1 Corinthians

Background

Paul founded the church at Corinth on his second missionary journey and stayed about eighteen months (Acts 18:1–18). The proconsul Gallio, before whom the Jews accused Paul, is dated by an inscription found at Delphi to about AD 51–52 (Delphi Inscription, secondary), which makes Corinth one of the firmest dates in Paul’s life. He wrote this letter a few years later from Ephesus (1 Corinthians 16:8).

Corinth was a Roman colony rebuilt in 44 BC, a busy port city with a mixed population, trade guilds, pagan temples and a strong taste for rhetoric and status. Much of the letter reads as Paul pushing back on those values inside the church. It answers a report from “Chloe’s people” (1:11) and then a letter the Corinthians had sent him: each new topic from chapter 7 on opens with “now concerning” (7:1). Paul often quotes the Corinthians’ own slogans back to them (“all things are lawful,” 6:12; “all of us possess knowledge,” 8:1) before correcting them. Where those quotations start and stop is itself a live question, and it matters for 7:1 and 14:34–35 below.

Social historians read the divisions as partly a matter of class. Gerd Theissen’s The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity (1982) argued that the trouble at the Lord’s Supper came from wealthier members eating their own food first in a private house while poorer members, arriving late from work, went hungry (11:21–22). Most later commentaries accept some version of this.

It was read early and widely. Around AD 96, 1 Clement told the same church to “take up the epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul” and remember the parties of Paul, Cephas and Apollos (ch. 47).

Outline and key ideas

Divisions and the wisdom of the cross (1–4). The church had split behind favourite teachers. Paul answers that the gospel is “Christ crucified,” foolishness to the world and the power of God (1:18–25). Leaders are servants, and the church is God’s temple (3:16).

Holiness in the body (5–7). A case of incest, lawsuits between believers, and men using prostitutes. The body belongs to the Lord: “you are not your own, for you were bought with a price” (6:19–20). Chapter 7 then treats marriage, singleness and divorce, with Paul carefully separating the Lord’s command from his own advice.

Freedom and food offered to idols (8–10). Knowledge says idols are nothing; love asks what eating does to a weaker believer. Paul gives up his own rights as an apostle as the example to follow (9:19–23).

Worship (11–14). Head coverings, then the Lord’s Supper, where Paul hands on the oldest written account of the Supper (11:23–26). Chapters 12–14 treat Spiritual Gifts: one body with many members, love as the “more excellent way” (chapter 13), and prophecy preferred over uninterpreted tongues because it builds up the church.

The resurrection (15). Some denied that the dead rise. Paul quotes an early creed he “received” (15:3–8) and argues that if Christ is not raised, faith is futile. The risen body is real but transformed, a “spiritual body.”

The collection and plans (16). Money for the poor in Jerusalem, travel plans, greetings, and the Aramaic prayer Maranatha, “Our Lord, come!”

The classic older commentaries are John Chrysostom’s 44 homilies (late 4th century) and John Calvin’s commentary (1546). The standard modern one is Gordon Fee’s The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT, 1987, revised 2014).

How the traditions read it

More church practice rests on this letter than on almost any other: the Eucharist, purgatory, clerical celibacy, tongues, women’s roles and the shape of the resurrection all lean on it. The passages below are where the traditions part ways.

The Lord’s Supper (10:16–17; 11:23–34)

“The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?” (10:16). And anyone who eats “in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord” (11:27–29). Every view of the Sacraments has to account for both verses.

Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic Church reads “participation” and “guilty of the body and blood” as plain realism: the bread and wine become Christ’s body and blood (Transubstantiation). The warning in 11:27–29 is why Catholics in mortal sin are told not to receive before confession.
Eastern Orthodox. Chrysostom’s Homily 24 on this letter presses 10:16 hard: what is in the cup is what flowed from Christ’s side, and those who share it become one body with him and each other. Eastern Orthodox churches keep that realism without defining how the change happens (Orthodox Eucharistic Mystery), and read 11:28 (“let a person examine himself”) as the basis for fasting and confession before communion.
Lutheran. The Formula of Concord (1577) quotes 10:16 repeatedly for the real presence of Christ’s body “in, with and under” the bread (Sacramental Union). Its sharpest argument comes from 11:27: if the unworthy are guilty of the body, then even they receive the body, a doctrine called the manducatio indignorum. Martin Luther held this line against Huldrych Zwingli at Marburg in 1529.
Reformed. John Calvin (Institutes 4.17) and the Westminster Confession (ch. 29) read “participation” as true communion with Christ by the Spirit, received by faith, while his body remains in heaven (Spiritual Presence). On this view the unworthy eat bread only and bring judgment on themselves.
Memorialist. Zwingli, and most Baptist and many free churches after him, lean on “do this in remembrance of me” (11:24–25) and “you proclaim the Lord’s death” (11:26): the Supper is a memorial and a proclamation (Memorialism). “Not discerning the body” in 11:29 is often read as failing to recognise the church as Christ’s body, which fits the class divisions Paul was rebuking.

The fire that tests (3:10–15)

Paul says each builder’s work will be tested by fire on the Day; if it burns, the builder “will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire” (3:15).

