Acts 18:2Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Because of this position, Corinth could be a very important center for spreading Christianity through a large part of the Roman Empire. Taking this local advantage into account, Paul chose it as the place of his longest stay.

Yet here there were especially strong obstacles to the spread of Christianity. The very causes that hindered the first reception of the Gospel also threatened the purity of Christianity in teaching and life.

They remained dangerous even after Christianity, having overcome obstacles, would be accepted there. Two opposing tendencies of the religious spirit, which generally hindered the spread of Christianity at that time, ruled in Corinth with particular force.

First was a one-sided love of knowledge in religion, which stifled living practical needs. This tendency Paul called “the seeking of wisdom.”

Second was sensuality, which subjected religious feeling to itself. This was a crude carnal feeling that wished to make the divine an object of sensory experience.

This tendency Paul called “the seeking of signs.” The first tendency ruled among most of those Corinthians who laid claim to education.

The new Corinth differed from the old in that it was also a patron of literature and philosophical schools. The second tendency ruled especially among the Jews, who were numerous in Corinth as a trading city.

Among them there prevailed the ordinary sensory notion of the Messiah. Besides this, the spread and action of Christianity were opposed here by a strong corruption of morals.

Although this corruption then prevailed in all great cities of the Roman Empire, in Corinth it was strengthened by the worship of Venus. A famous temple had been built for her there.

It was also strengthened by every convenience for satisfying sensuality in a commercial and maritime city.

For Paul’s activity in Corinth, it was some help that he found there a zealous fellow worker in the work of the Gospel, Aquila, a Jew from Pontus.

With him he could both live in his house and find work to gain his sustenance. It seems probable that Aquila had large establishments in the craft by which Paul supported himself.

Since he had no permanent residence in Rome, he stopped at different times in various trading cities along the way, such as Corinth, Ephesus, and others. Therefore he was nowhere a stranger.

At that time, however, he had been forced against his will to leave Rome by the decree of Emperor Claudius. By this decree Claudius condemned all Jews living there in great numbers to exile for their restless and rebellious spirit.

Whether Aquila was already a Christian before this time cannot be determined with certainty. In any case, his association with Paul must have had great influence on the formation of his Christian knowledge.

From this time Aquila appears as a zealous preacher of the Gospel. His various journeys and changes of residence could provide him many occasions for this.

Even his wife Priscilla was distinguished by active zeal for the benefit of Christianity. Therefore Paul called both of them his fellow workers in the work of the Lord (Rom 16:3).

One may imagine that the reception of the preaching of the Gospel in Athens must have made a very painful impression on the apostle’s heart.

For this reason he himself said that he came to the Corinthians in the feeling of his human weakness, with fear and trembling, that is, when he looked at his human strength.

Yet at the same time he came with great hope in the power of God acting through him in the preaching. Already in Athens he had experienced that it helped nothing to be a Greek to the Greeks in wisdom.

This was so when no inner need opened access to the heart. Therefore in Corinth he wished to leave the whole effect to the simple word about the Redeemer, who died for the salvation of mankind corrupted by sin.

He wished to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Even in Corinth he did not enter so much into relations with the higher class of people, as he had in Athens.

Rather, he associated chiefly with people of lower condition, who did not have such education. Some time after this preaching, when Christianity had been able to spread among the higher classes as well, Paul could say something about Corinth.

He could say that among the Christians in Corinth there were not many distinguished by human education and high social rank. God had chosen for Himself those despised by the world, so that in them He might more clearly reveal the power of the Gospel (1 Cor 1:26 and following).

Among these people of lower condition were some who until then had given themselves over to the vices that ruled in that capital of moral corruption.

Through the apostle’s preaching they were turned to repentance and experienced in their hearts the power of the preaching concerning the remission of sins (1 Cor 6:11).

Paul could indeed appeal to miracles as testimony to his apostolic calling (2 Cor 12:12). Yet it was not in these sensory actions that the preaching of the Gospel found its chief support in Corinth.

For the philosophizing Greeks, as long as they remained in the darkness of their wisdom, the Gospel seemed foolishness.

So also for the Jews seeking signs, as long as they demanded only outward miracles and did not open their hearts to receive the spiritual actions of divine power, the Gospel necessarily remained a stumbling block.

It preached the Messiah as a spiritual king, the transformer of the whole life. The proofs Paul used in Corinth in favor of the Gospel were the proofs that have always strengthened preaching most powerfully.

