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[First posted 2012. Continuing “What did Paul Achieve,” Chapter 5 of Charles Freeman’s A New History of Early Christianity; condensed and slightly edited. Please get a copy of the book for your library.–Admin1.]
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Corinth may have been the first city where Paul had an opportunity to preach over an extended period. (Acts suggests that he was there for 18 months.) Timothy and Silas joined him.
Again Paul encountered opposition from the Jews although when members of the community attempted to arraign him before the proconsul of the province, Gallio, the latter refused to respond. To him the arguments over Christ were a matter for Jews alone and he was reluctant to get drawn into the dispute. The down-to-earth Roman governors were well known for being exasperated by the intricate discussions so loved in the Greek east. Soon after this incident, Acs tells us that Paul, accompanied by Aquila and Prisca, left Corinth. As is so often the case in this story, one does not know the background; that the three left together may suggest some kind of division within the Corinthian community and their expulsion from it.
When Timothy had rejoined Paul in Corinth, he had reported on a visit he had made on his own to the Thessalonians. Earlier in Acts, Luke suggests that Paul had preached, unsuccessfully, in the synagogue there, but the converts whom Timothy had encountered do not seem to have been Jews at all. They are recorded as having turned from the worship of idols; in other words they had been pagans. They were also artisans and this suggests that Paul was seeking out marginal groups independent of the synagogues.
Not having to worry about offending the Jews, Paul was able to express his frustrations in his First Letter to the Thessalonians. He tells them that the Jews have killed Christ and they have obstructed him in his contacts with the Gentiles. Now, he goes on, retribution has overtaken them. It is possible that Paul is referring to the expulsion of Jews from Rome by the emperor Claudius of which he will have learned from Aquila and Prisca, but there is also the record of a massacre of Jews by the Roman authorities in Jerusalem at this time. Paul’s ‘being all things to all people‘ is on display here in his condemnation of his fellow Jews. His hold on his communities was so fragile that it was an understandable, if distasteful, tactic for one seeking to strengthen his position against his Jewish adversaries.
Paul, soothed by Timothy’s message that the Thessalonians had valued his teaching and respected him, mentions that he has been worried that they too would be seduced from allegiance to him by ‘the tempter.’ Reassured by Timothy of their loyalty, his letter is altogether more relaxed in tone than his impassioned outburst to the Galatians and perhaps reflects that for the first time, in Corinth, he enjoyed some form of psychological security. There was one major issue to address.
The Thessalonians had taken on board Paul’s preaching that the Second Coming of Christ was imminent, so imminent, in fact, that all would be alive to see it, yet some of the community had already died and the rest needed reassurance that all would be saved. The Second Coming, Paul tells them, will come to the unwary like a thief in the night and there will be no escape for those without faith. For believers such as themselves, on the other hand, night will not fall at all. They will always live in the light as they are destined by their faith for salvation. Their duty is to keep sober for the occasion. As elsewhere in Paul’s writings, soberness is associated with sexual continence —lust is linked to paganism.
In the letter Paul explains that ‘Satan’ had thwarted him in his hopes of returning to Thessalonica. After leaving Corinth, he made passage back to Asia Minor. He landed briefly at Ephesus, left Aquila and Prisca there, and appears to have gone on to Jerusalem. He may have had money from his collection to deliver there. He eventually made his way back to Ephesus. This was another of the empire’s most successful trading cities. Bequeathed to Rome by King Attalus III of Pergamum in 133 BC, it had become a major provincial centre, a focus for sea routes and the hub of important roads inland through Asia Minor. It was also the home of the great temple to Artemis to which pilgrims flocked from throughout the Mediterranean. Again, the mix of nationalities and cultures offered opportunities for conversion.
Paul seems to have used his customary tactic of preaching in the synagogue but again he aroused the opposition of the Jews. This time, however, he withdrew his own converts to a separate lecture hall and Acts records that he was able to preach safely for two years. Even now his success offended local interests and a local employer of silversmiths, Demetrius, stirred up the population against a man who threatened the lucrative trade in votive offerings. ‘Great is Diana [the Roman equivalent of Artemis] of the Ephesians’ becams the rallying cry of the rioters. This time the authorities confronted the troublemakers and the city was calmed. However, Paul seems to have left Ephesus soon afterwards.
The short and attractive Letter to Philemon may have been written while Paul was in Ephesus, apparently in some form of custody. Philemon was a Christian, living probably in Colossae. His slave, Onesimus, had escaped and was, for some reason, in the same prison as Paul where Paul became dependent on him. In the letter Paul tells how he is sending back the slave but he pleads for Philemon to be compassionate to him. On one level this letter can be seen as evidence of Paul’s desired church in which slave and free will live together as equal. However, Paul’s sympathy may also reflect his own awareness of slavery, freedom from which had given him his status as a Roman citizen.
It was probably while Paul was at Ephesus that disturbing news arrived from Corinth. The community with which he had formed his closest links was that of Corinth and Paul felt sensitive about its loyalty. The fundamental weakness of his strategy had been cruelly exposed. It was one thing to talk of the passing of the Law and its replacement by faith in Christ but this provided no guidance in how to confront the everyday challenges of living together until Christ returned. A number of problems were reported to him. First the community had been fragmented by rival allegiances. Some had remained loyal to Paul, but others saw Peter as their mentor.
