1 Corinthians 11:19

When a Church is forming, or when in a Church already established a revival takes place, there is a sort of fascination exercised over a great number of individuals who adopt the gospel preaching, or the new ideas, less from a serious and personal moral need than from a spirit of opposition or innovation, or from a proneness to imitation. Hence, at the end of a certain time, the necessity for a process of purifying; this is carried out by a separation due to the fermentation which follows from the contact of the heterogeneous elements within the same mass. The effect of this action is to show in clear light those members of the Church who are serious and genuine, and to separate them definitely from those who have believed only superficially and temporarily. This experience, made over and over again since then by the Church, is that which the apostle foresaw as an inevitable phase in the development of the flock at Corinth. The δεῖ, there must, is a heightening of the ὑπάρχειν, the existence as matter of fact (1 Corinthians 11:18); see on 1 Corinthians 7:26. The apostle thinks that the fact is, because he knows that it must be. He knows even that there is something graver to be expected. For the καί, even, which follows the δεῖ, it must be that, intimates a second gradation strengthening the first. This new gradation bears, as is proved by the position of the καί, on the substantive αἱρέσεις, in its relation to the σχίσματα, divisions, of 1 Corinthians 11:18. Indeed, it is wholly in vain that Meyer seeks to identify these two terms. No doubt the word αἵρεσις may have a very softened sense, in respect of its etymological signification: choice, preference (from αἱρεῖσθαι). But in the New Testament it has always a very forcible meaning; so Galatians 5:20, where it is placed after διχοστασίαι, dissensions, and that evidently as a gradation above this already strong enough term; so also Acts 5:17; Acts 15:5, where it denotes the opposite parties of the Sadducees and Pharisees among the Jewish people; finally, Acts 24:5 and Acts 27:28, where the Christian community is designated by this term as a special party in the midst of this same people. In all these cases the external division evidently rests on internal opposition, on profound and trenchant doctrinal differences. And it is also in this sense that the word αἵρεσις ought to be taken here, as has been recognised by Calvin, Beza, Rückert, Edwards. The context also imperatively demands this forcible meaning. To the simple divisions which arise from personal preferences or aversions, Paul foresees that there will succeed divisions of a far more profound nature, founded on opposite conceptions of Christian truth. He believes what is told him of the first, because he even expects the second. There will arise among them false doctrines, heresies, according to the meaning which the Greek term has taken in later ecclesiastical language, and thence will follow much graver disruptions than the present divisions. The σχίσματα resemble simple rents in a piece of cloth; but the αἱρέσεις are rendings which remove the fragment and break the unity of the piece. The Second Epistle to the Corinthians shows in how brief a period this anticipation of the apostle was realized.

The καί, which is read in B D after ἵνα, that, and which could only be rendered by also, gives no precise meaning, and should be rejected.

Of the two ἐν ὑμῖν, among you, the first is omitted by D F G, the second by C. They ought to be preserved, both of them. The first applies to the Corinthians the consequence from the moral necessity affirmed in this first proposition; the second puts to them, as it were, a question: “How many will there be found in your Church of these δόκιμοι ?”

The δόκιμοι are those who at such crises prove their Christian character by a wisdom and maturity of judgment which mark them in the eyes of all with the seal of Divine approbation; comp. 1 Corinthians 9:27. It is with a view to the manifestation of such genuine Christians, that the whole crisis has been permitted (ἵνα, that). The apostle passes to the second subject of rebuke: