Father Cornely's Commentary on 1 Cor 1:10-13, 17

 

Cor 1:10. “But I beseech you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all say the same thing (τὸ αὐτό, that is, the same) and that there be no schisms among you.”

The verb παρακαλεῖν carries meanings both of exhorting and entreating, and both are fitting here. The name of the Lord Jesus, invoked by all (cf. 1 Cor 1:2) and meant to unite all—and indeed to be, as it were, the badge of everyone’s unity (cf. 1 Cor 1:10)—he brings forward in solemn adjuration, so as to give greater force and authority to his exhortation and entreaty. For he does not commend any kind of unity, but a perfect one, both external and internal. This unity must show itself externally in a positive way—namely, in the harmony of what is spoken (“that you all say the same thing”)—and in a negative way by avoiding all dissensions (“that there be no schisms among you”).

Schisma (σχίσμα) is properly a tear or rupture (Matt. 9:16, etc.), metaphorically a division. In the other places of the New Testament where it is used metaphorically (1 Cor 11:18; 1 Cor 12:25; John 7:43; Jn 9:16; Jn 10:19), it signifies a dissension arising from differing opinions about some matter, which has not yet led to complete separation. It is used here in the same sense. Paul is writing to one and the same Church of Corinth, and the faithful had not yet—even though some non-Catholic interpreters mistakenly think otherwise (Vitringa, Michaelis, Eichhorn, Ewald, etc.)—separated themselves into distinct assemblies (cf. on 1 Cor 11:19).

But external unity will not be preserved unless internal unity is present. Therefore the Apostle, wishing to lead the faithful to this as well, adds:

“But be made perfect (κατηρτισμένοι) in the same mind and in the same judgment.”

Since the Greek καταρτίζειν can mean either “to repair what is broken” (Matt. 4:21; Mark 1:19; metaphorically Gal. 6:1) or “to prepare or make perfect” (Luke 6:40; Heb. 13:21), some modern interpreters (Meyer, Bisping, De Wette—some non-Catholics) prefer the former and think the Corinthians are being admonished to return to concord by removing schisms. But more rightly, as not only the Vulgate (“perfecti”) but also the Greek Fathers (Chrysostom, Theodoret—who glosses κατηρτισμένους with τελείους, “complete,” etc.) and the majority hold, the Apostle is commending complete and perfect concord.

This concord must exist “in the same mind and in the same judgment” (ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ νοῒ καὶ ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ γνώμῃ). According to Chrysostom, whom many moderns follow (Cajetan, Justiniani, Estius, Meyer, Bisping, etc.), νοῦς (“mind” or “intellect”) and γνώμη (“judgment”) are distinguished such that the former concerns what is to be known and the latter what is to be done—the former refers to faith, the latter to charity. But γνώμη does not occur in the New Testament with so strict and determined a sense; it means “opinion” or “judgment,” which may be either theoretical or practical according to the matter at hand. Better, then, is the distinction: νοῦς is mind or intellect; γνώμη is what the mind produces—i.e., the conclusion of the mind. Those are united in νοῦς who hold the same principles, whether these have been grasped naturally or supernaturally; they are united in γνώμη who derive the same theoretical or practical conclusions from those principles.

After this general exhortation, the Apostle states the reason that moved him to commend perfect unity:

1 Cor 1:11. “For it has been made known to me (ἐδηλώθη—more precisely rendered by the ancient Latin version as perlatum est, ‘it has been reported’) concerning you, my brothers, by those who are of Chloe, that there are quarrels among you.”

With great charity—so as to soften and mitigate the rebuke in some way—he calls the Corinthians his brothers, whom he had already called “brothers” in the preceding verse, and he shows them that he has not trusted uncertain and trifling rumors, but has been informed of their quarrels through witnesses worthy of belief. Who these witnesses were, the Corinthians knew, though the Fathers no longer did. Today, all hold that it refers to a Christian household originally from Corinth which had come to Ephesus and is designated by the phrase “those who are of Chloe.”

