2.4 Theology of Sexual Practice

Joining the Body

THIS HOMILY PRESENTS the second half of Paul’s theological foundation for sexual ethics (6:13-20). He offers his views in a marvelously structured apostolic homily with ten cameos. The text is displayed in figure 2.4(1).

THE RHETORIC

This profound apostolic homily is composed of ten cameos organized around the high jump format. The high jumper begins with a short sprint (1-2). This is followed by the jump (2-5); then comes the crossing of the bar (6), concluding with the descent on the far side (7-10).

As marked on f igure 2.4(1), each of the four lines in cameo 1 is matched in cameo 2 following the step-parallelism pattern. Then comes a brilliantly executed example of ring composition. The center climax is an encased Scripture quotation. There is a clear turning point just past the center in cameo 7. Cameo 2 looks both ways. At the same time the discussion of the resurrection in cameo 2 balances the aff irmation of the cross in cameo 10.

1.a	¹³“Food is meant for the stomach,	FOOD for STOMACH
b.	and the stomach for food ”	God Will Destroy Food
c.	and God both this	God Will Destroy Stomach
d.	and that will destroy.

2a.	The body is not for prostitution, but for the Lord,
b.	and the Lord for the body.	BODY for THE LORD
c.	⁴And God raised the Lord,	God Raised: the Lord
d.	and will raise us up by his power.	God Will Raise: Us

3.	¹⁵Do you not know
	that our bodies	OUR BODIES
	are members of Christ?	In Christ

4.	So taking away the members of Christ	SIN AGAINST
	shall I make them members of a prostitute?	Christ
	May it never be!

5.	¹⁶Do you not know that the one joining a prostitute	ONE BODY
	becomes one body with her?	With Prostitute

6.	For, it is written,	SCRIPTURE
	“The two shall become one flesh.”	Two—One Flesh

7.	¹⁷But the one joining to the Lord	ONE SPIRIT
	becomes one spirit with him.	With the Lord

8.	¹⁸Flee from prostitution.
	Every other sin which a man commits is outside his body;
	but the immoral man sins against his own body.	SIN AGAINST
		His Body
9.	¹⁹Do you not know
	that your body	YOUR BODY
	is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit within you,	Of Holy Spirit
	which you have from God?	From God

10.	You are not your own;	CROSS
	²⁰you were bought with a price.	With Body
	So glorify God in your body.	Glorify God

Figure 2.4(1). Theology of sexual practice: Joining the body (1 Cor 6:13-20)

COMMENTARY

Here Paul builds a foundation for Christian sexual practice on the cross, the resurrection, the trinity and the doctrine of the church.

1.	a.	¹³Food is meant for the stomach
	b.	and the stomach for food,
	c.	and God both this
	d.	and that will destroy.

2.	a.	But body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord,
	b.	and the Lord for the body;
	c.	¹⁴and God raised the Lord
	d.	and will raise us by his power.

Figure 2.4(2). Cameos 1-2 (1 Cor 6:13-14)

The parallels between these two stanzas are strong, and critical for Paul’s argument. The parallels can be summarized and seen as follows:

Food	Sex
Food is for the stomach	The body is for the Lord
The stomach is for food	The Lord is for the body
God—destroys stomach	God—raised the Lord
God—destroys food	God—will raise us (our bodies)

Each line has its matching line. This step-parallelism is as old as Isaiah 55:10-11. Apparently the Corinthians were arguing that food and sex were parallel. It is possible that the first two lines of stanza 1 are quoted from their argument. They say, “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food,” meaning that both are destined for destruction. Sexual appetites, they seem to have argued, were in the same category because the body dies and the soul is immortal. The Gnostic/Stoic rejection of the body is clearly behind such thinking. Paul had another view.

Using carefully chosen words, Paul wrote: God raised the Lord (that is, his body) and he will raise us (that is, our bodies). There is a balancing of terms that makes us = our bodies. In explaining Paul, Rudolf Bultmann has written, “man does not have a soma [body]; he is a soma [body].”2 The resurrection of the Lord assures the resurrection of the body for the believers, and the future resurrection of our bodies is determinative for how we behave sexually in this life.

James Moffat observes that Paul does not attack sexual immorality as a menace to public health or as a case of psychological unfairness to one of the partners, but as “a sin that strikes at the roots of the personality which is to flower into a risen life.”3 In short, if I take my body with me beyond death, then any permanent damage that I inflict on it in this life has eternal significance. Paul is objecting to the dehumanizing of sex that takes place when it is turned into a form of entertainment and made parallel to food. Paul is rejecting the view that says “I feel hungry—I eat. I feel sexual desire—I engage in sex.”

