BIG IDEA:
THE CONTROLLING FACTOR IN OUR DECISION MAKING REGARDING DEBATABLE AREAS OF CHRISTIAN CONDUCT MUST BE LOVE
INTRODUCTION:
These matters are sometimes called doubtful areas. They are specific issues of Christian conduct where believers debate whether it is appropriate or not to participate. The issues will vary by culture and by generation; but the principles regarding how to address them remain the same. In this chapter we must look beyond the particular area of controversy (“Is it OK for Christians to eat meat offered to idols?”) to glean the controlling principles that we must apply to our issues today. Paul is not talking about areas of doctrinal or theological controversy here – issues over which denominations have taken various stands. These are practical areas of Christian living. In our context of liberty-dominated thinking there don’t seem to be as many of these questionable issues as in past generations.
- Can Christians go trick-or-treating on Halloween?
- Is it OK for Christian teenagers to go to a school dance function?
- Can believers drink alcohol? What types? In what contexts?
But these issues, instead of staying small, can rise up to be very divisive in a church.
Robert Gundry: Now Paul proceeds to another topic that came up in the Corinthians’ letter to him (7:1). The topic has to do with the question whether Christians can eat foods that they know came from sacrifices to idols. Take meat especially. Parts of an animal sacrificed at a temple housing the idol of a god were burned in honor of the god. The priests of the temple got some of the meat for their own consumption. The offerer got some for himself, his family, and guests to eat in the temple (more exactly, in a dining room adjacent to the temple) or at home. Any remaining meat was put up for sale to the general public. You could be sure that meat eaten in the temple had come from an animal sacrificed to the god of that temple. But elsewhere, in private homes and public markets, you wouldn’t know unless you were told, because not all meat came from sacrificed animals. It turns out that Paul prohibits Christians from eating any food they know to have been sacrificed to an idol, but they don’t have to enquire whether food had such an origin.
Paul Gardner: Two groups of people emerge in this chapter even more clearly than in earlier chapters. Paul refers to the “weak” (8:7). These weak, as we shall see later, are those who are weak in their self-awareness (συνείδησις). They are insecure in their standing before God and lack confidence in community membership. How can they be sure they are part of God’s rescued covenant community? This means that they are open to being misled by others who would claim to be secure in their status. The second group of people is normally referred to as “the strong,” though Paul does not use that term here. Variously in this commentary this group is referred to as “the elitists,” “the arrogant,” “the knowers.” Mostly we have avoided the term “the strong” because of the very real concern that this group should not be identified with the “strong” of Romans 14–15. In Romans 15:1 Paul refers to himself as “strong.” In this passage, he distances himself almost entirely from the group. In using various terms, we are also seeking to reflect our belief that these people do not have a settled theological position to defend but rather have a deficient understanding of how their standing before God and membership in his community are to be demonstrated and authenticated.
Anthony Thiselton: A significant group in the church were relatively unconcerned about the problem that Paul addresses, except insofar as the “insecure” group criticized them for their lack of sensitivity or even Christian loyalty. Their logic, it seemed, was faultless. Their Christian creed affirmed, “There is no God but One” (8:5), and the immediate deduction is that “An idol has no real existence” (v. 5). They applied this axiom to the question of eating meat that had originated from a pagan temple as the main supplier of the meat market. What did it matter if meat had on some earlier occasion been offered or dedicated to some pagan deity, such as Zeus or Aphrodite? These “deities” are “nothings,” and a “nothing” cannot affect meat! Those who criticize this practice are “weak.” They failed to work out the implications of the falsity of idols robustly and confidently. . .
Why is “being right” not always the be-all of everything? Paul does not deny that the logic of “the strong” is faultless as far as it goes, but is this enough? Would it go too far to suggest that without a caring, loving concern for others who may see things differently, “being right” can bring confusion, minister to moralism and judgmentalism, and even perhaps destroy fellow believers?
