Paul and the Apocalyptic Imagination

by Ben C Blackwell

  In none of these texts, however, does Paul advocate active resistance to empire. In fact, while apocalyptic has certain social functions and implications, it is far from clear that the church, as Horsley maintains, stands diametrically opposed to non-Christian society. Believers will often be marginalized and despised by those in power (cf. οἱ ἐξουθενημένοι, 1:28; 6:4), but there is no indication that the church, though it should handle in-house disputes internally, must remain completely independent from the state (cf. Rom. 13:1–7).

  Moreover, despite Paul’s repeated stress on the transiency of political authorities, it is questionable on the basis of these passages to assume that Paul grants any special place to Rome in the pecking order of God’s enemies. Rome is singled out by Paul neither for killing Jesus, nor for establishing social injustice, nor for persecuting believers, all about which Paul has (equally) sharp words for the Jewish authorities (cf. 1 Thess. 2:14–15). Paul experiences “hourly dangers” and “daily deaths” (1 Cor. 15:30–32; cf. 16:9), but he never suggests these sufferings took place at the hands of political agents, Roman or otherwise. Neither do the Corinthians appear to be suffering due to such rulers; in fact, they seem to be experiencing a high degree of privilege as a result of being too heavily integrated into non-Christian society. To be sure, one of Paul’s rhetorical purposes for the apocalyptic motif in the early parts of 1 Corinthians is to re-incorporate cruciformity as a critical feature of life in Christ, but he nowhere suggests that the Corinthians should be experiencing such Christ-like suffering specifically from the hands of Roman authorities.[48] Paul desires the church to stand opposed to “this age” and “this world,” but there is no evidence, as Horsley supposes, that Paul considered “this world” to be coextensive with the “Roman imperial order.”[49]

  Admittedly, it could be that Paul, in step with many of his Jewish contemporaries, identified Daniel’s fourth beast with the Roman empire.[50] There is, however, no explicit reference to the fourth beast anywhere in 1 Corinthians, and it seems quite clear that Paul has a plurality of political entities in view when he forecasts their defeat in each of the three passages we have examined. Daniel likewise envisioned the destruction of multiple systems of governance in both the middle and final verses of his vision of the four beasts (τέσσαρες βασιλεῖαι αἳ ἀπολοῦνται ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς, LXX 7:17; πᾶσαι αἱ ἐξουσίαι ὑποταγήσονται αὐτῷ, LXX 7:27), and even while Daniel envisions the saints being commissioned with the judgment of the fourth beast (7:22), Paul broadens the scope of this judgment to encompass the whole world as well as angels (1 Cor. 6:2–3). It seems to be the case, then, that as Paul evokes the Danielic visions to support his message, he gives prominence to no single political power, but rather refers only generally to all hostile rulers and governments on his way toward narrating the downfall of the principal forces that possess dominion over humanity—sin and death (15:54–57).

  Thus, Wright may be correct to say, in reply to Barclay, that Rome was not “insignificant” to Paul, but neither can we affirm as confidently as Wright that Paul “saw [the suprahuman] powers coming together and doing their worst precisely in and through Rome itself.”[51] Paul nowhere unambiguously makes such critical claims about the Roman authorities or the empire. Nor are human rulers afforded the textual attention required to claim with Horsley that the apostle stood opposed to them in any absolute sense. Paul, to be sure, expects judgment to befall Caesar and his delegates,[52] but Rome is simply one ἔθνος among many, all of which “the root of Jesse . . . will arise to rule” (Rom. 15:12, citing Isa. 11:10).[53]

  * * *

  Ernst Käsemann, “On Paul’s Anthropology,” in Perspectives on Paul (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 1–31, at 24–25; cf. idem, “Zur paulinischen Anthropologie,” in Paulinische Perspektiven (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1969), 9–60, at 48. ↵

  Idem, “On the Subject of Primitive Christian Apocalyptic,” in New Testament Questions of Today (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969), 108–37, at 108; cf. idem, “Zum Thema der urchristlichen Apokalyptik, ” ZTK 59, no. 3 (1962): 267–84. ↵

  Richard A. Horsley, Revolt of the Scribes: Resistance and Apocalyptic Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 6 and 199–203. Cf. Idem, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993); idem, ed., Scribes, Visionaries, and the Politics of Second Temple Judea (Louisville: Westminster John Knox 2007); idem, Jesus and the Powers: Conflict, Covenant, and the Hope of the Poor (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011). ↵

