Love Over Knowledge

Food offered to idols sounds like the least urgent question in the Bible. In Corinth it was a question about money: meat was expensive, and most of it was served at banquets in wealthy homes and the city's temples, where the church's richer members kept up their social standing. Continuing Hot Takes in 1 Corinthians 8, Matt reads Paul's answer to the members who had reasoned their way to "an idol is nothing at all." He sets their gnosis, the knowledge that puffs up, beside the syneidesis, the conscience, of poorer and newer believers. He weighs why Paul cared so much, from a theology built to protect a comfortable life to temples that were places of harm, and tells why The Table stopped serving wine at communion. Paul's hot take: love and care for the vulnerable win out over knowledge. How do we make sure our freedom doesn't harm someone else?