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The Ascetic Impulse in Ancient Christianity
By Vincent L. Wimbush

"It is important to understand ... that the difference between the non-elites (the weak) and the elites in Corinth is not that between a world-rejecting ethic (the 'weak') on the one hand and a world-embracing ethic (the pneumatic elites) on the other. Clearly, both groups shared the imperative to renounce the world; the fact of membership in this new social group, the Jesus movement at Corinth, suggests as much,"

In spite of the long and impressive legacy of scholarship in New Testament and Christian origins and the exacting critical attention to the texts of the earliest Christians, it remains unclear just how much we know and understand about the people behind these texts. What motivated them? How did they construct "worlds" for themselves, and what were their primary frames of reference?

The sociological study of a group's "response to the world," a category advanced by Bryan Wilson, is one attempt to go beyond the history of ideas, beyond the quest for the understanding of texts alone, toward the recovery of a group's self-definition. Applied to the study of the earliest followers of Jesus in the context of groups in Greco-Roman antiquity, response to the world as a heuristic device holds much promise since it encourages comparative studies and produces general theories. Especially important in this regard is the study of ascetic behavior, popularly understood as the most radical response to the world, because it provides an opportunity to reconsider ancient Christianity within a broader conceptual framework than is customary in historical or literary critical work.

It is the "world, " after all, that all individuals and groups in all cultures in history have in common, must always engage, must always exist or work in or over against to be defined. This is why greater clarity about the ascetic impulse as response to the world is so important. Behind the ascetic impulse there may be a key to an understanding of the continuing legacy of Christianity itself for cultural self-definitions. Could it be that the part of the ascetic impulse that represents resistance to the world is the most powerful legacy, perhaps the only relevant aspect, of ancient Christianity for our times? Far too often,

Vincent L. Wimbush is Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He is the author of many books and articles, including Paul, the Worldly Ascetic (1987) and Ascetic Behavior in Greco-Roman An.iquity: A Sourcebook (1990).

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asceticism is broached as though its meanings and functions were clear and simple. Yet, in the last couple of decades, scholarship on asceticism across many different fields and disciplinary boundaries has wrought some significant changes, the most important of which are the deepened consciousness of the diversity of ascetic expressions in the ancient world and the consistent attempt to understand asceticism as a complex, multi-form, multi-motivated, almost elusive phenomenon. Even in the West, asceticism is no longer thought to have originated in (or is to be defined by) one tradition-Christianity-or one period in history-late antiquity. Conversely, no longer are some traditions (for example, Judaism) defined over against asceticism, as though either asceticism or those traditions could be explained simply. It is tempting to argue that the modern revival of academic interest in asceticism is influenced by the shift in the United States (and probably in Western Europe and other places, too) from the widespread, unquestioned valuing of consumption and desire to the questioning of such and a turn toward moderation, self-control, the search for the contemplative life, and even renunciation and discipline. This interest does not yet, by any means, define all of contemporary Western culture, but it represents a recognizable change in sensibility and has not gone without notice, as a fairly recent New York Times article on modern-day renunciation indicates.¹

Whether or not current ascetic impulses in the "secular," modern West directly influence scholarship, there is hope that such contemporary sensibilities can continue to help scholars-including students of ancient Christianity-to free their imaginations to go beyond the stereotype of asceticism as a single-issue, singly-motivated, cultural or religious phenomenon that originated in the third and fourth centuries among the monks.

I

I want to offer a thesis, not as an explanation for all of ancient Christianity as a simple and single phenomenon, but as an interpretive key that can provide a methodological framework to help account for, not gloss over, the diversity and development, the conflicts and complex shifts that were Christianity, at least up to the fifth century. The thesis did not begin with, but finds a touchstone in, the more encompassing argument of Gilbert Murray, who argued, among others (for example, E. R. Dodds, Martin Nilsson, A.J. Festugiere, and A. D. Nock), that a certain pessimism or "loss-of-world" ethos was pervasive in Greco-Roman antiquity, including Christian antiquity. Because he made the point with such poignancy, I cannot resist quoting from Murray's chapter, "The Failure of Nerve," in his famous lectures, Five Stages of Greek Religion:

¹ See "A New Gateway: Bed, Breakfast, Spirituality," The New York Times (Wednesday, July 17, 1992), with special reference to a new popular guide to lodging in monasteries by Jack and Marcia Kelly, entitled Sanctuaries (1991).