  Horsley, Revolt of the Scribes, 3–4. ↵

  Ibid., 3 (original emphasis). ↵

  Richard A. Horsley, “Rhetoric and Empire—and 1 Corinthians,” in Paul and Politics: Ekklesia, Israel, Imperium, Interpretation. Essays in Honor of Krister Stendahl, ed. R. A. Horsley (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000), 72–102, at 96. ↵

  N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 2:1309–10. ↵

  Anathea Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire: Theologies of Resistance in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 383; idem, “Jewish Apocalyptic Literature as Resistance Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature, ed. J. J. Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 145–62, at 149. ↵

  Ibid., 160. ↵

  Ibid., 146. Cf. Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire, 45; John J. Collins, “Apocalypse and Empire,” SEÅ 76, no. 1 (2011): 1–19. ↵

  Portier-Young, “Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,” 160. ↵

  Portier-Young, Apocalypse against Empire, 11 and 44. She defines resistance literature as that which “aims to limit, oppose, reject, or transform hegemonic institutions and cosmologies and systems, strategies, and acts of domination” (44, emphasis added). While I recognize the importance of incorporating inexplicit statements about government in the construction of a Pauline political theology (see Douglas A. Campbell, “Paul’s Apocalyptic Politics,” ProEccl 22, no. 2 [2013]: 129–52), I prioritize the explicit here in order to meet Portier-Young’s definition of resistance literature. ↵

  For important, recent contributions to the counter-imperial Paul project, see, e.g., Joseph D. Fantin, Lord of the Entire World: Lord Jesus, a Challenge to Lord Caesar?, NTM 31 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix, 2011); James R. Harrison, Paul and the Imperial Authorities at Thessalonica and Rome: A Study in the Conflict of Ideology, WUNT 173 (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2011); Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2:1271–1319; Christoph Heilig, Hidden Criticism? The Methodology and Plausibility of the Search for a Counter-Imperial Subtext in Paul, WUNT 2/392 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015). See also select volumes in Fortress Press’s Paul in Critical Contexts series. ↵

  For recent critical evaluations of the counter-imperial approach to Paul, see, e.g., Seyoon Kim, Christ and Caesar: The Gospel and the Roman Empire in the Writings of Paul and Luke (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008); John M. G. Barclay, “Why the Roman Empire Was Insignificant to Paul,” in Pauline Churches and Diaspora Jews, WUNT 275 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), 363–87; J. Albert Harrill, Paul the Apostle: His Life and Legacy in Their Roman Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 76–94; Matthew V. Novenson, “What the Apostles Did Not See,” in Reactions to Empire: Sacred Texts in Their Socio-Political Contexts, eds. J. A. Dunne and D. Batovici, WUNT 2/372 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014), 55–72. ↵

  I am using “politics” quite broadly, to encompass the organization and governance of community life. By “political authorities,” I mean those agents “who manage to get hold of and to make use of means of temporal power such as making laws, commanding instruments of physical coercion and being able to extract and use funds from a certain community” (Dorothea H. Bertschmann, Bowing before Christ—Nodding to the State? Reading Paul Politically with Oliver O’Donovan and John Howard Yoder, LNTS 502 [London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014], 72). ↵
<
br />   For an exchange on the relative “significance” of the Roman empire in Paul, see Barclay, “Why the Roman Empire Was Insignificant to Paul,” and Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, 2:1271–1319. ↵

  For the rhetorical divisions and aims of 1 Corinthians 1–4, see Joop F. M. Smit, “‘What Is Apollos? What Is Paul?’: In Search for the Coherence of First Corinthians 1:10–4:21,” NovT 44, no. 3 (2002): 231–51. ↵

  Cf. Dan. (Theod.) 10:13, 20–21; 11:5, 18; 12:1; 1 En. 6:2–3, 7; John 12:31; 14:30; 16:11; Eph. 2:2; Ep. Barn. 4:13; 18:2; T. Sol. 2:7. ↵

