1 Corinthians 6:16-17

“Or know ye not that he which is joined to an harlot is one body [with her]; for the two, it is said, shall be one flesh. 17. And he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit [with Him].”

The ἤ, or, is certainly authentic; as always it signifies, “Or indeed, if you deny what I have just said, are you then ignorant that...?” The proof of the truth of the expression used (members of an harlot) is given by means of the Biblical words, Genesis 2:24. Are these words in the narrative of Genesis the continuation of Adam's discourse, or a remark added by the author himself, as happens in several other cases (Genesis 10:9; Genesis 15:6; Genesis 32:32; see Hofmann)? It matters little; for the declaration can have value in the eyes of the sacred historian only in so far as it is the expression of a Divine truth.

The reg. with her is omitted in Greek after the word one body. This ellipsis arises from the fact that the nominative ὁ κολλώμενος and the dative τῇ πόρνῃ are morally regarded as forming one and the same logical subject of the proposition. The words οἱ δύο, the two, were added to the original text by the LXX., whom St. Paul here follows.

The subject of the verb φησίν, says he, may be either Adam, or Moses, or Scripture, or God Himself; or finally, as is shown by Heinrici, the verb may be a simple formula of quotation like our: It is said. This form is frequently found in Philo. The expression one flesh finds its confirmation in the extraordinary fact that from this union there may proceed a new personality. Therein is contained, for the reflecting mind, the undeniable proof of the profoundly mysterious character of such a union; it appears like the continuation of the creative act.

Vv. 17 is not, as has sometimes been thought, foreign to the argument as a whole. As 1 Corinthians 6:16 justifies by a Biblical quotation the strong expression of 1 Corinthians 6:15: “Shall I make them the members of an harlot?” so 1 Corinthians 6:17, framed as it were on the words of Genesis, justifies the equally strong expression of 1 Corinthians 6:15: “Taking the members of Christ;” comp. 1 Corinthians 15:45.

We again find here the ellipsis of 1 Corinthians 6:16; the “with Him” is understood after the words one spirit, as if to say that the believer's union with Christ culminates in the existence of one and the same spirit, and consequently in the possession and direction by Christ of the believer's whole person, soul and body.

According to Holsten (p. 466 seq.), the assimilation of these two unions is so untenable logically, that 1 Corinthians 6:15-17 can only be an ancient gloss intended to remove the obscurity of 1 Corinthians 6:13. I think it is better to seek to penetrate the depth of the apostolic thought than arbitrarily to recompose the text according to our own ideas.

Under the sway of this holy view (1 Corinthians 6:17), the apostle, at the thought of the crime of fornication, utters, as it were, a cry of horror (1 Corinthians 6:18 a); then he finishes his demonstration.