D. FniAL SALtrrATiONS ahd BBKBSicnoif (isii H).
10. Importance of the Epistle.— The Epistle is far less various in its contents than 1 Co, and throws correspondingly less direct light on the theology of St. Paul and on the life of the apostolic Church. All the more important is its contribution to our personal knowledge of St. Paul. The most important biographical material is supplied in ll^-". Some of the details (v.^) are not easy to tit into the othersvise known life of the apostle ; hut this is only what one would expect from a genuine source. The notice of Aretas i? exceptionally important for chronological reasons. Whether the same can be said of 12" (.see Clemen's view, referred to in 1 Corinthians, § 6) may be doubted. The attempts to identify the vision with any point of contact in Ac have been various and precarious. The apostle's KaOxvi^ (1 Co 9'"'-), of taking no sustenance from the Corinthians, is more fully elucidated 2 Co 11'" 12'-"'. Of a more personal kind are the notices of the apostle's miracles 12'" ; of the much-debated o-itiXo^ ry trapxl (12') (see Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 18311'. ; Lias, p. xxiv ; liamsay, Ch. in Rom. Emp.* pp. 62-66 ; St. Paul', p. 94 f^), and the references to St. Paul's comparative inferiority aa a speaker (II' 10'°) and lack of commanding presence (Plunimer in DB, p. 658*; Kanisay, CPE\ p. 30 f.). But the interest of such details is far transcended by the Epistle's revelation of the writer's personality. To draw out this in detail is superfluous ; let it suffice to say that to this Epistle, more than to any other, we owe our knowledge of the true ' pectus Pauli- num,'— our intimacy with the apostle's inmo.st self. From this iK)int of view it takes its jilace side by side with 1 Co aa the most pastoral of all Epistles. ' What an admirable Epistle is the second to the Corinthians I how full of afl'ections I he joys and he is sorry, he grieves and he glories ; never was there such care of a flock expressed, save in the great Shepherd of the Fold, \\)\o first shed tears over JeruKalcm, and afterwards blood ' (George Herbert ; cf. Lightfoot, Gnliitians, pp. 44, 51). The doctrinal interest of the Epistle must be very briefly inilicated. The eschatoiogy of 4"- .'j" is difficult, and involves at any rate a less con- fident expectation of living until the return of Christ than is expressed 1 Co 15" (for a very a<:curate exegesis of the passage see Waite in loc.). The contrast of the spirit and letter (3'"'") leads to the difficult passage 3"- ", apparently
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CORN
identifying the ' I«rd ' with the ' Spirit,' a thought with a long sequel in the history of theology (see Gebhardt ^uid Hamack on Ilerm. Sim. v. 2 ; Swete in Diet. Chr. Biog. iii. 1 15'; Bull, Def. Fid. Nic. I. ii. 5, II. ii. 3 ; Harnack, Dogmengesch.^ 494 n.; Athan. de Syn. 27 [Anath. 21]) ; and so to the Christology of St. Paul, which receives striking sideliglits from the Epistle. The glory of the exalted Christ is the dominant thought of S'^-i", a glory which shines ujjon ind transforms (Ac ^'■) the Christian, con- stituting in the life of grace a foretaste of the life of glory (v.'8, see Ro 6»-" 8"«- -'» etc.). The doctrine of renovation (5") and of the Christian life (4'"") thus rests upon the agency of a living Christ as the sustaining force ; but there is presupposed, as the fountainhead of union with Christ, forgive- ness of sin (3'), founded on the reconciling work of the Sinless (5"') Christ (S"-""). The last-men- tioned passage is a most important contribution to St Paul's soteriology. In 8* the thought of Ph 2»ff- is anticipated. The concluding verse of the Epistle is not a doctrinal annoxmcement of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, but may fairly be combined with other passages in which tnat doctrine is implicit.
We do not directly know the effect this Epistle produced at Corinth ; but from the fact that St. Paul's promised visit was carried out, and that our two Epistles were treasured up at Corinth and thence eventually found their way into the Church's canon, we infer that the Epistle produced the effect of which such a letter was worthy.
11. Apocryphal CoKRESPONDENCE OF St. Paul AND THE Corinthians.— A letter of the Corinthian Church to St. Paul, and a reply by the apostle, formed part of the NT of the Syrian Church in the time of Aphraates and Ephraim. From the Syrian Church the letters passed over into the Armenian, which retained them to a late date (they are still quoted by a writer of the 7th cent.). The Cor- inthians ask St. Paul to condemn certain false ♦/eaehers who have appeared amon" them, and the apostle duly replies. Ephraim, in Tiis oonimentary on St. Paul (given in Zahn, Gesch. d. N.T. K. ii. 695 ff.), already noticed that the false doctrine is that taught by the school of Bardesanes, who lived from A.D. 155 to 223. The letters are accordingly in all probability a product of the 3rd cent., and directed against the school in question. They were first made kno^vn in Europe by Usher, 1644, (Sylloge Annotat. p. 29), from an imperfect Arm. MS; then in 1736 Whiston nublished a Gr. and Lat. transl. from a complete MS. The Arm. text was printed by Zohrab in 1805. The commentary of Ephraim on St. Paul (where our Epp. follow 2 Co) was printed from an Arm. MS of A. D. 999 at Venice in 1836. At last, in 1890, Berger discovered at Milan a Latin MS of the Bible ('saec. x. ut videtur ') containiug our two Epp. (after He), and a second Lat. MS (saec. xiii.) has been discovered at Laon by Bratke, where the Epp. come after the Apoc. and Cath. Epp. The text of the Milan MS is given in ThL, 1892, p. 7 ff., that of the Laon MS in the same volume, p. 586 ff. The existence in a \,atin version of letters known only to Syrian and Aimenian tradition, and which have left no trace in (Jreek Christian literature, is not as yet explained. See Hamack, Gesch. d. altchrist. Lit. i. 37 ft'. ; CarriJ^re et Berger, Correap. Apocr. de S. P. et des Corinthiens, 1891 ; V'jtter, D. apokr. 3 Korinthcr- Ar»«/(Tub.), 1894 ; also in Th. Quartahchrift (1895) iv. ; Zahn (uhi sup , maintains that the correspond- ence comes from the lost Acta Pauli), PRE' xi. 378 ; Jiilicher in ThL. 1889, p. 164.