  See, e.g., Otto Everling, Die paulinische Angelologie und Dämonologie: Ein biblisch-theologischer Versuch (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1888), 11–14; Martin Dibelius, Die Geisterwelt im Glauben des Paulus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1909), 88–99; Julius Schniewind, “Die Archonten dieses Äons: I. Kor. 2,6-8,” in Nachgelassene Reden und Aufsätze (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1952), 104–9; Gerhard Delling, “ἄρχων,” in TDNT (Vol. 1), ed. G. Kittel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 488–89, at 489n7; C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, HNTC (New York: Harper & Row, 1968), 70; Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 61–63; Judith L. Kovacs, “The Archons, the Spirit and the Death of Christ: Do We Need the Hypothesis of Gnostic Opponents to Explain 1 Cor. 2.6-16?,” in Apocalyptic and the New Testament, eds. J. Marcus and M. L. Soards, JSNTSup 24 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1989), 217–36; Wolfgang Schrage, Der erste Brief an die Korinther (1 Kor 1,1-6,11), EKK VII/1 (Zurich: Benziger/Neukirchen Vluyn, 1991), 250–54; Clinton E. Arnold, Powers of Darkness: Principalities and Powers in Paul's Letters (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1992), 100–104; Raymond F. Collins, First Corinthians, Sacra Pagina 7 (Collegeville: Liturgical, 1999), 129; Guy Williams, The Spirit World in the Letters of Paul the Apostle: A Critical Examination of the Role of Spiritual Beings in the Authentic Pauline Epistles, FRLANT 231 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009), 136–37; Robert Ewusie Moses, Practices of Power: Revisiting the Principalities and Powers in the Pauline Letters, Emerging Scholars (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014), 84–94. ↵

  Gene Miller, “ἀρχόντων τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου—a New Look at 1 Corinthians 2:6-8,” JBL 91, no. 4 (1972): 522–28; Wesley Carr, “The Rulers of This Age—1 Corinthians 2.6-8,” NTS 23, no. 1 (1976/77): 20–35; Mauro Pesce, Paolo e gli arconti a Corinto: Storia dell ricerca (1888-1975) ed esegesi di I Cor. 2,6.8, Testi e ricerche di Scienze religiose 13 (Brescia: Oaedeia Editrice, 1977); Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 103–4; Neil Elliott, Liberating Paul: The Justice of God and the Politics of the Apostle (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995), 43; Ben Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 127; Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians, Interpretation (Louisville: John Knox, 1997), 43; David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 93; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AYB 32 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 175. ↵

  Corin Mihaila, The Paul-Apollos Relationship and Paul’s Stance toward Greco-Roman Rhetoric: An Exegetical and Socio-Historical Study of 1 Corinthians 1-4, LNTS 402 (London T&T Clark, 2009), 26 (emphasis added). ↵

  For the latter, see, e.g., G. H. C. MacGregor, “Principalities and Powers: The Cosmic Background of St Paul's Thought,” NTS 1, no. 1 (1954/55): 17–28, at 22–24; G. B. Caird, Principalities and Powers: A Study in Pauline Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1956), 82–101; Walter Wink, Naming the Powers: The Language of Power in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 40–45 and 106; Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, PNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 125. ↵

  Scholars continue to dispute this reading. Williams (Spirit World, 137) defends the celestial view by pointing to: (a) the history of interpretation (Ignatius [Eph. 18-19]; Marcion [Tertullian, Marc. 5.6.5]; Ascen. Isa. [11.24; cf. v. 19]); (b) the “highly suggestive parallel” of ἀρχή in 1 Cor. 15:24; (c) God’s decree of wisdom πρὸ τῶν αἰώνων—“a point of some relevance to immortal angels, but meaningless in connection with humans”; (d) the rulers’ present destruction, which would exclude Herod and Pilate; (e) the cosmic/demonic significance of τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου (cf. Gal. 1:4; 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2; Ascen. Isa. 2:4). Yet, each of these arguments is problematic. For (a), not only is exegesis based in the first place on Auslegungsgeschichte quite tenuous, but the earliest interpretations of 1 Cor. 2:8 were followed shortly thereafter by the political readings of Tertullian (Marc. 5.6.5) and John Chrysostom (Hom. 1 Cor., 7.1); cf. Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 236–37. For (b), the referent of ἀρχή in 1 Cor. 15:24 is probably ontologically inclusive, as suggested by the repetition of πᾶς and other contextual clues. For (c), it remains unclear how God’s decree of wisdom before the ages is any more relevant for one reading than another; the rulers plainly belong to “this age,” not before it, so God’s wisdom would have remained inaccessible even to angels until it was climactically revealed in Christ. For (d), the present tense participle οἱ καταργούμενοι (2:6) probably has a future rather than present implicature (cf. 1:28; 15:24). This is suggested in 1:18, where Paul uses the near synonym οἱ ἀπολλυμένοι and likewise emphasizes crucifixion, future destruction, and epistemological inability; the rulers, then, are to be understood collectively, rather than as a specific reference to Herod and Pilate. For (e), ὁ αἰὼν οὗτος relates to humans in 1:20 and 3:18, suggesting its similar deployment in-between. ↵

