Living as Christ Crucified: The Cross as a Foundation for Christian Ethics in 1 Corinthians

2003 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-131
Author(s):  
H. H. Drake Williams
Keyword(s):  
Lord's Supper ◽  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Specific Role ◽  
Civil Litigation ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Cross Of Christ ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Christian Unity ◽  
Christian Beliefs

The cross of Christ has been well recognized as providing a foundation for Christian beliefs throughout the ages. The cross is also becoming increasingly recognized as providing a general foundation for Christian ethics. This study explores the specific role that the cross plays for some of Paul’s ethical instructions within 1 Corinthians. It notes that the cross plays a recognizable role in Paul’s instruction for unity, Christian stewardship, community exclusion, civil litigation, weak and strong brothers, and the Lord’s Supper. In these exhortations, the cross is also regularly associated with ideas concerning Christian unity, self-sacrifice, and the Christian’s future hope.

scholarly journals “IMITATE ME”: INTERPRETING IMITATION IN 1 CORINTHIANS IN RELATION TO IGNATIUS OF ANTIOCH

Perichoresis ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. H. Drake Williams
Keyword(s):  
Social Situation ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Social Situations ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Counter Example ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Of Christ ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Way ◽  
Power And Authority

ABSTRACTSeveral times within 1 Corinthians Paul encourages the Corinthians to imitate him. These are found at critical junctures in the epistle in 1 Corinthians 4:16 and 11:1. The meaning of these sections is in question from the perspective of Corinthian scholars. Several believe that Paul is appealing to apostolic power and authority to coerce the Corinthians to obey him, whereas others find him responding to social situations. This is different from the way that imitation and discipleship are presented within the writings of Ignatius of Antioch. Pauline ideas, specifically those from 1 Corinthians, are known to have influenced Ignatius of Antioch’s writing, and thus Ignatius’ ideas about imitation are likely to reflect the meaning that Paul intended. Ignatius specifically speaks about imitation and discipleship in several places: Ign. Eph. 1, 2, 4; 3:1-3, Ign. Magn. 4:1; 5:1-2; 9:1-6, Ign. Rom. 3:1-2; 6, 3, 1. When these passages are considered, imitation involves suffering and possibly martyrdom. Imitation is also connected to the cross of Christ and is not a means to enforce superiority. Ignatius’ view of imitation would contradict the opinions of some scholars who see Paul’s injunction for imitation as a claim for power. It also supplies more information to the idea than those who claim that it is simply a counter example to the social situation.

Neither Jew nor Greek

2020 ◽  
pp. 187-251
Author(s):  
John A. Jillions
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Lord's Supper ◽  
Community Leaders ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Greco Roman ◽  
Rational Thought ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Divine Guidance

This chapter shows how issues of decisions, divine guidance, discernment, and delusion are woven throughout 1 Corinthians. Paul’s community was shaped by Greco-Roman and Jewish views, but he presents a distinctive new way based on the Cross. As he himself told them, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Identification with the crucified and risen Christ gave access to the Spirit and a life of communion with God in various ways: through the scriptures (reinterpreted in the light of Christ), the liturgical life of the community (especially baptism and the Lord’s Supper), tradition, preaching, apostles and community leaders, service, co-suffering, and, above all, love. But this does not eclipse individual divine communion, calling, and discernment. Nor does it exclude rational thought, which in Paul’s approach is equally illumined by divine guidance to integrate rational and mystical.

The Politics of the Nonviolent God: Reflections on René Girard and Karl Barth

1998 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Hunsinger
Keyword(s):  
Christian Ethics ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cross Of Christ ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Church ◽  
Secondary Consequence ◽  
As If

Doctrines of the atonement in Christian theology, as Marlin E. Miller has pointed out, ‘usually limit their concern to reconciliation with God and, at most, consider reconciliation with others a secondary consequence of reconciliation with God’. Too often, in other words, the vertical aspect of reconciliation is allowed to overshadow its horizontal aspect. The vertical aspect of the atonement as it pertains directly to God is often treated in isolation as if its ethical implications were of no great importance. The reverse defect, however, would also appear to be widespread. Christian ethics as we know it today often seems to proceed as if the atoning work of Christ were of little or no relevance to its deliberations on human affairs. The social or horizontal aspect of reconciliation thereby eclipses its vertical aspect. Yet if the cross of Christ is indeed the very center of the center of the Christian gospel, as the church has historically believed, then how can it fail to determine the substance of Christian ethics as well as that of Christian theology? Moreover, how can the centrality of the cross fail to orient them both in any attempt to specify their inner unity, order and differentiation?

