The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (110 page)

Paul's Opponents in 2 Corinthians

Scholars still debate the identity of Paul's opponents in 2 Corinthians. Since the 1800s scholars have proposed three major theories concerning their identity.
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R. Bultmann and W. Schmithals theorized that the opponents were Gnostics. C. K. Barrett suggested that the opponents were legalistic Judaizers similar to those that Paul battled in Galatians. D. Georgi argued that the opponents were Hellenistic Jewish missionaries who held to a mixed theology with both legalistic and gnostic/pneumatic elements and who venerated Moses as a “divine man” or miracle worker.
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Something to Think About: Lost in Affluence

T
he Corinthians had it all. Many were wealthy in this thriving seaport, and with this affluence came the arrogance that so often accompanies possessions in this world. Jesus warned the rich, saying, “It will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven! Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God” (Matt 19:23—24). John counseled, “Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him
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And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does God's will remains forever” (1 John 2:15,17).

Paul often began his letters with an opening greeting and a thanksgiving section. In 1 Thessalonians, for example, he rejoiced that these believers had become an example in the entire region (1 Thess 1:2—10). In 1 Corinthians, however, the only thing Paul can thank God for is that God has blessed the Corinthians with every spiritual gift (1 Cor 1:5—7)! What he cannot thank God for is the way in which they exercised these gifts. As becomes clear later in the letter, all too often chaos reigned, and the most important ingredient—love—was conspicuously absent in the life of the church (1 Corinthians 13).

So early in the letter (1:26—31) Paul felt compelled to write:

Brothers, consider your calling: not many are wise from a human perspective, not many powerful, not many of noble birth. Instead, God has chosen the world's foolish things to shame the wise, and God has chosen the world's weak things to shame the strong. God has chosen the world's insignificant and despised things
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the things viewed as nothing
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so he might bring to nothing the things that are viewed as something, so that no one can boast in his presence. But from Him you are in Christ Jesus, who for us became wisdom from God, as well as righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, in order that, as it is written: “The one who boasts must boast in the Lord.”

Most assuredly, this is a prophetic word that has in no way lost its relevance in the Western church, where affluence has significantly eroded the NT teaching of the church as the body of Christ, where its various members work together for the glory of God. May God help us in our performance orientation and shallow lip service to Christianity. If we keep Christ at arm's length, we will remain “babies in Christ” (1 Cor 3:1) rather than growing up into mature spiritual adulthood. And tragically, we will not be the salt and light of the earth by which people will see our good works and give glory to our Father in heaven (Matt 5:16).

In his synthesis of various characterizations of the false apostles and their message throughout 2 Corinthians, Furnish exhibited rare caution in not exceeding clear exegetical
evidence in his descriptions. He suggested the following reconstruction. (1) The intruders claimed a relationship with Christ and an apostolic authority superior to Paul's. (2) They supported these claims with letters of recommendation and boasts of their Jewish heritage, eloquence, boldness, missionary accomplishments, ecstatic experiences, miracles, and special knowledge gleaned from visionary experiences. (3) They were critical of Paul for being weak, having poor skills in public speaking, being a ne'er-do-well who suffered almost constant hardship, and lacking the confidence to expect financial support from the Corinthians.
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The most important texts for identifying these opponents are 2 Cor 3:1—18; 11:4, 22-23. Some texts in 2 Corinthians clearly address Paul's opponents. Other texts do not specifically mention Paul's opponents but appear to be part of Paul's apologetic against the opponents. Close examination of Paul's defense enables scholars to reconstruct elements of the theology of the opposition using a process called “mirror-reading.” Mirror-reading attempts to reconstruct the theology of Paul's opponents based on Paul's critique of their theology much like one can reconstruct essential elements of an unheard person's telephone conversation by listening carefully to the words of the other party. An application of mirror-reading to 2 Cor 3:1—18 suggests that Paul's opponents failed to recognize the temporary nature of the old covenant and the greater glory of the new covenant. They argued that the gospel had in no way changed the obligation to fulfill the law of Moses and that the law was somehow necessary to Christian experience. The emphasis on spiritual gifts in 1 Corinthians is matched in 2 Corinthians by the opponents’ apparent claim that they were “superapostles” whose miracles surpassed Paul's (2 Cor 11:5; 12:11—12). The great emphasis on Paul's sufferings as an apostle may imply that the opponents taught that they were superior to Paul since God had supernaturally protected them from such sufferings (2 Cor 1:3-11; 4:7-15; 6:4-10; 11:23-29). From 11:4, it is clear that the opponents preached “another Jesus,” “a different spirit,” and “another gospel.” But determining precisely what this means is difficult. The following chart (Table 12.1) shows some of the popular explanations of the teaching of these false apostles.

Although the debate over the identity of Paul's opponents in 2 Corinthians is far from settled, the Divine-man view outlined in the chart is growing in popularity and appears to be emerging as the new consensus. Along those lines, Belleville argued that “Paul's rivals were Palestinian Jews who, claiming the backing of the Jerusalem church, came to Corinth carrying letters of reference.”
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They brandished an impressive array of credentials—including visions, ecstatic experiences, and revelations—and sought to sway their audience through polished oratory, preaching what Paul referred to as “a different gospel” (2 Cor 11:4).

