sunday in the words of the Nicene Creed when we say: “Jesus became truly human”.

The idea that Jesus can represent both the masculine and the feminine is not new, but was a view commonly held in the Middle Ages. At that time in history the focus of the church was on the fate of the individual at the point of death and in particular on judgement and hell. In both literature and the visual arts lurid depictions of hell included such things eternally burning fire, demons with pitchforks and screaming human beings.

In reaction to this emphasis on hell and therefore on a demanding, oppressive, and even cruel God a number of things happened.
• The idea of purgatory was developed – a place between heaven and hell in which the (imperfect) soul could be purified and so achieve the state of holiness required to enter heaven.
• Devotion to Mary grew. In Mary the general populace found a softer, feminine force who could intercede with a forbidding God on their behalf.
• It was not only Mary who represented the feminine. The second person of the Trinity came to characterise the feminine aspect of God. Julian of Norwich for example consistently spoke of Jesus as mother. She writes: “our true Mother Jesus, he alone bears us for joy and for endless life. So, he carries us within him in love. The mother can give her child to suck of her milk, but our precious Mother Jesus can feed us with himself.” In a similar vein Anselm of Canterbury wrote: “Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you; you are gentle with us as a mother with her child.” (For the full version of this poem see p428 of your prayer book).

All these things I know from my study of Medieval History and Friday’s seminar did not revisit these concepts but explored new ideas relevant to our time and place in history. Something that particularly piqued my interest was a paper that claimed that the earliest images of Christ included the feminine. Of course, I have not had time to follow this up with my own research, but I should not have been surprised. The Christ hymn, with which John’s gospel begins speaks of Jesus as Word or wisdom/Sophia. We first come across Sophia in the book of Proverbs in which wisdom/Word/Sophia is unequivocally female. In Proverbs 1 we read: “Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the squares she raises her voice.
21 At the busiest corner she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks (Proverbs 1:20,21). Wisdom is co-creator with God and exists from the beginning with God – language later appropriated in the Christ hymn.

What was new to me – and this is where the seminar meets today’s gospel – was the claim that the images that we find in John 6 of eating flesh and drinking blood were, in the earliest post-resurrection days, associated with breast feeding. While I would have to read more to confirm this, it fits with the imagery later used by Julian of Norwich who compares partaking of the sacrament with breast-feeding. Indeed, the imagery of idea of pregnancy and breast feeding is very compelling and much less offensive than that of consuming actual flesh and blood. In the womb the unborn child is sustained by the blood of the mother and after birth, the child feeds from the breast. A child exists because it feeds off the flesh and blood of its mother.

However we understand Jesus’ imagery of eating flesh and drinking blood, it is quite clear that his audience found his language offensive. As I said last week, eating an animal with its blood was absolutely forbidden in Jewish law. Jesus’ language was so confronting that many of his disciples turned back. They could understand the miracle of the manna in the wilderness. That did not require any leap of the imagination. While it was not actual bread, the manna was edible, and it did sustain the Israelites through their long journey in the desert. What the people didn’t seem to understand was that while manna was physical and visible, its effects were temporary. Manna could sustain earthly existence, bodily flesh, what it could not do was feed the spirit or offer life beyond the grave. In his imagery of eating flesh and drinking blood, Jesus challenged his followers to consume those things that are spiritual and that prepare and equip a person for eternity.

I understand that the image of a genderless Christ may not speak to you. The point of my illustration is this, that whether we like them or not, we should never completely close ourselves to new ideas, to new ways of seeing. Many of those who followed Jesus simply could not embrace anything new. Their imaginations were limited to what they could see and feel and as a consequence, they turned away from a relationship with Jesus that we know to be life-giving and sustaining.

The lesson of today’s gospel is this: if we hold on to what we think we know, if confine our understanding to physical realities and if we hold on to earthly ways of thinking, we will be no different from those who turned away from Jesus and from Jesus’ difficult sayings. We will close the door on new possibilities for relationship and for being.

