Paul’s Charge in 1 Corinthians 11:27 (". . . Guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord"): Failure of Sacrifice or Disregard for Meal Etiquette?

Abstract:Central to the Pauline teaching on the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 10–11 are the two food elements, bread and wine (the "cup"), signifying the body and blood of the Lord. Two interpretive stances are dominant among exegetes. In respect of the referent "body," adherents to the ecclesiological view interpret it as the group of assembled eaters, whereas those who hold the christological view relate it to the physical or sacramental body of the Lord Christ. This study compares these two perspectives, paying special attention to matters of Vorverständnis and theoretical positioning. The litmus test for interpreters is 1 Corinthians 11:27 where the apostle Paul speaks about guilt concerning "the body and blood of the Lord." It is investigated whether this phrase has multiple referents, whether it harks back to the event of Jesus’s death on the cross, or whether it should refer to the Lord’s sacramental body in the context of a sacrificial meal. The overarching aim of this article is to take away misconceptions about sacrifice in general and partaking of the sacramental body of Christ in particular. It does so through (1) presenting sacrificial rituals as structured and purposive forms of shared behaviour within the dynamics of mimesis and replacement; and (2) presenting the ritual elements of bread and wine as functionally real and organically intricate parts of the sacrificial act as a whole. This study’s conclusion is that Corinth’s meal crisis involved both failure of sacrifice and collapse of social ethics.