New Series: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Corinthians (PART 1)
Guest Writer: Dr. Timothy A Brookins
Folks, (Nijay here), I am so stoked to introduce a guest writer for a Friday series here at Engaging Scripture. Dr. Timothy Brookins is a great historian and biblical scholar, and author of several books including the **brand new** Eerdmans title REDISCOVERING THE WISDOM OF THE CORINTHIANS: PAUL, STOICISM, AND SPIRITUAL HIERARCHY (2024). Tim was kind enough to agree to do a 6-part series introducing some of the key ideas and insights from his scholarship on the background and context of 1 Corinthians. This is PART 1.
Paul and His Philosophical School in Corinth (PART 1)
Dr. Timothy Brookins
“I think I know why Paul wrote 1 Corinthians 1-4; and I don’t think it’s for the reasons that recent scholarship suggests.” (Brookins)
Recent Research
Between the 1980s and the present, a general consensus has emerged that Paul’s discussion of the church’s “factions” and “wisdom” in chapters 1-4 find their explanation in the fact that the church was enamored with a missionary named Apollos because he was an eloquent (“wise”) preacher, whereas Paul was not, and hence, that “Paul” and “Apollos” factions had emerged in the church, and the relationship between the two men had grown tense. Across the same period, scholarship has also increasingly accepted the view that the church contained a small, but influential, group of well-to-do members, and that socio-economic stratification between this group and the remainder of the church caused friction that engendered this and several other problems addressed in the letter (e.g., litigation in 6:1-11, eating idol-meat in various settings in 8:1-13; 10:14-33; division at the Lord’s Supper in 11:17-34). These points of agreement reflect the general movement of scholarship away from older reconstructions of 1 Corinthians that discerned influence from “religious” systems like Gnosticism and toward reconstructions that attribute the church’s problems to “social” factors like the appeal of public oratory, socio-economic stratification, patron-client dynamics, conventional financial practices, the honor system, or political factionalism—or some a combination of these.
Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Corinthians
History bears out that, at any given moment in the course of scholarship on a particular question, widely shared views and even consensuses will be right in some things and wrong in others. It would be a long story to explain how we arrived at the point just summarized in the history of the interpretation of 1 Corinthians. For my part, I am convinced that, as much as we have learned from recent scholarship, in its zeal to demonstrate that the church’s divisions have to be situated within everyday “life” as these people experienced it—as indeed it does—it has too readily dismissed the contribution of religious or philosophical “ideas” to this church’s problems. The extreme reaction of scholarship to the old “Gnostic” thesis—and theses akin to this—has been evinced in the recurrence in recent scholarship of statements like “the problems in Corinth were not theological, but social” (dichotomy not my own). There are too many problems with such a perspective to address them here. The important point is that one can only reach this conclusion, in my view, if one is spending inordinate time laying out “social context” and too little time testing it with serious exegesis.
My new monograph Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Corinthians: Paul, Stoicism, and Spiritual Hierarchy (Eerdmans, 2024) enters into this discussion. As noted, Paul addresses two interrelated issues in 1 Corinthians 1-4: the church is divided into factions (1:10-17a), and some of its people espouse what he calls the “wisdom of the world” while referring to themselves as “wise men” (1:17b-3:23). My purpose in this book is to venture a reconstruction that explains as precisely as possible what kind of “wisdom” this wisdom was, what was the nature of their “divisions,” and how these two things relate.
As my goal of “rediscovering” intimates, I depart from the basic reconstructions of the letter’s occasion that scholarship of recent decades has offered. On the one hand, I reject the widely assumed view that “wisdom” in the context of the letter’s occasion alludes to the “wisdom” of eloquence, rhetorical ability, or sophistic skill; and hence I reject the view that the contrasting speaking abilities of Paul and Apollos were a primary reason for the church’s factions; as I reject also the view that “wisdom” refers more generically to higher education as a symbol of elite status. I equally reject the view that the factions had to do primarily with ordinary patron-client dynamics or contrasting financial practices involving, again, Paul and Apollos.
