NT Text: 1 Corinthians 8:6
OT Source(s):
Source: 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
Anchor Text: Gen 1:1 — In the Beginning
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.