The unknowable God is constantly revealing God’s self to those who are willing expose themselves to new ideas, new ways of knowing God. Faith after all is a journey, not a destination. My prayer for all of us is that we will continue to deepen and to grow our relationship with the living God – Earth-Maker, Pain-Bearer, Life-Giver – however uncomfortable and challenging that may be.

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The Trinity and Paul – some thoughts

May 30, 2015

Trinity Sunday – 2015

Romans 8

Marian Free

In the name of God who created us, died for us and enlivens us. Amen.

The Apostle Paul gets a lot of bad press. From the time the author of 2 Peter wrote: “There are some things in them (Paul’s letters) hard to understand”, there have been those who accuse Paul of being difficult, culture bound and chauvinistic. As a Pauline scholar I would of course, contest all such negative comments and claim them to be misrepresentations at worst and misinterpretations at best by those who have not taken the time to study and understand the genius that is Paul[1].

I am not saying that the letters of Paul are immediately transparent, or that there are not some parts that require a certain amount of effort to understand, but I would claim that what Paul has to say is absolutely essential for our understanding of the gospel and that he says it in a way that is quite masterful and compelling.

One of the difficulties that we face when we read either Paul’s letters or the gospels is that they were written in the first century for a first century Mediterranean audience. The letters are even more specific. Paul was not writing for our edification. In fact I think that he had no more idea of his letters being turning into Holy Scripture than we would imagine that our assignments in theology would one day be accepted into the canon.

Paul was writing to specific situations that had arisen in communities that had come to faith as a result of his teaching or, as is the case with Romans, a community that he wished to visit. His intention was not to write theology but to set the recipients straight on matters of faith or behaviour. The communities to whom he wrote consisted by and large of people who had had no grounding in the Jewish faith and who therefore had considerable catching up to do in order to begin to understand the gospel.

What I find remarkable is, that in this context and within twenty years of Jesus’ death, Paul – who never met the earthly Jesus – was able to distil the significance of Jesus’ life and teaching and to give them a meaning that continues to inform us today. The gospels give us the story of Jesus (albeit with interpretation). Paul, writing considerably earlier, tells us what it all means. In so doing he foreshadows ideas which later scholars turned into theology and into doctrine.

Take the notion of the Trinity for example. Over the centuries much ink has been spilt in trying to elucidate the nature of God and what it means for God to be both one and three. Paul simply assumes a Trinitarian God – Creator, Son and Spirit. This is particularly evident in Romans 8:9-11. “But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.” Paul is making an argument about life in the Spirit, but in order to do so he also speaks of God and Christ as if they were all one God.

In verse 9 Paul speaks of “being in the Spirit” because the “Spirit of God dwells in you” and adds “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. He goes on to say “the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you”, “the Spirit dwells in you.” The Spirit incorporates believers into the life of Christ that in turn incorporates them into the union between Christ and God. It seems that it is perfectly natural for Paul to think of God as the one who raised Jesus from the dead, as Jesus and as Spirit and that as a result he is able to use the expressions interchangeably.

The notion of God being known as God, as Spirit and as Word is not new to Paul. Genesis 1 introduces the Spirit in the form of ruah or breath and in Ezekiel (37:5) it is God’s ruah (breath) that brings life to the dry bones. The same Spirit animates Ezekiel, transports him to the valley of bones and will give life to the people of Israel. (This is not dissimilar to Paul’s idea that it is the Spirit that gives life to the believer (Rom 8:11)). Proverbs introduces Wisdom (sophia or logos) as co-creator with God. So in the Judeo-Christian from the beginning of creation there has been an implicit notion of the complex nature of the One God.

It would be the Incarnation that would give this idea flesh both literally and figuratively. God in human form proved much more challenging than the less concrete ideas of God as breath and wisdom. How could Jesus be both human and God? How could Jesus be pre-existent? Where did the Spirit fit in all this? It would take the church close to four hundred years to express the idea of the Trinity in theological and doctrinal terms that were universally accepted[2] and many more centuries for scholars to continue to explore and name what it means for God to be both one and three and how to express this without diminishing one of the persons of the Trinity.

