Intertextuality Pair

1 Corinthians 8:6 → Genesis 1:1

Allusion

Later text

1 Corinthians 8:6BSB

yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist. And there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we exist.

Earlier text

Genesis 1:1BSB

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

Significance

1 Corinthians 8:6 — "yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we exist; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we exist" — splits the creator-confession of Genesis 1:1 across Father and Son without dividing the one God. Paul has reshaped the Shema (Deut 6:4, "the LORD is one") into a Christological confession (see the companion IP 1 Cor 8:6 → Deut 6:4 for the Shema half); this file maps the creation half of the same composite confession. The "all things" that "came" through the Lord Jesus Christ is the totality God created in Genesis 1:1 — now disclosed as mediated through the Son. This is redemptive-historical progression and longitudinal development, not typology: the bare "God created" of Genesis 1:1 is unfolded into the Trinitarian grammar of creation, with the Father as source ("from whom") and the Son as agent ("through whom"), exactly as John 1:3, Colossians 1:16, and Hebrews 1:2 confess. Paul deploys this against idol-meat anxiety in Corinth: the so-called gods are nothing, because the one Lord through whom the cosmos exists is the One the Corinthians belong to. The telos is liberating assurance — every power the pagan world feared is a creature made through Christ, so that beholding Jesus as the agent of Genesis 1:1's creation frees the conscience and fixes the heart's allegiance on the Lord who made and sustains all things, infinitely worthy of worship.

Found via
Beale & Carson (eds.), Commentary on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (2007); Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel (2008)
Reference Type
Allusion
Connection Method(s)
Redemptive-Historical Progression + Longitudinal Theme

▸ In the Beginning

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