THE WRITINGS OF PAUL

CHAPTER VIII

THE LETTERS TO THE CORINTHIANS

DURING Paul's stay of a year and a half in Corinth he had founded a church there which consisted almost exclusively of former heathen, and for the most part of people of the lowest classes. When he left Corinth for Ephesus he maintained relations with the Corinthian church. He probably wrote, soon after his departure, an epistle, now lost, in which he called upon the Corinthian Christians to break off fraternal intercourse with any who continued the practice of heathen immoralities (1 Cor. v. 9). Thereupon the Corinthian church sent the apostle a letter in which it seems to have described this demand as too rigorous and impracticable, pointing out that on the principle that we ought to have no intercourse with any immoral person (v. 10) it would be necessary to go out of the world altogether. Besides this, the letter also contained a series of questions upon points of conduct on which divergent opinions, stricter and laxer, prevailed in the Church. Was married life in any case worthy of a Christian, and in particular was it permissible for a Christian husband or wife to continue to live with one who

66

was not a Christian? Was the eating of meats which had been offered to idols allowable for a Christian? What was the right opinion as to the value of 'spiritual gifts," and in particular of "speaking with tongues"? How were they to organise the collection which Paul desired to have made? Might they not hope for the return of Apollos in the near future?1 These questions, asked in the letter of the Corinthian church, formed one motive for the writing of a second letter by Paul-our "First Epistle to the Corinthians." But a further motive was supplied by the verbal reports which the apostle had received, partly from the messenger who brought this letter, partly from the servants of a Corinthian lady (Chloe) who had come to Ephesus. These reports were by no means of a nature to cause him satisfaction; they drew the picture of a congregation which was in a condition of religious confusion and dissension, and of moral disintegration and degeneration.

To the formation of religious factions an unintentional impulse had been given by the activity of Apollos, a Jewish Christian versed in the Alexandrian philosophy, who had come to Corinth after Paul's departure. His method of teaching differed from that of Paul, in the first place in being presented in a strikingly rhetorical form, and also by the use of Alexandrian speculation and allegorical interpretation of Scripture. It had so impressed many members of the church, not only by its eloquent presentation, but also through the suggestion of a deeper wisdom,

1 Cf. 1 Cor. vii. 1, viii. 1, xii. 1, xvi. 1, 12, where the recurrent περὶ δέ indicates a reference to a point in the letter of the

Corinthians.

through the charm of mystery in its idealistic speculations, that they saw in Apollos their true master, the teacher of a higher Christianity. No doubt Apollos himself did not propound any teachings essentially at variance with Paul's; he only sought to reinforce the Gospel which was common to both, by means of the Alexandrian philosophy and methods of exegesis. We find him later among the companions of Paul at Ephesus and on the best of terms with him (1 Cor. xvi. 12). But, as always happens in such cases, the adherents went much further than their masters. They were not content with a mere use of the forms of the Alexandrian philosophy, but worked out, by means of it, a gnostic Christianity for themselves, which doubtless differed in essential points from the simple gospel of Paul. Of what kind are we to suppose it to have been? Was it a Christianity adapted to the world on the lines of the secular heathen philosophy? But that would by no means correspond to the character of the Alexandrian religious philosophy, which was based on the principles of the dualistic Platonic idealism, and took throughout a spiritualistic, mystical, and ascetical direction nearly akin to that of Essenism. Of the errors to which such a philosophy might give rise on Christian soil, we have a clear example in the case of the false teachers at Colosse; their spiritualism led to an undervaluing of the historical saving work of Christ, to mystical intercourse with the spirit-world, and to an ascetic dread of all that was material as something unclean and standing in close relation with the world of evil spirits. When, therefore, we find among the errors combated by Paul in writing

to the Corinthians (alongside of quite other and opposite errors) traits of precisely the same kind as those of the gnostic heresy at Colosse, the conjecture, in my opinion, naturally suggests itself that we should see in these traits the distinguishing marks of the Alexandrian-Gnostic Apollos - party. In this connection it is worthy of notice that Paul at the outset, in the first chapter, where he is opposing especially the Apollos-party, emphasises the unique saving virtue of the death of Christ upon the cross against their so-called philosophy which tended to depreciate it; no doubt, therefore, they substituted a spiritualistic theory of redemption for this unique historical redemptive work of Christ. Since they despised the material body, they naturally could not believe in its resurrection, any more than did Philo or the Essenes; we may therefore see in the deniers of the resurrection, against whom the polemic of 1 Cor. xv. is directed, the followers of Apollos. It was not Epicurean indifference but dualistic Spiritualism which formed the motive of this denial. But they seem also, like the Essenes (and also probably the Colossian ascetics-Col. ii. 21) to have held marriage in aversion, and to have forbidden the entering on, or continuance in, that state as unworthy of the Christian; so the protest of Paul against this rigorism in chapter vii. is doubtless addressed to the Apollosparty. The anxious avoidance of any partaking of meat offered to idols also looks like a characteristic of theirs, though in this they may well have made common cause with the party of Peter. We may regard all these traits, which suggest an AlexandrianGnostic Christianity, as a mark of the Corinthian

Apollos-party. It was not in principle opposed to Paul, but emphasised in a one-sided fashion the idealism and dualism which were not inherently foreign to his mode of thought. On another side their rigorous asceticism was in touch with the legalistic standpoint of the Petrine-party. Thus the Alexandrianism of the Apollos-party formed in this early instance, as it continued to do throughout the whole of early Christianity, the middle-term and bond of connection between Paulinism and Judaism -it is perhaps significant that in i. 12 the Apollosparty is placed in the middle, between the parties of Paul and Peter.

If the Apollos-party had so travestied the attitude of Apollos that he no longer cared to identify himself with them (his refusal to return to Corinth, xvi. 12, proved that), the same thing had taken place in a still more marked fashion in regard to the Pauline party and to the apostle Paul. The two things hang together. The ascetic exaggerations of the former party naturally provoked the latter to push their master's principles of liberty to an extreme on the other side. Not that a loose morality had been first introduced into the Corinthian church by the Pauline doctrine of freedom from the law; it had always been the prevailing tone of Corinthian life. But it can quite well be conceived that the Pauline doctrines of the expiation of all sins by the death of Christ, of justification by faith, of the abrogation of the law, of the liberty of the spirit, of the brotherhood and equality of all in Christ, had been misinterpreted by many as giving licence to sin, and abused to the deadening of conscience and the abandonment of