Second Corinthians is one of the strangest letters in the New Testament: a leader defending himself, a community in open doubt, and in the middle of it, some of Paul's clearest writing on power in weakness. Dr. Lois Malcolm, professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary and author of a forthcoming commentary on the letter, joins Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to explore what that friction opens up for church leaders navigating a culture that no longer grants pastors automatic authority.

Lois traces why Paul turned down money from the Corinthians and accepted it from the far poorer Macedonians, unpacks the image of treasure carried in clay jars, and tells the story of her mother's imprisonment in a concentration camp and what it taught her about freedom. The conversation moves through baptismal identity, the ministry of reconciliation, and why Christian community has always asked hard things of the people inside it, without that difficulty ever being the point.

The testimony that I can have about how this text has worked in my life, and this is how I hope it'll work in yours, is that you will be able to stand in your baptism. And as you stand in that authority — not to change other people, because you have no control over them, okay? — as you stand in that authority and just begin to pray, to pray that God will in fact transform stuff... believe it or not, people, stuff begins to happen.

Alicia Granholm

Hello everyone and welcome to the Pivot Podcast, where we explore how the church can faithfully navigate a changing world. I'm Alicia Granholm.

And I'm Dwight Zscheile. Today we're joined by Dr. Lois Malcolm, professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary, and author of a forthcoming theological commentary on 2 Corinthians. 2 Corinthians is one of the stranger, more searching letters in the New Testament. It's a community in real conflict, a leader defending himself, and somehow, in the middle of it all, some of the most surprising and clarifying things that Paul ever wrote about ministry, power, weakness, reconciliation, and what God is doing in the world. Lois has spent years working on this letter, and we're glad she's here today because her reflections speak directly to today's big questions around power and leadership in ministry. So welcome, Lois. Great to have you here.

Be here.

Alicia Granholm

Yes, we're so happy to have you. Okay, so the letter has this quality about it of being written in the middle of real breakdown — Paul is defending himself, the community is doubting him, and there's lots of heartache. What do you think that friction opens up theologically that a tidier letter might not have?

Lois Malcolm

One of the things I love about Paul's letters in general is that they are always dealing with dysfunctional people and dysfunctional congregations. There has never been a perfect congregation. First Corinthians, you've got somebody sleeping with his mother-in-law. You have people suing each other. You have people joining with prostitutes. So you've got all sorts of issues going on.

And in 2 Corinthians in particular, Paul himself is being challenged. They're questioning his very authority for ministry. Okay, so that's what's at issue. But when I read your question initially, what struck me was the fact that there is something about the friction itself that makes it such a powerful letter. I think that's what your question was getting at. And the reason for that is that if you have a tidy letter that has all the answers, then we can just see it as an academic example. But as we are thrown into Paul's own insecurity in response to the challenges and the conflict that's going on, we are really forced to see how is God at work — not just a powerful personality who's got a great mind — and how does God actually work through a really complicated situation.

And not only that — if I could just say one more thing — this is one of the reasons I have found this letter so helpful in my own life working on this: it helps me understand that my own vulnerability, and the vulnerability of the people I am working with, all the stuff we are dealing with together with one another in the institutions — that that is where God is at work.

We —

I don't have to be in a perfect place. I don't have to be a perfect person. I'm right where I need to be, and my communities are right where they need to be, for God to be present.

Well, amen to that. So I want to dig into this question of power. From what I've read of your book, that's a pretty important theme. As we think about our context and our society right now, the questions of power, leadership, domination, glory — those are all over the place, right? Not only in the political sphere, but also very much in the life of the church. So talk to us a bit about what's going on here in Second Corinthians relative to those questions.

This is exactly what Paul is addressing. Paul is addressing a situation that's very similar to our context, which is basically that the church itself is patterning itself after the basic pagan patterns. And the pagan patterns are exemplified in all the major empires that oppressed Israel — from the Assyrians to the Babylonians to the Greeks to the Persians to the Romans, and later Christians.

You know.

