[JSNT19 (2000) 51-60]

HOLINESS AND JUSTICE: EXEGETICAL COMMENTS ON 1 CORINTHIANS 11.17-34 Luise Schottroff

Universitt Gesamthochschule Kassel, Fachbereich 01/Theologie, Diagonale 9, D-34109 Kassel, Germany

1. Paul 's Account of the Supper and Jesus ' Last Supper No great distance in time separates the account Paul gives of the Lord's Supper in his first letter to the community in Corinth from Jesus' Last Supper: we can date Jesus' death to c. 33 CE, and Paul's letter to c. 55 CE. When Paul says that he 'received' the account of the Supper (11.23), we may certainly suppose that this happened during his first positive contacts with Christian groups at the time of his so-called conversion. Thus, this account by Paul brings us closer to the life of the historical Jesus than almost any other traditions in the New Testament. We should not conclude from this that Paul's wording is more authoritative than the Gospels' accounts of the Supper (Mt. 26.26-29; Mk 14.22-25; Lk. 22.15-20); rather, the breadth of variations in the transmission shows that oral and written traditions were still flowing vigorously towards the end of the first century. Paul's version offers a very old snapshot of the oral tradition of the first generation of Jesus' followers. In theological terms, however, this means that immediately after Jesus' death, the Lord's Supper was already the action that created the identity of the groups that were coming into being, and hence also the locus of belief in the resurrection. The account of the Lord's Supper in the Didache (community regulations from 110-20 CE) shows that the account of the Last Supper, whether drawn from Paul or from the Gospels, did not form part of the celebration of the Lord's Supper in the early Christian period, as the 'institution narrative' of a rite: the rite of the Supper is essentially identical to the rite of Jewish community

52

Journal for the Study of the New Testament 79 (2000)

meals The ritual character is determined basically by the prayers of blessing over bread and wine, it is in this context that the reference to Jesus Christ is expressed The brief mention of the blessing of bread at 1 Cor 11 24, and the even briefer mention of the blessing of the cup at 11 25 ('likewise' includes the blessing of the cup too), show that Paul takes for granted his own familiarity and that of the Corinthian community with Jewish meals and the prayers which these involved Paul's verbal quotations in his account of the Supper concentrate primarily on the reference to Jesus Christ, which had been linked to the blessing prayers of the Jewish tradition According to Jewish tradition, the prayer of blessing over bread (and implicitly over all the food consumed in the course of the meal) often ran as follows 'Blessed be you, O Eternal One, our God, king of the world you bring forth bread from the earth' ' The meal is followed by a prayer of thanksgiving over the cup of blessing, Paul assumes that this too is well known, and writes only about that part of this prayer that is related to Christ Both prayers of blessing are accompanied in the Jewish tradition by ritual actions According to a custom discussed in rabbinic literature, the host or hostess lifts up the bread and shares it among the table fellowship after the blessing, the cup of blessing is lifted up and held slightly above the table during the prayer

2 The Conflict in Corinth Paul quotes the Last Supper narrative in order to protest against the manner in which one group of Christians in Corinth celebrated the Lord's Supper This conflict is not between Paul and 'the Corinthians', but between groups within the Corinthian community (11 18, 19) Paul's letter takes up the cudgels for one side in this dispute The image of the apostle and his Opponents' which has left its mark on the history of the exposition ot his letters is ecclesiogenetic it takes for granted a smoothly flowing continuity between a 'correct' Pauline church and today's church on the one hand, and a pattern (then and now) ot 1 See Leo Hirsch Judische Glaubenswelt (Basel Victor Goldschmidt Verlag 1978) 63 here he provides further information about Jewish meals One should not assume that this praxis was always and everywhere the same cf also m Ber 6 8 and Paul Billerbeck Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Mid rasch IV 2 (Munich Beck 1961) 24 excursus on Ein altjudisches Gastmahl

