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Pentecostal Theology, Volume 25, No. 1, Spring 2003
Editorial
“ I Belong to Christ:” A Pentecostal Re ection on Paul’ s
Passion for Unity
Frank D. Macchia
For insight into Paul’ s passion for unity, I turn naturally to 1 Corinthians 1:12, where Paul criticizes the confessions of the various factions at Corinth: “ I am of Paul,” “ I am of Apollos,” “ I am of Cephas, and “ I am of Christ.” Less than clear, of course, is whether or not these slogans rep- resented clear-cut groups. I favor the idea put forth by Richard Hayes that each of the factions represented a house church devoted largely to one prominent church leader. Perhaps these house churches were formed around a mixture of theological, cultural and personal issues. Paul seems to imply that the loyalties of the splintered groups were nonessential, superŽ cial and worldly. In any case, Paul will cast the entire issue of the divisions at Corinth in terms that went beyond the theological imaginations of those involved in the con icts. At the very least, the Corinthian situation is a lesson in how not to conduct small groups!
What was the key theological issue for Paul as he faced the divisions at Corinth? Let us look again at the slogans mentioned in 1:12: “ I am of Paul,” “ I am of Apollos,” “ I am of Cephas,” “ I am of Christ.” It is this latter, “ I am of Christ,” that seems most provocative. As such, it is tempt- ing to explore the idea that this confession most fruitfully informs us about Paul’ s passion for unity. Let us assume for the moment that this latter confession, “ I am of Christ,” represented a more-or-less uniŽ ed response to the other factions among the Corinthian Christians. Let us also assume that Paul mentions this confession last in order to emphasize it. If these assumptions are valid, then we are faced with an interesting puzzle. After all, is not this confession, “ I am of Christ,” Paul’ s own alle- giance? Is this allegiance to Christ not Paul’ s very solution to the divi- sions at Corinth? Does he not say in 3:23 to the divided Christians there that they are “ of Christ?” Then why does this slogan among some of the Corinthians draw Paul’ s Ž re? How could the confession, “ I belong to Christ” be both a problem and the solution to the problem at the same
© 2003 Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden
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time? Let’ s probe Paul’ s effort to heal the divisions at Corinth with this problem in mind and see what fruit it bears.
We should begin by trying not to be too hard on the “ I am of Christ” faction. Their slogan belonged, at least in principle, to the apostolic preach- ing. And, if such a faction did exist at Corinth, they were understandably provoked by the worldliness of the others. Paul himself concludes that the other factions at Corinth were following the ways of the world in treating an apostle as a favorite teacher of wisdom. Paul presses the point in chapters two and three that the gospel was not proclaimed by philoso- phers of this age but instead by apostles who preached that in Christ the powers of the age to come appeared in the here and now. To borrow a phrase from Soren Kierkegaard, we could say that the factions that ral- lied behind various apostles had failed to note the “ difference between a genius and an apostle.” As Kierkegaard argued, the genius is replaced in history by other geniuses. The history of philosophy is marked by key turning points in which the great thoughts of the philosophers were brought to a higher synthesis in which new possibilities of thinking were opened up and older thoughts become museum pieces in the history of philoso- phy. The truth of this matter may be easily exempliŽ ed by the question, “ Which philosopher today teaches the Platonic doctrine of forms as a liv- ing option for dealing with the issue of universals and particulars?” The apostolic witness, however, is different. Their witness cannot be surpassed and relegated to the museum of antiquated thoughts in this way. They speak with equal force in every time and place because their witness is to an event that comes to us from God’ s ultimate future. As Paul stated in 2:6, he and the other apostles spoke wisdom “ but not the wisdom of this age, or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing.”
In the light of the worldliness of the factions that rallied behind vari- ous apostles, was not the Christ faction justiŽ ed in responding with right- eous fury, “ I am of Christ?” Is this not Paul’ s own cry? Should he not have joined them in this cry and formed the church loyal to Christ in con- tradistinction to the other factions?
