Reading: 1 Corinthians 1-2, Psalm 141
Today we start reading the first letter of Paul to the Corinthian church. If you remember back to the book of Acts, you will recall that this was one of the many cities that Paul and his traveling companions visited during their journeys, and that like most cities they were at some point quite unwelcome there. Corinth was a provincial capital and as such enjoyed a great deal of autonomy in the Roman empire. It also helps that Julius Caesar personally re-founded Corinth after it’s total destruction a hundred or so years earlier, making it a little more Roman than Greek. The city had a reputation in the ancient world of being extremely cosmopolitan. Just about anybody could find a place in the city of Corinth. Until the next earthquake destroyed it, anyway.
Paul is writing his letter in the company of another major figure from Corinth, a guy named Sosthenes. If you remember, this was the guy who was getting wailed upon by a crowd of malcontents from Thessalonica who really didn’t like Paul. They local magistrate was totally disinterested and told them to figure it out themselves, while ignoring the violence going on in front of him. Apparently following this fabulous experience of civic life in Corinth, Sosthenes decided to leave town with Paul. Can hardly blame him.
Anyway, they are writing this letter to the Corinthian church to address some things that Paul has gotten wind of through various means. There are a number of problems, as we will see through the next several days, but they really all boil down to the same issue that Paul addressed in the letter to the Roman church: the Corinthians were elevating that which does not matter over that which does. They were ignoring the wisdom of God in order to determine for themselves what good and bad look like. It is the old story of taking forbidden fruit carried right on into the New Testament, and it has led to division and disunity.
The first source of disunity that Paul addresses has to do with who baptized who. It was fairly common in both Jewish and Greek culture of the time to have popular teachers who would found their own school. Paul himself is the product of one of these schools, led by a Pharisaic rabbi named Gamaliel. It seems clear that this tradition had found it’s way into the Corinthian church with the result of competing sects of those who followed various early Christian leaders. What exactly the differences between them were we do not know, but Paul is not pleased with what is happening in any event. To those who claim to follow him, he sarcastically asks if their baptism was into the name of Paul, challenging any assertion of authority other than that of Jesus as Lord. Like the Roman church, Paul is making sure that the Corinthians understand that Jesus is the sole judge, King, ruler, and Lord. There is to be no division among the people of God based on who taught or baptized who. This might be worth remembering among Christians today who tout labels like Calvinist or Arminian, Orthodox or Catholic. Were we baptized into the name of Calvin? Was the Pope crucified for you? Such division would have gotten little tolerance from the apostle Paul.
But Paul understands that this is a surface issue, not the deeper one that is causing the division. He starts talking about wisdom. He spends a great deal of time talking about it, actually. I think Paul is looking past the personalities involved in the conflict among the Corinthians and going for the root cause: the desire to have our own wisdom. Paul makes the point rather strongly that self discovered wisdom is useless. It is no better that what the Greeks have. It is worse than what the Jews have, because it is not even the Hebrew Scriptures that were given by God. Human wisdom, the knowledge of what is right and wrong as determined by human experience and thought, is not what the gospel is all about. These human teachers that the Corinthians are claiming to follow are no more capable of saving them than the Greek philosophers or the Jewish Pharisees. It is only the wisdom declared from God that saves. It is the only way back to the tree of life.