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Essays on Christian Unity (1924)

 

Appendices

A

APPARENT CONTRADICTION OF 1 COR. I. 10 AND
1 COR. XI. 18, 19.

WE shall all agree that in his first Epistle to the Corinthians St. Paul condemns in unequivocal terms the creating of schisms in the Body of Christ, and maintains the doctrine of its complete unity for all time. But I do not think that we shall all be prepared to follow the view which became so popular in Germany sixty years ago, that these schisms referred to in the first chapter and the third had actually done their work--i.e., that there were already definite theological groups or denominations, such as we get later in Calvinism, Lutheranism, Socinianism, etc. St. Paul rather opens with a warning, and notes that contentions had begun, and not actual divisions of a theological nature. Moreover, the Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, written perhaps forty years later, knows nothing of a divided state of the Church in this sense.

      But there was a sense in which the Church was divided already when St. Paul wrote, and to this he refers in the second passage. At verse 17 he begins to blame them in connection with the Church assembly. Note at 18 he says first. His second point is nowhere to be found. Perhaps it begins in chapter xii.--i.e., in the assembly there was partyism (1) over the eating of the Lord's Supper; (2) over spiritual gifts. The division, then, here referred to is of a different nature from that in chapter i., and is of the nature explained in verses 20-22. Our [251] Lord said, "offences must needs come,"1 and Justin Martyr quotes as one of His sayings, " there shall be divisions and heresies."2 It may be when St. Paul says strongly, "there must be parties," he has in mind such a saying of Jesus (cf. Acts xx. 30).

      The R.V. omits "also" after "the approved," but some of the oldest MSS. contain it, and it certainly explains the passage. The sense seems to be that those who were deliberately carried away by the party spirit were already manifest by their actions, but it was through their actions that the approved were also made manifest.

      If this interpretation be allowed, there does not seem to be any real contradiction between the two passages.


      1 Matt. xviii. 7. [252]
      2 Dialogue with Trypho, chap. XXXV. This saying is not found in the Canonical Gospels, but I am inclined to think that it represents a genuine saying of Jesus and is being quoted here in 1 Cor. xi. 19 by St. Paul. It is not possible to regard St. Paul as commending partyism in the Church. [252]

 

[EOCU 251-252]

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