1 Corinthians 15:33-34

“Be not deceived: evil company doth corrupt good manners. 34. Awake up righteously, and sin not; for some of you have not the knowledge of God: I speak [thus] to move you to shame.”

The formula μὴ πλανᾶσθε does not signify: Let not yourselves be misled by others; its meaning always is: “Do not deceive yourselves (by false reasonings).” What follows applies undoubtedly to the secret thoughts of the Corinthians whereby they sought to excuse certain acts which still kept up a connection between them and the heathen society around; comp. particularly chaps. 8-10. This meaning seems to me more natural than that of Meyer, who applies the expression evil companionships to the τινές, the some spoken of in 1 Corinthians 15:34. Paul is rather addressing the whole Church of which these some still form part. It is they who run the risk of being seduced by their heathen friends.

Erasmus, Luther, and some moderns (Heinrici, Holsten) give to ὁμιλίαι the meaning of conversations. This is a possible meaning. But the ordinary signification, societies, companies, is perfectly suitable.

The saying quoted by Paul has been found in the fragments of the Thais of Menander, a comic poet, who flourished in the 3rd century before Christ. It is easily recognised as an iambic trimeter acatalectic verse, provided it be written, as in the T. R., putting χρῆσθ᾿ and not χρῆστα. We are uncertain whether Menander borrowed this sentence from common usage, and simply made a verse of it, or if it passed from his comedy into ordinary use, as a sort of proverb. Paul himself may have borrowed it either from the one or other of these sources. In both cases, the form χρῆστα is probably Paul's original reading; why should he have been concerned to preserve the exact poetic form? The meaning only was of importance to him. The form χρῆσθ᾿ is therefore a correction. Already true in its application to ordinary moral life, the saying becomes still more so from the religious and Christian standpoint. Spiritual life is quenched in the atmosphere of carnal society, and a sort of intoxication quickly comes over him who frequents it. Hence the following abrupt exhortation.

Vv. 34. The word ἐκνήφειν strictly signifies: to get out of the stupefaction caused by drunkenness. The aorist imperative denotes an energetic, decided act. Nothing less will do if the Church is to shake off the torpor with which some of its members have been seized.

The word δικαίως here signifies seriously, or as we say: en règle, in due order. They were so far awaked already from their natural slumber, from their former carnal state, but only half; and hence the reason why this state had so easily regained the upper hand in many of them.

The present imperative ἁμαρτάνετε, sin, forms a contrast to the preceding aorist: the act of awaking is unique, decisive; but the state of sin which would follow without fail from the intoxication into which they were plunging, would, if they persisted, become permanent; this is what forms the danger of it; for such a life swayed by sin leads to total apostasy. Such is the terrible sin present to the mind of St. Paul when he uses the verb ἁμαρτάνετε, suggesting the strict meaning of the word in Greek: to miss the aim.

The for states the reason why he thinks he ought to address to them so formidable a warning. There was in the Church a knot of strong-headed members who, as we have seen, more than once derided the apostle's directions, and claimed to be more clear-sighted than he. Paul describes these people strangely. Instead of saying to them that they have not the knowledge of God, he says literally: that they have the non-knowledge, ἀγνωσία, of God. It is not merely a deficiency, the lack of a good thing, it is the possession of a real evil. It involves not only inanition, but poisoning. We must beware of limiting this non-knowledge of God to the denial of His power to raise the dead, as might be inferred from the parallel Matthew 22:29; the rebuke is too serious for that: it is the Divine holiness, the apprehension of which these men have stifled within them, by substituting for it a deeply corrupted notion of God's character, that they might give themselves up to their presumptuous and profane frivolity; it is that moral libertinism to which the Pantheistic conception of the Divine Being leads. For as to the suspicion of atheism, it is excluded by the very expression which the apostle uses. In the presence of such a group of men within the Church there is cause for profound humiliation, and at the same time an alarming danger. According to the T. R., the meaning of the last words would be: “I say this to you (λέγω) to shame you.” According to the Alex.: “I speak thus to you (λάλω) to...,” which is undoubtedly better. The apostle thus insists on the tone he is obliged to take, rather than on the matter of his words.

