12. See the comments on 1:23 and 2:6–16.
All the true “letters” in the NT follow this pattern (including the letter from James in Acts 15:23–29), except for 3 John, which lacks the standard greeting.
For a considerable collection of examples of these salutations from papyri, see F. X. J. Exler, The Form of the Ancient Greek Letter of the Epistolary Papyri (3rd c. B.C.–3rd c. A.D.) (Chicago, 1923), 23–68.
Paul usually has a thanksgiving, in several of which he includes a prayer-report (see, e.g., 1 Thess. 1:2–5; Phil. 1:3–11). For the closest Christian example of the actual prayer in the NT, see 3 John 2: “Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well” (NIV).
Some early MSS (
A b) and all the later ones have the reverse word order, Jesus Christ (see KJV). That word order, however, rarely occurs in Paul when he is referring to our Lord by name (except in the standard formula “our Lord Jesus Christ,” in which it is always in this order). See 2:2 and 3:11, which are exceptions; but in both cases the emphasis is on the earthly Jesus and his crucifixion, not, as here, on the name of the exalted Lord who has commissioned his apostle.
The earliest and best MSS both East and West (P46 B D F G b m; Ambrosiaster) have the difficult word order ἡγιασμένοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Κορίνθῳ. Both Zuntz, 91–92, and Metzger, 478, consider this reading “intrinsically too difficult” and too “un-Pauline” to be original and suggest an “accidental omission of one or more phrases and their subsequent reintroduction at the wrong position” (Zuntz). However, in this case preference for the “more difficult reading” as the original should prevail. One can more easily imagine later scribes to have “corrected” Paul’s own rough order than earlier ones to have omitted and then “corrected” in this bizarre fashion. Furthermore, how does one explain how this “corruption,” brought about by a double error, became the dominant reading both East and West, while the more Pauline “original” lay dormant for so many years and that no form of the earlier corruptions from which this sprang survived in any form? See the full discussion in To What End Exegesis? 43–47.
Godet, 38, thinks otherwise, that there is here no “polemical intention against parties that might deny his apostleship.” But a comparison of 1 and 2 Thessalonians with 1 Corinthians suggests that this assertion is in fact motivated by the recent events in this church.
Cf. the similar elaboration in Galatians, the other letter where the questioning of Paul’s apostleship is part of the problem being addressed in the letter. He also refers to himself as an apostle in Colossians, Ephesians, and the Pastoral Epistles, each for its own set of reasons. See, e.g., G. D. Fee, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus (GNC; San Francisco, 1984), 1.
In this letter in particular the concepts of calling as “vocation” and calling as “election” tend to blur somewhat. In 1:1 and 2 the concept of “vocation” predominates. In 1:9 and 24 the “calling” is the divine invitation to God’s “family.” In the extended usage in 7:15–24 the idea is less clear. The calling is first that of becoming believers, but it seems also inherently to have the idea of “one’s station in life,” thus meaning more than simply “vocation,” that is, what one does. In any case the ideas are always closely related in Paul. One is called of God “into the fellowship of his Son” (1:9), and such a call means that one lives out the implications of that calling as “God’s holy people” (1:2), which also involves being and doing what one is and does as one who has been “called” of God so to be and do (1:1; 7:15–24). For further reflections on “Paul’s theology of calling as a response to the Corinthian Pneumatikoi,” see chap. 3 in Bartchy, 127–59.
Gk. διά with the genitive to denote “efficient cause” (BDAG A3d). Cf. 2 Corinthians, Colossians, Ephesians, and 2 Timothy, where this phrase stands alone in the superscription.
Indeed Héring, 1, suggests that “ ‘called’ is duplicated by . . . ‘the will of God,’ and perhaps the latter should be deleted.” But this is to miss Paul’s usage rather widely.
There has been some discussion (e.g., Barrett, 30–31) as to whether “by the will of God” modifies “called” or Paul’s apostleship. More likely it includes both ideas. That is, Paul has been called to become an apostle because that is God’s prior will. Cf. Conzelmann, 20.
The literature on this term and on the nature of the “office” is large. Among other items, see K. H. Rengstorf, TDNT 1:407–45; chap. 2 in H. von Campenhausen, Ecclesiastical Authority and Spiritual Power in the Church of the First Three Centuries (ET, Stanford, 1969; 1st Ger. ed., 1953), 12–29; R. Schnackenburg, “Apostles before and during Paul’s Time,” in Apostolic History and the Gospel (ed. W. W. Gasque and R. P. Martin; Grand Rapids, 1970), 287–303; and J. A. Kirk, “Apostleship since Rengstorf: Towards a Synthesis,” NTS 21 (1974/75), 249–64. For an overview of the literature on its origins, see F. H. Agnew, “The Origin of the NT Apostle-Concept: A Review of Research,” JBL 105 (1986), 75–96.
For the eschatological role played by the apostle, see the important discussion by A. Fridrichsen, The Apostle and His Message (Uppsala, 1947). Cf. P. R. Jones, “1 Corinthians 15:8: Paul the Last Apostle,” TynB 36 (1985), 3–34.
For a considerable discussion of this phenomenon see Murphy-O’Connor, Keys, chap. 1; cf. the earlier, briefer discussion by G. J. Bahr, “Paul and Letter Writing in the First Century,” CBQ 28 (1966), 476–77. The only other known instance of joint authorship of a letter is in Cicero, Att. 11.5.1.
See the comments on 1:23 and 2:6–16.
On this matter see Ellis, 13–18, and C. H. Dodd, “New Testament Translation Problems I,” BibTrans 27 (1976), 301–11.
