2 Corinthians Part 3 (The letter kills)

In ch3 vv1-3, there is a discussion of the value of “letters of recommendation”, which seems to follow on from the previous chapter’s discussion of the “painful visit”. The people who do hold such letters are likely to have been emissaries from Jerusalem (we meet them elsewhere in Paul’s story), so this discussion must be part of his long-running struggle with Judaizers. The opening words “Are we beginning [in your eyes] to commend ourselves again?” looks like a reference to what he has just said in ch2 v17, in which case the emissaries are the people being criticised as “peddlers of God’s word”.

People must have been challenging him about the fact that he did not have any. If this was the issue at the “painful visit”, then that tells against the idea that this visit involved a clash with the followers of Apollos. Instead, the trouble would have come from the “I belong to Peter” party mentioned in 1 Corinthians ch1.

He says he doesn’t need any such letters, because the very existence of the Corinthian community IS his “letter of recommendation”, validating his commission. It could not have happened without him. They themselves are a letter addressed to the world, written by Christ himself and delivered by Paul, a letter written by not by ink but by the Holy Spirit, “on tablets of human hearts”.

“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ before God” (ch3 v4).
This opens up a section of 2 Corinthians, covering the best part of four chapters, dominated by two thoughts.
One is the development of the epistle’s opening theme, that the sufferings of Paul and his fellow-evangelists are worked out by God for the greater good.
The other is the need to trust in Christ rather than in the law of Moses.
“Such is the confidence” could follow on equally well from ch2 v15 (“we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved”) or from the discussion in the previous three verses about whether Paul needs letters of recommendation.
So on close consideration I am seeing no need for the theory (mentioned in the opening thread) that these themes belonged originally to different letters. Paul is simply allowing his mind to move from one side of his thoughts to another, as he dictates.

He wants to make it clear that his confidence is not self-confidence. The apostles have no competence except what comes from God.

For what purpose has God made them competent? To be the ministers of a new covenant, replacing the old covenant established through Moses. The difference is that the Spirit replaces a written code. The written code kills. That is, as Paul points out elsewhere, it announces a curse on those who do not give full obedience, which means everybody (Galatians ch3 v10). But the Spirit gives life.

He illustrates the splendour of this new covenant by associating with it the light which shone from the face of Moses after he met God on Sinai. This light was so unbearable to the Israelites that he was obliged to wear a veil over his face. If the old covenant, which was condemnatory and meant for the short term, could have such splendour, then the splendour of a new and permanent covenant which dispenses righteousness must be even greater (throwing the old covenant into the shade). That explains why the Jews of Paul’s time cannot “see” the new covenant. In effect, they are still maintaining the veil which blocks the full knowledge of God from their sight.

Paul confuses the image slightly (something he is prone to do) by indicating that the Jews are now wearing the veil themselves, “over their minds”. Wherever the notional veil is placed, the result is that they read the records of the old covenant without being able to see there the promise of the new covenant in Christ.

For practical purposes, I suggest, the essence of the “veil” is the most literal reading of the Old Testament scripture. The Spirit of Christ takes away the veil by enabling us to find and understand the gospel of Christ in a less literal interpretation. That is why the veil is removed when a man turns to the Lord.

This explanation ought to serve as a warning against the obsessive literalism which is becoming prevalent again in the modern church. This is especially dangerous when it is applied by Christians to the Old Testament, because it has the effect of restoring the “veil” which the Spirit is supposed to have taken away. That is why they sometimes begin to re-insist on the validity of Old Testament laws. I believe that Americans may be particularly prone to this temptation, because the mindset of American culture is very legalistic, and literalism is one of the symptoms of legalism.

V17; “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Sprit of the Lord is there is freedom”.
The escape from bondage to freedom through the gospel is one of the running themes of Galatians. Evidently this chapter is another contribution to the same kind of controversy.

V16; Whereas those of us who have not veiled our faces to hide the glory of the new covenant from our sight find that the glory has a transforming effect. The unspoken premise is that we share in the glory of whichever covenant we have adopted. Therefore we are being changed from one degree of glory to another. The first degree is presumably the muted glory of the old covenant which we knew originally. The new glory is the glory associated with the covenant of freedom; for this, too, comes from the Lord who IS the Spirit.

The trail-blazing Christian missionary and apostle, St Paul, appears nowhere in the secular histories of his age (not in Tacitus, not in Pliny, not in Josephus, etc.) Though Paul, we are told, mingled in the company of provincial governors and had audiences before kings and emperors, no scribe thought it worthwhile to record these events. The popular image of the saint is selectively crafted from two sources: the Book of Acts and the Epistles which bear his name. Yet the two sources actually present two radically different individuals and two wildly divergent stories. Biblical scholars are only too familiar with the conundrum that chunks of Paul's own story, gleaned from the epistles, are incompatible with the tale recorded in Acts but live with the "divine mystery" of it all. Perish the thought that they might recognize the whole saga is a work of pious fiction.