This severe tone is intended to throw them back on themselves (ἐντρέπεσθαι), and so to make humiliation succeed to pride and the feeling of their fall to that of the superiority which they think they possess over all the other Churches; comp. the expressions either analogous, 1 Corinthians 6:5, or opposite, 1 Corinthians 4:14.

The apostle has restored the expectation of the resurrection to its true bases, and so demonstrated its certainty. It now remains to solve the objections which are raised to the possibility of such an event, by showing how it will take place. This is what he does in the second part of the chapter.

But, before passing to the study of this new subject, we have to examine the question put at the beginning of the foregoing discussion: Does not the apostle throughout this passage confound the resurrection of the body with the immortality of the soul, and does he not ascribe to the denial of the former, practical consequences which, strictly speaking, only flow from the denial of the latter?

It seems to me that the Apostle Paul could not possibly be so much of a novice on this question as to be guilty of such confusion. The question of the survival of the personality after death was as thoroughly raised by Sadduceism as that of the resurrection of the body; and it is impossible that in the polemic of the Pharisees against the Sadducees the two questions should not have been distinguished. Are we not entitled to suppose, especially after the immediately preceding verses, that if Paul reasons as he does, it is because in the opinion of the adversaries whom he had before him the two denials were really confounded? And, in fact, once the hope of the resurrection of the body is abandoned, there no longer remains any very solid security for the survival of the person after death. There is a speedy gliding down the incline which leads from the idea of the annihilation of the body to the Pantheistic absorption of the finite spirit in the absolute Spirit. And it seems to me that if we carefully weigh the bearing, not only of 1 Corinthians 15:33-34 of our chapter, but also of the passage 1 Corinthians 6:12-20, there can be little doubt that the adversaries of the resurrection at Corinth were on this path, though Paul carefully avoids expressly saying so, and only exhibits this disastrous consequence as a result to be dreaded. But in this question there is another point of view, which is to be carefully taken into account. Paul is reasoning not as a philosopher, but as an apostle, that is to say, from the viewpoint of the Christian salvation. Now if the resurrection be once denied, either as to believers or as to Christ Himself, what means the survival of the soul after death? Paul has told us in 1 Corinthians 15:18: “Then they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished;” a saying the meaning of which is obvious from the preceding words: “We are yet in our sins.” Such an immortality is more to be dreaded than desired; it is not therefore of a nature to weaken the pernicious practical consequences drawn from the denial of the resurrection. It rather gives them new force. For is not condemnation following a life of sacrifice still more terrible than annihilation? Weiss says with perfect truth (Bibl. Theol. § 96d): “If Paul contends against those who deny the resurrection as if this denial involved the negation of all life after death, it must be remembered that with the denial of the resurrection of the body the resurrection of Christ in his view fell to the ground, and that consequently communion with the living Christ beyond the tomb was no longer possible.” In such circumstances, the conclusion was evident: Why torment ourselves to acquire and to bring into the possession of others a salvation which will never be realized? Better enjoy life peaceably till it be withdrawn from us.

The same confusion which is here ascribed to Paul might be imputed to Jesus Himself, on the occasion of His reply to the Sadducees, Matthew 22:29-32 and parallels. This reply indeed assumes that the immortality of the soul necessarily implies the resurrection of the body.

The position of Jesus face to face with the Sadducees was almost the same as that of Paul in relation to the Corinthian opponents of the resurrection. The Sadducees could not conceive the existence of the spirit as independent of that of the body; from the annihilation of the latter there followed therefore the annihilation of the former. Hence it is that Jesus, not confining Himself to solving the difficulty which they had put to Him, takes the offensive and saps at the root their view of the resurrection, demonstrating to them, by the declaration of Jehovah to Moses regarding His relation to the long-dead patriarchs, the survival of their persons. He argues on the foundation of Jewish monotheism, as St. Paul here argues on the foundation of Christ's own resurrection. The relation of the patriarchs to the living God implies the permanence of their personal life, as the relation of believers to Christ raised in the body implies the permanence of their personal and bodily life.