The
City of CorinthPaul's Letter to the Corinthians
Paul probably wrote 1 Cor. from Ephesus ca. 53-55 CE. He wrote this letter primarily to address certain problems in the congregation. He’s not as mad as he was when he wrote Galatians, but he still seems unhappy with the goings-on in Corinth.
The
City of Corinth
There are two main stages of the history of Corinth in Antiquity.
1) Old Corinth - Corinth was an ancient Greek city, the golden age of which was in the 4th cen. BCE (EDB). It was a member of the “Achaean League,” which was an organization of Greek cities that had banded together for mutual protection. Old Corinth was commonly referred to as “wealthy Corinth” because of its prosperity. It was a chief center for trade, and “the safest and most direct trade route from Asia to Italy” (Furnish, 4).
Old Corinth had a reputation for sexual vice, to the extent that Aristophanes (ca. 450-385 BCE) coined the term korinthazō ("act like a Corinthian," which meant to commit acts of sexual immorality). Venereal disease was extremely common (Fee, 2). Corinth was a seaport town where people came and went on business; money was readily available.
In the mid second century BCE, the Achaean league made the mistake of opposing the expansion of Rome, and Corinth was destroyed in 146 BCE. What was once a great center of commerce was now largely reduced to rubble.
2) Roman Corinth - In 44 BCE, Corinth was restored to prominence. Julius Caesar made it a Roman colony (this was a smart move on his part, because of Corinth’s strategic location). In 27 BCE it became the capital of Achaea.
Most Roman colonies were settled by soldiers, and their inhabitants were Roman citizens. This was not the case with Corinth. When the city was repopulated, most of the people who moved there were freed slaves of little financial means. Most of the population was probably drawn from the eastern Mediterranean (Furnish, 7). People came there seeking wealth. By the time of Paul, tens of thousands of people lived there and it was once again a thriving urban center (Furnish, 10).
From ancient sources, we know that Corinth was considered the “the epitome of crass materialism… and moral decadence” (Furnish, 13). Its culture was largely materialistic, its population was largely uneducated, and the poor were commonly exploited by the rich (Furnish, 13).
Corinth did not have a landed aristocracy, because its inhabitants came there as a part of a repopulation effort. Therefore, an “aristocracy of money” developed. Some people struck it rich, but the vast majority did not. Hence, “thousands of artisans and slaves made up the bulk of the population.” The wealth and spending of those who did strike it rich likely had a “trickle down” affect on the lower classes (Fee, 2).
Corinth had a very diverse population and an equally diverse religious environment. There were all kind of Greek cults, Egyptian cults, other eastern religions, and the emperor cult; there were also Jews. Apparently, there were not Christians until Paul founded the church there.
“All of this evidence together suggests that Paul’s Corinth was at once the New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas of the ancient world” (Fee, 3).
Status and Honor in the Greco-Roman World
In order to comprehend some of the argument in 1 Cor, it’s important to understand how deeply engrained notions of status and honor were for most people who lived in the Roman Empire.
Status
In the ancient Greco-Roman world, status was very highly valued, much like wealth is today in the 21st cen. US. There were various categories of people, such as slaves, freed slaves, citizens, equestrians, and senators.
Equestrians, senators, and various “friends” of the emperor made up the Roman elite. The upper stratum, in which less than one percent of the population of the empire was located, was comprised of the traditional Roman aristocracy, plus local nobles and “certain intellectuals who had gained renown as orators or philosophers” (Meeks, 33).
Within the lower strata, status was still quite important. “Even slaves within a household ranked themselves; those with more desirable jobs had higher prestige than menials and had the fact recorded on their tombstones…” (Meeks, 34).
Honor
The ancient Mediterranean has often been described as an “honor and shame” culture. “Honor is the value of a person in his or her own eyes (that is, one’s claim to worth) plus that person’s value in the eyes of his or her social group. Honor is a claim to worth along with the social acknowledgment of worth. Members of a society share the sets of meanings and feelings bound up in the symbols of authority, gender status, and respect” (Malina, 30).
In 6.7 we read, “[T]o have lawsuits at all with one another is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?” The answer that a Corinthian might give to this question would be, “Because it’s an affront to my honor, the public acknowledgment of my worth.”
Honor is tied closely to status, which was a ready-made structure for the social acknowledgment of worth.
Problems in the Church
Paul founded the congregation in Corinth, and he remained there for a year-and-a-half, which seems to have been quite a long time for Paul to remain with one congregation. After he left, however, he received reports that there were disputes, factions, and other problems within the community. 1 Corinthians is meant to address these problems. For example, we see in 10.17 that the members of the Corinthian community are forming different factions, and that they are claiming Paul, Apollos, Cephas, or Christ as figures of authority for their factions. It's not entirely clear what is going on here, but it is evident that there is division in the community.
