1 Corinthians

Paul wrote some weird things, but also some things of great power and beauty. The very best of his material (in my opinion) is here in chapter 13 - known as Paul's hymn to love. Of course, this has to be balanced against some pretty bad stuff - Paul made much of trying to be all things to all people, showing the level of his self-respect, and his confidence in the rational superiority of his religious message!

1 Cor 1:18-21 - For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart." Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.
This is the first of Paul's statements saying that the tenets of the Christian religion are superior to the wisdom of the rest of the world. He completely fails to mention that nearly all of the good philosophy of the Christian religion was actually borrowed from earlier religions and philosophies. The insistence that belief is the sole criterion for pleasing God and getting to heaven has caused more human sorrow than any other idea I've ever heard of.

1 Cor 1:26-29 - Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.
This is a transparent attempt to get the societal dregs that apparently made up the Church at Corinth to believe themselves to be superior to their neighbors. This is not an appeal to the believers to find themselves to be of intrinsic value, which I think would have been a worthy goal, but rather it is an exhortation to these downtrodden people to feel superior to the people who surrounded them. It is a sort of revenge for nasty treatment that poor, ignorant people would readily engage in, given the opportunity. Hearing that God is on their side, they have that opportunity, it seems.

1 Cor 2:1-5 - When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
I think it's interesting that Paul admits that his message in Corinth was not plausible, and that the only way he could get the people to believe him was by getting God to help him by performing miracles. This says to me that Paul was just another trickster, outwardly indistinguishable from any other confidence man with a poorly thought out message and some easily-engineered tricks to make the yokels gape. You see them all the time, even today.

1 Cor 2:7 - But we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.
Here's another part of the scam - making people think they're getting some sort of secret knowledge that no one else has been able to come up with. Unfortunately, there is no practical advice to be found in the New Testament that wasn't already in use before Jesus came on the scene, sometimes for hundreds of years.

1 Cor 2:15,16 - Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny. "For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?" But we have the mind of Christ.
The logical outcome of the attitude that one is privy to secret, Godly knowledge is this - the attitude that one is not answerable to anyone else, and that actions only need the approval of God (normally communicated to the believer through "feelings" or from the priests).

1 Cor 3:16,17 - Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy that person. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.
One of the limitations of the English language is that the second person pronoun "you" can be either singular or plural. Here, the context can work either way, making the statement hard to follow. Either Paul is saying that each person is inviolate, and a "temple of God," or the community is a unified temple. If Paul is referring to the community here, it means that anyone who tries to damage it will be destroyed by God.

1 Cor 3:18-20 - Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, "He catches the wise in their craftiness," and again, "The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile."
Just imagine the damage that this concept has caused in the hands of fanatic believers and unscrupulous church leaders! This is the very heart and soul of the Dark Ages, when all inquiry into science and philosophy were restricted by the church, and all education for the general populace was impossible - not because the people were incapable of understanding - but because all learning was considered evil, distracting from the lessons God had to teach through the priests and the rest of the church heirarchy!

1 Cor 4:16,17 - I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me. For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ Jesus, as I teach them everywhere in every church.
Personally, I think this is bad advice. Imitating Paul would mean becoming a self-righteous, unscrupulous person who would stop at nothing in order to get warm bodies into the church.

1 Cor 5:1-5 - It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not found even among pagans; for a man is living with his father's wife. And you are arrogant! Should you not rather have mourned, so that he who has done this would have been removed from among you? For though absent in body, I am present in spirit; and as if present I have already pronounced judgment in the name of the Lord Jesus on the man who has done such a thing. When you are assembled, and my spirit is present with the power of our Lord Jesus, you are to hand this man over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
Wow! Paul claims to have become omnipresent and omniscient here! And by remote control, he condemns a person that he has never met, ordering the church to hand the offender over to Satan - and I'd just love to know exactly what this entailed - to destroy the man's flesh. Imagine how this sort of idea could be used by an Inquisitor (and I expect it was!) to order the deaths of any person with no messy trial or legal procedure, or even the bother of actually being in the same city as the condemned person!

