First Letter to the Corinthians – Part One

LET’S KNOW THE BIBLE

After having considered the Letter to the Romans, masterpiece of the Pauline gospel, today we consider the First Letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians. It is before the Letter to the Romans, about a year earlier; it is a wonderful and varied letter, decidedly colloquial and familiar; it is not a systematic work; Paul did not write to the Corinthians to address the treatment of a theological argument, but to respond to concrete situations in which the Christian community living in Corinth found itself.

Paul himself had founded that community in the year 50 and had lived there in Corinth in the isthmus city, for a year and a half. The community was large and lively. Corinth was a very active but troubled city, without culture, without tradition, because it had been recently destroyed and rebuilt and, therefore, the population was coming from all the regions of the Mediterranean and, above all, it was an Italic population formed by slaves or former legionaries of Caesar; therefore, a mixed and varied population mainly made up of poor people, mostly slaves engaged in the great work of the port of Corinth.

But amid these people, the proclamation of the Gospel was successful, and a determined community was created, lively and enthusiastic, but precisely because there was this enthusiasm, some problems arose. A few years after Paul had left Corinth, the community was in difficulties precisely because of the divisions that had been created within the Christian group and so Paul, while he was in Ephesus, in the year 56, wrote the Corinthian community this letter. It’s not the first one in the sense that in this same letter the apostle says he had already written, but this earlier epistle has not been preserved. The technicians call it ‘Protocanonical letter,’ that is, it precedes the canonical one.

We take into consideration this letter which has been preserved and is an anthology of problems that the apostle faces. It is clearly divided into two parts. The first six chapters correspond to Paul’s reaction to receiving some news about the life of the Christian community of Corinth; while the second part, from chapter 7 to the end of chapter 16, is a series of responses that the apostle offers to the questions expressed by the community of Corinth itself and that was posed to him. We begin our commentary with the first part.

In the beginning, as usual, Paul greets, he says his name and that of the addressees, he also brings the greetings of Sosthenes, a native of Corinth who now lives with Paul; he wishes peace and the grace of God the Father as is his custom in the opening of the letters, and then addresses the problem directly. He says that he has heard from Chloe’s family that “there is discord among you.” We don’t know who Chloe’s family were, probably sailors, personnel of a company that originated from Corinth also had work in Ephesus. Paul must have met with some people from Corinth and, speaking of the situation in the city and of the Christian community, he learned that divisions had arisen within the Corinthian church. Reacting to this news, he writes.

The problem is presented like this: “I refer to what each one goes around saying: I am of Paul, I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, I am of Christ.” With this synthetic form, Paul has synthesized the existence of four groups. The Christian community of Corinth has fragmented, and some groups refer to someone as a leader. The leading group is Paul’s group. They are his friends, his disciples, the directly related ones with the apostle Paul, but when he left Corinth, his place in the leadership of the congregation was taken by one Apollos, a Christian from Alexandria, Egypt, a Jew well instructed in the holy scriptures, an able preacher, able to comment in-depth the holy scriptures.

Apollos is in perfect agreement with Paul but inevitably has a different style, and as it often happens also in our communities, when the parish priest or the bishop changes, there are always those who yearn for the previous one or support the current one saying that he is better than the former. And so, we end up with a community divided between the followers of Paul and those who prefer to follow Apollos, leaving Paul aside.

In this way, the two groups ended up looking at each other in a reproachful way and criticizing each other. As if that were not enough, a third group was also created, those referred to Cephas, that is, Peter. Not that Peter was present in person at Corinth, but they knew him as the chief apostle, the head of the Judeo-Christian community in Jerusalem, so it is probable that Peter was mentioned by conservatives of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in controversy with Paul, who on the other hand is decidedly open-minded. Finally, in this series of discussions as to which apostle to follow, a fourth group must have been created, which denied human mediation and turned directly to Christ, rejecting the apostles Paul, Apollos, and Peter.

This small summary allows us to see how within the community, the discussions and contrasts were alive. But the main problem that Paul now emphasizes in the first four chapters of this letter is the problem of wisdom, that is, of knowledge. It is a problem reminiscent of the question of Gnosticism. In Greek, the word ‘gnosis’ means knowledge and is the term that characterizes many movements of thought in the ancient world.

There is also a Christian Gnosticism, that is, a way of looking at Christianity as knowledge, as conquest of reason, as cognitive deepening of the hidden mysteries. This movement of knowledge is linked to Greek philosophy, especially to Platonism. It despises matter and gives great weight to spirit and intelligence. The serious thing is that this mentality of human knowledge contrasts matter with spirit; the body, physical reality, and therefore, moral behavior, to the world of ideas, thoughts, and reasoning, and is content with the level of knowledge. Interested to know, to understand and comprehend more than what has been said and revealed, therefore, to reconstruct, by the fantasy of intelligence, an incomprehensible divine world.

The practical consequence is that all that is earthly human, the physical is rejected. The practical consequence is that this gnostic movement does not take into consideration moral behavior at all and separates theory from practice; it affirms that practice is useless, worthless; what counts is the theory, and consequently, there will also be a rejection of the resurrection of the flesh, conforming to an abstract idea of the immortality of the soul. Therefore, it created in the Christian community an important theological question.

Beyond the division between the different groups, this argumentation is problematic about knowledge, about the way authentic theology should be done. We must recognize that within the Corinthian community there was someone, we can imagine a small group of people, interested in what today we would call theology, in search of a theology and theological deepening. The Hellenistic mentality and culture very much influence people. And this interest led these people to deepen outside of the proclamation of the Gospel, and not only that, but it also placed them in a position of presumed superiority, because they knew theology, they thought they were superior, and thus, despised those who did not follow their arguments.