Although the term “brother/sister” is found in pagan social and religious life (see BDAG 2a), it also had a history in Judaism that almost certainly forms the background for its adoption in early Christianity (see H. F. von Soden, TDNT 1:145–46). Among Christians, of course, it had increased significance through Jesus’ use of Abba (“dear Father”) as his standard address of God—indicating his own unique sonship—and his inviting his disciples to use that address after him (Luke 11:2; cf. Gal. 4:6; Rom. 8:15). In the new relationship with God and the new community brought about by Christ Jesus all of the old social, sexual, and racial distinctions are broken down (Gal. 3:28); all are “born” into God’s family and equally become sisters and brothers. The designation is found some 130 times in Paul for fellow believers, 39 of them in 1 Corinthians.
This shift would have escaped the Corinthians of course; but it probably says something about Paul and his relationship to this church.
The suggestion by M. Guerra that the πᾶσιν τοῖς ἐπικαλουμένοις refers to the governing body charged with directing the community and that ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ means their “position” is not supported by the philological or contextual evidence (“1 Cor 1,1–3. Los ministros en la comunidad de Corinto: Analisis filológico y traducción de protocolo de la Primera Carta a los Corintios,” Scripta Theologica 9 [1977], 761–96).
With this phrase, which probably immediately follows “church of God” (see ), there is a shift to the plural, but not as a means of particularizing or individualizing. Rather, the people collectively are in view.
Thus the phrase ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ is probably not locative here, but a kind of instrumental: “By what God has accomplished through Christ they have been sanctified.”
Gk. ἡγιασμένοις. This verb has a rich OT background, whereby what was formerly profane or ordinary had been consecrated, and thus set apart, strictly for divine purposes. In Paul it has clearly ethical implications in its first appearance (1 Thess. 5:23). In 1 Cor. 7:14 it seems to keep its original cultic/ritual sense; but here and in 1:30 and 6:11 it serves as an additional metaphor, among many others found in the apostle, to describe the many-splendored event of the salvation that is in Christ Jesus.
This difficulty was well illustrated in the original NIV, which here rendered Paul’s ἁγίοις “holy,” but in 16:15 (cf. Eph. 1:1) had “saints,” and “God’s people” in 16:1 (also in Rom. 12:13).
See the helpful discussion by O. E. Evans, “New Wine in Old Skins XIII: The Saints,” ExpT 86 (1975), 196–200.
Weiss, 4, conjectures that the entire phrase is a secondary addition by a final redactor of the Pauline corpus, who was trying to make the letter more universal in its application. But such radical surgery is unnecessary. The “addition” is Pauline in every way, and the unusual “theirs and ours” at the end seems hardly the kind of awkwardness a redactor would create.
U. Wickert, following Theodore of Mopsuestia, argues that the phrase includes both Paul and the Corinthians (“Einheit und Eintracht der Kirche im Präscript des ersten Korintherbriefes,” ZNW 50 [1959], 73–82); but it is difficult to see how Paul would think of all other Christians as joining him in writing the letter. The concern is with the independence/exclusivism being exhibited by the Corinthian pneumatics.
“To call upon the name of the Lord” is another OT phrase (by way of the LXX) that was appropriated by early Christians to express their existence. The verb ἐπικαλέω properly means “to name” in the sense of “giving a name to.” In the middle voice it came to mean “call on someone for aid,” as in 2 Cor. 1:23. However, most often it referred to calling on God for salvation (e.g., Joel 3:5) or deliverance (Ps. 50:15), or simply to calling on him as the one in whom people have put their trust (e.g., Gen. 4:26), and therefore esp. in prayer (e.g., Gen. 12:8). The latter two uses are those esp. appropriated by the early Christians, to the point that, as here, the phrase became a near synonym for “believers” (cf. Acts 9:14). Cf. W. C. van Unnik, “With All Who Call on the Name of the Lord,” in The New Testament Age: Essays in Honor of Bo Reicke (ed. W. C. Weinrich; Macon, Ga., 1984), 2:533–51, who emphasizes the element of prayer in distress as a common bond among believers, and P.-E. Langevin, “ ‘Ceux qui invoquent le nom du Seigneur’ (1 Co 1,2),” ScEs 19 (1967), 373–407; 20 (1968), 113–26; 21 (1969), 71–122.
See Barrett, 33, who so translates.
The two pronouns, “theirs and ours,” immediately follow the Greek word τόπῳ (“place”) and could modify it (as Grosheide, 24). But this gives a nearly intolerable sense. Ruef, 2–3, would also make them modify τόπῳ, but translates the latter to mean “station” or “status.” Thus “in every status, theirs and ours.” But besides giving a sense to τόπος that is not well attested, this completely misses Pauline usage.
Although one should perhaps not make too much of word order as such, it seems noteworthy that Paul never put it the way English translators are prone to do (after all, as I am regularly reminded by my colleagues on the NIV committee, we must speak English, not Greeklish). But for Paul it was always “grace to you,” not “grace and peace to you”; that is, he did not think of these two divine qualities as joined by a conjunction, but rather that the one came first (“grace to you”), which in turn was followed by peace. In a commentary the Pauline perspective can be pointed out.
Cf. J. D. G. Dunn, Jesus and the Spirit (Philadelphia, 1975), 202: “It is important to grasp . . . that for Paul ‘grace’ does not mean an attitude or disposition of God; it denotes rather the wholly generous act of God.”
This emphasis is also noted by W. Grundmann, TDNT 9:554–55; but he seems quite wrong in seeing it as an attempt by Paul to correct a gnostic Christology on the part of the Corinthians. Such language and emphasis were already in evidence in the two letters to the believers in Thessalonica.