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aspiring rather after extraordinary powers of discourse, than after a life of eminent practical godliness. This unpractical tendency, and the want of an all-animating and guiding love, were also shown in their mode of valuing and applying the various kinds of charisms which related to public speaking; in their one-sided over-valuation of gifts they sought for the more striking and dazzling, such as speaking in new tongues, in preference to those that were more adapted to general edification.

To which of the parties in the Corinthian church the opponents of the doctrine of the resurrection belonged, cannot be determined with certainty, since we have no precise account of their peculiar tenets. No other source of information is left open to us, than what we may infer from the objections against the doctrine of the resurrection which Paul seems to presuppose, and from the reasons alleged by him in its favour, and adapted to the standing-point from which they assailed it. As to the former, Paul might construct these objections, (as he had often done on other occasions when developing an important subject,) without our being authorized to infer that they were exactly the objections which had been urged by the impugners of the doctrine. And as to the latter, in his mode of establishing the doctrine, he might follow the connexion with other Christian truths in which this article of faith presented itself to his own mind, without being influenced by the peculiar mode of the opposition made to it.

When Paul, for example, adduced the evidence for the truth of the resurrection of Christ, this will not justify the inference, that his Corinthian opponents denied the resurrection of Christ; for, without regarding their opposition, he might adopt this line of argument, because to his own mind, faith in the resurrection of Christ was the foundation of

faith in the resurrection of the redeemed. He generally joins together the doctrines of the resurrection and of immortality, and hence some may infer that his opponents generally denied personal immortality. But still it remains a question, whether Paul possessed exact information respect

1 Paul reminds them in 1 Cor. iv. 20, that a participation in the kingdom of God is shown not in high-sounding words, but in the power of the life.

ing the sentiments of these persons, or whether he did not follow the connexion in which the truths of the Christian faith were presented to his own mind, and his habit of seeing in the opponents of the doctrines of the resurrection those also of the doctrine of immortality, since both stood or fell together in the Jewish polemical theology.

This controversy on the resurrection has been deduced from the ordinary opponents of that doctrine among the Jews, the Sadducees, and it has hence been concluded that it originated with the Judaizing party in the Corinthian church. This supposition appears to be confirmed by the circumstance that Paul particularly mentions, as witnesses for the truth of Christ's resurrection, Peter and James, who were the most distinguished authorities of the Judaizing party; but this cannot be esteemed a proof, for he must on any supposition have laid special weight on the testimony of the apostles collectively, and of these in particular, for the appearance of Christ repeated to them after his resurrection. Had he thought of the Sadducees, he would have joined issue with them on their peculiar mode of reasoning from the alleged silence of the Pentateuch, just as Christ opposed the Sadducees from this standing-point. But we nowhere find an example of the mingling of Sadduceeism and Christianity, and as they present no points of connexion with one another, such an amalgamation is in the highest degree improbable.

A similar reply must be made to those who imagine that the controversy on the doctrine of the resurrection, and the denial of that of immortality, may be explained from a mingling of the Epicurean notions with Christianity. Yet the passages in 1 Cor. xv. 32-35, may appear to be in favour of this view, if we consider the practical consequence deduced by Paul from that denial of the resurrection as a position laid down in the sense of the Epicureans, if we find in that passage a warning against their God-forgetting levity, and against the infectious example of the lax morals which were the offspring of their unbelief. Yet the objections would not apply with equal force to this interpretation as to the first.1 From the delicacy and mobility of the Grecian character, so susceptible of all kinds of impressions, we can more easily imagine such a mixture of contradictory 1 As Bauer correctly remarks in his Essay on the Christ-party, p. 81.

mental elements and such inconsistency, than from the stiffness of Jewish nationality, and the strict, dogmatic, decided nature of Saduceeism. To this may be added, that the spirit of the times, so very much disposed to Eclecticism and Syncretism, tended to bring nearer one another and to amalgamate modes of thinking that, at a different period, would have stood in most direct and violent opposition. Yet it would be difficult to find in Christianity, whether viewed on the doctrinal or ethical side, anything which could attract a person who was devoted to the Epicurean philosophy, and induce him to include something Christian in his Syncretism, unless we think of something entirely without reference to all the remaining peculiarities of Christianity, relating only to the idea of a monotheistic universal religion, in opposition to the popular superstitions, and some moral ideas detached from their connexion with the whole system; but this would be at least not very probable, and might more easily happen in an age when Christianity had long been fermenting in the general mind, rather than on its first appearance in the heathen world. All history, too, testifies against this supposition; for we always see the Epicurean philosophy in hostility to Christianity, and never in the first ages do we find any approximation of the two standing-points. As to the only passage which may appear to favour this view, 1 Cor. xv. 32-35, it is not clear that the opponents of the doctrine of the resurrection had really brought forward the maxims here stated. It might be, that Paul here intended only to characterise that course of living which it appeared to him must proceed from the consistent carrying out of a philosophy that denied the distinction of man to eternal life; for the idea of eternal life and of the reality of a striving directed to eternal things were to him correlative ideas. And when persons who had made a profession of Christianity could fall into a denial of eternal life, it appeared to him as an infatuation of mind proceeding from duapría, and hurrying a man away to sinful practice; a forgetfulness of God, or the mark of a state of estrangement from God, in which a man knows nothing of God. It is much more probable, that philosophically educated Gentile Christians were prejudiced against the doctrine of the resurrection from another standing-point, as in later times; the common rude conception

