Present crisis? What crisis?

Mr Neil G. T. Jeffers has suggested the possibility of a preterist reading of 1 Corinthians 7:26-31, which was new to me and seems well worth perusing.

The view of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7 seems rather more negative than in other passages in Paul (e.g. Ephesians 5) and the rest of the Bible and some of this might be explained if “the present crisis” is the events caught up with the covenant transition and the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70.

Despite a flick through Bruce, Fee and Thiselton, and a bit of Googling, I’ve not been able to find any discussion of this option.

The cosmic eschatological language of time being short(ened) and the present form of the world passing away would be a suitable Bible-way of talking about the coming of the new order in Christ.

Paul could call the event “present” even if it’s a few years off as Jesus had said it was coming in that generation and the fall of Jerusalem is really of a piece with his death and resurrection. Perhaps the birth pangs could already be felt as he wrote.

The fall of Jerusalem would have been of concern to the Corinthian Christians as Jesus had spoken of it in such cataclysmic terms. Any diaspora Jews in the church at Corinth may have been particularly concerned. Though it seems likely that Christians would have been subject to increased persecution by Romans around the time of the Jewish uprising too since it seems that the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity were somewhat fluid to begin with and the Romans may not have bothered to distinguish too much between the church and some Jewish reform movement.

The advice not to marry as the old world is in its death throws fits well with Jesus’ concern for how dreadful it will be pregnant women and nursing mothers when Jerusalem falls (Mark 13:17)

* * *

Speaking of the “present crisis” in 1 Cor 7, Thiselton argues that:

Since Paul cites “present circumstances” or some impending event as that which tips the scales if all other things are equal, clearly nothing in the teaching of Jesus corresponds to the contingent event, to which Paul, in a personal and pastoral capacity, gives considerable weight. (c.f. v25) (p571)

Maybe there’s something in this but it does not rule out a preterist reading since it would still be true that Jesus did not command people not to marry in the run up to the fall of Jerusalem and Paul could reasonably make this wise application on the basis of Jesus’ prediction.

* * *

In a typically idealist sort of way Thiselton does also mentions that: “Thus, arguably the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 might be a concrete symptom or sign of the eschatological anagke_.” (p575)

I also thought these other bits of Thiselton were noteworthy:

Caird’s contribution is to explain in linguistic terms how early Christian writers, including Paul, “regularly used end-of-the-world language metaphorically to refer to that which they knew well was not the end of the world” ([Thisleton’s] italics) [Language and Imagery, 256]. This is not because the world will continue as it is indefinitely. Quite the reverse: events such as the fall of Jerusalem, violent attacks on the church by evil forces, and the relativizing question marks which hang over the world order which has no future all constitute partial “end-of-the-world” experiences which come about because the present world order does indeed stand under judgement and does indeed face a cosmic End. (p581)

[From her “participant” persepective] Israel’s “world” (arguably) collapsed with the fall of Jersualem (cf. Mark 13), but the “observer” world is the universal, intersubjective cosmos. “My” world collapses at death; “the” world, at the End. (p583)

It would be a mistake, however, to ignore the possibility (even probability) that certain specific circumstances instantiated the eschatological question mark over supposed present securities and stability…. Such concrete circumstances bring home the crumbling insecurity of a world order which stands under the apocalyptic judgement of the cross. (p583)

Thiselton, Anthony C., NIGTC The First Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2000)