Folks, (Nijay here), we are continuing a Substack series on 1 Corinthians. 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 5. For PART 1, CLICK HERE, PART 2, CLICK HERE, PART 3, CLICK HERE, PART 4, CLICK HERE.
Paul and His Philosophical School in Corinth
Part 5: The Corinthian Wise Men and Sub-Stoicism
In my first three posts, I summarized the coverage of the first eight chapters of Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Corinthians. My fourth post began summarizing my main thesis—laid out in chapter 9 of the book—that the “wisdom” of the Corinthian “wise men” is appropriately described as “sub-Stoicism.” In that post I treated the Corinthian-Stoic comparison under on the topics of (1) the wise man; and (2) Stoic anthropology and Corinthian contrasts. This fifth post will summarizing the comparison. I here discuss (3) Stoic anthropology and self-sufficiency; and (4) the categories of good / the spiritual, bad / the unspiritual, and indifferents.
My argument based on these areas of consideration is that the Corinthians’ self-understanding was consistent with Stoic distinctives at some level of substance, technicality, and interrelation of parts. Constituting their framework was a similar configuration of systemically related parts located, specifically, at a cross-section where Stoic physics and anthropology intersected with Stoic ethics.
3. Stoic Anthropology and Self-Sufficiency
Stoic anthropology—that is, what the Stoics thought a human being was—was a cross-section of Stoic physics—that is, how they thought the universe was. As we saw previously, the Stoics believed that a divine intelligent force called Logos, or “Reason,” infused all things in the universe in the form of fiery Breath that they called Pneuma. It was this indwelling presence, constituted at a high level of “tension,” that gave human beings the capacity to reason and to live virtuously.
In fact, this indwelling faculty was not something separate from one’s humanity, poured in from the outside and somehow distinct from the human person. Rather, Stoic physics articulated a theory of “mixture” (κρᾶσις) whereby the active principle of the Logos and the passive principle of matter in the universe were so thoroughly mixed as to mutually envelop each other. Hence, the Logos/Pneuma did not just dwell “in” human beings. Rather, it was inherent to the constitution of a human being, something proper to the human self.
All of this leads to the Stoic doctrine of “self-sufficiency” (αὐτάρκεια). A human being has available all that they need to reach the perfect life, through faculties intrinsic to themselves. This is why the Stoics commonly said, “Do not ask from God for what you have available from yourself.” A number of passages in the discourses of Epictetus turn this doctrine, again, into something of a paradox (see post 4). Normally when one “receives,” one receives from an external agent, be it human or divine. Based on the idiosyncratic physics of the Stoic school, however, Epictetus reemploys the word “receive” in a sort of catachresis, or intentional “misusage” of terms: he says, if you need anything, “receive it from yourself.”
It is in relation to this doctrine that the Corinthians’ self-assessment needs to be understood. They believed that the Pneuma immanent in them was not independent of them, sourced elsewhere and gifted to them, such that they “received” it. It was “their own” (“all things are yours” was a Stoic paradox; cf. 1 Cor 3:21). This explains the drift of Paul’s thought in 1 Cor 4:6-8. The Corinthians should not compare one another, for, “What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (4:7).
And the parallel doesn’t stop here. Another contemporary Stoic, Seneca provides a clear connection between the Stoic idea of self-sufficiency and “boasting.” In Epistle 41, he explains that every animal has its own peculiar perfection. We don’t praise a lion for its decorations, or a horse for its bit. We praise each thing for fulfilling that in which its perfection, or end, is found. So also in the case of humanity: “what is more foolish than to praise in a man the qualities that come from without?” Rather, we praise the person who has brought to perfection that which is properly “his own”: that is the faculty of reason brought to perfection in virtue.
4. The Spiritual, the Unspiritual, and the Indifferent
This last point raises a problem, however, with respect to the Corinthian controversy: we don’t find Paul attributing to the Corinthians the language of “reason” and “virtue,” but rather the language of the “spiritual.” Here, as I mentioned in my previous post, lay the Corinthians’ chief modification to the Stoic theory.
It is serendipitous to our purposes that Paul provides exactly the proof we need to demonstrate a clean substitution by the Corinthians of the one thing for the other, i.e., the “spiritual” for “virtue,” but with other surrounding pieces remaining unchanged. Seneca helpfully illustrates the contextualizing Stoic doctrine. He says: “This [virtue] judges all things, but nothing judges it” (Ep. 71.20). As Seneca explains, virtue is a “rule” (regula), or standard, against which all other things are judged. It is against this that all things should be compared, and to which all things should conform. Hence, the wise man, who perfectly embodies virtue, serves as a like standard.
Interpreters of 1 Corinthians agree almost universally that πνευματικός (“the spiritual man”) and ψυχικός (the “unspiritual man”) were Corinthian terms, appropriated by Paul throughout the letter. Many interpreters, however, have suggested that the whole maxim that Paul articulates in 1 Cor 2:15 was in fact a Corinthian maxim, or as it is often called, a “Corinthian slogan.” If this is right, it seems uncoincidental, given the affinities of the wise for Stoicism, that this slogan parallels the line just cited from Seneca, with only the substitution of “spiritual” for “virtue”:
Now, for the Corinthians, it is not so much virtue as the spiritual that serves as the standard agains which all things are judged, and it is the spiritual man that serves as the standard against whom all others are judged.
The final point to note is the way in which this configuration of similarities extends to the category of indifference. As noted in our previous post, the Stoics considered virtue the only thing “good,” vice the only thing “bad,” and all intermediate things, like health, wealth, power, or reputation, as “indifferent” (ἀδιάφορα). Here we find the explanation for what appears to be a major contrast between the Corinthian wise man and the Stoic wise man. The Corinthian wise man did not claim to be virtuous, but rather spiritual. More specifically, he set as the criterion of excellence “spiritual,” or charismatic (12:1; 14:1), manifestations, of the type discussed extensively in 1 Corinthians 12-14—including spiritual insights (wisdom, knowledge, discernment) and spiritual manifestations (chiefly tongues). (Note that for the Corinthians these are “spiritual manifestations” [pneumatika]; it is Paul that recasts them as spiritual “gifts” [charismata]). Yet, the letter of 1 Corinthians shows that, between the categories of spiritual and unspiritual, the Corinthian wise man, like the Stoic wise man, had a wide category for things “indifferent.” The spiritual-wise man’s indifference was directed toward things pertaining to the body, like eating (6:13; 8:1-11; 10:14-22) and sex (5:1-11; 6:12, 18).
In short, the Corinthian wise men replaced the trifold Stoic distinction between things good-bad-indifferent with the trifold distinction spiritual-unspiritual-indifferent. “The spiritual,” like the “spiritual man,” became the absolute standard of excellence.
If you appreciated this post, subscribe to Engaging Scripture so you can make sure to get PART 6 directly to your email inbox! Dr. Brookins will offer further explanations and proofs for his approach.