First Epistle to the Corinthians

What is Third Corinthians?

Can we know anything about the situation of the Corinthian church after the time of Paul?   There is an apocryphal letter of Third Corinthians which is know from Armenian manuscripts of the New Testament, some Latin fragments, and a 3rd century Greek copy in the Bodmer Papyri.  Both the Syriac and Armenian churches accepted the letter as authentic, but with the discovery of a Coptic version in 1894, it has been shown that the letter is actually part of the apocryphal Acts of Paul.  It is absolutely certain that the letter is a forgery.  About A. D. 200 Tertullian reported author of the Acts of Paul was a presbyter in Asia Minor who confessed that he forged the book “out of love for Paul” (de Baptismo 17).

What is Third Corinthians?In the letter of Third Corinthians Paul writes to two men, Simon and Cleobius.  They have recently arrived in Corinth and “pervert the faith of many with pernicious words.”  The letter then lists these pernicious doctrines:  God is not all powerful, he did not create humans or even this world.  Jesus did not come in the flesh nor was he born from Mary.  All this strikes me as Gnostic theology, indicating a much later date than the mid-first century.

The only element of this apocryphal letter which seems related to the problems of the authentic Corinthian letters is a denial of the resurrection.  The writer alludes to Jonah and the men raised by the bones of Elisha as examples of resurrection from the scripture.  If God can raise people just as Jonah, so too could he raise Jesus from the dead.  The forger of the letter did not bother  include any ethical issues drawn from the book, there is no allusion to any of the social problems found in the canonical books.

To me, this makes it a fairly poor forgery and probably why the man was found out so quickly!

It would be interesting to take this letter apart line by line in order to show what texts the author used to create this apocryphal letter.  There are lines which are clearly drawn from Paul, but in several cases there are allusions to the words of Jesus (“O ye of little faith” and calling the false teachers a “generation of vipers,” for example.)

Since the letter has little to do with the actual church at Corinth, there is little here which informs us of the situation in Corinth.

Bibliography:  

Dana Andrew Thomason, “Corinthians, Third Epistle To The,” in ABD 1:1153.
W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 2:213-237 for the introduction to the “Acts of Paul,” 2:254-257 for the text of 3 Corinthians.

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1 Corinthians 1-4 – Division in the Church

It is well known that division in the church of Corinth was over leadership. Some considering Paul their authority, other Apollos, others Peter, and still others accepted only Jesus as their authority.  It is possible that these divisions represent competing house churches, some founded by Paul, some by Apollos.  But even if there are multiple house churches founded by different leaders, Paul passionately argues that the body of Christ cannot be divided in this way. In fact, these divisions are a sign of worldliness.  How can the presence of divisions be described as “worldly?”

Division in the Church

Bruce Winter details the Greco-Roman practice of discipleship in the second chapter of After Paul Left Corinth. He finds that there is a great deal of parallels between the disciple-teacher relationship in the culture of Corinth and the problem of divisions in the church over the authority of teachers. Dio Chrysostom visited Corinth about A.D. 89-96. He described the activities of the disciples of the Sophists – the professional orators who were able to command large audiences, high fees for educating youth, and often a great deal of power within the city. There was extreme competition among the orators for honor and power.  The better the orator, the higher the fee, and the more disciples he will attract.  Dio Chrysostom complained that Corinth was filled with “wretched” sophists, many of whom were debating one another with “shouting and abuse” near the temple to Poseidon. (I suppose that if Dio were commenting on the modern world, he would describe the “wretched bloggers” shouting abuse at the temple of WordPress…!)

Paul enters this world of “wretched Sophists” and preaches the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He gathers disciples and establishes a church, a meeting place for educating his disciples.  He begins the process of developing them into leaders who will also preach the gospel and found more churches. The Gentiles coming into this new Church do not seem to be able to see the differences between it and a Greco-Roman philosopher gathering disciples and educating them in a particular philosophy.

In 1 Corinthians, Paul consciously avoids disciple-teacher language. Paul did not want to present the Gospel as an orator, competing for students as they did.  In fact, Paul never claims disciples.  This is really what is behind his disclaimer on baptism in 1 Cor 1:14-16.  He come to Corinth to create a community of disciples from which he might receive patronage and prestige.

Paul does not want to be considered a philosopher who is gathering disciples, nor does he want that for Apollos or Peter or any man.  So rather that detailing their accomplishments as orators, Paul describes their functions (Paul planted, Apollos watered, etc.)  Christians are all disciples, or better, stewards and servants of the mysteries of God (1 Cor 4:1).

The real problem behind the “divisions” is that the church continues to act like Christianity is just another philosophy, and teachers are in competition with each other just as the Greek orators competed.  They are still acting “just like the world.”  This is the challenge of the “divisions” in 1 Corinthians –  how does the modern church act “just like the world”? In what ways have we failed to “de-paganize”? I do not think things have improved much since the first century.