But here is where we come to a crucial decision on behalf of the apostle. In the end, he could not fracture the community in this way and disown such large segments of the body of Christ at Corinth. They may have been wayward children, but they were still children not to be dis- owned. As Paul wrote in 3:1-2, they may have been worldly in their admi- ration of their chosen heroes, but they were not to be excluded from the fellowship and work of the Spirit. They were babes in Christ who still drank from the rudimentary milk of the word. Yes, they should have been
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on a diet of meat and potatoes by then but they were not, and Paul could not exclude them for their tardy growth. Though Paul warns in 3:17 that those who destroy the church will be destroyed, he implies in 3:10-15 that the factions were guilty at that point of building the house of God with weak and inadequate materials. Their worldly fascinations would probably not destroy the body of Christ but they would certainly weaken it. Such works will not stand but will be burned up by God’ s judgment, though the worker will end up being saved “ but only as one escaping through the ames,” as Paul states in 3:15.
The difŽ cult question, however, remains, Why does Paul criticize the “ I am of Christ” faction? If a faction at Corinth were saying that they were of Christ, they must have been, in some way, distorting the apos- tolic preaching. But how is belonging to Christ a distortion of Paul’ s preaching? The only possibility is that the distortion lay in the exclusiv- ity of this confession among those at Corinth who shared it. The faction in question had made an exclusive claim of belonging to Christ. Christ was consequently reduced to the leader of a particular faction of the church instead of the Lord of the entire Christian community at Corinth, indeed the Lord of all times and places. Paul is distancing himself from the sec- tarian nature of their claim and not the claim itself. Paul wanted to make the “ I belong to Christ” an inclusive offer of grace and not an exclusionary and sectarian exercise in self-exaltation.
The gracious way in which Paul deals with the divisive Christians at Corinth, however, did not mean that the weight of his judgment was light. By treating the apostles as favored teachers of wisdom, the Corinthians were under the spell of sophistry. In 1:17, Paul reminds the Corinthians that he sought to avoid playing the role of the wise philosopher among them, “ lest the cross of Christ lose its power.” The power of the gospel was not the power of philosophical wisdom but the power of life over death revealed in the cross and the resurrection. Jesus was not primarily a bearer of wisdom for life but rather life itself, life abundant and ever- lasting that can only come from God. This is the life that will forgive us of our sins and heal the wounds of sin in us. This is the life that will com- fort and empower the oppressed and heal the sick. This is the life that will reconcile us to God and allow us to drink from God’ s Spirit to over owing. This is the life that will bring us back from the dead. In their worldliness, the Corinthians were building with wood and straw, instead of with precious stones. They were clinging to relatively valueless mate- rials in the place of invaluable treasures. For Paul, the power of the Spirit of new life comes through the weakness of the cross, true wisdom through
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what would appear to the world as the foolishness of God. The Corinthians are urged to give up their worldly fascinations with their heroes in order to discover in these very same leaders invaluable gifts from God in Christ. Yes, the apostles who were the object of their fascination actually belonged to Christ. As such, these leaders belonged to the Corinthians as well, not as heroes to be exalted but as servants to point them to Christ, who is the true storehouse of life.
In short, Paul’ s warnings to the factions are weighty and meant to be taken with utmost seriousness. But Paul struggles to hold the Corinthians together as diverse members of the body of Christ bound to Christ by the Spirit of God and bound to each other as gifts of God to one another. In chapter three, the Corinthian church is regarded as the Ž eld of God. Paul planted and Apollos watered, but it was God who gave the increase. The Corinthian factions did not belong to Paul or to Apollos, Paul and Apollos belonged to them as gifts of God through which God would work to bestow upon them the blessings of Christ. The Corinthians were also a building, built upon the foundation, which is Christ. The apostles did not build upon themselves, nor even upon each other, but upon Christ. He is the source of the life-transforming wisdom and power of God. Lastly, the Corinthians were the temple of the Spirit, not the Spirit of human wis- dom or sophistry but the Spirit of the living God who in Christ called life from death. Whether the Ž eld of God, the building based on Christ, or the temple of the Spirit, the Corinthians belong to the triune God. Paul is not willing to cut any of them loose from the grip of the God who is disclosed through Christ and in the power of the Spirit. If there was a Christ faction at Corinth, Paul could not join them.
