5. Triumphalistic Qualifications
5
Triumphalistic Qualifications
Answering Fools according to Their Folly
16I repeat: Let no one take me for a fool. But if you do, then receive me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting. 17In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool. 18Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast. 19You gladly put up with fools since you are so wise! 20In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face. 21To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!
What anyone else dares to boast about—I am speaking as a fool—I also dare to boast about. 22Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they Abraham’s descendants? So am I. 23Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24Fives times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my own countrymen, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. 27I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?
30If I must boast, I will boast of the things that show my weakness. 31The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying. 32 In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. 33But I was lowered in a basket from a window in the wall and slipped through his hands.
2 Corinthians 11:16–33
A. The Preface of a Fool (11:16–21a)
The apostle is finally ready. He is about to embark on the foolish boasting he so much despises in others. But once more he pauses. There still remains a danger that some particularly obtuse Corinthians might wittingly or unwittingly fail to discern that Paul’s boasting is not the real Paul. So again, even after placing so much distance between himself and the false apostles, between his principles of conduct and theirs, he finds it necessary to warn his readers that what he is about to do is the shoddy work of a fool, not of an apostle. In short, he offers a brief preface to explain his foolishness one more time.
1. Orientation: not taking Paul’s folly seriously (11:16a). “I repeat,” Paul says, “Let no one take me for a fool.” In most of its occurrences in the next few verses, Paul uses “fool” to refer to those who boast in ways he finds unacceptable. In other words, they are fools from his perspective as a Christian. His readers must understand, therefore, that in the boasting on which he is about to embark, he is arguing ad hominem. This is no reflection of the real Paul, but only of the Paul who, to preserve the Corinthian church from moral and doctrinal seduction, must answer the real fools according to their folly.
Strictly speaking, Paul has not said these words before; so his initial “I repeat” is at first glance a little strange. But it is not strange as soon as we remember the immediately preceding verse. Paul has taken great pains to distance himself from his opponents. If he views them as false apostles, deceitful workmen, and servants of Satan, then it is unlikely that by adopting their practices (in this case, boasting) he is seriously interested in emulating them! From Christ’s perspective, and therefore from Paul’s, they remain fools. The apostle has already shown the unbridgeable gulf between the two. Now he “repeats” it: “Let no one take me for a fool”—i.e., let no one lump me with the false apostles because of the course I must temporarily take.
2. Apology: putting up temporarily with Paul’s folly (11:16b–18). Strictly speaking, if the Corinthians heeded Paul’s initial admonition not to take him as a fool, it would only be because they have come to their senses. But Paul recognizes they are more likely to take him as a fool—i.e., both to lump him with the false apostles and to use the same wretched and inadequate criteria. But Paul can use their insensitivity: “But if you do take me for a fool,” Paul writes, “then receive me just as you would a fool, so that I may do a little boasting.” If the Corinthians receive him just as they would a fool, then of course they will receive Paul just as they have received the rival apostles; and such acceptance is all Paul needs to get past their mental barriers and show that, even on the basis of his rivals’ criteria, he is not a bit inferior.
But having gone so far, Paul backs off. He feels intensely uncomfortable to be writing this way, to be contemplating his own enunciation of a long list of boasts. So once again he protests: “In this self-confident boasting I am not talking as the Lord would, but as a fool” (2 Cor. 11:7). Paul’s deep desire is to imitate Christ, even in his speech; and he knows full well that arrogant boasting was never the Lord’s style. Although no one ever made higher claims for himself than did Jesus, he uttered those claims not as a mortal vainly striving for equality with God, but as the self-emptied Son bent on the business of bringing salvation to condemned sinners. If the Lord Jesus Christ never spoke boastfully during the days of his flesh, it is outrageous to think his Spirit prompts his disciples to do so today. “No boasting could ever be said to be the fruit of the Spirit!” (Tasker). Paul is painfully aware of this; and so he draws attention to the fact that what he is about to say is far removed from “the meekness and gentleness of Christ” (10:1), indeed nothing short of temporary folly. The fact remains that, as the situation stands at Corinth, Paul has very little choice: “Since many are boasting in the way the world does, I too will boast” (11:18). In other words, Paul is about to boast, not because he is following the example of Christ, but because pastoral problems in Corinth force him, temporarily, to follow the example of his opponents. The Corinthian believers have been satiated by the constant self-promotion of the interloping apostles. Either they were many in number, or the practices of relatively few had corrupted many more in the congregation. Whatever the case, Paul needed to stoop to their level for a few minutes in order to gain a hearing and put an end to the libelous accusations. Once again Paul has given his apology for inviting the Corinthians to put up temporarily with his folly.
3. Denunciation: scathing mockery of the Corinthians’ wisdom (11:19–21a). Paul has focused much of his attention on the false apostles. Here he leaves them for a moment and turns to the Corinthians themselves; and his tone becomes ironical, even scathing, as he tries to make them see that their vaunted tolerance has enslaved them, their proud wisdom has proved to be folly, their blind acceptance of the intruders and their false criteria have resulted in pain and despoiliation of their substance.
Paul has been asking the Corinthians to put up with him as they would fools. Now he writes, in deeply ironical vein, “You gladly put up with fools, since you are so wise!” (2 Cor. 11:19). The word “fools” in this sentence could be taken one of two ways. First, it is just possible the Corinthians have so preened themselves over their wisdom that they have regarded their father in Christ as a fool. In that case “fools” refers to those whom the proud Corinthians label thus, even if they be apostles. But because every other use of “fool” or “fools” in the immediately surrounding verses refers to those whom Paul labels fools, it is better to take this occurrence the same way. In that case, Paul is saying in effect, “You believe yourselves to be so wise, so mature, so discerning; you have been flattered into thinking you are a cut above other believers. But look at yourselves realistically: in your great wisdom you have reduced yourselves to the point where you take for your leaders such fools as the false apostles!” So, e.g., Massie: “Foolish are these boasters; but you plume yourselves on your shrewdness in accepting them. So you will, I am sure, accept me when I talk like them.” This interpretation certainly makes sense of the next two verses (20–21a), as we shall see. (See also similar discussion at 11:1, in chap. 4 of this book.)
