It is J. B. Phillips I think who noted that the Apostles would be surprised at the level of exacting exegesis to which their writings would later be subjected.
With that in mind, perhaps Paul here was not making an exacting eschatological statement but was rather speaking heatedly: “God is going to wipe those guys out!” People sometimes speak of sports teams “annihilating” other teams. This is just everyday talking, rather than carefully-formulated theological precision. We know sometimes Paul wrote with less than scholarly precision (as when he forgot and then remembered baptizing the household of Stephanas, then stating that he wasn’t 100% sure if he was forgetting anybody else I Corinthians 1:14-16).
Close exegesis has its value, and it also has its limitations.
I think that is precisely what Paul was doing. Satan has often been God’s agent for good, while he thinks he is being independently destructive. Satan thought he was destroying the man by destroying his self-serving nature, for he thought that was the only nature he had. but, without knowing it, Satan was actually purifying the man.
Isn’t that the way the man’s “spirit” would be saved? Indeed, isn’t that the only way that any of us can be saved? By each of us having his self-serving nature destroyed and replaced with the new nature?
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. (2Cor 5:17)
I’m with Paidion on this; I don’t see why handing someone over to Satan can’t be a way to purge them of their selfishness and evil. It’s a motif of the Bible that God hands people over to evildoers in order to humble them and turn them back to him. Satan tears us down, thinking he is killing us but all he is doing is destroying the things we have held onto above God. Because he cannot destroy God, we end up turning back to him
I’m with Paidion on this; I don’t see why handing someone over to Satan can’t be a way to purge them of their selfishness and evil. It’s a motif of the Bible that God hands people over to evildoers in order to humble them and turn them back to him. Satan tears us down, thinking he is killing us but all he is doing is destroying the things we have held onto above God. Because he cannot destroy God, we end up turning back to him
In the 1 Corinthians verse, one knows from context that the destruction mentioned is used to accomplish an ultimate good: it saves the spirit of the Corinthian church member who committed evil acts. What is destroyed, then, could not be the person, his spirit, or his soul; it would be the person’s sinful propensity, or something like that, so that he–his spirit–may ultimately be saved.
I suspect Paul’s “deliver such a one over to satan” was euphemistic of the dire circumstances in stall for someone under judgement… “the satan” or enemy simply being the means, whatever “adversary” that might have been, by which said “destruction” [exile / excommunication / death] was accomplished; but always with ultimate restoration in view. I’m inclined to see the likes of Ananias and Sapphira similarly.
I haven’t caught up further downthread yet, but I’m curious how Satan, malevolently trying to destroy a man, who usually operates by tempting a person to magnify the person’s self-serving nature, would go about intentionally trying to destroy the self-serving nature of the man as a means of intending to destroy the man utterly. The only way I can see that working would be for Satan to enslave the man into merely reacting to stimulus – which is something the man would have to be saved from eventually! Physical death wouldn’t be the only way to force a person into merely reacting to stimulus, but it’s clearly a destructive way, even a most destructive way, and unlike the man’s sexual extravagances it isn’t something the man would be positively tempted to lose himself in as a desirable state of existence, so could easily serve the unintended purpose (from Satan’s perspective) of leading the man to repent of his sins having now tasted consequences he would care about.
But how would Satan go about destroying the man’s self-serving nature by means of only attacking his fleshy sin-nature with the goal of thus completely destroying the man, not realizing or caring that by only attacking the man’s disposition toward sin Satan would only be attacking the man’s disposition toward sin and so would be leading him to righteousness consequently??
Yes, but if all that Satan was attacking was the man’s fleshy sin-nature of self-servingness, the way the Holy Spirit presumably does (too??), the SSG would have been being led by Satan only and immediately toward righteousness, curing his sin-nature from its corruption: consequently, there would be no reason for Paul to contrast the olethron of the man’s sarx to an expectation of the man’s pneuma being saved in the Day of the Lord to come. Satan would be acting like the Holy Spirit toward saving the man’s pneuma with results tending only toward immediate moral improvement (instead of acting at cross purposes to the Holy Spirit): Paul would have no reason to look forward to the Day of YHWH for the saving of the man’s spirit, Satan (of all things/people) would be saving the man from evil now. Paul could reasonably expect such an operation to have immediately positive and continually improving results. It wouldn’t even be punishment per se! – nor would it result, in the short term, in a situation like in 2 Cor (assuming for purposes of argument this refers to the SSG) where Paul, somewhat reluctantly, has to take the lead in convincing the Corinthians to reconcile with the SSG in pity for the horrible suffering he’s going through. If only his self-serving fleshly sin-nature was being destroyed, he wouldn’t likely be horribly suffering, and more importantly he wouldn’t still be being shunned and rejected by the Corinthian church and even (up to this point) by Paul! Rather they ought to be on increasingly improving personal relationships, even if for whatever reason the SSG hasn’t been officially returned to Christian communion yet.
