PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

Lord Jesus. God is faithful, through whom you were called into fellowship with his
son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
As Chrysostom perceives, the emphasis of these verses is that the Corinthians have received
the grace of God in Christ, and look forward to the future fulfilment of God’s work in Christ.
They are to view themselves (and their possessions) as utterly dependent on God in Christ – a
position that ought to cure the disease of proud autonomy:
Do you see the repetition of the name of Christ? By this it is clear even to those who
are exceedingly dim that he [Paul] does not do this vainly or simple-mindedly, but so
that through concentrated application of this good appellation he might oppose their
inflammation, and clean out the decay of their disease [τὴν σηπεδόνα τοῦ
νοσήματος]. 107
I have argued in chapter 3 of this dissertation that the first main section of the letter body,
1:10-4:21, exhibits precisely this emphasis. In these chapters Paul pits Corinthian
autonomous, boastful, triumphalistic reliance on that which is human against the grace of God
epitomised in the cross of Christ:
It is from God that you are, in Christ Jesus, who became wisdom for us from God,
that is, righteousness and sanctification and redemption – in order that, just as it is
written, “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord”. (1 Corinthians 1:29-31)
Given the investigation of Pauline ethics and 1 Corinthians above, it would appear that in
chapters 5–14 of 1 Corinthians, Paul goes on to apply the “cruciform corrective” of chapters
1–4, via his own example, to the progression of issues that he would customarily pursue in an
ethical section. That is, the confrontation of the cross with triumphalistic human autonomy is
applied to the church firstly in relation to issues connected with sexual immorality, greed, and
107 Homily 2 on 1 Corinthians; PG 61.19.
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