Imitation for Disciples: How Paul Passed on the Faith
Adam C. Koontz
What follows is a lightly edited small portion of Pr. Koontz’s doctoral dissertation, now being prepared for publication. You can reach him to read more or to ask questions or provide comments at revkoontz@gmail.com.
The command to imitate is before all else an admonition (νουθέτω)1 within a familial relationship. Paul has become a father to the Corinthians and speaks of them as “beloved children.” The father has some wisdom to dispense to his children that will enable them to practice godliness. The already given created order of father and child is replicated within the church “through the gospel.”2 The fact of the good news that Paul was commissioned to proclaim also in Corinth has made him a father and the Corinthians his children with a duty to imitate their father. Imitation presupposes the stability of family relationships and an identity of apostolic paternity3 all “in Christ.” Since he is a father and wants the best for his children, the apostle speaks earnestly about his paternal relationship to the Corinthians.4
For a help in being loyally filial and imitative, the Corinthians will have a living example. Imitation is not an abstract command because Paul provides a model of imitation in Timothy. Timothy shares the status of “beloved child” with the Corinthians5 so that they are already similar to one another. The many Corinthians are Paul’s children, and the one Timothy is Paul’s child. Timothy, however, is beloved and “faithful.” The reproduction of Paul, the imitation of Paul, in Timothy is a faithful image. In seeing Timothy, the Corinthians see Paul, too. The vision of Timothy will be a remembrance of Paul for the Corinthians, just as the repetition of the Last Supper will be a remembrance of Christ in 1 Cor. 11.6 Utter identity is not posited. Imitation is a practice of transfer, and in the reception of Timothy, the Corinthians will have available to them a faithful copy of Paul.7
The example of Timothy shows four characteristics of imitation: 1) its communicability, 2) its universality, 3) its visibility, and 4) its memorability. Imitation engages these four realms simultaneously such that Timothy becomes Paul’s workmanship in Christ displayed before the Corinthians, as the apostles are displayed before the world.
The communicability of imitation means that Paul is not unique. His exemplary status does not preclude imitation. He expects the formation of his “beloved children” into the same image as the “beloved” and “faithful” Timothy according to the pattern of the father, Paul. Imitation can occur between father and child or between one beloved child and another. Paul is the archetype and the others follow as ectypes at lesser (Timothy) or greater (the Corinthians) removes.
The universality of imitation means that it produces practices and practitioners who are like those practices and practitioners “in every church.” A uniformity of being is produced through imitation, as if a sculpture were copied through the “small Greek world”.8 Like the presence of dedications to Heracles or images of the emperors, the image of Christ in Paul, in Timothy, in the Corinthians, and “in every church” will produce a uniformity and a familiarity of practice throughout the Christian communities.9
The visibility of imitation is its fully public aspect. To be an exemplar one must be observed carefully. To mark how to imitate, one must observe carefully and attend carefully to another’s “ways in Christ.” To measure the extent of one’s imitation, whether he is “faithful,” one must observe another carefully, whether to imitate or judge another’s imitation. Imitation presupposes and creates an atmosphere in the church of observation of others and of oneself as much as an ancient sculptor would mark carefully how faithful his assistant was being to his designs.10
The memorability of imitation occurs in two directions. The imitator remembers the pattern as he imitates. At the same time, the pattern as a human being rather than stone or wood is aware of his exemplary status, which is figured as an organic familial relationship, not a mechanism of reproduction. The use of imitation outside of metaphysics or art means that the pattern is not inert or impersonal but humanly available to the imitator.11
The possibility that Paul could come “with a rod” to the Corinthians indicates the optional quality of imitation. He cannot force them to imitate him through the pattern of Timothy. It is possible that they will fail to do so, and he will be required to discipline them. Should they imitate him as commanded, he will come in a “spirit of gentleness.” These options of punishment or welcome are available within the paternal relationship he presumes.12 Imitation cannot take place by virtue of Paul’s will, but he places before the Corinthians his appeal to imitate him and the example of Timothy as a successful imitator. The appeal and the example combine to convey the desire for faithful reproduction of the apostolic “ways in Christ.”
