CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 24
Corinthian Correspondence
1. The Corinthians’ letter to Paul
Paul dealt with the news he received from chloe’s people and other visitors in the letter which has come down to us as 1 Corinthians. Since this had been preceded by an earlier letter, no longer extant,1 which may conventionally be called “Corinthians A”, our 1 Corinthians may for certain purposes be referred to as “Corinthians B”.
Paul not only sent letters; he received them. None of the letters he received has survived; this is our loss, because if we had access to them they would probably be found to throw some light on passages in his own letters which are obscure to us because of our ignorance of the persons and circumstances mentioned in them.
But we do at least know something about one letter which he received—a letter from his friends and followers at Corinth, brought to him in Ephesus by three members of the Corinthian church (Stephanas, Fortunatus and Achaicus).2 In this letter they assured him that they observed all the “traditions” which he had delivered to them,3 and asked a series of questions to which he replied one by one in the second (and major) part of 1 Corinthians (Chapters 7–16). Some of the questions were perhaps stimulated by things which Paul had said in “Corinthians A”.4
(a) Observing the traditions. The “traditions” which the Corinthians assured Paul they continued to observe included basic articles of faith and practice, which Paul himself had “received” before he “delivered” them to his converts.5 (The verbs “receive” and “deliver” in this kind of context are practically technical terms for the passing on of tradition from one individual or generation to the next.) These traditions were summed up as “the tradition of Christ”,6 which comprised (i) a summary of the Christian message, expressed as a confession of faith, with special emphasis on the death and resurrection of Christ; (ii) various deeds and words of Christ; (iii) ethical and procedural rules for Christians. Much of this, as has been suggested above, was imparted to Paul during his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion,7 and he imparted it in turn to his converts.
When the Corinthians told him that they maintained these traditions, he commended them; but added that he was reliably informed that there were some which they had forgotten.8 The growth of a spirit of division among them was something which he did not commend: this manifested itself not only in the development of rival schools of thought but in social cleavages which took a particularly unpleasant form at the Lord’s table, and made a mockery of their claim to have fellowship there with their Lord and with one another. The memorial bread and wine were taken in the course of a fellowship meal to which each member or family made a contribution, but instead of sharing what had been brought, the rich ate their own food and the poorer members made do with the little they could afford, so that, as Paul said, “one is hungry and another is drunk” (1 Corinthians 11:21). Such selfish conduct was an outrage on the sacred occasion; those who participated in such an unworthy spirit, far from deriving any grace from their participation, were eating and drinking judgment upon themselves.
It is in this context that Paul gives us the earliest account which we have of the institution of the communion meal (1 Corinthians 11:23–26):
For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.9
The last clause, “until he comes”, is in all probability an integral part of what Paul “received”. It may hark back to Jesus’ saying in the upper room that the next time he ate the passover or drank the fruit of the vine would be in the consummated kingdom of God;10 but in any case it reflects the eschatological significance of the meal in the early church. It not only commemorated Jesus’ passion but anticipated his parousia: indeed, it may have been regarded as a “prophetic action” helping to ensure the fulfilment of the prayer maranā-thā (“Our Lord, come!”) which appears to have had its original setting at the Lord’s table.11
It is in his reply to the Corinthians’ letter, in fact, that Paul quotes most of the sayings of Jesus which are to be found in his writings. In answering their questions about marriage, he adduces Jesus’ prohibition of divorce;12 in defending his own apostolic freedom, he invokes his ruling “that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel”;13 in giving advice to a Christian invited to a meal in a non-Christian home he echoes Jesus’ injunction to the seventy disciples to eat what is set before them wherever they are offered hospitality.14
Another aspect of the tradition which he delivered to the Corinthians was the gospel account of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, with a summary of the occasions on which he had appeared in resurrection to one and another. Paul had reason to know that this tradition, too, was being taken with insufficient seriousness by those members of the church of Corinth who denied any such thing as a future resurrection.15 They had no thought of denying the past resurrection of Christ, but Paul reminds them of the tradition to this effect which they had received from him and insists that the past resurrection of Christ and the future resurrection of his people are so completely bound up with each other—Christ’s resurrection being the presentation of the first fruits and that of his people the completed harvest—that to give up belief in the latter logically demands giving up belief in the former, with consequent collapse of the Christian faith.16
The questions raised in the Corinthians’ letter covered a wide range: marriage and related subjects, food sacrificed to idols, spiritual gifts in the church, the relief fund which they had heard he was organizing for their fellow-believers in Jerusalem. These questions or groups of questions are readily identifiable because Paul introduces his answers to them one by one with the phrase “Now concerning”.
