“We Have Knowledge!”

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Traditional Easter baskets are full of eggs, meat, cheese, and holiday Easter bread. People bring their baskets to church to be blessed and share the food with their families, friends, and neighbors. Community identity is forged by what people do or do not eat together.


Concerning food that has been offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffs us up but love builds us up. If anyone thinks that he or she knows something, that one does not yet know as he or she ought to know. (1 Cor. 8:1-2)

Having spent all of chapter 7 talking about various aspects of marriage, St. Paul turns to the subject of food. He discusses various aspects of food for the next three chapters of this epistle. Food was important to the Christians of Corinth. Food is still important to Christians today.

The Corinthian parish had evidently written to St. Paul and asked him several questions about food. What to eat? Who to eat with? How to maintain their Christian identity in connection with food?

St. Paul begins by pointing out that although all the Corinthians claim to have knowledge, there is both “false knowledge” and “true knowledge.” The difference is that true knowledge goes together with love. False knowledge puffs up people, making them proud and arrogant. True knowledge, united with love, brings people into fellowship with each other. “We have knowledge!” was apparently the slogan or motto of the faction of the parish that was proud and arrogant. St. Paul warns these people that too often the people who claim to know more or know better are–in fact–the ones who know the least about the truth.

“Whatever knowledge we may have, it is still imperfect,” said St. John Chrysostom when he was preaching about this passage. “Where God is concerned, we cannot even say just how wrong our perception of him is.” He warns them, “More than anyone else, the arrogant injure themselves.”

Slaves of God

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When Orthodox Christians receive Holy Communion, the priest addresses them, “The slave of God [name] receives the precious and holy Body and Blood of Christ,” although in English the word “slave” is often replaced by the word “servant” or “handmaiden.”


Were you a slave when you became a Christian? Don’t worry about it…. For the slave who is called by the Lord is a freed person of the Lord’s; similarly, the freed person who becomes a Christian is a slave of Christ. You have been bought and paid for; do not become slaves of human beings. Brothers and sisters, let each remain with God in that situation in which he or she was converted. (1 Cor. 7:21-24)

St. Paul is eager to maintain a stable society. He does not want the Christians of Corinth to become known as anarchists and revolutionaries. He wants them to remain as they were when they were converted: married or single, slave or free. It doesn’t matter if the spouse of the convert is also a convert or not. Don’t upset the relationship unless the non-believer insists on getting a divorce. Slaves shouldn’t run away, using their new religion as an excuse. (Theodoret of Cyr said the same thing.)

St. Paul doesn’t want the Christians to deny their ethnic identities: Jewish (i.e. circumcised) or non-Jews (the uncircumcised). Were you circumcised as a child? Don’t boast about it now. Were you uncircumcised when you converted? Don’t get circumcised now, he tells the men in the parish.

Confronting the perennial issue of a community marked by distinctions of social status, St. Paul makes a paradoxical statement on Christian freedom: the slave is really free and the free person is really a slave. The free person who is a slave of Christ reflects the fact that anyone called “lord” in the first century AD had slaves but the title “Christ” evokes the Crucifixion, a form of execution reserved for the most abject slaves.

Slavery in Greece and Rome was very different from slavery in the Americas. In Greece and Rome, it was expected that a slave could earn or buy their freedom after 20 years. Such former slaves were known as “freed persons” and were expected to owe their former masters certain social obligations for another 3-20 years, depending on their agreement. (In first century Corinth, nearly 2/3 of the residents were probably either slaves or “freed persons.” )

It is important in this passage to understand “calling” is two things at once. “Calling” is not a personal vocation but is rather the life situation in which a person finds themselves. “Calling” is also the committed life of a Christian believer. Christians were bought and paid for by the blood of Christ. “The powers of the evil one are trying to render this price useless to us,” said St. Basil the Great. “They try to lead us back into slavery even after we are free.”

Read more about the fascinating social situation of slavery in first-century Corinth in Sacra Pagina: First Corinthians by Raymond F. Collins.

One Flesh=Made Holy….

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Left: St. Mary of Egypt received Holy Communion when she was baptized as an adult in Jerusalem and then again from the priest-monk Zosimas in the desert after 47 years of ascetic practice as a hermit. Right: priest pours water into the chalice at the Offertory of the Eucharist.

For the unbelieving husband is made holy through his wife and the unbelieving wife is made holy through her husband. (1 Cor. 7:14)

St. Paul has already discussed how a man and woman become one flesh when they have a sexual relationship, no matter how brief that relationship might be. Now he points out that because a husband and wife become one flesh, the unbelieving spouse shares in the holiness of the believing spouse.

Among the Eastern Christians, the spouse of the priest shares in her husband’s priestly ministry, to some extent. She is given a special title of respect, usually the feminine form of whatever title her husband has: presbyter/presbytera, papa(batushka)/mama (matushka), preot (priest)/preoteasa. She and the priest are one flesh and share a common relationship to the parish.

In the reception of Holy Communion, each Christian becomes one flesh with Christ and with other believers who partake. This is why the use of one loaf and one cup are so important in the celebration of the Eucharist. We all receive the same Holy Gifts and share a common life as a result.

Because we share a common life, we contribute to each other’s salvation and sanctification. The holiness of one member supports and sustains the holiness of the others; the sin of one member pulls down the others as well. “Save yourself and you will save 1,000 people around you,” said St. Seraphim of Sarov. The salvation of one radiates out to touch everyone in the vicinity–and beyond!–just a ripples from a stone thrown into a pond radiate out across the surface of the water.

“Husband and wife are one in the same way that wine and water are one when they are mixed together,” wrote the 2nd century Bible scholar Origen. The wine and water mixed in the chalice are frequently seen as an allusion to the union of divinity and humanity in Christ, as well as the union of human spouses or members of the same congregation. It is in the Paschal cup of blessing that we find our communion with God and each other.