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Honor and shame together constitute a repeated discourse in Paul’s teachings on sexual ethics. Although there have been numerous discussions about Paul’s sexual ethics among New Testament scholarship, the role of honor and shame as it pertains in Pauline sexual ethics has largely been ignored.
This study suggests that an enhanced comprehension of Paul’s sexual ethics can be achieved through the lens of honor and shame. In his moral teachings on sexuality, Paul strategically utilizes the rhetoric of honor and shame to evoke a collective moral emotion of the covenantal people among his gentile congregations, thereby reinforcing the shared values of the covenantal people on sexual ethics that are confirmed through the narrative (i.e., God’s created order), law (i.e., the Holiness Code and the Deuteronomic Code), and wisdom in the Old Testament. In particular, the rhetorical concept of the “court of honor/shame,” originally termed the “court of reputation,” exemplifies the manner in which Paul reinforces the insiders’ moral values concerning sexuality among his churches. While the moral teachings on sexuality through the court of honor/shame are evident in both Greco-Roman (e.g., Homer, Plato, Aristotle, and the Roman Stoics) and Jewish literature (e.g., the Old Testament and the OT apocryphal literature), Paul presents his moral teachings on sexuality through the transformed court of honor/shame, which redefines the Jewish court of honor/shame around Christ, the consummator of the new covenant.
This analysis primarily focuses on three Pauline passages that Paul employs the court of honor/shame in different contexts within his moral exhortations on sexuality (i.e., 1 Thess 4:1-8, 1 Cor 5:1-13, and Rom 1:18-32). First, Paul forms the moral values of the covenantal people (i.e., the insiders’ moral values) for sexual conduct among his gentile converts, the Thessalonian church, by establishing his court of honor/shame in the church. Second, Paul exercises the court of honor/shame by shaming the Corinthian church for the sexual improprieties (i.e., incest) within the church (i.e., the insiders’ community). Third, Paul invalidates the Gentiles’ (i.e., the outsiders’) opinion that dishonor God and reverse God’s created order (i.e., homosexual behavior) by emphasizing their ignorance and shamelessness.
Thus, this dissertation demonstrates the significance of the concepts of honor and shame in elucidating Paul’s sexual ethics, thereby contributing to the enhancement of the discourse surrounding his moral teachings on sexuality. First of all, it notes that sexual issues are fundamentally a matter of honor and shame for the covenantal people. Given these considerations, Paul’s ethical teachings on sexuality are understood within the context of honor and shame as they relate to the covenantal identity. Moreover, the analysis contributes to elucidating the manner in which the discourse of honor and shame reinforce Paul’s moral teachings on sexuality. Indeed, the rhetorical concept of the court of honor/shame provides an illustrative example of how Paul’s moral values, distinct from those of his contemporaries, are reinforced within the church community in relation to sexual ethics.