SCHOTTROFF Holiness and Justice

53

'opponents', 'sectarians' and 'splinter-groups' on the other hand. This dualistic antithesis fails to do justice to the plurality of community praxis in early Christianity; besides this, it attributes to Paul in absolute authority which he did not possess at that period, an authority to which he did not even lay claim. He was one teacher and apostle among many women and men who lived the gospel together and engaged in discussion and dispute about the correct interpretation of Torah in their situation. Exegetical discussions interpret in very monochrome terms the conflict among Christians in Corinth (mostly presented as a conflict between Paul and his Opponents'). In keeping with Hellenistic-Roman custom, people bring their own food for the meal. However, there exist wide social distinctions in the community (cf. 1 Cor. 1.26), and those who are well off have better food and other customs at table than the hired workers and slaves. The rich do indeed understand themselves as part of the community, and they come to its assembly, but on the whole they separate themselves from the others and eat what they have brought as a private meal (11.21, 23). They show no consideration for those who are worse off, who cannot bring much, and whose food is also of poorer quality. This results in inequality: some go hungry, while others are drunk (11.21, 22). The rich justify their behaviour by appealing to the hunger they feel (11.34, 22). Other members of the community see this as contempt for the community and for the poor, and Paul shares this view (11.22). It also wounds the holiness of the body of Christ (11.29). This meal must have been a humiliating situation for the poor, whose dignity as children of the one Creator of all human beings was called into question. 3. Holiness and Justice Paul writes at 11.30 that this praxis, which he and others criticize, has already led to illness and death in the community. Modern thought finds alien the idea that wrong behaviour in the community and in the sight of God can be dangerous, or even lethal, not only for the individual wrongdoers, but also for all the members and for the whole community; but if we are to understand the early Christian meal, it is decisively important that we trace the importance of holiness for what went on in the community. 1 Cor. 11.17-34 presupposes a property right which we also encounter in Acts 2.42-45 and 4.32-5.11. The community, as a fellowship

54

Journal for the Study of the New Testament 79 (2000)

sanctified by God, has common property (, Acts 2 44, 4 32) con secrated to God The conceptual antithesis to common property is 'private' property (, Acts 4 32, 1 Cor 1121) Both forms co-exist, for example in the sense that one who possesses a field and becomes a member of the community continues to be the possessor of his field, but with a fundamental willingness to sell the field and add the proceeds to what is held in common, if the community so decides The aim of the community is to prevent individual members from landing in economic distress, and to even out economic disparities The community is to be a fellowship in holiness, and justice is an essential dimension of this According to both Acts and 1 Cor 11, the basis of the common meal was this holiness and justice The better-off in Corinth have behaved exactly like Ananias and Sapphira they have treated common property, consecrated to God, as if it were private property More precisely, they have treated it as private property at a time when it was already common property, consecrated to God They have "misappropriated" something consecrated to God (Acts 5 2), thereby risking illness and death It would have been possible for them to continue to keep their private property in their own possession (Acts 5 4), by eating at home ( 1 Cor 11 22, 33), but this would have meant their withdrawal from the community and trom its holiness Sharing in the meal signifies sharing in justice, holiness and fellowship () both among themselves and with Christ 'Wounding the integrity of a community presumes a break between the human being and the divine ' Our modern mentality finds the death ot Ananias and Sapphira just as objectionable as 1 Cor 11 30 But even today one can understand the idea that human beings throw away their own lives or put them at risk when they destroy the correct relationship to other human beings and to God Paul's text is silent about participation by women, but we can assume that they took part on an equal basis, as acting subjects Society (both Hellenistic-Roman and Jewish) knew conservative ideals that excluded women from sharing in a meal, 4 but reality in general did not corre2 On this et Ivoni Richter Reimer Women in the Acts of the Apostles A Feminist Liberation Perspectne (Minneapolis Fortress Press 1995) pp 6 11 3 Richter Reimer Women 11 with reference to Acts 5 111 4 On this ci Kathleen E Corley Pinate WomenPublic Meals Social Con flict in the S\noptic Tradition (Peabody MA Hendrickson 1993) pp 180 86 and elsewheie

