7. The history of the Cor. Church after the departure of Apollos for Ephesus is knoA\-n to ns solely from the two Epp. to the Corinthians. That communications passed from time to time between St. Paul and this Church is only what we might expect from our general knowledge of St. Paul's life. In one letter, written not very long Defore 1 Co, he had had occasion to warn the Corinthians not to allow themselves to associate {(rvrafaijdyi'vffScu) with fornicators. This warning, in view of the conditions of the place (CORINTH), does not indicate circumstances or special urgency there. But we gather that there was a tendency in Corinth to treat the apostle's command as impracticable in its severity (1 Co 5""") ; the tone of public opinion in the Cor. Church was omin- ously low (cf. 1 Co 6"'^) ; and when a case of exceptional repulsiveness occurred, it was treated by tbe community with a tolerance amounting almost to levity (o'"'). How St. Paul heard of this, of the litigious recourse to heathen tribunals (6"-), and of other matters for blame (11'* 15'*), we do not know. Speaking broadly, these were all anxieties of a kind likely to occur, in a more or less acute form, in any community whose Christianity was recent, while the heathen in- stincts of its members were bred in the bone and not to be overcome except by time.
It was somewhat diti'erent AWth the (rx'^/uiTa or dissensions which occupy the early chapters of the Epistle. Partly no doubt, and specially as regards the use of the names of St. Paul and Apollos as party watchwords, they are explicable by the frivolous and excitable temper of the people. The Epistle of Clement shows us that forty years later than St. Paul's time, although the party watchwords of the year 57 have dis- appeared, the tendency to faction is still at work (S§ 1, 47, etc.). In communities of this kind, as Renan observes {St. Paul, p. 373 f.), 'divisions, parties, are a social necessity ; life would seem dull without them.' ' The talent of Apollos turned all their heads.' The contrast between the Alex- andrian methods of Apollos and the simpler spiritual preaching of St. Paul, would, in fact, furnish this tendency with an irresistible tempta- tion. But in Corinth we are in the presence of a more serious and far - reaching plienomenon. Apart from the question of the personal presence there at any time of one of the older apostles (see below), it is clear from the data of our Ep., combined with those of 2 Co (§ 4 [e] there), that Corinth was the scene of an anti-Pauline mission identical in its source and aims, though naturally diflering in tactics, with that which troubled the Churches of Galatia. At Corinth the demand for ciroimcision would appear to have been dropped or held back ; the point of attack was the apostolic mission of St. Paiil (1 Co 9"-), whose conduct and position had become the object of suspicious criti- cism {ifaKpivetp, 1 Co 4' 9' etc.). The .Judaic movement against St. Paul is probably respon- sible for the two watchwords iyu di Kri<pS.- &yui Si Xpiirrov. This is clearly the case with the former (cf. Hort, Judaistic Christ ianitt/, p. 96 f.). 'K7U) ii Ki](pa must have been, in the first in.stance, the utterance of n person who knew St. Pet«r by his Pal. name. Such persons must have found their
way to Corinth, and attached to themselves par- tisans, whether Gentile or Jewish, who were im- pressed by the prior claim of St. Peter to apostolic rank, or perh.ops repelled by the lengths to which emancipation from Jewish prejudices had carried some of the Christians at (jorinth (1 Co 8"-). It does not follow that, in order to say iyu di Ktj^S, it was necessary to be a personal pupil of St. Peter. The name of Cephas must have become a aouse- hold word in every Church visited by the Pal. propagandists ; there is nothing in 1 (5o 1", even combined with 9°, to justify us in inferring, as a 2nd cent, bishop of Corinth inferred (iJijnys. ap. Euseb. HE ii. 25), that St. Peter had actuady visited Corinth and shared with St. Paul the claim to rank as founder of the Church there. St. Paul's silence would in that case suggest a more painful relation between himself and the partisans of Cephas than we need otherwise assume. He blames the partisans of Cephas indeed, but neither more nor less than he blames those of Apollos and of himself ; there is nothing to suggest any special hostility between St. Paul and any one of the three. This would equally apply to the fourth party, whose watchword was iyii Si Xpiarov, had we only our present Ep. to go by. But on them the second Ep. throws a peculiar light, which reduces the other three parties to a comparatively unimportant rank. It is true that the Cephas- party must have been under the influence of the Judaizing propaganda ; but the second Ep. shows that it is not among them (cf. 1 Co 3-) that we are to look for its extreme and dangerous par- tisans.
In considering the ' Caj-ttt-party,' it will be needless to di9CUfl» the endless sui^estions that have been made apart from the li^ht derived from 2 Co. That iyi 3t Xpirrou were the words of St. Paul himself, or of Christians who formed a party against party spirit, etc., are Wews for which the reader must consult the Commentaries (see also Rabiger, Krit. Ur*t«j suchuiigen Hber den Inhalt der beiden Briefe an die Kor. Gerneinde, etc., 1886. RaVji;^er denies the existence of a Christ-party). Quite certainly there were men in Corinth who put forward the name of Christ as a party watchword, as others put forward that of Cephas, Apollos, or St. Paul. It is instructive to note the absolute contrast between the i/uui it Xpie-rov of 323 (cf. 1523 etc.). where the apostle asserts to XfiirTpv uymt as true of all, and the i>i it \piincZ of 11"- where he stamps its falsehood (v. 13 *ifl Christ portioned off ' to any) as the exclusive claim of some.