Either way, it is unconscionable that a group of Christians should view themselves as so superior to their fellow believers that they are blind to their own lack of discernment and of true wisdom. Sad to tell, this arrogance seems to have characterized many Corinthian believers; for in a passage no less ironic than this one, Paul felt compelled to write in his first canonical epistle to them, “We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored!” (1 Cor. 4:10).
The truth is that their self-assured wisdom bred in them a tolerance seemingly without limits; for Paul adds, “In fact, you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or pushes himself forward or slaps you in the face” (11:20). They have not only received these leaders at face value, they have permitted them to move into positions of influence and leadership and to take over the life of the community. The intruders had become tyrants, and the Corinthians slaves—slaves not least in the servitude to new rules and criteria that detracted from God’s free grace (cf. Gal. 2:4; 5:1). The false apostles had exploited the congregation for tidy sums, pushed themselves forward so successfully that the local Corinthian leadership was intimidated and had been handed bruising insults (the clause “slaps you in the face” is almost certainly metaphorical language to refer to any kind of humiliating treatment).
Doubtless many Corinthians, already too impressed with worldly notions of power, felt that the brutal authority exercised by these intruding “apostles” in some sense authenticated their claims. “The Corinthians were not the last Christians to find ecclesiastical pomp and circumstance impressive. Grovelling submission to it is hardly less evil than the original arrogance” (Barrett). These dupes of triumphalism have been trampled by it. Failing to discern the profound distinctions between the lordly authority of the intruders and the self-sacrificing devotion and Spirit-entrusted authority of the apostle, they chose exploiters as their leaders and models, and blindly reveled in their own wisdom. Paul does not even want to be compared with such power-hungry exploiters. With biting irony, he contemplates their abuse of power and writes, “To my shame I admit that we were too weak for that!” (2 Cor. 11:21a).
The Corinthian believers could not avoid wincing before this scathing denunciation of the wisdom of which they were so proud. They see themselves as mature and wise Christians, farsighted followers of the Savior. Yet this Savior’s conduct was characterized by meekness and gentleness (cf. Matt. 11:29), while here they are, kowtowing to the harsh aggressiveness and the abuse of authority exercised by servants of Satan masquerading as self-promoted apostles of Christ (2 Cor. 11:13–15). Meanwhile the Corinthians enjoy despising their father in Christ because they are unimpressed by what they dismiss as “weakness,” but which is nothing less than the devoted considerateness and kindness of a true apostle interested only in building them up.
Clearly Paul is fed up. Nevertheless this scathing denunciation of the Corinthians’ wisdom is quite different from his ruthless exposure of the false apostles (2 Cor. 11:13–15). When he rounds on the intruders, he offers no quarter and says they are not Christians at all. His irony to the Corinthians, by contrast, is striking enough to shake them out of their complacency, yet is formally very gentle: he is agreeing with them that he is weaker than the false apostles! Here is a leader with enormous pastoral sensitivity, an apostle whose diagnosis is so sensitive that he knows just what remedies to apply. The wound to the Corinthians’ ego, like the wound of the surgeon, is designed to remove a particularly vicious cancer. Few malignancies are more dangerous than arrogance fed by ignorance, or triumphalism nurtured by a secular mind.
B. Apostolic Boasting (11:21b–33)
1. Paul is in no way inferior (11:12b). Several times Paul has announced that his boasting is about to begin (2 Cor. 10:8; 11:1, 6, 16). Now, at last, it does. He opens up with a general declaration that he is in no way inferior to any conceivable rival the Corinthians may care to advance: “What anyone else dares to boast about . . . I also dare to boast about” (v. 21b). But to pen such a statement remains utterly detestable to Paul; so even now that his boasting has begun, he reminds his readers yet again in an embarrassed aside, “I am speaking as a fool.”
2. Paul is heir to old covenant blessings (11:22). That Paul is not boasting abstractly, but in the concrete situation where he must compare himself with the false apostles, is made clear by the repeated “they”: “Are they this, or are they that?”
Paul asks three questions, all having to do with a person’s relationship to the Old Testament. “Are they Hebrews?” he asks; and adds, “So am I.” This means something more than that both Paul and his rivals are Jewish. The full expression, “a Hebrew of the Hebrews” (which Paul could also apply to himself, Phil 3:5), was probably used to refer to full-blooded Jews. Unlike Timothy, for instance whose mother was a Jewess but whose father was a Gentile (Acts 16:1), Paul was not only a Hebrew but a Hebrew of the Hebrews: his parents on both sides were Jews. But the simple expression “Hebrew” or “Hebrews” most likely refers not to the purity of the bloodlines but to language and culture (as in Acts 6:1; NASB): both Paul and his rivals were not simply Hellenistic Jews, but Hebrew Jews—i.e., Jews fluent in the Hebrew (and/or Aramaic) language and culture. Though born in Tarsus, Paul may have been reared in Jerusalem; but reared there or not, he was thoroughly educated in Semitic thought and had put down Hebrew roots.
