The various letters or what is collectively identified as the Corinthian correspondence is associated with Saint Paul’s third missionary journey. He wrote his two canonical letters to the Corinthians during this third missionary journey, as well as what scholars believe to be two additional letters that have not been preserved in the New Testament. The First Letter to the Corinthians was likely written in Ephesus around A.D. 55. Shortly after sending it through a courier, Paul briefly visited Corinth and was grievously offended by a member of the church there. Subsequent to that visit, he wrote another letter that is now lost, sometimes referred to as his “Sorrowful Letter” that is mentioned in 2 Corinthians (2 Cor 2:4). Later, after receiving a report from Titus about the positive way his sorrowful letter had been received, Saint Paul wrote what is now known as the Second Letter to the Corinthians, probably from Macedonia, and most likely within a year or so of writing the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul addressed those overly-proud Corinthian Christians in both of those letters.
Although he also addressed many specific problems in the church at Corinth, Paul often did so by calling attention to the main source of their many problems. He believed the cause of the troubles within the Church of Corinth was due to their false belief that some of them had already crossed the finish line of the Christian life, while in reality the race was still going on. Many scholars believe that the heart of Saint Paul’s theology is eschatology. Paul taught that Jesus was Israel’s Messiah and that the coming of the Messiah had brought about the latter days in the history of salvation or inaugurated those last days. Faithful Jews in Paul’s day believed that when the Messiah were to finally come that the dawn of the messianic age would fulfill all of God’s purposes for creating the world by ushering in the fullness of the final times. However, Paul followed Jesus’ teaching and, so, he believed that, in the Lord’s first coming or advent, Jesus had only inaugurated the last days, which would then continue throughout the history of the church. Then, those days would finally come to their fullness at the consummation of the kingdom in Christ’s second advent or Parousia.
For the most part, early Christians affirmed that Christ’s kingdom would unfold in three phases, but, even now, eschatology can be confusing and easily misinterpreted. Related interpretative issues to the first and second comings, along with the intervening time between them are encapsulated in questions like these: How much has Christ already accomplished? Or, What divine blessings of the last days remain to be obtained at some point in the future? Apparently, the Galatians had underestimated how much Christ had already accomplished in their assessment of those last days. Moreover, many members of the Church in Thessalonica had come to believe that Christ’s return was so near that there was no reason to fulfill any of the daily responsibilities expected of faithful disciples. Yet, the Church in Corinth experienced divisions among themselves because some Corinthian Christians thought that they had far more of the blessings of the last days than others.
In theology, there is what is called futurist eschatology in which its proponents look toward the future and, in order to do so, they accentuate what is written in Daniel or the Book of Revelation. Others might read the prophetic portions of the Gospels and those prophetic portions of some of the Letters of the New Testament. In other theological circles you find a new term either called “realized eschatology” or “inaugurated eschatology”. In one sense, the use of such terminology works to restrain an over-emphasis on the future and to focus on the coming of the Lord. You could say that the Corinthian Church exhibited an over-realized form of the realized type, which is the study or doctrine of the four last things or ta eschata: death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
Nature and dignity 