My last two posts were concerned with two brief passages from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. This post continues to draw from that same deep well.
I like to think I am a ‘Grace of God guy,’ I mean, a fella like me can make very little other claim. Like the mystic prophet Paul, I can trace my spirituality back to a profound instance of grace – a veritable Damascus road moment – if you will. I’m not saying I got taken up to the third heaven, frolicking around in paradise like Paul, and I certainly didn’t receive any visions or revelations (2 Cor 12:2-4). But things would never be quite the same again, after I received the spiritual insight that the copious amount of alcohol I had been consuming for years, and the way my life was unraveling before my eyes, were both inextricably linked.
That Paul was concerned with Grace-sufficiency is indisputable
Some language deployed by Paul in 2nd Corinthians, including his flight of mystical fancy into the third heaven, is – as I now understand it – intentionally poetic and spiritually descriptive. It is this rather than a factual account along the lines that we western rational folks demand that is recounted by Paul regarding his dramatic conversion. There are no adequate words to capture the sort of revolutionary transformation that can ensue when grace comes knocking, but Paul gives it a red hot go.
In 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul is effectively reasserting his credentials as nothing less than a Jewish mystic and prophet, one of many, in the venerable Hebrew tradition of prophets. Scripture scholars widely agree that Paul had adopted the Israelite prophet badge, with all its attendant suffering, earlier in his letter writing career with allusions in Galatians 1:15-16, to the prophet call narratives of both Isaiah 49:1-3 and Jeremiah 1:5.1
By the time Paul was writing to the Corinthians, the Jewish prophet persona was arguably imbedded in how Paul saw himself, a point that is now generally acknowledged in contemporary Pauline scholarship, as shown by Scripture scholar Jeffrey W. Aernie.2
Indeed, there are many who see a direct correlation between Paul’s insistence on carrying the message about the ‘Risen Messiah for All,’ to the gentiles (Non-Jews), and the self-same directive from Yahweh (God), in Isaiah 49:6.
Grace is the proverbial gift that keeps giving
Moreover, that Paul saw the slain Galilean as depictive of Isaiah’s famed ‘Suffering Servant’ (Isa 52:13-53:12), is probable. In fact, it is likely that Paul considered that same suffering imagery as also entirely applicable to himself and indeed all those who claim the Christ.3 For Paul, it was all about embracing weakness because it is precisely in that space where all the good grace stuff becomes visible.
That Paul was concerned with Grace-sufficiency is indisputable (2 Cor 12:9), and he has plenty more to say about grace elsewhere (1 Cor 15:10; Rom 11:5-6). How these utterances have been interpreted across two thousand years, however, is to say the least distinctly variable. The great theologian Augustine of Hippo was without doubt absorbed in the notion of Grace-sufficiency. And a thousand years later the reforming rebel Martin Luther, was similarly drawn by the mysterious wonder that the living God provides unlimited and unmerited grace, Sola gratia (Grace alone).
When grace becomes a happening thing nothing more is required! And the really amazing thing about grace, is that it is not so much about the whizbang Damascus road moments. Rather, grace it is the proverbial gift that just keeps on giving.
- Seyoon Kim, Paul and the New Perspective: Second Thoughts on The Origin of Paul’s Gospel (Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002), 101. [↩]
- Jeffrey W. Aernie, Is Paul Also Among the Prophets? : An Examination of the Relationship between Paul and the Old Testament Prophetic Tradition in 2 Corinthians (London: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2012). [↩]
- Scott J. Hafemann, “Suffering,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, ed. Gerald F. Hawthorne, Ralph P. Martin, and Daniel G. Reid (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 919. [↩]