Gordon Fee: The most plausible solution to all these data is to view what is said explicitly near the beginning (8:10) and is elaborated in full toward the end (10:1–22) as the basic problem to which Paul is responding throughout. This means that eidōlothyta does not refer primarily to marketplace food, but to their (some of them at least) participating in the cultic meals in the precincts of the pagan temples, and thereby eating food that had been sacrificed to idols. In this view most of the present passage (8:1 – 10:22) takes up this issue against the Corinthian position that they have the “right” to continue this practice. As with going to the prostitutes (6:12–20), Paul forbids such behavior on both ethical (8:1–13) and theological (10:14–22) grounds. Then at the end (10:23 – 11:1) he picks up the matter of food sold in the market and eaten in private homes, much of which had been previously presented in sacrifice to a false god. On this issue the answer is considerably different; they may do as they wish unless someone else present at the meal calls attention to its (probably) idolatrous origins; and for the sake of that person in that setting Paul would have them forbear.
That going to the temples is the real issue is supported by the fact that the eating of cultic meals was a regular part of worship in antiquity. This is true not only of the nations that surrounded Israel, but of Israel itself. In the Corinth of Paul’s time, such meals were still the regular practice both at state festivals and private celebrations of various kinds. There were three parts to these meals: the preparation, the sacrifice proper, and the feast. The meat of the sacrifices apparently was divided into three portions: that burned before the god, that apportioned to the worshipers, and that placed on the “table of the god,” which was tended by cultic ministrants but also eaten by the worshipers. The significance of these meals has been much debated, but most likely they involved a combination of religious and social factors. The gods were thought to be present, since the meals were held in their honor and sacrifices were made; nonetheless, the meals were also intensely social occasions for the participants. For the most part, the Gentiles who had become believers in Corinth had probably attended such meals all their lives; indeed such meals served as the basic “restaurants” in antiquity, and every kind of occasion was celebrated in this fashion.
The problem Paul is addressing may thus best be reconstructed along the following lines. After their conversion—and most likely after the departure of Paul—some of them returned to the practice of attending the cultic meals. In his earlier letter Paul had forbidden such “idolatry,” but they apparently have taken exception to that prohibition and in their letter have made four points:
(1) They argue that “all have knowledge” about idols. Monotheism by its very nature rules out any genuine reality to idols (8:1, 4) — a point, of course, on which Paul will agree. Apparently this meant for them that attendance at the temples had no significance one way or the other, since they saw such participation in the meals as merely a matter of their eating with friends, not of worshiping what did not exist. Indeed, it is especially difficult to understand the vigor of Paul’s response if this were not the case.
(2) They also have knowledge about food, that it is a matter of indifference to God (8:8) — another point on which Paul will agree. But their take on this matter seems to be: “Since idols are nonentities, and since food is a matter of indifference to God, it matters not neither what we eat nor where we eat it.” So how can Paul forbid their going to the temples, especially since the “gods” involved had no reality?
(3) Although one has less certainty here, they perhaps also had a somewhat “magical” view of the sacraments; those who have had Christian baptism and who partake of the Lord’s Table are not in any danger of “falling” (10:1–4), especially when the other “gods” do not exist at all.
(4) Besides, there is considerable question in the minds of many whether Paul has the proper apostolic authority to forbid them on this matter. In their minds this has been substantiated by two factors: first, his failure to accept support while with them; and second, his own apparently compromising stance regarding idol food sold in the marketplace (he abstained when eating with Jews, but ate when eating with Gentiles; cf. 9:19–23).
David Garland: The issue is not just about meat bought in the market (contra Bruce 1971: 78) or dining in a temple (contra Fee 1980a; Witherington 1995; R. Horsley 1998: 141). It has to do with eating food conspicuously sacrificed to an idol, whether at a public feast, in a temple dining room, as a participant in an actual sacrifice, or in a private home (Cheung 1999; R. Collins 1999: 304). The Corinthians might excuse it as accommodation; Paul condemns it as religious syncretism. . .
The basic issue has to do with what Paul considers to be forbidden idolatrous behavior by those who perceive themselves as endowed with liberating knowledge.
