John Dominic Crossan in In Search of Paul writes “There are two separate letters now contained and reversed in the text we know as 2 Corinthians. The chronologically first one is 2 Corinthians 10-13, and it is so bitter that the trouble has clearly escalated into an out-and-out attack on Paul himself. It involves other Christian Jewish missionary opponents whom Paul sarcastically calls “super-apostles,” but regardless of them and their purpose, the question is Why are some, most or all the Corinthians ready to follow them and not Paul?....What underlay that complicated weave of visits, reports, and letters was a fundamental clash between two visions of moral community and even more important, of two fundamental theologies on which those discordant visions were based…..over against that startling vision of a kenotic community stands the utter normalcy of human civilization in general and Roman patronage in particular. For that normalcy, Paul’s vision is quite simply inhuman, impossible, idiotic, and absurd. But what is at stake is very clear. A kenotic community begets equality, a patronal community begets inequality; kenosis begets cooperation, patronage begets competition.”
John Dominic Crossan in In Search of Paul writes “There are two separate letters now contained and reversed in the text we know as 2 Corinthians. The chronologically first one is 2 Corinthians 10-13, and it is so bitter that the trouble has clearly escalated into an out-and-out attack on Paul himself. It involves other Christian Jewish missionary opponents whom Paul sarcastically calls “super-apostles,” but regardless of them and their purpose, the question is Why are some, most or all the Corinthians ready to follow them and not Paul?....What underlay that complicated weave of visits, reports, and letters was a fundamental clash between two visions of moral community and even more important, of two fundamental theologies on which those discordant visions were based…..over against that startling vision of a kenotic community stands the utter normalcy of human civilization in general and Roman patronage in particular. For that normalcy, Paul’s vision is quite simply inhuman, impossible, idiotic, and absurd. But what is at stake is very clear. A kenotic community begets equality, a patronal community begets inequality; kenosis begets cooperation, patronage begets competition.”
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