The alignment of Paul’s phrases is extremely precise. When the first lines of each stanza are put together this is evident. They read:

1a.Food is meant for the stomach

2a.The body is not for prostitution, but for the Lord

Paul seems to be saying, the Christian must understand that if his or her body is for the Lord, it cannot be for prostitution at the same time. If this is part of Paul’s intention, we could conclude that marriage is also incompatible with a commitment of the body for the Lord. But in cameos 5-7 Paul clearly does not come to that conclusion. There he is careful to point out that he is not forbidding Christian marriage. More of this later.

Paul continues in 2b by writing, “and the Lord for the body.” This has the unmistakable ring of double meanings. The term body certainly means the individual body of the believer, but also carries overtones of the community body, the church. The Lord is for the body, and the body is both of these. In this text one meaning seems to shade into another.

The crucial comparisons are between the stomach that is to be destroyed and the body that is to be raised. The advice given is: Do not damage the body with immorality because the body goes with you beyond death—it will be raised. Foods and stomachs are impermanent while bodies are permanent. Human sexuality, he affirms, is part of the inner core of the whole person called the body, and that body will be raised. Furthermore, that whole person (the body) will be affected negatively by immorality.

This raises a problem. In 15:43 Paul affirms that the Spirit-formulated body will be raised in “glory” and “in power.” We are encouraged to believe from this language that in the resurrection the broken physical body of a dying cancer patient will be replaced with a Spirit-formulated body that is whole. Is Paul contradicting himself? Or is he discussing mysteries that are beyond both him and us? One beam of biblical light on this issue is the fact that Jesus’ resurrection body was most certainly a new glorious body. Yet he had scars on his hands and in his side. Paul seems to be saying “Don’t scar up your own body—it goes with you!”

Cameo 2 is not only related thematically to cameo 1, it is also the leading cameo for a larger statement of five cameos that come to a climax in a classical biblical text. The argument then repeats backwards in a near-perfect example of ring composition. This can be seen in figure 2.4(1) above.

The various pairs of balanced cameos deserve careful scrutiny. Cameos 2 and 10 are the outer envelope in the ring composition. Seen together they appear in figure 2.4(3).

Cameo 2 (resurrection)	Cameo 10 (the cross)
^13bThe body is not for prostitution but for the Lord,	^19bYou are not your own;
and the Lord for the body;	²⁰you were bought with a price.
¹⁴and God raised the Lord	So glorify God in your body.
and will raise us up by his power.

Figure 2.4(3). Cameos 2 and 10 (1 Cor 6:13b-14, 19b-20)

Cameo 2 tells of the body that will be raised and affirms the importance of that resurrection for sexual ethics. Sexual conduct has to do with the body, and it will be raised. Cameo 10 concludes the discussion by reference to the price paid on the cross and its significance for “your [pl.] body [sing.].” The “body” that “belongs to the Lord” is central to each cameo. In the first, the body is affirmed to be “for the Lord,” and in the second the reader is reminded that “You are not your own” (that is: You belong to the Lord). The theme of “cross and resurrection” form a complementary pair.

An option for a slave in the first century was for him/her to slowly build up funds in an account in a local temple until her own price in the slave market was accumulated. He would then be “bought with a price” from his master by the priests of the temple and would formally become that god’s slave. Actually, he would be a free man. Adolf Deissmann writes,

A Christian slave of Corinth going up the path to the Acrocorinthus,… would see towards the north-west the snowy peak of Parnassus rising clearer and clearer before him, and everyone knew that within the circuit of that commanding summit lay the shrines at which Apollo or Serapis or Aschlepius the Healer bought slaves with a price, for freedom. Then in the evening assembly was read the letter lately received from Ephesus, and straightway the new Healer was present in spirit with His worshippers giving them freedom from another slavery, redeeming with a price the bondmen of sin and the law.4

Büchsel feels that “the details of sacral manumission need hardly be applied.”5 Conzelmann argues that Deissmann over-pressed his findings into a full theory of redemption.6 But Paul identifies Jesus with the Passover lamb only once (5:7). In making that identification Paul was not creating “a full theory of redemption.” Instead, he was unveiling an important aspect of the mystery of the atonement. The same can be said for the image of the manumission of the slave. The Corinthian slave believer was not set free from bondage to sin and death by saving his copper coins one after another for thirty years. Rather, God in Christ died on a cross to set him free. Here and elsewhere (1 Cor 7:23; Gal 3:13; 4:5) the text affirms that God paid a price for the believer and redeemed him or her. That price was the cross.

