Tag Archives: First Corinthians

If I Speak With the Tongues of Angels But Have Not Love

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In addition to the Eucharist, Christians would meet for banquets known as “agapes” or “love feasts” in order to eat, pray, and share their goods together. This is a fresco of a female figure holding a chalice at an early Christian Agape feast, depicted in the Catacomb of Saints Marcellinus and Peter, Via Labicana, Rome. Perhaps the woman with the cup is the personification of Agape-Love herself. The Patriarch Job is often called the Long-Suffering because of his many afflictions; he shown wearing a crown because he is described as a king in the oldest manuscripts of the Book of Job.


If I speak in the tongues of humans or even of angels, and do not have love, I have become sounding brass rather than a resounding cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy … and do not love, I am good for nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-2)

This chapter is a digression in the apostle’s instructions to the Corinthians, but it has become one of the most recognizable chapters in the New Testament. Chapters 12 and 14 of the epistle are about the Church but Chapter 13 is about the essential quality of Christian life: agape, translated simply as “love” is the clearest expression of Christian faith and practice.

St. Paul mentions angels a few times in this epistle (chapters 4, 6, and 11) but this is the only place where he refers to “the tongues of angels.” Perhaps he is thinking of the Testament of Job (written between 100 BC-100 AD), in which the daughters of Job are given the ability of ecstatic speech to make up for their not being allowed to inherit their father’s property on an equal footing with their brothers. The ecstatic speech of the daughters is described as the language of angels and cherubim.

Paul chooses speaking in tongues as his example because the Corinthians thought that it was the greatest of the gifts…. The tongues of angels are those perceived by the mind, not by the ear.

Theodoret of Cyr, Commentary on the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians

But this ecstatic speech is useless without love. Even prophecy, which St. Paul had earlier said was truly the greatest of the gifts, is useless without love.

Balaam prophesied even though he was not a prophet (Numbers 22-24). Even his donkey prophesied…. King Saul prophesied but was filled with an evil spirit (1 Samuel 16, 19).

Ambrosiaster, Commentary on Paul’s Epistles

Love is not just a quality of Christian life. Love is what is natural to divinity.

Since true charity loves all, if someone knows that he hates even one other person he should hasten to vomit up this bitter gall, in order to be ready to receive the sweetness of charity [Christ] himself.

St. Caesarius of Arles, Sermon 23.4

Many people have heard that there are four different words in Greek that are commonly all translated by the English word “love.” C.S. Lewis wrote a well-known book about these words, known as The Four Loves.

Are All Apostles? Are All Prophets?

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Bishops preaching–or about to preach–in Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches. Bishops, identified with both the apostles and the prophets, interpret the Scriptures and preside at the Eucharist; they serve as the principle of unity in the community and between communities that form the Church at large.



You are the Body of Christ, each member being a part God has arranged in the Church…. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? …. Avidly desire the greater gifts. (1 Cor. 12:27-30)

The gifts of the Holy Spirit have been hotly contested issues among the Christians in Corinth. Some people are proud that they have certain gifts–especially “tongues”–and look down their noses at other people who do not manifest these gifts. Some people are shut out of the community because they seem to be less “spiritual” than others. But the apostle insists that “tongues” is the least important of all the spiritual gifts and that–in any case–all the spiritual gifts are needed for the Body of Christ to function properly.

The gifts are not as easy to number and classify as some might think, either. To say that someone is a “prophet” does not tell us exactly how this person ministers to the community.

There are two types of prophets: those who predict the future and those who interpret the Scriptures…. There are also ‘prophets’ who are teachers, who teach children or young people.

St. Ambrosiaster, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistles

St. Ambrosiaster points out that the apostles in each community, i.e. the bishop of a community, is also a prophet who must interpret the Scriptures. Being able to practice one spiritual gift does not exclude a person from other gifts at the same time.

