While Paul's statements in 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 have led some to the mistaken idea that Paul changed his evangelistic strategy in Corinth, it soon becomes apparent that these same difficulties underlie much that Paul has written. Again, some have thought that the use of rhetoric in Corinth was the problem, while others have felt they were just arrogant and that Paul's eloquence did not measure up to their Graeco-Roman standards. Others have thought the Corinthians were just a particularly divisive and contentious lot. Some have thought that the background situation at Corinth was the rise of Gnosticism, but it seems too early for that to have been the case. This passage of 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 throws up enough red alert lights to suggest there is something important going on here that is not immediately obvious to us, reading it some 2000 years later. We have to try to understand them first in the context of those original 'horizons', before we can jump the centuries – and the cultures – and apply them within our own 'horizons'. Trying to understand any ancient document throws up the immediate question as to what the words meant to the writer at that time and how he wanted them to be understood by his original readers. There must be more going on here than is apparent. Now he comes to Corinth and has an attack of the nerves? If he was going to have a nervous breakdown, surely he would have done that a long time ago! This story doesn't seem to add up. He was subsequently attacked by a rabble in Thessalonica, those "lewd fellows of a baser sort" (KJV), who pursued him to Berea, from whence he escaped to Athens (Acts 13:44-17:15). He sailed on to Macedonia where he received a sound beating before being thrown into a prison, which then collapsed in an earthquake. He had faced jealous mobs which drove him out of Antioch he fled from Iconium to Lystra to avoid being stoned to death – only to be stoned when he got there! He was dragged out of that city half-dead. Why then did he say in his first letter to the Corinthians that in Corinth he avoided "lofty speech, wisdom and persuasive words"? And what did he mean when he said, "I was determined to know nothing among you, except Jesus Christ and him crucified"? What conclusions should we draw from this?Īnd what was he so frightened about, that he arrived in Corinth "in fear and much trembling"? This Paul had been hauled up before the authorities time and again. There appears to be no evidence at all, either in The Acts of the Apostles or from Paul's letters, that Paul changed his approach to an unsophisticated, and indeed an unargued, presentation of the Gospel when he went to Corinth after his encounter with the philosophers of Athens. Did Paul believe that he had failed in his encounter with the philosophers in Athens (Acts 17:16-34), leading to a change of approach in Corinth (Acts 18:1-18)? The start of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 2:1-5) is sometimes seen as supporting this change – and undermining the value of apologetics today.
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