as its heads, claimed to itself, in consequence of this relationship, the title ot rov Xpunov^ Hum of Ckritty by way of eminence. To this it has been objected that, had the party in question designed, by the name they assumed, to express the relationship of their lead- er to Jesus Christ, they would have employed the words o2 Tov Kvptov, ikote of the Lord^ not ot tov Xpi- 9rov, the former being more correctly descriptive of a penonal, and the latter of an official^ relationship. Be- sides, as Olshausen remarks, ** the party of James could not be precisely distinguished from that of Peter ; both must have been composed of strenuous Jew-Chris- tians. In fine, there is a- total absence of all positive grounds for this hypothesis. . . . The mere naming of * the brethren of the Lord' in 1 Cor. ix, 5, and of James in 1 Cor. xv, 7, can prove nothing, as this is not in connection with any strictures on the Christ- party, or indeed on any party, but entirely incidental ; and the expression yivunnutv Xpiorbv Kard aapKa^ *know Christ after the flesh' (2 Cor. v, 16), refers to some- thing quite different from the fomily-relations of the Saviour : it is designed to contrast the purely human aspect of his existence with hb eternal heavenly es- sence" {Biblische Comment. Ill, i, 457 ; comp. Bilroth, Commentary on the Cormthiane, i, 11). In an able treatise which appeared in the Tubingen ZeUeckr^ far Theologie for 1881 (part iv, p. 61), Baur has sug- gested that, properly speaking, there were only ttoo parties in the Corinthian Church — the Pauline and the Petrine ; and that, as that of Apollos was a subdivision of the former, that of Christ was a subdivision of the latter. This subdivision, he supposes, arose from the opposition ofifered by the Petrine party to Paul, which led some of them to call in question the right of the latter to the apostleship, and to claim for themselves, as followers of Peter, a closer spiritual relationship to the Saviour, the honor of being the alone genuine and apostolically-designated disciples of Christ. This opinion is followed by Billroth, and has much in its fa- vor; but the remark of Neander, that "according to it the Christ-party would be discriminated from the Petrine only in name, which is not in keeping with the relation of this party-appellation to the preceding par- ty-names," has considerable weight as an objection to it Neander himself, followed by Olshausen, supposes that the Christ-party was composed of persons " who repudiated the authority of all these teachers, and, in- dependently of the apostles, sought to construct for themselves a pure Christianity, out of which probably they cast everything that too strongly opposed their philosophical ideas as a mere foreign addition. From the opposition of Hellenism and Judaism, and ftom the Helleno-philoeophical tendency at Corinth, such a par- ty might easily have arisen To such tiie apos- tles would seem to have mixed too much that was Jewish with their system, and not to have presented the doctrines of Christ suflldently pure. To Christ alone, therefore, would they profesMdly appeal, and out of the materials famished them by tradition, they sought, by means of their philosophic criticism, to ex- tract what should be tiie pure doctrine of Christ" (^j)Mto^Z«itaA.p.205; i, 278 of Eng. tr.). The rea- soning of the apostle in the 1st, 2d, 12th, 13th, 14th, and 15th chapters of the 1st Epistle seems clearly to indicate that some such notions as these had crept into the Church at Corinth ; and, upon the whole, this hy- pothesis of Neander commends itself to our minds as the one which b best maintained and most probable. At the same time, we have serious doubts of the sound- ness of the assumption on which all these hypotheses proceed, viz. that there really were in the Corinthian Church sects or parties specifically distinguished from each other by peculiarities of <foe<riPNi/«ailH»ai<. That erroneous doctrines were entertained by individuals in the Church, and that a schismatical spirit pervaded it, cannot be questionad ; but that tiiese two stood form- ally connected with each other may fkirly admit of
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doabt Schisms often arise in chnrohes from cansee which hare little or nothing to do with diversitiee of doctrinal sentiment among tiie members; and that snch were the schisms which distorbed the Chnrch at Corinth appears to as probable, from the drcmnstance that tiie existence of these is condemned bj the apos- tle, without reference to anj doctrinal errors oat of which they might arise, while, on the other hand, the doctrinal errors condemned by him are denounced without reference to their hayfaig led to party strifes. — Kitto, 8. T. For farther information, besides that contained in the writings of Neander, Davidson (/i>- trod, to N.T.^232 sq.), Conybeare and Howson, and others, the student may be referred to the special trea- tises of Schenkel, De Ecd, Cor. (Basel, 1838), Kniewel, Fed, Cor, Distentumet (Gedan. 1841), Becker, PanMd^ ungen m die Gememde s. Kor, (Altona, 1841), Ribiger, Eat, Untenuch. (Bresl. 1847) ; HUgenfeld, in Zeittehr, fur wis$, Theol, 1865, p. 241 sq. ; Beyschlag, in the Tkeol, Stud, u, Krii, 1865, p. 217 sq. ; but he cannot be too emphatically warned against that tendency to con- struct a definite history out of the fewest possible facts, that marks most of these discussions. — Smith, s. ▼. See CoRiirTHiAirs (Epistles to the).