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Paul and the Crises of His Churches: The Corinthian Correspondence
- The following are the questions you should ask yourself for every Pauline epistle you read:
- What is the occasion of the letter?
- How did the church (or Paul’s contact with these people) begin?
- What can we say about the make-up of the church (i.e., what kind of people were in it? Jew? gentile? Rich? Poor? Well-educated? Uneducated? etc.)?
- What problems have arisen since Paul left the community (i.e., what is the context of each letter)?
- What does Paul say to resolve the problems (i.e., what are the overarching themes of each letter)?
- How have the Corinthians evidently interpreted the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection for their own lives, and how has this misinterpretation (from Paul’s vantage point) led to problems in the congregation?
- How does Paul’s belief in the future bodily resurrection of believers relate to the various problems the Corinthians were experiencing (e.g., the divisions in the church, men visiting prostitutes, chaos during the worship services)?
- How does Paul’s insistence that Christians live in love relate to the use of spiritual gifts in the church (1 Cor 12–14)? How does it relate to the question of whether it was right to eat food offered to idols?
- Be able to show the themes in common between 1 and 2 Corinthians and, especially, to trace the course of Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian community from the time of the first letter mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5:9 through the writing of 2 Corinthians.
- How does Paul’s account of his ministry in Corinth differ from Luke’s account as found in Acts?
- How do the socioeconomic and educational differences in the Christian community at Corinth account for some of the problems in that church?
- What things does Paul mention about Jesus’ life, ministry, and death? Does this information give you an indication of what was most important to Paul about Jesus? What is the best way, in your judgment, to explain the paucity of references to Jesus’ life in Paul’s writings?
- Why is meat offered to idols an issue within the Corinthian community? How does Paul address this issue?
- Why do many scholars often think that 2 Corinthians reflects the combination of two originally separate Pauline letters?