Who Were Paul's Opponents in 1 Corinthians?
There’s a moment in 1 Corinthians 1 that, if you’re paying attention, ought to puzzle you.
Paul tells the church at Corinth that the message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing — and then he proceeds, for four straight chapters, to spar with someone. He spars hard. He’s sarcastic. He calls his opponents fools. He overturns their categories one after another. He says God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, the weak to shame the strong, the things that are not to bring to nothing the things that are. He tells the Corinthians they’re behaving like infants. He warns them he’s coming back, and asks pointedly whether he should bring a rod when he does.
Whoever Paul’s opponents were, he was angry.
But here’s the thing: he never quite says who they were. He names some teachers — Apollos, Cephas, himself — and says the Corinthians have been picking sides, but he doesn’t think any of those teachers were the real problem. He’s striking at something else, something behind the slogans, something the Corinthians had absorbed from the surrounding culture and that was now tearing the church apart.
Who?
I spent two years writing my MTh thesis on this question. I’m going to walk you through what I found — because once you know who Paul was answering, you can tell whether his answer is for you, too.
Most sermons on 1 Corinthians 1-4 don’t bother with the question. They take the phrase “wisdom of the world” as a generic label and apply it to whatever the preacher disapproves of in the present moment. Worldly wisdom = secular humanism. Or = relativism. Or = academic theology. Or = scientism. The list goes on.
But Paul wasn’t writing to the present moment. He was writing to a specific church about a specific problem in the year 53 or 54 AD. The “wisdom” he was destroying was a particular wisdom — held by particular teachers — that had infiltrated that particular congregation. If we want to know whether it has anything to do with us, we have to know what it actually was.
Here are the six options scholars have proposed. I’ll take them one at a time.
Option 1: Judaizers
The oldest serious proposal goes back to F. C. Baur in the 1830s. Baur read 1 Corinthians as a story of two parties — the Pauline (Gentile) faction and the Petrine (Jewish) faction — and he argued the conflict was driven by Judaizing teachers who had followed Paul’s mission and tried to undo it.1
This was the same template Baur applied to Galatians, and to be fair, in Galatians it has some real explanatory power. But in 1 Corinthians it doesn’t.
There are no Jewish-Christian theological complaints in the letter. Paul never argues about circumcision, food laws, table fellowship, or any of the markers that defined the Jew/Gentile fight elsewhere in early Christianity. When he addresses idol meat in chapter 8, he assumes his readers have a Gentile background (”former association with idols,” 8:7) — a phrase that would horrify any practicing Jew, Hellenistic or otherwise.2 And the most distinctive Pauline polemical moves of Galatians (covenant, law, justification) are entirely absent.
The historian Hans Conzelmann put it bluntly: Baur’s thesis “breaks down in face of the text.3” No serious recent scholar holds this view, with the partial exception of Michael Goulder.4
The Corinthian opposition is not Jewish.
Option 2: Gnostics
After the Nag Hammadi documents were unearthed in 1945, scholars in the 1950s — particularly Ulrich Wilckens and Walter Schmithals — began identifying Gnostic ideas5 as the “wisdom of the world” in Corinth. The case has surface appeal. Paul uses several terms (σοφία, πνευματικός, μυστήριον, γνῶσις) that became technical Gnostic vocabulary. He distinguishes between the “natural person” and the “spiritual person” in 1 Corinthians 2, which sounds like a Gnostic move.
But on closer look, this position falls apart for three reasons.
First, terminology shared between two systems doesn’t mean the systems share content. The word “freedom” appears in both Stoic philosophy and modern American political rhetoric, but they don’t mean the same thing by it. As Corin Mihăilă observes, “Terms do not have meaning in isolation but in relation to each other, their semantic context being dependent on their context and frame of reference.6”
Second, the natural-person/spiritual-person distinction in 2:14-15 doesn’t actually function the way it does in Gnostic literature. For Paul, the contrast is between Christians and unbelievers. For Gnostics, it would have to be between two grades of Christian — the lower ranks of believers versus the elite “spiritual ones” who possess hidden knowledge. Paul’s contrast is of an entirely different kind.
Third, and most damaging: Gnosticism as a developed system is a second-century phenomenon. 1 Corinthians was written in the mid-50s. To argue Paul was responding to Gnosticism, you have to assume “proto-Gnostic” ideas were already circulating, which is exactly what the textual evidence does not show. Robert Wilson saw the trap clearly:
Those who begin with the developed Gnosticism of the second century and go back to Paul’s letters have no difficulty in identifying ‘gnostic motifs’ — terms, concepts and ideas which may legitimately be described as Gnostic because they are used as technical terms in the context of Gnostic systems. This usage however may be question-begging, since there is no way of showing that these terms and concepts are already Gnostic in an earlier context.7
You don’t get to assume what you’re trying to prove.
