Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Victor Paul Furnish on "The Tearful Letter" (2 Corinthians 2:3-4)

  

The Tearful Letter, 2:3-4

 

Paul’s unplanned, emergency visit to Corinth had been a disaster. He must have hurried back to Ephesus hurt, angered, and perplexed. Although he had evidently promised the Corinthians a return visit on the way to Macedonia, thus allowing him to see them yet again on his way from there (1:15-16), once back in Ephesus he seems to have thought better of the idea. His stated explanation for canceling the visit was that the Corinthians might be spared (1:23), presumably meaning that they might be spared his anger and censure. Other factors may also have entered into his decision—for example, his fear of being unable to cope with the situation; or, more positively, his unwillingness to delay or give up a mission to Troas (see 2:12), which lay along the route of his original itinerary (Ephesus-Troas—Macedonia—Corinth; cf. 1 Cor 16:5-9). Whatever the reason or reasons, the plan was changed, and in place of a visit Paul sent the letter which is described in these verses.

 

According to the traditional view, this tearful letter is to be identified with 1 Cor, and the offender referred to in 2 Cor 2:5-11 (and 7:12) is the man concerning whom Paul gives instructions in 1 Cor 5:1-5. However, there are decisive reasons (discussed above) why the person mentioned in 1 Cor cannot have been the offender mentioned here in 2 Cor, and if that identification falls through, so does the identification of 1 Cor with the tearful letter. There are also decisive arguments against the more recent and widespread view that 2 Cor 10-13 (and perhaps 2:14-7:4 as well) derive from that letter, one of which is that chaps. 10-13 were written in anticipation of a visit (12:14; 13:1), while the tearful letter was written in lieu of a visit (1:23). Indeed, the present passage shows that the cancellation of the visit and the dispatch of the tearful letter were very closely associated in the apostle’s own mind. The visit had been canceled because he wanted to spare them and avoid further grief (1:23; 2:1-2), and the letter had been written out of his love for them and not to aggrieve them (vv. 3-4). In fact, then, it would appear that at least part of the impact of the letter on the congregation was the news it contained that the first phase of the “double visit” was being called off (see v. 3, And I wrote this very thing, referring to the canceled visit in vv. 1-2).

 

In 1:23 Paul had stressed the hurt another visit would have inflicted upon the congregation, and now he writes about the hurt it would have caused him (v. 3). Both points have been made in v. 2, consistent with the apostle’s conviction that he and his congregations are bound so fully and closely together in the gospel that the joy o the one is the joy of the other (v. 3; cf. 1:5-7, 24 and Phil 1:25, and see Gulin 1932:265-66). Nowhere does Paul refer so directly and specifically to his love for the Corinthians as he does here (v. 4; cf. 1 Cor 4:21; 16:24). One could argue that the tearful letter had actually been written out of pique, not love, and that only Titus’ report of its goo effect (7:6-8) allows Paul to describe it now as he does. That may in part be the case. It is also true, however, that his “anxiety for all the churches” (11:28), and not least for the church in Corinth, is the type of anxiety a parent feels for a child, an anguish compounded of worry, fear, and hope, but rooted finally and decisively in love (see, notably, Gal 4:19-20; 1 Cor 4:21; cf. Gulin 1932:266). (Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians [AB 32a; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1984], 159-60)