Publication | Power and Peril: Temple Discourse in 1 Corinthians

In 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, Paul writes: “Do you not know (ouk oidate) that you are the temple of God (naos tou theou) and that the Spirit of God dwells among you? If anyone destroys the temple of God, God will destroy that person. For the temple of God is holy, and you are that temple.” This statement is striking for two reasons, reasons that remain obscure within the literature that discuss this concept of the Corinthians as the temple of God. First, Paul’s formulation of the question with the interrogative particle, ouk, expects a positive answer. The expectation of an affirmative response is actually unexpected: ancient texts, both literary and epigraphical, rarely, if ever, map the concept of sacred space upon a group of religious adherents.[1] So why should Paul expect the Corinthians to respond affirmatively to his question? Second, Paul’s assumption that God’s temple can be corrupted, even destroyed (phtheirō), highlights the danger that lies in proximity to the temple, and yet, this dimension of Corinthians-as-temple is never discussed in detail in the secondary literature. My book, Power and Peril: Paul’s Use of Temple Discourse in 1 Corinthians, probes the significance of these two ideas by analyzing Paul’s various statements about the Corinthian assembly in his first letter to the Corinthians.

One helpful concept to describe the human activity to sacralize particular spaces or places is what Jorunn Økland refers to as “ritually constructed space.”[2] I argue that the ritually constructed space described in certain parts of Paul’s letter distinguishes the Corinthians from simply a regular household space. In 1 Corinthians, Paul describes a dynamic relationship between the Corinthians’ ritual activity and the divine. It is this power operative within their community that undergirds his belief that the Corinthian assembly is the temple of God.[3] That is to say, a “temple” is not a neutral space, but rather a charged, liminality where ritualized encounters with the divine entail both power and peril. The language Paul uses to describe the Corinthian assembly stands not just as symbolic metaphor, but it also describes their present experiences. I demonstrate how this temple discourse comes to the fore in particular sections of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. Attending to the rhetorical force of Paul’s argument and to his broader ancient Mediterranean context clarifies what it means for the Corinthians to be the “temple of God.”

My research participates in a broader conversation surrounding Paul’s language about the Corinthians as the temple of God. The literature stretches back almost one hundred years ago with Hans Wenschkewitz’s Die Spiritualisierung der Kultusbegriffe (1932) and continues on as recently as Eyal Regev’s The Temple in Early Christianity (2019).[4] These studies have clarified Paul’s references to “temple” in several ways: (1) interpreting various Pauline material—whether in the Corinthian correspondence or beyond—concerning temple; (2) collecting relevant texts from Jewish literature; and (3) reflecting upon the value of archaeological data for comparative inquiry. There are, however, areas that require further elaboration. The majority of studies about Paul’s use of temple language are what I consider to be second-order reflections. They often focus on the substitution versus spiritualization dichotomy to explain Paul’s (critical) attitude towards the Jerusalem temple. Whether implicitly or explicitly, assumptions about the Jerusalem cult remains the background structure that informs these interpretations of Paul. Also, these studies often highlight the socially unifying role of temple imagery, an overly simplified understanding of Paul’s temple discourse. By this logic, Paul’s language regarding temple is just one more rhetorical tool Paul employs to fight stasis à la the arguments laid out by Margaret Mitchell in her influential reading of 1 Corinthians.[5] That is to say, factionalism remains the issue at stake, and the letter functions as deliberative rhetoric to persuade the Corinthians to be reunified. The following points describe how I depart from recent studies on this topic and what I see as the major contributions of my book.

My book intervenes into the scholarly conversation by modeling a holistic reading strategy. Earlier readers have often interpreted various combinations of 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, 5:7–8, 6:19, and 10:18 in their evaluation of Paul’s temple discourse, but none have engaged in a full exegesis of these relevant passages in 1 Corinthians within their broader literary context and relationship to one another. In 1991, Brian S. Rosner published a brief essay that engaged in a reading of 1 Corinthians 5 vis-à-vis the Corinthians and temple.[6] I expand the scope of Rosner’s project to incorporate other relevant texts within 1 Corinthians such as 5:1–13, 10:1–22, and 11:17–34. These texts are not typically marshalled to discuss the Corinthians as temple, but I argue that these disparate passages work in tandem to advance Paul’s temple discourse.

I also aim to address the more fundamental questions, specifically as they relate to the religious experience within temples and how this context may illuminate Paul’s use of temple discourse. One might ask: what were the rules that governed temples, and how were boundaries of such spaces maintained? What types of divine benefit or power did people encounter, or expect to encounter, when they entered into a temple space? Were there punishments, if any, for misbehavior within sacred spaces? This last question, in particular, gestures towards the current lacuna in scholarship, by exploring the peril that is inherently tied to temples. For example, scholars usually discuss in the abstract the rhetorical force of Paul’s language, Paul’s internal attitude towards the Jerusalem temple, or relevant archaeological data from Roman Corinth. But, the actual experience one had within temples and the dangerous nature of such spaces are rarely discussed. The epigraphic and literary evidence from Greek/Roman and Jewish contexts clearly establish an enduring belief that transgressions within sacred spaces carried punishments.[7] The penalties were diverse: monetary fines (e.g., SEG 11.314; LSCG 37.5–9, 14–17); exclusion (e.g., LSCG 53.31–32, 40–43; 65.41); corporal (e.g., LSCG 37.7–12; IG II(2) 1635); and even divinely sanctioned (e.g., LSAM 19; SEG 37.1001; TAM V.1 179b; Pausanias, Descr. 9.25.10).[8] One inscription vividly portrays the penalty for anyone who violated sacred vessels: “any who does these things is evil and may he perish in an evil destruction, having become fish food” (LSAM 17). These represent only a small sample of the available evidence that stretches back to as early as the 7th century BCE well into the 2nd century CE.