Option 3: Hellenistic Jewish Wisdom Teachers
A subtler proposal: maybe the teachers in Corinth weren’t Judaizers in the Galatian sense, but Hellenistic Jews who’d absorbed the wisdom-speculation of writers like Philo of Alexandria and the Wisdom of Solomon. Richard Horsley, working in this lane, tried to show that “the close relation between gnosis and sophia in Philo and Wisdom enables us to determine, by analogy, how the Corinthians’ gnosis may have been related to the sophia rejected by Paul in 1 Cor 1-4.8”
It’s a more sophisticated version of Option 2 — and it suffers from related problems.
Gordon Fee put his finger on the two strongest objections.9 First, the supposed parallels between the Corinthians and Philo may owe more to their shared Hellenization than to anything distinctly Jewish. The Greek-speaking world was full of these ideas; you don’t need a Jewish vector to explain them. Second, Paul’s responses exclude a Jewish source. The pronouncement that “Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom” (1:22) makes no sense if Philonic Judaism is what he’s opposing. And again, the “former association with idols” line in 8:7 is unintelligible if the wayward party is Jewish. As Fee dryly observed: “Even Philo would be horrified here.10”
So this option fails for the same family of reasons as the Gnostic one. The Corinthians’ problem wasn’t a Jewish-flavored wisdom tradition. It was something Greek.
Option 4: Socioeconomic Factions
Here we move out of pure ideology and into social structure. Beginning with John Chow, Frederick Danker, and L. L. Welborn, and continued more recently by Joshua Rice, a school of interpreters has argued that the divisions in Corinth weren’t theological at all — they were economic. Roman patron-client networks had infiltrated the church. The wealthy benefactors were sponsoring teachers and bringing along their dependents, creating cliques organized around social rank rather than doctrine.11
There’s something to this. Paul’s letter does engage social dynamics — the Lord’s Supper abuse in chapter 11 is straightforward class warfare, with the wealthy eating their fill while the poor go hungry. Welborn captures the dynamic crisply: “The bondage of the poor to the rich is the breeding ground of faction.12”
But you can’t reduce the conflict to economics, and you certainly can’t reduce 1 Corinthians 1-4 to economics.
Two pieces of textual evidence push back. First, if Paul understood the conflict as a patron problem, you’d expect him to position himself as the church’s true patron, replacing the rival benefactors. He doesn’t. He repeatedly identifies God as the source of the gifts the Corinthians have received (1:4-7), and he goes out of his way to avoid claiming patron status.13
Second, when Paul reaches for the construction metaphor in 3:10 — calling himself a “wise master builder” (ἀρχιτέκτων) — Joshua Rice argued this is patronage language, since “patrons constructed buildings.14” But that misses the more obvious referent. The same word ἀρχιτέκτων is used in the Septuagint of Exodus 31:4 to describe Bezalel, the temple craftsman whom God filled with His Spirit to build the Tabernacle. Paul isn’t describing himself as a Roman patron. He’s describing himself as a Spirit-filled master craftsman in the line of Bezalel and Solomon.15 The temple-building imagery in 1 Corinthians 3 is biblical-theological, not socioeconomic.
Patronage is a real factor in the background. But it’s not the wisdom Paul is destroying.
Option 5: Rhetors and Sophists
Now we get warmer.
In the mid-first century, Corinth was crawling with traveling teachers of rhetoric — Sophists, in the technical sense — who would set up shop in major cities, attract paying students, and compete with each other for prestige and following. Joseph Fitzmyer describes them as “wandering teachers of rhetoric who had come to Corinth and vied with each other to attract followers who would be loyal to them in their competitive rivalry.16”
There’s good evidence Sophists were operating in Corinth right around the time of Paul’s letter. We know they were there during Dio Chrysostom’s visit a few decades later (AD 89-96), and the social structure of the Sophistic teacher-disciple relationship maps remarkably onto what we see in 1 Corinthians. Students were expected to model their lives on their teachers. Loyalty was tribal. Ben Witherington summarizes the dynamic: “The Corinthians were apparently taking their cues from what they knew of the educational process as modeled by the rhetors teaching in their city and taking part in debates, quarrels, boasting, arrogance, and the like.17”
This explains Paul’s allegiance-slogans in 1:12 (”I follow Paul,” “I follow Apollos”) nicely. It even explains, as Witherington speculates, why Paul felt the need to mention his unimpressive personal appearance in 2:3: “The real complaint against Paul may have been that he was not arrogant in his presentation or did not engage in boasting, unlike the Sophists.18”
But there are two problems with making rhetoric the primary cause.
