The First Epistle to the Corinthians (New International Commentary on the New Testament | NICNT)

905 Pages·1987·50.68 MB·english

by  Gordon D. Fee

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL COMMENTARY ON
THE NEW TESTAMENT
F. F. BRUCE, General Editor

The First Epistle
to the
CORINTHIANS
by
GORDON D. FEE
WILLIAM B. EERDMANS PUBLISHING COMPANY
GRAND RAPIDS, MICHIGAN
FOR
WAYNE KRAISS
with appreciation
Copyright © 1987 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company
255 Jefferson Ave. S.E., Grand Rapids, Mich. 49503
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Reprinted, November 1988
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Fee, Gordon D.
The First Epistle to the Corinthians.
(The New international commentary on the New Testament)
Includes indexes.
1. Bible. N.T. Corinthians, 1st—Commentaries.
I. Title. II. Series.
BS2675.3.F43 1987 227'.2077 87-9270
ISBN 0-8028-2288-6
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE: NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION.
Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by the International Bible Society. Used by
permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
CONTENTS
Editor's Preface vii
Author's Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
Selected Bibliography xxi
INTRODUCTION 1
I. THE CITY AND ITS PEOPLE 1
II. THE CHURCH AND ITS APOSTLE 4
III. SOME CRITICAL QUESTIONS 15
IV. THEOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS 16
ANALYSIS OF 1 CORINTHIANS (with page references) 21
TEXT, EXPOSITION, AND NOTES 27
I. INTRODUCTION (1:1-9) 27
II. IN RESPONSE TO REPORTS (1:10-6:21) 46
III. IN RESPONSE TO THE CORINTHIAN LETTER (7:1-16:12) 266
IV. CONCLUDING MATTERS (16:13-24) 825
INDEXES
Subjects 841
Authors 845
Scripture References 854
Early Extrabiblical Literature 876
v

EDITOR'S PREFACE
In accordance with the policy of keeping the New International Commentary
on the New Testament up to date, by revision or replacement, a new volume
on 1 Corinthians is now presented.
The original NICNT volume on 1 Corinthians was one of the earliest
in the series: it was published in 1953, and was the work of the veteran Dutch
scholar Dr. F. W. Grosheide, who for over forty years had been Professor of
New Testament at the Free University of Amsterdam. Since its appearance a
full generation has elapsed. The study of 1 Corinthians—one of the most
exciting of Paul's letters—has been energetically pursued. New problems
have emerged and new questions have been asked, and on all of these
today's reader expects to find some help.
Dr. Gordon Fee is fully abreast of these issues and is well qualified to
give the required help. He is best known in the world of New Testament
scholarship for his expertise in textual criticism, but his exegetical gifts have
been continuously exercised during his years of teaching at Wheaton Col
lege, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, and now Regent College,
Vancouver, as well as in his commentary on the Pastoral Epistles.
He treats the successive sections of 1 Corinthians with an eye to the
place of each in the overall development of the letter and its argument; he
treats the letter itself in the context of the epistolary exchanges between Paul
and the Corinthian church as well as in its historical, cultural, and social
setting. Some elusive questions arise with regard to the Corinthian Chris
tians' unexpressed presuppositions—presuppositions of which Paul had to
take account when he was dictating the letter and of which we must be made
aware when reading it. This is a real letter (not a literary composition
disguised as a letter): in it Paul interacts with living, articulate, and argumen
tative men and women. Readers who try to use it as a manual of church
order, a directory of public worship, or a digest of canon law for today will
miss its point; but under Dr. Fee's guidance they will grasp, and perhaps
even apply, its abiding message.
F. F. BRUCE
vii

AUTHOR'S PREFACE
The story of the events that led me to write this commentary is long and need
not be recounted in full here. It began with my teaching a course in 1 Co
rinthians at Wheaton College in 1970, something I have done almost every
year since, first at Wheaton and then at Gordon-Conwell Theological Semi
nary. Close work with the text and the literature over the years made me
think that there might be a place for yet another commentary—of a slightly
different kind and from a slightly different point of view from others. As I
wrote the Study Guide for the college level course through the International
Correspondence Institute (Brussels) during the summer of 1977 the dream
became more real, and I hinted at my desire to write such a commentary in
the preface of that work. But it was at the annual meeting of the Studiorum
Novi Testamenti Societas in Toronto in August 1980 that the dream began to
move toward reality. Since the publisher of the present series was in the
process ofjreplacing some of its earlier volumes, I approached Professor
Bruce at that meeting with the suggestion of replacing the second volume in
the series, Professor F. W. Grosheide's commentary on 1 Corinthians. That
conversation resulted in an offer from Wm. B. Eerdmans, Jr., to write the
present volume.
A word about the commentary itself. My basic assumption is that it is
primarily for pastors, teachers, and students. Therefore, I have tried above
all else to provide a readable exposition of the text, in which the flow of
Paul's ideas, their theological relevance, and the meaning of the various
parts make good sense as one reads. Commentaries that are more difficult to
understand than the English translation on which they are based are anath
ema. At the same time, however, I am well aware of the scholarly com
munity, to whom I am greatly indebted and who hopefully will also find it
worthwhile to consult this work. Since I have been engaged in this enterprise
for so many years, I have interacted considerably with much of the literature;
that dimension of the enterprise is found in the footnotes. As I was nearing
the end of the writing, Professor John Ziesler's discussion of commentaries
on 1 Corinthians in English appeared in The Expository Times (97 [1986],
ix