"The belly is for food." This much is clear.spin wrote:This is transparent in the text. I don't see how it contributes to what you said:Ben C. Smith wrote:Either you misunderstood me or I miswrote. I did not (mean to) say that Paul wished to avoid connecting belly/food with body/fornication. What I meant is that he did not wish to connect the body with fornication in the same way as he has already connected the belly with food.spin wrote:This is just the sort of eisegesis I did warn about! You are mindreading here ("something Paul wishes to avoid"). .... There is no sign that Paul wants to disconnect the body/food from body/fornication in his argument.
Verse 14 seems necessary to disconnect the body from fornication in verse 13c; otherwise food/belly would logically have to be followed by sex/body, something Paul wishes to avoid.
I guess I just don't understand: food/belly (13a) is followed by sex/body (13c). The existence of v.14 doesn't change that. And v.15 takes up the sex/body discourse further. V.14 interrupts that discourse which began in v.13. What exactly do you think Paul wishes to avoid?
13a Food is for the belly and the belly is for food (b And God will do away with it and them).
c But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body
Paul's discourse is quite clear...
That doesn't seem to help whatever the argument was you were positing for the need for v.14.Ben C. Smith wrote:And we do not have to read his mind for that: he tells us this explicitly in verse 13 ("the body is not for fornication," as directly contrasted with "the belly is for food").
But, in order to argue against fornication (in a way that he is not arguing against food), Paul has to avoid the logically parallel equivalent: "the body is for fornication." How does he do this? By arguing that "the body is for the Lord." But this is a leap of logic. He bridges this leap by referring to the resurrection of the Lord and believers, which of course is the thematic counterbalance to the destruction of the belly and food:
13a Food is for the belly and the belly is for food [food and belly].
b And God will do away with it and them [destruction (of two entities)].
c But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body [not body and sex but body and Lord].
14 And God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power [resurrection (of two entities)].
b And God will do away with it and them [destruction (of two entities)].
c But the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body [not body and sex but body and Lord].
14 And God has not only raised the Lord, but will also raise us up through His power [resurrection (of two entities)].
You want to see this as a devotional marginal gloss which got slipped into the text, but there is more going on than that. The resurrection in verse 14 is the thematic opposite of the destruction in verse 13; the resurrection is twofold (the Lord and "us"), matching the twofold destruction (the belly and food, "it and them"); the resurrection is the link between our bodies and the Lord (or the Lord's body), thus making the otherwise enigmatic "body for the Lord" and "Lord for the body" lines intelligible; and verse 14 also rounds out the pattern whereby the chiastic AB BA lines ("food for the belly, the belly for food" and "the body for the Lord, the Lord for the body") are each followed by their eschatological justification: the belly is going to perish (therefore eating is not a sin), but the body is going to be raised (therefore sexual immorality is an issue). This would be a pretty sophisticated devotional note. I mean, you do see that parallel structure, right?