First, if the issue were form, you’d expect Paul’s response to focus on form. And while he does address rhetorical form in 1:17-20 and 2:1-5, the bulk of chapters 3-4 is about content — about what the rival teachers were actually saying, not just how they were saying it.
Second, by the first century, the word σοφία had become more associated with philosophy than with rhetoric. Cicero and Quintilian distinguish carefully between eloquentia (the Latin for rhetoric) and sapientia (the Latin for wisdom).19 When Paul says “the Greeks seek wisdom” (1:22), he’s not referring primarily to rhetorical polish. He’s referring to philosophical content.
So rhetoric is part of the picture — these wisdom teachings were being delivered in fashionable Sophistic dress. But the substance of the wisdom was something else.
Option 6: Stoics
Which brings us, finally, to the proposal that I think fits the evidence best — and that has been gaining traction in recent scholarship: the Corinthians had been captured by a Christianized form of Stoic philosophy.
Stoicism was the dominant philosophy in the Roman world in the first century. When Corinth was rebuilt as a Roman colony in the early first century BCE, Stoic ideas came along with the colonization. By Paul’s day, Stoicism was what an educated Roman would be, by default, unless he had been initiated into something else.20 There is solid evidence for a Roman gymnasium in Corinth at the time of Paul’s letter, where the upper classes would have received the standard Stoic curriculum.21
That alone doesn’t prove the case. What proves the case is that the language of 1 Corinthians 1-4 — the specific phrases Paul attacks — comes straight out of Stoic literature.
Here are three sets of parallels you’ll find hard to read as coincidental.
When Paul mocks the Corinthians in 4:8 — “Already you have become rich! Already you have become kings!” — he is quoting almost exactly a stock Stoic teaching about the wise man. Plutarch: “The wise man is termed an orator, a poet, a general, a rich man, and a king.22” Cicero: “For the wise man will have a better claim to the title of King than Tarquin, a better right to be called rich than Croesus.23”
When Paul writes in 4:10, “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise [φρόνιμοι] in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong [ἰσχυροί]” — those two adjectives are technical Stoic vocabulary for the sage. Plutarch again: “The wise man is termed not only prudent [φρόνιμος] and just and brave.24” Zeno of Citium: “The wise one is great and grand and lofty and strong25 [ἰσχυρόν].”
When Paul says in 3:21-22, “For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future — all are yours,” he’s not coining a phrase. He’s deliberately echoing — and reframing — a famous Stoic boast. Plutarch: “If one has got virtue from the Stoa, it is possible to say, ‘Ask, if there’s aught you wish, all will be yours.26’” Cicero: “[The wise man] will most rightly be called king… master… rich. Rightly will he be said to own all things27…”
These are not loose thematic similarities. They’re the kind of close verbal echoes that Paul’s Corinthian audience would have heard immediately. Paul is taking the Corinthians’ own slogans and throwing them back at the church — to show how absurd those slogans become when measured against the cross.
There’s more. The word σοφός (”wise one”), which Paul uses repeatedly in 1 Corinthians 1-4, was claimed almost as a brand by the Stoics. Timothy Brookins notes that “the Stoics in fact boasted that they had exclusive right to the title.28”
And the behavior of the Corinthians — the individualism, the disregard for community, the elevation of the self-actualizing sage figure over the welfare of the body — fits the Stoic outlook precisely. Terence Paige observes:
Just such a callousness of individuals toward others as we find at Corinth, such a disregard for the community dimension of their new existence, would likely be fostered by a Stoicizing influence, which would in fact exalt the individual σοφός at the expense of the community. And a Stoic could behave in this individualistic, community-destroying fashion at the same time that he believes he is pursuing a virtuous life.29
That’s the Corinthian church in one paragraph. People who think they are pursuing wisdom while ripping the body of Christ apart.
It’s worth saying — because the thesis I’m summarizing here was careful to say it — the Stoicism on display in Corinth wasn’t pure classical Stoicism. It was a watered-down popular version. Real Stoicism held the “wise man” up as an unreachable ideal — “as rare as the Phoenix,30” in one Stoic’s vivid phrase. The Corinthians thought they had already attained the rank. That self-congratulating shortcut may itself be what Paul is mocking when he says “Already you have become wise! Already you have become kings!”
