Margaret Mitchell’s Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 11:06 pm by Ben Witherington

Margaret Mitchell’s Paul, the Corinthians and the Birth of Christian Hermeneutics 2015-03-13T23:06:48-04:00 Ben Witherington

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Some books are rather like coal mines. There’s lots of stuff but its dirty, and yes it can be used as fuel for the fire (not to be confused with grist for the mill) and occasionally, though rarely you will find a diamond worth keeping forever…. but it’s rare.

On the other hand there are books that are like gold mines— you have to labor hard with them, but what you extract is pure gold, always gold. Margaret Mitchell’s new book is one of the latter. Don’t let the slender size of the volume fool you (only 115 pages of text, with reams of scholia, otherwise known as detailed footnotes). Consuming this book is rather like eating marzipan— its rich, and it needs to be taken in in small doses, otherwise you go into a insight coma (not to be confused with a sugar coma). There is nothing slight about this book. You can’t judge the merit or importance of a book by it’s size. Some are doorstops, which deserve to be used as such. Some by contrast are vital visionary texts and they cry out like the words Augustine once heard ‘tolle et lege’— pick it up and read. And you are in luck…. the paperback edition has just come out, which will take less of your hard won ‘argent’ to purchase.

My basic complaint about Margaret’s books is— there are too few of them (but see her wonderful Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation and also her The Heavenly Trumpet). But then she is Dean at U. of Chicago looking after a brace of students including our Yuliya and her own two daughters, so it is what it is. We must be content with what she is able to do. What we have in this book is six lectures she gave in Oxford in Trinity term in 2008 to which she has added copious notes, which are often as insightful as the text itself.

So what is this book about? She explains on p. 106– “My first purpose has been to demonstrate that in the Corinthian correspondence we have a dynamic process of negotiated meaning between Paul and the Corinthians, through the series of letters interpreting and reinterpreting what is written, stated and visually presented. Paul inaugurated the ‘agonistic paradigm of interpretation’ strategically arguing for the meaning of his letters (and his body, his spoken word and conduct, with which they were inextricably linked) that was most essential to his wider purposes and ongoing relationship with the Corinthians. This meant operating on a ‘veil’ scale’ sometimes insisting on the utter clarity of his utterances, and at other times urging his readers to move beyond the bare letter to the deeper sense held within.”

This paragraph of course requires some unpacking. What she is intimating, among other things, is that Paul’s discourse ranges from deliberately literal at times to highly figurative at the other end of the spectrum, and importantly she wants to stress that this very Corinthian correspondence (which we know as 1 and 2 Corinthians, but in the case of the latter she thinks involves several letter fragments) was the font of many later hermeneutical moves and battles in early Christian interpretations of the Bible, especially for the Greek Fathers. She wants to insist that both the more literalist Anthiochians and the more figurative and allegorical Alexandrians were indebted to Paul’s Corinthians correspondences, because Paul, baby, could play the meaning tune all kinds of ways— ranging from rap to jazz to classical to rock.

You may not be all that keen on patristic exegesis and hermeneutics based on Paul’s letters, or at least not to the degree Margaret is, but the study of the early use of Paul is enlightening, not least because we all still have the same battles between the ‘literalist’ sorts of interpreters of the Biblical text, and those who want more flexibility or finesse. Margaret’s point is of course that Paul didn’t always play the literal interpretation card. Consider for instance the very interesting and odd exegesis of ‘don’t muzzle the ox whilst it tread out the grain’ in 1 Cor. 9.8-11, where Paul: 1) draws analogy between oxen and apostles, and suggests 2) both have a right to benefit from their own hard work, and 3) anyway what Moses wrote was not primarily for the ASPCA types in OT times but for us Christians and Christian leaders. If you want to see just how far Paul was willing to go down the road of allegorizing a non-allegorical text, then read Gal. 4.21-31. This is not your basic historical critical exegesis of the Pentateuch! In other words, Margaret has a point— Paul the hermeneut could play the literal card, and he had other cards in his deck as well, and he didn’t consider them jokers either. Especially for Evangelical Protestants who keep insisting on the ‘literal’ meaning of the text, and its general perspicuity these things should cause at least a reboot and a rethink about the range of interpretative options.

Having said all this, I have to say, that sometimes I think Margaret pushes the envelope too far, but not without patristic precedent. Take for example her exegesis of the very interesting 2 Cor. 3.4-18. Along with various patristic fathers, Margaret thinks Paul is talking about hermeneutics here— the letter of the text kills, but the spirit or deeper meaning or sensus plenior etc. gives life. Yes, this is how some patristic fathers took this passage. No, I am afraid that is not what Paul is on about here. He is not talking about the levels of the text or various ways to interpret the text. He is offering a tale of two covenants, much like what we have in Gal. 4. He is contrasting the new covenant with the old, the covenant inaugurated and applied by the Spirit as opposed to the covenant which has as its heart and soul the law, in particular the ten commandments which Paul quite specifically alludes to. As Paul says elsewhere, while the Law is good, its effect on fallen human beings is is death-dealing not life giving, whereas the effect of the Holy Spirit is life-giving. The issue here is not Biblical interpretation but rather spiritual experience. It is a tale of the effects of two covenants and two ministries (that of Moses vs. that of Paul), not two ways of reading the Biblical text. So, as for this linchpin in Margaret’s argument, I have to say— good try, no cigar. Paul didn’t mean in this text what he was taken to mean by Origen and others. Here, I am prepared to say that the patristic readers simply got Paul wrong.

We will continue this conversation with Margaret’s book in another post, but here I must say– it is the measure of an excellent book that it tests the logic of your most cherished interpretations of Scripture, and sometimes they are found wanting, and sometimes not. The fact that a book disagrees with your view does not make it a bad book. Indeed, it could be a classic, and does you a good service to come up with better reasons for your views. This is a very good book…. it should be read by all those who are serious about the interpretation of Paul’s letters, and the legacy of Paul amongst later interpreters of Paul.

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