1 Cor 5:9-12 - I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral persons- not at all meaning the immoral of this world, or the greedy and robbers, or idolaters, since you would then need to go out of the world. But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother or sister who is sexually immoral or greedy, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or robber. Do not even eat with such a one. For what have I to do with judging those outside? Is it not those who are inside that you are to judge?
I don't know about this one. It seems to me that Jesus is reported to have said that only God does the judging, and therefore no human should set himself up as a judge. Paul clearly adds a new element to this religion, and one that is a dangerous thing, as history has proven quite spectacularly.

1 Cor 6:1-3 - When any of you has a grievance against another, do you dare to take it to court before the unrighteous, instead of taking it before the saints? Do you not know that the saints will judge the world? And if the world is to be judged by you, are you incompetent to try trivial cases? Do you not know that we are to judge angels-to say nothing of ordinary matters?
Once again, Paul has expanded the judgmental powers of Christians - telling them here that they should be able to judge the world, all their internal affairs, and even the angels - who I thought were said to be sinless messengers from God! If the believers are set to judge each other, the rest of the world, and just about every supernatural being besides God himself - what could there possibly be left to NOT judge?

1 Cor 6:9,10 - Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers-none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.
Paul here contradicts the message he gave to the Romans, saying that only a correct belief was needed to get into heaven. Humans are capable of holding many contradictory beliefs, and keeping those beliefs from influencing their actions. Here, Paul brings a person's actions into the mix, something he had shut the door on in other places.

1 Cor 6:13 - "Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food," and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.
Paul seems to have had a big hang-up over sex, because he harped on it almost constantly in all his letters. He says that the human body is meant for God, but I have trouble seeing how this could be.

1 Cor 7:1,2 - Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: "It is well for a man not to touch a woman." But because of cases of sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband.
Here, Paul's hang-up over sex comes into clearer focus. As a marriage counselor, he was about the worst imaginable. Here, he says that the only reason he can see for marrying is to keep from being sexually immoral, but his attitude is that men and women should never touch. This guy was one sick puppy!

1 Cor 7:12-14 - To the rest I say-I and not the Lord-that if any believer has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. And if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. Otherwise, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.
Finally, Paul admits that he's speaking on his own, though there's some doubt as to when he starts back acting as God's mouthpiece. He apparently thinks that, like citizenship in some country, outsiders can gain entrance to heaven by marrying into it. Apparently, the children also have naturalized citizenship rights, which takes logically away from the requirement of active belief.

1 Cor 7:21 - Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it. Even if you can gain your freedom, make use of your present condition now more than ever.
Paul here counsels slaves who become believers to remain in their slavery, even if an opportunity for freedom comes along! Obviously, Paul was an active supporter of the institution of slavery. Why today's Christian church isn't also supporting slavery is something of a mystery!

1 Cor 7:29-31 - I mean, brothers and sisters, the appointed time has grown short; from now on, let even those who have wives be as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no possessions, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.
If Paul had also advised his followers to hold their breaths, maybe the problems that Christianity have handed to the human species would have gone away! As it is, Paul gives a pretty harmful message, telling people to stop their everyday lives in order to wait in the "second coming." Of course, the damage to the Christian birth rate was most likely minimal, for some reason!

1 Cor 7:32-34 - I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband.
Paul's personal observation on the minds of virgins and married people was - shall we say - a little bit off?

1 Cor 8:1-3 - Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that "all of us possess knowledge." Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.
Paul embarks on the subject of eating food used in idol worship with his ideas on the nature of knowledge, otherwise called epistemology. His ideas on the subject are chaotic and ill-defined at best.

1 Cor 8:4 - Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one."
It sounds like Paul has no problem with someone eating this sort of food, and I think that there are quotes from other parts of the Bible that support this attitude. The problem is that in later quotes, Paul appears to soundly condemn the practice, setting up yet another contradiction.

1 Cor 9:1-6 - Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to our food and drink? Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living?
It sounds here like Paul was not considered to be an apostle by other early church leaders! He certainly sounds bitter toward the others, and Peter in particular. I wonder why Paul would mention his right to being accompanied by a wife, when he never even tried to get married?