So what do empires tell us? What do emperors tell us? You find this in Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 24 — basically the saying that if I am powerful and I am wealthy, whether it's me as a person or me as a nation or me as an institution, then that means God is on my side. And that is a pagan understanding of who God is, because it's working with a pagan understanding of what divine power is — that divine power is something that needs to amass power for itself, rather than the God of Scripture, the God of Israel and of our Lord Jesus Christ, whose basic characteristic is love and compassion and continually creating out of nothingness. That is real power — which we're going to talk about, this theme of power in weakness. This is where a lot of mainline Protestants get off, where we don't think it's about power. It is about God's power, and God wants us to live and rely on that power. So it's not a negation of power, but it's a very different kind of power than a power used to control and manipulate others.

Rather, it is God's power, which always creates out of nothingness, that always opens up a new kind of future. And we'll expand on this, because this is at the heart of the letter. 2 Corinthians 12:9 — my grace is sufficient, because power is made perfect in weakness. I could say much more about those two verses, but look them up, okay? Look them up.

Okay, go ahead.

Paul keeps returning to this image of consolation flowing through suffering — not comfort that insulates us from pain, but something that moves through it and out the other side. What does that offer someone who is afraid and fearful, who is standing at the edge of something and uncertain if they can take that next step?

This is not about "God is not going to give you anything you can't handle." Because often we literally are broken by circumstances, okay? Life often really, really sucks. And often our fears are not just irrational — often our fears are based on reality and truth. So the fear, in many ways, this side of the eschaton, this side of death — our fears are never going to go away. Our basic anxiety before death is never going to go away. As you are looking at me, I am aging right before your eyes. I'm nearing retirement in a few years — not yet, not dead yet.

But I'm not dead yet.

I am aware of my vulnerability. My husband is ten years older than I am. He's aware of his vulnerability. We all face a myriad of different circumstances on a personal, corporate, or political level. The fear and the anxiety — it's part of being human. There's nothing wrong with that. But the kind of consolation God gives us is ultimately the consolation manifest in Jesus, who has fully entered into our humanity and, in a sense, come out the other side — whose power and presence is with us, enabling us to live on that other side even as we're in the midst of the pain. So it's not a doing away with the pain or the suffering. We're never going to have these perfect lives. It's in the midst of whatever we are facing that we can be confident God's love is always there, holding us and sustaining us. And that is a tremendous confidence.

The person who exemplified this for me was my mother. She was not a perfect person — she was a very strong personality, and she and I had our conflict. This is not about the perfect mother-daughter relationship. But she had been through a concentration camp when she was in her late teens. Her parents were missionaries in China, and they were in the Shandong compound, which one of my professors from graduate school has written a book about. In that camp, my mother was with a group of girlfriends praying to be released. And my mother's realization was that the issue of freedom was not about being released from the camp — it was about understanding whether she was in the camp or not. That's why my mother was one of those formidable people — indomitable, not because she was so powerful, but because she knew she was loved by God. So that even at the end of her life, facing Alzheimer's, she had this confidence that she was God's spoiled child.

Well, I love that story, and it really does connect into one of the main themes of the letter, right? Thinking about what's the basis of power and leadership specifically for Paul. He's up against these super apostles who have a particular cultural understanding that the Corinthians seem to be drawn to — give us your credentials, your CV — and of course he has that wonderful mocking list of his own accomplishments. So say more about that, because I think it's easy right now for a lot of leaders in the church to wrestle with this question of what is the basis of my authority in a culture that no longer gives pastors the respect and deference they once held — and in fact is sometimes hostile and demeaning to them, and to the church itself as an institution, which in some places is grasping for power to hold on to it, and in other places is so obviously weakened.

Again, many stories — but in many ways, one of the things we need to understand is that scripture has been written from the standpoint not of the victors, but from the standpoint of those who have been on the opposite side of power and wealth.

This is what liberation theology has to teach us — as the African-American spiritual says, God always creates a way where there is no way. So when we understand that, yes, when we are called by God to be ambassadors of reconciliation — that's one of the questions coming up — we are called to be stewards of creation, stewards of all the resources. We have everything that Jesus shares with the Father. That's our baptismal identity, which Paul tells us about in Galatians 4 and Romans 8. All is yours — past, present, and future. Life and death.