SCHOTTROFF Holiness and Justice

55

spondto these conservative regulations. Accordingly, we should assume that Paul's theology, which oppresses women by postulating that only the man is God's image (1 Cor. 11.7), existed alongside a completely different praxis. But while we may take it for granted that women shared in the meal, we must ask what their role was: were they servants responsible for the domestic work, or were they equals with the men? Paul tells us nothing about this. But Jesus' manifesto on this question (Mk 10.42-45 parr.) demands that alland this means, in particular, free menshould share in the work of looking after others at home (). This precept was held in great honour in early Christianity, even when it led to conflicts (Lk. 10.38-42; Acts 6.1-6). We may certainly therefore assume that free men shared in cooking and the other work involved in preparing the meal at Corinth, as elsewhere, and that the community likewise behaved justly when it assigned work to women and slaves.5 The conflict about food in Acts 6.1-7 should be seen in connection with the conflict in Corinth. At the heart of the dispute about the widows lies the act of serving () during the community meal, that is the eucharist. This conflict is not provoked by class differences, but by the refusal of Hebrew-speaking men to serve one group of widows. Thus it is caused by the societal definition of the identity of free men: even when these men belong to the lower classes, they never serve, but are always served. It is clear that the group of widowsin the spirit of Mk 10.42-45 parr.had demanded that their role should not only be that of serving. They should also be served, even by men. From today's perspective, the solution to the conflict seems a rather unconvincing compromise, viz. separation of service of the Word from the service of tables, with the latter assigned to seven Hellenist men. Is Mk 10.42-45 parr, no longer valid for all men, but only for volunteers who are given a specific commission for this service? However, the effort involved in resolving the conflict in Acts 6.1-7 shows that the community meal or eucharist was the place where just relationships were tried out, and where the attempt was made to overcome class divisions and patriarchal gender boundaries, not only at Corinth, but in all the early Christian communities. The patriarchal structure of the established pattern of meals, which
5. On this, cf. Luise Schottroff, Lydia's Impatient Sisters: A Feminist Social History of Early Christianity (trans. Barbara and Martin Rumscheidt; Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1995), pp. 204-23.

56

Journal for the Study of the New Testament 79 (2000)

assigned to the master of the house or father of the family the central task of praying and distributing the bread, gave rise to problems of a hierarchical nature. It is the father of the family who appears as the giver of bread, while women are dissociated from their work for the bread which is the raw material of life: they have toiled in the fields and turned the mill for the sake of this bread, and they have baked it (Mt. 24.41 par. and Mt. 13.33 par.), but their work is rendered invisible. This is why one must pose a critical question about Jesus' role as family father in the tradition of the Last Supper. The rite of sharing bread is meant to express the participation in the body of Christ of all the participants in the meal, men, women and childrenthat is a table fellowship with a non-hierarchical structure. To emphasize the role of Jesus as family father is to contradict his own anti-hierarchical manifesto (Mk 10.42-45 parr.; on this, see above). Besides this, women took on the role of leading the meal both in the Jewish tradition and in early Christianity, as one may see for example in the depiction of a meal in the catacomb of Priscilla.6

4. Eating and Sacrament Both the sacramental praxis of Christian churches today and the separation in the early church of community meal and cultic meal mean that our customary ideas of the Lord's Supper in early Christianity separate sacramental eating from a normal meal taken to satisfy one's hunger. There is an increasing awareness that the Lord's Supper as a cultic rite was linked to a normal meal, as Paul clearly assumes (11.25: 'after you have eaten'), but scholars still tend to make a distinction between a normal evening meal and the ritual of the Lord's Supper, for example by suggesting that only bread and wine were consumed at the community meal, which was simultaneously the eucharist. In the Jewish tradition, however, the blessing over bread embraced all the foodstuffs that were on the table. Above all, we must bear in mind the continuity between the Christian community meal and the Jewish tradition of community meals; an increasing detachment of normal meals and the eucharist from one another in Christianity means a decreasing
6. See Joseph Wilpert, Die Malereien der Katakomben Roms (Freiburg: Herder, 1903), I, illustration 15. On this, see Dorothy Irvin, T h e Ministry of Women in the Early Church: The Archaeological Evidence', in Touchstone (January 1986), pp. 24-33 (reprinted from Duke Divinity School Review 46 [1980]).

