Credentials of God's Calling

Credentials of God’s Calling Comparative commentary by Matthew R. Anderson Bible Passage Paul’s long list of troubles in 2 Corinthians 11:21–30 is so full of adventures that one can almost imagine an action film based on this passage. For those fascinated by the frustratingly incomplete biography of Paul’s life, it’s hard not to get lost immediately in its details. Many imprisonments? Where? In what context did the floggings happen? Do they coincide with some of the events narrated in Galatians? A fourth or fifth-century ivory depicting Paul’s stoning, by an unknown artist, gives us an early image of one such event, but no solid details to satisfy our curiosity. Its pairing in this exhibition with artwork inspired by the Acts of Paul and Thecla testifies to the hunger of early Christian communities to ‘fill in the gaps’ left by Paul’s few, brief, references. I recently had the chance to visit ‘Shipwreck Island’, a very small islet off Malta. There I saw the natural caves and the rocky shoreline said by Acts to be the spot of one of Paul’s shipwrecks (in a story not from his own letters). It was wonderful to walk where perhaps Paul once did when he shook the snake off his hand into the fire (Acts 28:1–6). But only to focus on the biographical details of 2 Corinthians 11 might cause us to miss his larger rhetorical argument. Paul is not casually tossing off details of his life: he is carefully constructing a type of ironic encomium, an ancient template for praising someone. Here he’s using it to defend himself against his opponents. Encomia started with one’s birth and then moved to accomplishments. Paul begins with his credentials as a Jew: a Hebrew, an Israelite, and a descendant of Abraham, each statement of identity amplifying the one before (v.22). The earliest Jesus movement existed solidly within Judaism. As the self-proclaimed ‘apostle to the Gentiles’, Paul worked to bring non-Jews into the movement. But his controversial insistence that those non-Jewish Jesus followers should not follow Torah meant that he had to defend himself constantly against accusations of giving up Torah himself and urging the same on other Jewish followers (see Acts 21:21). Paul then moves to his accomplishments, which for him are the trials he has endured on behalf of the Gentile Corinthian followers. Like the artwork Life is Just a Bowl of Cherries, and the song that inspired it, the list is bittersweet. Paul says he is boasting of ‘the things that show my weakness’ (v.30, see also 1 Corinthians 1:27–31). In a Roman world influenced by a popularized type of Stoicism, one might be seen as ‘manly’ if one suffered for others. Seen in this light, Paul’s list of ‘failures’—his shipwrecks, whippings, and exposure—becomes his badge of honour. But it is the final move of this rhetorical passage where Paul proves himself most. He names the ‘false brothers and sisters’ who claim kinship but do not care for the Corinthians (and who in a more contemporary context are represented by Kent Monkman’s painting The Scream). By contrast with such false siblings, Paul points out that the truest test of his calling is not achievement, but relationship. Paul ends his list with the questions ‘who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I am not indignant?’ (v.29). Why is he an apostle, and what is the proof of God’s call? For Paul, it is the relationship he has built, and maintains, with his listeners.