The City of Corinth

            The Apostle Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, which he founded on his second missionary journey (48–51 AD), is a treasure trove of practical theology for Christians facing everyday challenges. It provides Paul’s instruction to Christians grappling with real-life issues including conflicts of loyalty, class differences, conflicts between personal freedom and the common good, and the difficulty of leading a diverse group of people to accomplish a shared mission.

            In Paul’s time, Corinth was the most important city in Greece. Sitting astride the isthmus that joins the Peloponnesian Peninsula to mainland Greece, Corinth controlled both the Saronic Gulf to the East and the Gulf of Corinth to the North. Merchants wanted to avoid the difficult, dangerous trip around the fingers of the Peloponnese, so a great deal of the goods flowing between Rome and the Western Empire, on the one hand, and the rich ports of the Eastern Mediterranean, on the other, was hauled across this isthmus. Almost all of it passed through Corinth, making it one of the Empire’s great commercial centers. Strabo, an older contemporary of Paul, noted that “Corinth is called ‘wealthy’ because of its commerce, since it is situated on the Isthmus and is master of two harbors, of which the one leads straight to Asia, and the other to Italy; and it makes easy the exchange of merchandise from both countries that are so far distant from each other.”[1]

            The city had something of a boomtown atmosphere during the middle of the First Century AD, as freed slaves and veterans, merchants and tradesmen streamed into the city. Though what we might now call “upward mobility” was elusive in the ancient world, Corinth was one place where it might be possible, with a little luck and a lot of hard work, to establish oneself and enjoy a reasonably good life.[2] This contributed to the unique ethos of Corinth, which viewed itself as prosperous and self-sufficient, a city whose core value was “entrepreneurial pragmatism in the pursuit of success.”[3] Many cities in today’s world aspire to this very ethos.