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Any one who turns from the great writers of classical Athens, say Sophocles or Aristotle, to those of the Christian era must be conscious of a great difference in tone. There is a change in the whole relation of the writer to the world about him. The new quality is not specifically Christian: it is just as marked in the Gnostics and Mithras-worshippers as in the Gospels and the Apocalypse, in Julian and Plotinus as in Gregory and Jerome. It is hard to describe. It is a rise of asceticism, of mysticism, in a sense, of pessimism; a loss of confidence, of hope in this life and of faith in the normal human effort; a despair of patient inquiry, a cry for infallible revelation; an indifference to the welfare of the state, a conversion of the soul to God ... an intensifying of certain emotions; an increase of sensitiveness, a failure of nerve.²

Although I am aware of and in basic agreement with some of the criticism leveled against Murray's arguments, especially the overstatements and the lack of cross-cultural perspective, I am convinced that his basic thrust merits critical reconsideration. There is little doubt that in parts of the Mediterranean and the Near East during the post-classical period, views of and responses to the world ranged from negative to contemptuous. What Murray argued can be nuanced by suggesting that Christianity, certainly up to the fifth century in many circles and beyond the fifth century in some circles, can be understood as counter-cultural, or at least culture-critical, as a complex of movements in opposition to the "world."

Ancient Christianity was ambivalent toward the world. Sometimes, "world" meant the reign of Satan in opposition to God's reign; at other times, it referred to humanity and the natural, physical order. Confusion and challenge ensued over these two divergent understandings. Ancient Christian resistance, or critique, must be viewed alongside many other contemporary Hellenistic-Roman reflections of contemptus mundi. The different expressions of ancient Christian contemptus mundi were signaled most dramatically in different forms and degrees of ascetic behavior and in correspondence with different motives and discursive strategies.³

II

From a comparative sociological-historical perspective, Christianity is seen not as a unique phenomenon but as one of many movements originating in a period in which a "loss of world" and alienation were quite common across many different cultural divisions. This whole

² See his Five Stages of Greek Religion: Studies Based on a Course of Lectures Delivered in April 12 at Columbia University (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), p. 155.
³ In regard to contemptus mundi, its long history beyond antiquity and the ambivalence toward "world" in ancient Christian thinking, see Jean Delumeau, Sin and Fear: The Emergence of a Western Guilt Culture: 13th-18th Centuries (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990). For a discussion of resistance, see Geoffrey Harpham, The Ascetic Imperative in Culture and Criticism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). For a discussion about groups among the alienated in the Greco-Roman world, see Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order: Treason, Unrest, and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), And for provocative reflection upon religion-including ancient Christianity-as "critique," see Robert John Ackermann, Religion as Critique (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1985).

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period, from the first millennium BCE through late antiquity, was first designated the "Axial Age" by Karl Jaspers, characterized by the critique of and eventual rupture of the traditional, static, "holistic" societies and aristocratic empires of antiquity. This critique is said to have been inspired by the "transcendental visions" that reflected the conceptual and existential tension between the traditional order and the imagined Other. The tension eventually led to such a critical evaluation of traditions that it inspired a devaluation and renunciation of the world.⁴ Benjamin Schwartz has, perhaps, summarized scholarly sentiment about the period best:

If there is some common underlying impulse in all these "axial" movements, it might be called the strain towards transcendence ... a kind of standing back and looking beyond-a kind of critical, reflective questioning of the actual and a new vision of what lies beyond ....⁵

The "axial age" thesis does not explain all of early Christianity as phenomenon in history; it only provides a general perspective that does not assume that the transcendental visions were unique to Christians but, on the contrary, assumes the proliferation of such visions. It also assumes that differences among such visions beg-and do not function as-explanations. Any explanation would require comparative analysis to focus questions in ways that do not begin with the often unacknowledged assumption that Christianity was a unique phenomenon.

