Classroom Snippets: Paul from Early to Late

Today in 1 Corinthians we read through chapters 12 and 13 together. I enjoyed it much (although I've decided that yesterday was the low day of the entire semester--it's only up from here to the end).

One point of interest was 1 Cor. 12:13:

"For by one Spirit we all were baptized into one body, whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, even all were given one Spirit to drink."

This verse is of course reminiscent of Galatians 3:28, which is also in a baptismal setting. And it is similar to Colossians 3:11, which is in the context of putting on the new person. The evidence is not conclusive, but we can understand why some think some comment of this sort was made as part of the baptismal ceremony.

But what is missing here and in Colossians: "not male and female"! I actually date 1 Corinthians to around the same time as Galatians. But regardless of dating, the question quickly arises, "Why does Paul leave this line out, especially if it is a formula?"

One suggestion, and of course not one we can prove or disprove, is that some of the problems at Corinth have come from women exploiting their new found equality with men in Christ. Perhaps some of the rhetoric in Corinthians, which seems to "put women in their place," is actually Paul's response to a particular problem at Corinth. This is of course the danger of absolutizing the text as it stands and appears to us--we sometimes lack critical information to let us know the proper tone and trajectory behind the text.

So in class I did my usual dual pictures of bodies on the board, one representing the early Paul and the other representing the Paul of Ephesians. The first body is the body of Christ. The second is the body, the church, with Christ as the head. In the early Paul, women are more involved in ministry, there is more prophecy, more charismatic operation. In the Paul of Ephesians and the Paul of 1 Timothy, there is institutionalization and the establishment of a "deposit" of teaching.

These are of course interpretive constructs, but we all have them. These are the theological structures we build alongside the text, particularly as we move toward appropriation of the text.