Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Guy Williams on 1 Corinthians 5:5/1 Timothy 1:20 and Being "delivered unto Satan"

Two unusual usages of "Satan" (Σατανας) in the New Testament are:

 

To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. (1 Cor 5:5)

 

Of whom is Hymenaeus and Alexander; whom I have delivered unto Satan, that they may learn not to blaspheme. (1 Tim 1:20)

 

Guy Williams made the following comment about the First Corinthian text:

 

1Corinthians 5.5

 

Here, Paul states that an immoral person should be “handed over to Satan, for the destruction of the flesh”. The man in question will be removed from the church. As we noted earlier, this phrase had come continued usage beyond Paul’s death, particularly in its repetition in 1Tim 1.20. Satan acquired a rhetorical value, and Paul’s words were understood as conveying something important about church discipline. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this practical implementation of Satan as the marker of punishment or excommunication resonates through early Christian life. An interesting example of this is found with the controversy surrounding ethical rigorism and Montanism. How unforgivable should certain sins be? Was there a way back after expulsion from the church? In his shocked reaction to the leniency of the bishop of Carthage, who was gentle in his treatment of returning apostates, Tertullian evokes our text again and again (Pud. 2.9; 13.1; 14.1 etc.). He is much concerned with what Paul understood the role of Satan to be. Tertullian emphasises that there can be no return or restoration from the power of evil; the man in 1Cor 5.5 was delivered “not with a view to emendation, but with a view to perdition, to Satan” (13.22). This spiritual power, mentioned by Paul, is assumed to be of great practical relevance. (Guy Williams, The Spirit World in the Letters of Paul the Apostle: A Critical Examination of the Role of Spiritual Beings in the Authentic Pauline Epistles [Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments 231; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 2009], 73)