For Paul and the early church the nature of God was not something to be intellectualized or argued. It seems to have been taken for granted that God could be known as Father, Son and Spirit, the one who sent Jesus, the one sent (Jesus) and the one whom Jesus sent (Spirit), the one who raised Jesus from the dead, Jesus who was raised from the dead and the Spirit.

Instead of worrying about how the Trinity works and which analogies are heretical or not, let us take a page out of Paul’s book and assert that God simply is – Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

[1] When I speak of Paul’s letters I refer to the seven letters that are considered genuinely Pauline – Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon.

[2] Some would claim imposed was a better word.

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Wisdom and the cross

February 8, 2014

Epiphany 5

1 Corinthians 2:1-13

Marian Free 

In the name of God, whose foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. Amen.

 If someone were to ask me which of Paul’s letters was my favourite, I think I would say the first letter to the Corinthians for no other reason than it reveals Paul’s profound insight into and interpretation of the cross. The community almost certainly Gentiles so it is not surprising that, as the letter indicates, they were a little confused as to the details of this new faith. It has to be remembered that at that time, there were no Christian scriptures. New converts were entirely dependent on the teaching of itinerant preachers who did not stay long enough in the community to ensure that all possible problems had been dealt with and all questions answered. Even though Paul had spent quite some time among the Corinthians, it seems that confusion reigned once he had left the city.

Paul writes this (possibly his second)[1] letter to Corinth in response to some concerns which had been reported by Chloe’s people[2] and also in response to a letter that the community had written to him[3]. Chloe’s concerns relate to divisions and competition in the community and immoral and un-Christian behaviour. Paul’s deals with issues such as members striving to outdo each other with regard to spiritual gifts, sub-groups following different leaders, a man living with his father’s wife and believers taking one-another to court. The letter also deals with more specific issues, many of which relate to relationships and sex: how to behave towards one’s spouse (whether to have sex or not, whether one should divorce a non-believing partner) and to marry or not to marry.

Even though Paul is addressing these very specific issues, he does so in a way that is theologically insightful and which interprets the cross of Christ is such a way that he can apply it to the community life of the believers in Corinth and to his own ministry.

The Corinthians, as I have said, were a divided community who had not fully grasped Paul’s message of the gospel. Perhaps based on the religions from which they had come, they placed wisdom as the high point of their faith and competed for the distinction of being the wisest or most knowledgeable in the community. It is clear that knowledge or wisdom is at issue. More than once Paul challenges their supposed wisdom with the question: “Do you not know?” (Obviously they do not!)

In order to demonstrate that the Corinthians wisdom is only narrow and partial, Paul points out the absurd contradiction of a crucified man proving to be God’s chosen one. As he says, any self-respecting Jew would have nothing to do with such a person – let alone elevate him to the status of God’s anointed.  On the other hand Greeks would think that to have faith in such a man would be utter foolishness.  To be fair, if we were to strip away sentimentality, dogma and creed, we too would think that a crucified Saviour was both gruesome and ridiculous (and impossible to sell). God, in Christ, has done something absolutely ludicrous. This, Paul claims, this is exactly the point. Christians believe that a man who was condemned to death as a criminal was the one sent by God. God’s action begs the question: Why on earth or in heaven would God chose such a person, or allow such an awful fate to befall the one whom he sent? He provides the answer using the words of Isaiah “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” (29:14)

According to Paul, God’s purpose in presenting us with a crucified Saviour was precisely to confound and unsettle us, to create some sort of cognitive dissonance that would force us to rely, not on ourselves, but on God, to shake us out of our complacency and to open our eyes to a completely different way of seeing, so that instead of being limited and bound by our own intelligence and by the constraints of the human imagination, we might be freed to see and hear what God is actually doing and saying. This, the cross demonstrates, is often the exact reverse of what we expect God to say and do.

In today’s text, Paul extends his argument about the cross to his proclamation of the gospel.  Paul made no attempt to claim power or knowledge for himself as did other preachers. He did not pretend to be anything he was not but allowed the Corinthians to see his weaknesses and imperfections. Paul has no need to compete, to demonstrate that he is wiser, stronger or more knowledgeable than anyone else. He is content to be weak and inarticulate because he knows that this enables him to be used by God and to be receptive to the Spirit. What is more those who come to faith know that they have not been swayed by the power of Paul’s presence and the force of his argument, but by the power of God working through him. Their faith lies where it belongs, in God and not in Paul.