SCHOTTROFF Holiness and Justice

57

awareness of the Jewish roots of the eucharist. The dualistic separation between eating and holiness, between daily life and the cult, does not do justice to early Christianity: the transformation of bodies into temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6.19) means precisely that holiness embraces daily living, the bodily relationships of human beings, their work and their meals. The strength of the early Christian communities was the way they shared with one another this kind of community action in daily living. Eating and praying, union with Jesus Christ, sanctification of the community by God, experience of justice in their mutual relationships: all this flows together into the fellowship meal of the communities. If we read 1 Cor. 11.17-34 together with Acts 2.4245; 4.32-5.11; 6.1-7, we see clearly that the Lord's Supper, in this sense, was centrally significant in the emergence of the Christian communities. This could also suggest decisive impulses for a new form of the Lord's Supper today, but above all for a new ritual praxis of daily eating in fellowship, with prayers that praise the Creator and keep alive the memory of the resurrection. 5. This Is my Body Paul quotes the Last Supper narrative in order to make clear the holiness of the community meal in the face of a praxis on the part of some persons in Corinth that destroyed this holiness. He presupposes Jewish meal customs and concentrates in his quotation on the reference to Jesus Christ, which entails a new expansion of the Jewish prayers of blessing. By eating the bread, the community receives a share in the body of Christ, and is the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12.12). The words of the blessing over the bread are accompanied by the action of breaking the bread and distributing it to the entire table fellowship; they are expanded as follows: This is my body for you. Do this in memory of me.' At this period, the wording of this interpretative formula is not fixed; as the vitality of the tradition shows, it is continually shaped anew. There is a great variety of interpretations of the Lord's Supper in early Christianity, as can almost always be recognized in the various versions. We are not interested here in hypotheses about the reconstruction of some oldest form of the eucharistie words, or about how Paul may have changed the wording that had been handed on to him; rather, we wish to make clear the variety of levels of interpretation in the form that we find in 1 Cor. 11.23-26. Christ is the risen

58

Journal for the Study of the New Testament 79 (2000)

(in the sense of 1 Cor 15 3-5, Phil 2 6-11) who has opened up, by means ot his martyr's death, a path out of violence for the people of Israel and for all human beings The word k Lord' does not reproduce the meaning ot , which signifies, in relation to Jesus Christ, that one speaks about him with reverence for Jesus' closeness to God and with enthusiasm over the transformation of one's own life by taith His death, as a martyr's death 'for you', must be understood in politi cal and theological terms in the sense of the Jewish martyr tradition Through the death ot women and men martyrs, the sin ot the people, the violence directed ad intra, is expiated, and this renders powerless the violence that comes ab extra, the violence inflicted on the people by toreign political lords These lose their power One Jewish-Hellenistic text trom this period between Pompey and Vespasian helps us to understand the New Testament interpretation ot Jesus' death as the liberation ot the people trom sins in relation to God Here we are told about the martyrs They are consecrated tor the sake of God and are now honoured not only with this [heavenly] honour but also because it is thanks to them that the enemies lost their power over our people the tyrant was pun ished and the fatherland cleansed They are as it were a substitute for the soul of the people which is [stained] by sin Divine providence saved Israel which was in such dire straits through the blood of those pious ones and their expiatory death (4 Mace 17 20 22) Through their death, the martyrs purify and sanctify the soul of the people, which is stained by sin Ancient ideas of sacrifice, where the blood of the sacrificial beasts brings about the purification of the peo ple, find a secondary application here, which helps to interpret the reality God is once again united to his people, and the foes have no more power ovei this people, since it did not remain silent The anamnesis of the martyr's death draws attention to this death, which now lies in the past, and to the act of resistance it signified, at the same time, attention is directed forwards, to the path into the future which God opens up foi the people In the context of the Roman empire, the remembrance of Jesus 1 death signifies a clear act of politi cal resistance and solidarity as well as the willingness to take this path which Jesus had taken This following of Jesus on the path of the cross was the object of controveisy in eaily Christianity, because many weie unable to grasp why (on the one hand) God should want to escue them and heal them and why (on the othei hand) the result ot this in their

