Paul and Abraham’s Exclusive Family

When modern Christians appeal to the apostle Paul in contemporary debates about political and economic structures, they often do so on a superficial, text-by-text basis. A handful of passages, Romans 13:1-7 being the foremost, are invoked, interpreted, and applied, almost always under the implicit assumptions of modern authoritarian socialism. Not only are post-nineteenth-century political and economic categories dictating the parameters of debate, but a more fundamentally dangerous omission is also at play: the failure to integrate individual, isolated passages from Paul within the larger framework of Pauline thought and theology. This has not only led to disastrous interpretive results, it has also screened out several Pauline texts which do actually have something to say about the ways in which believers ought to think about political and economic questions today. In my book Politics, Economics, and New Testament Interpretation, I front load my lengthy discussion of Paul’s letters with a chapter-length treatment of major questions in Pauline interpretation, including the main themes which dominate his letters. Of great significance, yet severely under-explored in political and economic debates, is Paul’s ecclesiology, or theology of the church.

For Paul, the Pharisaic Jew, the world could be neatly divided up into two separate categories: Israel, God’s chosen people, the true descendants of Abraham, and an essentially undifferentiated mass of ungodly Gentiles. God’s people were defined by Torah observance, in the hope that those who fulfill the Law would be delivered on the day when God finally returned to rescue his long-suffering people and set the world straight. After Damascus, Paul came to believe that the great day of deliverance had already begun through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of God’s promised Davidic Messiah, Jesus. Surprisingly, especially to the exclusively Jewish leadership of the early Jesus movement, the promised outpouring of God’s Spirit on all mankind, prophesied in Ezekiel 36 and Joel 2, was happening even to Gentiles on the basis of their faith in Jesus! For Paul, the people of God were now defined by faith in Christ Jesus and the gift of the Spirit, and therefore, as he argues at length in Romans, Galatians, and Ephesians, the family of Abraham was reconstituted around Jesus.

Here’s the catch, though: Paul didn’t abandon his exclusivistic understanding of Abraham’s family as the only true people of God. He simply reworks his ecclesiology around Jesus, who is the decisive revelation of God’s saving righteousness and the inaugurator of God’s new creation. The church, therefore, is still the only community that matters, and God has called this Jew-and-Gentile family of Abraham to proclaim to the world the reign of the one true king. The idea that Abraham’s family would capitulate to national, ethnic, or political identities other than the one granted to them through faith and the Spirit is anathema to Paul, and his conception of Christian political and economic engagement is shaped by his conviction that the church is the true people of God and cannot compromise the integrity of that identity. An excellent example of this phenomenon is found in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul addresses the question of an illicit (and illegal) sexual relationship in the Corinthian church. His instructions are a perfect example of the church as an exclusive, self-regulating community handling its own internal affairs outside the state apparatus, and an excellent place to start thinking about Pauline passages which must be brought into contemporary debates about Christian political and economic theology. I present an edited version of this section of my book below.

Sleeping with Stepmothers

The issue at hand is addressed bluntly by Paul in 5:1: “It is actually reported that there is immorality among you, and immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles, that someone has his father’s wife.” While there have been many reconstructions of Paul’s phrase “has his father’s wife,” the most plausible is that the man’s birth mother either died or divorced, at which point his father remarried. The verb “to have” (translated “has” in the NASB) means “to have sexual intercourse” with another person, and the present tense implies the behavior was continuing to happen. So a member of the Corinthian church was sleeping with his stepmother. Gross. While the man’s behavior is detestable across cultures, in Roman Corinth a perverse relationship with one’s stepmother was more than a matter of transgressing delicate social mores. It was illegal. Roman law punished adultery and incest, and the criminal consequences of engaging in such behavior included banishment, the revoking of citizenship, and the confiscation of property. When Paul says in 5:1 that this is “immorality of such a kind as does not exist even among the Gentiles,” he is likely referencing the Roman legal precedent condemning such behavior.

Not only had the Corinthians tolerated this man’s behavior, they had become arrogant and were boasting about it! The precise reason for the Corinthian boast is unclear; scholar Kenneth Bailey suggests that the Corinthians were celebrating their newfound freedom and grace in Christ by disregarding immoral behavior as if they had somehow overcome it, while another scholar, Bruce Winter, argues that the man was probably a member of the upper class and the church, proud of his presence in its community, was willing to overlook his indiscretions. Either way, Paul thinks this kind of behavior is intolerable and chastises the church for failing to address it. In 5:6-8, Paul compares the man to old leaven which corrupted the dough; the church needed to clear out the old leaven and become “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.“

Paul’s solution, outlined in 5:9-13, holds the church accountable for ignoring abhorrent behavior in the believing community: “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people; I did not at all mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the greedy and swindlers, or with idolaters, for then you would have to leave the world. But actually, I wrote to you not to associate with any so-called brother if he is a sexually immoral person, or a greedy person, or an idolater, or is verbally abusive, or habitually drunk, or a swindler, not even to eat with such a person. For what business of mine is it to judge outsiders? Do you not judge those who are within the church? But those who are outside, God judges. Remove the evil person from among yourselves.” The issue is not the immorality of those outside the church, which Jewish Paul takes as a given, but the allowance and approval of immorality within the church. Paul commands the Corinthians to take action. The man must be removed from the community. While God alone judges those outside of the church, it is the responsibility of those inside of the church, whom Paul has already labeled “holy,” to hold this man accountable. Paul isn’t just being punitive, however. The removal of this man from the congregation is justified by Paul in 5:5: “I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” By doing so, the moral integrity of the church is preserved, freeing it from the potentially corrupting influence of the man’s detestable behavior, while the man himself might repent of his deeds and be saved on the final day.

What does an illicit sexual affair with one’s stepmother have to do with politics or economics? Quite a lot, actually. Paul sees the church as its own supra-political entity, demarcated by faith and the Spirit, with Jesus ruling over it as king. Within this framework believers must handle their own internal affairs. The call to holiness, set-apartness, means that the church should not conform to the values of pagan society. If someone within the church is threatening its integrity, they should be judged by the church. On the other hand, the church should not be in the business of either acting against the behavior of those outside the church or refusing to associate with unbelievers. Paul assumes the world is immoral but maintains that salvation comes only through faith in the gospel, and it is the role of God’s family to reveal the gospel to the world. A church that refuses to engage with those who don’t share its values is a church which has abdicated its mission.

Modern Christians on both the political left and right seek the passage of legislation to impose, under threat of violence, their own moral and theological preferences on society. I doubt, based on 1 Corinthians 5:9-13, that Paul would approve of this inclination. While political authoritarianism may be the prevailing secular (dare I say “pagan”?) political value of our time, those following a crucified Messiah should think twice before proposing political solutions to theological problems. Conversely, problems which arise within the church should generally be handled by the church. The man sleeping with his stepmother should be shamed and removed from the church by the church. Paul quotes Deuteronomy 13:5 and 17:7 in 1 Corinthians 5:13. In contrast to those outside the church who are judged by God, the Corinthians should “Remove the wicked man from among yourselves.” Christians regulate their own internal behavior instead of seeking to pass some law which regulates the behavior of non-Christians. We should stop acting like worldly people. The contrast between insiders and outsiders, us and them, is sharp, and Paul’s instructions about accountability and purity are prescient for Christians today.