The contradiction of the cross turns everything upside down. In so doing the cross exposes the flaws in what we might have thought we knew and the limitations of human knowledge and understanding – about worldly values, wisdom and strength. Through the cross God makes us aware that our knowledge, however good, is always incomplete and imperfect. The only true wisdom is that of God and the only way to achieve that wisdom is through recognizing the vast gulf between ourselves and the creator of all – who saw fit not to stun us with a triumphant king or a military victory, but a vulnerable, friendless man who died one of the most shocking deaths of all.

The purpose of the cross is to challenge the arrogance and self-conceit that allows us to believe that we know all there is to know about God. A crucified Saviour confronts our need for certainty and our dependence on doctrine, ritual and yes, even scripture and to open us to the power of God working in us and through us.

[1] 1 Corinthians 5:9

[2] 1 Corinthians 1:11

[3] “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote” (7:1, cf 7:25, 8:1).

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Eyes wide open

February 1, 2014

The Presentation of Christ in the Temple

Luke 2:22-40

Marian Free

In the name of God who opens our eyes to the wonders around us. Amen.

It sometimes seems that we live in a world of Botox, facelifts, diets and exercise programmes designed to delay aging. No one wants to grow old or to face the consequences of growing old. Youth and beauty are ideals that people want to hold onto forever. This is understandable of course. We would all like to retain our strength and vitality as long as possible and to avoid the gradual descent into dependence on others. Youth has more than good health to recommend it. Where would we be without the confidence, enthusiasm, vision and impetuousness of youth – the idealism that has yet to be dampened by the realities of the world.

This adoration of and hanging onto youth does however have a number of drawbacks the most significant of which is a failure to come face-to-face with mortality. Accepting that death is inevitable, however unpalatable that may be, has the effect of encouraging us to make the most of life. Knowing that our time is finite enables us to live more fully in the present, to accept life for what it is rather than living in constant denial and fear, focussed on putting off the inevitable rather than relaxing into the reality of our existence.

A desire to hold onto our youth may mean a failure to take on the responsibility of adulthood. We may find ourselves locked forever into a kind of teenage limbo-land, never moving forward, refusing to allow life to mould and shape us into wiser and stronger people.

In his book, Falling Upwards, Richard Rohr suggests that, spiritually speaking there are two stages of life. He makes the claim that in the first half of life we are egocentric focussed on ourselves and our own needs. At this stage of our spiritual life we are bound by external rules and regulations – only able to think in terms of black and white, right and wrong. In the second stage of our spiritual life we are able to see beyond ourselves and better able to understand that between black and white there are vast stretches of grey. Rohr argues that many people never grow beyond the first stage no matter what age they are in worldly terms. Many, he suggests, continue to put their own needs first and their ideas of right and wrong, good and evil continue to be determined by outside forces. They never manage to internalise the principles behind the rules that they learnt as a child. They are never so secure in themselves that they can let go of the need to be reassured.

Simeon and Anna are wonderful characters, and I think, examples of people in the second stage of their spiritual life. Both, in different ways, exhibit the wisdom of age, the confidence of knowing who they are, the freedom to trust in God and the willingness to see things in ways that differed from their expectations. Luke’s account is quite extraordinary. Mary and Joseph are doing something that is quite routine  – taking Jesus to the Temple in order to present him to God and make the appropriate offerings. Externally, there would have been nothing to distinguish them from the hundreds of other parents who came on a daily basis to do the very same thing. From the point of view of the average onlooker, Jesus is just another baby. Yet both Simeon and Anna recognise the infant Jesus as God’s anointed, the one who was to redeem Israel.

