1 Corinthians 11:17-34 - Discerning the Body

The Abuse Paul is Actually Addressing

Paul's tone in this chapter is set before he addresses the Supper at all: "when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse" (11:17).

Schreiner identifies the problem: "The divisions in this instance are not theological but social." The Supper was celebrated as part of a regular meal, and "apparently rich members in the community were eating and drinking sumptuously during these meals, while the poor were not even getting enough to eat." His judgment on what that meant is exact: "By treating the poor in this way the rich were preserving class distinctions characteristic of secular society" (Schreiner, 2001).

Paul's verdict in verse 20 is that what they are eating is not the Lord's Supper at all. Schreiner: "To allege that they are meeting in honor of the Lord when the poor are despised and some of the rich are even getting drunk is a contradiction in terms."

Paul has no place for "sacramental devotion" that coexists with social oppression.
(Schreiner, 2001)

Reading chapter 11 in light of chapters 5, 6 and 10, Billings argues Paul is concerned not only with literal idolatry but with "greed, divisions, sexual immorality, and other sins with corporate, covenantal implications." The Corinthians "have rejected the koinonia offered in the bread and cup in 10:16-17," turning "from the spiritual manna and drink offered in the body and blood of Christ" and acting "against their true identity as a covenant people united in Christ" (Billings, 2018). The argument that sets that up is in Koinonia - Participation in the Body and Blood.

Why "worthy" is the Wrong Instinct

Ridderbos makes an important translation point. Of "unworthy manner" in verse 27 he writes:

The word "unworthy" here can scarcely reproduce the meaning. For every idea as though by merit or legal claim one would have to or were able to make himself "worthy" of eating the bread is to be excluded. The thought is rather that of inadequate, inappropriate eating and drinking, in a manner that is unsuited to it and not in harmony with it.
(Ridderbos, 1975)

The Greek is adverbial. It describes the manner of the eating, not the moral rating of the eater. Every pastoral disaster this passage has ever produced traces to reading it the other way, and there have been a lot of them.

Fee reaches the same result from the verb in verse 28. "This is not a call for deep personal introspection to determine whether one is worthy of the table. Rather, it stands in contrast to the 'divine examination' to which unworthy participation will lead." What they are to examine is "their attitude toward the table, especially their behavior toward others at the table" (Fee, 2014).

The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters records Richard Hays making the same case from Paul's use of judgment language elsewhere in the letter (1 Cor 6:5; 14:29): "this is not an individualized self-assessment but a call to communal discernment" (Hays, cited in DPL, 1993).

So the question Paul is putting is not "have I been good enough this week." It is "am I coming in faith, in repentance, and at peace with the people in this room."

What "the body" Refers to

Which body? Christ's, present in the elements, or the church, present in the room? Fee has a four-part case for the ecclesial reading:

1. Textual. The received text's addition of "unworthily" and "of the Lord" is a later assimilation to verse 27. The differences between the two verses are more striking than the similarities: verse 29 has the absolute "the body" with no genitive qualifier, and it drops the cup, which Paul elsewhere always mentions when he means both.
2. Structural. Verse 29 makes sense of what was otherwise an odd digression back at 10:17, where Paul singled out the bread and declared their partaking of the one loaf proof that they are one body.
3. Contextual. The entire section from verse 17 through verses 33-34 exists "to correct a considerable abuse of the church as it is visibly portrayed at the Lord's Supper," so the question ought to be "why would one think that this absolute use, set up by what was said earlier (10:17), would mean anything else?"
4. Lexical. "Discern" means to distinguish as distinct and different, which is exactly the verb required "for expressing the need properly to take cognizance of the whole church that is gathered as one body at this meal" (Fee, 2014).

The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters prefers Thiselton's mutually-interpretive alternative. Rather than holding the christological and ecclesial readings in antithesis, "it is best to see them as mutually interpretive of each other," since "when the Corinthians participate in the meal as a body, they reflect on Christ's body, so that they may image the body of Christ toward one another" (DPL, 1993). Billings arrives at a similar double reading: discerning the body involves "discerning that Christ offers his body as one who owns our bodies and has incorporated ours into his; and discerning that we have been incorporated into the communal body of Christ, which joins together rich and poor" (Billings, 2018).

My own judgment is that Fee's grammatical argument on the absolute use of "body" is stronger than the harmonising alternative, and that the harmonisers are right about the theology anyway. Paul's immediate referent is the church. But Paul's whole point is that failing to discern the church is a failure to discern what Christ's body accomplished, because what it accomplished was a people. The two readings collapse into each other under pressure, which is why the argument between them has never been very heated.