1 Cor 9:11-14 - If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.
Paul tries to shame his readers into giving him money, enough to become a professional preacher. It seems to me that the Lord (I think Paul was referring to Jesus here) actually said, in the gospels, that those who preach would be cared for, so long as they kept going until they found someone who would put them up.

1 Cor 9:19-22 - For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though I myself am not under the law) so that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law) so that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, so that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some.
This says to me that Paul thinks that his message isn't good enough to just come out and say what he believes. Instead, he tries to dress it up in any way he can just so he can lure in more bodies for the church. Personally, I have found this to be a demeaning approach (I found this out through personal experience), one that is dishonest in the person giving the message, and one that implies a shallowness in the hearer that is not necessarily there.

1 Cor 10:1-4 - I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
Here's a novel interpretation of the Exodus! Paul adds in baptism where none was mentioned (baptism being a ceremony copied from the Persians much, MUCH later), and he starts the Christian practice of adding in Jesus to every spot imaginable in the Old Testament, with no real justification - just bald-faced assertion.

1 Cor 10:9,10 - We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.
I just love recalling the story in the book of Numbers as to the time the Israelites complained to God about the monotony of eating their manna. The book says that the complainers were killed by a plague sent by God - so it looks here like Paul is calling God "the destroyer"!

1 Cor 10:19-21 - What do I imply then? That food sacrificed to idols is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, I imply that what pagans sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons and not to God. I do not want you to be partners with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
Just a little while earlier, Paul said there was nothing intrinsically wrong with eating food sacrificed to idols. Now, he returns to the subject, with a completely different take on the subject. Was this guy into mood swings, or what?

1 Cor 11:4-7 - Any man who prays or prophesies with something on his head disgraces his head, but any woman who prays or prophesies with her head unveiled disgraces her head-it is one and the same thing as having her head shaved. For if a woman will not veil herself, then she should cut off her hair; but if it is disgraceful for a woman to have her hair cut off or to be shaved, she should wear a veil. For a man ought not to have his head veiled, since he is the image and reflection of God; but woman is the reflection of man.
Sartorial and grooming tips from a real style maven! It looks as though a Bible-believing fundamentalist Christian, in order to follow this passage, would need to look rather odd by most standards. It's been a while since I've seen women wearing veils or bald in church!

1 Cor 11:13-15 - Judge for yourselves: is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head unveiled? Does not nature itself teach you that if a man wears long hair, it is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her glory? For her hair is given to her for a covering.
My, but Paul gets the strangest lessons from "nature"! This bit of "natural theology" is another example of how Paul has confused his cultural biases with laws of nature. It's plain for any thinking person that there is no natural base from which one can build a case of this grooming requirement that Paul wants to impose.

1 Cor 11:29,30 - For all who eat and drink without discerning the body, eat and drink judgment against themselves. For this reason many of you are weak and ill, and some have died.
Imagine that! If you take communion and you can't convince yourself that you're eating Jesus' flesh and drinking his blood, you might die!? Paul thinks this is the reason that some people are sick - because they took communion without being "true Christians." I don't know - sounds pretty fishy to me.

1 Cor 12:3 - Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says "Let Jesus be cursed!" and no one can say "Jesus is Lord" except by the Holy Spirit.
I think it's interesting that Paul, in dictating this letter, actually said the words that could never be said by someone speaking in the spirit! Then again, I said the words "Jesus is Lord," as I wrote down this reference, just as a reaction to Paul's dare. Me, I think he was full of it!

1 Cor 12:8-10 - To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues.
Paul has quite a strange little system set up in his mind on how these supernatural things come about. The odd thing, from what I can see, is that this seems to be far different from the way Jesus said supernatural works happened. According to what I read in the gospels, Jesus was saying that each believer would have the ability to do all of these things, but Paul says that it's scattered in little pockets. And where did the thing about "interpretation of tongues" come from? In Acts, the speaking in tongues was about believers speaking in human languages that they normally didn't know in order to get the preaching to out of town visitors. Now, Paul seems to be saying it's different!