of this doctrine which Paul particularly combated probably gave rise to many such prejudices. The objections, how can such a body as the present be united to the soul in a higher condition, and how is it possible that a body which has sunk into corruption should be restored again; these objections would perfectly suit the standing-point of a Gentile Christian, who had received a certain philosophical training, although it cannot be affirmed with certainty, that precisely these objections were brought forward in the present instance. And if we are justified in supposing, that by the Christ-party is meant one that, from certain expressions of Christ which they explained according to their subjective standing-point, constructed a peculiar philosophical Christianity, it would be most probable that such persons formed an idea of a resurrection only in a spiritual sense, and explained in this manner the expressions of Christ himself relating to the resurrection, as we must in any case assume that those who wished to be Christians and yet denied the future resurrection, were far removed from the true standard of Christian doctrine in other respects, and had indulged in arbitrary explanations of such of the discourses of Christ as they were acquainted with.

It may be asked, where, and in what manner did Paul receive the first accounts of these disturbances in the Corinthian church? From several expressions of Paul in his Second Epistle to the Corinthians,' it appears, that when he wrote his admonitory epistle, he had been there again, but only for a very short time, and that he must have had many painful experiences of the disorders among them, though they might not all have appeared during his visit.2

1 Between which and the First Epistle, Paul could have taken no journey to Corinth, and yet in the First Epistle, as we shall presently see, there is a passage which must be most naturally referred to a preceding second journey to that city.

I must now declare myself, after repeated examinations, more decidedly than in the first edition, in favour of the view maintained by Bleek in his valuable essay in the Theologischen Studien und Kritiken, 1830, part iii., which has since been approved by Rückert,-by Schott, in his discussion of some important chronological points in the history of the apostle Paul, Jena, 1832,—and by Credner, in his Introduction to the New Testament, and by others. Though some of the passages adduced as evidence for this opinion admit of another interpretation,

Owing to the breaks in the narrative of the Acts, it is difficult to decide when this second visit to Corinth took yet, taken altogether, they establish the second visit of Paul to this church as an undeniable fact. The passage in 2 Cor. xii. 14, compared with v. 13, we must naturally understand to mean, that, as he had already stayed twice at Corinth without receiving the means of support from the church, he was resolved so to act on his third visit, as to be no more a burden to them than on the two former occasions. If verse 14 be understood to mean (a sense of which the words will admit), that he was planning to come to them a third time, we must supply what is not expressly said, that he would certainly execute this resolution, and yet the words so understood do not quite suit the connexion. According to the most approved reading of 2 Cor. ii. 1, the mάλ must be referred to the whole clause èv λúnη èxoev, and then it follows, that Paul had already once received a painful impression from the Corinthians in a visit made to them, which cannot refer to his first residence among them, and therefore obliges us to suppose a second already past. In the passage 2 Cor. xii. 21, which cannot here be brought in proof, it is indeed possible, and, according to the position of the words, is most natural, to connect the Táλ with λ0óvтa; but we may be allowed to suppose that the Táλ belongs to Tarewwon, but is placed first for emphasis. In this case, the introduction of the wάλw, which yet is not added to xov in v. 20, as well as the position of the whole clause táλív énoóvta, is made good, and the connexion with what follows favours this interpretation. Paul, in v. 21, expresses his anxiety lest God should humble him a second time among them when he came. Accordingly, we should thus understand xiii. 1, following the simplest interpretation, though this passage may be otherwise understood, (if it be supposed to mean, that as he had already twice announced his intended coming to Corinth, having now a third time repeated his threatening, he would certainly execute it). "I am now intending for a third time to come to you, and as what is supported by two or three witnesses must be valid, so now what I have threatened a second and a third time will certainly be fulfilled. I have (when I was with you a second time) told beforehand, those who had sinned, and all the rest, and I now say it to them a second time, as if I were with you-though I now (this now is opposed to formerly, since when present among them, he had expressed the same sentiments,) that if I come to you again, I will not act towards you with forbearance," (as Paul, when he came to them a second time, still behaved with forbearance, though he had already sufficient cause for dissatisfaction with them.) De Wette, indeed, objects against this interpretation, that the mention of the first visit of Paul to Corinth would be in this case quite superfluous; but if, during his second visit, he had not acted with severity towards the Corinthians, but intended to do so on this third occasion, because they had not listened to his admonitions, he would have reason to mention his two first visits together, in order to mark more distinctly in what respect the third would be distinguished from the other two. And though, during his first residence among them, his experience was on the whole pleasing, yet in this long period many things must have

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