Again Paul asks, “Are they Israelites?” And again he responds, “So am I.” If both “Hebrew” and “Israelite” refers to nothing more than race, then of course the second question is redundant (as is the third). In fact, “Israelites” suggests something more. It calls to mind the Jewish people as the people of God, with all the rights, privileges, and heritage that entailed. Paul’s own race was the people of Israel; and he says of them elsewhere, “Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” (Rom. 9:4–5).
Paul raises a third question: “Are they Abraham’s descendants?” And again he protests, “So am I.” This is probably another way of saying that Paul, no less than his opponents, could list as many Jewish qualifications in his pedigree as any might wish. As a descendant of Abraham, he was doubtless circumcised the eighth day, and made an heir of the covenants (cf. Eph. 2:11–12).
What Paul really thinks of such a heritage, as far as its usefulness in commending a person to God is concerned, comes to explicit expression in another of his epistles:
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness that comes from the law, faultless.
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ.
Philippians 3:4b–8
But for now, he must present his pedigree to remind the Corinthians that he is no less Jewish, no less a son of Abraham, no less an heir of the covenants, no less a Jew trained in the ancient language and heritage, than any of the false apostles who oppose him. That he must put this matter first on the list of boasts (indeed, the only detailed boasts that do not partake of the biting irony characteristic of the remaining entries) strongly confirms that the intruders in the Corinthian church are Judaizers, probably from Palestine.
3. Paul is an exemplary servant of Christ (11:23a). Paul now turns from the old covenant to the new, from race and heritage to achievement. Moreover, he no longer restricts himself to being the equal of his opponents (e.g., “Are they Hebrews? So am I.”) Rather, he insists on his superiority: “Are they servants of Christ? . . . I am more.” But to write in this vein sends him into spiritual agony, and he cannot restrain himself from bursting out again, “I am out of my mind to talk like this.”
Because Paul has already insisted that the false apostles are not true servants of Christ at all, several interpreters argue that those to whom Paul is referring here cannot be the same people. After all, if Paul is more of a servant of Christ than those of whom he is speaking, they themselves must be servants of Christ in some sense. As a result, it is argued, the people with whom Paul is comparing himself here must be the genuine apostles, the Twelve; and in hard, pioneer work, Paul excels more than they do (cf. 1 Cor. 15:10).
But this interpretation puts an intolerable strain on the unity of the passage. Second Corinthians 13–15 unambiguously refer to the intruders, the false apostles. When Paul continues in verses 16–21a, he must still be talking about the same group, not about the Twelve, for he writes of those “who are boasting in the way the world does” and who exploit and humiliate the Corinthians. Immediately after this paragraph, Paul says that “what anyone else dares to boast about” he can boast about too. The natural way to take this is as a continued reference to the worldly boasters, the false apostles. Why else speak of daring to boast? Moreover Paul insists his boasting is not Christian speech but the talk of a fool. If the others who dare to boast are the Twelve, Paul is implicitly labeling all of them fools—which is singularly unlikely. It is much better to allow the natural reading of the passage to stand: i.e., Paul is still referring to the intruders. The word “they” in the following sentences follows on as a reference to the same false apostles, for there is no convenient break at verse 23 to suggest Paul is switching subjects from the deceitful workmen to the Twelve.
What then shall we make of Paul’s question and answer, “Are they servants of Christ? . . . I am more”? Does he really think, after the unrelenting condemnation of 2 Corinthians 11:13–15, that the false apostles are not so false after all, but are truly servants of Christ, even if poor ones? No, of course not; but such an interpretation pushes the language of Paul’s question and answer beyond reasonable boundaries. In this context, the question “Are they servants of Christ?” really means “Do they claim to be servants of Christ?” or, better yet, “Are they servants of Christ [according to the criteria you Corinthians have been taught to use]?” For that is just Paul’s point: by whatever criteria, Paul is more of a servant of Christ than they—even if the criteria are finally shown to be outrageously sub-Christian. There is no contradiction between verses 13 and 23. The former verse tells us what Paul really thinks of the intruders, and the latter what the Corinthians think of them. This makes Paul’s agonizing parenthesis perfectly understandable: precisely because he does not want to be compared with the false apostles and their proud, man-centered boasting in any way, he writes, “I am out of my mind to be talking like this!”
4. Superb irony: the overthrow of all categories for boasting used by triumphalists (11:23b–29). According to the logic of the situation, Paul should now go on to show in what ways he is a superior servant of Christ. Indeed, he appears on the verge of such boasting, for he says, “I have worked much harder.” This may simply be a fair description of Paul’s labors, so well attested in Acts, as compared with the limited efforts of the interlopers. The clause may also reflect the fact that Paul on occasion worked hard with his own hands. But above all, these words raise our expectation as to what must follow. We might imagine Paul saying something like this: “I have established more churches; I have preached the gospel in more lands and to more ethnic groups; I have traveled more miles; I have won more converts; I have written more books; I have raised more money; I have dominated more councils; I have walked with God more fervently and seen more visions; I have commanded the greatest crowds and performed the most spectacular miracles.” After all, that is the sort of list many pagans actually did produce, albeit with different entries. There was even a kind of stylized way of writing up such a brag-sheet, a technique modern scholars refer to as “well-known encomiastic conventions.” Augustus Caesar, for instance, wrote an eulogy in his own honor, an encomium that listed his many accomplishments (the so-called Res gestae Divi Augusti). Augustus is careful to include numbers: once I did this, three times I did that, many times the other. It is highly probably Paul himself had read Caesar’s Res Gestae since it was inscribed on monuments in many of the provinces. Other lists of self-praise are common in the Graeco-Roman world and fit very nicely with the prevailing attitudes toward self-promotion that I have already outlined. Thus, Paul follows the accepted pattern, even to the point of using the numbers that were an important part of these self-eulogies (five times I was flogged, three times shipwrecked, etc.). “But even a superficial comparison between Paul’s catalog of his sufferings and Augustus’ and Pompey’s whitewashed accounts of their glorious achievements shows that Paul’s catalog is a carefully calculated reductio ad absurdum [a reduction of the argument to absurdity] of the whole Graeco-Roman attitude to boasting” (Travis, p. 530, n. 1).
