Courting Trouble
To understand 1 Corinthians 6 it is
necessary to understand some basic characteristics of the judicial process in a
Roman colony. It appears that by the mid-first century a.d. trial by jury was reserved mainly for criminal
proceedings, and even then there might be exceptions.1 Trials would be
handled by some sort of judge, perhaps one of the colony’s duoviri, but it is possible that an aedile like Erastus might
handle a case that arose out of some conflict or problem in the macellum (the meat market) or the
marketplace.2 The earliest and most famous of Roman courts was the
“extortion” court, “the need for which became acute as Roman governors …
discovered the possibilities of enriching themselves at the expense of the
provincials.… Many of the great cases of the late republic and early empire
were heard before this court.”3
There was a three-stage judicial process for civil cases. First, the
plaintiff would appear before one of the city’s magistrates requesting a suit.
If the magistrate agreed that there were grounds for a suit the defendant would
be summoned by the plaintiff to
court. The factual details of the case would be discussed and debated and a formula (statement of the factual
details that both parties agreed on) arrived at. The trial would be based on
what was in the formula. Second, the
magistrate would then asssign a judge, agreeable to both parties, to the case
and pass along to him the formula.
Finally, the case would be heard by the judge and the sentence passed, but it
was the plaintiff’s responsibility to see that the judgment was carried out by
the defendant. This process could drag on for some time and could be aborted at
various points, for example if the defendant refused to come to court in the
first place and the magistrate was not inclined to use force. Going to court
could be a very expensive proposition. Tacitus tells us that a lawyer in a.d. 47 could command a fee of as much
as 10,000 sesterces (Ann.
11.5–7). The annual salary for a duovir’s
clerk in a Roman colony in Spain was only 1200 sesterces.4
A number of forces in Roman society affected the adminstration of
justice.5
Social status and rank vis-à-vis one’s opponent were major determining factors.
While “the situation of the weaker plaintiff improved with the end of the
Republic and the coming of the Empire,” the system remained heavily weighted in
favor of people of higher status.6 From at least the time of Augustus
certain people—fathers, patrons, magistrates, and men of standing—were
basically immune from prosecution for fraud by some kinds of other
people—children, freedmen, private citizens, and men of low rank. Only if a
lower status person had a powerful patron was there a likelihood that he or she
could bring a successful suit against someone higher up the social ladder.7
Another factor in civil cases was the lawyer. If he was a good
rhetorician, highly skilled in forensic rhetoric, one had a chance, even if
social standing stacked the odds otherwise. In courts the art of persuasion
became much more than a mere exercise in public oratory. People packed many
trials to hear the great orators of the day.
Nevertheless, the Roman judicial system was pervaded by “improper
influences” and this “made equality before the law unattainable” or virtually
so.8
Citizens were less likely to be arrested, beaten, and imprisoned than
foreigners. “The principal criterion of legal privilege in the eyes of the
Romans was dignitas or honor derived from power, style of life, and
wealth.”9 To the wealthy, well-born, and well-connected went
the chief rewards of the legal system, along with many of the other benefits
available in society. There was a strongly aristocratic bias to the whole
culture. Justice during the empire was far from blind and was often looking
over its shoulder.
The importance of this for 1 Corinthians 6 is that at the very least
one or both of the Christians going to court were probably well-to-do and
hoping to exploit the judicial system to their advantage.10
As in ch. 5 we find further hints here that Paul’s chief troubles in Corinth
were caused by well-to-do members of the ekklēsia.
Chapter 6 has been traditionally divided
into two parts, the first on a case in a pagan court involving differences
between two Christians (vv. 1–11) and the second on another case of sexual
immorality (after the one in ch. 5), in this instance a man going to
prostitutes (vv. 12–20). It is often doubted that the case in 6:1–11 is
directly connected to the incest case addressed in ch. 5, since it has to do
with fraud (v. 7) and thus is likely a property matter. But since marriage
often was a property matter, there
may be a close connection.
There are close links between 6:12–20 and what follows in ch. 7. Paul
is trying to establish both a Christian view of the importance of the human
body in the order of redemption and the practical implications of an
eschatological worldview for present sexual conduct. He continues to address
his audience’s view of human sexuality and their aberrant theology of salvation
in ch. 7.11
Both cases discussed in ch. 6 deal with a serious breach of community
and an ensuing bad witness to the world. Paul argues that by taking disputes to
a pagan court and by fulfilling one’s sexual drives outside the body of Christ
one is violating Christian community and Christian witness. He uses several
sarcastic rhetorical questions, not detailed arguments, to express himself
here. Especially sarcastic is the question whether there is not one sophos (wise person) among the
Corinthian Christians who could judge the matter (v. 5), in view of their
claims about being wise. All these rhetorical questions are meant to shame the
Corinthians into seeing their real moral condition and to deflate their
unwarranted pride. This letter would be read before the whole congregation and
would be a humiliating public shaming.
