The photo you see here is a four sided column outside the Church of Saint Paul in Corinth. On it is Corinthians chapter 13, or the love chapter, in four different languages.

On the return journey to Athens, Poulis talked to us about this column. As many of you may know, the Corinthian Church had some real issues that Paul had to contend with, some say it was his worst Church!

You will remember that the temple in Corinth had many temple prostitutes as Corinth was a hub of trading and centre of commerce. Many traders would come to its port and often were delayed because of bad weather, or the season, or had to wait for repairs to their vessels before heading off to other ports. This had a very negative affect on the whole town, as you can imagine.

So when Paul arrives there he needed to redefine what love is and from here grew the new word for love, agape. And chapter 13 is Paul's teaching about what love really is.

Poulis also talked about Paul's teaching on the matter of communion and talked about it in reference to the trade unions that first grew up in Corinth. They grew up out of business associations where businessmen would come together to do their business and would then share a meal together. The rich would bring their meat and perhaps wine etc, but the poorer would bring their bread and olives etc. so there was a huge gulf between the rich and the poor.

When the Church began many thought it was a trade union of some kind and so they would come together for worship and afterwards would join together for a meal, where the rich ate very well but the poor did not. So this teaching of Paul's was to help them understand that the church was not a trade union movement, but the bride of Christ and his instructions were to help these new to faith in the one true God, what communion was all about.

An Interesting day!