Is there any way to know what Christians at Corinth—disgusted by the way things were in the church—acted? Did they just stay until things changed? What happened to that church long term? — M.C.
The Corinthian church is famous for its issues. In fact, it’s probably fair to describe it as a problem-saturated fellowship! (Partisanship, immorality, lawsuits… the list is long.)
But no, there isn't any historical information to answer your question. However, you might be interested to read 1 Clement. This is a letter written to Corinth about 95 AD, some four decades after Paul wrote 1-2 Corinthians (in the 50s), by a church leader in Rome. The interesting light shed by 1 Clement is that the issue of disunity has resurfaced. The younger men are rebelling against their elders.
Since the Corinthians seem to have met in house churches (1 Cor 16:19, it seems to me that different small groups probably faced different sets of challenges. Not every group was confused about the resurrection, or the spiritual gifts, or was eating meat sacrificed to idols.) That’s a benefit of the small group dynamic. This isn’t to say that sin can’t jump from group to group, leavening the whole community. But there’s a layer of insulation when our primary church identity is in the house church
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