The Greatest of These
1 Corinthians 13:1BH-13, the chapter read at weddings and written to a church tearing itself apart, as the early church read it
Paul is not being lyrical here. He is arguing, and the argument is a subtraction: take one thing away and watch what the rest is worth. Augustine puts the question in the sharpest form anyone has managed, and Clement of Alexandria notices the detail people skate over, that the last item on Paul’s list is a martyr.
The Fathers’ words are verbatim and attributed (Augustine, Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy; Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata; both ANF/NPNF, public domain, selected from the running prose). The box marked “In plain terms” is our own restatement, never theirs.
1 Corinthians 13:1-2 · KJVThough I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.
“Let them see how many things, and what important things, are of no avail, if a certain single thing be wanting, and let them see what that one thing is. And herein let them hear not my words, but those of the apostle… What does it profit them, therefore, if they have both the voice of angels in the sacred mysteries, and the gift of prophecy, as had Caiaphas”
St. Augustine, on the DonatistsAugustine is arguing with a separatist party convinced its purity was the proof, and he does not dispute their gifts. He grants them, then subtracts. And the example he reaches for is devastating: Caiaphas prophesied (John 11:51), truly, about the death of Christ, on the way to arranging it. So the gift is real, the prophecy is real, and the man is condemned. Which is precisely Paul’s point: these are not small things being dismissed. They are large things being weighed and found to total nothing.
1 Corinthians 13:3 · KJVAnd though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.
“In love, all the chosen of God were perfected. Apart from love, nothing is well pleasing to God… To the point the Apostle Paul speaks, ‘If I give my body, and have not love, I am sounding brass, and a tinkling cymbal.’ If it is not from a disposition determined by… love that I shall testify, he means; but if through fear and expected reward… I am a common man”
Clement of Alexandria, The StromataNotice where Paul has put the ceiling. Not a large donation. Not even a life given away. Burned. The last item on the list is martyrdom, the one act nobody can fake and everybody honours, and Paul says it can be done for nothing. Clement names the failure mode exactly: a man can go to the fire out of fear, or for the reward, and the fire will not tell you which. That is why the chapter cannot be reduced to being nice. It is asking what is underneath an act that looks, from outside, like the best thing a human being has ever done.
1 Corinthians 13:12-13 · KJVFor now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.
“Unless, therefore, the Holy Spirit is so far imparted to each, as to make him one who loves God and his neighbor, he is not removed from the left hand to the right. Nor is the Spirit specially called the Gift, unless on account of love.”
St. Augustine, On the TrinityAugustine ties the chapter back to what the Spirit is for. The gifts in chapters 12 and 14 are real and given, and this chapter sits deliberately between them; but the Spirit is not called the Gift on account of tongues or prophecy. He is called the Gift on account of love. And the reason charity is the greatest of the three is in the verse before it: faith and hope are both postures toward something not yet seen, and when the seeing comes they are answered. Love is the only one of the three that has nothing to be completed by.
Where this stands among the traditions
There is no fault line here worth the name. Orthodox, Catholic and Protestant all read 1 Corinthians 13 the same way, and the reason is that Paul left no room: he sets the highest spiritual attainments beside the highest sacrificial acts and prices them all at nothing without agapē. The only live question is the one raised by the chapter’s position, between two chapters on gifts, and that belongs to Spiritual Gifts and Did the Gifts Stop? rather than here. The site’s own letter on what this love actually is, since the word has been overused, is What Is Love?
Patristic text from Augustine, Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy and On the Trinity, and Clement of Alexandria, The Stromata (ANF and NPNF, public domain), selected from the running prose with footnote apparatus omitted; nothing added or paraphrased within the quotation marks. Scripture in the King James Version; the plain-language lines are our own restatement. This passage in the Study Bible; 1 Corinthians 13 at BibleHub.