Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 12

It is not expedient for me doubtless to glory. I will come . . .—The English “doubtless” corresponds to a Greek illative particle. To boast, then, is not expedient for me. The manuscripts, however, present a considerable variety of readings. The best-authenticated text is probably that which would be represented in English by, I must needs glory. It is not, indeed, expedient, but I will come . . . The sequence of thought would seem to be that the Apostle felt constrained by the taunts of his opponents to indulge in what looked like self-assertion in vindication of his own character; that he was conscious, as he did so, that it was not, in the highest sense of the word, expedient for him; and that, under the influence of these mingled feelings, he passed over other topics on which he might have dwelt, and came at once to that which had been made a matter of reproach against him.

Visions and revelations of the Lord.—It scarcely needs to be said that the history of the Acts is full of such visions (Acts 9:4–6; Acts 16:9; Acts 18:9; Acts 22:18; Acts 23:11; Acts 27:23). One other instance is referred to in Galatians 2:2. There is scarcely any room for doubt that this also had been made a matter of reproach against him, and perhaps urged as a proof of the charge of madness.

In the Clementine Homilies—a kind of controversial romance representing the later views of the Ebionite or Judaizing party, in which most recent critics have recognized a thinly-veiled attempt to present the characteristic features of St. Paul under the pretense of an attack on Simon Magus, just as the writer of a political novel in modern times might draw the portraits of his rivals under fictitious names—we find stress placed on the alleged claims of Simon to have had communications from the Lord through visions and dreams and outward revelations; and this claim is contrasted with that of Peter, who had personally followed Christ during his ministry on earth (Hom. xvii. 14-20).

What was said then, in the form of this elaborate attack, may well have been said before by the more malignant advocates of the same party. The charge of insanity was one easy to make, and of all charges, perhaps, the most difficult to refute by one who gloried in the facts which were alleged as its foundation—who did see visions, and did speak with tongues in the ecstasy of adoring rapture (1 Corinthians 14:18). It may be noted as an instance of St. Luke’s fairness that he, ignorant of, or ignoring, the charge of madness that had been brought against St. Paul, does not grudge the Apostle of the Circumcision whatever glory might accrue from a true revelation thus made through the medium of a vision (Acts 10:10–11).

I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago.—Better, I know a man. The Greek verb, though a perfect tense in form, is invariably used with the force of a present. It is almost impossible to connect the facts that follow with any definite point of time in the Apostle’s life as recorded in the Acts.

The date of the Epistle may be fixed, without much risk of error, in A.D. 57. Reckoning fourteen years back, we come to A.D. 43, which coincides with the period of unrecorded activity between St. Paul’s departure from Jerusalem (Acts 9:30) and his arrival at Antioch (Acts 11:26).

It would be giving, perhaps, too wide a margin to the words “more than fourteen years ago” to refer the visions and revelations of which he speaks here to those given him at the time of his conversion, in A.D. 37. The trance in the Temple (Acts 22:17) on his first visit to Jerusalem may, perhaps, be identified with them; but it seems best, on the whole, to refer them to the commencement of his work at Antioch, when they would have been unspeakably precious as an encouragement in his arduous work. It may be noted that Galatians 2:2 specifically refers to one revelation at Antioch, and it may well have been preceded by others.

The term “a man in Christ,” as a way of speaking of himself, is probably connected with the thought that if any man be in Christ he is a new creature (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15). As one who lived and moved and had his being in Christ, he was raised to a higher region of experience than that in which he had lived before. It was in moments such as he describes that he became conscious of that “new creation” with a new and previously unknown experience.

Whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell.—No words can describe more accurately the phenomena of consciousness in the state of trance or ecstasy. It is dead to the outer world. The body remains, sometimes standing, sometimes recumbent, but, in either case, motionless.

The man may well doubt, on his return to the normal condition of his life, whether his spirit has actually passed into unknown regions in a separate and disembodied condition, or whether the body itself has also been a sharer in its experiences of the unseen.

We, with our wider knowledge, have no hesitation in accepting the former alternative, or, perhaps, in reducing the whole revelation to an impression on the brain and the phenomena known as cataleptic. St. Paul, however, would naturally turn to such records as those of Ezekiel’s journey, in the visions of God, from the banks of Chebar to Jerusalem (Ezekiel 8:3; Ezekiel 11:1), and find in them the analogue, though, as he admits, not the solution, of his own experience.

The lives of many of the great movers in the history of religious thought present, it may be noted, analogous phenomena. Of Epimenides, and Pythagoras, and Socrates, of Muhammad, of Francis of Assisi, and Thomas Aquinas, and Johannes Scotus, of George Fox, and Savonarola, and Swedenborg, it was equally true that to pass from time to time into the abnormal state of ecstasy was with them almost the normal order of their lives. (See article “Trance” in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, by the present writer.)