Turning to the final phrase in cameo 10, there is another possible Old Testament echo. Apart from 5:1-10, the only other case of incest in the Bible is in Amos where the prophet reports, “A man and his father go in to the same maiden” (Amos 2:7). Each account describes the problem in the same way. It is not a case of “a man and his son do so-and-so,” but in both texts we are told that “a man and his father do so-and-so.” It seems clear that the Amos passage is in Paul’s mind. Starting with this assumption, Amos affirms a case of incest and then laments, “so that my holy name is profaned.” The sin was certainly against the woman and against the father, but on another level it was a sin against God, whose holy name was thereby profaned. Amos uses the Hebrew word ללה (to profane). Change the Hebrew hard ח to a soft ה with a slight change in pronunciation or the slightest erasure and you have the word ללה (to praise).7 Amos says, “Your sexual practice has become a ללה (profaning) of the name of God.” He seems to infer, “It should have been a ללה (an offering of praise) to a holy God.” Only those with a Jewish background would have caught this play on words. Yet it is possible that such a nuance was in Paul’s mind as he wrote.

There is an important double meaning to the word “body” that was known to all of Paul’s readers. The “body” meant the physical body and also refered to the “body/church.” The Corinthians are told to glorify God in your (pl.) body (sing.). The phrase “your [pl.] body [sing.]” has in cameo 9 just been defined as a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. Their corporate body (the church) is the place where they are to glorify God. No doubt the individual body of the believer is a key aspect of Paul’s focus here in cameo 10, but the communal body of Christ is unmistakably also intended. Defile the human body through sexual immorality and you defile the sanctuary which is the body of Christ. Because “you [pl.] were bought with a price” such defilement was abhorrent in the extreme.

Finally, in each cameo God is active for the sake of the body. In cameo 2d he “will raise us up,” and in cameo 10 God in Christ buys them “with a price.”

In summary, in Paul’s mind the resurrection and the cross provide the larger theological framework within which human sexual practice is to find its appropriate forms of expression. Because of the resurrection the believer knows that her or his body will be raised and her or his sexual practice involves that body. Because of the cross, he or she is bought with a price and expected to use the physical body in a way that glorifies God, which brings us to the next pair of stanzas.

Cameo 3	Cameo 9
¹⁵Do you not know	¹⁹Do you not know
that our bodies	that your [pl.] body [sing.]
are members of Christ	is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit within you which you have from God?

The familiar diatribe formula “Do you not know” is repeated twice. In the second line the words are identical except for the shift from “our” to “your.” This shift is consistent with cameos 2 and 10. That is, Paul begins this rhetorical structure with a plural (cameo 2) “raise us up” and ends with a singular (cameo 10) “your body.” My individual physical body is related to our body the church.

Returning to cameos 3 and 9, the third line can be seen to carry the theological weight of the two cameos. Here Paul uses complementary images. In the first (3) he tells his readers that they are members of Christ. In the balancing cameo (9) he affirms that the “Holy Spirit within” them is “from God.” They are a naos, a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit. These spatial images are diagrammed in figure 2.4(4). See figure 2.4(5) for the two images combined.

Figure 2.4(4). The spatial images of 1 Corinthians 6:15, 19

Figure 2.4(5). The combined spatial images of 1 Corinthians 6:15, 19

As early as chapter 2.3 8 we noted the Trinity was at work in purification. Now the Trinity appears again. The believer is in Christ and at the same time is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit from God.

In the first pair of cameos (2 and 10) the reader is asked to formulate an understanding of sexual ethics within the theological framework of the cross and the resurrection. Here a second theological frame appears. This time it is the Trinity. Within the body is the Holy Spirit (from God) and that same body is in Christ. This is a pointed rejection of Epicurean and Stoic thought where the Spirit (of God) unites only with the soul while the body is part of the brutes.

Again, the phrase “your [pl.] body” in cameo 9 carries the overtones of body/church. This double meaning attached to “the body” becomes a significant part of the second half of this homily. In cameo 3 there is reference to “bodies” and to “members” of Christ. The reference is to individual bodies (united in Christ). But in cameo 9 the language shifts to “your [pl.] body [sing.].” Paul is not merely interested in the personal/bodily health and destiny of the individual, but also in the health of the whole body of Christ. This point was already affirmed in 1 Corinthians 5, where Paul expressed anxiety over how libertinism was damaging the health of the corporate body of Christ. In the two outer envelopes Paul sets sexual ethics into three great frames of reference. The first has to do with the cross and the resurrection. The second is the Trinity, and the third relates to the church.

