The Early Church Speaks · Audio

Clement of Rome

The First & Second Epistles to the Corinthians

Written from Rome around AD 96 — while the Apostle John was still alive — by St. Clement, a bishop who knew Peter and Paul personally. When the church in Corinth deposed its clergy, Rome answered with this letter on humility, repentance, and why the apostles appointed bishops to succeed them: the earliest witness to apostolic succession outside the New Testament. Then hear the second epistle — the oldest surviving Christian sermon, which opens by declaring that we ought to think of Jesus Christ as of God.