Although the offices of prophet and apostle were similar or overlapped in some ways, they were also distinct. St. Ambrosiaster seems to presume the prophets were sedentary members of the community, staying in one place. On the other hand, in Syria authentic prophets were presumed to always be on-the-move and never stayed long in any one place. In fact, that was how a parish could distinguish between true and false prophets: the Didache (a handbook for local parishes from the same time as the New Testament) says that a true prophet would never stay in any one place for more than three days.

Not only are the gifts given for the well-being of any one particular community or parish. The gifts are given for the well-being of the Church as a whole.

The Corinthian church was not the whole body by itself but was part of a worldwide community of faith. Therefore the Corinthians ought to be at peace with the Church in every other place, if it is a true member of the body.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily 32 on the Epistles of St. Paul

Although the gifts might be given to the parish in Corinth, they had to be practiced in a way that did not only benefit the parish in Corinth but the other parishes in every city. Nowadays, we might say that the parish on East 17th Street had to realize that the gifts of the people in that parish were also to benefit the people in the parish on West 25th Street, as well as the people in parishes across the country.

While all the members of the community have differing gifts and everyone has a role to play in their local parish as well as in the larger Church as a whole, there is one gift that everyone in every parish is called to embrace and practice. The greatest of the spiritual gifts that St. Paul wants everyone in each parish to strive for is love.

Can the Eye Say to the Hand, “I Don’t Need You”?

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The depiction of the hand of God stood in the presence of God himself, as in this hand of God the Father seen above the Cross, clutching a wreath of victory, San Clemente, Rome, AD 1140–43. Read here for more about the Hand of God in ancient-medieval Jewish and Christian art.


For just as the body is one and has many members and all the members of the body, although many, are one body, so also is Christ…. If the foot says, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,” is it for this reason less a part of the body? (1 Cor. 12:12-15)

St. Paul was not the only one to talk about the Church as if it were a body. St. Jerome wrote

The Church has real eyes: its teachers and leaders who see the mysteries of God in the sacred Scriptures…. The Church has feet: those who make official journeys of all kinds. The foot runs that the hand may find the work it should do. The eye does not scorn the hand, nor do the eyes, hands, and feet scorn the belly as if it were idle and unemployed.

Homily 85 on the Gospel According to St. Matthew

I think the best example of body imagery is what St. Augustine wrote:

Aren’t the hairs of your head certainly of less value than your other members? What is cheaper and more despicable and lowly than the hairs of your head? Yet if the barber gives you a bad haircut, you become angry at him for doing a bad job and cutting your hair unevenly. But you are not as concerned about the unity of the members of the Church as you are about the hairs on your head.

On the Usefulness of Fasting 6

How new was all this body imagery? Philosophers who were writing at the same time as St. Paul also used body imagery as a way to talk about society. Seneca wrote:

What if the hands should desire to harm the feet or the eyes the hands? As all the members of the body are in harmony with one another because it is to the advantage of the whole that individual members be unharmed….

On Anger, 2.31.7

A Roman fable told the story of hands, mouth, and teeth rebelling against the stomach, with the result that the whole body is harmed. (Livy, History of Rome 2.32.7-33.1) Other fables and philosophers compared political unrest to disease or self-harm (such as cutting).

Jewish writers like Josephus and Philo also used body imagery. “As in the body, all the members get sick if the principal members are inflamed….” and the high priest asks for blessings in order “that every age and every part of the nation be regarded as a single body, united in one and the same fellowship, making peace and good order their aim.”

A few decades after St. Paul wrote, St. Clement of Rome also write to the Corinthians. St. Clement also used body imagery to appeal to the Corinthians to embrace harmony and set aside discord.

Let us take our body as an example. The head without the feet is nothing; likewise the feet without the head are nothing: even the smallest limbs of our body are necessary and useful for the whole body; but all the members conspire and unite in subjection, that the whole body may be saved.”

1 Clement 37

I highly recommend Raymond Collins’ commentary on First Corinthians in the Sacra Pagina series.