In Your Face: Gestures of Shame in 1 Corinthians

Shame is central to 1 Corinthians both as social context and rhetorical strategy, showing Paul’s deliberate use and inversion rather than elimination of Greco-Roman cultural values to form communal identity and conduct. The article identifies three embodied modes at work in the letter: shaming gestures, gestures of shame emotion, and gestures of shamelessness. Shaming gestures appear in the subjugation imagery of powers beneath Christ (15:24–28), which draws on Roman humiliation iconography to consolidate dominance through shame. Gestures of shame emotion emerge in the visitor’s gesture of prostration (14:24–25), aligning with regulatory responses to communal shaming. Gestures of shamelessness center on women’s head covering and hairstyle practices (11:2–16), interpreted either as defiance of prevailing norms or as modesty that marks a change of status within the community’s inverted values. Overall, Paul’s use of gestures of shame illustrates the inverted cultural value system while preserving the honor–shame framework.