A formula we find in this letter and that can serve as a key to read the whole text is this: ‘Science puffs up, charity builds up.’ Behind the word ‘science,’ there is the Greek word ‘gnosis,’ therefore we must not understand science in our modern, technical, scientific way, but it is the abstract knowledge, the philosophical elucubration that puffs up, that is, that makes proud, whereas it is the ‘agape,’ charity, that builds up, that builds a community. In the face of the exaltation of ‘gnosis,’ Paul exalts agape.

Let us see in this first part how the apostle raises the question: “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” To the pretended human wisdom, Paul contrasts the word of the cross. In Greek, it says ‘logos,’ so we could translate it as ‘the logic of the cross;’ seems stupid to the human mentality, whereas it is the power of God. “For since in the wisdom of God the world did not come to know God through wisdom, it was the will of God through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who have faith.”

There is divine wisdom that surpasses human wisdom. There is a greater plan which man with his intellectual strength cannot know, and God wisely intervenes to save, with seemingly absurd preaching, which overturns the present mentality and logic. “For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” Another cultural contrast between Jews and Greeks. The Jewish tradition expects a powerful manifestation of God, says that they look for miraculous signs; that is, they expect God to demonstrate some sign of power, of his intervention. Whereas the desire of the Greeks is for wisdom, knowledge, philosophy, of an intelligent system that explains everything to them.

To this, the apostles propose Christ crucified. Not a doctrine but a person. He is a person with a tragic human history, a man who ended up condemned. to the infamous punishment of the cross, but such a man is a scandal to the Jews (scandal meaning a stone of stumbling) in the sense that looking for a manifestation of the power of God and simply finding a man who ended badly, one finds oneself blocked, not helped.

On the other hand, for the Greeks who were seeking wisdom, a crucified man is meaningless. A man, an individual, who ended so badly, cannot explain everything, makes no sense, and yet Paul is convinced that Christ crucified is the explanation of everything. “But to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” To the Jews, it seems weak, but no, it is the power of God; to the Greeks, it seems stupid, but no, it is the wisdom of God.

Paul brings about this profound revolution concerning the Jewish mentality and the Greek mentality to center everything in Christ, that is, to pass from preconceived ideas to the historical reality of the person of Jesus Christ. It is his history that determines everything, and therefore it is necessary to overcome the cultural preconceptions, both Jews as well as Greeks, to welcome this novelty; it is the logic of the cross, it is the weakness of God that actually is much stronger than man; it is the foolishness of God which is much wiser than man. Paul says to the addressees: “Consider your own calling, brothers. Not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.” The Christian community of Corinth was made up mostly of simple people. “Rather, God chose the foolish of the world to shame the wise, and God chose the weak of the world to shame the strong, and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something.”

This is the logic of the cross, and Paul undertakes to preach this Gospel of the wisdom of God precisely, challenging the presumption of those who think they know, stressing the importance of availability to the work of God. Paul relates his own experience of evangelism to people who knew it well: “I planted, Apollos—who came after me—watered” … but it is not important who plants and who waters it; it is important God who makes it grow. What the apostle emphasizes is the centrality of Jesus Christ, thus, recognizing the importance and the foundation of apostleship and ministry, that always remains in Christ alone, and it is his history that determines the logic of wisdom.

Christ is wisdom; his historical experience cannot be ignored in reconstructing the plan of salvation. It is a philosophical scheme that explains the world. After this first great part, which occupies four chapters, Paul addresses, in a much shorter form, three other more practical questions, of which he has heard, perhaps from the people of Chloe.

In chapter 5, speaks of a serious case of immorality: there is a person in Corinth who lives incestuously with his father’s wife, who evidently is his stepmother. It is a situation of immorality also for the Greek world. This person evidently has some authority in the Christian community, and although his personal life and morals is incorrect; he has a public function; perhaps he is a teacher, responsible for the community. Paul argues that this separation between theory and practice is detrimental, and so he intervenes very harshly, asking, also in this specific case, for a correction.

This coherence is necessary, and he gives an example inspired by the Passover rite. Leaven is eliminated before celebrating the Passover because leaven is the principle of ferment and it is a negative principle, then how do you eliminate the yeast to have an unleavened dough? Thus, it is necessary to eliminate the leavenings of evil. This passage suggests that the letter was written in the imminence of the Passover feast. In fact, the apostle says: “For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. 8 Therefore, let us celebrate the feast, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.” A transformation of the person and the community is necessary; coherence is needed. “Therefore, let us celebrate the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”

The other two cases are oriented in the same direction. There have been Christians who have sued other Christians in a pagan court. It is a shameful situation. Paul says: Rather, they should suffer unrighteousness. “You inflict injustice and cheat, and this to brothers.” There is serious misconduct on the part of Christians who denounce one another. This attitude must be completely overcome.

The last question refers to ‘porneia.’ I am not going to translate the term because I do not know a word that can translate this vast concept. We recognize it because it goes to the root of modern words like pornography. It is a disordered sex life with a vast field of meaning. Corinth was a dissolute city, and so the people who lived there had rather licentious habits. Converted to Christianity, many people kept this licentious attitude, and Paul must reiterate the sacredness of the body.

Perhaps the Gnostic idea that the body does not matter could justify any attitude. They hold that is enough to have the theory, to know the Gospel, and to believe with the head, and then what the body does is indifferent. Paul upholds the necessity of coherence and the elimination of all that is evil. “For you have been purchased at a price.” Christ has redeemed you with his blood, “Therefore glorify God in your body.” Concretely, theory and practice are one reality in the Christian life. This is the wisdom of Jesus Christ; this is what Paul teaches in the First Letter to the Corinthians.