(b) Questions about marriage. The sexual laxity which was part of the Corinthian way of life, and from which even the church in Corinth was not immune, made some members of the church feel that sexual relations, even within a marriage already contracted, were best avoided altogether. Those who felt like this may have been confirmed in their sentiment by the consideration that the approaching end of the age ruled out the long-term planning which was incumbent on those who undertook the responsibilities of family life. They summed up their view in the statement: “It is well for a man not to touch a woman”17—with which some of them at least confidently expected Paul to agree. They knew of his preference for the celibate life, and thought that he would applaud this preference in his converts. The Paul of later tradition does indeed applaud this preference: in the apocryphal Acts of Paul he gets into trouble because his female converts, if betrothed, refuse to be married or, if married, discontinue normal relations with their husbands.18 But the historical Paul takes quite a different line. He surprises his Corinthian correspondents because, after quoting their counsel of perfection as though he approved of it, he immediately adds a “nevertheless” which explodes it. Monogamy, he says, not celibacy, is the norm for Christians,19 even if there were no higher motive for it than the avoidance of fornication, which was his correspondents’ aim. (This is said for the sake of the ad hominem argument; it does not mean that Paul could see no higher motive for marriage than the avoidance of fornication.)20 Unless one had a special vocation—a charisma, as he calls it21—for celibacy, any attempt to adopt this condition was contrary to nature and would expose them to the very kind of temptation which they abhorred. Paul goes as far as he can with his converts in either the ascetic or the libertarian direction, until he reaches a point where he calls a halt, and profoundly qualifies his foregoing concession.22
As for the idea that husband and wife should refrain from sexual union, Paul concedes that they may do so, for a limited period, if both are agreed on it. He will not countenance a unilateral abstention: that would be defrauding the other party of his or her rights. After the agreed period of abstinence they should resume normal relations: to adopt any other course would be to court disaster.
For a Christian husband or wife divorce is excluded by the law of Christ: here Paul has no need to express a judgment of his own, for the Lord’s ruling on this matter was explicit. True, Jesus’ ruling was given in the context of rabbinical debate and Jewish social usage, in which the initiation of divorce proceedings was a male prerogative: his ruling against such proceedings was in a part a protection of the underprivileged wife. Paul writes in a Gentile situation, and applies Jesus’ ruling to men and women alike: reconciliation, not estrangement, is the course for Christians.
But the Gentile mission might frequently lead to a situation which was not envisaged in Jesus’ Palestinian ministry and on which, accordingly, no ruling of his was available. A husband or a wife might be converted to Christianity, while the other party to the marriage remained a pagan. What was to be done about it? If the pagan partner is willing to go on living with the Christian partner, said Paul, good and well. But, it might be asked, would not cohabitation with a pagan pollute the Christian? On the contrary, said Paul; continued cohabitation with a Christian would “sanctify” the pagan, and the children of such a union would share in that “sanctification”.23 Perhaps Paul was guided in this judgment by the principle inherent in an ordinance of the Jewish ceremonial law: “whatever touches the altar shall become holy” (Exodus 29:37). In rabbinical literature a proselyte after conversion to Judaism is described as being “in holiness”.24 There was also the possibility that the pagan partner might be won for the gospel through the other’s witness: such a marriage had missionary potentialities.25
On the other hand, the pagan partner might refuse to live with the Christian: what was to be done then? Let it be so, says Paul; do not try to compel non-Christian husbands or wives to stay or return against their will. Better agree to part in that kind of situation than live together in contention. The deserted partner is then no longer bound by the marriage contract.
