1 Corinthians 8:1-4

“Now, as touching things offered to idols, we know that we all have knowledge, knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth. 2. If any man think that he knoweth anything, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know. 3. But if any man love God, the same is known of Him 4. as concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is no God but one.”

We might take the preposition περί, on the subject of, with its regimen as a sort of title: “As to what concerns consecrated meats....” In that case we must understand: “This is what I have to say to you;” comp. 1 Corinthians 7:1. But we might also make this preposition depend on the verb οἴδαμεν, we know, or finally, on the expression γνῶσιν ἔχομεν, we have knowledge; in this sense: “We know that on the subject of meats offered in sacrifice we all have knowledge.” In itself this last meaning might be suitable; but in 1 Corinthians 8:4, where the sentence is taken up again (after an interruption), the words: we have knowledge, are omitted, and the περί, on the subject of, can only be explained there, and consequently also in 1 Corinthians 8:1, in one of the two first meanings. The first construction is likewise set aside by 1 Corinthians 8:4, where the περί can only depend on the verb which follows it, οἴδαμεν, we know. We are thus perforce brought to the second construction: “On the subject of meats...we know.”

After such a verb as we know, it is more natural to give ὅτι the meaning of that, than the meaning of because. This sense is confirmed by 1 Corinthians 8:4, where it is evidently the only one possible.

Several (Flatt, etc.) have supposed that these first words: On the subject of...we know that..., were taken word for word by the apostle from the letter of the Corinthians. The most advanced members of the Church, they hold, expressed themselves thus: “We know that every one is sufficiently enlightened on this subject, and consequently we are perfectly free to use our liberty in the matter.” Paul afterwards shows (1 Corinthians 8:7), they continue, that this affirmation is far from being exact. But, if it were so, we must also ascribe to the Corinthians 1 Corinthians 8:4-6, which are a continuation of the sentence begun at 1 Corinthians 8:1; now it is evident that it is Paul who speaks in these verses. The subject of we know is therefore, first of all, Paul and Sosthenes, who address the letter, but at the same time the Corinthians, whom the authors include with them in the same category. Perhaps the Corinthians had written something similar to these opening words; and Paul chooses to emphasize it as his own affirmation: “Yes, undoubtedly, we know, as you love to repeat that...;” comp. the similar maxim reproduced by Paul, 1 Corinthians 6:11.

As this beginning of the sentence is taken up again, 1 Corinthians 8:4, it must necessarily be held that a parenthesis begins in 1 Corinthians 8:1 and continues to the end of 1 Corinthians 8:3. The only question is where this parenthesis begins. Luther, Bengel, Olshausen, Heinrici, Edwards, etc., think that it opens with the conj. ὅτι, to which they give the meaning because. We have already set aside this meaning of ὅτι, and we add that the following asyndeton: “knowledge puffeth up...,” would be far from natural so soon after the beginning of a parenthesis; two successive interruptions of the thought are inadmissible. The parenthesis therefore does not begin till the second proposition of the verse: “Knowledge puffeth up....”

All denotes in Paul's view all those who composed the Church. They had in baptism abjured the errors of polytheism, and accepted what the Church taught regarding the only true God. They had therefore all a certain measure of knowledge. How can Edwards go astray so far as to see in this πάντες, all, an allusion to the other apostles and to the decree of the Council of Jerusalem?

But, at this word knowledge, the apostle all at once stops short; and he gives himself up to a brief digression on the uselessness and nothingness of a certain kind of knowledge, as well as on the true nature of that for which this fair name should be reserved. “Knowledge, yes, every one has it; but when it is only in the head, and the heart is empty of love, knowledge produces only a vain inflation, presumption, vanity, lightness.” With this idea of inflation the apostle contrasts that of edification, that is to say, of a solid and growing building; fulness, that is, reality, in opposition to emptiness and appearance. Love alone can produce in him who knows, and, through him, in his brethren, serious moral progress. Love alone draws from God the real knowledge of Divine things, and teaches him who receives it to adapt it to the wants of his brethren.

Vv. 2. The asyndeton of 1 Corinthians 8:2 (the δέ of the T. R. should, it appears, be rejected) does not indicate a new interruption. It is that frequent asyndeton which announces the more emphatic reaffirmation of the previous thought: “Yes, that knowledge devoid of love and of power to edify, when we look at it more nearly, is not even a true knowledge.” The expression εἰ τὶς δοκεῖ, if any one thinketh he knoweth, indicates an empty pretence; real knowing, on the contrary, is denoted by the words, as he ought to know. The reading should certainly be, with almost all the Mjj., ἐγνωκέναι, instead of the εἰδέναι of T. R.; as Edwards says, the second of these terms signifies: to know a fact, while the former signifies: to be thoroughly acquainted with, to have penetrated the thing. Now this second meaning is the only one which is suitable here.