Without them, all other proofs and aids were vain. These were the proofs of the Spirit and of power (1 Cor 2:4).

That is, they were experiences of those effects which the Gospel, by its divine power, produced upon hearts prepared for it by the feeling of moral needs.

In such a case, Jews seeking signs, when turning to faith, could see in the Gospel the power of God in a much clearer light than in all sensory miracles.

Believers from among the Greeks seeking wisdom could find in the Gospel divine wisdom, in comparison with which every wisdom of the philosophers is nothing.

Yet his speech made an impression on some members of the Areopagus. After he left the Areopagus, they entered into closer contact and longer conversation with him. Through him they were converted to faith in Christ. Among those who believed in Christ in Athens were, among others, Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris.

Aquila is the Greek pronunciation of the Latin name Aquila. Probably this Jew, according to the custom of those then living in the diaspora, changed his Hebrew name to a Latin one while living in Rome, as Saul did with Paul.

“By birth a Pontian.” He was from the province of Pontus in Asia Minor, adjoining the Black Sea.

“Recently come from Italy” to Corinth, and specifically from Rome, because of the decree of Emperor Claudius ordering all Jews to leave Rome.

The Roman historian Suetonius speaks of this expulsion of the Jews from Rome by Claudius in his Life of Claudius, chapter 25.

He reports that the cause was disturbances among the Jews produced by some Jewish agitator who had assumed the name of Christ.

Perhaps, however, Suetonius, as a pagan, did not understand the matter well.

Church tradition is more reliable: the expulsion occurred because of the name of the Lord Jesus, king of Israel, preached in Rome among the Jews.

Probably Aquila and Priscilla had a permanent place of residence in Rome.

Their stay in Corinth, and afterward in Ephesus, was only forced by Claudius’ expulsion of the Jews from Rome.

Later they were again in Rome (Rom 16:3), when many of the Jews returned there after the death of Claudius; see Acts 28:7 and following.

Priscilla is a diminutive form of the Latin female name Prisca.

There is no indication whether she was a Jew by birth, who like her husband had changed a Hebrew name to a Latin one, or a native Roman woman.

As for becoming acquainted with the city and the temper of its inhabitants, the apostle could do this as quickly as in Athens. In Athens life surged in the marketplaces. Here it poured in streams through every street and alley. The densely populated city of Corinth was a maritime and commercial city. A multitude of every kind of people flowed into it from all parts of Greece and even from distant lands.

The memory of the Isthmian games also drew many there to the ease of wealthy life amid luxuriant nature. The place was full of enchanting views of mountains and sea, steeped in an abundance of light and warmth. These reached even the poor corner of Paul, in the modest hut of those akin to him by nation and faith.

Bishop Michael holds that Aquila and Priscilla had permanent residence in Rome. Their stay in Corinth, and later in Ephesus, was only the result of Claudius's expulsion of the Jews from Rome. Later they were again in Rome, see Rom 16:3, when many Jews returned there after Claudius's death. See Acts 28:17. There also they were among the most prominent persons in the Christian community. Therefore, when writing greetings, the apostle places them among the first whom he greets. See Rom 16:3.

The fruitful meeting of Saint Paul with the couple who sheltered him cannot be regarded as a mere chance event. In it one must see the ordering of Providence. Life in the house of a tentmaker was useful for the Apostle Paul, since it provided him some means of subsistence. It was also pleasant, since it allowed him to observe first the gradual approach of his hosts to Christ. Then he saw the swift development in them of a truly apostolic readiness to serve what they regarded as the greatest truth.

It is difficult to express in words the high dignity of the school of doctrine through which Aquila and Priscilla passed while living with the Apostle Paul. Saint John Chrysostom, wishing to show how exceedingly profitable it was to be the housemate of the great apostle, says this in his homily on Priscilla and Aquila: "I could boldly call their hut heaven and the Church. For where Paul was, there Christ also was; see 2 Cor 13:3. And where Christ was, there the angels also continually dwelt. If even before this Priscilla and Aquila proved worthy of ministering to Paul, imagine what they became after living with him for two years. They observed his appearance, his gait, his glance, his manner of dress, his comings and goings. If we, having only his fourteen epistles, carry them throughout the whole world, what could those become who had with them the very source of the epistles, living with such an angel?"