He could not join them because the confession, “ I am of Christ,” needed to be balanced with “ I am of Christ with the community of faith.” This community would be constituted by the calling of the Father, the con- fession of devotion to the Lordship of the living Christ, and the energiz- ing presence of the Spirit. Thus, not only are the preaching of the word of the cross and the supper of the Lord’ s table important for Paul in 1 Corinthians, but Paul would develop in chapters 12 to 14 the idea that all of us in the body of Christ belong to each other as gifts of the Spirit to help build one another up. In this growth process, not one person was to be excluded, for the Corinthians were to come behind in no single gift (1:8). It is not the community of faith nor its many gifted members that are to be lifted up and adored. Only Christ is adored. He is the content of our preaching and the foundation of our work. He is the precious stone that we give up our wood and hay to possess. But neither can we adore
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Christ in the absence of that community through which God works to bring us all to Christ so that we could drink abundantly of his Spirit. Yes, God has taken a great risk by condescending in love in order to commit the responsibility of witness to a frail community of faith made from the likes of the divisive Corinthians, or from the likes of us . God took a great risk to inhabit the likes of us so that we would encounter Christ in encoun- tering each other. God took great risk to use the likes of us as the unique form through which Christ would encounter the world.
For we are divided too. And we also have our own theological alle- giances. And we too succumb to the temptation of worldliness. One Reformed theologian who will remain unnamed wrote a book on pre- destination in which he boasts that his book was “ thoroughly Calvinistic.” In remarking on this statement, Barth noted in his volume on election that the task of the theologian was to be higher than certiŽ ed allegiance to Calvin!
Our temptation as Pentecostals, however, is not devotion to a theo- logical Ž gure but a sectarian devotion to Jesus. Can Pentecostals avoid the sectarian version of devotion to Jesus and adopt Paul’ s passion for unity? In doing so, we might rediscover what our good friend, Cecil Robeck, has been telling us about the early Pentecostal passion for the visible unity of the church. This passion that was fueled, as Geoffrey Wainwright and Ralph Del Colle note in this issue, by a witness to the fact that the Spirit has fallen and now constitutes the church as a living and gifted body of Christ on earth. If the Spirit serves to constitute the church, then our divisions “ do not reach to heaven” as one ecumenical document puts it. There is hope for the church.
On the other hand, can the mainline churches that stress the sacra- mental nature of the church, its church ofŽ ces, or the continuity of tradi- tion Ž nd room for renewal movements like Pentecostalism? As a young student I entered New York’ s Union theological Seminary from a small Pentecostal college. I will never forget how fascinated I was by the thoughts of great theologians who preserved and helped to shape the ongoing con- fessions and theological heritage of the church throughout history. Though I also discovered great riches from within my own Pentecostal heritage, I came to miss the fact that we Pentecostals did not generally honor the doctors and theologians of the church the way other traditions did. I read the great works of these theologians from outside of my church and was blessed by the great power of their witness. And, yet, I was aware of the fact that these thinkers did not write from my tradition. They did not teach at the schools of my church. Their works did not play a prominent role
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in the history of the community of faith I hold dear. Yet, all of these the- ologians belong to me just as much as they belong to their own traditions because they belong to Christ . The power of their works is in the power of their witness to him. As servants of Christ they are servants to us all and we are all servants to one another.
I am grateful to Non-Pentecostal churches for the gifts that God has given to us Pentecostals through them. Now, we should like to offer the gifts of our heritage to them. William Seymour and others from Pentecostal history belong to them as much as they belong to us. If we can all func- tion as gifts of Christ to each other across the deep divisions that sepa- rate us, we might begin to understand together what Paul meant when he said that everything belongs to us, whether it be Paul or Apollos, or life, both present and future. All belongs to us because we belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.
Note: The above is a revised version of a sermon that was given last October at Eden Theological Seminary (St. Louis) for a meeting of The Faith and Order Commission of the National Council of Churches.
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