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Civil Litigation In Secular Corinth and the Church

The Forensic Background to 1 Corinthians 6.1–81

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Bruce W. Winter
Bruce W. Winter
Affiliation:
Cambridge, England
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Extract

Paul's teaching about the attitude of the Christian towards the state is well known in Rom 13. There the rulers are God's vicegerents, God's deacons for the praising of those who do good and for the punishing of evil-doers. All are to be subject to them in order to avoid God's wrath and to maintain a good conscience. They are deserving of financial support as God'a λειτουργο and are to be shown honour and respect. Does Paul espouse a contradictory view of the state in 1 Cor 6? Here they are not God's λειτουργο, but οἱἄδικοι, the unrighteous, v. 1. They are those least esteemed in the κκλησα, v. 4, and appearing before them is plainly wrong for Christians, v. 6. The Corinthians were not called upon to honour them by Paul in 1 Cor 6, if they are indeed the same persons mentioned in Rom 13.

Type
Articles
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 37 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 559 - 572
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1991

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References

2 For a discussion of the former function see the author’s ‘The Public Praising of Christian Benefactors: Romans 13.3–4 and 1 Peter 2.14–15’, JSNT 34 (1988) 87–103.Google Scholar

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5 It has been argued that the Corinthian Christians were submitting their cases to Jewish judges (A. Stein, op. cit., 87–8), but in the words of Conzelmann, H., A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (ET Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) 105Google Scholar, n. 23 that conclusion is ‘misguided’. See also Fee, G. D., The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1987) 236Google Scholar who notes that Stein's major difficulties arose out of the use of the verb καθίζειν in v. 4 which can mean ‘to appoint a judge’. Fee cites Josephus Ant. 13.75 where the verb is used of plaintiffs asking that a court be convened to hear their arguments. See also Dio Cassius Roman Histories 37.27.1 where one group in a disagreement demanded that their rights be exercised and the court be convened to hear the case (ϊνακαθιζήση); cf. LS ‘to cause an assembly or court’, i.e. to institute proceedings.

Furthermore, in Acts 18.12ff. the Jews had already dragged Paul before Gallio. The animosity engendered by that unsuccessful attempt, in addition to normal division created with the arrival of the Christian message among Jews, made for a lasting break with the synagogue. That makes it extremely unlikely that Christians would have gone for arbitration to a Jewish court which operated under the aegis of the synagogue and was presided over by a Jewish bākām, an official one step below a rabbi in status. See E. Dinkler, op. cit., 171–208 on the Jewish official. On the legal problems raised by Stein, ibid., 88–9 see the most recent treatment by Garnsey, P., ‘The Civil Suit’, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970) Part III.Google Scholar

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26 Suetonius Claudius 15,16.2.

27 P.Ryl. 119 (AD 54–67).

28 P. Fouad 26 11. 21–24.

29 Seneca Contr. 10.1. 2 and 7.

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53 Contra Robinson, D. W. B., op. cit., 4ffGoogle Scholar. where he suggests that the Jewish Christians had the right to act as judges in the congregation because they were ‘the saints’, i.e. the faithful Jews who had the scriptures.

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57 Fiori, B., ‘“Covert Allusion” in 1 Corinthians 1–4’, CBQ 47 (1985) 85–102Google Scholar. See further the discussion in Philo and Paul among the Sophists 206 ff. which shows how Paul deliberately negates the covertness of that rhetorical device.

58 In this passage Paul uses the term κκλησία to mean the actual gathering of Christians in the same way as it was used to refer to a recognized gathering in the secular world, cf. Acts 19.39.

59 The place of τοτο δελφούς in the whole sentence lays stress on the Christian status of the defendant. Fee, G. D., op. cit., 239Google Scholar, n. 4 believes that the use of τοτο combines the wronging and cheating together. The continuative use of the single neuter demonstrative pronoun which points to a previous action would suggest that the reference is to cheating.

60 For an interesting example of Christians resolving a claim and counter-claim involving a large sum of money and garments in AD 481, see Dewing, H. B., ‘A Dialysis of the Fifth Century AD in the Princeton Collection of Papyri’, AJP 53 (1922) 113–27Google Scholar. They signed a dialysis which was a legal contract recording the settlement between a bishop and two presbyters and a deacon.

61 Cf. 1 Cor 3.4, κατ ἄνθρωπον περιπατεν.

62 Philo and Paul among the Sophists, 209.

63 Contra Robertson, A. and Plummer, A., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary of the First Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1914) 110Google Scholar who suggested that a ‘fair, if rough summary’ of Paul's teaching in the two passages was ‘obey the criminal courts, but do not go out of your way to invoke the civil courts’. However, Paul proscribes the use of the latter.