Mark Taylor: The exegetical challenges of 8:1 – 11:1 are numerous. Since Paul links the expression “now about” in 7:1 to a previous correspondence, it is probable that the Corinthians also raised the issue of food sacrificed to idols in their letter to Paul. The phrase itself, “food sacrificed to idols” (NIV), translates one Greek word, which occurs fives times in 1 Corinthians (8:1, 4, 7, 10; 10:19), but elsewhere in the New Testament only in Acts (15:29; 21:25) and Revelation (2:14, 20). In Acts 15 and 21, Luke writes of the decision of the Apostolic Council forbidding Gentile believers from eating food associated with idols, and in Rev 2 Jesus warns the churches of Pergamum and Thyatira of those who would lead believers to do the same. Paul’s discussion of the issue is not as clear cut, involves a circuitous argument with what appears to be a long digression from 9:1 – 10:13, and raises a host of questions.
- Why did Paul respond at such length to the question?
- Did he implement the Apostolic Decree in Corinth, or was the situation in Corinth different from the concerns of Acts 15?
- Were the Corinthians in agreement on the matter of idol food over against Paul, or were they themselves divided over the issue, and did they appeal to their apostle to render a verdict between competing factions in the community?
- Why would those with “knowledge” (8:1) argue for the right to eat idol food?
- Was the motivation primarily theological (freedom to eat, “all things are lawful”), or did they want to eat idol food for social reasons and sought to justify their behavior theologically?
- What is the relation of this passage to Rom 14 and 15 where Paul addresses the strong and the weak in the context of eating certain foods?
I. (:1-3) LOVE MUST BE THE GOAL OF OUR KNOWLEDGE
David Garland: (:1-6) — Paul introduces the dispute over idol food by establishing common ground with the Corinthians: We Christians know that God is one and that idols have no existence despite their many adherents. This consensus allows him to introduce two key principles that will inform his argument.
- First, Christian love is to override knowledge that feeds arrogance. Christian love is not blind (in contrast to the popular saying about love); it is to be informed by knowledge (cf. Phil. 1:9). But knowledge without love is barren (13:2).
- Second, Christian monotheism defines who the people of God are as distinct from those who worship many gods and lords in their sundry guises. The confession of one God and one Lord, however, requires exclusive loyalty to God as Father and to Christ as Lord. Even a perfunctory or make-believe show of fealty to an idol compromises the loyalty owed only to God and Christ.
A. (:1A) Specific Doubtful Issue Introduced – Eating meat possibly offered to idols
“Now concerning things sacrificed to idols”
For us today it would be range of different issues; same principles will apply
Cf. Acts 15:28-29 This was a major issue in the early church.
1 Timothy 1:5 “But the goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and a sincere faith.”
James Boyer: Some considered such food defiled. They not only refused to eat themselves, but were offended by those who did eat. Others considered meat in the category of “morally indifferent things” and claimed Christian liberty. They considered it right to do so and went ahead.
B. (:1B-2) Knowledge Alone Just Promotes Pride
- Sarcastic Retort – Everybody is a Know-it-all in their Natural Pride
“we know that we all have knowledge”
James Boyer: Paul is making reference to some of their own claims, even quoting their very words, when he says, “We know that we all have knowledge.” He does so a bit sarcastically, for in verse 7 he says that they did not all have this knowledge.
Robert Gundry: Here in 8:1, then, “We all have knowledge” appears to be a slogan of those Corinthian Christians who, unlike the others, recognized the falsity of polytheism (the belief in many deities). Since Paul immediately follows with the observation that “knowledge puffs up,” “we know that” represents Paul’s sardonic prefix to the Corinthians’ slogan. Furthermore, his quoting the slogan in connection with “[foods] sacrificed to idols” implies that the slogan rationalized unlimited freedom to eat foods sacrificed to idols, this on the ground that nonexistent gods and lords such as are represented by idols can’t taint sacrifices offered to them. For nothing comes of nothing.