Weakness, Illness, and Death

Fee: "This is neither parenesis nor warning; it is an ad hoc reflection on their own situation. Most likely Paul is here stepping into the prophetic role; by the Spirit he has seen a divine cause and effect between two otherwise independent realities." He argues the judgment is probably corporate rather than one-for-one, falling on the whole community because of the divisions some are creating, and he is explicit about the limit: "Paul is not saying that sickness among believers is to be viewed as present judgment, nor that such sickness is necessarily related to an abuse of the supper. Rather, he has at this point prophetically judged this to be so" (Fee, 2014).

Verse 32 sets the register, and it is the verse that keeps the paragraph from being terrifying. Schreiner: "Paul views such 'judgments' as merciful, for they prevent sinning believers from receiving the condemnation that the world experiences at the last judgment" (Schreiner, 2001). Ridderbos says the same: these serve "as the gracious pedagogy of God who does not will to wreck the church, but to bring it back again from the wrong pathway" (Ridderbos, 1975).

The positive point stands, and it is the one memorialism has to answer. The elements are not in themselves magical, and "there is no other gift in the sacrament than from the hand of the Giver," yet "it is the living presence of Christ, in accordance with the arrangement established in his own words of institution, which in the elements effects communion with the sacrifice once made by him and which can transform the gift in the Supper into a judgment" (Ridderbos, 1975).

Something is being handled at this table that a symbol could not be handled badly enough to make anyone ill.

Two Things This Passage Does not Establish

It does not establish a link between sin and sickness. The Dictionary of Paul and His Letters is careful here: "One cannot maintain that Paul considers all sickness and death to be related to the abuse of the Lord's Supper," even if Romans 1:18-32 and 1 Corinthians 10:1-14 suggest a general principle that sickness is sometimes caused by sin (DPL, 1993). Fee's point that Paul is speaking prophetically about a specific situation is the guardrail.

It cannot be run in reverse. Verse 30 says abuse of the Supper brought sickness. It does not say that proper use of the Supper removes sickness, and the inference from one to the other is invalid. It is a common move in Pentecostal preaching and it does not work. The full argument, including what can legitimately be said about healing at the table, is in A Pentecostal Theology of the Table.

The Pastoral Misuse

Fee's summary paragraph is the best pastoral writing in the commentary literature on this:

As noted throughout, this paragraph has had an unfortunate history of understanding in the church. The very table that is God's reminder, and therefore his repeated gift, of grace, the table where we affirm again who and whose we are, has been allowed to become a table of condemnation for the very people who most truly need the assurance of acceptance that this table affords, the sinful, the weak, the weary. One does not have to "get rid of the sin in one's life" in order to partake.
(Fee, 2014)

He immediately balances it: "any magical view of the sacrament that allows the unrepentant to partake without 'discerning the body' makes the offer of grace a place of judgment. Grace 'received' that is not recognized as such is not grace at all; and grace 'received' that does not recognize the need to be gracious to others is to miss the point of the table altogether."

Come repentant. Do not come qualified.

What Should Be Said instead

The passage does ask for something before we eat, so the answer is to point it where Paul points it.

Ask the room three questions.

1. Am I coming in faith rather than out of habit?
2. Is there something I need to repent of and bring to God right now, at this table, rather than avoiding the table until I have sorted it out myself?
3. Is there anyone in this room, or at home, that I am refusing to be one body with?

Paul's own landing is the tone to take: "if we judged ourselves truly, we would not be judged" (11:31). Self-examination is how we avoid the warning. It was never the trap hidden inside it.

See also: Koinonia - Participation in the Body and Blood | The Table and the Body - Unity, Discipline, and Mission | Communion Practice - Frequency, Elements, and Admission

Sources

• Billings, J. T. (2018). Remembrance, Communion, and Hope: Rediscovering the Gospel at the Lord's Table. Eerdmans.
• Fee, G. D. (2014). The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Revised ed.). NICNT. Eerdmans.
• Hawthorne, G. F., Martin, R. P., & Reid, D. G. (Eds.) (1993). Dictionary of Paul and His Letters. IVP.
• Ridderbos, H. (1975). Paul: An Outline of His Theology (J. R. de Witt, Trans.). Eerdmans.
• Schreiner, T. R. (2001). Paul, Apostle of God's Glory in Christ: A Pauline Theology. IVP Academic.
• Thiselton, A. C. (2006). 1 Corinthians: A Shorter Exegetical and Pastoral Commentary. Eerdmans.