Paul’s thorn in the flesh is, pun intended, one of the thorniest passages in the scripture. >> You’ve written a book on it, but before we get to your preferred interpretation, maybe tell us two or three different ways that people often take this passage in second Corinthians. >> Yeah. Well, you’ll probably know that there’s a lot of frivolous interpretations that are out there, Sean. That’s true. >> I mean, people uh dozens and dozens of suggestions, but historically, there are really two. Okay. >> One is that there’s uh a group of people or one person who is opposing Paul. So it’s a person or people. >> Oh. >> And the other one, and that’s the minor view, but that’s still one that’s ongoing. >> The main one is that it’s it’s some sort of physical ailment like a um an ongoing chronic illness or a physical disability of some sort. And within those, of course, >> there’s nuances. >> There’s nuances, but those are the two main ones historically. >> Oh, that’s super interesting. Now, what again before we get to your preferred interpretation, this is in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. >> Yeah. >> I’m going to read verse 7 so people can hear it. >> Paul writes, “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations. A thorn was given me in the flesh. A messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited.” >> What is going on in the context of this passage? >> Right? And it’s kind of a crazy context. It drops into a section that is often referred to by scholars as a fool’s speech. But this specific period, he’s responding to >> accusations from the false apostles in Corenth that he um has not seen visions like they have. And so he says, “Yeah, I’m reluctant to say this, but let me just tell you about a vision that I had.” And he talks about being taken up into the third heaven, which he calls paradise. He hears inexpressable words which a man is not permitted to speak. And because he has the surpassing greatness of the revelations, the way he puts it, there was given me this thorn in the flesh. And there was given me is a divine passive, which means God is involved in the whole thing. >> But then he calls it an angel of Satan to beat him probably to hit him in the face. That’s kind of the literal idea of that that word. >> And then he asked God to to remove it from him three times. He asked him to do that. And then God gives him a powerful answer which I’m sure we’ll get to in our discussion. >> We will get to. Now this raises other questions we’ll come back to. Can Paul pray and not have answered prayers? No. >> What on earth is the third heaven? >> We’re tackling some of the difficult passages here. So we will come back to those. Okay. >> But tell us, you’ve written an entire book on this. You’ve done a deep dive for years scholarly looking at it. >> What’s your preferred interpretation? Why? And how confident are you in that interpretation? Yeah. So, I I am happy to answer this question. I am somewhat confident in this interpretation. I’m not willing to go in the skeptical direction people have been for the last 130 or so years since Lightfoot where they’ve just been like, well, we’re never going to be able to figure this out. >> There’s an amazing amount of skepticism on this. >> But, and that’s for for some reason that has also been the thing that has led us into not wanting to study it the way they should. Crazy. You’re gonna be surprised by this, but mine is the first academic book on this topic. No. Ever. >> People have written on little tiny minute things. The longest the best thing that I’ve ever read on this before this was a 28page document in German. >> Um, and that’s the longest thing that I know that there’s no dissertations. >> There’s no dissertations on this. Absolutely. >> I I literally can’t I trust you, but I can’t believe that. >> Yeah. So, that’s why I decided to dive into it. Actually, I started just noticing a few things and then I noticed more and just decided I needed to go with it. All right, so answer to your question. Yeah, I’m going to read it out to you just to make sure I don’t get it wrong. Paul’s thorn in the flesh was some sort of unusual long-term intermittent stabbing cranioacial pain that is above the neck that was viewed by others as shameful and the result of black magic attacks but by Paul as attacks of a demon permitted by God. >> Oh my goodness. >> So, you can see why I wanted to read it rather than just try to say it all. >> There’s so many specifics and nuances there. We can’t get into all those, but tell us how you land such a specific interpretation on that. >> All right. So, the reason is is that in the study of Paul’s thorn in the flesh, people have typically like if they have to write a commentary, they have to say something about this. So, they just say there’s this criterion, there’s this criterion, and they usually say three or four of those. The best have six. I think one person has seven. And my question was, what if we had 20? >> Okay. Couldn’t you just narrow the options? >> Okay. >> And so, um, and I think that there are 20 that you actually have to answer. And if you if you try to address these 20, it actually narrows the options down significantly. >> Um, and I do think that it is a physical ailment of some sort. So, I agree with with the majority on this, >> but I think that there’s a lot of nuances that you have to add to it. You can’t just say it’s just a physical thing there. >> Oh, man. I have so many questions. >> Yeah, I do too. So don’t worry. >> So you you have somewhat confidence in this, >> but there’s still a sense where we don’t know for sure. And it raises so many questions like why would Paul say this >> without telling us about it? And why? What’s our takeaway supposed to be? >> So maybe I’ll ask you like why why does this why does this matter? Like why is it important that you write a whole academic book on this? We do a deep dive. We do our best to understand it even though we admit we can’t fully understand