The First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians

It is a letter written from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth around AD 96 — the earliest Christian writing we have outside the New Testament. Clement, writing in the name of the Roman church, pleads with the Corinthians to end a bitter division in which some younger members had deposed their elders, calling them to humility, order, and love.

Clement was a leader of the church at Rome at the end of the first century, traditionally counted among the earliest bishops of that church and sometimes identified with the Clement mentioned by Paul in Philippians. He wrote this letter on behalf of the Roman church, and early Christians held it in such esteem that it was read publicly in some churches alongside Scripture.

Because it is the earliest surviving Christian document outside the New Testament, written while the apostolic age had only just closed — possibly while the apostle John still lived. It gives a rare window onto the life, order, and faith of the very early church, and shows one church counselling another in matters of unity and leadership within a generation of the apostles.

A division in which some younger members had risen up against the church's presbyters, or elders, and removed them from office. Clement writes to heal this strife, rebuking the pride and jealousy behind it and urging the offenders to submit, repent, and restore the deposed leaders, so that peace and order might return to the church.

That leadership in the church is not to be overthrown at will, but rests on an orderly appointment that goes back through the apostles to Christ and God. Clement appeals to this order to argue that the Corinthians had no right to depose their faithful elders, and his letter is an early and influential witness to the church's concern for orderly, God-given ministry.

Humility, repentance, love, and harmony. Clement draws richly on the Old Testament and on the example of Christ to urge lowliness in place of pride, and he includes a famous passage on love echoing Paul's words to the same church. He points, too, to the order of creation and the resurrection as grounds for confidence and peace among believers.

Anyone interested in the earliest post-apostolic church, in the roots of Christian teaching on unity and leadership, or in the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. It offers a vivid, first-hand sense of the church's life just after the New Testament era, and its counsel on humility and peace still speaks to divided congregations.

At the beginning, reading it as the letter it is, from Rome's warm greeting to Corinth through its plea for the deposed elders. It is a single, continuous appeal, best read straight through, so that the reader follows Clement's argument from the strife he laments to the humility, order, and love he urges to heal it.