The third point of emphasis in my book lies in the importance of ritual food for the Corinthian community. Food and drink associated with the house of the gods were not benign objects in antiquity, but they inherently held both power and danger for those consuming such substances. Comparing the dynamic relationship between consumed substances and sacred spaces provides greater insight as to why Paul outlines certain rules and boundaries regarding communal meals in 1 Corinthians. In short, the meals taken together within the Corinthian community could be considered as temple food.

My research on Paul’s temple rhetoric relies heavily on material evidence regarding temples and other sacred spaces in antiquity. Many inscriptions remain untranslated or difficult to access for non-specialists, and so I bring attention to these often fragmentary, yet important, data for other scholars who wish to engage with the same evidence. After locating and engaging with nearly two hundred inscriptions, it was clear to me that more work was needed to incorporate this material into an interpretation of Paul’s language about temple in 1 Corinthians. Such evidence serves as an important counter-balance to the plethora of literary evidence which so often reflects the beliefs and practices of the socio-political elite. While inscriptions harbor their own ideological aims and were likely funded by wealthier members of the communities, they nevertheless offer publicly accessible language and ideas concerning sacred spaces in antiquity.

Paul has identified the Corinthians as the temple of God not only to persuade them, but he also aimed to shape their identity. The fact that Paul expected an affirmative response to his question (“Do you not know?”) concerning their status as temple hints at the likelihood that this was an important and repeated part of his teaching which the Corinthians have also come to accept. For Paul, the Corinthian assembly existed as the temple where its members could experience divine presence in the form of the Holy Spirit and the Lord’s supper. The community constituted this new building formed with new materials. Being the naos tou theou did not mean that it is established once-for-all, but this structure required upkeep, maintained strict boundaries that should not be transgressed, and was even vulnerable to corruption and destruction. Through attending to larger context for Paul’s temple rhetoric, my book offers a reading that conveys the power of his language for a modern audience.

[1] Perhaps apart from Paul, no other persons or groups in the ancient Mediterranean so imagined itself as a temple as the community at Qumran. A few suggestive texts (which I discuss more fully) are: 1QS 8:4¬¬¬–12; 9:6; 1QSb 4:28; 4Q164 f1:1–5 (exegeting the architectural metaphors from Isa 54:11–12); and 4Q174 (4QFlorilegium) f1¬–2i:6. See also the OT Peshitta on Jeremiah 7:4 which originally reads, “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord” = “The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, you (pl. = ‘ntwn) are the temple of the Lord.” Carol Newsom calls the metaphor of community as temple at Qumran a “quite unprecedented transference of meaning.” In The Self as Symbolic Space: Constructing Identity and Community at Qumran (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 156.

[2] Jorunn Økland, Women in Their Space: Paul and the Corinthian Discourse of Gender and Sanctuary Space (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 143–149.

[3] The dynamic I refer to militates against the false dichotomy between an Eliadian perspective (i.e. divine power sets something apart as sacred) and a Smithian one (i.e. the contingent nature of sacredness, or that human beings themselves sacralize certain spaces or places). See Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Task (New York: Harcourt, 1959), 26; Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 76–95.

[4] Hans Wenschkewitz, Die Spiritualisierung der Kultusbegriffe: Tempel, Priester und Opfer im Neuen Testament (Leipzig: E. Pfeiffer, 1932); Eyal Regev, The Temple in Early Christianity: Experiencing the Sacred (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), esp. 53¬–95 (“Paul’s Letters: Temple Imagery as Religious Identity”).

[5] Margaret M. Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation: An Exegetical Investigation of the Language and Composition of 1 Corinthians (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991).

[6] Brian S. Rosner, “Temple and Holiness in 1 Corinthians 5,” TynBul 42.1 (1991): 137–145.

[7] One should not flatten Greek, Roman, and Jewish contexts into a single monolith. I devote separate sections and chapters in my book to discuss their distinctive and similar qualities with regard to attitudes and rituals surrounding temples and other sacred spaces.

[8] IG = Wilhelm Dittenberger, Adolf Kirchhoff, Johannes Kirchner, Ulrich Koehler, et al., Inscriptiones Graecae, 11 vols. in 57 (Berlin: 1873–); LSAM = Franciszek Sokolowski, Lois sacrées de l’Asie Mineure (Paris: 1955); LSCG = F. Sokolowski, Lois sacrées des cités grecques (Paris: 1969); SEG = Supplementum epigraphicum graecum (vol. 1–25, Leiden; vols. 26–27, Alphen aaa den Rijn; vols. 28–51, Amsterdam; vols. 52–, Leiden & Boston: 1923–); TAM = Ernst Kalinka, Rudolf Heberdey, Friedrich K. Dörner, Peter Hermann, and George Petzl, Tituli Asiae Minoris, 5 vols. in 9 (Vienna: 1901-).

Michael K.W. Suh lives in Atlanta, GA and is the Assistant Director of Professional Development & Career Planning at Emory University. Further details about Michael’s current research projects are listed on his Academia page, and he is also on Twitter.