Colonia Laus Juliua Corinthiensis

That somewhat awkward title above refers to the name that Julius Caesar gave the city we know as Corinth after he restored it in 44 B.C. (The city had been sacked by Lucius Mummius about one hundred years previously.) I remember Corinth as being the city of the billions of mosquitos. The first time I went there was in 1989, during a warm and humid but otherwise beautiful early summer. Our hosts fed us dinner outdoors that lasted until well after the sun went down. In keeping with modern Greek tradition, dinner started at about 5:00 p.m. and lasted until well after midnight. They kept the mosquitos at bay with citronella candles during dinner and then with mosquito netting when we finally retired to our beds. But despite the netting, that high-pitched buzz of mosquiotos in my ears kept me up for most of the night.

Several years and several thousand miles later, I came back to Corinth and the mosquitos were still there. Perhaps that explains the divisions and arguments in the early church: maybe nobody was able to get a decent night's sleep. And they were too tired to think straight in the morning.

We read Corinthians today, in a passage that Jerome Murphy O'Conner says is "mental gymnastics intended to bemuse the Corinthians." Paul is probably trying to turn the Corinthians' own terminology and phrases against them. The salient point is found in the last verse of the passage: "But we have the mind of Christ." As O'Conner says, "God is known only through Christ, whose mind is not concerned with speculation, but with obedience and service."

Academically, the divisions in the early Corinthian church serve as fascinating ways to shed light on different perspectives of Christian thought. But in a practical sense, Corinth remains for me the city of billions of mosquitos.