It's like one of the things my parents taught me, and I didn't realize this until we came to America — I didn't realize how poor we were until I applied for college and was eligible for so many grants, because I had so much guilt that we had so much wealth. I grew up in the Philippines, where most people did not have the kind of wealth we had. But the point is that the power and the wealth is a power and a wealth that we are given, that we already have in creation.

Let me give you one other example, to get more directly at your question about power. This has to do with my own experience, especially when I began to teach theology at a time when women weren't taken seriously. I realized: they don't take me seriously, I don't have any authority. And then I came to realize that's not a weakness — that's actually strength, because it's teaching me to rely on the message I am speaking about. In fact, the less seriously people take me, the more, perhaps, the word actually speaks. I don't know if that makes sense, but often the people I most listen to in sermons aren't the polished preachers — it's the people who have actually experienced God's power in the midst of weakness. Remember, scripture is written by those who have been oppressed. Those are the stories, those are the models of scripture.

Does that make sense? So it's when we are in that place, relying on God's power and God's strength and the truth of what we are talking about... I want to get to the point about wealth, because truth and righteousness is what creates wealth. Truth and righteousness, justice, creates power. Mercy creates wisdom. That goes against our worldly wisdom, but there's truth to this. My parents consistently negotiated for the lowest possible salary so they could be the most open for the kind of ministry they were called into. They live simply — I never thought that we were poor.

How upside down is that — what's...

My sister and I live a very middle-class lifestyle, I have to admit that, okay? We're more of a form of rebel — our form of teen rebellion was to become part of the bourgeoisie. I just had to add that. Anyway, go ahead.

Well, one of the things you brought to my attention that I never realized reading Second Corinthians is this whole dynamic around Paul receiving money from the Macedonians, but not from the Corinthians, to support his own ministry — he's taking a collection for Jerusalem from the Corinthians, but not for himself. So what is going on there?

Yes, this is counterintuitive. If you talk to anybody with a degree in philanthropy, they'll tell you this does not work. How do you get benefactors? You go to the wealthiest people — you don't think of the poorest people as the source to support your ministry. This is precisely the character of God's power to create out of nothingness.

Why does Paul not want to take money from the Corinthians? There's this major conflict between the Macedonians and the Corinthians, even culturally. The Corinthians are the sophisticated, cosmopolitan, wealthy ones, whereas the Macedonians — both the city and the congregation — are poor, agricultural, living on the edge of nothingness. The reason Paul wants to maintain his freedom — remember 1 Corinthians 9 — is that he does not want to take their money. That's why they don't trust him: he won't take their money. There's a deep missionary principle here, having to do with not being obligated to people who might want to control you. Not being obligated to people operating by worldly values and not kingdom values.

Paul does not want to become obligated. Paul wants to be free — not to do his own will, but to do God's will, to work out of kingdom values. Once you establish a patron-client relationship with other people, you have what they call in Tagalog utang na loob — a debt of inner gratitude. When I am indebted to you because you provide an income for me, am I going to speak the truth that needs to be spoken that may challenge your values? I don't think so. That's why Paul would rather take from people who are giving out of their poverty, out of a purity of heart.

If I could say one other thing — again, my mom. The Shandong compound was a place where they were able to create a kind of community amidst all the dysfunction, a relatively just community, out of nothing, without money. My mother and her brothers came to America, Norwegians, to go to college. My mother worked these values out as a socialist. One of her brothers was part of the Republican Party, the compassionate conservative variety. They worked this out with different political ideologies, but out of the same principle — the principle Paul is trying to communicate to the Corinthians. It comes out of Isaiah 61: what is the wealth of nations? The wealth of nations is righteousness, which only God can create. Any good capitalist knows this — what is the condition for the possibility of a healthy capitalist society? The rule of law. I grew up in the Philippines, where there was crony capitalism — people were not investing unless they could invest with the crony capitalists. One reason people have historically wanted to invest in America is the rule of law.