So What?
This isn’t just pedantry. It changes how you read the entire opening section of 1 Corinthians.
If Paul’s opponents were Stoics — or, more precisely, if his congregation had been seduced by a Christianized Stoicism that taught self-sufficiency, individual sagehood, and the elevation of the wise above the foolish — then his response is not generic. It’s targeted. He’s not attacking “worldly wisdom” in the abstract. He’s attacking a specific philosophical system that his readers had imported into the church and were using to justify their own social hierarchy and their own self-image as “the wise ones.”
The cross, for Paul, is the device that detonates that whole framework. Stoicism was a philosophy of self-mastery, status, and the heroic individual sage. The crucified Messiah is the exact opposite: weakness chosen, status forfeited, the individual humiliated in public for the sake of others. You can be a Stoic, or you can be a Christian, but you cannot be both. Not because they overlap on too many surface concepts (they do), but because their underlying stories about reality are mutually exclusive.
And here’s the part that will only land if you keep reading.
In 2026, Stoicism is back. Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic sells in the millions. “Be a Stoic” is now an entire content genre on YouTube. The self-sufficient sage who masters his emotions and rises above the herd is once again one of the most marketable figures in Western culture. There are Christians right now reading Marcus Aurelius alongside their Bibles and feeling like the two fit naturally together.
Paul has thoughts about that.
I’ll take those up next week.
F. C. Baur, "The Two Epistles to the Corinthians," in Christianity at Corinth: The Quest for the Pauline Church, ed. Edward Adams and David G. Horrell (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2004), 51-59. Baur famously read all of early Christian history through a Hegelian dialectic — Pauline thesis, Petrine antithesis, early-Catholic synthesis — which colored every text he read.
Gordon D. Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 14-15.
Hans Conzelmann, 1 Corinthians: A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 14.
Michael D. Goulder, "Σοφία in 1 Corinthians," in Adams and Horrell, Christianity at Corinth, 173-181.
Ulrich Wilckens, Weisheit und Torheit: Eine exegetisch-religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu 1. Kor. 1 und 2, BHT 26 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1959); Walter Schmithals, Die Gnosis in Korinth (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1956).
Corin Mihăilă, "The Gnostic and Hellenistic Backgrounds of Sophia in 1 Corinthians 1-4," Perichoresis 17, no. s2 (2019): 5.
Robert McLaughlin Wilson, "Gnosis at Corinth," in Paul and Paulinism: Essays in Honor of C. K. Barrett (London: SPCK, 1982), 103.
Richard A. Horsley, "Gnosis in Corinth: I Corinthians 8.1-6," NTS 27, no. 1 (1980): 35.
Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 14.
Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, 15.
John K. Chow, Patronage and Power: A Study of Social Networks in Corinth (Edinburgh: Black, 1992); L. L. Welborn, Politics and Rhetoric in the Corinthian Epistles (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997); Joshua Rice, Paul and Patronage: The Dynamics of Power in 1 Corinthians (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2013).
Welborn, Politics and Rhetoric, 24.
David E. Briones, Review of Paul and Patronage: The Dynamics of Power in 1 Corinthians, by Joshua Rice, JETS 57:4 (2014): 831.
Rice, Paul and Patronage, 114.
Raymond B. Dillard, "The Chronicler’s Solomon," WTJ 43:2 (Spring 1981): 298-299.
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, AYBRL 32 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 139.
Ben Witherington, Conflict and Community in Corinth: A Socio-Rhetorical Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 75.
Witherington, Conflict and Community, 123-124.
Timothy A. Brookins, Corinthian Wisdom, Stoic Philosophy, and the Ancient Economy, SNTSMS 159 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 34.
Terence Paige, "Stoicism, ἐλυθερία and Community at Corinth," in Adams and Horrell, Christianity at Corinth, 210.
Timothy A. Brookins, "The Wise Corinthians: Their Stoic Education and Outlook," JTS 62:1 (2011): 58.
Plutarch, De tranquillitate animi 472A (Helmbold, LCL).
Cicero, De finibus 3.75 (Rackham, LCL).
Plutarch, De tranquillitate animi 472A.
SVF 1.216 (author’s translation).
Plutarch, Stoicos absurdiora poetis dicere 1058C (Cherniss, LCL).
Cicero, De finibus 3.75.
Brookins, Corinthian Wisdom, 160.
Paige, “Stoicism,” 215.
Troels Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and the Stoics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 62.