SCHOTTROFF Holiness and Justice

59

lives should be a terrible fear of death and perhaps even death as a martyr. This historical and theological explanation of the sacrificial Christology which interpreted Jesus' death as expiatory, tracing this back to the history of the martyrdom of the Jewish people, does not render the feminist critique of such a Christology void. On the contrary: one can no longer justify the dogmatic use of affirmations about sacrifice and an expiatory death, detached from any specific context, since these reduce the status of women and other oppressed persons to that of chattels. The feminist critique7 implies consequences for today: the correctness of this critique must become visible, and the remembrance of the tortured and risen body of Christ must also make visible the bodies of women and men as they experience violence and healing. The liberation of the people and of humanity is understood eschatologically: 'the new covenant through my blood'. The eschatological myth which can be recognized in the hints of the words from the Last Supper is the myth of the New Testament and of early Christianity as a whole: God will make the earth arise anew, God alone will be king. God is close at hand, and his judgment of the earth will take place soon. Christ will come as judge of humankind; Christians do not fear this coming in judgment, but yearn for it. The community holds the meal in yearning and firm hope, 'until he comes' (1 Cor. 11.26). God's judgment will establish justice on earth, and bring about peace and the fullness of life on earth and in heaven. In this myth of hope, ideas of a renewed creation coalesce with ideas of an end to the political violence which some inflict on others. The 'new covenant' began when Jesus the martyr died and his resurrection brought forth the beginning of new life for human beings. Every holy meal held in common by the adherents of Jesus Christ lets the community see the new covenant afresh. They live out of this hope, and work for this hope. The eschatological idea gives us the key to the ecclesiological level of interpretation of the Lord's Supper. Ifas so often happensthe eschatological image is subordinated to ecclesiology, this produces the idea of a church that already is the new covenant of God. This ecclesi7. On this, see especially Doris Strahm and Regula Strobel (eds.), Vom Verlangen nach Heilwerden: Christologie in feministisch-theologischer Sicht (Fribourg: Edition Exodus, 1991); Eveline Valtink and Renate Jost (eds.), Ihr aber, fr wen haltet ihr mich? Auf dem Weg zu einer feministisch-befreiungstheologischen Revision von Christologie (Gtersloh: Gtersloher Verlagshaus, 1996).

60

Journal for the Study of the New Testament 79 (2000)

ology, which places the kingdom of God in human hands, is blasphemous, since it does not preserve the proper distance from God. Besides this, it results in anti-Judaism, positing an antithesis between the new covenant with the church and the old covenant with the people of Israel. The ecclesiology of the words in the Lord's Supper is present in the form of address that is used: the community that eats the Supper is addressed. Through its memorial meal, it proclaims the death of Christ as the beginning of God's new covenant. It repeats the Supper in its daily living and constitutes each time anew the fellowship of the saints which even now practises justice. The framework of the Supper in Corinth, so difficult to grasp and so incompletely related by Paul, prevents modern interpreters from separating the meal, as ritual, from the praxis of the community's life. In its common holiness and justice, the community eats the body of the risen Jesus. This is not associated with the idea of eating flesh and drinking blood; what is involved is the idea that the bodies of the believers are united with the body of Christ. This concept is already present in 1 Cor. 6.15 ('your bodies are limbs of Christ'), and this bodily fellowship is not meant only as a metaphor. The consequence of the unity of the bodies of the believers in their fellowship is that they as a fellowship are the body of Christ (cf. also ICor. 10.16-17).

ABSTRACT The Pauline tradition of the Last Supper is understood here as the handing on of affirmations of hope and remembrance related to Christ, which are inserted into the ritual of Jewish meals The early Christian celebration of the Lord's Supper is a full community meal which follows the Jewish rite The conflict in Corinth was generated by the attempt of well-off members of the community to consume their own food and drink during the community meal, separated from the poorer majority of the community In the view of Paul and other members of the community, this action involves a social injustice which wounds the holiness of the body of Christ Just as eating and sacrament are linked in the early Christian Lord's Supper, so too are holiness and justice linked

^ s
Copyright and Use: As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the copyright holder(s)' express written permission. Any use, decompiling, reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a violation of copyright law. This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission from the copyright holder(s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of a journal typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However, for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article. Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available, or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s). About ATLAS: The ATLA Serials (ATLAS) collection contains electronic versions of previously published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American Theological Library Association.