1 Corinthians 1:14-16

“I thank God that I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, 15. lest any should say that ye were baptized in my name. 16. I baptized also the household of Stephanas; besides, I know not whether I baptized any other.”

Paul's thanksgiving proves that there had been no calculation on his part, when, as a rule, he had abstained from baptizing. The real motive for the course he followed will be given in 1 Corinthians 1:17. This is why he is thankful for the way in which God has ordered things. Rückert objects to this reasoning, that if Paul had wished to form a party of his own, he might have done so by getting one of his friends to baptize in his name, as well as by baptizing himself. True; but would he easily have found any one to lend himself to such a procedure? What seems to me more difficult to explain is the supposition itself, on which this passage rests, of a baptism administered in another name than that of Jesus. This idea, which now seems to us absurd, might seem more admissible in the first times of the Church, especially in Greece. In the midst of the religious ferment which characterized that epoch, new systems and new worships were springing up everywhere; and in these circumstances the distance was not great between an eminent preacher like Paul, and the head of a school, teaching and labouring on his own account. The apostle of the Gentiles, no doubt, passed in the eyes of many as the true founder of the religion which he propagated; and the supposition which he here combats might thus have a certain degree of likelihood. There is no need, therefore, in accounting for this passage, either of Hofmann's hypothesis, according to which there were people at Corinth who boasted of having received baptism at Jerusalem from Peter's own hand,

Paul would thus congratulate himself on not having given occasion to such a superstition, or for that of Keim and Heinrici, who ascribe a similar superstition to the Apollos-party (see above, p. 65).

The regimen τῷ θεῷ, to God, omitted by the Sinaït. and Vatic., is unnecessary; it has rather been interpolated than omitted.

Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue at the time of Paul's arrival, had been one of his first converts (Acts 18:8); Gaius, his host during one of the stays which followed (Romans 16:23), was also probably one of the first believers. Thus, probably, is explained why Paul had baptized them himself; his two assistants, Silas and Timothy, had not yet arrived from Macedonia, when they were received into the Church. It cannot be held with Beet that Paul deliberately made an exception in these two cases because of their importance: this idea would contradict the very drift of the whole passage. It matters little that in the account given in the Acts the order of events does not agree with what we say here.