#37 - Becoming All Things: 1 Corinthians 9:19–23 and the Art of Persuasion

Paul’s famous claim “I have become all things to all people” has been read for centuries as a pattern for mission, moral flexibility, or even theological compromise. This episode reconstructs how the verse was received from the Fathers through the Reformers and into the early modern missionary age — the background against which Fausto Socini would later stake a radical claim for persuasion over coercion. Expect close attention to Paul’s immediate context in Corinth, how key interpreters understood the language of “slave” and “becoming all things,” and why this passage mattered for debates about conscience, conversion, and the use of cultural accommodation.