The Essence of Christianity and the Cross of Christ

1914 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 538-594
Author(s):  
Benjamin B. Warfield
Keyword(s):  
New Haven ◽  
Liberal Theology ◽  
Religious System ◽  
The World ◽  
Cross Of Christ ◽  
The Face ◽  
Divinity School ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Cross ◽  
The Right

In a recent number of The Harvard Theological Review, Professor Douglas Clyde Macintosh of the Yale Divinity School outlines in a very interesting manner the religious system to which he gives his adherence. For “substance of doctrine” (to use a form of speech formerly quite familiar at New Haven) this religious system does not differ markedly from what is usually taught in the circles of the so-called “Liberal Theology.” Professor Macintosh has, however, his own way of construing and phrasing the common “Liberal” teaching; and his own way of construing and phrasing it presents a number of features which invite comment. It is tempting to turn aside to enumerate some of these, and perhaps to offer some remarks upon them. As we must make a selection, however, it seems best to confine ourselves to what appears on the face of it to be the most remarkable thing in Professor Macintosh's representations. This is his disposition to retain for his religious system the historical name of Christianity, although it utterly repudiates the cross of Christ, and in fact feels itself (in case of need) quite able to get along without even the person of Christ. A “new Christianity,” he is willing, to be sure, to allow that it is—a “new Christianity for which the world is waiting”; and as such he is perhaps something more than willing to separate it from what he varyingly speaks of as “the older Christianity,” “actual Christianity,” “historic Christianity,” “actual, historical Christianity.” He strenuously claims for it, nevertheless, the right to call itself by the name of “Christianity.”

scholarly journals Paradoks Salib: Keindahan Wajah Kemuliaan Allah

MELINTAS ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Joko Umbara
Keyword(s):  
Jesus Christ ◽  
Tree Of Life ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Christian Faith ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Divine Love ◽  
God's Love ◽  
Cross Of Christ ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Tragic Drama

An experience of the cross of Jesus Christ in Christian theology brings the sense of paradox. Christ’s death on the cross reflects the fate of humanity within the context of Christian faith. The cross is also seen as a mystery that tells the tragic story of humans who accept their punishment. However, the cross of Jesus Christ also reveals meanings that challenge Christians to find answers in their contemplation of the cross. The cross becomes a stage for human tragic drama, which might also reveal the beauty of death and life. It is the phatos of humanity, for every human being will die, but it is also seen as the tree of life hoped for by every faithful. On the cross is visible God’s self-giving through the love shown by the crucified Christ. God speaks God’s love not only through words, that is, in the teachings of Jesus Christ, but also through Christ’s loving gesture on the cross. The cross of Christ is the culmination of God’s glory and through it, God’s glory is shown in the beauty of divine love.

Paul and Philosophy

2020 ◽  
pp. 52-99
Author(s):  
Ole Jakob Løland
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Carl Schmitt ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
1 Corinthians ◽  
Theodor Adorno ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Conceptual Revolution

Taubes’s readings of Paul demonstrate a hermeneutical art of disagreement within the intellectual life of post-Holocaust Europe. Taubes is a reader who looks for intellectual enemies with whom he can achieve a true disagreement without dismissing their true insights, whether they are historical or philosophical. This hermeneutic is not unattached to Taubes’s Jewish background but reflects a Talmudic spirit inherent within Taubes’s idiosyncratic readings of Paul. Moreover, Taubes’s readings are attuned to nuances, ambivalences, and contradictions within Paul, as Taubes powerfully demonstrates in his exegesis of 1 Corinthians. With the help of Nietzsche’s polemical reading of this Pauline epistle, Taubes detects the instances where Paul’s doctrine of the cross revolutionizes ancient perceptions and passages that contain the power to neutralize this very same conceptual revolution. This results in Taubes’s image of a contradictory apostle, who can be used throughout history for various purposes. In Taubes’s case, Paul becomes a messianic thinker and part of Taubes’s efforts to establish a powerful synthesis of the insights of Walter Benjamin and Carl Schmitt—against what Taubes considers as the merely aesthetic tradition of “critical theory” in Theodor Adorno that remains indifferent to the historical struggles of the excluded.

Reappropriating Paul and Exercising Discipline

2018 ◽  
pp. 111-195
Author(s):  
Bart van Egmond
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Old Testament ◽  
Christian Life ◽  
Cross Of Christ ◽  
The Cross ◽  
Intellectual Production

The fourth chapter describes Augustine’s intellectual production and practice as presbyter of the Catholic congregation of Hippo Regius. It addresses his rereading of Paul against the Manichees, and describes the development of his thought on sin and free will (in relation to the Origenist tradition), his view of the salvific meaning of the Old Testament law, and his changing interpretation of the cross of Christ. Furthermore, the chapter describes the development of Augustine’s view of divine chastisement in the Christian life. A final series of sections deals with different aspects of fraternal correction and ecclesiastical discipline, and poses the question of how Augustine’s thought on these subjects relates to his later justification of coercion against the Donatists.

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