Religions Reviewed

Gillihan’s approach, despite its forbiddingly dense philological scholarship, persuasively argues against the tack taken by Gundry-Volf, and implicates a different grammar of alterity. Gillihan relies on Paul’s familiarity with Jewish legal writings to argue that the formula in I Corinthians 7 requires the distinction of the “sanctification” of the unbelieving parent as a distinct phenomenon, which contributes to the “holy” status of the child. The Greek word for “sanctification” is taken from an ambivalent Hebrew term that also means “betrothal.” As a result, the passage is chiefly concerned with prohibiting the divorce of believers (as signaled in vv. 12-13), and “sanctification” simply means that the marriage is licit, and therefore the children are not subject to the punitive measures against exogamy from the old purity codes.[1] The model of alterity in this case is a grammar of segmentation, in which the context has been shifted in order to include the children of marriages who would formerly have been declared unclean.[2]  In fact, Gillihan provides further evidence for the proposed explanation by pointing to other instances where analogous shifts of context may have been attempted in order to provide relief from the evident condemnation of descendants of forbidden marriages.[3]
            The next term for children is nepioiV (nepiois), a very generic word that does denote immaturity. It occurs in two different passages of I Corinthians: first, as part of the phrase “babes in Christ” (nepioiV en Cristw) in 3:1, and then again in reference to the putting away of “childish things” in 13:11. In each case, the notion of childhood is derogatory, and it serves as an indicator of incapacity or lack of seriousness. Children cannot yet eat solid food, and they must be fed milk instead. As Carroll notes, “Paul does not intend this as a compliment!”[4]  Paul identifies childhood with carnality, and adulthood with spirituality. Children are those who still play with evanescent fancies, rather than working with the durable realities of adults. These passages activate a principal feature of that particular model: the “denial of contemporaneousness.” The ‘other’ is that which is different because it is positioned differently relative to time; in this case, literally younger and less experienced. As Baumann writes, “The distancing from the self-created other is also a distancing from an uncomplicated idea of self.”[5]

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[1] Gillihan 2004, 715, 717-20, 738-9.

[2] Baumann 2004, 21-24.

[3] Gillihan 2004, 724-7.

[4] Carroll 2001, 127.

[5] Baumann 2004, 20; who credits the notion of “denial of contemporaneousness” to Johannes Fabian.