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Love in the Church: A Study of First Corinthians, Chapter 13

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

Allan Barr
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Extract

The thirteenth chapter of I Corinthians loses some of its force through our familiarity with it. It is one of the bestknown passages of the Bible, and many a man who has little interest in the Church, and less patience with Pauline theology, will accept it as a literary classic and warmly express his admiration of it. No one who is responsive to elevated thought or sensitive to beauty of language will deny it its right to a place in an anthology of literary excellence, whether it be regarded as eloquent prose or as lyrical poetry, whether it be read in the original Greek or in the mellifluous music of our English version. But the custom of abstracting it from its setting and treating it as a poem or hymn, self-complete and selfilluminating, brings great disadvantages.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 3 , Issue 4 , December 1950 , pp. 416 - 425
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1950

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References

page 417 note 1 It is remarkable how reluctant the early Christians seem to have been to adopt criteria leading, on what we might call psychological grounds, to the condemnation of eccentric behaviour as not “of the Spirit”. They had been well warned by Jesus Himself of the enormity of “blaspheming against the Holy Spirit” and had been directed by Him to ethical standards of discrimination—“Ye shall know them by their fruits.” In the Didache (XI.5.9) the itinerant prophet is detected as false if he imposes himself on the hospitality of the community for more than two days or if he orders a table (an Agape, or Love-feast) of which he is himself to partake. This may seem quaint; but it is in line with the ethical standard of Jesus and also with I Cor. 13. In this Epistle the power to discriminate between spirits (12.10, διακρίσεις πνεuμάτων) is itself a gift of the Spirit. But there are cases affecting the essentials of the faith on which the Apostle's pronouncement is enough: “No man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed: and no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost” (12.3; cf. 1 John 4. 1–3).

page 421 note 1 The phrase of course accords with the usage in the Gospels. In Paul's own characteristic conception of faith, love is inseparable from it. The essence of Christianity is “faith which worketh by love”, that is, faith expressing itself in action through love (Gal. 5.6).

page 422 note 1 The Moffatt translation differs from the A.V. mainly at two points: (a) by taking πάντα in an adverbial sense, “in all respects”, “always”, rather than as the direct object of the four verbs, which is difficult grammatically with πιοτεύει and intrinsically with έλπίζει and (b) by interpreting οτέyεl as “covers” rather than “bears”. The function of a house-roof (στέyη) is, from one point of view, to keep out rain and wind; from another, to cover, shelter, and in a sense hide the inmates. The idea of “covering” is in line with Biblical conceptions of forgiveness, and is very appropriate in a description of Christian love. Other modern versions diverge here, to varying extents, from the A.V.