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The "next book" is I Cor. itself, which makes a case for the new spiritual organization of the Christian church, to supplant the old organization of Judaism. An important component of such an organization has to be spiritual unity. Campbell cites I Cor. 11 to explain the far-reaching effects of Paul's institutionalization of the church, which occurred within the context of a response to spiritual Judaism and secular Imperial Rome. As Campbell puts it, "'Be imitators of me,' wrote Paul to his sheep, 'as I am of Christ.' Which is to say: let no one conceive or follow his own image of Christ . . . but only that of Paul and his community. And so it was that in the name of this community, as its own image of Christ gradually matured, the history of the West for the next two thousand years was to be carved and trimmed" (Campbell 380).
In Pauline thought, there is, indeed, tension between Christianity and the traditions of Jerusalem and Athens alike. Baur cites Paul's letters to the Corinthians and Galatians, in which "the standpoint of the higher religio-historical contemplation. Judaism and Christianity are related . . . [but] the old one is antiquated and extinct, but the new one is bright and luminous" (Baur 285). In Paul's formulation, it is given to the Christian cult only to know the glories of the kingdom of heaven, as revealed by Jesus Christ. That issue is decisive, and it occupies virtually the whole of I Cor. 1, wherein Paul introduces, states, and restates the unique and superior qualities of the church, whether at Corinth or Ephesus or Rome, differentiating the culture (cult) of the church from all and sundry. This background explains the introductory dismissal of Jewish spiritual and Greek secular tradition and a declaration in favor of the uniqueness of Christian spirituality.
For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: But we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the G...