Paul the Apostle, His Life Letters and Thought— Part Sixteen

Last updated on: February 12, 2017 at 1:56 am by Ben Witherington

Paul the Apostle, His Life Letters and Thought— Part Sixteen 2017-01-17T14:03:39-05:00 Ben Witherington

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p. 239— There were three types of problems Paul faced in Corinth: 1) other competing leaders; 2) theological problems like res.; 3) behavioral problems.

p. 241– Sanders thinks perhaps Apollos was the polished rhetorician that various Corinthians preferred and he stood in contrast with Paul. 1 Cor. 3.5-17 provides the heart of Paul’s warning against Apollos using 3 metaphors.

p. 242—in 3.12-15 he uses the notion that good deeds will be rewarded but do not save and bad deeds will be punished. This he views Apollos as a suspect builder even a potential destroyer of community. NO. I have applied all this to myself and Apollos (4.6). This just reflects that Paul was worried about Apollos’ influence on the Corinthians (p. 243) but at the end of 1 Cor. 16.12 Apollos is still an ally, as Sanders notes.

p. 244—The tone of the critique of the super apostles in 2 Cor. is very different and there he does not name names. The tone there is sarcastic, involves threats, mock boasts, pleas etc. Sanders says we cannot know if he is referring to the same folk as in 1 Cor. where Peter and the brother of Jesus and Apollos are mentioned directly by name. [I would say yes we can—- Paul names his allies and consigns his opponents to oblivion almost always (see Galatians). The super apostles are definitely not Peter or Apostle or Jesus’ brothers.] 11.4 says these super apostles preach another Gospel but the content is not delineated.

p. 246— One point of continuity between 1 and 2 Cor. is that in both Paul has to defend himself against those who ridicule his speaking ability. In 11.6 he says he is untrained in speech. Sanders suspects there are still problems with comparing him to Apollos in 2 Cor. He then conjectures on the basis of 2 Cor. 3.1 that maybe some Jerusalem apostles had arrived with letters of reference from Jerusalem.

p. 247— Some scholars like Barrett and Kasemann have thought the super and the false apostles were two different groups. [I agree with Sanders that there is only one group of opponents called both false and super apostles.]

p. 248— It is possible that Paul’s opposition in Corinth was Peter, or someone with a letter of reference from Peter, or from another leader in Jerusalem. “we cannot make a firm connection between the opposition in Corinth, [where circumcision never comes up] which did not concern the Jew-Gentile problem, and the opposition in Jerusalem, Antioch and Galatia, which did.” The problem in 1 Cor. is an eloquent speaker, unlikely to be Peter or other Jerusalem apostles, more likely to be Apollos (p. 249). The false apostles had letters of reference, took money and lorded it over the Corinthians. The issues do not link up with what we hear in Galatians.

p. 250– Weird. He says 2 Cor.11.2 where Paul says he feels a divine jealousy for his converts since be betrothed them to Christ. Sanders says this means he is jealous of the success of the false apostles! [Nope.] He then suggests Paul was over-reacting, and asks was there really a lot of money to be gained or prestige from preaching the Gospel?

p. 251— Paul seems to be operating with the assumption that the founder of a congregation has almost exclusive authority over it. He says he would not boast in other’s labors, and that he would not plow in someone else’s field. But Romans suggests that he was willing to be a bit flexible about this principle when it came to himself— Rom. 1.14-15.

pp. 252-54— Sanders discussion of Paul’s boasting especially in 2 Cor. 11. [Totally missing from this discussion is the Greco-Roman discussions about mock boasting meant to shame others, and Plutarch’s discussions of Inoffensive self-praise.]

p. 256— ‘we are weak in Him’ and his power is made perfect in his weakness. “Paul will not make the explicit statement that Christians [in general, not just Paul or apostles] share the suffering and death of Christ until Galatians.” [Of course ,this sort of reading of the development of Paul’s thought depends on the assumption that Galatians is a later letter].

p. 259— He compares Paul’s mention of 3rd heaven= paradise to 2 Enoch where the two are both mentioned but Paradise is viewed as below the 3rd heaven and is seen as an Edenic garden. In any case this ‘I knew a man who had revelations…’ passage reveals Paul as a mystic who had remarkable spiritual experiences. [No, it reveals he was a visionary, like John of Patmos, not like later mystics]. He recommends James Tabor’s dissertation entitled Things Unutterable: Paul’s Ascent to Paradise.

p. 260– 2 Cor. 12.8-9 suggest that Paul actually heard God answer his prayer— ‘my power is made perfect in your weakness’. In some sense Christ possessed him “It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me” Gal. 2.19-20 and similarly 2 Cor. 4.10 and 13.3-4. Occasionally he could declare mysteries (1 Cor. 15; Rom. 11) received probably from a revelation. Indeed, his conversion was caused by God revealing his Son ‘in me’. Gal. 1.16. But he also believed the Spirit was in him and spoke through him (1 Cor. 2.12). Paul’s spiritual gifts and power were a major source of his apostolic authority (p. 261).

pp. 262-63— Certainly Paul could mount powerful arguments, but Sanders thinks 2 Cor. 13.2-4 refers to his spiritual power derived from the indwelling Christ or his visionary experiences, power he could use to produce miracles etc. He could go to Corinth again and demonstrate God’s power, and so his own authority over his converts.

pp. 264-265— He uses the word mystic, but not in the later medieval sense of surrender of self and withdrawal into meditation and increasing otherworldliness. While he does think his converts have remarkable spiritual gifts, he does not think they could all see the Lord, as he had, or that they could become apostles or that they could receive revelations comparable to his. Indeed he thought he so had the mind of Christ and so possessed the Spirit that he could give instructions, laws on marriage etc. that partly supplemented and partly disagreed with those of Christ (2 Cor. 7).[Nope. Paul is quoting not disagreeing with Jesus. Jesus never spoke to the issue of religiously mixed marriages]. But the converts could not give rules to him. This is because Paul had an unusually close union with Christ.

p. 265— When he brags about his weakness that’s one thing. But when he tells them he is not going to tell them something about the content of his revelation, Sanders calls this the rhetorical device similar to pre-iteration, i.e. ‘I am not going to tell you how smart I am. The speaker here says what he claims he is not saying.

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Paul the Apostle, His Life Letters and Thought--- Part Fifteen

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