The eschatology of the passage is also worthy of note.9 Inheriting the kingdom is in the future. The unrighteous “will not inherit the kingdom,” and God “will raise us up by his power.” As regards the present, even now our bodies “are members of Christ.” The past is important because in that past “God raised the Lord” and in the past believers were “bought with a price.” So the believer is already united with the body of the risen Lord in the present even though “inheritance of the kingdom” and “the resurrection” are in the future.

In the center of the homily Paul turns from the great positives of the cross, the resurrection, the Trinity and the body of Christ to a strong set of negatives:

Cameo 4	Cameo 8
^15bSo taking away the members of Christ	¹⁸Flee from prostitution!
Shall I make them members of a prostitute?	Every other sin is… outside his body
May it never be!	but the immoral man sins against his own body.

Each of these passionately stated cameos contains an emphatic negative imperative. The first (4) is the familiar me genoito (may it never be) common in Romans. This is Paul’s negative assertion against something that for him is blatantly impossible. The imperative of cameo 8 may well have an Old Testament image behind it. Paul may be calling on his readers to imitate Joseph. When faced with the temptation to sexual immorality with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph ran out of the house (Gen 39:7-12). Paul commands the Corinthians to flee from the sacred prostitutes who roam the city.10 At the very end of the hymn to love Paul will tell them to “run after love” (14:1). They are to run away from the prostitutes, turn around, and run after the love of God.

In cameo 4 Paul focuses on the individual. He may be using his language imprecisely, but in light of the remarkable precision of expression in the rest of the structure it is doubtful. He affirms, “So taking away the members [pl.] of Christ shall I [sing.] make them members [pl.] of a prostitute?” Paul is making a statement about the inherent nature of sexual relations that is in total harmony with the Old Testament Scripture he is about to quote. For Paul, in sexual intercourse the whole body, that is the whole person becomes one flesh with the sexual partner.

Furthermore, Paul describes a wrenching process. The verb he uses is airo, which ordinarily means “take up” but here means “take away” and can carry the overtones of “take away by force.” It was the cry of the high priests who before Pilate shouted, “Away with him” (Jn 19:15). The believer’s body/self is joined to the body of Christ (cameo 3). Now that same body/self cannot be joined to another body (the prostitute) unless it is first wrenched, torn, taken away by force from Christ. The horror that Paul feels at this prospect evokes the cry, “May it never be!”

Cameo 8 is problematic. Drunkenness, suicide and gluttony are also sins against one’s own body. This particular crux is handled by various commentators in various ways. Conzelmann remarks that this argument is “of course formulated ad hoc,” and that for the moment Paul is only discussing this single case of offenses against the body.11 Conzelmann then gently chides Paul for showing a lack of concern for the prostitute and for “taking his cue from a Jewish saying which describes fornication as the direst of sins (Prov 6:25ff).”12 Moule suggests that the troubling phrase “every sin which a man commits is outside his body” is a Corinthian libertine slogan which Paul contradicts.13 Barrett considers C. F. D. Moule’s view, finds it attractive, but prefers to see Paul as writing “rather loosely.”14 Barrett quotes John Calvin with approval where Calvin writes, “My explanation is that he does not completely deny that there are other sins, which also bring dishonor and disgrace upon our bodies, but that he is simply saying that these other sins do not leave anything like the same filthy stain on our bodies as fornication does.”15

By contrast Dean Alford starts with the idea of “from without” and argues that the language is very precise and that drunkenness and gluttony are introduced from without, unlike fornication which comes from desire within.16 A fourth alternative is yet possible. As Conzelmann affirms: “the ‘body’ differs from the ‘belly’ in that ‘the body’ is destined for resurrection.”17 Drunkenness, gluttony, suicide are against the physical part of a person that is to be destroyed by death. Fornication damages the self that is destined for resurrection. Fornication for Paul is thus unique among sins in that it is indeed “against the body.” Hering catches this when he writes, “Has he [Paul] forgotten gluttony, drunkenness, suicide? No doubt for reasons we have mentioned he attributes to ‘porneia,’ a destructive quality with metaphysical repercussions.”18

Other sins do not necessarily take the believer by force away from the body of Christ and join him or her to a new body. In Paul’s view fornication does. As such it is singled out.

Paul’s remarkable discussion breaks new ground. On the one hand, Paul cannot merely read the seventh commandment to them. They could counter that this is strictly a commercial arrangement. Especially if the person involved was unmarried, no covenant with another person would be broken. That is, they would not (in such a case) be “committing adultery.” On the other hand, Paul cannot allow for the Gnostic view that the body is evil and doomed to pass away. Rather than speaking in general terms Paul’s language is again precise.19 The one sin that profoundly affects the body (now a part of Christ, destined to be resurrected) is the tearing of it away from the body of Christ and the joining of it to a prostitute. Within this pair of bold negatives (4, 8) he comes to the climax of his discussion [see fig. 2.4(6)].