The Apostle explains more clearly the quarrels by which the external and internal concord of the Church was being disturbed:

1 Cor 1:12. “But I mean this—that each one of you says: ‘I indeed am of Paul’; ‘I, however, of Apollos’; ‘I, for my part, of Cephas’; ‘but I of Christ.’”

Thus he understood a partisan zeal which had already begun to reveal itself by various self-designations, though the faithful had not yet gone so far as to form separate congregations. The phrase each one of you (ἕκαστος ὑμῶν), as in 14:26, is distributive but not universal (cf. Lapide, Meyer, Bisping), and expresses less than you all, each one individually (Eph. 5:33) or each one of you all (2 Thess. 1:3). Just as in the preceding praises he addressed the whole Church, so in this rebuke he addresses the whole Church, in which some indeed claimed to “be of Paul” (that is, as if attached to him and standing on his side), others of Apollos (cf. Acts 18:24–28), others of Cephas (i.e., Peter; cf. 1 Cor 9:5; 1 Cor 15:5; Gal. 2:9, 11; John 1:42). Yet many also recoiled from all the factions, and on their behalf Paul sets against the three factional badges the one genuine confession: “But I am of Christ,” who does not want His Church to be divided according to various teachers.

1. The Greeks (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Damascene, Oecumenius, Theophylact) and many Latins (Ambrosiaster, Pelagius, Primasius, Rabanus, Haymo of Chartres, Cajetan, etc.) have thought that the names “Paul,” “Apollos,” and “Cephas” were placed by the Apostle only as examples, and that the factions had taken their actual names from other leaders. But to refute this view the witness of St. Clement of Rome alone already suffices. As an equal in age and well acquainted with affairs at Corinth, he explicitly hands down that the factions were named after Paul, Apollos, and Cephas (cf. 1 Cor. 47). Therefore, with St. Augustine (Contra Petil. on the unity of baptism, 5), St. Jerome (on Tit. 3:13), Thomas Aquinas, Lyra, and others, all moderns hold that the Apostle gave the actual factional names. What the Greeks object from 1 Cor 4:6 against this opinion we shall examine below.

2. The question of the number of factions is more difficult, since some judge that four are to be distinguished, others three, and others only two. Most modern interpreters (both Catholic and non-Catholic) hold that there were four factions corresponding to the four badges (tesserae). For it cannot be denied that the last badge (“I am of Christ”) matches the form of the three preceding ones and thus seems to be explained in the same way. In fact, those who said they were “of Christ”—because they rightly attributed their salvation to Him alone—could have contributed to the increase of schisms and to the formation of a new faction, by defending their badge with excessive zeal and by depressing and despising the authority of Christ’s ministers.

Nevertheless, the more accurate view is that there were only three Corinthian factions, and that the fourth badge—whether taken in its proper sense or in the name of those who recoiled from schism—is opposed by Paul to the three former badges.

For it is certain that only three factions are recognized by Clement of Rome, who in this matter, being contemporary, is a witness above all exception. Only three were acknowledged also by all ancient interpreters before the 16th century—when Cajetan was the first to introduce a fourth—and by most from the 16th century until these most recent decades. Nor is this opinion recommended by authority alone, but also by internal arguments.

For Paul condemns only the first three badges and proposes the fourth as necessary for all Christians (1 Cor 3:22ff.). Nowhere in his entire treatment of schism (1:10–4:21), nor in the whole letter, does he give any indication that this badge was being understood or used in a factious or erroneous sense. Indeed, he even brings forward at the very outset the strongest argument against the three factions—those who named themselves after men—an argument which by no means harms those who say they belong to Christ, but rather confirms them in their sentiment: “Was Paul (or Cephas, or Apollos) crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul (or Cephas, or Apollos)?” He would have made poor use of this argument had he wished at the same time to attack a faction named from Christ.