On the other hand, I accept some of the basic criticisms against older scholarship that much of the newer era of scholarship has raised. First, I agree that whatever the Corinthians’ wisdom was, it wasn’t wholly derivative, but was undoubtedly something “new.” Second, I agree that whatever it was, it can’t be explained based on “ideas” or abstract “religious systems” alone.
An Interaction Approach
Building on my earlier monograph Corinthian Wisdom, Stoic Philosophy, and the Ancient Economy (Cambridge University Press, 2014), I argue in Rediscovering that the Corinthian wise group had a special affinity for Stoic philosophy (or Stoic “wisdom”). However, in this second installment I draw from more recent methodological insights on cultural “comparison” by approaching comparison in terms of “interaction” rather than “influence.” Specifically, I draw from a taxonomy, developed by Max Lee, of seven interaction-types (table below) commonly seen in interactions between rivaling philosophical schools. The interaction approach highlights not just what or how much one “borrowed,” but rather the mechanics of how rivaling groups used each other’s material—citing it in order to reject it, appropriating it polemically or irenically, reworking it within one’s own system of thought, and so forth. It is important to observe that when the ancient philosophical schools interacted in this way, they did not see themselves compromising their firm commitment to their originating school; for rivalry went hand in hand with a culture of stalwart “allegiance” to school founders. Consequently, interaction and exchange did not result in a prevailing phenomenon of “eclecticism.”
Eclecticism
The subject assimilates or appropriates material from another school but the rationale behind their appropriation is unclear.
Refutation
The subject cites and proceeds to disprove the source philosophy or to demonstrate that one’s own philosophy is more correct.
Competitive Appropriation
The subject takes over the meaning of the source’s linguistic inventory and uses it in a “better” way.
Irenic Appropriation
The author critically supplements or synchronizes the rivals’ material.
Concession
The subject concedes to the rival school’s teaching.
Common Ethical Usage
The subject appropriates language or concepts that belong to a common encyclopedia of philosophy and moral traditions.
Doctrinal Reformulation
Adherents within a common tradition reinterpret their founder’s teachings while believing that they adequately preserve the essential integrity of his original doctrines.
In my analysis of the Corinthians’ interaction with Stoicism I note that they exhibit a tension between two of Lee’s interaction types: irenic appropriation (or possibly competitive appropriation) and doctrinal reformulation. Irenic appropriation occurs when the borrower critically supplements or synchronizes a rival school’s material (using it in a “better” way, if competitive). In my assessment, the Corinthians have appropriated Stoic doctrine at some level of substance, technicality, and interrelation of its parts. Doctrinal reformulation, on the other hand, occurs when the borrower shares a common tradition with their source, but reinterprets the source’s teachings while believing that they adequately preserve the essential integrity of the original doctrines. In this regard, the wise group in Corinth has aligned themselves with Paul but have reformulated his teaching in the direction of Stoicism.
Corinthian Wisdom as Sub(ordinated) Stoicism
Due to this tension—between interaction with Stoic material and adherence to the teachings of Paul (reformulated in alignment with the former)—the Corinthian brand of wisdom cannot, on the one hand, exactly be considered “Stoicism”; nor, on the other hand, did it satisfactorily represent Paul’s teaching. In short, it bore a strong family resemblance with “Stoicism,” but as subordinated to what the Corinthians claimed as their primary identity: they were adherents of the teachings of Paul. Thus, I offer as an appropriate description of the Corinthians’ wisdom the label “sub-Stoicism,” meaning, “sub(ordinated)-Stoicism.” What precisely the resemblances of this wisdom with Stoicism were, and how this group viewed their relationship with Paul, I lay out in our remaining posts.
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I'm looking forward to part 2 and getting my hands on the book. Fascinating thesis.