‘Traumatized Church: What Paul’s Relationship with the Corinthian Church Teaches Us About Helping Those Who are Hurting’

I (Scot) know I never would have heard Paul’s emotions and the allegations against him as well as I can now had I not learned from Adrienne’s work. … With her understanding of how to help those who have experienced trauma in mind, I began applying her insights as I was studying Corinthians for my work on the Everyday Bible Studies series. I found that I was hearing more in Paul’s words than I had ever heard before.

In one of my favorite novels, author Lil Copan observes that Paul “became the roaring voice of the early church.” He was that, but not always. Paul’s roars sometimes cracked, creaked, and croaked, and in 2 Corinthians they become a whimper. We hear some weeping, along with clear signs of depression and despair. His Corinth-bound correspondence, if that is not too delicate a term for his at times white-hot missives, reveals a transparent, vulnerable, and deeply emotional man. One can’t read the following lines from his back-and-forth with the unstable, and probably mercurial, house churches in Corinth without spinning one’s head a bit to ask, Was Paul really that vulnerable with them? (Yes, he was.) Again, hearing Paul requires us to have ears attuned to and in empathy with him to hear the depths of what he is saying. When a caring pastor reads these lines on a Sunday morning, she may tear up, but such a pastor undoubtedly will reveal a tone of pained compassion. I have added italics to emphasize the words revealing Paul’s sufferings and emotions. (If you still think Paul is a jerk, just read the words in italic font from The Second Testament.)

Up to the present hour we hunger and we thirst and are shabby and slapped and destabilized. (1 Cor. 4:11)

For we don’t want you to be uninformed, siblings, about our trouble that happened in Asia, because we were depressed — excessively, beyond ability — so that we despaired even of living. But we ourselves had among ourselves the death sentence so we might not be persuaded in ourselves but in God, the one who raises the dead ones, who rescued and will rescue us out of such great deaths, in whom we have hoped that he will also still rescue. (2 Cor. 1:8-9)

For out of much trouble and heart-anguish I wrote through many tears, not so you may be pained but so you may know the love that I have aboundingly for you. . . . Coming into Troas for the Christos-gospel and having a door opened for me in the Lord, I did not have leisure in my spirit in not finding Titos [Titus], my sibling, but, saying farewell to them, I exited to Makedonia [Macedonia]. (2 Cor. 2:4, 12-13)

In every way, [we are] ones being troubled but not distressed;

ones perplexed but not overperplexed,

ones being chased but not abandoned,

ones being tossed down but not destroyed. (2 Cor. 4:8-9)

Make space for us! (2 Cor. 7:2)

Apart from the exceptions [to the above] [there is] my daily supervision, [that is], the [inner] disturbance for all the assemblies.

Who weakens and I don’t weaken?

Who trips and I am not set on fire? (2 Cor. 11:28-29)

Picture that. Paul, an empathic, sympathetic, read-the-room’s-feelings people-pleaser? It sure sounds like that to me. The Paul we meet here is not some stiff, stoical, sophisticated, tight-upper-lip bishop or rector who fulfilled his duties like clockwork. This is no jerk. This is someone who loved the Corinthians, though they at times refused to return the favor. He is homeless and without food, tested and often confronting possible martyrdom, and blubbering with “trouble and heart-anguish . . . many tears.” His preaching voice is stoppered in his anxious waiting for good news from Corinth. He is all but begging for their reciprocal love. On top of this, he was a pastor overwhelmed by what needed to be done to accomplish his hopes for his least favorite church. Or perhaps they were his favorite but his most difficult.

I (Scot) love this Paul. I love him the way I love pastors I’ve known. I respect them; I get irritated by them; I worry about them; I am blessed by them. Paul had formed enough churches at this point to have hundreds of children in the faith, evidently many of whom now considered themselves his supervisor. As odd as that may sound, it is no surprise to anyone who has led anything in a church. Church people have plenty of opinions about seemingly everything. What continues to fascinate me about Paul is his traveling back-and-forths from Ephesus and elsewhere to Corinth. Back-and-forths that were both in body and by letter, and at times he was represented in body by one of his close coworkers, such as Titus (2 Cor. 2:4, 12-13).

This emotionally, personally vulnerable Paul forms the personality of the backstory of Paul’s testy relationship with the house churches in Corinth. Most of us know Christians, even some church leaders, who think with their feelings and feel with their thoughts. Such persons are not just intuitive, they are in touch with themselves. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, unlike any document from the earliest churches, reveals an in-touch Paul who, sad to say, has been overinterpreted and weaponized by too many who are themselves out of touch with themselves.

The Backstory’s Details

Only specialists of 2 Corinthians enjoy getting lost in the intricacies of the back-and-forths of Paul and Corinth. It’s so complicated that many just give up. Others (and I understand their views) don’t care about reconstructing the back-and-forths because they just want to read the letters. So in what follows I hope to provide a basic sketch of what is happening — the backstory behind the letters as best we can tell.

