The Scripture readings I am doing right now are all from the letters of Paul. I am reading his letters and trying to put them into the context of the story told by Luke in Acts. I am presently re-reading 1st Corinthians. Any commentary I make is in italics.
1 Cor. 10 – Paul expounds on the lessons Christians can learn from the OT narrative. As Christians enter into Christ through baptism, the Israelites were “baptized into Moses” in their water passage. Similarly they “ate. . .spiritual food” provided by God on their passage through the wilderness. The rock that nourished the Jews in the wilderness was Christ typologically present in the water from the Rock, and in the manna. Yet they were unfaithful. Christians face the same choices—we must not fall into idolatry (14). The sacraments are for us a “participation in the blood of Christ . . .participation in [His] body.” (16).
This chapter presents in a very unequivocal way the idea that things in the Old Testament narrative are to be seen as “types” and “figures” of events and lessons from Christ’s life. No one in my experience focused more on this than George Fox:
“. . .as man comes through by the Spirit and power of God to Christ who fulfils the types, figures, shadows, promises, and prophecies that were of him, and is led by the Holy Ghost into the truth and substance of the Scriptures, sitting down in him who is the author and end of them, then are they read and understood with profit and great delight.” George Fox, Journal, 32
This is an idea that has meant a great deal to me, but I have also come to see more in it than Fox and early Friends saw. They saw the types and figures as “shadows” of the substance – Christ – that preceded his ascendance into the world we live in. But Fox never considered that the time that was to come AFTER Christ’s time here on earth would also be a time when we would need the physical presence of some “shadows” to remind us of him. Like the sun rising and setting, shadows are cast on both sides of the noon of His Presence. And I think I see those sacramental “types” and “figures” as still playing a significant role in reminding us of the eternal spiritual substance, which is Christ.
Returning to the text, when you eat of food sacrificed to demons, you make yourself one with those demons—even though we may know that they are “really” nothing. We must remember that what we want to do is “build up” the body of Christ, not bring it into disrepute. You don’t need to probe into the origin of food offered to you by pagans, but if someone tells you it was sacrificed, then you must respond as if that act has significance to a brother’s conscience.
1 Cor. 11 - Paul uses the prevailing cultural norms as ways of bringing out how Christ can be understood by the people of Corinth. As a man is head over his wife in marriage, so Christ now is head over the man. Women should not act like men—if she doesn’t wear the customary veil, she should logically have her head shaved like a man, but this she does not want to do. Women are to be veiled as a sign of submission – and for propriety’s sake. These are all just customs, but people should not be rebellious (16).
He addresses the problem of factions among them. When they meet together it ought not to be for simple eating and drinking but rather to all be equal before God and to share in the sacred memorial of Christ’s Last Supper with them. He warns them that communion is not just eating. It involves “discerning” Christ’s presence in the bread (29). Ordinary eating should be done at home.
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