Quote:
Originally Posted by OBW
If anything, I believe that Paul's goal was not to school the Corinthians on what was to be, but to give them a narrower range of imagination so they would drop it and move on to what mattered — living now. And from what I can see, no matter how high and lofty and spiritual the other things Paul taught, it was all tied in with their practical living as a community of faith and as individuals representing that community in the larger community of life.
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Two sections come to my mind, here. First, where Paul said, "I know that you want to know about certain foods..." then he suddenly started talking about the vanity of knowledge and the better way, which is love.
1 Cor 8:1 "Now concerning things sacrificed to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies. 2 If anyone supposes that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know; 3 but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him.…"
The way is not to scrupulously parse the rule book, but rather to love one another. True knowledge is not objective fact closely held but rather to love. Paul was not interested in answering their question so much as re-directing their inquiry, and focus.
Secondly, remember where Paul wrote "For you can all prophesy one by one, so that all may learn and all be encouraged..." in 1 Cor 14:31? WL made it appear as if the apostle was encouraging us all to stand one by one, and speak. But actually Paul was dealing with a situation in which everybody tried to speak at once, and to re-create the excitement of Pentecost. The Corinthians were going to each meeting expecting the building to shake and tongues of fire to fall, and each would shout in the language of angels (or at least in Scythian) of the mighty works of God. Paul was saying, "Calm down, be sober, speak to edify the hearers."
But Lee divorced that word from its context and it became, repeated endlessly, the basis of our "popcorn testimonies", in which we would line up behind the microphone, and one by one, tell everyone else what a revelation the latest speaking was.
Likewise, if we consider the over-all context of 1 Corinthians 15:45b we might see what the merit of OBW's comment. Perhaps Paul is not attempting to lay the foundation for someone's trinitarian dogma but rather trying to bring some measure of closure and/or restraint to what is, for the speculating Corinthians, a largely hypothetical realm.