1 Corinthians 8 Footnotes

8:5 Paul’s comment that there were “many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’” in Corinth is confirmed by the travel writer Pausanias, who visited Corinth soon after Paul. Temples and shrines were everywhere. Pagan priests offered sacrificial animals to the gods; leftover meat was sold in shops. Family dinners were held in rooms attached to the temples in the presence of the statues of deities. The religious culture of Corinth was simultaneously the city’s civic culture. To disengage from one was to disengage from the other, with serious social and financial consequences.

8:6 In a remarkable affirmation, Paul called Jesus Christ the “one Lord.” Paul the Jew was echoing but reconfiguring the thrice-daily prayer known as the Shema: “Listen, Israel … the LORD is one” (Dt 6:4-6). He added later, “If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him” (1Co 16:22). The “Lord, Jesus Christ” is being identified with Yahweh, the God of Israel. Other Jewish NT writers routinely made this astonishing identification (e.g., 1Pt 3:15; see Is 8:13). It is important to keep in mind that Paul, the monotheist, wrote this a mere twenty years after Jesus’s crucifixion, indicating a high view of Jesus very early on in the church. This high view is assumed and beyond dispute in the NT.

Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians, who sit between Judaism and Christianity but belong to neither, must take seriously Christ’s divine lordship based on such passages. Similarly, Mormons, by taking the words “for us” (1Co 8:6) and thus allowing for the recognition of other gods, misunderstand Paul’s intent. By saying “even if there are so-called gods” (v. 5), he meant they existed only in the minds of Corinthian idolaters. However, the words “for us there is one God, the Father … and … one Lord, Jesus Christ” point to the new reality these readers have come to know through the gospel. Corinthian believers had acknowledged and appropriated this reality (“for us”).

8:7-9 Paul addressed a pastoral problem related to food sacrificed to idols. Some believers felt there was nothing wrong with eating this meat that following the sacrifice, was sold in shops near the temple. They knew that the gods to whom the meat had been offered were nonexistent. God had created the food, and there was no problem with purchasing and eating it. On the other hand, some believers who had trusted in these gods prior to their coming to Christ, would feel conflicted about eating meat offered to idols. Paul’s primary concern was that believers look to the good of fellow believers, acknowledging those with weaker consciences. Paul himself was willing to relinquish personal rights (9:1-27) to encourage the stronger Christians to make concessions for the weaker ones. In 10:14-22 he wrote that one should not attend temples where sacrifices to pagan deities were being made since this would mean being in spiritual fellowship with demons.