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It will be seen that after a salutation or introduction of the epistle to the church as a
whole, with a stress upon the place that the hope of the Lord's return should have in their
lives (I Cor. 1: 7-9), the Apostle immediately plunges into the problems that threatened
the spiritual life of the Corinthians by the words "it hath been declared unto me of you,
my brethren, by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions among
you". We must not for a moment think of these members of the household of Chloe as
tale-bearers, but rather that by dint of personal probing and questioning, Paul had
unearthed the confused state in which the church of the Corinthians had been thrown by
their divisions, their laxity of morals and their doctrinal errors.
The great Rabbi Hillel said "Many fathers, much strife", and Paul's own expression
"Though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers", seems
to point to the cause of divisions among them. He feared that when he did come among
them that there might still be "debates, envyings, wraths, strifes, backbitings,
whisperings, swellings and tumults" (II Cor. 12: 20). It had become evident that the
coming of Apollos to them, instead of proving an unmixed blessing, had been used by the
evil one to sow discord. Paul had designedly used simple language when among them,
owing to their predilection to "excellency of speech and of wisdom" (I Cor. 2: 11), in
order that their faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. As
a result, some of the Corinthians, disappointed and possibly rebuffed by the Apostle's
attitude, spoke of his personal appearance as `mean' and of his speech as `contemptible'
(II Cor. 10: 10). Apollos was mighty in the Scriptures, and fervent in spirit, and had been
much blessed by the ministry of Aquila and Priscilla, so that he "helped them much
which had believed through grace" (Acts 18: 27). Apollos moreover was `eloquent'
logios and this gift may have been seized upon by some of the Corinthians as a weapon
with which to beat Paul.
"Apollos, who had followed him, though an able man, was an inexperienced
Christian, and not only by the natural charm of his impassioned oratory, but also by the
way in which he entered into subtle refinements so familiar to the Alexandrian intellect,
had unintentionally led them first of all to despise the unsophisticated simplicity of
St. Paul's teaching, and next to give the rein to all the skeptical fancies with which their
faith was overlaid . . . . . St. Paul could not but see the most extravagant exaggerations of
his own doctrines--the half-truths, which are ever the most dangerous of errors" (Farrar,
Life and Work of Paul).
While naturally there was a Greek element in the church of Corinth, a company who
could be reminded that they were "Gentiles, carried away by these dumb idols, even as ye
were led" (I Cor. 12: 1), there was a strong Jewish section who also could be reminded by
Paul "how that all our fathers were under the cloud and in the sea" (I Cor. 10: 1, 2).
The Judaic Christians who came armed with `letters of commendation' (II Cor. 3: 1)
from the twelve at Jerusalem, would naturally be most acceptable to the Jewish section of
the church, with the consequence that the emergence of a party that favoured Apollos,
drove the Jewish section to range themselves under the name of Peter, or apparently as
they preferred to call him, Cephas, avoiding even the Gentile name which the Lord had
given to him. Already at Corinth there had been invidious comparisons made between
the apostleship of Peter and of Paul, to which allusions can be found in both epistles