Although no dominical authority is claimed for this “Pauline privilege”, Paul plainly does not consider that it conflicts with Jesus’ ruling. He deals with such unprecedented issues as a wise pastor, having regard to the interests of the people concerned and remaining faithful to the spirit and principle of the “law of Christ”. Marriage, like the sabbath, was instituted for human beings, and not vice versa.
Would it be permissible in that case for the Christian to enter into a new marriage? Probably Paul would give the same answer to that question as he gave to widows and unmarried persons (including those couples who had resolved to live together in virginity):26 “You will do better if you refrain from marriage, but if you must marry, then marry: it is no sin!” Not only did married people incur secular cares and anxieties from which the unmarried were free: in times of persecution and distress, which Paul saw to be impending, an unmarried man was under less powerful temptation to compromise the faith than a man with family responsibilities, whose wife and children might suffer for his confession as well as himself. Paul is prescribing iron rations for hard times, which presaged the end of the present world-order. Jesus had spoken of a coming crisis when the childless would be counted exceptionally fortunate because of the calamities which it would bring.27 These were more practical arguments than Paul’s remark that ideally much trouble would be avoided if everyone found the celibate life as congenial as he himself did: celibacy, he acknowledged, was for the few who knew themselves called to it.
It is reasonably clear that Paul was a celibate throughout his apostolic career. But what was his actual marital status? He knew of other Christian leaders, from Peter downwards, who were accompanied by their wives on their missionary journeys, and he agreed that they were perfectly entitled to do so, and to have their wives as well as themselves maintained by the churches. Indeed, he claims the same right for himself, if he were minded to avail himself of it, as he is not.28
This does not mean that he had a wife, but chose to forgo her company during his apostolic visits to this place and that. We may dismiss such a romantic fantasy as that he married Lydia, the tradeswoman of Philippi, and that she is the “true yoke fellow” whom he asks to help other Philippian women who had co-operated with him in his gospel ministry (Philippians 4:3).29 But, granted that he was not married during his apostolic activity, had he ever been married? It may be pointed out that marriage was normal and, indeed, expected in pious Jews when they came of age.30 True, Jesus had spoken of certain exceptions—those who, as he said, had “made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:12)—among whom he may have included John the Baptist and himself. But Paul was not presumably influenced by considerations of this kind in his pre-Christian days. What then? Was he a widower? Perhaps he was: the question has received a positive answer from Joachim Jeremias, for example.31 Rather more probable is the view that his wife left him when he became a Christian: that when he “suffered the loss of all things”32 for the sake of Christ he lost his wife too. This cannot be proved, of course, but if something like this did happen it might explain Paul’s specially sympathetic understanding of the domestic situation in which the unconverted partner walks out on the husband or wife who has become a Christian: “in such a case the brother or sister is not bound” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Paul, for his part, was not “bound” either way: he knew that he could fulfil his commission more wholeheartedly if he remained free from the marriage bond.
(c) Questions about food. The issue of food that had been sacrificed to idols could not be considered in isolation in a pagan city like Corinth: it was part of the wider problem of idolatrous associations. The more enlightened members of the church maintained that since “there is no God but one”, it followed that “an idol has no real existence” (1 Corinthians 8:4), and that therefore food was neither better nor worse for coming from an animal which had been sacrificed in a pagan temple. Paul agreed; nevertheless, as he pointed out, for many less enlightened Christians an idol had a real existence; it was a demonic power to those who ascribed a measure of reality to it, even if they did not worship it but rather abominated it. In the eyes of such people, the food had been in some sense contaminated by its association with the idol, and if they ate it they might become demon-possessed. Paul shows considerable sympathy with these “weak brethren”:33 he realized, as many of the men of knowledge did not, that to a person who believes in an idol or similar demonic being, it has real substance and power—not independently but none the less effectively.