The new movements, under the inspiration of the new visionary elites, came to view the world in its social, cultural, political, and economic manifestations as alien, as oppressive, and as a stumbling block in the pursuit of the new goals and ideals of salvation.⁶ These groups did not constitute one united block of opposition. They did not confer with one another. They did not always use the same languages or discourses of opposition. They did not even stand opposed to the world from the same position or perspective or to the same degree. What they had in common was their low level of comfort in and renunciation of the world. This negative stance, this resistance, was often influenced by some positive ideal, whether that be salvation according to a transcendent order or self-knowledge in association with the ordered kosmos. The realization that there was now a fundamental tension between the world and the new ideals inspired asceticism, behavior signifying a new critical attitude of resistance, a

⁴ See S. N. Eisenstadt, editor, The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilizations (SUNY Series in Near Eastern Studies; Albany: State University of New York, 1986), Introduction and passim.
⁵ Benjamin I. Schwartz, "The Age of Transcendence" in Wisdom, Revelation, and Doubt: Daedalus (Spring 1975), pp. 3-4.
⁶ See Louis Bouyer, Cosmos: The World and the Glory of God (Petersham, MA: St. Bede's Publications, 1988), chs. 1 and 10.

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refusal to orient the body, indeed, the self, in the world in traditional or socially acceptable ways.⁷

Both in its origins as the Jesus movement in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt and in its later development into conventicles resembling (some argue) Jewish synagogues, Hellenistic mysteries, or philosophical schools-even in its turn toward the ethos of the Greco-Roman urban petit bourgeois-early Christianity generally shared the impulse toward cultural criticism or resistance. It is very difficult to account for its origins other than as a critique of resistance to different circles of establishment power and tradition.⁸ The object of the resistance was differently articulated, of course, among different groups, and the character, intensity, and language of the opposition changed according to the circumstances. Every effort to define "Christian" existence in antiquity had to come to grips with a critique of the world as a strong and broadly based assumption and sensibility. There were internal debates within the Christian movement, and in those that became shrill, where one group attempted to define another out of the movement, it was motives, styles, degrees of intensity, or measures of control regarding renunciation of the world that were at stake.

It is most important that these differences not be understood simply as the divide between "worldly" and "ascetic" (or "otherworldly") orientations. Too much of the discussion about early Christian self-definition is simplified when such a dichotomy is allowed to operate. A fuller accounting of the different ascetic practices and self-definitions and corresponding discourses of the early Christians is imperative.

Given this, the methodological advantage of employing asceticism as a key for interpreting early Christianity can be seen in its potential to be both comprehensive and specific. Asceticism not only can help account for the diverse patterns of behavior and self-definitions in early Christianity, it can also help account for the common assumptions that were held throughout the movement.

III

A case study text is needed to demonstrate the implications of the arguments above for the self-definitions in ancient Christianity. I Corinthians 7 is chosen for a number of reasons: (1) It is the earliest text in which there is actual debate about ascetic practices and what they suggest about "Christian" self-definition; (2) as part of one of Paul's letters, it provides a window onto the socio-religious world of

⁷ See Eisenstadt, "The Axial Age Breakthroughs-Their Characteristics and Origins," in Origins, pp. 1-25. Also, see the recently published and well received cultural critical work of Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), especially ch. 6.
⁸ See Christopher Rowland, Radical Christianity: A Reading of Recovery (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988); Ackermann, Religion as Critique; and Klaus Wengst, Humility: Solidarity of the Humiliated (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988) for a provocative discussion regarding the notion of ancient Christianity as a movement of resistance.

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religious virtuosi, allowing the interpreter to understand more clearly how the issue of ascetic practices functioned in context;⁹ and (3) it is a text that has had tremendous influence on subsequent Christian and Western cultural discussions and debates about marriage, ascetic practices, attitudes regarding the body, and self-definition.¹⁰

It is important to clarify the general occasion for and function of this text. It seems to be the beginning of Paul's response to an "official" letter sent from the church at Corinth (see 7:1; 8:1; 11:2f, and 12:1), containing several questions or issues that were at the heart of group self-definition, communal rituals, and worship and ethics. The questions or issues broached in the letter to Paul came from that wing of the church represented by the somewhat official delegation led by Stephanas and Fortunatus (see 16:17). Paul's response to this letter, reflected in chapters seven through fifteen, has the character of qualified agreement ("yes ..., but ..." as reflected in kalon ..., de ... found in 7:1, 2, 8, 9, 25, and 28). This qualification reflects Paul's awareness of another set of opinions and orientations among believers in Corinth.