Instead of talking about his exploits and his victories, Paul details his sufferings, loss, shame, and defeats. It is almost as if the primary (if not the only) incontestable criterion of true apostleship is massive suffering in the service of Christ (cf. 1 Cor. 4:9–13; 2 Cor. 4:7–12; 6:4–5). There is very little for triumphalists to say once Paul has finished. The systems of values espoused by Paul and his opponents are so diametrically antithetical that there remains very little common ground.
I shall reflect a little further on the significance of this list later; but it is worth our while first to pause briefly at each entry.
Been in prison more frequently: This epistle was written about the time of travel described in Acts 20:2a; and before that period, Acts records only one imprisonment, viz., the one that took place in Philippi (Acts 16:23–40). Imprisonment in Jerusalem, Caesarea, and Rome all took place later. It is just possible the apostle spent time in jail during his Ephesian ministry (cf. 1 Cor. 15:32; 2 Cor. 1:8–9). A document written at the end of the first century says Paul was in prison on seven different occasions (1 Clement 5:6), but it may have been much more. Two things are already clear. First, the book of Acts does not give us anything like a full account of Paul’s sufferings. Even at this intermediate stage of his apostolic career, Paul had been in prison “many times” unmentioned by Luke. Second, the false apostles would not have chosen this as a lead item in their résumé. Paul has already begun the scathing irony.
Been flogged more severely: If prison was shameful, flogging was both shameful and painful, and could inflict mortal wounds. This generic word “flogging” receives more detailed breakdown in the next two verses. The word translated “more severely” does not suggest that Paul was beaten “more severely” than the false apostles, who were therefore (it might be concluded) beaten less severely. Rather, it means Paul was beaten “beyond measure.”
Been exposed to death again and again: Like the last entry, this clause refers in general terms to many different kinds of situations in which there was mortal danger, situations detailed in the following verses. “When the apostle would prove himself an extraordinary minister, he proves that he had been an extraordinary sufferer. . . . The jail and the whipping-post, and all the other hard usages of those who are accounted the worst of men, were what he was accustomed to” (Henry).
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one (11:24): Jesus predicted that opponents of his gospel would hand his disciples over to the local councils and flog them in their synagogues (Matt. 10:17). None of these scourgings by Paul’s Jewish compatriots is recorded in Acts. That Paul faced this ordeal five times by this point in his ministry is profound testimony to his persistent attempts to reach his fellow Jews with the gospel (cf. Rom. 1:16b; 9:1–4a; 10:1). Never did he restrict himself to Gentiles only. These Jewish beatings were probably mandated by the local court attached to many synagogues to dispense justice among the Jews of the community.
Why was Paul beaten? A passage in the Mishnah provides a long list of crimes that could earn the forty lashes, including incest and certain other sexual sins, entering the temple in an unclean condition, marring the corners of one’s beard, tattooing, and breaking a Nazirite vow (Makkoth 3:1–9). Not only is it unlikely Paul was guilty of any of these crimes, but the context in 2 Corinthians 11 makes it clear that his beatings were connected with his apostolic ministry. Certainly by the third century A.D., flogging was the customary punishment for a scholar who came under the synagogue ban; and something of the sort must have happened to Paul as well. Probably there was some sort of legal excuse. The charge may have been specific: consorting with Gentiles or eating forbidden food or the like. When I was a boy, Christian ministers and evangelists spent a total of eight years in jail during 1950–1952 in Quebec, because they preached the gospel in the open air and handed out literature; but the charge was always something else, such as inciting to riot or disturbing the peace.
The beating was severe. The Old Testament limited the maximum number of lashings that a court could impose to forty; but the practice in Paul’s day was to keep the limit to thirty-nine (hence his reference to “forty lashes minus one”). The medieval Jewish scholar Maimonides surmised that this was done to ensure that no officer of the court ever went over the maximum. Be that as it may, the number of lashings in Paul’s day had to be divisible by the number three, because the scourge used had three thongs, the central one of calf-hide and the other two of ass-hide. One blow, therefore, administered three stripes; and the maximum number of blows was thirteen (3 x 13 = 39). Fewer might be given if the court felt that the prisoner might not survive the full quota. If Paul five times received the full thirty-nine lashes, “there is no occasion for taking into account bodily weakness in the case of Paul” (Meyer): he must have been physically very tough and resilient, for such flogging could kill a man. It took place by binding the prisoner’s arms, as he lay on his back, to two pillars, one on either side. The minister of the synagogue then tore open the prisoner’s clothes, baring his chest. One-third of the blows were then administered; the whip ends long enough to extend from the prisoner’s shoulder to his navel. The prisoner was then released, rolled over, tied down again; and the remaining two-thirds of the prescribed number of blows was administered to his back. “And he that smites, smites with his own hand with all his might” (Makkoth 3:13).