If an attempt had been made, possibly through the “Peter party” at Corinth, to impose the Jerusalem decree on the church, this would have provided an additional reason for presenting the question to Paul.34
Quite apart from the doubtful propriety of subjecting his Gentile churches to the authority of Jerusalem, it was not Paul’s way to impose a rule but to help his converts to judge such issues for themselves in the light of basic Christian principles. One of the most important of these principles was to consider the consciences of weaker brethren so as to assist them gently to a better and more enlightened appreciation of what their faith involved. Otherwise a Christian’s freedom was not to be impaired by external restrictions. The Christian was at liberty to buy what he chose for domestic use in the Corinthian meat-market,35 without scrupulously inquiring whether the meat came from a sacrificed animal or not. Similarly, he was at liberty to accept an invitation to a meal in the home of a pagan acquaintance—again, without making scrupulous inquiries. If, on the other hand, his attention was deliberately drawn to the fact that a particular dish was hierothyton,36 the flesh of a sacrificed animal, as though his response to this information was being treated as a test of his Christian confession, he could properly ask to be excused from eating it.37
But some members of the Corinthian church went much farther than buying what might be sacrificed meat at the butcher’s or eating it at the table of a pagan neighbour. Such a neighbour might arrange a banquet in a pagan temple: should the Christian accept an invitation to be present?38 Here it was of little importance that the meat would certainly come from an animal sacrificed to the god worshipped in that temple; it was of great importance that the whole occasion would be under the patronage of the god, and a Christian might well find himself in an atmosphere where some compromise with idolatry was inevitable. Was it conceivable, Paul asks, that the same man should be a partaker of the table of the Lord one evening and of the table of a demon another evening?39 Nonentities though false gods were, they were demonic powers to their worshippers, and it was hardly possible to take part in a feast in the temple of one of them without being influenced for the worse. Even here Paul does not lay down the law but appeals to his readers’ sense of fitness: “I speak as to sensible men; judge for yourselves what I say” (1 Corinthians 10:15).
In a pagan city it was difficult to avoid all association with idolatry, but it was foolish to enter deliberately into such associations when there was no need to do so Paul reminds them of the disastrous consequences of Israel’s association with the Moabites in the apostasy of Baal-peor during the wilderness wanderings, with the implication that now, as then, such idolatry might well involve sexual immorality.40 “These things”, he says, “were written down for our instruction …; therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:11 f.).
All things might be lawful, as the men of knowledge affirmed, but (Paul added) “not all things are helpful”41—least of all attendance at an idolatrous feast in a pagan temple.
(d) Questions about spiritual gifts. In the eyes of some Corinthian Christians, the most important manifestations of the indwelling Spirit were spectacular phenomena like speaking with tongues. On this question too Paul’s opinion is sought. And once again he starts to answer the question by going as far as he can with the questioners. As for speaking with tongues, he says—yes, I speak with tongues myself, more than any of you, in fact; “nevertheless, in church I would rather speak five words with my mind, in order to instruct others, than ten thousand words in a ‘tongue’ ” (1 Corinthians 14:18 f.).
