1. Marriage is between a man and a woman

1 Cor 6:16 quotes Gen 2:24: “The two shall be one flesh”; 1 Cor 7:10-11.

2. Sexuality and sexual intercourse are a part of God’s good creation

1 Cor 7:1 – a Corinthian slogan: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman”.

• “eschatological perfectionism” (4:8) – leading to either libertinism or asceticism.

• Paul argues against those who are undervaluing marriage and physical intimacy:  

As Hays (1 Corinthians, p117) notes, 1 Cor 7 has been misinterpreted: “The time-honoured reading of this text sees Paul as grudgingly permitting marriage itself as a distasteful concession to the lusts of the flesh. In fact, however, it is some of the Corinthians who are seeking to renounce marriage and sexual intercourse, and it is Paul who insists in a robustly realistic way that sexual relations within marriage are normal and necessary.”

• 1 Cor 7:7: “I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has a particular gift from God, one having one kind and another a different kind.”

• 1 Cor 7 v8-9, 25-40: his own personal preference is for singleness and celibacy.

• 1 Cor 7:26: “I think that, in view of the impending crisis, it is well for you to remain as you are”.

3. Sexual relationships for Paul are within marriage

1 Cor 5; 7:2: “let him hold to his own wife, let her hold to her own husband”.

4. Sexual intercourse is not just for procreation (1 Cor 7)

5. What we do in the physical body matters (1 Cor 6:12-20)

• A Corinthian slogan in 1 Cor 6:12: “All things are lawful for me”.

• 6:13: “The body is meant not for fornication but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body”.

• 6:14: “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power”.

• 6:15-17: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Should I therefore take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never! ¹⁶ Do you not know that whoever is united to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For it is said, ‘The two shall be one flesh.’ ¹⁷ But anyone united to the Lord becomes one spirit with him.”

• 6:19: “your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you”.

6. Mutuality in marriage (7:4)

• 1 Cor 7:4: “the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”

7. Homosexuality 1 Cor 6:9

⁸ But you yourselves wrong and defraud – and believers at that. ⁹ Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes (malakoi), arsenokoitai ¹⁰ thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the Kingdom of God. ¹¹ And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

• Paul seems to have coined arsenokoitai on the basis of the Greek translation of Lev 20:13 (“If a man lies with a male as with a woman (arsenos koitën)); the resultant term is very general in meaning - “a man who lies with a man”.

• If arsenokoites refers to male sexual activity with males in general, then in this context the other term used – malakos – literally “soft” or “effeminate” –  almost certainly refers to the passive partner in male homosexual relations.

• Paul seems to be saying that these particular OT prohibitions are relevant to the lifestyle and ethics of Christians.

• Ellen Davis writes of 1 Cor 6:9-10: “The hermeneutical question with which the church must struggle is whether the acts that Paul condemns belong in the same category with mutually committed homosexual relationships between persons whose lives may on multiple grounds attest to a deep commitment to Jesus Christ and an exemplary love of neighbour.”

8. Some further hermeneutical thoughts

8.1 Use of the OT and the argument from creation, but with a Christological lens
 • Paul draws upon the OT regularly in 1 Cor 5-7. For example, in 5:1-8 he is applying Deut 27:20, his list in 5:11 is dependent on Deut, in 5:13 he quotes Dt 17:7 (cf. 22:21), and he affirms Gen 2:24 in 6:16. This is partly in the context of the Corinthians’ probable rejection of the moral tradition of Judaism. One dimension of his use of the OT is also an argument from Creation – in 1 Cor 6:16.

• Yet Paul clearly reads the OT through a Christological lens: 1 Cor 7:17-24. What he says about circumcision and uncircumcision would have been scandalous to his Jewish contemporaries – particularly since in 7:19 he says: “Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing; but obeying the commandments of God is everything.” Yet circumcision is one of the OT commandments of God! Clearly he is reading the OT through the hermeneutical lens of being “in Christ”, of salvation in Christ and of Christ as the goal or telos of the Law (Rom 10:3).

• The teaching that Paul does affirm from the OT – such as marriage from Gen 2:24 – he sees as applicable “in Christ”.

8.2 Argument from New Creation

• 1 Cor 5:7-8 he writes: “Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

• The reality of the resurrection: “And God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power” (6:14).

8.3 The task of moral discernment

In 1 Cor 7, Paul “repeatedly invites the Corinthians to join him in the task of moral discernment” (Hays, p130).

Paul Trebilco

Department of Theology and Religion, University of Otago

paul.trebilco@otago.ac.nz