Gordon Fee: In their minds being “spiritual” apparently meant to have received gnōsis, meaning probably that the Spirit had endued them with special knowledge, which all believers should have as they do, and which should serve as the basis of Christian behavior.
David Garland: Paul opens his discussion of idol food by asserting that knowledge is not their special domain. He gently reminds them that their prized knowledge of God is something that God has bestowed on them through revelation and is something all Christians share. He also reminds them that knowledge can be unhealthy when misused. All Christians possess knowledge, but not all Christians know as they are meant to know. Knowledge can be incomplete and/or misapplied. Knowledge misapplied can lead to the wrong kind of edifying (8:10) and can destroy others (8:11). Knowledge that permits one to steamroll over the scruples of others or to harm them or the church in any way is not Christian knowledge.
- Ultimate Goal is Love, Not Knowledge for Its Own Sake
a. “Knowledge makes arrogant” — puffs up
Gordon Fee: Paul’s response goes right to the heart of things. Their emphasis is totally wrong; the aim of our faith is not knowledge but love. Knowledge and love are thus contrasted in two ways.
- First, the net effect of each (knowledge puffs up; love builds up);
- second, the difference it makes for the one doing the knowing or loving.
b. “but love edifies” — builds up
Ray Stedman: Knowledge creates pride; it makes you feel superior. You only have to listen to some of the arguments waged in this regard today to see how true that is. It does not make any difference which side you are on, on the liberty side or the restricted side, knowledge tends to create a sense of pride.
- Self-Deception in This Area is Prevalent – True Knowledge vs False Knowledge
“If anyone supposes that he knows anything,
he has not yet known as he ought to know.”
At best, our knowledge is incomplete and limited to our finite view.
Robert Gundry: “If someone supposes he has come to know something” refers to thinking mistakenly that information is all that’s needed for the governance of Christian conduct. Paul counters that loving God has to accompany the learning of information if knowledge is to govern such conduct correctly.
Thomas Schreiner: True knowledge is adorned with humility and accompanied by love, and if these qualities are lacking, one’s knowledge has not been applied correctly. Love is the signature and mark of being a Christian (cf. 13:1-13; John 13:34-35), and such love has God supremely as its object, though such love for God is also expressed in love for brothers and sisters. The knowers may have boasted in their knowledge, but what is decisive is whether one is known by God.
Paul Gardner: Since “knowledge” is incomplete and partial, it can hardly function as a marker of status before God, so flaunting it brings no benefit at all. However, those who love God reveal in themselves that they are indeed authentically the Lord’s, for they reveal that they “are known” (v. 3).
C. (:3) Test of Whether Love has been the Goal of Your Knowledge —
Do you love God? (with accompanying Word of Assurance)
“but if anyone loves God, he is known by Him”
Ray Stedman: If you love God you are responding to the love of God for you. That is the appeal of the apostle everywhere. Do not try to force yourself to think of somebody else. Give yourself to reviewing what God has already done for you. Think of the thousand times a day he has manifested love and concern and faithfulness for you. It will begin to make you feel humbly grateful. When you do this you will then be able to recognize that other people need to be treated with patience as God treats you. You will begin to be more understanding of their point of view. Therefore, the key to the carrying out of this kind of exhortation is that you learn to love God because he has loved you.
David Garland: He is reminding them that loving God means that they are known by God, and that draws sharp boundaries that set them apart from worshipers of false gods and delimits what they may and may not do. Those who love God and are known by God may not dally in the shrines of other gods.
Paul Gardner: Ironically, the elitists at Corinth had failed to “know” that love is the only clear marker of authentic Christianity and maturity of faith. It is love, practiced in their love for God and for each other, that they should be pursuing (14:1; cf. 16:22). This contrasts starkly with “knowledge,” which is being practiced in a way that divides people and even leads some back to other gods.
II. (:4-6) KNOWLEDGE LAYS THE FOUNDATION FOR THE APPLICATION OF BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES IN LOVE
A. (:4A) Specific Issue Repeated
“Therefore concerning the eating of things sacrificed to idols,”
Paul gets back to the issue he had raised in 8:1
B. (:4b) Two Things Believers Know with Certainty
- Idols Don’t Exist
“we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world”
No reality behind the physical image that man has created
- Other Gods Don’t Exist
“and that there is no God but one.”
