{"id":1285,"date":"2020-03-31T04:18:37","date_gmt":"2020-03-31T09:18:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?p=1285"},"modified":"2020-04-01T09:17:59","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T14:17:59","slug":"who-is-the-weaker-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/","title":{"rendered":"Who is “the Weaker Brother”?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"In chapter 8 of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul begins a discussion that will go on for several chapters regarding food offered to idols.\u00a0 The eating of this food was the means by which worshippers participated in the sacrifices offered to those pagan gods.\u00a0 Through these chapters, St. Paul gives a variety of reasons why all of the members of the Christian community at Corinth must abide by the commandments against such participation as re-affirmed at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15<\/a>.\u00a0 In the opening chapter of this discussion, chapter 8, St. Paul makes a distinction between stronger and weaker brethren.\u00a0 This distinction understood rather casually, is employed all too frequently in both popular and pastoral discussions and debates in a way that belies the actual use to which St. Paul puts it.\u00a0 All too often, this distinction is used in order to create a sort of tyranny of the minority within communities or to justify judgmentalism of one group against another.\u00a0 In some cases, these misuses of St. Paul’s argument even involve a person identifying himself as the “weaker brother.”\u00a0 The point which the apostle is here making, however, is important.\u00a0 It is far too important to be lost to misuse and misapplication.<\/p>\n

The language of brethren, we know from both St. Paul’s epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, was the common language of the first century to refer to members of Christian communities.\u00a0 This family language predominated as the means for understanding the relationship between Christians as brothers and sisters.\u00a0 The relationship between the apostles and presbyters in the early church was seen in paternal terms, fathers and children (eg. 1 Cor 4:15; 1 John 2:1, 12, 18, 28; 3:7, 18; 4:4; 5:21).\u00a0 Much of St. Paul’s moral teaching falls into the genre of household regulation.\u00a0 This is most obvious when St. Paul is speaking about the roles of husbands and wives, parents and children.\u00a0 It influences, however, all of St. Paul’s practical teaching precisely because he sees the church as a family and himself as having been given a paternal role in that family.\u00a0 He instructs as a father governing his household.<\/p>\n

St. Paul speaks first to the “stronger brothers,” at least by comparison, in chapter 8.\u00a0 The way in which he speaks to them, however, clearly entails that they are not, in actuality, stronger or superior to their brethren in any real way.\u00a0 What they seem to believe makes them superior is certain “knowledge” which they possess which others within the community do not.\u00a0 This knowledge makes them more advanced than their brethren (1 Cor 8:1).\u00a0 St. Paul is quick to attack this conception, however, pointing out that this supposed knowledge produces pride and not love, sin rather than spiritual fruit.\u00a0 Further, he describes these brethren as those who “imagine that they know something” (v. 2).\u00a0 In contrast to those who love God and therefore are known by him (v. 3).<\/p>\n

It is within this context that St. Paul addresses what it is that these members of the community claim to know.\u00a0 The verses in which their view is described are the victim of frequent mistranslation.\u00a0 The knowledge which these brethren claim to possess is that “an idol is nothing” and that “there is no God but one” (v. 4).\u00a0 This implies that these brethren are arguing based on the basic principle of the faith that Yahweh, the God of Israel, is the only one worthy of worship that idols and the demonic entities which they represent and which dwell in them are nothing and worthless.\u00a0 They then apply this to mean that the pagan rites are irrelevant and it doesn’t matter if they eat of the sacrifices.\u00a0 It is worth noting here that St. Paul returns to and disputes these claims quite directly in chapter 10.\u00a0 This is, after all, the beginning of his discussion and not the end.\u00a0 In the end, he is quite clear that what the nations offer in sacrifices they offer to demons and that to participate in these sacrifices is to commune with demons (1 Cor 10:19-22).\u00a0 St. Paul’s affirmation that an idol is nothing, then, is seen to be a confirmation that these gods do not represent beings comparable to Yahweh, not agreement that idolatry is somehow no longer a moral problem.<\/p>\n