The physiology of glossolalia was unknown to Paul: it results from the appropriate stimulation of what has been known since 1861 as “Broca’s area”, the centre for articulate speech in the third frontal convolution of the dominant cerebral hemisphere. What did concern him was its cultivation as a spiritual gift. That it might be a vehicle of the Spirit of Christ he agreed, but this could not be known unless the utterance was interpreted, and the power to interpret glossolalia was itself a spiritual gift. Only when an interpreter was available would glossolalia be helpful to an assembled congregation; otherwise its value was confined to private devotion (as Paul had presumably proved in his personal experience).42
Prophecy, on the other hand, was a charisma of great value; Paul warmly recommended its cultivation. By prophecy he seems to mean the declaration of the mind of God in the power of the Spirit, in a language understood by speaker and hearers alike—as when a prophetic utterance at Antioch directed that he and Barnabas should be released by the church there for a more extended ministry.43 A stranger finding his way into a church meeting where several people were speaking with “tongues” would conclude that they were all mad; but if he found his way there while they were prophesying one by one, he would be convicted in conscience by what he heard and acknowledge that God was present.44
Ephesus: The theatre (see p. 293)
Caesarea: The theatre (see p. 354)
Paul uses the analogy of a human body, in which the proper functioning of each part contributes to the health of the whole, to show that in the church, “the body of Christ”, a variety of endowments and ministries was necessary for the general well-being. It was foolish, therefore, for too many members of the church to concentrate on the exercise of a few impressive charismata when so many more, some of them obscure and unspectacular but none the less valuable, were needed for the common good. This figure of the body was to play an increasingly important part in Paul’s thinking about the church and her relation to the risen Lord.45
(e) Questions about the Jerusalem relief fund. One final question dealt with a practical matter not arising from controversies within the Corinthian church. They had heard that Paul was organizing a relief fund in his Gentile mission-field for the benefit of the Jerusalem church: how did he wish them to set about contributing to it? Let each of you set aside an appropriate sum week by week, said Paul; then, when I come to supervise the collecting of the money, it will be ready and there will be no undignified scramble to raise your contribution. They should appoint their own delegates with written accreditation to take the gift to Jerusalem; he might be going there himself about the same time, in which case they could accompany him. He had given similar instructions to other contributing churches, including the churches of Galatia.46
2. A painful visit and a stern letter
When Paul sent off this letter—1 Corinthians or “Corinthians B”—he expected to follow it up with a personal visit. He planned to stay on at Ephesus for a few more weeks at least—until Pentecost (probably A.D. 55). Meanwhile he sent Timothy ahead of him, and asked the Corinthians to make him feel at home among them.47 After Pentecost he himself would cross the Aegean to Macedonia,48 visit his churches there, and then make his way south to Corinth, where he hoped to spend the winter. Soon afterwards he modified this plan, and let the Corinthians know that he would visit them twice—once on his way to Macedonia and again on his way back from there.49 After the second of these visits he would set sail in the spring for Palestine, along with delegates of the churches which were contributing to the Jerusalem relief fund.
A number of factors made it impossible for this modified plan to be carried out. One of these was news of further trouble in the church of Corinth, which compelled Paul to pay it an urgent visit. The letter recently received by the church had evidently not been so effective as Paul had hoped in checking those tendencies of which he expressed disapproval, and when Timothy arrived he was quite unable to enforce Paul’s directions. It may indeed have been Timothy who brought back the news which made Paul decide that nothing would serve but a direct confrontation with the church. A confrontation it proved to be—a painful experience for Paul and his converts alike. The opposition to Paul came to a head, and one member of the church in particular took the lead in defying his authority. The others took no effective action in Paul’s defence, and Paul, deeply humiliated, left Corinth.50
But he could not leave the Corinthian situation as it was: he composed a stinging letter to the church—“out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears” (2 Corinthians 2:3 f.)—and sent it to Corinth by the hand of Titus, a stronger personality, probably, than Timothy. We may call this letter “Corinthians C”; it is doubtful if any part of it survives.51 When Titus set off with it, Paul immediately began to be sorry that he had sent it. Its severe tone might produce the desired effect, but it might on the other hand exacerbate the situation. In it he assured the Corinthians of his love for them, but demanded that they give evidence of the love which they professed for him by acknowledging his apostolic authority and taking disciplinary measures against the man who had defied it. He assured Titus, as he gave him the letter to take to Corinth, that the Corinthian Christians were sound at heart, and that they would give proof of their true quality by gladly rendering the obedience which the letter demanded. He now had to wait and see if his confident assurance was well founded or not.
