1 Corinthians 11:33-34

“Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, tarry one for another. 34. If any man hunger, let him eat at home, that ye come not together to incur judgment. The rest will I set in order when I come.”

This conclusion reminds us of the passage 1 Corinthians 10:23-33. Here, as there, Paul, after starting from an outward fact (the disorders in the love-feast), enters on a complete development, intended thoroughly to enlighten the conscience of the Church; then he winds up with some rules of conduct, apparently external, but in which there is concentrated the whole moral quintessence of the preceding exposition.

The affectionate address, my brethren, following warnings so serious, has in it something familiar and genial, fitted to open the hearts of his readers to the counsel with which he is about to close. The regimen εἰς τὸ φαγεῖν, to eat, might be connected with the following verb, tarry: “Tarry for one another to begin the feast.” But it is simpler to make it dependent on the verb come together: “When you come together, not for ordinary worship simply, but for a love-feast and the celebration of the Supper, tarry one for another to partake of the feast.” The verb ἐκδέχεσθαι signifies to wait and to welcome. The first meaning is the only one found in the New Testament. It is also that which is most suitable here; for the word forms an antithesis to προλαμβάνειν, to precede in eating, 1 Corinthians 11:21. The apostle wishes, that all seating themselves to eat together, the supper of each may become that of his neighbours; thereby it is that the feast becomes a true agape.

Vv. 34. The first words correspond exactly to the question of 1 Corinthians 11:22: “Have ye not houses to eat and to drink in?” In this feast the object is not in reality to take nourishment, but to eat together.

A judgment, such as that instanced by the apostle in 1 Corinthians 11:29.

The term: the other points, the rest, τὰ λοιπά, no doubt embraces a number of questions of detail relating to the celebration of the Supper, such as the frequency, the days, the time of day, the mode of the feast, etc. The Catholics have supposed that the matter in question here was the institution of the Mass, which, they say, became from that time the subject of an Episcopal tradition. But that would not have been a detail of secondary importance, like those which are evidently in the mind of the apostle.

In the representations of the agapae which are found in the Catacombs, there is seen a company of seven or eight persons grouped round the same table (Heinrici, p. 342). If it was so at Corinth, one can very easily understand the possibility of the abuse pointed out by the apostle; every company of friends might have gathered in a group separate from the rest of the Church. But did such a practice prevail at Corinth? Of this we have not the slightest proof.

The agapae of which Paul speaks have been compared to the feasts which were celebrated from time to time in Greece by the corporations which then existed in great number, with a view to certain common interests. But however that may be, the origin of the agapae is Jewish and not Greek. This feast indeed represented the last supper of Jesus with His apostles, in the course of which He instituted the Holy Communion. Besides, in the feasts of those Greek colleges, it was the common fund of the society which paid the banquet, while our chapter itself proves that in the agapae every family furnished its own provisions.

From certain notices, for which we are indebted to the historian Sozomenes (5th cent.), it appears that in some Churches (that of Alexandria, for example) the agape preceded the Holy Supper; according to Augustine, and no doubt in all the Churches of the West, it was the opposite: the Supper introduced the agape. Usage might vary according to place, and it certainly varied according to time, till the date when the agape was completely suppressed because of the abuses to which it gave rise.