Paul Speaks as a Fool

 One of the challenges of reading Paul's letters are that we often don't know what they are written in response to.  It is like listening to one side of a phone conversation without knowing what the other person is saying.  You can extrapolate something of what the unheard person said just by how the person on this side responds, but you can't know for sure.  That is what is happening with the second part of 2 Corinthians.  In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul seems to be responding to people who has challenged his authority as a prophet. They seem to have said that Paul writes boldly, but speaks weakly.  They seem to think that he should have let the people of Corinth support him financially, but instead he supported himself.  One of their biggest criticisms, and the one he spends the most time responding to, seems to have been, "if you are a prophet of God, why have so many terrible things happened to you?"

Starting at 2 Corinthians 11:23 Paul says, "Are they (i.e. his detractors) ministers of Christ? (I speak as a fool) "I am more, in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths, oft."  Then he goes into a long list of all the trials he has suffered in his 14 year ministry. To a modern reader, his recitation sound a bit self-righteous.  It sounds like he is saying, "You think you have sacrificed a lot for the gospel.  Well, I have sacrificed way more."  The important thing here is to pay attention to his little asides where he says he is speaking as a "fool."  He is admitting that what he is giving as evidence of his authority as an apostle will sound ridiculous to them.  But wait.  Isn't sacrificing and suffering for the Kingdom of God a mark of extreme righteousness?  Wouldn't he expect his listeners to be impressed with the long list of what he was willing to undergo in his quest to spread Christianity?  Well, yes and no.

We need to remember historical context here. So here is a trick question.  Who was the first Christian martyr?  You might think, Steven, but really the first Christian martyr was Christ.  I bring this up because the idea of someone whom God favors suffering was a new and unfamiliar idea in the ancient world.  In both ancient Judaism and in Greek culture, you can tell if someone is favored of God because of their wealth and prosperity.  Jesus was the first to turn that on its head and, as an agent of God, suffer. Yes, there was the talk of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53, but in day to day life in the ancient world  god's favor=prosperity. If you look at Greek mythology, the heroes only fell when they angered a god.  Odysseus had to wander for ten years because he angered Poseidon. Heracles had to perform his 10 labors because he angered Hera. On the Jewish side, Sampson was captured by Delilah because he broke his vow to God. Moses was prevented from entering the promised land because he smote the rock to get water without giving credit to God.  The fact that Paul had endured so many trials would have been evidence to some of this mindset in the ancient world that he was not in good standing with God.  

Of course, Paul, in this chapter, it turning this on its head, and by doing so, I believe, helps originate the Christian ideal of suffering as a sign of righteousness. Of course, it really originated with Jesus, but I think Paul brought it to the common believer. At the time when Paul was a missionary, the idea of the righteous suffering was new and strange. A few decades later when Christians began to be the target of Nero and experienced widespread persecution and mass murder in gladiatorial arenas and elsewhere, this idea of suffering as a sign of righteousness took root. Perhaps these chapters in 2 Corinthians were even the foundation for the later glorification of Christian martyrs and even the establishment of the idea of "Saints." Early Christians who underwent persecution certainly would have been a comforted by Paul's example of enduring trials with faith.  It would have given them a way to say, "I have suffered for Christ, as Christ suffered for me.  My suffering has value and validates my righteousness instead of negating it."

Ruins of Ancient Corinth

Views of the Afterlife in Ancient Rome

In the 15th chapter of Corinthians, Paul spends a great deal of time affirming the belief in a physical resurrection. In the modern Christian world the idea of a physical resurrection is, if not universally accepted, at least a common belief. Not so in ancient Rome. Here are some of the different ideas of the afterlife that Paul had to confront.

Ancient Greek: Much of the mythology of ancient Greece originated in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. In book 11 of the Odyssey, Odysseus approaches the realm that separates the living world from Hades, the home of the dead, and makes a sacrifice so he can speak to the prophet Teiresias. The ghosts from Hades approach Odysseus hoping to drink the blood of his sacrifice, but he prevents them until Teiresias approaches. He also speaks to the ghost of his mother who explains what it is like to be dead. "this is the way it is with mortals after death. The sinews no longer bind flesh and bone, the fierce heat of the blazing pyre consumes them, and the spirit flees from our white bones, a ghost that flutters and goes like a dream." In Homeric Greek mythology all the dead go to live in Hades where they flutter around as shadows of their former self.

