I wonder if perhaps the identities of the strong and weak in Corinth might be almost exactly opposite what most interpreters have taken them as being. My reason for wondering this has to do with the meaning of the Greek word συνείδησις (in 1 Cor 8:7 and following), translated into English as conscience, and how it relates to Paul’s argument in 1 Cor 8-10 (cf. Rom 14), his descriptions of the Corinthians’ attitudes and actions, and his exhortation to them in these chapters. As I will show, our concept of what a conscience is and how it works is very different than what knowledge-with-oneself would have meant to Paul’s Corinthian correspondents.
In 1 Cor 8-10, Paul gives his Christian readers or hearers instructions about eating food that had been sacrificed to pagan idols. In Corinth, the main issue Paul is concerned about isn’t whether they do or don’t eat but how their choice reflects their underlying thought and attitude: what do they believe about God in relation to pagan idols, and does their choice show that they really love and care for the people around them? He leads off in 1 Cor 8:1-3 by contrasting two kinds of knowledge, abstract knowledge and relational knowledge (characterized by love):
Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. (1 Corinthians 8:1-3 ESV)
Paul wants the Corinthian Christians’ actions to be informed not only by impersonal abstract knowledge but primarily by God’s love for them and their love for him and each other. As we shall see beginning in verse 7, some in the church had been eating meat sacrificed to idols with no regard for how it would affect the spiritual wellbeing of the people around them, and the problem didn’t lie in the fact that they were eating the meat, but the way it was influencing the thought and action of others.
Before we get to verse 7, however, in verses 4-6 Paul elaborates on the impersonal abstract knowledge that has led some in the church to eat sacrificial meat without any regard for how it would affect others:
Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth–as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”– yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (1 Corinthians 8:4-6 ESV)
As you can see, some Christians reasoned, correctly according to Paul, that there is no God but one. The pagan gods of the ancient Mediterranean world aren’t competitors to God since they don’t really exist in the first place. Some of these believers may have thought that the clearest way they could show their disbelief in and disregard for pagan gods was freely to eat the meat, showing total indifference to its association with a cult sacrifice. After all, an idol is nothing, but meat is given as food by the one who is God indeed, the God whom Christians know and love.
Whatever their own motivations might have been, Paul makes it clear that they feel free to eat because they know idols are nothing, but they act on the basis of this knowledge with nary a care about whether other people know the same thing. Paul’s concern is that other people, who don’t have the same degree of confident knowledge that the pagan gods do not exist, will see these Christians eating idol meat and interpret their action in light of some other belief or so-called knowledge–and that is where all kinds of trouble starts.
Unfortunately, I don’t have time to continue writing now, so I’ll have to continue with this later. Check back soon for the next exciting installment of … STRONG AND WEAK CONSCIENCES IN CORINTH!
