Book review
Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes
Review by Alan F.H. Wisdom, Special to The Layman, May 7, 2012
Kenneth Bailey is best known as the missionary professor who taught through 40 turbulent years in Egypt, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Cyprus and then brought us Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes. Now Bailey moves on to view Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes (InterVarsity Press). He does not disappoint in this study of 1 Corinthians.
Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes: Cultural Studies
in 1 Corinthians
Kenneth E. Bailey
IVP Academic, 560 pages
Many have read Paul’s epistle as a disjointed series of responses to scandals, quarrels and questions arising out of the Corinthian church. Many have set the Jesus of the Gospels against His apostle to the Gentiles. Many have treated Paul’s critique of the Law as if it were a rejection of his Jewish heritage. Many have sought to separate the apostle’s teaching from later Christian doctrines such as the Trinity. Many have caricatured Paul as sexually repressed and hostile to women. Bailey challenges all these assumptions.
Bailey’s thesis is “that the entire book [of 1 Corinthians] has a carefully designed inner coherence that exhibits amazing precision in composition and admirable grandeur in overall theological concept.” The reason this coherence has been missed is that western readers do not see the rhetorical structures familiar to them: a linear progression of thought from premises to conclusions, with supporting evidence and illustrations attached to each point.
But Paul argues in a different, more Middle Eastern manner, said Bailey. While writing in Greek, the apostle reproduces rhetorical strategies from the Hebrew Scriptures and their rabbinic interpreters: the parallel phrases expressing similar thoughts in different words, the vivid parables that embody meaning rather than just illustrating it, the Scriptural citations that clinch arguments rather than just supporting them.
Bailey meticulously outlines Paul’s letter and diagrams it phrase by phrase to reveal its Hebraic “ring composition.” The apostle typically spirals through his material, first raising an issue, then burrowing through various aspects until he reaches a central insight (often a parable or Scripture verse), then revisiting the same aspects in reverse order and returning to his original point. Thus the discussion of the cross in 1 Corinthians 1:5-4:16 is matched by the proclamation of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. The two sections on men and women in worship, in chapters 11 and 14, mirror one another. And the central insight that links them is the great discourse on love in chapter 13.
Bailey shows how much Paul draws from the Old Testament not only in style but also in content. He alerts readers to frequent echoes of the prophets Amos and Isaiah – especially the “servant songs” in Isaiah 42-53 that frame the apostle’s understanding of Christ’s mission. Of course, these same prophetic passages also impressed the Gospel writers. And Bailey demonstrates how much Paul has in common with the Gospels.
Although the apostle would not have read the four Gospels that we have today (those being composed later), he was clearly familiar with sayings and stories of Jesus that were later collected in those Gospels. Bailey notes how often the apostle touches on thoughts and images associated with Jesus: the sower who plants His seed in hopes of a plentiful harvest, the builder who lays a firm foundation, the faith that moves mountains, God’s great reversal in which the first shall be last and the last first.
Likewise, Bailey connects Paul to the Christian theology that came after him. He detects “a striking number of carefully constructed affirmations related to the Trinity” in passages such as 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. Contrary to the claims of some modern liberals, the doctrine of the Trinity was not invented by Athanasius in the fourth century. It grew out of the apostolic witness that “God was in Christ” and that the same God sent out His Spirit to dwell in Christ’s people.
He elucidates Paul’s teaching on several questions that still vex the modern church. He clarifies that, in speaking of “the foolishness of the Gospel,” the apostle “does not intend any form of anti-intellectualism.” Indeed, Paul’s proclamation of the cruciform “wisdom of God” is rhetorically eloquent and conceptually sophisticated.
Regarding the proper relationship between Christianity and culture, Bailey expounds how Paul addresses the quandary about eating meat sacrificed in pagan temples. He maintains that, in 1 Corinthians 9:19-10:22, there is not a single right approach to Jewish or Greek culture, but rather three approaches depending upon the circumstances. In some cases, Paul recommends “full identification” by being “all things to all people.” In other cases, the apostle advises “partial identification” with the heritage of Israel, but not with its shortcomings and sins. Finally, Paul warns that there can be “no identification” with demonic idolatry. Christians must have prudence to judge each cultural situation and the approach that it requires.
In discussing 1 Corinthians 5-7, Bailey confronts the delusion that sex is “a private matter” about which “God is not interested.” Libertines, ancient and modern, imagine that joining our bodies to one another is no more consequential than which food we choose to eat for dinner. Bailey summarizes Paul’s response: “Human sexuality, he affirms, is part of the inner core of the whole person called the body, and that body will be raised. Furthermore, that whole person (the body) will be affected negatively by immorality.” And the body affected is not merely the individual’s but also the whole body of Christ that is the church. “Paul knew that if there were no boundaries for sexual behavior, any form of social bonding as a community would be impossible.” This is a powerful word to be heard in a denomination that seems to be dropping the Biblical boundaries for sexual behavior.
Bailey also draws forth a word for a denomination that, like the church in Corinth, is rent by divisions. Commenting on Paul’s disavowal even of the faction in Corinth that boasted, “We are of Christ,” Bailey insists, “No group in the church has the right to claim that they alone are loyal to Christ.” This and many other insights make Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes well worth its 500 pages for any serious student of the Scriptures.
Alan F.H. Wisdom, a freelance writer and PCUSA elder, is an adjunct fellow with the Institute on Religion and Democracy in Washington, D.C.