The point in v. 1 could be
that Gentile courts are inherently unrighteous. Dio Chrysostom, commenting on
Roman Corinth about a.d. 100, says
that there were “lawyers innumerable perverting justice” there, and refers to
young men declaiming forensic pieces in the courtyard next to the Temple of
Poseidon during the Isthmian games, hoping to drum up business (8.9).12
K. Wengst has stressed that in view of the experiences listed in his
tribulation catalogs (1 Cor. 4:9ff.; 2 Cor. 11:23ff.), Paul had little reason
to trust Roman justice and that this passage should be read in that light.13
But Paul’s sweeping dismissal of the practice of law does not amount
to an attack on the law as such, and his statement that it would be better to
suffer wrong (v. 7) “presupposes the recognition of law.” “Going to law here is
itself regarded as doing injustice and robbing one’s adversary. That injustice
and robbery thus appear in the garb of law … makes it clear why Paul can
describe the judges as unjust.”14 Paul believes that
Christians, like Jews before them, should settle all disputes among themselves
on their own. He does not deal here with the case of a Christian and a
non-Christian entangled in legal matters.
In both this and the next case, Paul provides the wider Christian
perspective by bringing in eschatological matters. In the first case, he brings
in the fact that on judgment day believers will judge the outside world and
even angels (vv. 2f.); in the second
case, he refers to the future resurrection, which shows the value that God has
placed on human bodies (v. 14). The Corinthians’ problems arose not just from
bad ethics or bad social values but from bad theology, which affected all
worldly affairs and matters including sexual and legal matters. They had an
inadequate if not non-existent future eschatology, or at least future
eschatology was not shaping their values and decision making. Paul’s point in
vv. 2f. is that if they are going to go on and judge the world, then surely
they can handle an ordinary mundane matter now on their own.
Some have identified “the despised” (or “the least esteemed”) in v. 4 as Christians,15
in which case Paul is showing his contempt for the litigators, or possibly he
wants to invert the secular pyramid by putting the least esteemed of the
congregation on top as judges. But if the word in question really means
“despised,” then this view seems unlikely. It is more likely that the ekklēsia in this verse is the secular
assembly, not the Christian congregation.16 Men oun (“no, rather,” “therefore”) in the first clause must be
given its due weight, so that v. 4 answers to v. 3.17 In v. 4, then, Paul
asks rhetorically whether resorting to a pagan court does not amount to
appointing outsiders ill-suited to the task to judge among Christians.
Paul is clear in v. 7 that
going to pagan court already amounts to moral failure. He asks the plaintiff,
in words probably drawing on the Jesus tradition, would it not be better to be
defrauded? In v. 8 he addresses the
one who did the defrauding and reminds him that people who behave in this
manner will not inherit God’s dominion when it finally comes.[1]
1 Jesus’ case might have been such an exception since
Pilate, not the Sanhedrin, was in the end the one who decided it.
2 Cf. J. K. Chow, Patronage
and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (Sheffield: JSOT, 1992),
p. 80.
3 G. A. Kennedy, The
Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World 300 b.c.
to a.d. 300 (Princeton:
Princeton University, 1972), pp. 11f.
4 Cf. Chow, Patronage
and Power, p. 76.
5 See P. Garnsey, Social
Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970),
pp. 183ff.
6 Ibid., p. 192, cf. p. 217: “The possibility of suits
brought by men of comparatively humble origin and position against men of rank
cannot be ruled out; but they are unlikely to have been a frequent occurrence.”
7 It is better to speak of social status or level and
not social class, since the modern notion of class does not really suit the
situation in the Roman Empire. There was nothing quite equivalent to our middle
class. The three basic distinctions were between citizen and foreigner, honestiores and humiliores, and freeborn and slave. Depending on which distinction
was being used, one could be higher or lower. For example, a freeborn person
could be poor, whereas a freedman or freedwoman could be rich, and this was of
great importance in a city in which one bought one’s way into society, public
office, and sometimes even justice. Furthermore, some honestiores did not have citizenship while some humiliores did. See A. Clarke, Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth
(dissertation, Cambridge, 1991), pp. 26ff.
8 Garnsey, Social
Status, p. 207.
10 Cicero (Pro Caecina 73) complains that three things hinder justice from
being done in the provinces east of Rome: gratia,
potentia, and pecunia, that is,
“excessive favor,” power or great resources, and money, that is, bribery.
11 Many Corinthian Christians apparently
thought that salvation did not involve the body.
12 If one also considers the analogy with
Jesus’ parable in Luke 18, it is believable that Paul may have been referring
to judges in Corinth. Unlike B. W. Winter, “Civil Litigation in Secular Corinth
and the Church,” NTS 37 (1991), pp.
559–72, I doubt that Paul’s reference is to juries, since small civil claims
did not usually call for a jury. The plural “the unrighteous ones” does not
require a reference to a jury, since Paul is generalizing here.
13 K. Wengst, Pax Romana and the Peace of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress,
1987), pp. 76f.
14 Ibid. This assessment does not
conflict with what Paul says in Romans 13 since there he speaks of the divinely
ordained and intended function of government, not of some particular practice
of it, and he is not referring to Christians making use of the judicial system
but of actions initiated by the authorities.
15 Winter, “Civil Litigation,” p. 570.
16 It is possible that en tȩ̄ ekklēsia̧ means “of the assembly” so that Paul’s
complaint is about making pagans judges of the Christian ekklēsia. In any case, if Paul could call secular judges
“unrighteous” (v. 1), he could equally well call them “despised.”
17 J. B. Lightfoot, Notes on the Epistles of Saint Paul (Winona Lake: Alpha, reprint),
p. 213.