Revised by Lois Malcolm (09/25)
SUMMARY
Paul’s relationship with the Corinthian congregation has deteriorated. In 2 Corinthians, the apostleDerived from a Greek word meaning “one who is sent,” an apostle is a person who embraces and advocates another person’s idea or beliefs. At the beginning of his ministry Jesus called twelve apostles to follow and serve him. Paul became an apostle of Jesus… More seeks to rebuild his relationship with the Corinthians, to defend his own integrity as a trustworthy and competent servant of Christ, and to counter the influence of other apostles on the Corinthians and their claims to be superior to him as apostles. He also seeks to encourage the Corinthians to continue collecting funds for the Jerusalem churches. To address these issues, PaulThe Apostle Paul, originally known as Saul of Tarsus, was the author of several New Testament letters and the founder of many Christian communities. More makes extensive use of biblical interpretation and autobiography, writing about his hardships and mystical experience. He also employs a range of emotions—from joy to anger—and literary styles—from appeals, arguments, and vivid depictions of his suffering to rebukes, attacks and counterattacks, and biting irony. Given this variety in tone and style, along with what appear to modern readers as digressions and abrupt shifts in topic, some interpreters believe that what we call 2 Corinthians is actually a combination of multiple letters from Paul to the Corinthian church. Yet, it is also possible to see it as a unified letter, especially in light of similarly literary patterns in texts written at the same time as Paul’s letters. From this standpoint, Paul’s mode of constructing the letter provides his readers, in his own time and in our day, with a means for encountering—in the very act of reading it—the very basis for Paul’s arguments and appeals: the living presence of JesusJesus is the Messiah whose life, death, and resurrection are God’s saving act for humanity. More the MessiahThe Messiah was the one who, it was believed, would come to free the people of Israel from bondage and exile. In Jewish thought the Messiah is the anticipated one who will come, as prophesied by Isaiah. In Christian thought Jesus of Nazareth is identified… More, crucified and raised from the dead.
SO WHAT?
At face value, 2 Corinthians depicts an anxious apostle hoping to restore a broken relationship with churches he has founded while also raising a collection for Jerusalem and addressing the false claims of other apostles and their deleterious effects on the Corinthians. But in the very way Paul structures and portrays what takes place in the letter, he depicts how the death and resurrection of Jesus the Messiah both deconstructs and re-envisions the ways we perceive and respond to God and to one another. Moreover, Paul makes clear that such transformation takes place precisely in the midst of whatever it is we are facing—within our own bodily experience of life and through the multi-sensory ways we communicate with one another and with God, through eyes, ears, mouths, and even noses.
WHERE DO I FIND IT?
Second Corinthians is the eighth book in the New Testament. It is the third in the collection of Paul’s letters, following 1 Corinthians and preceding Galatians.
WHO WROTE IT?
This second letter to the Corinthians identifies Paul and TimothyThe companion on Paul’s later journeys for whom two pastoral epistles are named. More as the letter’s senders. While some of the New Testament letters bearing Paul’s name are more likely to have been written by Paul’s students, there is no reason to doubt that this letter is from Paul himself.
WHEN WAS IT WRITTEN?
At the end of 1 Corinthians, Paul says that he expects to visit Corinth after passing through Macedonia (1 Corinthians 16:5-7). Instead, however, he came directly to Corinth and on that visit, someone wronged him. In response, he wrote a “letter of tears” in lieu of yet another “painful visit” (2 Corinthians 2:1-11, 7:12). Second Corinthians was written soon after, although chapters 10-13 may have been written later than chapters 1-9. Most scholars place the letter (and the writing of its various parts) in the mid-fifties (54-56 CE). Written between 1 Thessalonians and Romans, scholars agree that the letter belongs to the most theologically creative phase in Paul’s life.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Paul writes in order to mend a broken relationship with the Corinthians, who are being influenced by competing apostles with, in Paul’s view, false ideas about Jesus, the Spirit, and the gospel. In addition, he urges the Corinthians to fulfill their promise to provide for the church in Jerusalem. Throughout the letter, Paul addresses these concerns by portraying—through depictions of his own ongoing bodily encounter with Jesus, crucified and raised from the dead—how God not only reconciles us, but also the entire world, to God and to one another and calls us into a radically different way of perceiving and appropriating spiritual wisdomWisdom encompasses the qualities of experience, knowledge, and good judgment. The Old Testament book of Proverbs, which sometimes invokes a Woman as the personification of Wisdom, is a collection of aphorisms and moral teachings. Along with other biblical passages, it teaches, “The fear of the… More, wealth, and power.
HOW DO I READ IT?
Read 2 Corinthians as a letter that provides a snapshot of a strained and complicated relationship between Paul and the Corinthian congregation, and in the background competing apostles who, in Paul’s view, are seducing the Corinthians with deceptive teaching. As this drama unfolds, notice how Paul uses multi-sensory media to portray Jesus’s presence in his own body, in others and their effect on him, and even in the entire cosmos. As you do this, observe how this multi-sensory imagery portrays God’s reconciling work in the world through Jesus as the Messiah and in so doing both deconstructs and transforms your assumptions about God, others, and the world around you. Finally, reflect on how—in the midst of this process of deconstruction and transformation—you are being entrusted as well, centuries later, with a message and a ministry that embodies that work of reconciliation.