Unlike many others of their era, Anna and Simeon, being outward (God) focussed are not limited to one way of seeing. They expect God to send a Saviour, but they are open to God’s doing something unexpected. Neither of them is locked into one or other particular idea. They are not committed to a belief that God will send someone out of the ordinary – a king or a soldier – to lead the people to freedom. They are not taken aback by the fact that God has chosen to send a Redeemer in the form of a tiny infant – just the opposite. Their years of prayer have ensured that they are no longer self-absorbed, and they have no need for absolutes. With the wisdom of age, they know that things are not always what they seem. This is why they are able to see Jesus for who he is, even though he looks like an ordinary child of ordinary parents.

Simeon and Anna have the wisdom and patience of age. Anna has lived in the Temple for at least sixty years, Simeon seems to be aware that his end might be near.  They expect God to act, but know that God will act in God’s way and in God’s time.  Year after year, they have continued to wait and to pray, confident that God will act, content even though they do not know when.

That said, when they do see the child – God’s anointed – they demonstrate that age and wisdom have not dampened their youthful passions. They respond to the infant Jesus with all the impetuousness and enthusiasm of youth. Simeon sweeps the child away from his mother and Anna throws caution to the wind as she tells all and sundry about the child.

Anna and Simeon are among my favourite New Testament characters. They remind us that age is not something to be feared and denied but in the case of a life lived well age is liberating and ennobling – they no longer have to worry about what others might think of them and they have the wisdom and experience that can only be gained by being open to all that life has to offer. As Luke describes them, they are two people who have grown and matured in their faith to a point that their own egos and needs are unimportant, they have abandoned any need for certainty and security and have placed their trust completely in God. Lives of prayer have enabled them to allow the Holy Spirit to work through them, to make them, at the end of their lives prophets and messengers of God who announce the Saviour to the world and in so-doing have earned themselves a place in history.

Life is a progression from birth to death, certainty to uncertainty. If we hold on too tightly to youth, to security, if we try to avoid suffering and pain, we may never grow in faith and may never allow ourselves to be in-dwelt by the Holy Spirit. God will be more of an idea than a reality and we will miss the  wonders and revelations that God has in store for us.

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A lesson in letter-writing

January 19, 2014

Epiphany 2 – 2013

1 Corinthians 1:1-9

Marian Free

In the name of God who reveals Godself in many and varied ways. Amen.

1:1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, 1Cor. 1:2   To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: 1Cor. 1:3   Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus,  5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind—  6 just as the testimony of Christ has been strengthened among you—  7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.  8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.  9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

John and Joan McFee have great pleasure in inviting Mark and Mary de Angelo to the wedding of their daughter Susan Maria to Joseph Anthony on July 31st at St Margaret’s Church, 4 George St, Marland, at 4:00pm and afterwards at Maryville Reception Centre, 23 Victoria St, Marland. RSVP July 17, 33458687.

Times have changed, but when I was at school children were taught how to write letters – personal letters, business letters, job applications, wedding invitations and replies and so on. Each form of communication had its own style. Even the form of letter closure differed according to how formal the letter was and the relationship between the writer and the recipient. It did (and does not) not make immediate sense that personal letters were signed “yours sincerely” and formal letters with “yours faithfully” but that is how it is done. These days there is a lot more flexibility. Text messages and emails have created entirely new and less formal styles of writing. Some forms such as Job Applications still have very structured formats – possibly even more structured than previously. So rigid are these styles that consultants exist to assist people in writing their CVs and job applications.

Given that in our more informal world we continue to have set formats for at least some style of letters, we should not be surprised that the Greek world also had criteria for writing different forms of communication. It is important to understand these forms when we read the letters in the New Testament. Paul’s letters exhibit a uniformity of style because Paul is using the letter-writing format common to educated people of his time. That said, there are some immediately obvious differences between first century Greek letters and twenty-first Australian letters. Our form of letter-writing might have an address at the beginning but with some exceptions (wedding invitations) the author is generally not identified until the end of the letter – “yours faithfully, Marian Free”. When we write a letter, we usually begin with an address to the recipient – “Dear Sam”. Greek letters reverse this pattern and begin with the name of the author and some means of identifying that person. In the letter to the Corinthians we read – “Paul, called to be an Apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God”.