it. Why does looking at this passage and your take on it matter? >> Yeah. Well, in one sense it doesn’t matter. So in applicationally it doesn’t matter because >> because the spiritual lessons that are here are applicable to anybody who’s suffering in any way. Having said that, >> anytime that we come to scripture and we don’t know what it is or when we just discard it because we’re saying we’ll never be able to solve this, that’s a problem. Every time that we actually get some traction even on a small verse, it helps us to understand the rest of scripture. >> So your listeners may be familiar with intertextuality. Scripture interprets scripture. It informs scripture. It helps you to understand more things. Think about the um the moon launch during the 1960s leading up to that. They I’m just using this as an analogy, but they they had so many different things that they were able to learn about science, about technology, so many different things. Even though they were trying to go to the moon, that wasn’t the only that wasn’t the only thing that you got from it. So, understanding a passage is important in that sense. >> Otherwise, applicationally, not so much. That that’s really helpful to say we understand all of scripture, but there are certain parts parts that are more meaty and weightier than others practically for how we live. Now, some of the things that jump out to me, you probably can’t get into this is like a messenger of Satan to harass me. >> Yeah. So even Paul who writes in Ephesians that we’re supposed to have armor on >> right in Ephesians 6 to defend from satanic attacks in some sense was attacked by Satan. He was >> in this case physically >> and this is to keep him from being conceited. So somehow God allows this presumably. And so can Satan cause physical maladies in us or at least Paul? Like how do you make sense of some of those questions? >> Yeah. Well, one of them is that we’ve got Job in the Old Testament. He actually had a physical malady that was of the skin and flesh. >> There’s good reasons to think that Paul actually is drawing upon the Job example. And I actually have a whole chapter about that. That’s one of that’s one of the reasons we have um we have Jesus saying to Peter, >> it says, “Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat.” It’s not physical necessarily there, but did he attack him in some way? >> Um, yeah, I mean that is a possibility. Paul says that Satan thwarted him from going to Thessalonica at one point. >> We don’t really know what that is. I tend to think that it’s situational >> rather than some sort of physical stopping him. But >> yeah, that is a possibility. As far as as you were reading here, you said there was given to me. That’s a divine passive. So God’s involved >> a messenger of Satan. That’s how a lot of our Bibles translate it, but it’s actually angulos and that is usually translated as angel. So angel of Satan is the more likely interpretation of this, especially when you understand what he’s talking about in the greater context. And there’s a lot about spiritual warfare in second Corinthians and in relationship to Galatians, which has some overlap as well. >> And then you said to torment me. It’s really poor translation actually. Kolaf fitso. It’s like it’s built off of like the the noun for fist and it’s it’s really to punch me and the most common place that that’s used in ancient literature is the punch in the face. >> So, u it’s probably something above the neck as well. So, that’s that’s and I would say there’s a lot more to that. Let me just add a little bit more to that one because people are going to be like, “What are you talking about, Ken?” >> You know, Paul uses the word face 22 times in his letters. 12 of them are in 2 Corinthians. He leads up with a bunch of a collocation of words for faith leading up to this. Um he talks about like um you you you it’s almost like you uh you’re willing to let people punch you, not punch you, skin you on your face. He says that just before that just before he comes into this in chapter 11. So that’s there. It is also the anatomical location of shame. the head and the faces. And there’s a lot of shame and honor language in this section. So, there’s just a lot of clues. We’re only talking about, you know, a few of these today. There really are dozens, maybe hundreds of clues that help you. So, the argument is in the details. >> Okay. So, in some ways, you’ve answered this, but what would your advice be to somebody who’s reading through Paul’s letters or any part of the Bible and they come across something that goes thorn in the flesh >> and they go, “What on earth is happening? I don’t know what this means. >> What steps should we go through to tackle difficult passages like that? >> So, a difficult passage, you’re going to start with the immediate context. In this case, the fir the verse itself. Just pay attention to the details that are there. >> Then you look at the paragraph. >> Then you look at the immediate like the broader context which would be chapters 10 to13 of 2 Corinthians. Then you go to second Corinthians as a whole. Good. >> Then you go to the rest of Paul’s letters. Then you go to the New Testament as a whole. If you still can’t solve it there, then you’re going into the Old Testament, of course, Septuagent, and even Grecoman backgrounds, Jewish backgrounds leading up to it. Those are the types of things you do. Not all of those you can do if you’re not a specialist. So, that’s the point at which you need to go to Bible dictionaries. You go to u to commentaries. All of those things are um are really helpful for us. I know that I know there’s some people listening today who just don’t believe you should ever use commentaries, but there are times that they can really be helpful. >> Or what they can do is come study with us at Talbot and take your class and learn how to do this. >> That’s right. >> Ken Bing, thanks for your work in this passage and thanks for unpacking it with me.