PAUL AND THE RHETORIC OF REVERSAL: KERYGMATIC ...

Robertson’s caution is worth heeding. However, it ought to be recognised that in 1
Corinthians we are not presented with the comprehensive facts about congregational
conflict in Corinth; rather we are presented with Paul’s pastorally-motivated
entextualisation of the situation in Corinth according to his own rhetorical purposes. So it
should not be considered unlikely that such a framing should have a certain coherence or
unified theological flavour.
Listening to the Text in Expectation of Otherness
Robertsons’s caution does, however, point toward a valuable reminder. Investigating a
text should involve the expectation of encounter with that which cannot be immediately
under our mastery, because it is other:
The most important thing is the question that the text puts to us, our being
perplexed by the traditionary word, so that understanding it must already include
the task of the historical self-mediation between the present and tradition. Thus
the relation of question and answer is, in fact, reversed. The voice that speaks to
us from the past – whether text, work, trace – itself poses a question and places
our meaning in openness. 86
Schenk’s redactional analysis 87 is perhaps illustrative of an overly swift dismissal of the
“perplexing”. Schenk’s analysis seems so quick to start deciding which letter-parts belong
to which original letters that there is no space for the discomfort of canonical 1
Corinthians’ exegetical tensions to provoke and stretch contemporary expectations of
appropriate literary flow. This does not mean that all tensions must be unthinkingly
accepted as simply features of original epistolary “otherness” – but that this possibility
should at least be seriously entertained and explored. If Paul is to be received in his own
86 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (trans. by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G.
Marshall; 2nd rev. ed.; London: Continuum, 2004) 366-367; trans. of Wahrheit und
Methode: Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik (2nd ed.; Tubingen: J. C. B.
Mohr, 1960).
87 Wolfgang Schenk, “Der 1 Korintherbrief als Briefsammlung,” ZNW 60 (1969): 219-
243.
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