Although 1 Cor. 9 does not contain explicit exhortations to imitation, its extensive mentions of Paul’s personal practice within the mission to the Gentiles lay out what it means to imitate him. To imitate Paul on mission is to be 1) excellent, 2) flexible, and 3) focused. Paul’s excellence is a function of his dedication to the mission for which he was commissioned by the risen Jesus (9:16). Paul is distinguished from the other apostles in foregoing what should belong to him by right (9:14), including his own personal preferences so that he might not present any hindrance to the gospel (9:12, 18). This excellence may be an indirect boast on Paul’s part but is meant straightforwardly as a statement of the situation.13
Paul’s flexibility is directed toward the people whom he evangelizes. The boundary around his personal behavior is to remain “in the law of Christ,”14 but besides that marker, he may become Jewish to Jews or Greek to Greeks or under the law to those under the law. His character across apparent ethnic and religious boundaries shapeshifts to convey the gospel.15 If there is some great number of a people-group, his shapeshifting will by “any means” save some out of that number, and his capacity for change allows him not to be locked into any particular faction, whether at Corinth or elsewhere. The person who can change is a person who cannot be found in a party identity, as the Corinthians are now (1 Cor. 1:12).
Paul’s focus is on the eschatological prize of victory in Christ. As he considered it possible for the Corinthians to fail in their imitation of him, he considers it possible to be disqualified from the prize in Christ, despite his preaching to others. So he disciplines his body and focuses his attention in order to remain a good athlete. This focus enables him to escape the possibility of dropping out of the race, of being dismissed from competition for the prize in Christ.16 That possibility makes it livelier for the recipients who can likewise envision their own ultimate humiliation and loss of all cause for boasting.17
The second and final explicit mention of imitation in 1 Corinthians involves Paul’s specification of his interest in requiring imitation and then a final exhortation to imitate him as he imitates Christ. This necessitates a discussion of Paul’s connection to Jesus, which he asserts without further mention or elaboration.
In 10:33 Paul avers that he is not doing what is pleasing to himself. This matches the assertion of total disinterest in self-satisfaction he made in 9:19-23. Paul does not exist for himself, and his work is not for its own sake. Indeed, the idea of self-seeking is excluded by the desire to do what he does “for the many,” the same altruistic direction of the shedding of Christ’s blood given in the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor. 11:24). The imitation of Paul is commanded because Paul’s way is an imitation of Christ. How did Paul know what Christ’s way was? The resonance of “for the many” does not require an extensive acquaintance with the earthly life of Jesus.18 He knew that Jesus had died “for the many” or on behalf of others. The imitation of Christ for Paul is an imitation of Christ’s self-donating death.19
That foundational event of Christ’s death decides the shape of imitation. The mixture of exhortation to imitate and self-description of self-sacrifice patterns the Corinthians’ life after the concrete patterns of his own and Timothy’s and the ultimate pattern known through the common knowledge of the gospel.20 The pattern comes from the story of Jesus21 but is recognized and potentially practiced through the on-the-ground knowledge of Paul’s way, exhibited in 1 Cor. 4 through the expected arrival of Timothy, one who has already been formed in a faithful imitation of Paul, the imitator of Christ.
Evidence of Paul’s love of this word in difficult situations collated at Roy E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians, Pillar New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 186.
“It is shorthand for the underlying gospel narrative of God’s salvific acts on behalf of humankind through Christ’s cross and resurrection,” David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 145; cf. also Margaret Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation (Philadelphia: Westminster/John Knox, 1993), 55-56, n. 160.
“an objective sphere which is constitutive for the relationship of father and children,” Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians, 91.
Thiselton’s objection to “alleged paternal authoritarianism” (Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 371-373) mistakes Castelli’s objections to Pauline imitation for “freelance, egalitarian ‘freedoms’ demanded at Corinth,” which equates modern objections to hierarchy or power with the Corinthian desire to possess or display greater gifts than others. The existence of hierarchical familial relationships was not the issue at Corinth; Paul did not defend the notion of fatherhood abstractly but of his fatherhood.
The beloved child witnesses to the father’s efforts and ways, b. Sanh. 19b, where teaching the Torah to another’s child is a kind of begetting anew by the teacher, but in 1 Cor. 4:15 the gospel is the means of generation and Timothy is the fulfillment of Paul’s paternal responsibility (cf. Prov. 4:11), cf. Gutierrez, La Paternité Spirituelle, 180, n. 42.
Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 374, 878-882, esp. “Since this remembrance is not mere mental recollection, but a living out of this Christomorphic individual and corporate identity, the collapse of this Christian identity undermines what it is to share in my body in such remembrance,” 882 [bold original].
Strüder uses the term “mediation” (Vermittlung) for this transmissible reality of imitation, C.W. Strüder, Paulus und die Gesinnung Christi: Identität und Entscheidungsfindung aus der Mitte von 1 Kor. 1-4, BETL 190 (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), 393.
Irad Malkin, A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).
Witherington (Conflict and Community in Corinth, 149) rejects the term “uniformity” because the body image later in 1 Cor. indicates enduring differentiation within the church, but whereas gifts are diverse and point out separate tasks for members, following Paul’s ways in Christ is universal (1 Cor. 4:17, 21, 11:1), as are parts of his marriage guidance (7:17, 18), head-coverings (1 Cor. 11:16), and liturgical order (1 Cor. 14:33).
This public example of life is as public as the foolishness of Christ displayed in his crucifixion, Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth, 148; Lindemann, Der Erste Korintherbrief, 119.
Burke points out the unitive function of fatherhood, as opposed to any other relationship; Paul’s paternity is the antidote to Corinthian factionalism, Trevor J. Burke, “Paul’s Role as ‘Father’ to His Corinthian ‘Children’ in Socio-Historical Context (1 Corinthians 4:14-21),” in Paul and the Corinthians: Studies on a Community in Conflict, Essays in Honour of Margaret Thrall, ed. Trevor J. Burke and J. Keith Elliott (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 107.
Cf. the father’s power to discipline with the rod (2 Sam. 7:14; Prov. 22:15; 23:13; 29:15; also, Isa. 22:15; Lam. 3:1); Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 193, n. 49; Lockwood, First Corinthians, 156-157.
Garland, 1 Corinthians, 418-419. As Paul likely disappointed the Corinthians in his self-presentation as one working with his hands, boasting in 1 Cor. 9 would be at best ironic, if not actually absent.
“…those kinds of ethical demands given, for example, in Rom. 12 and Gal. 5-6, so many of which do reflect the teaching of Jesus,” Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 475; Lindemann, Der Erste Korintherbrief, 212.
Lindemann, Der Erste Korintherbrief, 213; Mitchell, Paul and the Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 133.
Meuzelaar noted the interweaving of “with Christ” and “in Christ” in “the intermixing of indicative and imperative, of being and becoming, of to be and ought to be. This analogy is an analogy of faith, of obedience, ob love. It is not the realism of a mystical identity that here predominates, but the realism of praxis, which is defined from the historical setting of the Messiah Jesus,” J. J. Meuzelaar, Der Leib des Messias: Eine Exegetische Studie über den Gedanken vom Leib Christi in den Paulusbriefen (Van Gorcum’s Theologische Bibliotheek) (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1961), 125 [trans. mine]. This captures well the connection between the practices of Jesus and the practices “in the Messiah” that Paul models and expects from his readers.
The simultaneous loss of self-discipline and loss of honor was readily understood in Paul’s Greco-Roman context, so that Paul’s athletic metaphor takes common athletic imagery and applies it to specifically ecclesial contexts, Mark T. Finney, Honour and Conflict in the Ancient World: 1 Corinthians in its Greco-Roman Social Setting, LNTS/JSNTS 460 (London: T&T Clark, 2011), 38-39.
Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 264-266; Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 604.
Identified already more than thirty years before Michaelis’ epochal article, Paul Feine, Jesus Christus und Paulus (Leipzig: Hinrich, 1902), 112; Feine identifies 1 Cor. 11:1 with the same basic thought (Grundgedanke) as Mt. 20:26-28, Mk. 10:43-45; Cf. also Garland, 1 Corinthians, 548.
For the link between proclamation of Christ’s death and imitation of Paul-Christ, Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, O. P., 1 Corinthians, NTM 10 (Wilmington, DE: Glazier, 1979), 113.
James D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 189-195.
Fresh posts from the Mad☧Tank
✝️ Catch the first installment on living faithfully at the world’s end, from a series from Unbiased Mike:
“For the Christian, we exist in The Ark of the Church. Even though all else falls apart we make it by the grace of God. That said, to sit idly by in the civic sense while the world burns and Christ has not yet come is a coward’s game.
