PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

they will continue to proudly identify themselves with the glory of “this or that person”, or
whether they will descend, with Paul, to inhabit the cruciform Christ. This descent
represents the faithful embrace of the kerygma that ends in resurrection.
Conclusion to Chapter 3
In this chapter I have paid attention to John Chrysostom’s reading of 1 Corinthians,
particularly chapters 1–4. I have found it essential to attend to the exegetical insights that
Chrysostom brings as both an expositor and applier of the letter to his Antiochene hearers.
Chrysostom detects broad problems in Corinth that can be summarised as boastful pride,
present wealth, and human autonomy. Paul’s solution to these problems, according to
Chrysostom, is God’s “contrary” way of the cross.
This conception of the issues of 1 Corinthians 1–4 involves both a recognition of their
socio-historical setting, in the displacement of godly leaders, and their pastoral
interpretation by Paul, as a boastful affront to the glory of God.
I seek to emulate this approach, and to affirm Chrysostom’s sense of these chapters. An
analysis of each minor and major conclusion point throughout Paul’s argumentation
indicates that the chief problem is not precisely that boasting is causing disunity; but
rather that disunity is evidence of a theologically significant orientation of boastful,
present-obsessed human autonomy. This chief problem is countered with the corrective of
the cross, as the opening move in Paul’s kerygmatic rhetoric of reversal.
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