Paul takes up the issues of marriage and celibacy, probably following the order of questions in the letter addressed to him. (But note the otherwise fortuitous juxtaposition of the issue of porneia in chapters 5-6, followed by the issues of marriage and celibacy in chapter 7!) Recent interpreters (G. Theissen, W. Meeks, J. Neyrey, D. Balch, Margaret MacDonald, and others) have seen the topic of sexual celibacy as a communal marker over against the world. But some of these same interpreters (D. Balch, W. Schmithals, and others) seem to argue-or to have assumed-that the sexual asceticism under discussion in the chapter was a simple phenomenon-of one type, from one source, influenced by outsiders or by a radicalized and anti-Pauline interpretation of the teachings and example of Paul himself on the part of some Corinthian believers. The general thrust of scholarship, then, reflects little notice of the evidence for different types of ascetic piety among the Corinthians and Paul, or that these types were reflective of different understandings of the ideals and challenges of Christian existence.

Indeed, I find in 1 Corinthians 7 (and throughout 1 Corinthians) evidence for three types of "responses to the world" that should be understood as ascetic. These three responses can be described by phrases supplied by the text itself: "All things are permitted"; "eat not ... touch not"; and "as if not."

The first of the responses-"all things are permitted"-is associated

⁹ For the most recent general social scientific treatment of Paul useful for analysis of 1 Corinthians 7, see Margaret MacDonald, The Pauline Churches: A Socio-Historical Study of institutionalization in the Pauline and Deutero-Pauline Churches (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), Part 1.
¹⁰ See Vincent L. Wimbush, Paul the Worldly Ascetic: Response to the World and Self-Understanding According to I Corinthians 7 (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987); and O. Larry Yarbrough, Not Like the Gentiles (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1987).

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with the so-called radical pneumatic elites, whose understanding of Christian existence as sophia (see 1 Corinthians 1-4) or gnosis (see I Corinthians 8) inspired a boldness in response to the world, a radical indifference to the world's standards and expectations. This response was sometimes perceived as renunciation but much more often as its opposite: profligacy and immorality. Until very recently, scholars associated "gnostic" piety with profligacy, but this was due, for the most part, to dependence upon the writings and perspectives of the establishment Christians of Greek and Latin antiquity, the "fathers" and heresiologists. More recently, access to the writings of the " gnostics" themselves has given pause and caused rethinking.¹¹ Based upon their own writings, these "gnostic" believers appear to have been convinced that the world was already irrelevant and of no consequence, given their status as enlightened ones. In principle, this meant that any response to the world was legitimate, but in actual practice, such believers were more often "radical" in their renunciation of the world than in their embrace of it.

Although it is certainly not necessary to label them "gnostics," the "radicals" addressed in I Corinthians 7 seem to share some second- and third-century gnostic sensibilities, defining Christian existence as a bold and radical way of life, rejecting the customs and traditions of the world. This included the renunciation of sexual relations and the traditional ties and responsibilities of marriage and family life. Among some, Christian existence was thought to require renunciation of sexual relations even within marriage or in an engaged relationship (see 7: 1f., 25f). This response represented a clear critique of the world, since family life, sexual relations, and the laws and traditions governing them were perhaps the most important socializing forces in Greek and Roman antiquity.¹² Renunciation of marriage and family and sexual relations would have been seen as an unambiguous declaration of independence from the world. The radical, aggressive sexual renunciation of some of the Christians at Corinth clearly represented, through whatever influence,¹³ one view of Christian existence: rejection of the world.

Those in Corinth who held this view, the ones who wrote seeking the

¹¹ See the recently published and controversial books by Giovanni Filorama, A History of Gnosticism, translated by Anthony Alcock (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990) and Simone Petrement, A Separate Go& The Christian Origins of Gnosticism (New York: Harper Collins, 1990).
¹² See Peter Brown, The Body and Society (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988) and his "Bodies and Minds: Sexuality and Renunciation in Early Christianity," in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient World, edited by David M. Halperin, John J. Winkler, and Froma I. Zeitlin (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 479-93.
¹³ See David Balch, "Backgrounds of 1 Corinthians 7," NTS 17 (1971), pp. 351-64 and "l Corinthians 7:32-35, Marriage, Anxiety and Distraction," JBL 102 (1983), pp. 429-39, for what can lay claim to being the definitive study on the popular Greco-Roman philosophical background. But see also James Davis, Wisdom and Spirit (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), for revival (following works of B. Pearson and R. Horsley) of Hellenistic Jewish speculative wisdom as background.