The reconstruction by S. Hafemann sought to integrate the various elements of the false teaching into a more coherent system. According to Hafemann, Paul's opponents had embraced “a theology of ‘over-realized glory,’ in which participation in their gospel, with
its tie to the old covenant, was said to guarantee freedom from sin and suffering in this world.”
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At the center of the debate likely was the relationship between the two covenants as it pertained to the roles of Moses and the law on the one hand and Paul as an apostle of Christ engaged in “the ministry of the Spirit” on the other (see 2 Cor 2:16; 3:4-18).

Table 12.1: Teaching of False Apostles in 2 Corinthians

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See Hughes,
The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, 377—78.
A similar view was suggested by R. V. G. Tasker,
The Second Epistle to the Corinthians
, TNTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), 147-48.

^**
W. Schmithals,
Gnosticism in Corinth: An Investigation of the Letters to the Corinthians
,trans. J. E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), 134; R. Bultmann,
Der zweite Brief an die Korinther
, ed. E. Dinkler (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1976), 205

^***
See F. T. Fallon,
2 Corinthians
(Wilmington: Glazier, 1980), 94; Martin, 2 Corinthians, 341.

Precisely identifying Paul's opponents is notoriously difficult. A bewildering array of theories of identification has been proposed. So far, none of these theories has succeeded in becoming the consensus view. Attempts to reconstruct the teachings of the opponents should proceed with caution and humility. Interpreters must hesitate before using the
reconstruction to interpret difficult texts in 2 Corinthians and realize that their interpretation may be no more accurate than their reconstruction.

Purpose

1
Corinthians
Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to respond to oral reports he had received from those associated with Chloe (1 Cor 1:11) and elsewhere and to answer questions raised by the Corinthians in a letter that they wrote to him (1 Cor 7:1). The oral report focused primarily on the disunity of the Corinthian church. The church had divided into several factions, each of which celebrated a particular Christian leader. Paul wrote 1 Corinthians to urge the church to seek unity and to follow Christ rather than idolizing a human leader such as Paul, Apollos, or Cephas (1 Cor 1:12; see 1:10—4:21). Paul recognized that the glorification of human leaders indicated that the Corinthians did not understand the nature of divine grace and that they had a flawed view of the nature of human leadership. God's grace uses unlikely people for great purposes to display his power and wisdom. This promotes God's glory and diminishes human pride.

Paul had also heard from several different sources that a member of the church of Corinth was living in an incestuous relationship with his stepmother. Paul urged the church to repent of its casual acceptance of such immorality. He commanded the church to exercise church discipline in hopes of encouraging the immoral church member to repent and of preventing the spread of immorality throughout the congregation (1 Cor 5:1—13). Paul also wrote to clarify the doctrine of Christian liberty and to demonstrate that freedom in Christ was not a license for immoral behavior (1 Cor 6:12—20).

Paul also knew that believers were taking fellow believers to court to settle disputes. Paul recognized that this was a poor witness to unbelievers in the local court systems and that justice was more likely to be found in decisions made by believers than by unbelievers. Paul thus urged the Corinthians to settle their disputes through arbitrators who were fellow believers.

Several issues were raised by the Corinthians’ letter to Paul, and his reply to these concerns begins in chap. 7 and extends at least through chap. 14 and possibly through chap. 15. These concerns include questions about Christian marital relationships (chap. 7), participation in pagan feasts in various temples in Corinth and eating food formerly sacrificed to idols (chaps. 8—10), proper dress and decorum during worship and the Lord's Supper (chap. 11), and the exercise of spiritual gifts (chaps. 12—14).

Some of the Corinthians had rejected the doctrine of the bodily resurrection of believers. This rejection had a significant impact on their moral as well as their theological views. Paul wrote to defend the doctrine of the resurrection and to show the crucial nature of this doctrine to the Christian gospel (chap. 15).

Finally, Paul gave the church practical instructions for the collection of the relief offering for believers in Jerusalem and informed the Corinthians of his tentative travel plans (chap. 16).

2 Corinthians
Although 2 Corinthians constitutes a single letter rather than a composite of several different Pauline letters, a letter of this length was likely composed over a period of several days or weeks. The needs of the churches to which Paul traveled, the demands of his occupation as a tentmaker, and the limited availability of secretaries with the skills needed to produce such a letter probably required Paul to dictate various portions of the letter at different times and possibly different places. This chapter has suggested that when Paul dictated chaps. 1—9 he was greatly encouraged by the positive report about the Corinthians that he received from Titus. But, after dictating the first nine chapters, he may have received more news from Corinth that alarmed him again and prompted him to write the final chapters of the letter with a different tone.
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Some interpreters suggest that a secretary was not available for the last three chapters and that Paul actually penned chaps. 10-13 with his own hand.
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Paul wrote chaps. 1—9 for four major purposes. First, Paul's change in travel plans had made him vulnerable to his opponents’ charge that he was inconsistent and unworthy of the Corinthians’ trust. Paul wrote to defend his reliability and to explain the reasons for his change in plans. Second, Paul wrote to encourage the Corinthians to restore a church member who had been disciplined by the congregation for vicious attacks on the apostle. Third, Paul wrote to clarify the nature of his apostolic ministry and his qualifications for that ministry. Under the influence of new leaders who boasted that their apostolic qualifications were superior to Paul's, his credentials had been scrutinized and rejected by a growing number of Corinthian believers. Paul attempted to demonstrate that his qualifications for spiritual leadership exceeded those of his opponents in every way. This defense of Paul's apostleship is the primary motivation for the earlier section of the letter, and Paul seems confident that the Corinthians would be convinced by his defense. Fourth, Paul wrote to encourage the Corinthians to fulfill their pledge to contribute generously to the relief offering for the Jerusalem believers.