Three times I was beaten with rods (11:25): This is almost certainly a reference to Roman beatings, not Jewish. Acts records only one of these (Acts 16:22–23). There was no limit to the number of blows; and they could be landed anywhere on the prisoner’s body, which was stripped naked in preparation. In theory, this punishment (often used in connection with interrogating a suspect) was not to be inflicted on any Roman citizen (cf. Acts 16:37; 22:25, 29; Cicero, In Verrem v. 170: “to bind a Roman citizen is a crime, to flog him is an abomination.”) Yet there is ample evidence that in Paul’s day this breach of law occurred rather frequently (Cicero, In Verrem 5.161–62; Livy, 10.9.3–6). The charge brought against Paul was probably disturbing the peace. In any event, no triumphalist would confess he had run afoul of the Roman judicial system. The shame of these public beatings was matched only by the agony they inflicted.
Once I was stoned (11:25): Doubtless this is a reference to Paul’s horrifying experience in Lystra (Acts 14:19) where he was roughly handled by a mob, stoned, and left for dead. There was no legal procedure in this case, of course (as under the judicial stoning of a Jewish court: cf. Sanhedrin 6:1–6), but only mob violence. From the perspective of the person being stoned, however, it is very doubtful that stones would feel any different if they had been hurled only after proper procedure had taken place.
Three times I was shipwrecked (11:25): These words Paul wrote before the shipwreck recorded in Acts 27. So Paul must have survived at least four such terrifying experiences in his life. We do not know when the earlier three took place. One or more may have occurred in connection with the travels of his first or second missionary journeys (sea voyages are mentioned in Acts 13:4, 13; 14:26; 16:11; 17:5; 18:18; and there were certainly other sea trips, e.g., 2 Cor. 2:1, 13; 7:5); or perhaps they all took place in the silent years of ministry before his arrival in Antioch to work with Barnabas.
I spent a night and a day in the open sea (11:25): One of the shipwrecks, at least, proved very dangerous. Apparently it occurred far enough from land that the distance was too great to swim, and Paul was left in the water, clinging to wreckage perhaps, until rescue arrived.
I have been constantly on the move (11:26): In some ways this is a transitional statement introducing the specific dangers enumerated in the following lines. But perhaps it also hints at something of the privation that most people feel if they are on the road constantly, with no place truly home.
I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits (11:26): Both dangers would be occasioned by the apostle’s many travels. Some rivers would be dangerous to ford at any time, others at certain times of the year. Highwaymen infested some parts of the empire more thickly than others. Both rivers and bandits were particularly dangerous for the traveler who tried to cross the Taurus Mountains between Perga and Pamphylia and Pisidian Antioch in Phrygia (Acts 13:14; 14:24). The danger of robbers might be particularly bad when Paul was carrying money from one church to another for the relief of the poor.
In danger from my own countrymen (11:26): Much of the earliest persecution of the church came from the Jewish side. The book of Acts tells of several Jewish plots against Paul’s life (e.g., Acts 9:23, 29; 13:45; 14:2, 19; 15:26; 17:5ff; 18:12).
In danger from Gentiles (11:26): Acts recounts three such episodes (14:19–20, at Jewish instigation; 16:16–40; 19:23–41).
In danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea (11:26): Paul now moves from the human origins of his dangers to their geographical locations. The threefold string, cities/country/ sea, leaves very little left: in other words, Paul is in danger everywhere, all the time. Moreover, in the context of the seriousness of the charge, the danger Paul confronts is probably to life and limb: it is not mere irritation. Crowded city made dangerous by endless plots against him, bandit-infested countryside, and the potential for shipwrecks might have deterred a lesser man from his ministry, but not Paul.
And in danger from false brothers (11:26): “Brothers” means “fellow-Christians”; so “false brothers” probably means those who claim to be fellow-Christians but are not. There is an unmistakable reference back to false apostles (2 Cor. 11:13). Most such false brothers in Paul’s day would be Judaizers. They would easily pass for Christians and be acceptable in most churches, for they certainly believed Jesus to be the Messiah, and that he died and rose again. But because they insisted that Gentiles must in some respects come under the law of Moses, as well as bow to the lordship of Jesus Messiah in repentance and faith if they were to be saved at all, they found themselves in direct conflict with the apostolic gospel, which insisted no less strongly on the exclusive sufficiency of Jesus Christ. In Jerusalem, the issue would not have been as burning as in the provinces (unless someone like Paul brought the matter up), because there were very few Gentiles there. This made Paul the focus of Judaizing opposition, for his ministry was primarily exercised among Gentiles.
Probably on occasion the apostle was betrayed by some Jewish leaders into the hands of local authorities and thereby met with various reprisals, direct and indirect. At the same time, Paul’s listing of false brothers as one of his great dangers and sources of suffering, along with flogging, shipwrecks, and stoning, could only be a stinging rebuke to the Corinthians themselves; for if they had not harbored the rival apostles and given them a secure base and a sympathetic ear, Paul would not have needed to write this response at all. Duped brothers often multiply the evil influence of false brothers.
I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep (11:27): Quite apart from the extraordinary dangers and all too frequent beatings and imprisonments that the apostle faced during the course of his ministry, his life was scarcely characterized by luxury, comfort, reflective ease, or even much rest (cf. 1 Cor. 4:9–13, 24–27; 2 Cor. 6:4–10). He “labored” and “toiled” (a pair of verbs Paul has used elsewhere to describe his combination of spiritual ministry and manual work, 1 Thess. 2:9; 2 Thess. 3:8). Both words suggest not only the energy that went into the work itself, but the resulting fatigue and accompanying hardship as well. In this context, the sleeplessness is probably due neither to easy choice nor to insomnia but to the pressures of too much work and too many responsibilities.