Such an one caught up to the third heaven.—Rabbinic speculations on the subject of Heaven present two forms: one which, starting probably from the dual form of the Hebrew word, recognises but two heavens, both visible—the lower region of the clouds and the upper firmament; and a later, which, under the influence of ideas from the further East, spoke of seven.

A remarkable legend in the Talmud (Bereshith Rabba, 19, fol. 19,Colossians 3:0) relates how the Shechinah, or glory-cloud of the Divine Presence, retired step by step from earth, where it had dwelt before the sin of Adam, at every fresh development of evil; into the first heaven at the fall, into the second at the murder of Abel, and so on, until it reached the seventh heaven on Abraham’s going down to Egypt, and descended again by successive steps from the birth of Isaac to the time of the Exodus, when it came once more to earth and dwelt in the Tabernacle with Moses.

If we assume St. Paul to have accepted any such division, the third heaven would indicate little more than the region of the clouds and sky. It is more probable, however, from the tone in which he speaks, as clearly dwelling on the surpassing excellence of his visions, that he adopts the simpler classification, and thinks of himself as passing beyond the lower sky, beyond the firmament of heaven, into the third or yet higher heaven, where the presence of God was manifested.

The seven heavens reappear naturally in the legends of the Koran (Sura lxvii.) and in the speculations of medieval theology as represented by Dante. We probably hear a far-off echo of the derision with which the announcement was received by the jesting Greeks of Corinth and by St. Paul’s personal rivals in the dialogue ascribed to Lucian, and known as the Philopatris, in which St. Paul is represented as “the Galilean, bald, with eagle nose, walking through the air to the third heaven.”

And I knew such a man.—Better, as before, I know.

That he was caught up into paradise.—The stress laid on this second vision hinders us from thinking of it as identical with the former, either in time or in subject matter. Paradise (see Note on Luke 23:43) was emphatically the dwelling-place of the souls of the righteous, the reproduction in the unseen world of the lost beauty of the Garden of Eden—the “paradise of joy,” as the LXX. in Genesis 2:15 translates the name.

There, flowing about the throne of God, was the fountain of the water of life, and the tree of life growing on its banks (Revelation 2:7; Revelation 22:1–2). Speculations on the question whether St. Paul thought of it as nearer or farther from earth than the third heaven are obviously idle and profitless.

The nearest approach which we can make to an adequate distinction between the two visions is that the first revealed to his gaze the glory of the Throne of God, with angels and archangels round it, and seraphim and cherubim—a vision like that of Moses (Exodus 24:10), Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1–3), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 1:4–28), and St. John (Revelation 4:2–11), and thoughts like those of Hooker’s death-bed (Walton’s Life)—while the latter brought before his spirit the ineffable peace and rest, even in their intermediate and therefore imperfect state, of the souls who had fallen asleep in Christ and were waiting for their resurrection.

Unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.—The first two words present the tone of a paradox—speech unspeakable, or utterances unutterable. The verb in the second clause has a meaning that hovers between “it is not lawful” and “it is not possible.” The hymns which St. John records in Revelation 4:8-9; Revelation 5:12–14; Revelation 7:12; Revelation 15:3, may give us some faint approach to what dwelt in St. Paul’s memory and yet could not be reproduced.

Sounds of ineffable sweetness, bursts of praise and adoration, hallelujahs like the sound of many waters, voices low and sweet as those of children, whispers which were scarcely distinguishable from silence and yet thrilled the soul with a rapturous joy—this we may, perhaps, think of as underlying St. Paul’s language. In the mystic ecstatic utterances of the Tongues—themselves needing an interpreter, and helping little to build up those who heard them, though they raised the life of those who spoke with them to a higher level—we may, perhaps, trace some earthly echoes of that heavenly music. (See Notes on Acts 2:4; 1 Corinthians 14:2.)

Of such an one will I glory.—There is, if we rightly understand it, an almost exquisite sadness in the distinction which is thus drawn by the Apostle between the old self of fourteen years ago, with this abundance of revelations, and the new self of the present, feebler and sadder than the old, worn with cares and sorrows, the daily rush of life and its ever-growing anxieties.

Then he saw with open vision; now he walks by faith and not by the thing seen. He can hardly recognise his own identity, and can speak of the man who had then this capacity for the beatific vision as though he were another—almost as if he were dead and gone.

The “non sum qualis eram” of decay and age presents manifold varieties of form: the soldier recalling the stir and the rush of battle, the poet finding that the vision and the “faculty divine” are no longer entrusted to his keeping, the eloquent orator who had “wielded at will a fierce democracy,” complaining of slow speech and of a stammering tongue; but this has a sadness peculiar to itself.

Faith, hope, love, peace, righteousness, are still there, but there has passed away a glory from the earth, and the joy of that ecstatic rapture lies in the remote past, never to return on earth.