Why were the Corinthian believers so ignorant?
The Corinthian believers were ignorant because they had recently come out of paganism and had no prior Christian training—no Sunday school or catechism—and possessed only some Old Testament writings, not the New Testament, leaving them with many unanswered questions.
Les explains that Paul was dealing with the nitty-gritty of the marriage relationship, and the reason was what prompted the letter to the Corinthians in the first place. The Corinthian believers were just recently out of paganism. They didn’t have Sunday school when they were kids; they didn’t go through catechism. They were as ignorant as ignorant could be, and now as believers they were congregating in a small church, not a huge mega church, and they had questions. They didn’t have the Bible; they had some of the Old Testament, but nothing of the New Testament. So they had a whole bunch of questions and wrote to the apostle Paul, and he answers them one by one.