3. Temporary reconciliation
On his return to the province of Asia he was assailed by severe depression, and also, it appears, by extreme external danger.52 The danger subsided, but the anxiety remained. He went to the district around Troas,53 in the north-west of the province, hoping to greet Titus there on his return by sea from Corinth. While he waited for Titus, he found many encouraging opportunities for evangelism, but his mind was so unsettled that he could not take proper advantage of them. He waited probably until navigation across the Aegean had ceased for the winter, and since he now knew that Titus would have to take the land-route through Macedonia, he himself set out for Macedonia, still a prey to “fightings without and fears within” (2 Corinthians 7:5).
But then Titus met him, and brought good news from Corinth.54 The severe letter had been completely effective: the Corinthian Christians were stung to such a pitch of indignation in their zeal to vindicate themselves in Paul’s eyes and assure him of their loyalty that they were now in danger of going to the opposite extreme in making a scapegoat of the man who had been foremost in defying Paul’s authority. There were still some complaints that Paul’s changes of travel plans were disconcertingly abrupt and unforeseen, but the general mood was one of reconciliation. Titus was delighted with their attitude and shared his delight with Paul. Paul immediately sent a further letter, “Corinthians D”—our 2 Corinthians (or at least 2 Corinthians 1–9)—in which he expressed his response to Titus’s news in an outpouring of open-hearted affection. He explains that his one reason for sending Titus instead of coming back himself was his desire not to cause them further pain. He urges them to forgive the offender because his demand for disciplinary action against him was due to no personal resentment but to a resolve to test the church’s love and obedience. Now that they had satisfied him on this score, they should extend full friendship and fellowship to the offender; otherwise the dejection which he was suffering as a result of their unconcealed disapproval might be his undoing—and theirs.55
The sense of euphoria which Titus’s news had engendered in Paul encouraged him to wear his heart on his sleeve and enlarge on the hardships and the splendours of his apostolic service. To be a minister of the new covenant, with its message of liberation and life, was more glorious by far than to be a minister of the old covenant, even were that minister Moses himself, not to speak of some contemporaries of Paul who proclaimed the continuing validity of the law in the gospel age.56 Paul’s feeling of relief and relaxation encouraged him also to raise afresh the question of the collection for Jerusalem. During the period of strained relations it had not been expedient to mention this. Now, however, he tells the Corinthians how generously the Macedonian churches, despite their deep poverty and recent endurance of persecution, have given to this fund. He mentions, too, that he has been boasting to the Macedonians about the promptness with which the Corinthian church and other Achaian churches have got their contributions ready. He will soon be on his way to Corinth with representatives of the Macedonian churches, carrying those churches’ donations; but meanwhile, to make sure that the Corinthian donation will indeed be ready, he is sending Titus back to them with two other friends, highly reputed among the churches for their impartiality and probity, to help them to complete what has been so well begun—the gathering together of the sums of money already set aside for this purpose by individuals or households.57
4. Challenge to Paul’s authority
But this second visit of Titus to Corinth was not so happy as the former one. Some members of the church may have felt that, for all his insistence on the voluntary character of the gift for Jerusalem, Paul was really putting them on the spot, placing them in a situation in which they had no choice but to make a generous contribution if they were not to lose face—and make Paul lose face—before the representatives of other churches.