In chapter 8, however, St. Paul takes a different preliminary approach to these brethren.\u00a0 First, he corrects their view of God, their theology proper.\u00a0 He says that “there are many things called gods in heaven or on earth, indeed there are many gods and many lords” (1 Cor 8:5).\u00a0 St. Paul is here acknowledging the existence of the demonic powers to which he will return in chapter 10.\u00a0 He goes on to say, “But for us, there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we are, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we are” (v. 6).\u00a0 Though perhaps not obvious in English translation, this verse is St. Paul’s reworking of the Greek text of the central prayer of Judaism, the Shema, “Hear, O Israel, Yahweh your God, Yahweh is one” (Deut 6:4).<\/p>\n

St. Paul has altered this text by inserting Christ into this statement of the oneness of God.\u00a0 The apostle sees neither the existence of other spiritual beings, angelic and demonic, nor the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, as contradictory to or impinging upon this affirmation of Israelite religion.\u00a0 Indeed, the final Hebrew word of the Shema, ‘echad<\/em>‘, translated “one,” means “one” in the sense of unity.\u00a0 It means one in the sense in which Christ uses the word in St. John’s Gospel (10:30;\u00a0 17:21-23).\u00a0 The Hebrew word for the cardinal numeral “one” is not ‘echad<\/em>‘ but ‘yachid<\/em>‘.\u00a0 The latter might be translated as “single” in order to bring out the difference.\u00a0 It is also worth noting that St. Paul’s description of the relationship of the Father and the Son vis a vis creation parallels that described by St. John in the prologue to his Gospel (John 1:1-3).<\/p>\n

Having corrected their doctrine, St. Paul then corrects their application.\u00a0 In chapter 8, still at the beginning of his discussion, he offers one compelling reason why, even if these “knowledgeable” brothers were correct, they ought not to eat food which had been offered to an idol, and this is for the sake of their brother who is “weak” (1 Cor 8:7).\u00a0 In what way is this person “weak”?\u00a0 St. Paul first describes them as not having the “knowledge” of the formerly addressed brethren, but he has already lampooned this knowledge at the opening of his discussion.\u00a0 He goes on, however, to describe what is weak as their “conscience” (v. 7, 10).\u00a0 The word here translated as “conscience” is in Greek ‘syneidesis<\/em>‘.\u00a0 This word describes the faculty of human consciousness which brings together everything received by the five senses as well as that perceived by the mind (‘nous<\/em>‘).\u00a0 The “conscience” does this either well or poorly resulting in choosing good or evil respectively.\u00a0 To have a weak conscience, then, is to have difficulty discerning the good and doing it.\u00a0 It means being prone to falling into sin and thereby away from Christ.<\/p>\n

This means that the “weaker brother” does not have weak faith in the sense that it is often described.\u00a0 It is not that this brother doesn’t believe hard enough.\u00a0 It is not that he has doubts about the existence of God or the truth of some doctrine.\u00a0 The former case simply did not exist in the ancient world.\u00a0 It is certainly not that this weak brother was easily offended or overly sensitive such that St. Paul is advising the rest of the community to walk on eggshells around him or play along with his prejudices and moralisms.\u00a0 It is that this man or woman is prone to falling into some particular sin.\u00a0 In this case, it is someone prone to fall back into the idolatrous pagan worship out of which they had come in converting to follow Christ (v. 10).<\/p>\n

The person is rather weak in regard to faithfulness or loyalty.\u00a0 Here St. Paul describes sin as “stumbling” (v. 13).\u00a0 He warns that the authority which these “knowledgeable” persons claim for themselves may become a “stumbling block” for their brothers (v. 9).\u00a0 If to fall into sin is to stumble, then what these brothers whom St. Paul is critiquing are doing is tripping them.\u00a0 What St. Paul here instructs is grounded in the teaching of Christ himself in the Gospels (Mark 9:42; Luke 17:1).\u00a0 St. Paul addresses this theme also in his Epistle to the Romans (14:13-23).<\/p>\n

