As a last note (for now) on 1 Cor 8, I want to clarify how the scenario I proposed last week is different than the reconstruction proposed by most interpreters. What is new in my proposal, so far as I can tell, is this: the weak understood themselves to be participating in the worship of [...]

An exposition of Paul’s flow of thought in 1 Corinthians 8-10, in which he rebukes the strong for their thoughtlessness and corrects the idolatrous error in thought and action of the [...]

In a new interpretation of 1 Cor 8:7, the weak person does not have a guilty conscience but first a weak conscience, then a defiled one. Guilty feelings never enter the [...]

We saw that in 1 Cor 8:4-6, Paul affirms the fact that there is no God but one; idols are nothing. In verse 7, however, we begin to see more clearly what the problem is:

However, not all possess this knowledge. But some, through former association with idols, eat food as really offered to an idol, and their [...]

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 [...]