The Resurrection of the Dead. Karl Barth

in itself, and the place whither it is brought is also nothing in itself. In uttering this warning it did not perhaps occur to Paul to take the pagan world of religion seriously as a magical element in nature (10:19), but that sacrifices are here offered to devils and not to God—that, at any rate, is something. It goes without saying that Paul was familiar with contemporary ideas and customs, especially those relating to sacramental eating and drinking: as, for example, the wholly secular banquets which were expressly and solemnly arranged under the auspices of Serapis, Anubis, Jupiter, and Hercules (details of which are quoted in Lietzmann’s commentary on these verses). But I do not believe that this contemporary historical interpretation can supply the clue in the understanding of the passage. Paul was quite serious, whatever he may have thought in concreto (and he was, of course, thinking of perfectly concrete things), when in 8:5 he said: Not idols as such and idols’ meat as such, but gods and lords exist. The devils are the invisible, but extremely real, world powers, from whence came the temptation to which the majority of the Israelites succumbed in the wilderness, and the strength of which even exceeds the strength of Christians. These world powers constitute the meaning, the object, and the reality of pagan idolatry. Whatever its gods are called, paganism is the worship of devils, the religious veneration of world spirits and world forces instead of God. To be in contact with this atmosphere and not to be severed from paganism, that which the Corinthians cherish and prize as their freedom, may, regarded objectively, be communion with devils every time, and the subjective element, their human knowledge, will not prevent its actually being so. Then the comrade of Christ becomes the comrade of devils; blind just because of his knowledge, upon which he builds, he falls into their hands. Subjectively one may be an absolutely honest Christian, full of the most sincere confidence in his pure conscience and in the “all things are lawful for me,” and objectively may serve the devil as long as he lives, and will and may not once observe it just because of his certitude! And then arises the Either-Or which Paul sketches in 10:20–21. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partaker of the Lord’s table and of the table of devils. Ye cannot. If you do so—and what guarantees you against doing so? your freedom perhaps!—then the cup and the table of the Lord become nothing but lies, nothing but Greek religious magic, like others may also have. In the formula “Christianity and …” lurks betrayal of Christianity, backsliding and perishing. In the face of this threatening danger, it is not the free disposition of man that is the abode of the real, the sacred freedom, but the freedom alone that God has and confers. We are not to challenge God, to provoke Him to anger by presumption, by aiming to be stronger than He, by recklessly availing ourselves of our freedom, where He in His freedom perhaps just halts, and also bids us halt (10:22). That is what Paul designs to offer as food for reflection to the discriminating faculties of the Corinthians, and, indeed, of his own supporters in Corinth in particular. Is not your freedom perchance this freedom from the fear and the trembling of the man of God, who has to be faithful not so much to himself as to his Lord? If it were that, then would judgment already be upon you. If it be not that, then it cannot profess to be an unrestricted freedom.

      “All things are not expedient; all things edify not,” we now read again in 10:23, as in 6:12, but on a higher plane and in a dialectically more refined connexion than there. But what is the limitation planted in freedom by God? I would not say, like Lietzmann, that 10:17, with its at first surprising emphasis upon communio—the idea of the Lord’s Supper applied to the Church—is a digression from the main thought. Rather the plain steering direct to the leading thought is the explanation of the verse. The communion with Christ is in Paul’s view not to be severed from the communion in the Church. In 10:24 occurs the same injunction that is placed right at the beginning of the similar section Rom. 14–15. Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s. Paul has already said what is vital upon this in 8:8–13. His concern for the Corinthian gnostics and what they understood by freedom then prompted him to make this further digression 9:1–10. We must now go back to those verses in the eighth chapter. Making use of that freedom has in itself no positive value. To eat questionable meat does not commend us to God; to refrain from eating signifies no deprivation; to eat is no gain (8:8). But there is more than one “weak one” in the Church, who has not the right knowledge, the freedom and superiority which spring from the right conception of the idea of God. He makes the eating of that meat a matter of conscience. A regrettable restriction, certainly. As we saw, Paul does not conceal what he thinks of the matter. But how unimportant is this deficiency compared with the fact that he is a brother for whom Christ died (8:13). The use that the Pauline gnostic makes of his freedom may become a stumbling-block to him, may cause him to follow his example without the approbation of his conscience (8:9–10), and through that he will perish (8:11). What Paul thought about conscience was this: our own good conscience gives us no charter, does not preserve us from temptation, which only God can do. But in the alien good conscience, in the personality of another, as it is constituted, with its possibilities and limitations, we meet the inviolable majesty itself, the insurmountable check set upon our liberty. The Church may not be torn asunder. We know why: its communion is identical with the communion of the body and blood of the Lord (10:16, 17). Hence, he who sins against his brother by such maltreatment of another’s conscience sins against Christ (8:12). And hence, Paul continues (8:13) impetuously: If my eating is an offence to my brother, I will eat no flesh to all eternity. Mention has already been made of the pastoral advice which Paul gives upon the basis of this whole reflection (10:25–30). The conclusion of the section (10:31–33) shows that the question of sacrificing to idols, and its answer, was really only the occasion, but not the theme. Whether ye eat or drink, do all to the glory of God. With the vexatious modern idea that the whole of life, including eating and drinking, must be, and can be, a service of God, this, of course, has nothing to do. Paul is not concerned with eating and drinking and the other activities of man, but with using or not using the freedom that is founded in the knowledge of God. What is done in the freedom of God, really in the freedom derived from God, in the knowledge that is no puffing up of man but is his being known of God (8:3), that is done to the honour of God. In this sense, the Corinthians are enjoined to aim at giving no offence (10:32); what is meant is that they are not, through excessive religious confidence, to be the cause of stumbling-blocks, but to be bearers of the testimony of God, and for God’s honour. But it is remarkable that Paul only says the first, the negative: not to be in the way of God through our inflated pride is what we can do for God’s honour. The sweep is immeasurably wide in these two last verses: Paul visualises his Corinthians who are just nearest to him and who have understood him so well and yet have not understood him at all, provided they will take to heart his sharp warning, standing before Jews and Greeks and the Church of God, responsible and capable of responsibility, because they know that they are not to be concerned with seeking their own profit, that which is good for oneself, be it ever so good or so spiritual or so well founded, but that of the many, and that is: their salvation. For Paul it is the same as if he had once more said: God’s cause. In this sense he wants to regard the Corinthians as his successors (11:1). Like the angel of the Lord upon the path of Balaam, the great riddle once more looms across a human path, or even a solution of all riddles. Truly, it was no bad way that these Pauline gnostics took; an abundance of truth and strength was there, but Paul’s petition points the Corinthians to the better, as well as to the worse, way. Both the one and the other must accept the meeting with God at first as the end of their path.

      § 6

      The next of the four chapters which still separate us from our goal, chapter 11, stands by itself. It is a remarkable chapter not only in its first part, but also in the second. Reference is made to two details of Christian Church life, respecting which Paul has to give advice or lay down rules, 11:2–16 deals with the veiling of women in the Church meeting. The passage is perhaps one of the most difficult in Paul’s writings. Conditions of the most concrete kind, grounded upon contemporary culture and civilization, and again what are plainly incidental and individual opinions of Paul of the most concrete kind, seem to have got into an inextricable entanglement so far as we are concerned. A question, for the significance of which we at first lack all comprehension, is treated with a fullness of detail which is almost a matter for astonishment and according to a method which, for us, is quite unconvincing. We need not be surprised that a modern exegete, rejoicing in the considerable contemporary data which he assembles