Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 25:3 (Sep 1982)
Article: The Weak In Thessalonica: A Study In Pauline Lexicography
Author: David Alan Black

---

JETS 25:3 (September 1982) p. 307

The Weak In Thessalonica:
A Study In Pauline Lexicography

David Alan Black*

Like other expressions important in the anthropological sphere, the concept of weakness is particularly at home in the religious terminology of the apostle Paul. Indeed, one may even speak of Paul as “the apostle of weakness.” The title is justified inasmuch as the Pauline identification of weakness and apostleship is the foundation of the Christian concept of weakness. All the essential points of the NT doctrine of weakness are reproduced in the Pauline writings, though Paul takes us a stage further by his explicit identification of Christ and weakness, which gives to the primitive Christian idea a distinct Christological meaning. This development of the theology of weakness, if one can call it that, is characteristically Pauline.

Not surprisingly, therefore, the Pauline concept and understanding of weakness is most extensively developed in his three longest doctrinal letters: Romans, 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians. These epistles from the middle period of Paul’s apostolic career have an unquestioned authenticity and chronological relationship firmly established by internal references to the collection for the poor. Within these letters Paul’s thinking seems to evolve in direct relationship to historical events. Of the major events in Paul’s career, certainly the opposition of his enemies (whoever they may have been) played a sizable role in this evolution. Especially i and 2 Corinthians suggest that only when Paul’s active career brought him into contact with these opponents did he demonstrate with any specificity what he understood weakness to mean. Thereby the idea moved from the circumference to the center of his thinking, a phenomenon most clearly seen in the “Narrenrede” of 2 Corinthians 10–13, where from a purely lexical view we have the most frequent occurrence of the terms for weakness in the NT.

While it is true, however, that Romans and the Corinthian letters embody the most fertile soil of knowledge concerning the apostle’s unique perception of weakness and its implications for Christian living, occurrences of the word-family in his other letters constitute an additional and equally valuable source for our understanding of the motif. It is therefore all the more surprising that the Pauline weakness vocabulary has received virtually no intensive or comprehensive study outside of his Hauptbriefe.1 The purpose of this essay is to examine one of these

*David Black is a doctoral candidate in NT at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

JETS 25:3 (September 1982) p. 308

o...

visitor : : uid: ()