I also think that, since he had already said that all Christians invoke the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and since he exhorts the Corinthians through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to maintain unity (1 Cor 1:2, 10), Paul had already taken sufficient precautions to prevent that most august name from being understood as the badge of a single faction. It may seem strange to us—who are less acquainted with the condition of the primitive Corinthian Church—that he expresses the erroneous badges and the true one in the same form, without opposing the true badge more forcefully to the erroneous; but the Corinthians themselves, who knew that only the first three were used among them, immediately understood that the fourth, which the Apostle added, was the only one to be used, even if it was expressed in a form similar to the rest.

Only the Neo-Tübingen scholars (and with them, among Catholics, Döllinger) distinguish merely two factions. They desire to find their own two—Pauline and Petrine—even in Corinth, and so they compress the first two and the last two badges into two groups. But this is done rashly, even if one wished to distinguish four erroneous badges. We therefore pass by that opinion.

3. We distinguish, then, three factions. The first took its name from Paul, founder of the Corinthian Church. The second bore the name of Apollos, who shortly after Paul’s departure had come to Achaia and “greatly helped those who had believed” (Acts 18:27). The third claimed to belong to Cephas, who indeed had not yet come to Corinth, but whose name certain Judaizing teachers seem to have set in opposition to Paul’s. Into what internal characteristics these three factions differed it is hard to say.

First, one must hold that those things alone can be used with certainty to describe them which are found in this first section (1:10–4:21). Almost everything else is arbitrarily dragged in from elsewhere. Furthermore, it is certain that the first and second factions were not distinguished by differing doctrines. For Apollos had been instructed more accurately in the way of the Lord by Paul’s disciples, Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:26). Paul himself recognized him as a genuine helper of his labors (1 Cor 3:6), urged him strongly to return to Corinth (1 Cor 16:12), and later employed him for other apostolic ministries (Tit. 3:13). From this we rightly conclude that neither he nor his followers departed from Paul’s doctrines.

But Apollos, “a Jew from Alexandria, an eloquent man, mighty in the Scriptures,” probably held a different method of teaching. Among Alexandrian Jews at that time, an allegorical and typological interpretation of Scripture flourished, by which they tried to attract Gentiles and reconcile revealed doctrines with the teachings of Greek philosophers. It is therefore highly probable that Apollos—being both an eloquent man and an Alexandrian powerful in Scripture—made use at Corinth of a more subtle and abstruse interpretation of Scripture, the kind which Paul himself scarcely wished to use even among more perfect Christians (cf. Heb. 5:11ff.). Nor is it unlikely that he may have proposed to the neophytes some points of doctrine which Paul had judged too lofty or difficult for the newly converted.

Thus it could happen that some of the more noble and educated Corinthians began to despise Paul’s simple catechesis and to prefer the new teacher as more learned than their first Apostle. Indeed, in a great part of this treatise (1:17–3:4) Paul defends his simple preaching and explains the reasons that moved him to refrain from more elevated doctrines.

The third faction appears to have taken its rise from certain Judaizing teachers, as the third watchword itself suggests. For those pseudo-apostles who Judaized, and who did everything in their power to disturb all the churches founded by Paul, were accustomed to set Peter—whom they preferred to call by his original Hebrew name, Cephas—and the other Apostles chosen by the Lord before the Passion (τὸν ὑπὸ τοῦ Κυρίου πρὸ τοῦ πάθους ἐκλελεγμένον, “the one chosen by the Lord before the Passion”) in opposition to Paul, so that by undermining his authority they might draw the neophytes over to Jewish rites. At Corinth, indeed, they had not yet dared to propose their perverse doctrine concerning the perpetual obligation of the Jewish Law to such an extent; but that they had already attacked Paul’s apostolic dignity and authority is sufficiently shown by the second letter, which was written only a few months after this first one (2 Cor. 10–12). And indeed, unless we are entirely mistaken, even before our letter was written they had already scattered certain teachings which, although not openly erroneous, were nevertheless not worthy of praise and prepared the way for errors.