1 Cor 13:4-6 - Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.
This is one of the few things that Paul wrote that I can completely agree with. However, I think it's important to see how God, as presented in the Bible measures up to this definition. In the Old Testament, God states he's a jealous god, insisting that his people worship him in only one possible way. There was an awful lot of talk of revenge over the smallest offenses. In the New Testament, not much has changed - in return for the slightest doubt, people are to be sentenced to eternal torment. I think Paul's idea of love pretty much does away with the statement in 1 John that "God is love."

1 Cor 13:11 - When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.
It's interesting that Paul should mention this. After all, he wants all followers to do away with worldly wisdom. In fact, Jesus said that only those who are like children could get into heaven! The other thought that struck me when I read this was that Paul certainly hadn't put behind him childish ways, being quite comfortable with condemning any who dared to teach anything differently from his doctrine, ordering the death of people he had never seen or talked to on the basis of a "report" he had heard, and so on.

1 Cor 14:2-5 - For those who speak in a tongue do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, those who prophesy speak to other people for their upbuilding and encouragement and consolation. Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church. Now I would like all of you to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up.
Here, more clearly, we see a marked departure from the idea of "speaking in tongues" presented in Acts. Apparently, Paul was talking about the phenomenon of glossolalia, the hysterical gibberish exhibited by some believers caught up in a religious frenzy. The interesting thing here is that Paul says such people need an interpreter so that the rest of the church can understand what is being said. This is interesting, because this is precisely what the Greeks did in consulting the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracle (a priestess) would go into a religious trance and start spouting gibberish, which would be interpreted by another priest. Here's yet another example of an idea being "borrowed" from a surrounding, far older religion!

1 Cor 14:26-28 - What should be done then, my friends? When you come together, each one has a hymn, a lesson, a revelation, a tongue, or an interpretation. Let all things be done for building up. If anyone speaks in a tongue, let there be only two or at most three, and each in turn; and let one interpret. But if there is no one to interpret, let them be silent in church and speak to themselves and to God.
More clarification on the procedures to be used in church services. This makes it look far more clearly that this is an exact copy of the Delphic procedure. It makes me wonder why these people were so unoriginal that they couldn't come up with a single original "miracle" for their religion?

1 Cor 14:32-35 - And the spirits of prophets are subject to the prophets, for God is a God not of disorder but of peace. (As in all the churches of the saints, women should be silent in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as the law also says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church....)
Well, Paul has certainly changed HIS tune from what we saw in the book of Romans, where he commended and praised a female deacon in the church at Rome! I understand that some theologians think this possibly might be a case where Paul was quoting from an earlier letter that had been written to him, and he was criticising the stance they had toward women, instead of condemning them himself. I will carry out more study on this issue and report my findings later, but the idea stikes me as being rather awkward.

1 Cor 14:37,38 - Anyone who claims to be a prophet, or to have spiritual powers, must acknowledge that what I am writing to you is a command of the Lord. Anyone who does not recognize this is not to be recognized.
Oh yes! Here's an example of Paul's notion of love! Just a few items up, we saw Paul say that love doesn't insist on its own way - yet here, he says that if anyone dares to disagree with what he says, they are to be ignored. This is much like the passage in Deuteronomy 13, where any attempt to change the Jewish religion was to be met with death.

1 Cor 15:5-8 - ...and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Here's part of Paul's only attempt to talk about the story of Jesus in any sort of detail. Interestingly enough, his version of these events matches with what we see in the gospels on hardly any points!

1 Cor 15:12-17 - Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ-whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
I like this little rant from Paul. He states the problem with Christianity quite well - it all goes back to the question of the validity of the idea of a resurrection. In this case, I think it's easy to answer Paul's first question - any person who has read the Jewish scripture can name plenty of passages that specifically state that there is no life after death. The Sadducees were quite familiar with that concept. The idea of an immortal soul and resurrection came into the Jewish religion quite late in its history, being borrowed from the Persians and Greeks. It's a small wonder, then, that there should still be confusion over this issue, especially in this new religion Paul and his cronies were trying to tack onto the old Hebrew religion!

1 Cor 15:29 - Otherwise, what will those people do who receive baptism on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?
This verse puzzled me greatly. I wonder what Paul had in mind in talking about people being baptized "on behalf" of dead people? I've certainly never heard of such a thing these days, though I understand that this is done in the Mormon religion.