5.	¹⁶Do you not know that the one joining a prostitute
	becomes one body with her?

6.	For it is written,
	“The two shall become one flesh.”

7.	¹⁷But the one joining to the Lord
	becomes one spirit with him.

Figure 2.4(6). Cameos 5-7 (1 Cor 6:16-17)

No doubt the libertines at Corinth argued that fornication with prostitutes did not constitute any significant union with the woman involved. There was no love, and no ongoing relationship. Paul affirms in cameos 5 and 6 that any act of sexual intercourse necessarily creates a new unity. D. S. Bailey commends Paul’s “profound and realistic treatment of coitus.” Bailey writes regarding this passage,

Here his [Paul’s] thought apparently owes nothing to any antecedent notions, and displays a psychological insight into human sexuality which is altogether exceptional by first-century standards. The Apostle denies that coitus is, as the Corinthians would have it, merely a detached and (as it were) peripheral function… of the genital organs. On the contrary, he insists that it is an act which, by reason of its very nature, engages and expresses the whole personality in such a way as to constitute a unique mode of self-disclosure and self-commitment.20

By comparing cameo 5 and cameo 7 Paul sees uniting with a prostitute as incompatible to joining with the Lord and becoming “one spirit with him.” In this latter phrase we expect Paul to say that we become “one body with him.” Paul’s carefully chosen phrases are remarkably crafted. If he had affirmed that the believer becomes “one body” with the Lord, then joining with any sexual partner and joining with the Lord would be completely parallel. In such a case there would be no room for Christian marriage. This would have pushed Paul over the edge into joining his ascetic (Gnostic) enemies by condemning all marriage as violating the unity of the believer with the body of Christ. Paul emphatically disagrees and thus, in chapter 7, he is able to affirm a place for sanctified marriage. As Conzelmann notes, “‘One spirit with him’ explains what is the nature of this one body.”21

In ring composition there is often a turning point just past the center; such a device is used in this homily. The turning point is in stanza 7. With the word but the argument shifts dramatically, and the theme of becoming one spirit with the Lord is introduced.

This same compatibility between marriage and the giving of the whole person to God is again affirmed when the connection between the center and the outside of this ring composition is noted.

The climax in ring composition is usually the center. In this case a Scripture quotation (Gen 2:24) appears in that climactic center. In addition, the theme of the “two becoming one” that appears in the quoted Scripture is repeated (with different nuances) three times (in cameos 5-7).22

The summary of the beginning, the center and the end of the structure appears in figure 2.4(7).

2.	¹³The body is… for the Lord
	and the Lord for the body.

6.	^16bFor it is written.
	“The two shall become one flesh.”

10.	^19bYou are not your own…
	so glorify God in your body.

Figure 2.4(7). The beginning, the center and the end of 1 Corinthians 6:13-20

In Paul’s mind, affirming that the “body is… for the Lord” (2) and the glorifying of “God in your body” (10) is fully compatible with a man and a woman becoming “one flesh” (6).

In summary, this remarkable passage can be seen as a carefully written piece of Pauline theological rhetoric that uses a variety of ancient prophetic styles. Words are selected with care and placed in parallel phrases following well-established Hebrew patterns.

The foundation of a new sexual ethic is not grounded in abstract philosophical principles. There is no discussion of social responsibility for the potential newborn child or the possibility of disease. Inheriting property and complications in family life are not mentioned. Libertinism is rejected in the light of the cross, the resurrection, the participation in the body of Christ and the Trinity. Sexual immorality is seen as a forcible separation from Christ and as a forming of new unions destructive to the body/church.

The discussion is tied to the end of all things. The believer is part of the body of Christ and he or she shall be raised. Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God, but believers are cleansed, justified and sanctified.

The law is not fashioned into a club and used to administer a beating, but the loyalties of a new relationship and a new identity are set forth. The passage is Paul’s foundation for Christian sexual ethics. When his style is observed the passage no longer appears “somewhat disjointed and obscure.”23 Rather it surfaces as a carefully ordered theological and ethical statement of Paul’s views.

Paul first exposed the problem (chap. 2.1), and then removed three road-blocks to finding a solution (chap. 2.2). Next came a theological foundation for human sexuality (chaps. 2.3-2.4). He is now ready to discuss patterns of sexual practice that are in harmony with those foundations (chap. 2.5).