# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_December 1855_S361
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

Exposition of 1 Corinthians etc. 361

the idol-services and the un-blessing or curse of the idol-altar, even if they themselves did not just then sacrifice; indeed they belong to the fellowship that has in common the idol-service and the calamity of the idol-altars — they are heathen, however much they may call themselves Christians. But the Apostle does not proceed at once to this conclusion either. He had to expect that the clever Corinthians would answer him: correct, but we want to draw from that yet another inference of our own that will overturn your whole proof. This inference, therefore, he draws himself, by asking them whether, in their opinion, he is not thereby asserting what now follows, and accordingly he introduces the next question with a connecting word of consequence, with "now":

Verse 19. "What do I say then? That an idol's offering is anything, or that an idol is anything?"

The Corinthians would, so Paul presupposes, conclude from his assertion that participation in eating the idol-sacrifice is also participation in the idol-sacrifice itself, that he teaches that an idol's offering, or, what hangs together with it, that an idol is something — since he had, after all, preached to them that the idols to whom the heathen sacrificed are nothing, that they are no existing beings but mere fabrications of the idolatrous heart, 1 Corinthians 8:4. Would they draw such false doctrine and contradiction to his earlier preaching from his words? he asks them, presupposing that they would indeed answer yes to this, and he then answers himself with

Verse 20. "But that what they sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God; but I would not that you should have communion with devils."

Paul does not utter the "no" at all, but he compels us to supply it ourselves, in that as an antithesis, and therefore with "but," he sets forth what he holds concerning the idol-sacrifices; by this compulsion he pushes away from himself, quite emphatically, whatever false doctrine the Corinthians might perhaps seek in his words. We must likewise supply a "this I say" from the preceding words, as Luther rightly does; it is thoroughly Greek, wherever one speaks forcefully and vividly, to be very sparing with words and to leave the hearer much to think out. The words themselves bear witness to the deep and vivid stirring of heart with which the Apostle now completes the second member of the opposition, namely that those who take part in the sacrificial meals of idols sit at the table of devils, just as much as those who ate together at the Jewish sacrificial meals, thereby worshiping God and receiving a share in the graces of God bound up with the sacrifice. Already in chapter 8:5 the Apostle, alongside the definite assertion that the idols are nothing, had also taught that there are powers that are called gods, some an invisible creation, the good angels and the devils (Colossians 1:16), some visible, the authorities and lords (John 10:34; Psalm 82:6), although there is only one God and one Lord over all. Now he asserts that the heathen sacrifice not, as they supposed, to their idols, but rather to the devils. Their sacrificing was no indifferent act — certainly not, to the living