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apostle's approval of their renunciation of sex and marriage, are the same group against whom Paul argues in the beginning chapters of the letter, those who are called the pneumatikoi, sarcastically labeled "the mature," "the strong," and "royalty." The very ones who think themselves already spiritually mature are those who want the apostle's imprimatur for their attitudes toward celibacy, table fellowship, worship and ritual observances, and doctrine.

We find, then, a group within the church at Corinth that defined itself over against the world. The rejection of marriage, one of the strongest of socializing forces, reflected a need to maintain the strongest boundaries between church and world. The evidence, however, is not just negative. The struggle to realize the ideal of enlightenment (gnosis, sophia) in the world required, it was thought, overcoming, ignoring, making sport of, or renouncing the world, but what seemed most important was gaining the insight to understand one's identity, one's origins, and one's destiny. Such insight was expressed most dramatically by what was done in the world and with the body. For the pneumatics in Corinth, what was done with the body was reflective of radical opposition to the prevailing views and mores of urban Greco-Roman society. But this response was only one of the responses among Christians intended to realize this ideal.

Teasing responses from the letter other than those of the pneumatic elites is a serious interpretive challenge, especially since the letter is mostly a response to the views and practices of these elites. 1 Corinthians 7-15 contains Paul's responses to the questions raised by the pneumatic elites; 1 Corinthians 1-6 seems to be his response to the perspectives given about the pneumatic elites. Nevertheless, these chapters do provide some information about another orientation, if not a clearly definable group in Corinth. This other orientation-"eat not ... touch not"-was no less "ascetic" than that associated with the pneumatic elites.

Evidence for this other orientation is strongest in the section of the letter that is a response to the questions raised by the pneumatic elites. As Paul attempts to respond to the questions raised, he finds himself in a quandary. He most often agrees with the elites, finding the assumptions behind their questions influential in his own life, but he just as often finds himself attempting to play down and to relativize the significance of their views and practices. He does this primarily to maintain unity in the church (see especially I Corinthians 8-10). He saw the need to balance the differences in backgrounds, perspectives, and capacities in the church so that those who were considered less influential, less eloquent, and who seemed less bold in their response to the world could be heard and be deemed legitimate.

Those believers whom Paul termed "weak in conscience" (see 1 Corinthians 8:7, 9, 11, 12)-probably both for the sake of argument and as a reflection of his own sensitivities to what he thinks are the dynamics in Corinth-also apparently felt estranged from the world,

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especially in light of the heightened eschatological consciousness. By establishing and maintaining, through cultic taboos, simple and strong boundaries between themselves and the world, those labeled "weak" in Corinth registered their critique of the world. They renounced table fellowship and, we are led to believe, many other forms of social contact with outsiders. It is important to realize, however, that the difference between the non-elites (the "weak") and the elites in Corinth is not that between a world-rejecting ethic (the "weak") on the one hand and a world-embracing ethic (the pneumatic elites) on the other. Clearly, both groups shared the imperative to renounce the world; the fact of membership in this new social group, the Jesus movement at Corinth, suggests as much. They reflected, however, differences about what such renunciation should entail and, perhaps, even the grounds upon which such renunciation should be based. For the "weak," the critique of the world was to be registered consistently and simply in physical and social separation. This response, as some interpreters have suggested, may very well have been influenced by the Jewish background of some in the community. Temporary renunciation of social and physical contact for the sake of the cultic purity and observances is evident.¹⁴

The pneumatic elites thought it no less important to establish distance from the world, but they apparently wanted the distancing to be a part of a more sophisticated, comprehensive, and rather bold world view. More important than renouncing some aspect of the world at any given moment was insight into the world, recognition of truth about the world and everything in it, and the power to overcome the world, to be at any time indifferent to it, to indulge it, to exploit it, to renounce it. The point was not to have to take the world seriously.