Epistemology: How do believers know what they know?
Why doesn’t everyone have this knowledge?
Paul Gardner: Monotheism is true, but to deny the spiritual realities involved with idolatry and the eating of food offered to idols is wrong. This is what Paul now argues in the next two verses, which, we believe, reflect the apostle’s position as distinct from the Corinthian position.
C. (:5-6) Uniqueness of the One True God
- (:5) Not Negated by the Existence of Lesser Demonic Powers
“For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth,
as indeed there are many gods and many lords”
David Garland: The γάρ (gar, for) beginning this clause is explanatory (Fee 1987: 371 n. 10) and introduces either a corroboration or clarification of the two statements in 8:4. It is not a continuation of the Corinthian argument (contra Findlay 1910: 841; Willis 1985b: 83–88) but Paul’s explanation of what he means when he says that “idols do not exist” (8:5) and that “there is no God but one” (8:6).
- (:6) Known Personally by All Believers
a. One God the Father
“yet for us there is but one God, the Father,
from whom are all things and we exist for Him;”
b. One Lord Jesus Christ
“and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things,
and we exist through Him.”
David Garland: This confession marks out believers as having special obligations. He begins his argument by defining the nature of the people of God, who believe in one God and one Lord and who live in the midst of a pagan society where there are many gods and lords. Consorting with the many other gods and lords ruptures the relationship with the one God and one Lord. He develops this idea in 10:1–22, along with the blazing jealousy of the one God, who must be feared. This confession bars any participation in idolatry, even if it appears on the surface to be only a perfunctory and innocuous idolatry—friends gathering for convivial fellowship in an idol’s temple where even the devotees do not take seriously their consecration of the food to the god or goddess.
III. (:7-13) SENSITIVITY TO OUR FELLOW BELIEVERS MUST GUIDE THE APPLICATION OF BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES IN LOVE
David Garland: Paul’s strict monotheism makes him rigidly opposed to any encroachment by religious syncretism, but his argument does not take the form of a raging renunciation of the actions of those who feel free to eat as they please. He chooses a more indirect route to try to convince those who have not yet been persuaded. He began his discussion by reasserting the Christian’s basic confession that binds them to one God and one Lord with its distinctive obligations. Mentioning Christ recalls God’s supreme act of love that made Christians a unique people. Christ died for them (8:11). This act of love that brought them into God’s family requires that they respond to others in the family with love, to put others’ needs and interests ahead of their own (N. Wright 1992: 133–36). It may require giving up things that one regards as a right for the sake of winning others or preventing them from falling. Hays (1997: 142) comments on 8:11, “Christ died for this person, and you can’t even change your diet?” But it is more than a matter of changing their diet. Withdrawing from pagan celebrations calls for a real sacrifice that will bring inevitable ostracism and potential material loss.
Paul leaves aside, for the moment, the theological aspect of the argument and turns to the potential effect of their current behavior on a fellow believer who may not have the same level of theological sophistication to rationalize such behavior or to apprehend its theological consequences. Paul presents the hypothetical example of a fellow Christian observing another Christian, esteemed as a person of knowledge, eating food in an idol setting. The Christian who does not have the knowledge to make correct moral judgments may then be persuaded that such syncretistic practice is permissible for Christians. Paul fears that this Christian will be sucked back into the vortex of idolatry and face spiritual ruination. He concludes with a hyperbolic example of what he would do to avert such a catastrophe: he would abstain from eating meat altogether.
A. (:7) Believers Vary in Their Level of Knowledge and Background –
Making some more vulnerable in the area under consideration
“However not all men have this knowledge;
but some, being accustomed to the idol until now,
eat food as if it were sacrificed to an idol;
and their conscience being weak is defiled.”
