Movement A: The Problem at Corinth (vv. 17-22)

The Verses

17 Now in this that I declare unto you I praise you not, that ye come together not for the better, but for the worse. 18 For first of all, when ye come together in the church, I hear that there be divisions among you; and I partly believe it. 19 For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you. 20 When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. 21 For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. 22 What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not? What shall I say to you? shall I praise you in this? I praise you not.

— 1 Corinthians 11:17-22 (KJV)

What Paul Is Doing

Paul opens the Lord’s Supper passage with a refusal of praise. The note matters. Earlier in chapter 11 (vv. 2-16) he had begun with praise — “Now I praise you, brethren, that ye remember me in all things, and keep the ordinances, as I delivered them to you.” Now, three verses later, the praise stops: I praise you not. The thing he is about to describe is so off-pattern that his usual encouragement-first style breaks.

His diagnosis is single-pointed: when the Corinthian church gathers, the gathering itself makes things worse, not better. Whatever they came together to do, the manner of their coming-together is producing the opposite effect. The remainder of the passage will explain how that is happening and what to do about it.

Topic A1 — Schism and Faction (v. 18, σχίσματα)

“I hear that there be divisions among you” (v. 18, KJV)

The Greek is σχίσματα (schismata) — tears, splits, factions. The same word group appears earlier in 1 Corinthians 1:10 (“I beseech you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions [σχίσματα] among you”), and again in 1 Corinthians 12:25 (“That there should be no schism [σχίσμα] in the body”). The word is one of Paul’s keywords for the Corinthian problem.

What is the division? Not yet a doctrinal split — that becomes the topic only obliquely. The σχίσματα at the gathering are social divisions: who eats with whom, who arrives when, who gets what. The Historical Context page traces the Greco-Roman dining background that makes this concrete: the σχίσμα is the standard host/guest, patron/client, free/slave stratification of a Roman dinner being reproduced at the Lord’s Supper.

Paul’s “I partly believe it” is interesting. He has heard reports — likely from Chloe’s people (1 Cor 1:11) — but he frames his belief carefully. Not “I believe it fully” (which would suggest he knows everything). Not “I dismiss the report” (which would suggest he is hoping it is false). Partly — meaning the reports must be substantially correct or he would not be writing, but he leaves room for the Corinthians to clarify and self-correct.

This pastoral tone matters for application. The diagnosis is sharp; the framing is not absolute. Paul names the problem without claiming complete knowledge of it.

Topic A2 — Heresies Must Be (v. 19, αἱρέσεις)

“For there must be also heresies among you, that they which are approved may be made manifest among you.” (v. 19, KJV)

This is one of the genuinely puzzling lines in the New Testament. Paul says there must be heresies. The Greek δεῖ (dei) is the word of necessity — the same word Jesus uses of his own death (“the Son of man must suffer,” Mark 8:31). And the purpose clause says these heresies happen so that (ἵνα) the approved (δόκιμοι) may be made manifest (φανεροὶ γένωνται).

Several questions branch from these few words.

What does αἱρέσεις mean here?

The word later becomes the technical term for doctrinal deviation — heresies in the post-Nicene sense. But in the first century the word means choices, parties, factions — the Sadducees and Pharisees are called αἱρέσεις in Acts (5:17; 15:5; 26:5). The KJV “heresies” preserves the etymology but carries unintended modern weight. The ESV and NASB consistently translate “factions.” The 1st-century sense is closer to “party affiliations” than to “doctrinal deviations.”

So v. 19’s αἱρέσεις are likely a sharper or more entrenched form of the v. 18 σχίσματα — splits that have become parties. The relationship between v. 18 and v. 19 is not “two unrelated complaints” but “a gradient” — schisms (the tears) tend to become haireseis (the parties), and Paul names both stages.

What does “must be” mean?

Three live views among careful commentators:

View 1 — Predictive, not approving. Paul is observing that factions are an expected consequence of fallen human community; in a mixed church there will be parties because that is what humans do. The “must be” is the must-be of fallen sociology, not of divine design. Many modern commentators take this line; it preserves human responsibility for the factionalism while acknowledging its inevitability.

View 2 — Providential, refining. God uses the emergence of factions to expose who is genuine and who is not. The “must be” is purposive at the divine level: God has a use for these splits, namely the sifting of the church. The δόκιμοι/ἀδόκιμοι (approved/unapproved) language elsewhere in Paul (1 Cor 9:27; 2 Cor 13:5–7) is the language of testing-by-fire, and v. 19 fits that pattern. The early church often read it this way — Origen and Chrysostom both take a providential reading.

