5:9
The verb ἔγραψα
(egrapsa) is not an epistolary
aorist, “I write,” but a true preterit, “I wrote.” When Paul includes the
phrase ἐν τῇ ἐπιστολῇ (en
tē epistolē, in the letter) in 2 Cor. 7:8, he refers to a previous
letter (see additional note). He may be directly quoting his admonition from
this letter insisting that church members not associate with πόρνοι (pornoi),
sexually immoral persons. (David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians [2d
ed.; Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Baker Academic, 2025], 177-78)
Additional Note
5:9. Since the present letter is known to us
as 1 Corinthians, this previous letter must no longer be extant, or it may
have been mortised into one of the canonical letters. The enigmatic passage in
2 Cor. 6:14–7:1 is the chief candidate to be a fragment of this previous
letter. A cursory reading of this passage gives the impression that it matches
the description of this previous letter. Some contend that Paul works through
some of the statements in this passage that the Corinthians misinterpreted in
various segments of this letter. “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers” is
expanded further by Paul’s instructions about marriage to an unbeliever
(1 Cor. 7:12–16). “What agreement is there between the temple of God and
idols?” is developed in more detail in the discussion of eating idol food (1 Cor.
8–10). “Come out from them and be separate” is clarified as referring to
immoral Christians and not the immoral of this world (1 Cor. 5:9–11). I
conclude (Garland 2021a: 362), “These correlations do not prove that
2 Cor. 6:14–7:1 was originally part of the first letter Paul sent to the
Corinthians. They show instead that such problems were endemic in Corinth and
that Paul continually needed to address them” (for arguments that this passage
originally belongs to 2 Corinthians, see Garland 2021a: 358–73). The
biggest problem with the view that 2 Cor. 6:14–7:1 was part of this
previous letter is that the key words πορνεία and πόρνοι
do not appear. The command not to be unequally yoked, for example, refers to
“unbelievers” and not to immoral Christians.
If this were a portion of the previous letter, one might understand
how the Corinthians may have been confused, but the most likely conclusion is
that this previous letter is lost. If Paul published his own letters (see
Trobisch 1989), he may have chosen, for whatever reason, to omit it from the
collection. (Ibid., 183)