Moreover, 1.18 ff. seems to indicate that some members of the community are asserting that they have wisdom that others do not possess. These members may be claiming a kind of wisdom that is based on spiritual experience, or they may simply be more educated than the other members of the congregation. Paul, however, instructs them that human wisdom is unimportant compared to God's wisdom, and that God's wisdom is to be found in the cross.
For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God (2.2-5).
How does one get this wisdom? “No one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God” (2.11-12). In 2.14-16, Paul speaks of spiritual discernment. He makes the astounding claim, “We have the mind of Christ.” God's wisdom is given through revelation, and it stands over against human wisdom.
How is this is connected to the divisions within the Corinthian community? Paul asks in 3.3, “[A]s long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not in the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?” He then goes on to ask in 3.16, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?” “You” here is in the plural; it refers to the community, not just to the individual.
Working backwards, the argument goes something like this: The community of faith is God’s temple. God’s Spirit resides in God’s temple. Those who have the Spirit of God comprehend what is truly God’s. The wisdom of the cross, not the wisdom of the world, is God’s wisdom. Therefore, the Corinthians are behaving wrongly by quarrelling and exalting themselves over one another.
Paul's Eschatological Ethic
In 7.1, Paul writes, “Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: ‘It is well for a man not to touch a woman.’” These may be Paul’s own words. He gives them instructions regarding proper sexual behavior between a wife and a husband, but then he says, “This I say by way of concession, not of command. I wish that all were as I myself am.” In other words, it’s best not to marry, but people who can’t control themselves should marry.
In ch. 7, Paul is basically saying that Christians should maintain their current status and situation. For example, the married person should stay married, and the single person should stay single (unless the single person can't control his or her sexual urges). This is an eschatological ethic. Paul thought that the world was coming to an end very soon, and, therefore, he thought that people should maintain their current life-situations; in the near future, all worldly concerns would come to an end. Christians should devote their lives to God, and not worry so much about long-term plans for the future.
Paul and the Ethics of Love
Eschatology doesn’t entirely account for Paul’s understanding of how people should behave. For example, consider the problems that are addressed in 11.17 ff. It seems that some people (likely the ones with more status and money) are eating the Lord's Supper (which was more like a potluck dinner than the "communion" services that go on in churches today) without waiting for the poorer members to show up, and without sharing their food. "For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God an humiliate those who have nothing?" For Paul, this kind of behavior is an affront to the notion of "community" that should exist among members of the church. People who are behaving selfishly, who are making use of their status, who are seeking honor, and who are disregarding those of lower status, are forgetting the central aspect of Paul's gospel: Christ crucified.
Likewise, when Paul discusses spiritual gifts in chs. 12 and 14, the same principle is at work. It seems that some people in the church are attempting to demonstrate the depth of their spirituality by speaking in tongues - speaking ecstatically in a language (a heavenly language?) that they do not know. Paul's problem is not with the act of speaking in tongues. He states in 14.18, "I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you...." The point that he wants to communicate is that, while tongues can be useful for personal edification, prophecy is to be preferred in worship, because prophecy builds up the community. "Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church" (14.4).
This notion of how Christians are to live in community with one another is rooted in Paul's discussion of love in ch. 13. Love is the central feature of Paul's ethics.
Basically, there are three different Greek words that we translate as "love":
1) philia – love between friends; friendship
(2) erōs – romantic love; desire
(3) agapē – in this context, it means love between Christian sisters and brothers, as well as God’s love.
Paul is using the last of these terms, agapē. As you read through ch. 13, think about the problems that Paul addresses in the letter and the ways that this description of love offers solutions to these problems. "Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth."
Paul is undercutting cultural notions of what it means to be successful, to be honored, and to have status. In place of these cultural notions, he offers the cross, which, while foolishness to humans, is really God’s wisdom. This is all part of Paul’s overarching argument that, in the community in which the Spirit of God resides, certain social behavior is acceptable, and certain social behavior is unacceptable. At the root of what is acceptable is love; at the root of what is unacceptable are all of the things that Greco-Roman culture tells people that they need to pursue: money, status, public recognition, personal gain, etc.
Sources:
Fee, Gordon D. The First Epistle to the Corinthians. New International Commentary on the New Testament, gen. ed. Gordon D. Fee. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987.
Freedman, David Noel, ed. Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible. Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2000.
Furnish, Victor Paul. II Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Anchor Bible 32A, gen. eds. William Foxwell Albright and David Noel Freedman. New York: Doubleday, 1984.
Malina, Bruce J. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. Lousiville: WJKP, 2001.
Meeks, Wayne A. The Moral World of the First Christians. Library of Early Christianity, gen. ed. Wayne A. Meeks. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986.