View 3 — Eschatological/apocalyptic. Paul is echoing the apocalyptic expectation that the end will be marked by tribulations and apostasies (Matt 24:10–12; 2 Thess 2:3; 1 Tim 4:1), and the appearance of factions is part of that pattern. The “must be” is the must-be of the unfolding end-time pattern. This view has support from how Paul uses δεῖ elsewhere of eschatological necessity.

These views are not mutually exclusive. A careful reader can hold (1) and (2) together: factions arise because of human fallenness and God uses them refiningly. (3) overlaps with (2) when the refining is read into a broader end-time frame.

What does “the approved are made manifest” mean?

The δόκιμοι (dokimoi) are the tested-and-found-genuine. The word comes from metallurgy — what survives the assayer’s fire is dokimos. The same root reappears in v. 28 (let a man examine himself, δοκιμαζέτω) — the testing thread of the whole passage. The factions, on the providential reading, do not make people approved; they reveal who already is. A person’s response to a faction at the gathering shows what kind of disciple they are.

What this does not mean

It does not mean Paul welcomes the factions. The very next phrase makes that clear: “this is not to eat the Lord’s supper” (v. 20). The factions are a fact that has a sifting use, not a good to be promoted. The pastor’s response to v. 19 is not “let the factions multiply for the sake of refinement.” It is to keep teaching the church to honor the body so the factions do not consume the gathering.

Topic A3 — The Supper as Actual Meal (vv. 20-21)

“When ye come together therefore into one place, this is not to eat the Lord’s supper. For in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken.” (vv. 20-21, KJV)

The full treatment of this topic is in Historical Context. Three points summarized here for the movement’s argument:

The Greek confirms a full meal. Deipnon is the main evening meal. People are hungry and people are drunken. The vocabulary cannot bear the wafer-and-thimble reading; Paul is talking about a real dinner.
There are two suppers, not one. Paul contrasts the Lord’s supper (κυριακὸν δεῖπνον) with each Corinthian’s own supper (ἴδιον δεῖπνον). The Corinthians are eating the second while imagining they are eating the first. The complaint is precisely that the gathering’s name Lord’s supper has been hollowed out — they are eating their food, their way, while telling themselves they are doing the Lord’s thing.
The phrase “Lord’s supper” is rare. Kyriakon deipnon appears only here in the New Testament. The adjective kyriakon (“belonging to the Lord”) shows up otherwise only at Rev 1:10 (the Lord’s day). Paul is coining specificity — the supper that belongs to him — precisely because the Corinthians have lost the specificity.

Topic A4 — Class Division at the Table (vv. 21-22) ★

This is the heart of Movement A and the heaviest of its topics. The text:

“in eating every one taketh before other his own supper: and one is hungry, and another is drunken. What? have ye not houses to eat and to drink in? or despise ye the church of God, and shame them that have not?” (vv. 21-22, KJV)

What was actually happening at Corinth

The Historical Context page traces two backgrounds — the Greco-Roman cena the Corinthians were drifting into (Pliny Ep. 2.6; Martial 3.60; Juvenal Sat. 5; Plutarch Quaest. Conv. 2.10) and the Jewish meal-tradition the Christian Supper had inherited from (Passover seder, Sabbath table, havurah, Essene/Therapeutae meals). The summary, applied to the Corinthian situation:

The wealthier members of the Corinthian church (those with houses large enough to host a gathering — note v. 22’s assumption that some “have houses”) were beginning the meal as a normal Roman dinner. They arrived early; they brought their own food and wine; they reclined in the host’s triclinium with first-class portions. By the time the working-class members of the church arrived — slaves released after work, freedmen finishing their patrons’ errands, day-laborers and craftsmen leaving the marketplace — the better food was gone, the wine was depleted, and the wealthier members were already past hungry into drunken.

Paul names the result with brutal precision: “them that have not” (τοὺς μὴ ἔχοντας) — the propertyless, the working poor — were being shamed (καταισχύνετε). The verb is the technical Greek word for what a stratified Roman dinner did to its lower-class guests. The poor were being made to feel their poverty at the Lord’s Table.

Why this is theologically catastrophic

The corruption Paul identifies is not “the Corinthians are being a little inconsiderate.” The corruption is that the Lord’s Supper has been reconfigured as a Roman dinner — and a Roman dinner is, by its social grammar, an instrument for displaying and reinforcing social hierarchy. To turn the Lord’s Supper into a Roman dinner is to take the rite that proclaims one body in Christ and make it instead a rite that proclaims many bodies, ranked.

This is why “despise ye the church of God” (v. 22) is the right level of language. To eat this way at the Lord’s Supper is not a small breach. It is contempt for the body the Supper is supposed to constitute.

