If, as other scholars hold, the offender was not the same as in
the first epistle, the general picture of the visit will not have to
be much changed.
Besides making this visit it is probable that Paul also wrote to Corinth a letter, now lost, intended to secure the result of which the unfortunate visit had failed (ii. 3, 4, 9, vii. 8, 12). It, is, however, possible that the allusions merely refer to 1 Cor. v., in which case it is not necessary to assume this intermediate letter. The letter, if there was one, may have been sent by Titus, whom Paul in any case commissioned to go to Corinth and try to mend matters. Paul describes his anxiety over this last resource in touching language (ii. 12, 13). Disappointed that Titus did not meet him at Troas, he moved on to Macedonia, and there (vii. 5-9) was rejoiced by the coming of the envoy with good news of the complete return of the Corinthians to integrity and loyalty.
Second Corinthians was Paul’s response to this friendly attitude reported by Titus. It went by the hand of Titus, who was promptly sent back to complete the work he had so well begun (viii. 6, 16-24). In company with him (viii. 18) was sent a brother (unnamed) who had already been appointed as the representative of the churches to accompany Paul in carrying to Jerusalem the great collection of money now nearly completed. The greater part of the epistle consists of the outpouring of Paul’s thankful and loving heart (chaps, i.-vii.), together with directions and exhortations relating to the collection.
But the epistle contains evidence of another and a disagreeable side to the affairs of the Corinthian church. Especially the last four chapters, but also references in the earlier chapters, show that virulent personal opponents of Paul and his work had been exercising an evil activity. It is not easy to discover the precise relation of these persons to the parties at Corinth or to the series of events which have just been sketched, but we can well understand that their presence and efforts played a large part in the history. We learn that Jewish Christians (xi. 22) had come to Corinth, doubtless from Jerusalem, with letters of recommendation (iii. 1). They urged their own claims as apostles (though not of the twelve), and set themselves up as superior to Paul (xi. 5, xii. 11, v. 12, xi. 18). Paul calls them “false apostles” (xi. 13-15), and declares that they preach “another Jesus, another Spirit, another Gospel” (xi. 4). That in Paul’s judgment his influence with the Corinthian church depended on overthrowing the power of these disturbers of the peace is plain, and this accounts for the strenuous, and occasionally violent, tone of his polemic in chapters x.-xiii. As we compare them with the Judaizers of Galatia it seems that their polemic was less on the ground of principles and doctrines, and more a personal attack. Paul does not much argue, as he does in Galatians, against the inclination of Gentile Christians to subject themselves to the Law (yet note the contrast of the old veiled covenant and the new open revelation, iii. 4-18, esp. iii. 6); he is engaged in personal defence against charges of carnal motives (x. 2), perhaps even of embezzlement (xii. 16-18), and also of fickleness (i. 12-ii. 4). When he ironically calls himself a “fool” (xi. 1, 16, 17, 19, 21, xii. 6-11), he is doubtless taking up their term of abuse, and in many of the hard passages of this most difficult of all Paul’s epistles we may suspect that half-quoted flings of the enemy glimmer through his retort. From 2 Cor. x. 7, xi. 22 it may be inferred that these Jewish Christians had something to do with the “Christ-party” of which we seem to hear in the first epistle.
To the tact and firmness of Titus must be ascribed much of the successful issue of these dealings with the Corinthians. Paul spent the following winter at Corinth (Acts xx. 2, 3); while there he wrote the Epistle to the Romans, which in its milder tone gives clear indication that the day of violent controversy with Judaizing emissaries like those who came to Galatia had passed. There was indeed, as might have been expected, trouble from enemies among the Jews, but Paul escaped the danger, and with the money for the mother church, the collection of which had so long lain near his heart, he was able to start for Jerusalem in the spring of one of the years 55–59 (See Paul).
In later time (circ. A.D. 95) we hear from the epistle of Clement of Rome that the Corinthian church paid full honour to Paul’s memory; and circ. A.D. 139, the excellent Catholic (though Hebrew) Christian Hegesippus found himself deeply refreshed by the honest life and the fidelity to Christian truth of the descendants and successors of the Christians over whom Paul had laboured with such faithful oversight and so many anxious tears.
Critical Questions.—The manuscript evidence for the Corinthian epistles is the same as for the other epistles of Paul (see Bible: New Testament). Of early attestation the amount is rather greater for First Corinthians than for other epistles. Not only were both epistles included without question in the Pauline canon of Marcion (circ. A.D. 150) and in the Muratorian list (end of 2nd century), and known to various Gnostic sects of the 2nd century, but Clement of Rome (circ. A.D. 95) makes a specific reference (xlvii. 1) to the fact that the Corinthians “received the Epistle of the blessed Apostle Paul,” and proceeds with an unmistakable quotation from 1 Cor. i. 11-13. Other quotations from First Corinthians are found in Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, while use of the epistle can probably be detected in Hermas. Second Corinthians was, and still remains, less quotable, but it is probably used by Polycarp, perhaps by Ignatius, and by the presbyters known to Irenaeus, and it was freely used by Theophilus, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria and Tertullian.
The only serious doubt of the genuineness of First and Second Corinthians has been that of the so-called Dutch school of critics, in the latter part of the 19th century, and forms a part of their attempt (the first since that of Baur) entirely to reconstruct the history of early Christianity. Their view that the Corinthian epistles are the product of a body of progressive Christians in the 2nd century, who ascribed to a legendary Paul the advanced views they had themselves developed, has not commended itself to critics, and seems to be burdened by nearly all possible difficulties. The genuineness of both epistles is, in fact, amply attested not only by early writers, but by the surer proof of complicated and consistent concreteness, with perfect adaptation to all we know of Paul and of the passing circumstances of the earliest days of Christianity in Greece. For a writer a century later to have composed the Corinthian epistles and then successfully passed them off as the work of Paul could be explained only by an hypothesis of inspiration! It would have been as difficult as to forge a daily newspaper. It is to be observed that the two epistles are so intimately connected by their contents with Romans and Galatians that the four together support one another’s genuineness.
In Second Corinthians two important questions of integrity have been much discussed. (1) 2 Cor. vi. 14–vii. 1 is a passage somewhat distinct from its context, and introduced by a seemingly abrupt break in the sequence of thought. It is, therefore, held by some (including G. Heinrici) to be an interpolation by another writer, by others (as A. Hilgenfeld) to be a part of the letter referred to in 1 Cor. v. 9. But the arguments against Pauline authorship are not convincing; there is after all a certain real connexion to be traced between the section and vi. I; and the resemblance to the substance of 1 Cor. v. 9 is natural in any case. (2) More important is the question as to 2 Cor. x.-xiii. Since J. S. Semler (1776) it has been held by careful scholars that these chapters are written in a tone of excited irritation which is out of accord with the genial tone of gratified affection and confidence that pervades chaps, i.-ix. Hence such scholars as A. Hausrath, R. A. Lipsius, O. Pfleiderer, P. W. Schmiedel, A. C. M‘Giffert have adopted the view that these four chapters were not written as part of Second Corinthians, but, while unquestionably from Paul’s hand, were from a separate letter (the “Vier-kapitel-Brief”), probably the same as that supposed to be referred to in 2 Cor. ii. 3-9, vii. 8-12. This theory is, however, probably not correct, for while, on the one hand, it is based on an exaggeration of the differences and a neglect of certain lines of connexion between the chaps, x.-xiii. and chaps, i.-ix., on the other hand the identification supposed is made difficult by several facts.