Augustine floated a cautious reading in his Enchiridion (ch. 68–69): some believers may be purified by a cleansing fire after death, “whether this be so or not.” The Council of Trent defined purgatory in 1563, and the Catechism (§1031) cites 1 Cor 3:15 among its texts. Protestants answer that the passage is about teachers and the quality of their work, that the fire tests works rather than purging souls, and that the “loss” is of reward, not a punishment to be served. Eastern Orthodox churches pray for the dead but reject purgatory as the West defines it.

Marriage and celibacy (7)

“It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (7:1) may be Paul’s view or a Corinthian slogan he is quoting; most modern translations now put it in quotation marks. Paul then calls singleness a gift and says the unmarried can be devoted to the Lord “without distraction” (7:32–35).

The early church read the chapter as ranking celibacy above marriage. Jerome’s Against Jovinianus (393) argued it at length, and the Council of Trent (session 24, canon 10) condemned anyone who places marriage above virginity. The Latin church’s celibate priesthood draws on this chapter. The Reformers turned it around: the Augsburg Confession (art. 23) quotes 7:2 and 7:9 (“it is better to marry than to burn”) to defend married clergy. Orthodox and Eastern Catholic churches sit between: married men may be ordained priests, but bishops are drawn from the celibate.

Verse 15, on an unbelieving spouse who leaves, also became law. Catholic canon law calls it the “Pauline privilege,” and the Westminster Confession (24.6) allows divorce for “wilful desertion.” Both rest on this one verse.

Spiritual gifts (12–14)

Chapter 12 lists gifts, including tongues, prophecy and healing; chapter 14 regulates them. Pentecostals read Paul’s “I want you all to speak in tongues” (14:5) together with Acts, and the Assemblies of God holds tongues to be the “initial physical evidence” of baptism in the Spirit (Statement of Fundamental Truths, art. 8). Most Charismatic Christians in other churches, including the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, welcome the gifts without making tongues the required sign; Paul’s “do all speak with tongues?” (12:30) is their usual counter to the Pentecostal view.

Cessationism holds that the revelatory and sign gifts ended with the apostles. B. B. Warfield’s Counterfeit Miracles (1918) gave it classic form, mostly from church history rather than from this letter. The exegetical fight is over 13:8–10, “when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.” Some cessationists read “the perfect” as the completed New Testament; Continuationism, and most commentators including Fee, read it as Christ’s return. Many cessationists now concede the point and argue instead from Ephesians 2:20.

Women, heads and silence (11:2–16; 14:34–35)

“The head of a wife is her husband” (11:3). Wayne Grudem and most complementarians read kephalē as authority; Fee, Philip Payne and many egalitarians read it as source or origin. The covering itself was practised across the church until the twentieth century. The Catholic Code of Canon Law of 1917 required women to cover their heads in church; the 1983 code dropped it. Many Orthodox women still cover, as do Mennonite and other Anabaptist women, the Plymouth Brethren and a small Reformed revival. Most Protestant churches keep the principle of order and treat the covering as a local custom.

“The women should keep silent in the churches” (14:34–35) sits awkwardly beside 11:5, which assumes women pray and prophesy. The main readings are:

A later addition. Fee and Payne argue the verses were added by a scribe, since some manuscripts place them after verse 40.
A Corinthian slogan that Paul quotes in order to reject (“Or was it from you that the word of God came?”, v. 36).
Disruptive questions from women who had less education, which Paul tells them to save for home.
The judging of prophecies, a form of authoritative speech complementarians reserve for men.
A general rule of silence, now held by few churches.

See Women in Ministry for how the denominations have lined up.

Sexual ethics (6:9–11)

The vice list names malakoi and arsenokoitai. The second word appears here for the first time in surviving Greek and seems to be built from the Septuagint of Leviticus 20:13. Catholic, Orthodox and most Protestant churches read the pair as covering male same-sex intercourse, part of the Traditional Marriage Ethic. Affirming Theology argues that the terms point to exploitative forms such as pederasty or sex trafficking, or that modern translations (“homosexuals,” first in the RSV of 1946) read later categories into them. Both sides note that Paul’s point in 6:11 is “such were some of you. But you were washed.”

The resurrection and the end (15)

Most scholars, sceptical and believing, date the creed in 15:3–8 to within a few years of the crucifixion, which makes it the earliest written witness to the resurrection appearances. Evangelical apologists build their case on it; critical scholars such as Bart Ehrman accept the early date but not the conclusion. Rudolf Bultmann reinterpreted the chapter’s language as myth to be read existentially. N.T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) argues at length that “spiritual body” means a body animated by God’s Spirit, not a body made of spirit.

The order of events in 15:23–28 (“Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ, then comes the end”) is read by Premillennialism as leaving a gap for a thousand-year reign, and by Amillennialism as one event at Christ’s return. The chapter’s last line about God, “that God may be all in all” (15:28), was a key text for Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, and for Christian Universalism since; Orthodox writers read it in the light of Theosis.

Baptism for the dead (15:29)

Paul mentions people “baptized on behalf of the dead” without explaining or endorsing it. There are dozens of proposed readings (overview, secondary); no mainstream church practises it, and the Latter-day Saints’ proxy baptism is the best-known modern use of the verse.