A new feeling of resentment showed itself among some members of the church, and it was fostered by certain visitors to Corinth who did their best to undermine Paul’s prestige in his converts’ eyes. Our knowledge of these visitors, and of the atmosphere of the church at the time of their visit, is derived solely from 2 Corinthians 10–13, which may have been sent to Corinth a little later than Chapters 1–9, and could be called “Corinthians E”.58 Since Paul had no need to identify those visitors in writing about them to the Corinthians, it is not surprising that conflicting opinions about their character are held today. One view, first put forward by Wilhelm Lütgert in 1908, is that they were Gnostics of ecstatic temperament and libertine ethics.59 But since they claimed to be “Hebrews” and invoked the authority of the “superlative apostles”, it is more likely that they came from Judaea. They represented themselves as “men of the Spirit”, no doubt, but that does not make them Gnostics: the issue between Paul and them was not gnōsis, not spiritual gifts, but Paul’s apostolic exousia, his authority and liberty.60
If, like some earlier visitors to the Corinthian church, they brought credentials signed by the Jerusalem leaders, Paul had the task of exposing the hollowness of their pretensions without overtly questioning the authority or bona fides of those who recommended them. He was concerned to avoid the slightest appearance of a breach between his Gentile mission and the Jerusalem church. It was not always easy to avoid the appearance of such a breach, when the authority of Jerusalem was so vigorously asserted in opposition to his own. The interlopers argued that no teaching could be validated unless it was authorized by Jerusalem. If Paul acted in independence of Jerusalem, he lacked the commission of Christ which was primarily vested in Jerusalem and which they accordingly inherited; to cut oneself loose, as Paul did, from the source of spiritual authority was to “walk according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 10:2). If the church of Corinth wished to enjoy the blessings of the Spirit, it must acknowledge the authority of Jerusalem.
In Paul’s mind, these arguments did not affect his personal status so much as the truth of the gospel and the nature of the church. If his ministry bore the stamp of divine approval, if the Corinthian church was the seal of his apostleship, then the opposition of those intruders was opposition not merely to him but to the Lord who commissioned him, to the Spirit who empowered him, and to the gospel which he proclaimed: theirs was therefore “another Jesus,61 … a different Spirit, … a different gospel” (2 Corinthians 11:4). They might invoke the authority of the “superlative apostles”62—it is not certain whether this is their own designation of the Jerusalem leaders or Paul’s ironical summing-up of their portrayal of those leaders. (Even if none of the twelve was actually resident in Jerusalem by this time, Jerusalem would still be regarded as their home base; and James was permanently there.) But they themselves were apostles of a very different kind. In so far as they were entitled to be so called, they were “apostles” or messengers of the Jerusalem church, whether they carried out their instructions to the letter or (as is possible) exceeded them. But they were usurping the functions of “apostles of Christ”—men who, like Paul, were directly commissioned by the risen Christ to undertake pioneer evangelism and to plant churches, and whose commission was sealed, as Paul’s was at Corinth, by the visible fruit of their labours. Far from being messengers of Christ, however, those others were false apostles in disguise, no true servants of Christ but servants of Satan. Instead of pioneering a mission-field of their own (as true apostles of Christ would have done), they preferred to be parasites on “other men’s labours” (2 Corinthians 10:15).
They boasted of their impeccable Israelite pedigree and pointed in support of their claims to “visions and revelations of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 12:1). Paul makes no attempt to refute these claims, because they are really irrelevant to the issue; but if such credentials impress the Corinthians, he himself can produce more impressive ones.63 What is more to the point—though he is ashamed to have to say it (for his own converts might have been expected spontaneously to defend him against his detractors)—he has endured far more hardships in the discharge of his ministry than they have done.64 If they assert their authority among the Corinthian Christians by lording it over them and living at their expense, Paul will exercise his apostolic freedom by tending his converts with paternal care and spending and being spent for them.
These intruders were not judaizers in the narrower sense; they did not try to impose legal observances on Gentile believers. They simply conceived it as their mission to impose the authority of the mother church over the Christian world. It was nothing to them that this contravened the agreement over which the Jerusalem leaders had shaken hands with Paul and Barnabas some years previously; if the “superlative apostles” were so blind to their own best interests, they themselves would secure for them the status which was their due. For a time they clearly made some headway at Corinth. Ten or eleven years later their policy must have collapsed in any case; the dispersal of the Jerusalem church at the time of the Jewish revolt against Rome which broke out in A.D. 66 put an end to such authority as that church had enjoyed throughout the Gentile mission-field. But there never came a time during Paul’s life, so far as can be known, when he could feel that the cause of gospel liberty had finally triumphed at Corinth. “Paul, who learnt at Corinth what it is to be weak in Christ, shows there perhaps more clearly than elsewhere his full stature of Christian intelligence, firmness, and magnanimity.”65