ation. Reference to the Cross or its equivalent is hardly a leitmotif of the dif-
ferent Pauline writings: mention is made of it only in 1 Corinthians 1:13,
17, 18, 23; 2:2, 8; 2 Corinthians 13:4; Philippians 2:8; 3:18; Galatians 2:19;
3:1; 5:11, 24; 6:12, 14; Romans 6:6. Notice that any such reference is com-
pletely lacking in 1 Thessalonians and Philemon; in 2 Corinthians and
Romans, the reference is almost incidental. Even in Philippians, I would
argue, the two references to the Cross are essentially rhetorical flourishes.
In the case of 1 Corinthians, only in the first two chapters does the Cross
play any explicit role in Paul’s argument. Every other issue in this letter Paul
resolves by other means. Whatever, therefore, the particular significance
might be of the more frequent references to the Cross in Galatians, this
significance cannot simply be exported to the other Pauline writings. Ref-
erences to Jesus’ death are not simply equivalent to a statement about the
Crucifixion, if only because the more generic expression “death” lacks pre-
cisely the politically charged overtones of “crucifixion” as state-sponsored
execution.
Paul obviously knew that Jesus had died on a cross and that such a
death was not a noble one. Nonetheless, there is no evidence to suggest that
Paul thought to make a political virtue out of this servile, criminal fact. To
the extent that Jesus’ death became increasingly a significant feature of
Paul’s understanding of the gospel he proclaimed to Gentiles, the saving
dimension of Jesus’ death reciprocally had less and less to do with the spe-
cific act of crucifixion. At least, I find the essential absence of any reference
to the Cross in Romans a striking feature of this letter. Rather, it was both
Jesus’ erstwhile and Paul’s own probable death—i.e., the most universal and
ordinary experience of human vulnerability—which Paul increasingly incor-
porated into his own ever more fragile experience (albeit with enduring con-
viction) of God’s new creation in Christ through the spirit.
For this reason I am not inclined to find in Paul’s reference to “Jesus
Christ and him crucified” in 1 Corinthians 2:2 or any of the other (rela-
tively few) pronouncements regarding the Cross and Crucifixion in the
Corinthian correspondence further evidence of the apostle’s “anti-impe-
rial” proclamation. In my judgment, none of these has much, if anything
at all, to do with the political imaginary here at work. In 1 Corinthians 1–2
the references to the Cross and Crucifixion serve primarily as rhetorical
counterpoint to the competing claims of greater wisdom and social stand-
ing as the defined benefits of the early Christian offer of salvation (see, fur-
ther, Vaage 1994).
R.A. Horsley thinks that Paul’s counsel in 1 Corinthians 5–6 is definitely
“anti-Roman-imperial,” because the apostle is supposed to advocate here
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