  While Paul does not attribute a pejorative outlook specifically to political authorities, he attributes to them “wisdom of this age” and the epistemology consistent with the world (1:18–28). ↵

  Benjamin L. Gladd, Revealing the Mysterion: The Use of Mystery in Daniel and Second Temple Judaism with Its Bearing on First Corinthians, BZNT 160 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008), 159–63. ↵

  Alexandra R. Brown, The Cross and Human Transformation: Paul's Apocalyptic Word in 1 Corinthians (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 157–67. ↵

  Michael Peppard, “Brother against Brother: Controversiae About Inheritance Disputes and 1 Corinthians 6:1-11,” JBL 133, no. 1 (2014): 179–92, at 189. ↵

  Bruce W. Winter, “Civil Litigation in Secular Corinth and the Church: The Forensic Background to 1 Corinthians 6.1-8,” NTS 37, no. 4 (1991): 559–72; Alan C. Mitchell, “Rich and Poor in the Courts of Corinth: Litigiousness and Status in 1 Corinthians 6.1-11,” NTS 39, no. 4 (1993): 562–86. ↵

  Note also the shared use of κριτήριον, καθίζω, and βασιλεία in 1 Cor. 6:2–10 and LXX Dan. 7:26–27; cf. κρίμα, 1 Cor. 6:7; Dan. (Theod.) 7:22. Cf. Brian S. Rosner, Paul, Scripture, and Ethics: A Study of 1 Corinthians 5-7, AGJU 22 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 111. See, however, Paul M. Hoskins, “The Use of Biblical and Extrabiblical Parallels in the Interpretation of First Corinthians 6:2-3,” CBQ 63, no. 2 (2001): 287–97. ↵

  For καθίζετε (6:4) as an imperative, see Brent Kinman, “‘Appoint the Despised as Judges!’ (1 Corinthians 6:4),” TynBul 48, no. 2 (1997): 345–54. ↵

  Winter, “Civil Litigation,” 568-69; Peppard, “Brother against Brother,” 190. ↵

  Horsley repeatedly overstates the degree of separation Paul demands between the church and non-Christian society; cf. Richard A. Horsley, 1 Corinthians, ANTC (Nashville: Abingdon, 1998), 88; idem, “1 Corinthians: A Case Study of Paul’s Assembly as an Alternative Society,” in Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society, ed. R. A. Horsley (Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 1997), 242–52, esp. 245–46; idem, “Rhetoric and Empire—and 1 Corinthians,” 100. ↵

  Paul J. Brown, Bodily Resurrection and Ethics in 1 Cor. 15: Connecting Faith and Morality in the Context of Greco-Roman Mythology, WUNT 2/360 (Tübingen: Moh
r Siebeck, 2014), 97–102. ↵

  Wesley Carr, Angels and Principalities: The Background, Meaning, and Development of the Pauline Phrase hai archai kai hai exousiai, SNTSMS 42 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 91. Horsley (“1 Corinthians,” 244) divides the terms between spiritual and Roman political authorities (δύναμις = death, etc.; ἀρχή/ἐξουσία = “the rulers of the Roman imperial system”). Cf. Horsley, “Rhetoric and Empire—and 1 Corinthians,” 99; Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth, 304–5. ↵

  See, e.g., Everling, Angelologie 44–45; Dibelius, Die Geisterwelt, 99–103; MacGregor, “Principalities and Powers,” 18; Caird, Principalities and Powers, 1–17; Delling, “ἀρχή,” 483–84; Barrett, First Epistle to the Corinthians, 357–58; Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 271–72; Matthew Black, “Πᾶσαι ἐξουσίαι αὐτῷ ὑποταγήσονται,” in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honour of C. K. Barrett, eds. M. D. Hooker and S. G. Wilson (London: SPCK, 1982), 74–82; Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 754n41; Martinus C. de Boer, The Defeat of Death: Apocalyptic Eschatology in 1 Corinthians 15 and Romans 5, JSNTSup 22 (Sheffield: JSOT, 1988), 136; Arnold, Powers of Darkness, 101–4; Scott M. Lewis, So That God May Be All in All: The Apocalyptic Message of 1 Corinthians 15,12-34, TGST 42 (Rome: Pontifical Gregorian University, 1998), 56; Collins, First Corinthians, 553; Garland, 1 Corinthians, 710; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, 572; Williams, Spirit World, 127–40; Moses, Practices of Power, 84–94. For impersonal structures of power, see Hendrik Berkhof, Christ and the Powers, trans. J. H. Yoder (Scottdale, PA: Herald, 1977), 39–43. ↵