After Paul had founded the church at Corinth, factionalism and divisions threatened to destroy its unity and effectiveness. Paul was greatly concerned for the spiritual welfare of these early followers of the Christ, and his two epistles to them, which appear in the New Testament, testify to this solicitude. He did not hesitate to come to grips with the specific errors which he discerned were leading them astray. Greece was the intellectual hub of the universe of its day, and Corinth was one of its great centers.
It is notable that Paul completely dissociated himself and his teaching from materialistic intellectualism. This is particularly emphatic in the first three chapters of the first epistle to the Corinthians. For instance, he wrote (2:1, 4): "And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. ... And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power." There is much more of a relevant nature in these chapters. And in his second epistle he says (11:3), "I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ."
The fact that the Pauline Epistles were written twenty centuries ago to a people long passed from this world's scene in no way deprives them of their spiritual vitality. Their application is common to Christian pilgrims in all ages. Paul's early scholastic training was most rigorous. Until his experience on the road to Damascus and his conversion, he was a most zealous defender of the priestly Jewish church and an exponent of its theology.