St. Paul’s theme here is the same as at the beginning of the chapter, in contrasting love and pride.\u00a0 Christ loved these brethren so much that he was willing to die for them, to free them from the powers of sin and death as well as the demonic beings whom they had worshipped (v. 11).\u00a0 The “knowledgeable,” on the other hand, are too puffed up with pride in their knowledge and authority to care if they are leading some of their brethren to destruction in falling away from Christ.\u00a0 This is not just a sin against these brothers but against Christ himself (v. 12, cf. Matt 25:45).<\/p>\n

St. Paul concludes by stating that rather than lead his brother into sin, he would give up eating meat entirely (v. 13).\u00a0 Indeed, this likely would have been required of most of the Corinthian Christians as Corinth was one of several cities within the Roman Empire known to have nearly all of its meat in the marketplace supplied from the temples of idols.\u00a0 But as St. Paul had already established, there was no spiritual benefit of concerning certain types of food over others in terms of one’s daily diet such that one would truly suffer from giving up meat (v. 8).<\/p>\n

The apostle, here, is then reissuing a warning delivered by Christ to his disciples and apostles.\u00a0 The person who encourages, excuses, or guides a weaker, struggling brother in Christ toward sin is more liable to a more severe judgment than the confused and struggling Christian who falls into the sin.\u00a0 The promotion of sin, even casually through one’s actions, but most certainly with one’s words, is a sort of anti-evangelism.\u00a0 It is to ally one’s self with the demonic powers seeking to ensnare and destroy one’s fellow Christians (1 Pet 5:8).\u00a0 St. Paul is not warning against upsetting someone or confronting their sin.\u00a0 Nearly the entirety of 1 Corinthians is the apostle doing precisely that to the Christian of the Corinthian community.\u00a0 Rather, he is doing the opposite.\u00a0 He is issuing a dire warning that encouraging the weak to sin or go on sinning is a diabolical act that cuts that person off from Christ and brings about condemnation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In chapter 8 of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul begins a discussion that will go on for several chapters regarding food offered to idols.\u00a0 The eating of this food was the means by which worshippers participated in the sacrifices offered to those pagan gods.\u00a0 Through these chapters, St. Paul gives a variety of reasons why all of the members of the Christian community at Corinth must abide by the commandments against such participation as re-affirmed at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.\u00a0 In the opening chapter of this discussion, chapter 8, St. Paul makes a distinction between stronger and weaker brethren.\u00a0 This distinction understood rather casually, is employed all too frequently in both popular and pastoral\u2026 <\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"Who is "the Weaker Brother"? - The Whole Counsel Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Who is "the Weaker Brother"? - The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In chapter 8 of his First Epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul begins a discussion that will go on for several chapters regarding food offered to idols.\u00a0 The eating of this food was the means by which worshippers participated in the sacrifices offered to those pagan gods.\u00a0 Through these chapters, St. Paul gives a variety of reasons why all of the members of the Christian community at Corinth must abide by the commandments against such participation as re-affirmed at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.\u00a0 In the opening chapter of this discussion, chapter 8, St. Paul makes a distinction between stronger and weaker brethren.\u00a0 This distinction understood rather casually, is employed all too frequently in both popular and pastoral\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-03-31T09:18:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-04-01T14:17:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2020\/03\/1a05e424bb84cd38eb2bcbc3893e64d9.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. Stephen De Young\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fr. Stephen De Young\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"9 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/\",\"name\":\"Who is \\\"the Weaker Brother\\\"? - The Whole Counsel Blog\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2020\/03\/1a05e424bb84cd38eb2bcbc3893e64d9.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-03-31T09:18:37+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-04-01T14:17:59+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/#\/schema\/person\/247da0ea47cc50719afc0ec2a8ee5e90\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2020\/03\/1a05e424bb84cd38eb2bcbc3893e64d9.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2020\/03\/1a05e424bb84cd38eb2bcbc3893e64d9.jpg\",\"width\":684,\"height\":351},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2020\/03\/31\/who-is-the-weaker-brother\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Who is “the Weaker Brother”?\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/\",\"name\":\"The Whole Counsel Blog\",\"description\":\"The Scriptures in the Orthodox Church\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/#\/schema\/person\/247da0ea47cc50719afc0ec2a8ee5e90\",\"name\":\"Fr. 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