First and Second Letters to the Corinthians (Part Nine)

Part Nine of the New Testament Survey Series

Khen Lim



Paul in Corinth (Image source: biblescripture.net)

The backdrop for the first letter is a church beleaguered by divisiveness in which believers find themselves split into camps loyal to different spiritual leaders (1 Cor 1:12, 3:1-6). Paul uses his first letter¹ to encourage the Corinthians to stay united and devoted under Christ (3:21-23).

However chapter 5 to 7 reveals the Corinth church to be riddled with some serious issues. Immorality was mentioned in verses 5:1-2 and so was wickedness in verse 13 of the same chapter. Lawsuits among believers in the same church were apparently rife (6:1-2) while in chapter 7, Paul provided instructions to counter marital infidelity and adultery. Believers were also apparently offering food to idols as part of a disturbing practice in idolatry in chapters 8 and 9. That’s quite a bit of ground for anyone to cover in just a single letter!

In the latter parts of the same letter, Paul talked about Christian freedom (c.9), modesty among womenfolk (11:1-16), the Lord’s Supper (11:17-34), spiritual gifting (cc.12-14) and the resurrection of Christ (c.15) as well as how he would respond to improper conduct and misdirected beliefs and understandings.

Without a doubt, the one part in the whole of his first letter that is frequently used in churches throughout the world is his famous description of the Lord’s Supper (11:17-34) where the details are often part of the Protestant Church’s Holy Communion ritual.

Paul begins his second letter to the Corinthians by offering reasons why it wasn’t capable for him to visit them as he had originally planned (2 Cor 1:3-2:2) before he went on to talk about the nature of his ministry. Of the second letter, the apostle’s featured hallmarks include victory through Christ (2:14-17) in which he compares the glorious ministry of the righteousness of Christ to the ‘ministry of condemnation’ that is vested in the Law (3:9).

Then he continues by validating his ministerial position in view of the intense persecution that is happening at that time (4:8-18). In chapter 5, Paul espouses the new nature of the Christian faith (v.17) and the swapping of our sin for the righteousness of Christ (v.21).

In the second half of his letter, Paul puts up a defence, assuring the Corinthians that his love for them is sincere. He then calls on them to repent and live a holy life, citing their Macedonian brothers as examples. He ends the letter by not only re-stressing his apostolic authority but amidst all the false witnessing that is taking place, he is also concerned for their faith. He concludes by asking them to meditate over the reality of what they profess.

Unlike some of his other letters, there is no dispute to Pauline authorship with both letters to the Corinthians. Yet some contend that there is a co-writer for the second letter in the form of Timothy (2 Cor 1:1). In fact there is much contention as to whether or not 1 Corinthians is Paul’s very first letter to the church and for that, there are many differing opinions.

It is said by some that there could be as many as four or more letters to the same church. All of these letters identify the Corinth church’s myriad problems that were eventually resolved at huge emotional costs to Paul and no doubt at least some of the early Christians in Corinth.

These letters could well be the following:

-         Paul’s actual first letter to the Corinthians, said to be lost, is supposed to address specific questions that were raised in a letter supposedly sent to him from the church including some more serious issues that visitors from Corinth had reported.

This is apparently the one mentioned in 1 Cor 5:9, which talks about a missing correspondence that warned against relationships with sinners and the sexually immoral. Some claim that parts of this lost letter might have been ‘preserved’ in 1 Cor 6:12-20 and also 2 Cor 6:14-7:1.

-         There is another one (2:4), which is sandwiched between the two known letters, meaning that 2 Corinthians would actually be the final letter that Paul wrote to the community.

This second missing letter is sometimes referred to as a ‘stem’ letter in which Paul, under great distress wrote to expel a malicious ringleader (2 Cor 2:3-9, 7:8-12) who was involved in faux teachings and was also responsible for verbally attacking the apostle. Parts of this letter are said to be found in 2 Cor 10:1-13:10.

-         However there is much debate about 2 Cor 10-13 (mentioned above). Although there is no dispute as to the Pauline authenticity of the two letters we have today, modern scholars believe that the verses of 2 Cor 10-13 are tonally different enough to remain contestable particularly when they are compared to the precious chapters 1 to 9.

These scholars claim that the differences are too dramatic to be avoided or ignored and so they suggest four options:

o   The first suggestion is that 2 Cor 10-13 constitutes a separate letter to 2 Cor 1-9. By separating them, the former would become the actual second letter, the one that was deemed missing all this while.

o   In the second, modern scholars allege that 2 Cor 10-13 was written separately at a particular time, which they take to properly explain the different tone and approach that Paul used.

o   The third option suggests that 2 Cor 10-13 constitutes the fifth letter that is, after the fourth represented by 2 Cor 1-9.

o   The fourth and last option considers the chapters 10 to 13 in 2 Corinthians to be part of the latter but likely written at a different (later) time and under a different set of circumstances.