The great Lutheran institutions we're all part of — right here at Luther Seminary — were all originally supported by poor peasants. It's only later that those peasants became wealthy, because they were educated, because those poor communities banded together to create institutions. How do healthy institutions get created? Through mercy, righteousness, and justice — not worldly technology or wisdom, wealth, and power. The condition for the possibility of wealth is righteousness. My mom and her brothers came to America with hardly any money, but it really is true: the condition for the possibility of wealth is truth and righteousness, justice, trust. If we don't have trust with one another, we can't negotiate.

Alicia Granholm

So let's talk about chapter four and Paul's image of the power of God being held in clay jars — the treasure in clay jars, in light of our humanity. Can you unpack that in light of ministry today?

Lois Malcolm

I'll connect a verse. And then it moves on to what we have — if I could just work through the text — we have this treasure in clay jars so that this extraordinary, or if you want a literal translation, hyperbolic power, is evidently from God and not from us. Then Paul goes on with a series of phrases that echo the Psalms and prophetic and wisdom literature — afflicted but not crushed, persecuted but not... I can't remember the exact lines, but you get the idea. And then the clincher: we bear the death of Jesus in our bodies so that the life of Jesus might be manifested in those bodies. Daily we are being handed over to death so that the life of Jesus can be born there. Death in me, life for you.

So what does that actually mean? Why treasure in clay jars? As I say to my students — and I've probably said this to my colleagues too — everything I say to my students that sticks from my lectures comes out of my death. Now that sounds macabre, but it really is true. It's out of what God has put to death, and taught me through forgiving me, through raising me from the dead in times of trial, whether from sin or death, either way. And I don't need to talk about those experiences with my students.

You don't need to go — you know, wear your dirty laundry in public, do you know what I mean? But when you are speaking out of that place where you have actually claimed God's promises in your life, there is a kind of truth to that. You don't need to pretend. And you don't need to grasp for that power in your very vulnerability — Brené Brown has talked about this, your very vulnerability. But it's not just human vulnerability. It's that you are really claiming God's power at work in this moment, and in the past and in the future and right now. That there really is something that happens that we don't control, but God is at work.

I want to pause on that for a moment, because I wonder — in this moment in the Western church, where we still have so much baggage from Christendom, from imperial power — whether what you're describing isn't in fact the core thing we need to learn above anything else for the church to have a future in our context. One of the reasons so many communities on the edges are flourishing, even though socioeconomically, as we think of it in the world's terms, they may be impoverished, but spiritually so alive — and the churches used to having all the resources and privilege are struggling so mightily right now. Particularly the mainline — the history of that in the mainline is so acute. But it's also now in other places, Roman Catholic, evangelical, others as well.

So let's lean into that a little, as we think about the church's vocation in the world. If we move on to chapter five, there's this wonderful passage — God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. And Paul speaks of being ambassadors of reconciliation. How does that then play out as we think about how churches can engage their neighbors?

If I could take one step back — this is why I think Paul's letters to the Corinthians are to our age what Romans and Galatians were for Luther in the time of the Reformation. Luther was seeking to reform Christendom — he spoke about justification by faith to release people from sin and guilt, because they already knew what the law was.

We are living in a neo-pagan time. We don't even assume international law anymore. All these things we assumed — which paradoxically came out of World War II, out of situations of suffering — we've been lulled into wealth, lulled into secure institutions. And we've forgotten that many of our educational and ecclesial institutions — the Methodists, circuit riders, forming not just churches in the Wild West but educational institutions, as did these Lutheran immigrant communities — were built out of nothing.

We've been lulled into a Christendom mode, and along with Christendom come the trappings of power. But here's the interesting paradoxical twist: what we have to rethink is our understanding of salvation. Salvation is not being freed from the law, for our time. Salvation is not about getting a ticket to heaven. It's not the neo-Platonic assumption that I need to escape the body and enter some pure state of the soul, which you find in many forms of conservative Christianity or New Age spirituality.