It matters little whether we read with the Alex. οὔπω, not yet, or with the Greco-Lat. and the Byz. οὐδέπω, not at all yet. As to the pron. οὐδέν, nothing, of the T. R., it ought certainly to be suppressed (with the majority of the Mjj.). It weakens the idea instead of strengthening it. It is not the knowledge of this or that which the apostle denies to the man who is full of self and empty of love; it is the very possibility of knowledge. One can only know by assimilating the being to be known, and one can only assimilate him by renouncing self to give himself to him. Love, therefore, is the condition of all true knowledge, and that above all, when, as here, it is God and His thought and will which are in question; comp. 1 John 4:8: “He who loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love.”

Vv. 3 is the antithesis of 1 Corinthians 8:2: Without love, no knowledge (1 Corinthians 8:2); with love, true knowledge (1 Corinthians 8:3). But why, instead of: “The same knoweth God,” does the apostle say: The same is known of God? Does he mean to deny the first of these two ideas? Assuredly not. But he clears, as it were, this first stage, which is self-understood, to rise at a bound to the higher stage, which supposes and implies it. To be known of God is more than to know Him. This appears from Galatians 4:9: “But now, having known God, or rather being known of Him.” In a residence, every one knows the monarch; but every one is not known by him. This second stage of knowledge supposes personal intimacy, familiarity of a kind; a character which is foreign to the first. We need not therefore seek to give the expression, “to be known of God,” an exceptional meaning, which was done by Erasmus: “he is acknowledged of God as His true disciple;” and by Grotius: “He is approved of Him.” Beza went even the length of giving to the passive ἔγνωσται, is known, the sense of a Hebrew Hophal: “he is rendered knowing, put in possession of the knowledge of God.” The word know is here taken in the same sense as in Psalms 1:6: “The Lord knoweth the way of the righteous,” a passage which Heinrici rightly compares. The eye of God can penetrate into the heart that loves Him and His light, to illuminate it. In this light an intimate communion is formed between him and God; and this communion is the condition of all true knowledge, of man's being known by God as of God's being known by man.

The pronoun οὗτος, this same, does not refer to God, but to man; it signifies: “This same truly,” in opposition to those πάντες, all, to whom the privilege of knowledge was so freely ascribed at Corinth (1 Corinthians 8:1).

After this digression, for which there was only too much reason, the apostle returns to the thought which he had begun to enunciate, 1 Corinthians 8:1.

Vv. 4. The οὖν, therefore, indicates, as it does so frequently, the resuming of the interrupted sentence; but with this difference, that for the fact of knowledge (the γνῶσιν ἔχειν) Paul substitutes as the object of the we know the contents of the knowledge.

The term βρῶσις, the act of eating, which he here introduces (it did not occur in 1 Corinthians 8:1), has in it something disdainful; it emphasizes the lower and material character of the act in question.

The contents of the knowledge which Paul ascribes to all Christians, are the monotheistic creed, as it is summed up in the two following propositions. And first the nothingness of idols; οὐδέν might be an adjective: “ no idol.” In that case we must apply the term idol to the false deity itself. None of those deities worshipped by the heathen has any existence in the circle of real beings (the world). So Meyer, de Wette, etc. But, says Edwards, it is doubtful whether εἴδωλον, the idol, can denote the false God, without the image representing it; the examples quoted do not prove this. He explains thus: There is not in creation any visible image of God; the only real image of God is that which is in heaven: Christ (Col 1:15; 2 Corinthians 4:4). But one feels at once how foreign this thought is to the context. The subject in question for the time is God; only afterwards will Paul come to Jesus Christ, as the only Lord (1 Corinthians 8:6). What has led some to make οὐδέν an adjective, is the following οὐδείς, which evidently signifies no. But why should the construction of the two propositions be the same? The οὐδέν ought to be taken as a predicate: “That an idol is nothing in the world.” It must be remembered that the statue was judged by the heathen to be the dwelling and agent of the god himself, so that the apostle means: If in the world of beings you seek one corresponding to the statue and person of Jupiter, Apollo, etc., you will find nothing.

In the following proposition, the word ἕτερος, other (which is found in the T. R.), must be rejected.

There was certainly not a single Christian at Corinth who had not subscribed to these two propositions; and the apostle may have borrowed them from the Church's own letter. He himself confirms while explaining them, but at the same time completing and prudently limiting them in the two following verses.