Of the four options, none are decisive or irrefutable or fully agreed by all modern scholars. However there are suggestions that the first two (options) are the least likely and that between the third and the fourth, the latter appears marginally more convincing even if none of them are unanimously acceptable.

City of Corinth (Image source: travelinstylegreece.com

-         There is also the possibility that a ‘glad’ letter that is partly reproduced in the first segment of 2 Cor 1-9 including 13:11-14. 2 Cor 7:6 tells us that Paul was reconciled with the Corinthians after Titus, on returning from Corinth, had come bearing positive reports.  

For the purpose of this overview, we consider 1 and 2 Corinthians to be the first and second letters and so we will be disregarding the letters that are allegedly lost.

Paul wrote 1 Corinthian during his two-and-a-half stay in the city of Ephesus, which is now in modern western Turkey and this likely occurred around 55AD during his third missionary journey, after spending some time in Palestine. 2 Corinthians was completed within the following year while he was residing in Macedonia (2 Cor 2:12-13, 7:5, 8:1-5, 9:2).

To understand who Paul’s readers were with these letters, a brief understanding of the historical city of Corinth is necessary:

The church in Corinth largely comprised Gentile Christians. Corinth itself was a major commercial centre second only to Athens and also a capital city of Achaia. This was where Paul had stayed for eighteen months of his second missionary journey (Acts 18:11). As a Roman colony, Corinth enjoyed the pleasures of life amidst a peaceful and stable environment owing to its legal system, culture and religion.

Corinth is located on an isthmus and was at the centre of the Isthmian Games, similar in form to Athen’s Olympic Games and with that, there was the same epicurean preoccupation over body and mind. Like modern-day Marseille, Corinth was a vibrant port city with a motley cosmopolitan blend comprising Romans, Greeks and Jews, freedman and slaves mixing it with the wealthy and the impoverished.

Corinth’s worldview was of course influenced by its social composition predominated by hedonistic Roman-style paganism, which would have been very intimidating for young fledgling and freshly minted Christians particularly in areas like wisdom and spirituality. Spiritually weaker Christians would have found things very hard when it came to how they conceived charismatic gifts and love (8:1-11:1).

Corinthian society’s reverence for the rhetorical intellectual power of Greek and Roman speakers was amply matched by the city’s ill-reputation for massive corruption and moneyed-politics. Spellbound by impressive rhetoric, the people of Corinth were broadly repulsed by Paul’s passionate call to preach Christ, preferring the grand impressionism of oratorical eloquence.

For young and impressionable Christians living through such times, the impact and pressure would have been intensely foreboding. Such an understanding of Corinthian society should provide us with the setting behind which the first and second letters to the church in Corinth were written.

It is therefore unsurprising that Corinthians were too smug to understand the true blessings that were to come. Given the climate of disdain and reprehension, it is not difficult to see Paul as an enemy of Corinthian society but what might be harder to imagine is that he could also be hated within the church itself although this might not be very apparent when 1 Corinthians was written.

Ancient Corinth (Image source: tes.com)

However by the time the second letter was completed, Paul’s opposition became more evident, visibly in the form of outside spiritual leaders who had by now taken over control of the church (2 Cor 10-13). These enemies were not very obvious in 1 Corinthians but then they might have been as divided among themselves as they were in being collectively against him. 2 Cor 10-13 identifies these enemies as Judaisers but unlike the typical radical followers of Judaism, they were neither pro-circumcision nor pro-law. On the contrary they were avowed self-indulgent epicureans with a craving for power, glamour, luxury and sensual pleasures.

Just like his letter to the Romans, the First and Second Letters to the Corinthians represent works of mammoth proportions by any apostle for that matter. They are also hugely significant in so many ways. As many as nine themes course through the two letters including 1 Cor 15, which is Paul’s great argument for the Gospel in opposition against the Corinthian denial of Christ’s resurrection.

There is also Paul’s articulation over the law that resulted in him imposing some restraint (1 Cor 9:19-23), or the one where men and women should relate to one another in relationships (1 Cor 11:2-16, 14:34-35), how he defines spiritual gifts and how they contribute to their prophetic nature (1 Cor 12-14) and then, last but not least, the resurrection of Christ as mentioned earlier.

These letters to the church in Corinth offer us a vivid impression of Paul the theologian, the pastor, the apostle and no less, the man himself. They also give us an early portrayal of the church in its infancy days, revealing Paul wrote with intriguing detail that makes these letters an indispensable user’s instruction manual on the building of a church’s foundation.

Last but not least, Paul’s writings have also helped us to focus on the Christian existence that gravitates towards the cross that itself brings to life, a new meaning of love in “the most excellent way” for believers to live a life in Christ.

1. There was an earlier letter that Paul had apparently written to the Corinthians that is now lost. Hence this letter is now considered the default first, which is why the Church refers to it as 1 Corinthians.

 Part ten (Letter to the Galatians) will be available on February 10 2016