Certainly! – but Satan and the other evildoers aren’t merely attacking the selfishness and evil in their victims! Otherwise (and quite in parallel with the pagan armies being sent to punish rebel Israel), God wouldn’t be treating Satan and other scourging evildoers as evildoers who themselves deserve punishment for how they’re treating those whom God is punishing by handing them over to Satan and other evildoers.
(Which by the way loops back over to the judgment of the baby-goats in how they treat the other people who are also the least of Christ’s flock! )
Since I wasn’t arguing that Paul was handing the SSG over to Satan for the destruction of his spirit, but rather to accomplish an ultimate good in regard to the person (and his spirit), you can be agreeing with me on that, too, you know.
The point of contention between Paidion and I was over what Paul expects Satan to do in olethroning the SSG’s sarx. I don’t see how it can make any kind of sense yet to expect Satan to be attacking only the sinful propensity – even if that is a side-effect of Satan’s attack, intended by Paul for the ultimate good of the SSG. Whereas it’s well within Satan’s mode of operation (whether Satan is taken figuratively or literally) to attack the person’s spirit by attacking the literal flesh into several modes of fatal dissolution. Paul doesn’t call Satan “the death” for nothing, especially in contrast to bodily resurrection in Christ (even of the evil as well as of the good).
Pilgrim brings up a good comparison: the Holy Spirit definitely kills at least the bodies of Ananias and Sapphira – or anyway no other agent is invoked as an explanation for their punitive deaths. It seems weirdly backward for Paul to hand the Stepmom-Sleeping Guy over to something not the Holy Spirit in order for only the man’s sinful propensity to be attacked by “Satan”, which would be more merciful (since only the sinful propensity would be targeted by “Satan”) than handing him over to the Holy Spirit! On the other hand, Anan and Sapph are killed quickly and even peacefully without even destruction of their flesh per se.
Like Davo says, though, if Paul hands the SSG over to “the Adversary” (whatever that’s supposed to be, though I can’t think it refers to a Person or direct power of God) expecting the man’s spirit to be saved in the Day of YHWH to come, how much moreso should we expect salvation by YHWH of Anan and Sapph apparently slain by YHWH!
Which has topical connection with my main argument in favor of the 2 Thess 1:9 punishment being hopeful, not hopeless, of course. If Paul can hand the SSG over to Satan for olethron punishment (whatever specifically that involved for the SSG) and hope for the salvation of the man in the day of YHWH to come, how much more should we expect the olethron of evildoers by God instead of Satan in the same Day of YHWH to have the salvation of the spirits as a goal!
For purposes of that exegetical comparison, whether or not the various people are being bodily killed by the olethron-ing is irrelevant.
To which I will remind again that in at least two of the three scriptural prophecies Paul is referencing in his Thessalonian usages of olethron, evildoers are being slain either directly by God or by other evildoers sent on God’s authority (the latter of whom are also indiscriminately killing the innocent, too.) And while the Isaiah 2-5 bloc may only talk indirectly about rebels being slain by God, the authoritative death of rebels (directly by God and indirectly by evildoers on God’s authority) is hardly foreign to Isaiah elsewhere.
I grant this isn’t deductive evidence for what Paul expects to happen to the SSG in 1 Cor 5, and to rebels who don’t obey the gospel of Jesus Christ in 2 Thess 1:9, but whatever inductive expectation weight it lends is in the direction of similar expectation of fatalities. (Even if the SSG repents and reconciles later before his fatality completes.)
I can see your point that the usual mode of operation of actual Satan is not to save the person’s spirit. Turning the man over to Satan here, then, in 1 Corinthians 5:5, could be a metaphor for allowing the man to be immersed in and consumed by self-generated depravity, some of which was on display while the man was a member of the Corinthian church.