 
Ancient Rome: The Roman epic, the Aeneid in book VI shows an afterlife where the righteous/valiant spirits go to Elysium, which is a kind of paradise. They eventually cross over the river Lithe, loose their memories and reborn into new bodies. The wicked go to Tartarus where they are eternally tortured.

Classic Philosophers/ Socrates faces death in his Apology of Phaedo, he says he does not fear death because he does not know what will happen when he dies. He hypotheses that he will either be completely extinguished, and therefore have an end of suffering, or he will go to an afterlife overseen by the gods, which he supposes will be better than mortal life.

 
Jewish beliefs: We learn from the New Testament that the Sadducees didn't believe in the resurrection, but that the Pharisees did (Acts 23:8). There is some evidence in the Old Testament about an afterlife, specifically in the book of Job and Isaiah, but the overwhelming focus of the Old Testament was obedience to God to ensure continued support from God in the mortal world.

The idea of a physical resurrection was almost completely foreign to the people Paul taught. It was the thing that early Christians could site that made Jesus different than other Jewish prophets. Elijah and Elisha healed the sick as Jesus did. Moses and Joshua controlled the elements and talked with God. But only Jesus was physically resurrected. That, in Paul's mind, was a fact that confirmed that Jesus was, not only a prophet, but the Messiah that would take away the sins of the world. (1 Corinthians 15:17)

Corinthians 12-13

 Corinthians 12 and 13 are super full of great topics to discuss. I could imagine a whole year of classes just on those two chapters.  I just want to mention two things I noticed in Greek in these chapters. In chapter 12, I found the word for "spiritual gift" in Greek interesting.  The term is "χαρισμα"  pronounced "charisma" (1 Cor 12:4, 9, 28, 30 31) How did I not know that is why some churches who believe in spiritual gifts are called Charismatic Christians. The word is a form of the word, χαρισ which means "grace" and signifies that these gifts are given as a free gift through God's grace.  

Roman silver mirror

Another interesting Greek discovery is from Corinthians 13.  When Paul says that "For now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face." (v 12) I had always thought of looking through an ancient piece of glass.  In ancient Rome the only way they knew how to form glass was by glass blowing.  So if there were ever a glass window, it would be made out of small pieces of blown glass that would be set in some kind of frame.  They would be translucent, but not transparent, so that is what I thought they were referring to. But as I read this passage in Greek I discovered that the word, translated in the KJV as "glass" is εσοπτρον which is not a window, but a mirror, a "looking glass".  Because they didn't know how to make flat glass in Roman times (plate glass wasn't available in Europe until the 3nd century AD) mirrors were made out of polished metal.  They could be made quite reflective, but the image was dark because it was metal instead of glass.  This brings a new nuance to the passage.  Paul isn't saying, as I had always thought, that we can't now see God clearly because we see him as if we were looking through an opaque window, but that we can't see ourselves clearly because we are using a metal mirror. This makes the next sentence easier to understand. "now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."  In other words, I cannot see myself now clearly, but at some future time I will see myself clearly as God sees me.  It is a beautiful thought.  If we see ourselves clearly, and see others as God sees them, then charity will be the natural outcome.

The Marriage Imagery, Again

A couple of weeks ago we were reading Romans in our Come Follow Me.  I have been super busy but I wanted to comment on one thing I read.  In Romans 7:1-6 we see Paul address the Jewish saints using the marriage imagery once again.  Back in Jeremiah (e. g. chapters 3 and 5) God condemned the Israelites of "playing the harlot" because they were worshiping other gods. This was one the the main reasons, or justifications the LORD gave for allowing Israel to be conquered by their enemies. The imagery of infidelity was so vivid and negative, that you can imagine it left an indelible mark on the psyche of Jews in Paul's time.  They could have thought something like, "We can't worship Jesus. If we did we would be unfaithful to the God of Israel."  This would be a frightening idea to some because they were already overshadowed by Roman and they might fear that if they were untrue, they would be ripe for destruction.  

In Roman's 7, Paul attempts to explain why following Jesus is not spiritual "adulteries" like worshiping idols had been.  His argument is that when Israel were under the Mosaic Law, they were in a binding marriage covenant with the LORD similar to a marriage bond.  When Jesus came, It was is Israel's first wife, the LAW, had died, leaving Israel unattached, and ready to attach to the worship of Jesus without impunity. 

Of course, after saying such a heretical thing, (that the Law was dead) he back steps and goes into a whole discourse about how Jesus didn't destroy the law, but fulfilled the law.  I just think it is interesting to see the strong Old Testament themes coming out in the New Testament as well.