Unless we use a line that indicates what the letter is in regard to, the reader has to wait for the body of the letter to discover why we have written. In Greek letter writing and certainly in the letters of Paul, the greeting prepares us for what is to follow. In his first letter to Corinth, Paul appears to be laying claim to his authority. Not only is he “an apostle of Christ Jesus”, he is an apostle by “the will of God”. This provides much more detail than is provided in the first letter to the Thessalonians which reads very simply: “Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy”. It is only as the letter progresses that we understand that Paul is drawing on his God-given authority in order to pull the Corinthians into line. No doubt the Corinthians were immediately aware of the tone that Paul was setting. He is making it clear that he is an apostle and that his authority comes directly from God.

Having begun with an introduction to the author, the letter introduces us to the recipients. Again, if we compare 1 Corinthians with 1 Thessalonians, we notice a significant difference. The Thessalonians are addressed quite simply: “To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. The letter to Corinth includes much more detail:  “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” Compared with the Thessalonians where the address is purely descriptive, here there is not only more detail, there is a degree of flattery. Those in Corinth are described as “sanctified, called to be saints” what is more, they are skilfully connected with all the other believing communities,  “together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours.” How do we explain the difference in detail? Is it because the lives of the Corinthians exhibit a deeper spirituality than those in Thessalonica? As we read on, this conclusion seems unlikely. The letter reveals that the Corinthians are a divided congregation who compete with each other and whose members engage in immoral behaviour. A more plausible explanation for the long greeting is that Paul, who will later castigate this community, is using both flattery (saints, sanctified) and coercion (with all who call on the name of our Lord). Paul uses flattery because he wants them on side, open to what he has to say. At the same time, he is drawing on the practices of all the other churches to pull them into line, to make them conform.

As you can see, already, in just three verses, we suspect that Paul has something difficult to tell the Corinthians and that he will use the example of other churches to pressure them to change their behaviour. Paul follows the introduction with a standard greeting: “Grace to you and peace.” Paul adapts the usual greeting (charein – hello) to a term associated with the gospel (charis – grace) and adds the Semitic greeting of peace (shalom).

In most letters, the greeting is followed by a Thanksgiving. This serves to get the reader on side and to ensure that they are receptive to what is to follow. (The absence of a Thanksgiving rings alarm bells. For example, there is no thanksgiving in the letter to the Galatians. As we read that letter we can see that Paul has nothing for which to be thankful – he is very angry.)

Again, the content of the thanksgiving provides an introduction to the content of the letter as a whole. In this instance Paul says: “you have been enriched in him in speech and knowledge of every kind”; “you are not lacking in any spiritual gift”. As we read on, we cannot help but wonder if Paul is being sarcastic here. The Corinthians it seems put a great emphasis on wisdom, knowledge and spiritual gifts. They think that they have already achieved some sort of spiritual perfection (“Already you are rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings!” 4:8). In chapter 12, Paul tries to put their spiritual gifts into perspective – no gift is more significant than any other. Over and over again, Paul confronts the arrogance of the Corinthians, their belief in their own wisdom and knowledge and the fact that they compete with one another in areas of knowledge and spirituality. The refrain: “Do you not know?” is used repeatedly in Chapter 6 in which Paul exposes the fact that they do not know. “Do you not know the saints will judge the world?” Do you not know that we are to judge angels?” (6:2,3) and so on.

A good way to begin to understand Paul and his letters is to read the Greetings and Thanksgivings of his letters and to identify the similarities and differences between them. In so doing, it is essential to remember that Paul did not set out to write theology. He wrote letters to communities of faith, communities that – with the exception of Romans – he himself founded. Paul’s intention and deepest desire is that these communities share his faith, his knowledge of God and Christ, his conviction that faith in Jesus leads to freedom and that a life that is Spirit-led is a life that most closely conforms to the will of God. What is amazing is that these letters that were written to encourage, to chide and to correct, express the most profound theology and that over two thousand years later, these letters have become an integral part of our Holy Scriptures. Not before or since has one person’s letter-writing had such a profound effect.

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