The Scripture readings I am doing right now are all from the letters of Paul. I am reading his letters and trying to put them into the context of the story told by Luke in Acts. I am presently re-reading 2 Corinthians. Any commentary I make is in italics:
2 Cor. 5 – Paul, the poet, continues - When the tent we live in is folded up there is a house built by God for us. We “groan and find it a burden being still in this tent” (4). We do not want to leave the mortal tent but we want to put the immortal garment over it. “to have what must die taken up into life” (4). In the law court of Christ, “Each of us will get what he deserves for the things he did in the body, good or bad” (10). In part it is this “fear” of God’s judgment that impels Paul to “try to persuade others” (11). But everything he does, he does out of love—if he appears crazy, if he uses his reason—he is simply trying to get us to understand that Christ “died for all. . .so that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him. . .” (15). This is the ministry of reconciliation—reconciliation of the human with the divine, reconciliation of man with man, of man with woman, of man with the creation. “For our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (21).
2 Cor. 6 - Do not neglect the grace God gives to you. This present moment, this time between Christ’s coming into the world and his return “is the day of salvation” (2). The marks of His presence are the following:
- fortitude (endurance) - capacity to suffer afflictions and constraints
- purity
- knowledge
- patience and kindness
- a spirit of holiness
- genuine love
- truthful speech
- able to demonstrate God’s power
- armed with the “weapons of righteousness”
- always rejoicing.
He warns about harnessing yourself to unbelievers. “[W]hat fellowship does light have with darkness?” (14) What this harnessing is is the question. It cannot mean a lack of love or concern, a failure to reach out to those who are lost. But it must mean at least accepting or being indifferent to the standards, values and habits of “the world” (the mass of unbelievers). Mennonites use the following passage to justify removing themselves—“ . . .we are the temple of the living God; as God said: ‘I will live with them and move among them, and I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore, come forth from them and be separate,’ says the Lord, ‘and touch nothing unclean; then I will receive you and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty’” (16-18).
This is not exactly a Catholic vision. How shall this be reconciled to the Catholic openness to all that seems good and worthy in the secular world. How indeed shall the Catholic notion of “countercultural” be reconciled to this same openness? See the Avery Dulles article of 1998 where he tries to describe an approach to such reconciliation. Seeing this comment again in 2011, I do not completely recall the article referred to here, but I think he was talking about the need for us to tell our stories of faith, so that those caught up in the worldly culture around us can see that there is an alternative approach to living in this “tent.”
Reading this again in 2011, I wonder if this last part of chapter 6 is not a little self-contradictory. Paul is so articulate about Christ’s joining himself to us in our sinful state, though he himself had no personal sin. But now, as he is encouraging us to join ourselves to Christ, he tells us to stay away from those who have not done so. I think we must do as Christ did and live our lives among those who need his love and his salvation. We must not be like them but if we separate ourselves completely, we are not following his example.
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