Do you know what the calling is all about? Do you know what being made righteous is all about in 2 Corinthians 5:21 — Christ became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God? You've got to have truth in advertising. We are called to follow Jesus. We are called to be Christians, not so we can be above the world and control other people. We are called precisely so that we can be ambassadors for God's reconciliation. That's the point of the church. That's the point of being a follower of Jesus — so that we now become those who enact God's purposes in the world, to bring about reconciliation, to bring about healing.

This means both that we need to be healed — in our relationships with one another, our families, our communities — and in the process of being healed with one another, we are being called now to be emissaries for that in the world, whether in our particular vocations as individuals or as the church. Now, I have a little more to say, but why don't you ask your next question? Because people often get mixed up about this whole idea of ministry and message — they think the ministry of reconciliation is about doing good things, and the message is about the gospel. No — the call to ministry is that we are now called to be God's stewards in the world, to be little Christs to the world. And at the heart of that ministry, quite frankly, is what happens in the third article of the Creed, about the Holy Spirit: sins are forgiven, and we look forward to the resurrection of the dead. The church exists to proclaim that message. We are released from sin, not so we can get a ticket to heaven, but so we can actually love God and love our neighbor. We are released from the fear of death so we can boldly do what we've been called to do. That's why the church exists. Out of that place, in the rest of our lives, we have a ripple effect in all that.

So — Second Corinthians has a lot to say about community. What is Paul's experience with the Corinthians teach us about why Christian community is so difficult, and what makes it worth the trouble anyway?

Christian community is difficult because of all the issues Paul is dealing with in this community — broken relationships, issues about money, issues about power. Those are the issues that divide every family, every congregation, every nation. Those are the three temptations Jesus had to experience: wealth, power, and wanting to manipulate spirituality.

But why do we need community, and why is community... there is no perfect community. You're never going to find a perfect community, or a perfect job, or a perfect institution, or perfect colleagues — and yet I have wonderful colleagues. Once we see that God is at work, suddenly you realize there's all this abundance there. So why do we need community? It's going to be dysfunctional, but at the same time, we're made for relationships. We're not made to be monads. We're always in bodies, and we're always in relationship. There's no way around those two things. Being human means being in a body and being in relationship. It's in that context that the freedom to actually live in truth happens. It's part of being human — we have to be in community.

The other thing is, we're captured by this neo-Platonic understanding of the individual soul as what's saved. No — God calls a people to be a holy nation, a royal nation of priests. We are called as a people. I cannot live in Christ without you, without Dwight. We are called, and what Christ brings is new creation. So yes, we are individually called, but it's always in a people, and always for the sake of creation. That's where, in spite of all the difficulties, we are called to be — and we can only enact that as we ourselves are being transformed in relationship with one another, because we're not perfect either. We're as much in need of help as the other guy. But as we begin to trust in God's power, stuff actually does begin to happen.

Amen. Well, let's shift gears a little and think — for those of our listeners and viewers leading congregations or Christian communities — if Second Corinthians speaks into this cultural moment so powerfully, what would be your counsel for them on how they might use that within the formative life of the congregation? How can this text reshape not just their own understanding of leadership, but also help reshape the congregation's imagination for what it means to be the people of God in this kind of moment — and perhaps to have expectations of their pastors that aren't shaped by the culture, by super apostles, but by this deeper narrative of God's action amid the clay jars and the vulnerability of our humanity?

Can I work through some texts? Unfortunately, 2 Corinthians is not written in a logical, modern sequence, so in some ways you have to jimmy the text to get the gems. But the place I would start is 2 Corinthians 5 — the passage you referred to — going from 5:11 to 5:20, because that gives you a complete picture of an ontology, a worldview defined by the one who died for all so that all might live in the one. What does it mean to have your whole life governed by that as the world's ontology, the worldview you presuppose? How does that change your epistemology? We no longer look at one another from a human point of view. We look at one another differently. And when we are in Christ, new creation happens — it's not about whether I'm a new creation or not, it's that when we trust Christ, new creation happens around us. We begin to see the world as a place where God is at work. So you have a shift in ontology, epistemology, and then a different ethos. We are all called to a ministry, to be emissaries of what God is doing in the world through Christ. And we have the message, which we need to hear as much as other people do — that God is in the world, not counting their trespasses against them.

