The obvious meaning of texts
It has always seemed obvious to me that whenever anyone says “the obvious meaning of this text / word is …” they are about to say something that is far from obvious to everyone else. This thought was prompted (again) by Andrew’s post on I Corinthians 6:9-10 and the words malakoi and arsenokoitai. I would completely agree with him that the meaning of these words is far less certain than most people (for and against particular views) state in their respective arguments. The only thing we can say about them for certain is that they denoted forms of behaviour that Paul regarded as sinful.
It also seems obvious to me, but to very few others as far as I can tell, that Paul is not listing sins that he knew various members of the Corinthian church had previously committed. I think he is drawing on a range of common sins in a vice list which he and other Jews more generally attributed to Gentiles. The force of the argument is to say: “These are the sort of things Gentile sinners do, and some of you used to be Gentile sinners, but now you are called to be God’s people.” Why isn’t this generic use of a vice-list obvious to anyone else?
Arguing that these were the sins of specific individuals in the community, and then deciding what sort of sins Corinth was famous for, and then deducing what the specifics of the vice list mean, seems to me an equally dodgy practice as assigning “obvious” meanings to specific words, when the context doesn’t sufficiently clarify them.
Either way, “obvious” obviously means “tendentious”
February 27th, 2008 at 1:24 am
Would Paul, do you think, list things that for him would be incompatible with the reality of his knowledge of Christ? It is Paul who also wrote - whatsoever is not of faith is sin. So lists of ’sins’ doesn’t seem very useful in his thought process. The lists in Romans 1 are part of a rhetorical structure. Your comment made me think there could be something other than do’s and don’ts in Paul’s mind when writing this response to the Corinthian questions…