David Garland: I have noted that Paul shows no concern to try to strengthen the person with a weak conscience. It is not that the weak one is insufficiently astute intellectually to understand all the theological intricacies of the question and so must be treated with kid gloves. The issue does not revolve around the one with a weak conscience; Paul’s goal is to change the activity of the knowers, who, despite their imagined theological sophistication, are in danger of being partners with demons. His rhetorical strategy is to show those who presume to have knowledge that they also have a responsibility for the weak individual. This approach assumes that they would care about the plight of one with a weak conscience. If there were an intense debate raging between the strong and the weak over this issue, the knowers would have already shown a lack of regard for the weak. They would be likely to reject such an argument and respond that the “weak conscience” was precisely the problem. The case of the weak conscience is therefore a new wrinkle in Paul’s approach to the problem. He trusts that it will carry weight because the knowers would not be callously indifferent toward the weak’s situation, and they would be impressed by the grievous nature of sin against Christ (8:12) and the expected punishment for such sin. In this segment of his argument, Paul seeks to help the knowers examine their actions from a new angle and see ramifications of their actions that they had not foreseen.
B. (:8) Spirituality is Not the Issue
“But food will not commend us to God;
we are neither the worse if we do not eat, nor the better if we do eat.”
David Garland: Paul’s illustrations from the OT in 10:1–13 reveal that idol food is not as harmless as they assumed. It can kill—most significantly, it kills a person’s relationship to God. Kosher laws may be a matter of indifference, but idol food is not. Nothing is unclean in itself, unless it is known to be idol food. Just as sexual relations are not unclean in themselves but can be perverted by human sin into porneia, food is not unclean in itself but can become tainted by its associations with demons and thus become something forbidden. Consuming food in an idolatrous context or food plainly associated with idolatry is not a matter of indifference but one that has deadly consequences.
C. (:9-13) Sensitivity to Our Fellow Believers is the Issue
- (:9) Liberty Requires Caution – Understand the Impact on Fellow Believers
“But take care that this liberty of yours
does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”
David Garland: Paul is not afraid that they might offend the weak in some way but that they might cause them to fall away from their Christian faith.
- (:10-12) The Non-Moral Issue for You Can Become a Sin Issue for Your
Fellow Believer – and Therefore a Sin Issue for You
“For if someone sees you, who have knowledge, dining in an idol’s
temple, will not his conscience, if he is weak, be strengthened to eat
things sacrificed to idols? For through your knowledge he who is weak
is ruined, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And so, by sinning
against the brethren and wounding their conscience when it is weak, you
sin against Christ.”
- (:13) Liberty Must be Restrained to Protect Fellow Believers
“Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat
again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.”
Chestnut: We create Christian community when we restrict our freedom for the sake of others.
David Prior: The whole of Paul’s argument in this chapter is a practical example of following the law of love: love will restrict itself for the sake of others. To cause any brother or sister, just one brother or sister, to stumble even once is such an appalling danger for Paul that he will not once touch meat to avoid such a disaster. That is true Christian love, and that, Paul would affirm with equal fervour, is true Christian freedom.
Mark Taylor: Paul has enumerated a string of negative consequences that result from the actions of those with knowledge:
(1) Their actions defile and strike the conscience of the weak (8:7, 12),
(2) are a stumbling block to the weak (8:9), and
(3) destroy those for whom Christ died and therefore constitute a sin against a brother and a sin against Christ.
David Garland: Commentators frequently have missed the radicality of Paul’s argument. He wants to show what love ultimately requires from believers and how it transcends knowledge. The argument moves from the lesser to the greater. If he would do this in the case of ordinary food, how much more so in the case of something so spiritually toxic as idol food? We should not infer from this principle, however, that Paul thinks it is permissible to eat idol food as long as those with weak consciences do not observe it or if it will not cause them to stumble. Ruling out eating idol food on the basis of the “weaker brethren” principle does not affirm its appropriateness in other circumstances (Cheung 1999: 90). It is not an invitation to the “strong” to “come over and join Paul at table with the weak” (contra Hays 1997: 142). It is instead an indirect demand to withdraw from idolatry.