Re: 1Cor 1:28 TA MH ONTA

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Mon Jan 26 1998 - 05:58:53 EST


At 1:15 PM -0600 1/25/98, Revcraigh wrote:
>Here's an interesting question: Why, after beginning with masc. plurals (OU
>POLLOI SOFOI KATA SARKA, OU POLLOI DUNATOI, OU POLLOI EUGENEIS (v. 26)) does
>Paul switch to neut. plurals (TA MH ONTA, TA MWRA TOU KOSMOU, TA ASQENH TOU
>KOSMOU (v. 27), TA AGENH TOU KOSMOU KAI TA EXOUQENHMENA (v. 28)) in the next
>two verses?
>
>Although it is possible that the neuter plurals refer to things which Paul has
>in mind which are grammatically neuter (but what indeed?), my thought (I
>wonder what others think?) is that TA MH ONTA et. al. all refer to the
>Corinthians. Is it possible that Paul is deliberately depersonalizing them,
>not because Paul himself thinks of them in this way but because those who are
>wise according to the flesh, powerful, and well-born look thus down on them as
>not attaining to their standards? Paul's point seems to be that, however
>rejected and abused the Corinthian Christians may be by the "greats" of the
>world, God deliberately chose them to put the big shots in the world's eyes to
>shame. I notice that Paul depersonalizes the SOFOI KATA SARKA, the DUNATOI,
>and the EUGENEIS by calling them TA ONTA (v. 28, if indeed that is what TA
>ONTA refers to).

In one sense I think this is right--that Paul uses the neuter plurals to create abstract substantives that refer to attitudes and to the kinds of things that are esteemed in the attitudes that he finds questionable in the Corinthian congregation. I think that the whole letter (1 Cor) is, for the most part, a sustained harangue against the peril of the Christianity he is trying to nurse along in Corinth being transformed into a Greek mystery cult with proto-Gnostic tendencies and an emphasis on religious individualism, private religious experience to the detriment of shared worship, a notion of hierarchy within the community in terms of those who have GNWSIS and/or SOFIA. Much of the argumentation in 1 Cor is akin to the synoptic teaching of Jesus about greatness (Mk 10:42-45 and parallels). I think then that these neuter plurals TA MH ONTA, TA MWRA TOU KOSMOU, TA ASQENH TOU KOSMOU, TA AGENH TOU KOSMOU KAI TA EXOUQENHMENA are referring to attitudes and especially to degrees of self-esteem in those who have re
sponded to the gospel: not the somebodies but "those who don't count", not the intellectuals but the simple-minded, not the powerful but the powerless, not the well-born but those without pedigrees. The harangue that continues on through the better part of the first four chapters of 1 Cor is particularly an attack upon the sort of religious arrogance that Paul seems implicit in the splintering of the Corinthian congregation into cliques or sectarian sub-groups claiming to be adherents of a different leader or teacher (1 Cor 1:10ff.). So I think there is something in the antithesis of TA ONTA and TA MH ONTA in this context that Craig has rightly noted: God hasn't chosen the "somebodies" of this world but the "nobodies." In that case this sequence of neuter plural substantives is part of a rhetorical argument rather than a discussion of cosmology.



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