as 1 Cor. iii. 12-15, iv. 11-13, v. 1-6, 19, vi. 5, 9-11. Had the structure of 1 Corinthians been sufficiently attended to, | cannot think that this objection would ever have seemed forcible. And so with 2 Cor. vii. 8. It has been urged against the identification of the « Painful Letter ” with 1 Corinthians that “ it is scarcely comprehen- sible that St. Paul should have said, even in a moment of strong excitement, of so costly a monument of Christian truth as the First Epistle is, that he repented for a while of ever having written it”? But this is to exaggerate the measure of the Apostle’s regret. He merely says (2 Cor. vii. 8) that fora moment he regretted having given them pain by what he had written, i.¢., he regretted the severe sentences which he had penned; but not that he lamented the composition of the whole Epistle. The earlier part of the Epistle, which is, I repeat, the core of the letter, is extremely severe, and especially chaps. v. and νι In the phrase “ the Painful Letter” there is, in fact, a latent fallacy. The language of 2 Cor. ii. 4, vii. 8, would be sufficiently accounted for if any part of the letter to which he refers seemed to St. Paul (for the moment) to be unduly severe, or if any section of it had caused unexpected grief to the Corinthians.
15. An objection of a somewhat similar character is that the language used in 2 Cor. ii. 6-11 cannot be taken as referring to the punishment of the offender of 1 Cor. v. 1-5, inasmuch as the mild treatment suggested by St. Paul in the later Epistle would be quite inadequate to the offence.* Not to dwell on the fact that unrelenting severity is not a Christian virtue, and that Titus may have reported some extenuating circumstances of which we know nothing, I believe that the considerations brought forward above in § 10 go a long way to break the force of this objection. The intimate connexion between the fifth and sixth chapters of 1 Corinthians has not been sufficiently recognised by commentators, and thus the primary pur- pose of St. Paul’s message of rebuke has been misconceived. He was more anxious to awaken the sleeping conscience of the Church at Corinth, and to prevail upon its members to exercise their powers of spiritual discipline, than to adjudicate between the wronged father and the offending son. Excommunication was the only suitable penalty for the latter's grave offence, but St. Paul had never meant
1 Waite, Speaker's Commentary, Ὁ. 383.
2Compare also the great severity of the incidental remark in 1 Cor. xv. 2 ἐκτὸς εἰ μὴ εἰκῆ ἐπιστεύσατε. That he should suggest such a possibility shows how much he is depressed as he writes.
8 This is urged by Schmiedel and Jilicher amongst others,