I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked (11:27): It is unlikely that the bouts of hunger came from self-imposed fasts connected with Christian festivals or private hours of prayer, for if Paul could bring himself to mention such fasts, he certainly would not do so in a list of sufferings and privations. Far more likely is the suggestion that Paul experienced hunger and thirst associated with awkward travel arrangements and with an empty pocketbook. Paul determined not to accept support from the Corinthians (1 Cor. 9:12, 15, 18; 2 Cor. 11:7–12; 12:14–16a); and this may well have precipitated one of the periods of hunger. Cold and nakedness might be forced on him either by prison life or, again, by financial destitution. While the Corinthians were being taught that truly great teachers earned huge fees and commanded multiplying assets, the apostle Paul frequently lived so far below the poverty line he would have needed substantial sums to teach it. For this he suffered doubly: the privations themselves, and then the condescending scorn of immature triumphalists who married pagan greed with overrealized eschatology to argue that financial prosperity was the reward of the just and the right of sons of God, conveniently forgetting the cross.
“Besides everything else,” Paul writes (the expression could mean “besides all the other things left unmentioned,” or “besides all I’ve mentioned and more of the same,” or, less likely, “besides external trials”), “I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches” (2 Cor. 11:28). Here is Paul the pastor and world Christian. His concern extends to all the churches, doubtless first and foremost the ones he himself founded, but not limited to that boundary, since Paul often uses the plural “churches” to refer to the whole people of God (e.g., Rom. 16:16; 1 Cor. 7:17; 11:16; 14:33; 2 Cor. 8:18; 2 Thess. 1:4). The epistles to the Romans and to the Colossians were written to churches Paul had neither founded nor visited; but that fact did not prevent him from expressing profound concern for the churches in Rome and Colosse.
The concern Paul felt is no violation of Jesus’s prohibition of self-interested worry (Matt. 6:25–34); for the worry Jesus forbids is set over against seeking first God’s kingdom and righteousness, the very virtue Paul’s concern for the churches most deeply displays. While the rival apostles compromise themselves by seeking power, money, and fame, Paul seeks none of the three. He preaches the kingdom of God and teaches about the Lord Jesus Christ (Acts 28:31), and is passionately concerned for righteousness (as 2 Cor. 11:29 proves).
Paul seems to view his concern for all the churches as the climax of his trials. The immensity of the pressures and sufferings already enumerated therefore serve as a measure of the intensity of his care for fellow believers. Certainly if many congregations had problems as serious as those in Galatia and Corinth, Paul must have poured staggering quantities of emotional and spiritual energy into the churches he loved so well. If Paul faces such pressure daily, it is not because a bad situation never improves but because there is always a new one about to break. Nor is Paul’s concern limited to churches that are in danger of apostatizing. He cares with equal intensity for fledgling congregations he is not in a position to help directly, but the newness of whose faith prompts the apostle to vigilant prayer and whatever is the spiritual equivalent of gnawed fingernails.
The church in Thessalonica, for instance, came into existence as a result of apostolic work that spanned at most a few weeks; and Paul’s first epistle back to them reflects, not only the tenderest love, but a doting parent’s unqualified concern (see esp. 1 Thess. 1:4–3:10). Forced in this instance to remain at a distance, Paul makes a decision: “So when we could stand it no longer, we thought it best to be left by ourselves in Athens. We sent Timothy, who is our brother and God’s fellow worker in spreading the gospel of Christ, to strengthen and encourage you in your faith, so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. . . . Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. . . . Therefore, brothers, in all our distress and persecution we were encouraged about you because of your faith. For now we really live, since you are standing firm in the Lord. . . . Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you again and supply what is lacking in your faith” (3:1–10).
Here is no mere professional, running a superb organization from the comfort of a well-appointed, air-conditioned office, but a pastor attuned to the needs of even the least brother for whom Christ died. Organization and competent administration there are, as a close study of the comings and goings of Paul’s numerous assistants reveals; nevertheless, this apostolic ministry is not discharged with aloof detachment but with flaming zeal, profound compassion, evangelistic fervor, and a father’s heart. Paul engages all his considerable intellectual and emotional power in his ministry to the whole church. Such an approach bears fruit; but it takes its toll in energy consumed and in deep involvement with people.
This is brought to sharp focus as Paul provides an example, set forth by a couple of rhetorical questions: “Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?” (2 Cor. 11:29). “Weakness” in the Pauline corpus can refer to personal faith or conscience: i.e., a believer whose faith or conscience is weak may suffer pangs of false guilt and observe regulations of indifferent importance (e.g., Rom. 4:9; 14:1–2; 1 Cor. 8:11–12). But in this context “weakness” probably bears its broader sense, referring to lack of strength in any respect. Paul is talking about Christians who for some reason have been brought to a spiritual low point, and who seem to have no reserves of strength to overcome temptation, doubt, seduction, and opposition, or to get on with the business of discipleship. Paul empathizes deeply, for he has frequently experienced the most debilitating weakness, including illness (Gal. 4:13), discouragement, and fear (Acts 18:9–10; 1 Cor. 2:3), and the perpetual pressures generated by the list of apostolic “credentials” he is now bringing to a close (cf. also 2 Cor. 4:7–12). How could triumphalists who boast only of their strength and who despise all signs of weakness ever provide any empathetic help to the fellow believer who is weak?
No less acute is the intensity of his feelings when a Christian is led into sin. Paul cannot stoop to indifference when any believer, whether by the persuasive power of evil example, by the saccharine seduction of duplicitous personalities, or by the bane of false teaching, is tripped up and made to stumble into sin. The apostle burns inwardly, not only with the compassionate empathy presupposed by the previous question, but now also with fiery indignation against those who lead one of Christ’s little ones into sin (cf. Matt. 18:6; Gal. 5:12). That explains the heat of Paul’s reaction and the vehemence of his language in 2 Corinthians 11:13–15. Unreservedly committed both to the righteousness bound up with the gospel and to the brothers and sisters transformed by that gospel, Paul burns when he sees righteousness in ruins and believers morally battered by the servants of Satan.