That would be a place I would start. From there, there are all sorts of pieces that give you the composite picture, and other texts that work on different aspects — bodily exercises these texts evoke that could be developed. I don't know if you want me to go on with that, or where you want to go with this.

No, I think that's really helpful, because it seems to me that helping people sit inside this imaginative framework, which does seem so odd — that's what we started out talking about, how this is a strange letter, provocative, not polished, full of emotion and messiness — but that's precisely where congregations are right now so often, and those that have a lid on that, where they think everything's perfect, it's all right there under the surface. So it seems to me that inviting people into the imaginative space of this letter would be incredibly rich right now.

If I could add one other thing — this is another sort of deep reason why Paul is so angry in this text. He's not so much angry at the super apostles. He's angry at the Corinthians, and this is the message I think we need to hear. He's angry because they have sold their soul to a bunch of people who are giving them a bill of goods so that they will be submissive to them, even though those people actually abuse them. So the issue is not that the Corinthians are arrogant — I mean, they are arrogant — but what really angers Paul is that they're not standing in their authority. So if there's a message, it's not even a message about trying to change other people. What I have discovered in living this text — this is my testimony, and Paul says all we have is testimony, the only way you can influence is by telling people about what God has done — the testimony I can have about how this text has worked in my life, and this is how I hope it'll work in yours, is that you will be able to stand in your baptismal oath. And as you stand in that authority — not to change other people, because you have no control over them — as you stand in that authority and just begin to pray, to pray that God will in fact transform stuff... believe it or not, people, stuff begins to happen. You know that phrase, the change has to begin with you? There is a way — this is the messianic message, Jesus' message — that when we become places where the kingdom of God happens, there really is a kind of ripple effect. So whether you're a pastoral leader, a congregation member, a council member, a faculty member, working with Faith+Lead, wherever you are — you are in a place that is tremendously powerful.

You know, we're —

All is yours — past, present, and future, life and death — and begin to trust that the promises of God are true. When you begin that... like, I'm teaching a Holy Spirit course right now, and I'm praying for every single student in that class. I have no idea how the Holy Spirit is going to use that class in their lives. I may or may not like the individual students — it has nothing to do with their academic performance, but I am called to pray. And that, I think, is the first step. Once we enter into that, and are open to how God is going to use us, stuff begins to happen.

Well, Lois, thank you so much for this conversation — for the commentary, which is not out yet but will be coming, which we look forward to.

Lois Malcolm

No, it's written. It's just in the publication process.

Dwight Zscheile

And as we close, is there a particular verse from Second Corinthians, or from Paul, that you would leave us with?

My thorn in the flesh, getting stuff done. I'm going to leave you with a prayer from Ephesians — some argue it was written by Paul, others, like myself, argue it was written within the Pauline community. But the prayer speaks about the kind of abundance of blessing that the Second Corinthians blessing begins with, because it's out of that abundance of consolation that we are called into suffering with the Messiah. So this is the prayer I pray for each of you out there, and each of you in the room here:

With this in mind I kneel in prayer before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that out of the riches of God's glory, God may grant that each of you may be granted in your inner being power, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith as each of you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that each of you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that each of you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Now to this God, who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine — to this God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus forever and ever. Amen.

God is going to use you. So just open up.

Alicia Granholm

Amen. Just open up. And to our audience, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of Pivot. We always love to hear from you, so send us an email at [email protected] with your thoughts and questions. To help spread the word about Pivot, please like and subscribe if you're catching us on YouTube. Leave a review on your podcast platform, or share Pivot with a friend. We'll see you next week.

The Pivot Podcast is a production of Luther Seminary's Faith+Lead. Faith+Lead is an ecosystem of theological resources and training designed to equip Christian disciples and leaders to follow God into a faithful future. Learn more at faithlead.org.