Читать книгу 1 Corinthians - Luise Schottroff - Страница 33

1 As I came to you, sisters and brothers, I did not appear as a brilliant speaker and teacher of wisdom, in order to proclaim to you God’s mystery. 2 For I became convinced that in your case nothing was so important as Jesus the Messiah, and he, indeed, as a crucified one. 3 I came to you in weakness and fear and with great anxiety. 4 My speech and my message did not consist in winning words of wisdom but came out of the experience of the Spirit and of God-given power. 5 Thus your faith does not rest on human wisdom but on the power of God.

2:1, 4 In distancing himself from an »excess« of rhetorical skill and wisdom, as society thinks of them, Paul repeats what he had already said in 1:17, 20: there is in Corinthian society—as in the Hellenistic Roman public culture in general—a rhetoric that serves the self-presentation and ideology of the empire.¹³³ Such public discourse is also the sphere for the preservation of masculinity, which is meant to give expression to the system of domination and serve it. What Paul is here distancing himself from is not opponents in the congregation; rather he is distancing himself and the congregation from the public culture, which is in the service of violence.

The very first word in this section, kagō/»I also,« already links Paul and the congregation together. In 2:3 he uses it once more. They are a congregation of the uneducated, who are living out God’s wisdom, and that’s how Paul presents himself as well. What does he mean by that? There is no doubt that Paul has a rigorous education as an interpreter of the Torah under a famous Pharisaic teacher in Jerusalem, Gamaliel (cf. Acts 22:3). Nevertheless, he does not have a particular rhetorical gift or an education in public speaking and presence. In 2 Cor 10:10 we learn that there are members of the congregation who criticize him for his weak bodily presence.¹³⁴ It appears to them that he is hiding behind his letters, for they »are weighty and full of power« (BigS). Doubts have been raised about whether his letters, which were read aloud in the assembly, were easy to understand, even though the congregation could recognize much that was in them. But the fact remains that he played a decisive role in the building of messianic communities in the Roman Empire, and so, despite a lack of rhetorical education, through his »counter-rhetoric«¹³⁵ he reached many people and won them over to adopting a new goal for their lives.

2:2 When he first appeared in Corinth, Paul consciously and emphatically put the Messiah Jesus, and him as crucified, at the center. He does not mention here that God raised the crucified Messiah, nor that God had not abandoned him to death and violence. And yet without this miracle by God, Jesus’ crucifixion remains merely a sign of political oppression, meant to act as a deterrent to the populace. That Paul here names the crucifixion in such isolation as the content of his message is understandable in the context of 1:17–25. This public solidarity with the crucified, and thereby with the many victims of crucifixion, dare not be swept under the rug (see the basic information on denial of the crucifixion at 1:18 above). And yet, finally, his message does not consist solely in communicating the mere fact of the crucifixion. Therefore, the message that tells of Jesus’ crucifixion, already in itself, makes powerfully present in the congregations the resurrection and the Risen One—even without the need for explicit words about them.

2:3 Paul is speaking very personally here: back when he first came to the congregation (see 2:1), he came »in weakness.« If in 2:3, as also in 2:1, he is referring to the situation in which he first came to Corinth, which is linguistically possible, the question arises whether he actually understands himself to be the founder of the Corinthian congregation, because he is here presupposing the existence of a congregation before he began. In 3:6 he compares his initial work to planting a crop, in 3:10 to laying a foundation, and in 4:14, 15 he calls himself a father who has given birth to or sired the congregation (cf. Gal 4:19). Does Acts 18:2–4 contradict these assertions? It is reported there that Paul is living with the couple Prisca and Aquila during his stay in Corinth. There are reasons to surmise that they are already part of a messianic house church before his arrival in Corinth (see on 16:19). Thus, Paul’s work in Corinth could also have first found its footing in this congregation. What he says in 1 Cor 3:6, 10 and 4:14–15 does not have to contradict this. In any case, he played a decisive role in the building of the congregation. To designate him as the founder of the congregation is more important to the church’s interpretive tradition than it is to him.

For Paul, his weakness is a concern that comes up again and again.¹³⁶ He must have had a severe chronic illness. What exactly it was that made him so frail cannot be determined. Wherever he mentions or laments his weakness, he speaks at the same time of the experience of the power of God—precisely at the times of weakness. That’s the case here as well. Despite his weakness at the beginning of his time in Corinth, his proclamation was full of the Spirit and of demonstrations of that power (2:4–5). Thus, the fate of Jesus, who died on the cross and was summoned to life anew by God, is repeated with respect to his body (cf. 2 Cor 4:10). The vitality and presence of the Messiah is a miracle of God that can be repeated in people’s lives, in the life of Paul as in that of the congregation (1:26–31). The expression »fear and trembling,« takes up the language of the Old Testament. It can refer to the awe God’s power evokes (Isa 19:16; Exod 15:16; Deut 11:25), but also to the horror that human violence unleashes (Ps 55:6 [Eng. Bible: 55:5]). Yet here the phrase refers to the time when Paul came on the scene and clarifies his experience of frailty: he was afraid of failure, of being unable to fulfill what he was sent to do. In the history of interpretation there are theological generalizations for Paul’s description of weakness and fear, for example, as »humble acceptance … of the will of God,«¹³⁷ as dependence on God. In this way the physical and psychic affliction becomes a minor matter. Paul is concerned here not with the humility and conformity to Christ of those who proclaim Christ but with a personal experience of affliction that the congregation in Corinth remembers.

2:5 In Greek, 2:5 begins with hina, usually translated this way: »so that« your faith (might not stand on human wisdom, for example). However, as is frequently the case in the language of the New Testament, the Greek hina here does not indicate the goal or purpose, but the result.¹³⁸ If the hina is interpreted as a final clause, expressing purpose, then what emerges is that it was God’s (or Paul’s) intention to set Paul before the congregation with a lack of rhetorical skills and suffering from illness: his weakness was then the means to an end. This produces absurd consequences, for example, that those who are healthy are unfit for proclaiming the message about the cross. It is important to take the individual affliction of this person Paul as that which he says about it: as a great burden and hindrance. That the congregation, despite this, by means of this proclamation came to trust God, is a miracle worked by God’s power. Faith is the confidence »that God makes the dead alive« (Rom 4:17). The translation of words about faith can be given to misunderstanding, for example, in the sense of taking certain doctrines to be true.¹³⁹