A woman named Chloe has asked Paul a fistful of questions. In doing so, she or some others at the church have dished out some scoop about people and problems in the church of Corinth (1 Cor. 1:11-12). At the end of Paul’s first letter we learn that three men were probably the scoopers (Stephanas, Fortunatus, Achaicus; 16:17). That letter and their trip were only the beginning of a series of trips and letters between Paul and Corinth. Listening to Paul’s own words about what others were saying and what he said back is a bit like driving a car with no windows. Paul is a courageous letter writer, but by his own admission not so courageous in person. Whether he was showing off his courage or sitting in a corner, the man clearly loved the Corinthians and longed for restoration with them. He also yearned for them to get their act together.

We know Paul wrote a number of letters to Corinth. Two have survived in our New Testament. There were also letters written from Corinth to Paul, though none of these have survived, except in bits of quotation found in the two surviving letters of Paul that we have. Many today have concluded that our second letter to the Corinthians combines two or more letters of Paul into one. Here’s a brief outline of how at least five letters were written and delivered, based on one of the most informed sketches of the backstory made by a lifelong specialist on Paul.

Paul was in Corinth several times. He founded the church and remained there for eighteen months (Acts 18:1-8). He returned about three years later (AD 55) in what is called the “painful visit” (2 Cor. 2:1; 12:21; 13:2). After writing 2 Corinthians, Paul arrived again in Corinth (Acts 20:2-4). During this time, five letters were written between Corinth and Paul.

Letter A: by Paul from Ephesus, mentioned in 1 Corinthians 5:9, but which we probably do not have. Some think letter A could be reflected or cited in 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1.

Letter B: from Chloe’s household about Corinth. This letter details divisions among believers in Corinth (1 Cor. 1:11).

Letter C: 1 Corinthians by Paul from Ephesus, which responds to the issues bobbing up and down in both letters A and B and more. Taken to Corinth by Timothy (or perhaps others). Timothy returned to Paul in Ephesus (1 Cor. 16:12).

Letter D: by Paul, the “severe” letter (2 Cor. 2:4; 7:8), which is at least reflected in 2 Corinthians 10-13. Titus delivered the letter. Paul requests Titus to meet up with him in Troas (north of Ephesus).

Letter E: by Paul, our 2 Corinthians, from Macedonia. Titus, with others, delivered the letter to the Corinthians.

On top of this, Paul sent Timothy and Titus to Corinth to mediate the tensions (1 Cor. 4:17; 16:10; 2 Cor. 2:4; 7:8). Most of what happened between Paul and the Corinthians, other than the eighteen-month founding visit, occurred from Paul’s mission hub, Ephesus, through letters and Paul’s envoys. In the middle of it all, Paul was attacked by congregants in Corinth and perhaps, too, some outsiders who showed up and caused disturbances over Paul’s leadership (2 Cor. 2:5-11; 7:8-13). Even after one apparent resolution to the tensions, another disturbance occurred (2 Cor. 10:10; 11:27; 12:6-7). And let’s be honest: This simplified sketch involves complications that are far from easy to settle. What we can all agree on is that Paul and his children in the faith in Corinth were more often than not at odds with one another.

Paul had one advantage, if I can call it that, and it permits us to identify with him in ways we cannot identify with other church leaders or pastors. Paul was not a local pastor in Corinth dealing with his parishioners. He was an apostle on the move who resided for much of the time during which this conflict occurred — months and minimally weeks at a time — away in Ephesus. Paul’s disadvantage was that he was not local, residing there at the church. Had he been there, he may have been able to settle some of these tensions directly, in person. On the other hand, perhaps, had he been there, the whole situation would have become untenable for his leadership.

Paul was more than just a church-planting apostle who zoomed in and then zoomed out. He loved the Corinthians, but he was a scorned lover in his relationship with Corinth. He likely had had a honeymoon start when he founded the church and stayed on for more than a year. But their relationship eventually deteriorated, and following that dustup he was anything but warmly received, respected, honored, and praised. He was the talk of the church gatherings. “Can you believe Paul told us to do that!” He was gossiped about. “Paul’s arrogant. Pushy. He’s not one of us.” They degraded him. “The man has no idea how to organize an oration.” A specialist on 2 Corinthians, Paul Barnett, sums this up by saying that the Corinthians “didn’t trust his sincerity. They questioned his adequacy. They doubted his integrity. They didn’t acknowledge his authority.” A female pastor who knows the ups and downs of the pastoral life, Barbara Brown Taylor, once observed in a sermon, with a wry reminder, the wider reality of the relationship of Paul and the Corinthians: “Everywhere he went he offended people, they said (which they, presumably, did not).”

The Corinthians were no doubt offended by Paul. However, they did not seem to consider, as Taylor observed, how much they might have offended, wounded, and traumatized him. Plenty of us know what it means not to be taken seriously in our wounds and trauma. Many of us know the experience of being dismissed. Over time Paul had heard enough of what the Corinthians were saying about him that he pulled out every criticism he had heard and responded to it — while claiming he was not defending himself! Just what did the Corinthians have against him? What they had against him mirrors what many church folks have against many churches and Christian institutions. Those who say what they think often wound others deeply, and as a result many Christians have learned that their “calling,” truth be told, is simply to absorb the criticisms and play nice. Paul must have missed that lecture, because he had some juicy words for the Corinthians. Here is where we find the authentic Paul.

Excerpted from “Traumatized Church.” Copyright © 2026 by Scot McKnight and Adrienne Gibson. Used with permission from Zondervan Reflective.