AUTHOR

The first letter to the Corinthians was written by the apostle Paul. Few scholars debate his authorship. Moreover, evidence from second-century manuscripts leaves no doubt about the integrity of the text as a whole.

Setting authorship and textual issues to one side, it should be noted that the initiative to write this letter was not entirely Paul’s. The church in Corinth was in some degree of turmoil, and Paul wrote this letter in response to some disturbing reports he had heard from the church as well as by way of reply to a set of questions the church had sent to him. Paul used these questions and concerns to set the agenda for this masterly letter. He addressed the issues of wisdom (chaps. 1–4), sexual practices (chaps. 5–7), pagan sacrifices (chaps. 8–10), behavior in church (chaps. 11–14), and the resurrection of the body (chap. 15). As in other letters, Paul touched on personal issues in his final chapter.

DATE

Since Acts includes references to two datable events in the Roman world, we can use those to date the letters to the Corinthians. The first event was the expulsion of Jews from Rome in AD 49 by the Emperor Claudius (a date we can find reference to in the writings of the historian Suetonius, Claudius 25.4). This mass exodus brought Aquila and Priscilla to Corinth (Ac 18:2). The second datable event was the appointment of Gallio as governor of the province of Achaia in mid AD 51 (based on the Gallio inscription found at Delphi). Luke noted in Acts 18:12 that “Gallio was proconsul of Achaia” while Paul was in Corinth.

We are able to say, therefore, that Paul arrived in Corinth sometime in AD 50 and left about the middle of AD 52 (Ac 18:11). Some months later Paul came to Ephesus, where he remained for around three years. Toward the end of his ministry there, he wrote 1 Corinthians, most likely dated AD 54, although it appears that Paul also wrote an earlier letter that has not survived (1Co 5:9).

THEMES

Many have observed that the powerful pagan culture of the city of Corinth affected the values and behavior of these new Christians and that 1 Corinthians is Paul’s corrective to these pressures. In chapters 1–4 Paul engaged in debate over the “wisdom of this world”; in chapters 5–7 he addressed Corinth’s prevalent sexuality and lawsuits; in chapters 8–10 the issue is the city’s idol worship; in chapters 11–14 he confronted them for allowing worldliness into the church in the rich/poor division and the love of personal display in the church meetings; finally, in chapter 15, Paul responded to Greek skepticism about the resurrection of the body. In a sense, then, 1 Corinthians is about the clash in Greco-Roman Corinth between the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ and the multifaceted pagan culture of that day.

Perhaps not so often noticed is the likely underlying problem in Corinth and the reason Paul needed to write: this was a young church, and Paul had now been absent from them longer than he had been with them. The church appears to have been unsettled by visits from the gifted Apollos and the apostolic Peter—unsettled, that is, in regard to Paul’s role as their “father” in the gospel. It also seems that local leaders had arisen in the past two or three years and were taking pride in their eloquence (“wisdom”) and objecting to Paul’s ongoing apostolic oversight exercised from a distance. Paul wrote to counteract these problems and to provide a clear vision for the direction of the young church.