The "weak" group/orientation in Corinth was, as ascetic behavior, simply different. It defined Christian existence in a way different from the pneumatic elites. This group thought it imperative to be separate from the surrounding communities, especially as such communities defined themselves as communities through cultic rituals. Their critique of the world was less radical because it was more simple, transparent, and locally focused. The phrases "eat not ..., touch not," "abstain from …," and so on, suggest an understanding of self and community that is straightforward, based on certain observances and rituals. All of this suggests that the "Jewish" identity of the "weak" group needs to be explored further.¹⁵

¹⁴ Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 97, 105, and Jacob Neusner, The Idea of Purity in Ancient Judaism (Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, 1; Leiden: Brill, 1973),passim.
¹⁵ As is the case regarding the influence behind the pneumatic elitist orientation, so with the "weak group" orientation, "Jewish" influence can be posited. But this means that "Jewish" must, with the two orientations, mean different things. Although I do not need or want to argue the origins or influence question here in order to advance my general thesis, I can say that with respect to the pneumatic elites, the argument might be that Hellenistic Jewish wisdom traditions were of direct influence; in the case of the "weak group," the argument might be that more traditional cultic sensibilities were of direct influence. The divide between "Jewish" and "Greek," "Jewish" and "Greco-Roman" will not stand because it does not respect the dynamic and fluid character of cultural traditions and sensibilities and their interrelationships. One orientation might be considered more or less Hellenistic (of a certain cast) or Jewish (of a certain cast) in influence, but not all of this or all of something else.

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Paul's writings serve not only as sources for the sentiments and practices of others but also as reflections of his own attitudes. His responses to the two different sources of information in Corinth, reflecting at least two different understandings of Christian existence in Corinth, challenged him to clarify his own thinking as well as to help the community move toward a consensus. This challenge resulted in Paul's articulation of a third view of Christian ascetic existence-"as if not."

In his response to the questions put to him in the letter from Corinth, Paul reflects his personal orientation and his sensitivity to the diverse church membership in Corinth. Throughout 1 Corinthians 7-15, Paul indicates his personal affinity with the views, the principled thinking, and the practices of the pneumatic elites in Corinth. He also indicates, however, his unwillingness to make his (and the elites') views and practices the rule for all. He even challenges himself and the elites, with whom he is in basic theological agreement, to defer to those whose backgrounds and capacities and consciences are different: "the weak."

Paul also shows, in 1 Corinthians 1-6, his identification with the anxieties and concerns of those outside the circle of the elites. His self-references in chapter four (moroi, astheneis, atimoi) show his identification with the non-elites in Corinth. His almost strident response to the perspectives relayed by those from Chloe's house should be understood as part of his effort to encourage and legitimize the views and practices of the non-elites and, most important, to preserve church unity. Paul sought to downplay, even to ridicule, the views and practices of the elites as part of a strategy to embrace and to elevate, perhaps as an act of ideological inversion, the status of the non-dominant group: the non-elites.

Since Paul's rhetoric in this part of the letter is aimed primarily at the elites-but written in support of non-elites-he gives little direct attention to the explication of his own views and practices or to those of the non-elites. It is as though the radical, well-developed, well-articulated views and behaviors of the elites were so dominant and so arresting that they had always to be reacted to. If 1 Corinthians, then, is thought of primarily as Paul's response to the behavior of the elites in Corinth, one can see more clearly his arguments functioning both to give partial justification to aspects of the ascetic piety of the non-elites and to provide an alternative, a third type of ascetic piety that could be embraced by all.

I Corinthians reflects Paul as neither the anti-ascetic, holding up the banner of worldliness against the "gnostics" nor as the radical ascetic

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dragging other believers along the path of world hatred. The snapshot is one of a movement in which Christian self-understanding and mission in the world were understood from the perspective of a loss of the world, a radical rupture with the world. Everything-every ideal, every assumption, every strategy-had to be questioned and reconsidered. All of the Corinthian Christians experienced this loss of the world. 1 Corinthians reflects their differences about how to understand the rupture, about what might or should be the consequences for orientation to the world.