Paul uses the same type of language in 1 Timothy 1:20.
“Among these are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan, so that they will be taught not to blaspheme.”
In the 1 Corinthians 5:5 passage,
“I have decided to deliver such a one to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus,”
Paul arranged this consuming immersion in depravity by instructing the church to sever all ties with this man and thus to let him live without that strong, potentially positive, but to that time, ineffective force in his life. (Note that this instruction–apparently–occurs in the last part of 1 Corinthians 5:13, “. . . REMOVE THE WICKED MAN FROM AMONG YOURSELVES." This instruction to the church to remove the man would make little sense if the man were to be killed as part of Paul’s turning him over to Satan.) After the man was removed from the church, he lived totally with his depravity–with no counter from the church–until he realized the truth of his situation. That was the start of his repentance and led him to the sorrowful state that Paul refers to later (if he indeed does). The man’s welcome back to the church (if this man is indeed the one referred to later) furthered his continued repentance until he was free from this depravity, a depravity that was eventually recognized by the man only after he was immersed totally in it, i.e., only after he was turned over to Satan.
Obviously the two ideas are not mutually exclusive, since I myself agreed there was an excommunication. I even talked about how excom’ing the guy is itself evidence, in several ways, that Paul meant for the congregation not to consider his case hopeless.
Consequently, going on to discuss the excommunication I already acknowledged does not count against Paul expecting the SSG (and possibly Hym and Alex) to die from being handed over to Satan.
But say it is a metaphor (which I seem to recall also allowing): being immersed in depravity is not something which in itself has any inherent tendency to destroy a person’s sinful propensities, no more than Satan attack only the sinful propensity. The prodigal son doesn’t repent of his life of whoring away his father’s money until he has been reduced by painful starvation to eating the leftovers of swine, and “joining” himself to the owner of the pigs. (A euphamism often overlooked, but part of the shock value of the situation to a rigorous Jew no less than literally living with swine: there being no way surely the father would accept him back now.)
Until the evil passes a threshold of inconvenience in its results, the SSG would think being immersed in depravity was amenable! The phrase is much more likely to be a polite way of talking about being cursed with a painful and likely fatal result of his sins. Then being cut off from the church would be meaningful to the SSG; so would his horrific pain be explained if 2 Cor’s pity and reconciliation refers to him. So would the term, olethron, synch better with Paul’s OT citations of prophetic expectations of what will happen to people olethron’d by God (whether directly by divine power or indirectly by pagan armies).
I see so much in your reply that suggests we agree even more than you acknowledge!
I agree that “being immersed in depravity is not something which in itself has any inherent tendency to destroy a person’s sinful propensities.” I also agree that “Until the evil passes a threshold of inconvenience in its results, the SSG would think being immersed in depravity was amenable.” The prodigal son’s depravity passed that threshold of inconvenience through circumstances unique to his case. Perhaps Paul saw that immersion in depravity would indeed cause the SSG to pass that threshold of inconvenience through circumstances unique to his case, too, even if it does not inherently or necessarily do that in all other cases. I mean if we are ready to say that Paul had the power to place an effective curse on someone, is it not as likely, or even more likely, that Paul had the power of perception sufficient to judge that an immersion in depravity would cause the SSG to pass the threshold of inconvenience?
But, despite that, I like your suggestion that there was a curse involved. I do have a question about a conclusion you drew, though. You said, “The phrase is much more likely to be a polite way of talking about being cursed with a painful and likely fatal result of his sins,” followed by “Then being cut off from the church would be meaningful to the SSG.” How exactly does being cursed with a painful and likely fatal result of his sins make being cut off from the church more meaningful to the SSG any more than would immersion in depravity, which itself could cause pain and death, despite superficial and temporary pleasure?
I think we are going to have to wait for a definitive answer from Jason on this one because he was the first to use the abbreviation in this thread. I used it because he used it to describe the sexually deviant man who is the reason for Paul’s “deliver to Satan” message in 1 Corinthians 5:5.
)
I even talked about how excom’ing the guy is itself evidence, in several ways, that Paul meant for the congregation not to consider his case hopeless.
(A euphamism often overlooked, but part of the shock value of the situation to a rigorous Jew no less than literally living with swine: there being no way surely the father would accept him back now.)