1 Corinthians 7 - Introduction

V. Marriage and Celibacy. Chap. 7.

Some commentators begin the second part of the Epistle here. According to them, the apostle up to this point answered the reports which had been made to him viva voce (1 Corinthians 1:11 and 1 Corinthians 5:1); now he takes up the letter of the Corinthians to answer the questions it contains. It is certain that in 1 Corinthians 7:1 the subject which he proceeds to treat is presented in reply to a question which had been addressed to him. A similar formula occurs 1 Corinthians 8:1; 1 Corinthians 12:1, 1 Corinthians 16:1; 1 Corinthians 16:12; and it is natural to hold that in each of these cases it introduces a subject raised by the letter of the Corinthians. Nevertheless the difference between verbal reports and epistolary communications would be too external to have determined the general arrangement of our Epistle. It is impossible to overlook a moral relation between the matter about to be treated in this chap. 7 and that of fornication, treated in the second half of chap. 6. It is easy to establish a still closer connection with what precedes. In 1 Corinthians 7:12 of chap. 6 there had been put the question of Christian liberty and its limits. It was from this point of view that the apostle had treated the subject of fornication. Now the question of marriage (chap. 7), as well as that of sacrificed meats (chaps. 8-10), and even, up to a certain point, that of the behaviour of women in meetings for worship (chap. 11), all belong to this same domain. If then it is true that the apostle here passes to the questions put to him by the Corinthians, it must be acknowledged, on the other hand, that he does not do so without establishing a logical and moral connection between the different subjects which he treats in succession.

The questions examined in this chapter, the preference to be accorded to celibacy or marriage, as well as others subordinate to it, must have been discussed at Corinth, since the apostle's advice was asked about them. There were therefore in the Church partisans of celibacy and defenders of marriage. Did this division coincide in any way with that of the different parties? The attempt has been made to prove this. Schwegler regards the admirers of celibacy as Judeo - Christians of Essenian tendency, and identifies them with the party of Peter. But Peter himself was married (1 Corinthians 9:5; Mark 1:30). Others Ewald, Hausrath, for example have supposed that they were members of the party which designated itself those of Christ, and that they alleged against marriage the example of Jesus. But this example was too exceptional; and in any case Paul would have required to rebut this argument. The general current of the Jewish mind recommended and glorified marriage. We might therefore take them to be members of the Pauline party, who rested their argument on the apostle's example, and on some mistaken saying which he had uttered during his stay at Corinth. But there is nothing in chap. 7 leading to this supposition. Grotius thought that the opponents of marriage at Corinth were men of culture, who, influenced by certain sayings of the Greek philosophers, regarded marriage as a vulgar state and one contrary to man's independence. But the apostle in his answer makes no allusion to such an idea, and the sayings of the Greek sages, which might be quoted, have rather the effect of whimsical utterances called forth by the troubles of family life, than of a serious theory. It seems simpler to hold that the opposition to marriage at Corinth proceeded from a reaction against the licentious manners which reigned in that city. New converts often go beyond the just limit of opposition to the life of nature, and easily lose sight of the Divine basis of human relations. The history of the Christian Church is full of examples of such extreme tendencies. It is easy therefore to understand how among the most serious Christians, especially among Paul's converts, men should be found, who, disgusted with all that belonged to the relations between the two sexes, proclaimed the superiority of the celibate life.

It was certainly one of the most delicate tasks for him whom God had called, not only to create the Church among the Gentiles, but also to direct its first steps in the new way which opened before it, to show the young Churches what they ought to reject and what they might preserve of their former life. So we shall see in this very chapter the apostle enlarging the question, and applying the solution which he gives in regard to marriage to other social relations in connection with which analogous difficulties were raised. The apostle needed all the wisdom which God had bestowed on him when entrusting him with his mission (Romans 12:3), and all the natural subtlety of his understanding, to resolve the questions proposed to him, without compromising the future of individuals and of the Church. Thus, as to marriage, he could not forget that the conjugal bond was a Divine institution; he had himself just quoted 1 Corinthians 6:16, the saying on which the sacred and exclusive character of this relation rests. But, on the other hand, he contemplated the ideal of a Christian life freed from every bond and wholly consecrated to the service of Christ, and every day he felt from his own experience the value of such a state. The question must therefore have presented itself to his mind in two aspects equally grave, neither of which could be sacrificed to the other, and yet aspects apparently contradictory. The task was thus at once important and difficult.

He begins by treating of the formation of the marriage bond, 1 Corinthians 7:1-9; then he takes up questions relative to the loosing of the bond, 1 Corinthians 7:10-24; finally, he deals with the preference to be given to celibacy or marriage in the case of virgins and widows, 1 Corinthians 7:25-40.