5. Meat Sacrificed To Idols (8:1–11:1)
5. Meat Sacrificed To Idols (8:1–11:1)
Christians today are apt to find it a little strange that there could be doubt about the attitude of believers to meat offered to idols. It seems to us so obvious that they could have no truck with idolatry. But it was not as easy as that to a new convert at Corinth in the first century. The situation was complicated by two facts. First, it was an accepted social practice to have meals in a temple, or in some place associated with an idol. ‘It was all part and parcel of the formal etiquette in society’ (Moffatt). The kind of occasion, public or private, when people were likely to come together socially was the kind of occasion when a sacrifice was appropriate. To have nothing to do with such gatherings was to cut oneself off from most social intercourse with one’s fellows. People from the lower classes, moreover (and cf. 1:26ff.), ‘knew meat almost exclusively as an ingredient in pagan religious celebrations’. Some of them would not want ‘to miss out on what little bit of meat was offered to them by pagan feasts and institutions’ (Theissen, pp. 128f.).1 But some Christians might well eat it with a guilty conscience. Others, firmly convinced that there was but one God, might well reason, ‘How can there possibly be any harm in eating before a block of wood or stone? What difference can it make if meat has been offered to a non-existent deity?’
Secondly, most of the meat sold in the shops had first been offered in sacrifice (see SPC, p. 33). Part of the victim was always offered on the altar to the god, part went to the priests, and usually part to the worshippers. The priests customarily sold what they could not use. It would often be very difficult to know for sure whether meat in a given shop had been part of a sacrifice or not. Notice that there are two separate questions: the taking part in idol feasts, and the eating of meat bought in the shops, but previously part of a sacrifice. Many things might be said. Paul begins with the obligations of Christian love.