Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

Preface

1. The question

2. Paul in Corinth: AD 50–52 (Acts 18:1–18)

3. Paul’s Damascus narrative and the crucified Christ

4. Corinth, Rome and chronology

5. After Paul left Corinth: AD 52–54

6. Crisis in Corinth

7. Eschatology and social attitude

8. Christ crucified in 1 Corinthians

9. Between 1 and 2 Corinthians: (1) The visits

10. Between 1 and 2 Corinthians: (2) The new missionaries

11. Paul’s objectives in 2 Corinthians

12. The third visit

13. The answer

14. Paul the apostle and the church in Corinth

Appendix A: Size of the church at the time Paul wrote 1 Corinthians

Appendix B: The integrity of 1 and 2 Corinthians

Appendix C: Timeline of Paul and the Corinthians, a 7-year saga

Preface

Paul’s known mission years were only ten, between circa ad 47 and 57. Before that his years between the Damascus event and his first westward mission, circa ad 34–47, are relatively ‘unknown’. His years following his glorious mission decade, ad 57–64, were mostly spent in various prisons. The great missionary decade changed the course of history, as Paul brought the message of the Messiah of the Jews to the Gentile world.

Strikingly, however, seven of those ten mission years (between ad 50 and 57) were occupied with the church in Corinth, especially the latter years, ad 55–57.

During his initial contact with the Corinthians (ad 50–52) there is no hint of difficulty between Paul and them. After his departure, however, relationships began to deteriorate, especially from the time Paul wrote 1 Corinthians in ad 55, and reached a crisis point when he wrote 2 Corinthians in ad 56.

The Corinthian question is that the church came to oppose her founder, Paul, almost to the point of rejecting him.

I feel privileged to have studied and written about the great apostle and his letters to the Corinthians. Because of their rootedness in history and geography these letters are of special interest to historians, exegetical scholars and theologians. Not least, these letters are a remarkable window into the heart of Paul the missionary and pastor.

I have attempted to follow Paul’s relationships with this church through a sequential study of the texts and to address the questions that arise from such an approach. At many points I have been indebted to commentaries, monographs and specialist papers, yet it is impossible to pursue that research in an exhaustive way since their number runs into the thousands!

I hope the linear approach I have pursued and the questions I have tried to answer will prove stimulating and helpful to fellow students of the great apostle and his dealings with those turbulent Corinthians.

As I worked through those years, I realized increasingly the value of a chronological approach as a way of understanding the dynamics of Paul’s relationships with this church. Such an approach prompts important questions; for example, why does Paul now need to urge the Corinthian submission to Stephanas (1 Cor. 16:15–18) when this man has been a member of the church since her beginning five years earlier?

The chronological approach means that the search for exegetical understanding may profitably begin within the text, rather than texts external to it in Corinth’s cultural and historical background. The report Paul quotes, that his ‘letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence weak, and his speech of no account’ (2 Cor. 10:10), is a case in point. Reflection on the chronology of Paul’s ‘painful’ visit and ‘tearful’ letter suggests that the critic (or critics) were sarcastically summarizing his ‘failed’ disciplinary visit and its sequel, the deeply resented ‘tearful’ letter. Titus heard this criticism when delivering the ‘tearful’ letter and later reported it to Paul in Macedonia. Chronology focuses the issue as disciplinary and this is the place to begin, only then analysing Greco-Roman letter-writing and speech-making. To begin with the latter may impede an understanding that may be closer to hand within the flow of the events within the Pauline texts themselves.

When sociologists address the composition of the church, they rightly include Erastus, the city treasurer, in their analyses (Rom. 16:23). Erastus was a member of the congregation in 57 when Paul wrote Romans, but was he a member from the beginning, as is often assumed? Perhaps he was, but it is rather surprising that neither Luke nor Paul mentions him in these early times. An advantage of the chronological approach is that it raises the issue of the church’s changing character and the probability of a growth in numbers.

Another example is connected with over-reading the indisputable social and economic stratification within the church as if it demonstrably revealed a full-blown pattern of patrons and clients in the church. In fact, while we know a lot about the sociology of Corinth as a Roman colony this does not mean that patron–client relationships dominated church life. Stratification is clear enough, but patronage is not.

This study is about what went wrong after Paul left the church after founding it. Such answers that are available will be found in the main within the texts themselves studied diachronically, based on a little historical imagination. Background information illuminates the exegesis of the text but does not control it.