For in his third argument Paul speaks of teachers who in Corinth build upon the foundation he himself had laid—which is Christ Jesus—not gold and precious stones, that is, sound and useful doctrines, but wood and straw, that is, frivolous and useless doctrines (1 Cor. 3:10ff.). By these words Judaizing teachers are rightly understood to be indicated (cf. vv. 12ff.); and that these found adherents among those neophytes who had come from the circumcision, especially if they were boasting about Jewish privileges, is easily understood.

These statements about the Corinthian factions seem to be established with great probability; yet we judge that modern interpreters exceed the limits of sound interpretation when they distribute everything that is read—or thought to be read—in the two letters to the Corinthians among three or four factions, and then construct entire systems of doctrine attributed to “the Paulinists,” “the Apollonians,” and so forth. Is it not arbitrary, for example, if a certain Catholic (Mai.) portrays the Apollonians as the forerunners of modern rationalists, who, although they perhaps did not deny Christ’s divinity, nevertheless revered Him merely as a wise teacher, denied the future resurrection of the dead or explained it in some purely spiritual manner (as the heretics in 2 Tim. 1:18), imitated pagan morals, and inclined in their whole manner of life toward the world, etc.? Or when he reproaches a supposed fourth faction of “Christ-party” adherents because they claimed to be taught and governed directly by Christ through visions and ecstasies, and spread novel doctrines concerning the future state of the messianic kingdom and heavenly matters as though they had been revealed? Or when another Catholic interpreter (Bisp.) censures in the Apollonians only a kind of false spiritualism by which the Christian dogmas could have been destroyed, yet describes his “Christ-party” as the forerunners of rationalism, for whom Christ was only a wise teacher, who encouraged ecclesiastical liberalism, etc.?

Quite absurd, moreover, are the conjectures handed down by not a few Protestant and rationalist interpreters, who devote great effort to describing the factions but whose continual disputes and controversies reveal that they have discovered nothing to this day that can be proved. For indeed, if the Corinthian factions had taught all those heresies which modern interpreters do not hesitate to attribute to them, Paul would have attacked them in a different manner and would have written a very different letter to the Corinthians.

 1 Cor 1:13. "Is Christ then divided?" or exclaims complainingly: "Christ is therefore divided!" Christ founded one Church, of which he himself would be the head of all; but if the Church is torn apart into various groups that fight among themselves, is its very head also divided, since it would disagree with itself? Christ as head of one faction attacks himself as head of another faction; therefore there is no longer one Christ, whose body is the whole Church and whose ministers are both Paul and Apollos and Cephas, but various Christs arise, of whom one has only Paul as minister and only Paul's followers as body, another pertains only to Apollos and his followers, etc. Therefore no right belongs to the factious to say they are of Christ, who is one and undivided; nor is it permitted them to call themselves of Paul. For Christians are all devoted to Christ and derive their name from him for two reasons; for by his passion and cross they have been redeemed and made his property (1 Cor 6:19; 1 Cor 7:21; Tit. 2:14, etc.), and baptized in his name they have been consecrated to him, or rather inserted into his body and made his members (1 Cor 6:15; 1 Cor 12:13, 27; Eph. 4:16; Eph 5:30, etc.); wherefore those Corinthians who professed to be of Paul should have been in this double or at least in one or the other relationship to Paul; but he teaches by a double question that they are in neither: "Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?" The former question did not need fuller explanation; for although the Apostles later also laid down their lives for the faithful, "nevertheless for the remission of the sins of the brethren, no martyr's blood is poured out, which Christ did for us" (St. Augustine on John 15:13, Tract. 85.2): nor did anyone except Christ purchase us with his blood. But the other question seemed to create a certain difficulty, insofar as some converts perhaps thought that those baptized pass into the patronage, as it were, of the baptizer and depend on him as his clients. To guard against this error, Paul shows how little care he had to baptize many, although this should have been a care to him if the baptized had entered into his patronage.

CONTINUE