6. It is time to adduce the passages upon which defenders of the theory that chaps. x.-xiii. constitute a part of the Painful Letter mainly depend. The case is best put by Dr. Kennedy,? who produces
ΕἼ cannot think that Dr. Kennedy’s view (loc. cit., p. 102) that the “" minority " here indicated were out-and-out supporters of St. Paul who were anxious to go farther even than he, will commend itself to many minds,
2 Loc. cit., p. 81 {.
three pairs of parallels between the first nine and the last four chapters of the Epistle. (a) In xiii. 10 the Apostle wrote διὰ τοῦτο ταῦτα ἀπὼν γράφω, ἵνα παρὼν μὴ ἀποτόμως χρήσωμαι ; and to this it is said that ii. 3, καὶ ἔγραψα τοῦτο αὐτὸ, ἵνα μὴ ἐλθὼν λύπην ἔχω, refers. But this reference is by no means inevitable; it is quite as natural to suppose that the effect of the Painful Letter (which I take to be 1 Corinthians) having been so salutary, as is indicated in ii. 3, the Apostle would again try the effect of a written threat of severe dealing. (0) In xiii. 2 we have προείρηκα καὶ προλέγω ὡς παρὼν τὸ δεύτερον καὶ ἀπὼν νῦν τοῖς προημαρτηκόσιν καὶ τοῖς λοιποῖς πᾶσιν, ὅτι ἐὰν ἔλθω εἰς τὸ πάλιν οὐ φείσομαι, to which i. 23 corresponds well if we suppose it written at a later date, viz., φειδόμενος ὑμῶν οὐκέτι ἦλθον εἰς Κόρινθον. On the other hand, it is plain that the texts may be taken up by another handle; and we may understand their sequence to be that the Apostle having said at i. 23 that he had not come to Corinth before as he wished to spare them, he explains at xiii. 2 with plain sternness that when he does come he will not spare. There is nothing gained in lucidity or in force by the hypothesis that xiii. 2 represents the earlier statement and i. 23 the later. (c) Again, in x. 6, St. Paul says of himself: ἐν ἑτοίμῳ ἔχοντες ἐκδικῆσαι πᾶσαν παρακοήν, ὅταν πληρωθῇ ὑμῶν ἡ ὑπακοή, while at ii. 9 he writes, εἰς τοῦτο γὰρ καὶ ἔγραψα ἵνα γνῶ τὴν δοκιμὴν ὑμῶν, εἰ εἰς πάντα ὑπήκοοί ἐστε. Here it is not to be gainsaid that an excellent sense emerges from counting x. 6 to be prior to ii. 9, which seems, when taken in connexion with vii. 15, 16, to speak of unanimous obedience on the part of the Christians at Corinth. But the character of this obedience has been indicated above in § 4. So far as the specific case as to which St. Paul had written the Painful Letter was concerned, the “ obedience”’ had been that of “all”; but there remained a faction which was disobedient at heart, and until they should have yielded to his authority it could not be said that their ‘“‘obedience”’ was “ fulfilled”. As to these three pairs of parallel passages, then, it is not the case that a satisfactory explanation can be provided only by the ex- pedient of recognising chaps. x.-xiii. as prior to chaps. i.-ix.; on the contrary, they yield a consistent sense when the Epistle is inter- preted as a continuous whole. A remarkable commentary upon the danger of relying too much on coincidences of language of this sort is afforded by the fact that exactly an opposite inference to that with which we have been dealing has been drawn by another critic, Drescher. This writer, like Schmiedel and Clemen and Kennedy, regards chaps, x.-xili. as distinct from chaps. i.-ix.; but he is led from internal evidence, as it appears to him, to count the Nine Chapters