How different are many of our reactions to the same phenomena today. It is regrettably easy to philosophize when such sin occurs, comment on the evil times in which we live, reflect that the brother or sister who fell into sin or heresy was never very strong or discerning anyway, and never to agonize in prayer for our fellow believer or inwardly burn because of their weakness and shame. The really consistent triumphalist may actually entertain feelings of superiority in that situation, and rejoice that he is not as other men are. Our indifference links us with the priest and Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25–37).
5. Boasting of weakness and shame (11:30–33). With magnificent irony, Paul has scathingly rejected the criteria of the triumphalists by boasting of his sufferings, beatings, deprivations, and exhausting concerns. Now he turns the argument in a new direction. He boasts about an event in his life of which he is ashamed. “If I must boast,” he writes (possibly echoing an axiom of the rival apostles that one must boast), “I will boast of the things that show my weakness.” This paradoxical boasting is the only kind of boasting the apostle can tolerate for long.
What he is about to say is, from the perspective of triumphal-ism, so improbable that Paul puts himself under an oath before he begins: “The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, who is to be praised forever, knows that I am not lying” (2 Cor. 11:31). The proper function of oaths is not to erect special situations in which truth-telling is important, by contrast with other situations in which truth-telling does not matter; rather, they function to enhance the credibility of the speaker before skeptical hearers. Paul’s credibility has been questioned; he takes this oath, appealing to God’s omniscience, to ensure the Corinthians will hear him out and be more inclined to believe him (for other Pauline oaths, cf. 2 Cor. 1:18; 11:10–11; Rom. 9:1; Gal. 1:20; 1 Tim. 2:7).
At first glance, what he tells the Corinthians seems innocuous enough; it is the account of his escape from Damascus. “In Damascus the governor under King Aretas had the city of the Damascenes guarded in order to arrest me. But I was lowered from a basket through a window in the wall and slipped through his hands” (2 Cor. 11:32–33).
This is Paul’s version of the escape described by Luke in Acts 9:23–25. It is not entirely clear why the governor tried to arrest Paul, but probably his reason was grounded in Paul’s evangelistic activity in Arabia (Gal. 1:17), the area inhabited by the Nabataean Arabs over whom Aretas ruled. There are other historical uncertainties; but Paul’s terse report is clear enough. He escaped from the city by passing through a hatch in the wall and being lowered to the ground in a fish basket, assisted by some of his disciples.
Why should Paul tell this story with such an obvious sense of weakness and shame? Why must he put himself under oath, as if this is so hard to believe? There are two observations that will bring us to the heart of what Paul is saying in these verses. First, many readers of the English Bible have become familiar with the escape through Sunday schools, where the story is told, not only from the perspective of Luke (who is more interested in God’s providential direction of the church and preservation of this “apostle to the Gentiles” than in Paul’s personal feelings), but as an adventure in which the “good guy” wins. It can actually be exciting on flannel graph! But the good guy himself didn’t look back on the event as a piece of high drama to spice up his memoirs. Rather, he recalled the event with shame. Probably it was the event that shattered whatever residual pride still lurked in the proud heart of Saul the Pharisee. He had set out for the city of Damascus with the avowed intent of rounding up Christians; he left the city not as the hunter but as the hunted. This toast of high rabbinic circles, this educated and sincere Pharisee, this man who had access to the highest officials in Jerusalem, slunk out of Damascus like a criminal, lowered like a catch of dead fish in a basket whose smelly cargo he had displaced. It is even possible that his detractors had held this event up to the Corinthians as proof of Paul’s cowardice (cf. 10:1, 10). “What a contrast there was between his arrogant approach to the city, and his humiliating exit from it!” (Wilson).
The second observation is still more telling. The list of boasts (2 Cor. 11:23–29), it will be remembered, is shaped as a parody of the self-praise great public figures commonly wrote in their own honor. In these last few verses, Paul parodies the type of self-eulogy that singles out one detail and describes it graphically as a kind of paradigm of what might be expected from such a man. Now it becomes perfectly clear why Paul focuses attention on a single incident partly trivial and partly shameful.
He will boast, if he must, of his weaknesses. But if it is realised that everyone in antiquity would have known that the finest military award for valour was the corona muralis, for the man who was first up the wall in the face of the enemy, Paul’s point is devastatingly plain; he was first down.
The triumphalists are so very proud of their accomplishments, such as they are. But while everyone is showing off his war medals, including the odd Congressional Medal of Honor, Paul tells how he ran away in the face of the enemy. He is determined to boast of the things that will show his weakness. He might have penned the following lines:
Credential apostolic: here’s my boast,
Certificate of God’s elusive call.
I might have pointed out that I am Paul,
A Benjamite of purest lines, the toast
Oh high rabbinic educators, most
Experienced church planter; but the pall
Of guilt, the grace of God, Golgotha—all
Combine to prompt this apostolic boast:
Like wretched slaves I’ve worked, and borne the lash.
Severely beaten, stoned, and shipwrecked thrice,
In constant danger, treated like old trash
By my own flocks—these prove I serve the Christ.
For I delight to suffer weakness, wrong.
Grace answers need; and when I’m weak, I’m strong.
C. Some Final Reflections
Comparison of this list with Luke’s selective presentation of Paul’s ministry shows that, far from exaggerating, Luke records only a small part of Paul’s work and suffering for Jesus Christ. We would have no knowledge of the extent of Paul’s labors, privations, and beatings were it not for the fact that, in the providence of God, Paul is forced to write this parody in order to save the Corinthian church; for it is quite clear the apostle would not easily have offered such information. His agony over the matter is our great gain.
