sex flesh prostitutes body spirit Christ's brides?

brides of christ: 1 corinthians 6
~*~

~*~

THE
topos
of spiritual propagation
as opposed to and higher than
physical procreation
is well-known in PAUL's world:

found already in PLATO's symposium,
it is also frequently mobilized in PHILO,
Paul's Jewish contemporary,
most notable in his description
of the life of the celibate
Therapeutae.

According to my reading,
Paul in Romans 6 & 7 also opposes a physical sexuality to a spiritual,
that is, allegorical, sexuality.

This reading
can be strengthened by noting
that the same antithesis occurs in
1 Corinthians 6:
14-20:

'AND
g d
raised the Lord
and will also raise us up
by his power.

Do you not know
that your bodies are
members of
Christ?

Shall I
therefore
take the members of Christ
and make them members
of a prostitute?

NEVER!

Do you not know
that he who joins himself to a prostitute
becomes one body with her?

For,
as it is written,

"THE TWO shall become ONE!"

But she
who is united with the Lord
becomes one spirit with him.

SHUN immorality!

Every other sin
which a man commits
is outside the body;
but the immoral man
sins against against her
own body.

Do you not know
that your body is a temple
of the Holy Spirit
within you,
which you have from
G D?

You are
not your own;
you were bought
with a price.

SO
glorify G D in your
body!'

~*~

THE
argument in verses 15-16 ["Do you not know ..."]
seems strikingly inconsequent,
in that it skips from the immorality of sex with a prostitute
right over to union with Christ.

Moreover,
the verse cited,
"And the two shall become one,"
refers in GENESIS entirely positively to sexual union
between man
and wife!


I would certainly expect to read here:
"Do you know that he who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her?
For,
as it is written, 'The two shall become one.'
But he who is united with his wife becomes one flesh with.
Shun immorality."

I think, therefore,
that Paul is truly revealing his hand
here.

For him,
sexuality per se is tainted
with immorality.

Paul looks forward
to the becoming-one-flesh of GENESIS being entirely replaced by an allegorical becoming-one-spirit
with Christ.

He proposes
displacing thit commandment,
as well as the commandment to be fruitful and multiply,
bu their spiritual referents of marriage to Christ
and the bearing of fruits of
the spirit.

Here, however,
Paul makes the point not openly but indirectly,
through what he does not say,
because immediately below he is going to recommand legitimate
marital sex for those not gifted as he is
with the ability to remain celibate
and who would therefore
be in danger of
porneia
were they not
married.


Paul
says as much
openly in 7:1,
"It is well for a man not to touch a woman,"
and 7:7,
"I wish that all were as I myself am. BUT EACH has her own special gift from G D."

The value system is crystal clear.


It is thus manifest from these verses
that the modes of sexuality Paul contrasts
are not so much sex with prostitutes as opposed to legitimate sexual intercourse but rather physical union between men and women [and men]
as opposed to spiritual union between people
and Christ.

~*~

But what,
however, of Paul's dual insistence here
on the body as members of Christ and as the temple
for the spirit?


Neither
of these expressions
seems in any way a manifestation
of an ascetic contempt
for the flesh.


Paying close attention
to this inconsequence in Paul's argument
gives us another moment of access to the very special Pauline anthropology that I have explored elsewhere with reference to 1 Corinthians 15 & 2
Corinthians 5.


As in those passages,
Paul is at great pains to disable those strains of thought
- perhaps proto~gnostic - that would claim that the body is of no
significance and in radical platonic fashion only to be escaped from
and denied.


For Paul,
not only will there be a body of resurrection,
but the body in this life is to be honored and paid its due by keeping it pure and holy.


He is alive always
to the danger that by devaluing the flesh and its works
- positive AND negative -
he is making room for a libertinism
that will achieve the precise opposite
of his intention.


THUS
he MUST insist BOTH
that the body is temple of the spirit AND
that the Christian in his/her [sic] body is a member of Christ -
but precisely THAT membership in Christ anticipates
the resurrection body which is not
a body of flesh.


PAUL
thus distinguishes
between the flesh and
the body.


The flesh,
i.e., sexuality,
has been dispensed with the Christian dispensation,
precisely in order to spiritualize
the body.


To be sure,
a legitimated marital sexuality is allowed for in Paul's system as the second-best alternative to celibacy,
but the ideal is a spiritual union as bride of Christ
in which he who "is united with the Lord becomes one spirit with him"
and NOT one flesh with even his/her
lawful wife/husband.


INDEED
the connection between chaps 6 & 7 of Corinthians
is now much
clearer.
engel
29 jul 2005 - bewerkt op 14 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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