What Jesus said and showed (Christocentric anchor)

The pattern Paul invokes here did not emerge in his theological mind from nowhere. Jesus’s own meal practice was the polemic against status-based dining:

The Lukan parable of the great supper (Luke 14:15-24): the originally-invited refuse, the master sends out to “the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind” — these fill the Lord’s table.
Jesus’s table-fellowship complaints: “this man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them” (Luke 15:2). The scandal of Jesus’s own dinners was who he ate with.
The teaching on banquet seating (Luke 14:7-11): take the lowest seat; let the host raise you. The reversal of Roman dinner protocol could not be more explicit.
The foot-washing (John 13:1-17): the host as servant, on the night of the Supper itself. “If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

The Lord whose Supper this is washed his disciples’ feet on the night he instituted it. The Roman dinner he was not hosting was that one.

It bears noting that Jesus’s anti-stratifying meal teaching does not float free of his Jewish formation; it radicalizes the egalitarian logic already inside Jewish meal practice (Sabbath table, Passover seder, havurah). The Historical Context page’s section on the Jewish meal-tradition traces this background. The Corinthian drift toward the Roman cena was not just a betrayal of Jesus; it was a defection from the meal-form Jesus stood inside and pushed further.

What the early church did with this (Antiquity)

The early church kept the polemic going, sometimes more sharply than the Corinthians ever heard from Paul.

The Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (c. 215 AD) preserves explicit rules for the agape feast that read like direct corrections of Corinthian abuse: portions go to widows first; the bishop blesses first; everyone receives a portion; no one eats more than is decent; if a guest brings something, it is for distribution, not for the guest alone.

The Didascalia Apostolorum (c. 230 AD) prescribes seating: if a poor person arrives and there is no seat, the bishop or presbyter is to give up his own seat — even if it means sitting on the ground — so that the poor person is honored. The text directly engages the same Greco-Roman dinner conventions Paul opposed.

The agape feast itself (Tertullian Apology 39, c. 197 AD) was structured precisely as anti-Roman dinner: prayer before reclining; modest eating; care for the poor as the purpose of the meal, not its incidental beneficiary. Tertullian’s description shows what 11:17-34’s prescription looks like when actually implemented over decades.

The pattern is unmistakable: the early church read 1 Cor 11:21-22 as a permanent correction, not a one-time pastoral note.

How modern communities take it up (Reality)

Different traditions inherit this in different ways. None of them gets it perfectly; each is doing real work with the passage.

The historic Anabaptist witness (Hutterites, Old Order communities) treats the common meal as expressive of communal economic sharing — the Table presumes that the bodily needs of the body are already being met because the body shares its goods. The risk: when the witness narrows to one social class (the community itself), the original polemic against intra-church class division loses its target.
The Catholic Worker movement (Dorothy Day, Peter Maurin) reads “shame them that have not” as the indictment of any church practice that ignores the bodily poor. The Mass and the soup line belong together. The risk: institutional Catholicism’s eucharistic discipline can become disconnected from its own social teaching.
The Black Church tradition has historically read 11:21-22 in light of the racialized economic exclusion that produced its very existence as a separate ecclesial space. Communion is the rite where the lynched body of Christ and the brutalized bodies of his people meet at one table. The reading is searing and theologically serious; it is not always heard by majority-culture exegesis.
Liturgical reform across denominations since Vatican II and the 20th-century ecumenical movement (Lima document, 1982) has restored attention to the social dimension of the Eucharist. The 1979 BCP Eucharistic Prayer C reads: “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.” The shift is in the direction Paul demands.
Many evangelical churches have inherited the Reformation focus on examination-of-conscience (Movement C) while largely losing the social-class reading of vv. 21-22. The result is communion services where v. 27’s “unworthily” is preached with weight while v. 22’s “shame them that have not” is preached not at all. This is a partial inheritance of the passage.

What the passage demands

Whatever else Movement A says, vv. 21-22 land here: a church whose Lord’s Supper does not visibly contradict the social-status patterns of its surrounding culture has not yet read this passage. The pattern at Corinth was the standard pattern of Greco-Roman dining. The pattern at any church now will be the standard pattern of its own moment — racial, economic, generational, educational, immigration-status. The discernment of the body (a Movement C topic) starts here, in a willingness to ask which patterns of the surrounding social order have come with us into the assembly.

This is not a sentimental reading. It is the reading the text demands.

Connecting Forward

Movement A diagnoses. Movements B, C, and D respond.

The diagnosis of misuse opens the way to Movement B (vv. 23-26) — Paul re-grounds the rite in the dominical tradition: the Supper is this, what the Lord did and said, and any practice that departs from that is no longer the Lord’s Supper at all.
The diagnosis of misuse opens the way to Movement C (vv. 27-32) — the pastoral consequences of misuse, including the discernment of the body (which is now decisively informed by Movement A’s class reading) and the bodily harm that follows from misuse.
The diagnosis of misuse opens the way to Movement D (vv. 33-34) — practical instructions to keep the gathering from becoming what it has been.