It is not clear that Paul had himself thought deeply about the practical consequences of such an experience for the new community he had founded. If the views and practices of the elites provoked his ruminations in 1 Corinthians, his advice and arguments can easily be understood as a type of ascetic piety, offered as counter-proposal, or at least as a reconsidered proposal.

Paul comes closest to advancing a broad proposal in response to the teachings and behavior of the elites in 1 Corinthians 7:29-35. This passage has long been seen as the locus classicus for Paul's views on marriage and celibacy.¹⁶ It is Paul's attempt to counter the views and practices of some (perhaps, a minority) of the Corinthians by advancing an ethic of response to the world that could be embraced by the majority. This ethic, which can be put under the greatly abbreviated, but haunting, rubric "as if not" (hos me), points to the praxis and motive that Paul thinks should govern the believer's relationship to the world and identity. In the context of 1 Corinthians 7,¹⁷ "as if not" suggests the rejection of both the radical indifference to the world of the pneumatic elites and the absolute, but simple, rejection of basic worldly contact by the non-elites. The world was affirmed by Paul as the sphere of Christian existence (as shown by his grudging acceptance of marriage and other forms of social contact), but the world was rejected by him as a source of value and identity.

The believer, according to Paul, must accept the reality of bodily, historical existence in the world, including contact with outsiders (I Corinthians 5:11). But this, for Paul, also meant existence in tension with the world, insofar as the world is understood not to have been built and oriented around the expressed goal of undistracted devotion to the Lord (see 1 Corinthians 7:32-35). What, at every point, seems to be at stake is the believers' discernment of the appropriate "use" (chraomai) of or response to the world (see 1 Corinthians 7:31). The questions Paul was asked to respond to and the charges leveled against the elites throughout the letter suggest this interpretation.

Regarding the particular issues that provoked the correspondence with the Corinthians, marriage and celibacy, Paul avoids any unequivocal answer. He leaves his readers only with a sense of ambivalence,

¹⁶ See Wimbush, Paul the Worldly Ascetic, pp. 7-9.
¹⁷ I have argued that vv. 29b-31a are pre-Pauline, part of traditional eschatological prophecy. See Wimbush, Paul the Worldy Ascetic, pp. 44f.

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with Christian existence understood as a life of tension, of "both ... and, " and he refuses to lay down rules for all to follow. Although he personally felt some affinity with the elites and agreed with them in principle, he counseled against any blind imitation of his lifestyle. He thought it better that each individual follow the path that reflects both the gift (charisma) from God and one's worldly situation. So, neither elitist indifference nor cultically or eschatologically influenced separatism gained Paul's uncritical favor. In the end, he supported a relationship to the world that reflected a rational critique of the structures and dominant order of the day. This critique was expressed concretely in the form of differently ordered individual and group priorities, challenges, and social formations, all in pursuit of the ideal of living out one's devotion to the Lord in the context of the city. This is made clear above all by the emphasis on mission. The believers were to be worldly enough to gain converts, but they were to be enough detached from the world not to be distracted and frustrated by its challenges (see 1 Corinthians 7:15).

IV

This is a challenge, then, to some fundamental assumptions in the study of ancient Christianity about the appropriate relationship to the world and about how to define the self and others in relationship to the world. If it is defensible, then the matter of whether anyone today can or should become "Christian" takes on new and intriguing twists and ramifications. In the end, the matter is about perspective: whether Christianity's ancient legacy should be read as an admittedly complicated development toward the embracing of the world or as a struggle to sustain resistance. This makes a great difference, as G. K. Chesterton, in his essay "A Defence of Humility," makes clear:

That the trees are high and the grasses short is a mere accident of our own foot-rules and our own stature. But to the spirit which has stripped off for a moment its own idle temporal standards the grass is an everlasting forest, with dragons for denizens, the stones of the road are as incredible mountains piled one upon the other.... Meanwhile the sage whose faith is in magnitude and ambition is, like a giant, becoming larger and larger, which only means that the stars are becoming smaller and smaller. World after world falls ... into insignificance; the whole passionate and intricate life of common things becomes ... lost .... ¹⁸

¹⁸ From p. 137 of The Defendant (1914), quoted in Maus Wengst, Humility, p. 1,