There was now a third leader, one Apollos, an Alexandrian Jew. Apollos had turned up in Ephesus before Paul had arrived there and Prisca and Aquila had heard him speak in the synagogue. He was a Christian who knew something of Jesus but Prisca and Aquila felt that they needed to give him further insturction. they then sent him on to Corinth. They had failed to foresee the impact he would have. He was clearly learned –it has been suggested, in fact, that he may have been a disciple of the Jewish philosopher Philo. His education would have included training in rhetoric so, whatever form his Christianity took, he would have been able to expound it with greater eloquence that Paul (who has to tell the Corinthians that he was himself no speaker). It is not surprising that Apolos created his own following in the fluid world of the early converts especially among those who needed a more intellectually satisfying religion. He may, in fact, have been the first Christian preacher to bring Platonism into Christianity. Plato had argued for an intellectual elite who through years of dedicated study were able to transcend the material world with its desires and ambitions and it seems that it was just this approach that was at the core of Apollos’ teaching.
Alongside intelectual divisions there were also reports of social fragmentation. It is not known how large the Christian community (if one could talk of such a clearly defined group) in Corinth was. Some reports suggest about forty, others perhaps a hundred. The group would have depended on wealthier householders to let them meet for their Eucharistic meals. The allocation of rooms within a Roman house reflected the status of those who entered there, where they would be received and eat, with more intimate friends welcomed further inside to the more private rooms. The Corinthian Christians were allocated places at table according to status with some being forced to eat outside the main dining room. As if this were not enough, Paul’s injunction to love one another was reported to have degenerated into sexual immorality. A man had married his stepmother; another leaders appeared to dress as a woman. It was exactly the kind of behavior that most disturbed Paul
Paul had communicated with them before but this ‘First’ Letter to the Corinthians is the earliest of these letters to survive. While Paul is upset about what he heard of their behavior, he has learned to be less denigrating of his recipients and more modest. He addresses the Corinthians as a community who can be brought back into harmony and avoids the bullying tone he had used for the Galatians. Their disputes should, for example, be resolved within the congregation and they should shun recourse to the pagan courts. He talks of the importance of the Eucharist as a memorial of Christ in which all must share equally. In Chapter 12, he tells how every kind of skill —healing, prophecy and teaching –can be brought together in the service of Christ just as the limbs and organs contribute to a single body. He was developing a vision of a church as a stable and self-governing community. It is also in this letter that he tells of his beliefs in the resurrection, the earliest Christian text to mention it in this context as the spiritual transformation of Jesus after the crucifixion.
There now follows one of his finest outbursts of rhetoric: the hymn to charity, charity that transcends all other gifts. There is perhaps no other passage in his writings that has proved a more enduring inspiration than this and it has resonated through the centuries. Paul goes on to provide a blueprint for worship at which hymns, instruction, revelation and even ecstatic outbursts will be welcomed.
However, it is only men who can contribute. Women have no licence to speak and must direct their concerns to their husbands at home. This stricture may, of course, have been aimed only at the Corinthian community but Paul’s ambivalence towards women is obvious. While the logic of his theology requires that all male and female, slave and free, Jew and Gentile are welcome in the church if they purify themselves (1 Corinthians 6:11 (cf. Galatians 3:28), he also appears fearful of a breakdown of social distinctions. Here is one of the most ambiguous of his legacies. Within 50 years male supremacy appears to have reasserted itself in the Christian communities but there remained an independent tradition in the 3rd century church that Paul had taught that women had the right to teach and baptise.
At some point after this remarkable letter, Paul visited Corinth again. In his 2nd letter to the Corinthians he describes this as a painful visit. His 1st letter had failed to produce the community living in loving harmony that he had hoped for. One individual in particular seems to have led the opposition to him. Another (lost) letter he wrote to the community had caused great offence. The first chapters of the 2nd letter are deeply troubled and rambling, clearly the work of an individual in emotional turmoil. Paul seems overwhelmed with the burdens he is carrying and it is only the promises of Christ that sustain him. the anger with which he condemned the Galatians is replaced by a pleading tone in which he ask the Corinthians for acceptance of his weakness. This chastened Paul is understandably more attractive. Normally he was not a man who understood compromise but he now appears to understand that he must respond to the concerns of the Corinthians rather than impose his views on them.
However, in a separate letter, which was added later to Chapters 1-9, Paul’s emotional state is such that he appears close to breakdown. In a tone reminiscent of Galatians, he is back to a hectoring stance, full of self-justification and the denigration of ‘his’ Christians for being led astray by others, just, he says, as Eve was seduced by the serpent. His rivals appear to have been Hellenistic Jews whose charisma depended on rhetoric and miracle working and Paul feels outclassed by them. He threatens that when he returns to them he will show no mercy and that, somehow, they will see that he, and not other preachers, speaks through Christ. The air of desperation suggests that Paul knows he has lost his flock.
Next: Revisit: Paul 6: Founder of Gentile Christianity