It is very humbling to become intimately acquainted with a servant of Christ like Paul. But we will not be honoring him, nor worshipping the Lord he loves, if we do not reflect a little further on the appropriate application of our own lives of so moving and candid a self-portrayal.
1. Christians ought to be greatly ashamed of boasting about strengths, skills, victories, training, successes, and productivity in their lives as if, on the one hand, we either earned those things or deserved them, or as if, on the other, such things make us intrinsically more acceptable to the Lord Jesus Christ. What do we have but what we have received? And if we received it as a gracious gift from God, how dare we boast about it (1 Cor. 4:7)? Does not the most elementary grasp of the gospel assure us that we are accepted by God solely by the merits of Christ Jesus the Redeemer? Why then so much boasting? Is our love of man’s applause stronger than our love for Christ?
2. Christians ought to be quick to admit to their weaknesses, because rightly handled our weaknesses will serve to extol Christ’s strength and therefore bring glory to him. I know a Christian leader who openly advises his colleagues never to admit their weaknesses. To do so, he says, might give opponents an advantage. Christian this leader may be; but in this respect he thinks like a pagan.
3. In any case, Christians must not uncritically drag over from the world criteria of self-assessment whose underlying values actually betray biblical discipleship to Jesus Christ. Paul’s deeply ironic boasting is not the work of a man who is naturally self-effacing. Behind the lines in these verses stands an apostle who has by God’s grace thought through the implications of his discipleship to the Lord Jesus, and has learned in large measure to think and act in ways consistent with that calling. His grasp of grace and his desire to imitate his Savior provide the impulse behind his boasting.
The solution to overblown self-esteem and self-eulogizing is neither an artificial self-loathing nor a valiant attempt to try harder. It is unconditional devotion to Jesus Christ. In these matters nothing will mature us more effectively than multiplied devotion to the Lord Jesus and growing, biblically controlled reflection on the entailments of our discipleship, until we can sing unreservedly:
Savior! Thy dying love
Thou gavest me;
Nor should I aught withhold,
Dear Lord, from Thee;
My heart fulfill its vow,
Some off’ring bring Thee now,
Something for Thee.
At the blest mercy-seat,
Pleading for me;
My feeble faith looks up,
Jesus, to Thee:
Help me the cross to bear,
Thy wondrous love declare,
Some song to raise, or prayer,
Something for Thee.
Give me a faithful heart,
Likeness to Thee,
That each departing day
Henceforth may see
Some work of love begun,
Some deed of kindness done,
Some wand’rer sought and won,
Something for Thee.
All that I am and have—
Thy gifts so free—
In joy, in grief, through life,
O Lord, for Thee!
And when Thy face I see
My ransomed soul shall be
Through all eternity
Something for Thee.
Sylvanus Dryden Phelps (1816–95)
In the last few decades, there has been an enormous amount of work aimed at identifying Paul’s opponents here and in other epistles. The subject is too intricate and the results too tentative to be probed in a profitable way here, beyond the sketch of the one alternative position I have tried to refute above and in chapter 1.
I have dealt a little more comprehensively with Jesus’s teaching on worry in The Sermon on the Mount (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1978), 81–96.
It has been argued that the verb skandalizetai, rendered “is led into sin” by the NIV, really means “is offended” in this context; and Paul replies in effect that when other Christians are offended he can “burn” empathetically with them, for he has frequently been offended himself. This interpretation is unlikely. Though the verb can indeed mean “is offended,” this is normally not in the sense that someone has had his feelings hurt, but that some “offense” has been committed against that person. In biblical usage this “offense” often leads the victim into sin. Moreover, the “burning” Paul feels toward the offenders is contextually shaped by 11:13–15.
Luke says the Jews were watching the gates in order to kill Paul (Acts 9:23–25); Paul says the governor under King Aretas had the city guarded in order to arrest him. This problem is related to uncertainty as to who was really in charge of Damascus at the time. The Romans certainly ruled the city until A.D. 34, and they may have ruled long after that; but the absence of Roman coins in Damascus for the period A.D. 34–62 has convinced some historians that King Aretas IV, father-in-law of Herod Antipas and ruler of Nabataea from about 9 B.C. to A.D. 40, extended his territory in A.D. 34 to include Damascus, and maintained oversight through a deputy while the king himself maintained his palace in Petra. If this is correct, then it is possible (as Hughes suggests) that this governor was himself a Jew (compare the connection between Aretas and the half-breed Herods) who appointed an entirely Jewish unit of guards to regulate what was in fact a purely Jewish matter. This search for Paul then becomes the first of many bouts with his Jewish compatriots. But it is marginally more likely that the Romans never relinquished control of the city. In that case the “governor” was probably an appointee of King Aretas to rule over a semiautonomous colony of Nabataean Arabs in the city. This sort of arrangement the Romans fostered in other cities (e.g., it appears the Jews in Alexandria enjoyed long periods of semiautonomous self-government in their section of the city); and indeed the word rendered “governor” by the NIV, ethnarches, customarily refers to a relatively minor governor over a tribal group. In this view, Paul’s evangelistic activity offended the Jews of Damascus, and his forays in Arabia offended the Nabataean Arabs. The Jews (Acts) and Nabataeans (Paul) therefore forged an agreement to stop him, precipitating the escape.
E. A. Judge, “The Conflict of Educational Aims in NT Thought,” Journal of Christian Education 9 (1966): 45.
D. A. Carson, Sonnets from Scripture.