Corinth

Corinth was one of the great cities of the Roman world and the home of the most vividly documented congregation of the apostolic age. Set on the narrow isthmus joining mainland Greece to the Peloponnese, it commanded two harbors — Cenchreae on the Aegean and Lechaeum on the Adriatic — and the portage road between them, making it a teeming crossroads of trade, wealth, and every kind of people. Rome razed the old Greek city in 146 BC and refounded it as a colony in 44 BC; by Paul's day it was the capital of the province of Achaia, prosperous, cosmopolitan, and notorious for its immorality, with the great temple of Aphrodite crowning the Acrocorinth.

Into this city Paul came on his second missionary journey, and the founding of the Corinthian church is recounted in Acts 18:1–18. He lodged and worked with the tentmakers Aquila and Priscilla (Acts 18:2–3), reasoned in the synagogue, and when the Jews opposed him turned to the Gentiles. Encouraged by a vision in which the Lord said, "I have many in this city who are my people" (Acts 18:9–10), he stayed a year and a half teaching the word of God (Acts 18:11). When the Jews dragged him before the proconsul Gallio, the charge was dismissed (Acts 18:12–16) — an episode that helps anchor the chronology of Paul's life.

Corinth occasioned two of Paul's major letters, written to a church as gifted as it was troubled. 1 Corinthians confronts the factionalism of those who said "I follow Paul" or "I follow Apollos" (1 Corinthians 1:12), and addresses lawsuits, sexual immorality, marriage, food offered to idols, disorder at the Lord's Supper, and the abuse of spiritual gifts — to which Paul replies with the supremacy of love (1 Corinthians 13) and the great defense of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15:3–8). 2 Corinthians, written amid a painful conflict over Paul's authority, is his most personal letter, exalting the treasure of the gospel carried in "jars of clay" (2 Corinthians 4:7) and the strength of Christ made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9).

The Corinthian correspondence thus offers the fullest New Testament window into the life, gifts, and failings of an early urban church, and into Paul's pastoral heart. Corinth also gave the church the deacon Phoebe of nearby Cenchreae (Romans 16:1) — for Romans was written from Corinth — and Erastus its city treasurer (Romans 16:23). The city remained an important Christian center into the patristic age, the recipient of one of the earliest post-apostolic letters, Clement of Rome's epistle to the Corinthians. In Scripture Corinth stands as the enduring case study of the gospel's power to plant a holy people in the midst of a worldly city.