Corinth

Corinth is a city in the Roman province of Achaia, on the narrow isthmus connecting the Greek mainland to the Peloponnese, and in the New Testament it is chiefly the place where Paul planted a church and to which he wrote two surviving letters. The text names it directly in the greetings: the first letter is addressed “to the assembly of God which is at Corinth—those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints” (1 Corinthians 1:2), and the second “to the assembly of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in the whole of Achaia” (2 Corinthians 1:1), which places the city within a wider region rather than as a church standing alone.

Historically and geographically, Corinth was a busy commercial center of the Greek world with a mixed population, and by the first century it was a Roman colony with civic offices of the kind the letters reflect; Romans 16:23 names “Erastus, the treasurer of the city,” among those sending greetings, while the same verse calls Gaius Paul’s host “and host of the whole assembly,” indicating a church meeting in a household and large enough to need one. The letters show a congregation of converts from pagan backgrounds, and Paul’s travel plans to and from the city shape their narrative: he writes of being ready to come a third time and of not wanting to be a burden (2 Corinthians 12:14; 13:1), and he speaks of the collection and of Titus’s care for them (2 Corinthians 8:16). The letters also show a church in dispute with its founding apostle and with itself.

What Scripture says about the Corinthian church is largely a record of problems Paul addresses: rival slogans — “I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos,” “I follow Cephas,” and “I follow Christ” (1 Corinthians 1:12); denial of the resurrection by some — “how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?” (1 Corinthians 15:12); and social division at the common meal, where some eat and drink while others are put to shame for having too little (1 Corinthians 11:22). The letters close with liturgical-sounding formulas: “If any man doesn’t love the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be cursed. Come, Lord!” (1 Corinthians 16:22), and “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, God’s love, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14; the letter’s final doxology appears at Romans 16:27).

Christian traditions differ over how to read these letters and, by extension, what Corinth represents. In one common reading the Corinthian correspondence is a charter for ordered church life — sacraments, discipline, and settled ministry — and Corinth becomes a cautionary name for faction and disorder; another reading, especially among Pentecostal and charismatic communities, treats the same letters as evidence that the Spirit’s gifts were at work in an ordinary congregation, and reads Paul’s corrections as regulation rather than suppression. Interpreters also differ on the “Come, Lord” of 1 Corinthians 16:22, which some take as a preserved early liturgical prayer and others as a prophetic utterance; the text itself does not say. Later Christian writers sometimes used “Corinthian” as a byword for luxury and loose morals, a reputation drawn more from pagan satire and civic reputation than from the letters, and readers today divide on how far that background should inform interpretation.

AI-generated reference entry, grounded in the passages where this term appears — history and Scripture stated as such, interpretation labeled as interpretation. Not a substitute for the text itself.