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On
His Majesty's Secret Service:
Prof.
Mark D. Given
In 2 Cor 6:3-10, as part of a paradoxical description of his “mission,” Paul says that “in every way we establish ourselves as agents of God” (v. 4a), including “with weapons of rectification for the right hand and the left” (v. 7b). The height of paradox comes immediately after and in partial description of these weapons: “through honor and disgrace, through defamation and affirmation; as deceivers, yet true; as unknown, yet well known; as dying yet behold we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.” (vv. 8-10). These paradoxes, as well as the polymorphic disguises of 1 Cor 9:19-23, bring to mind a long footnote in M. Detienne and J-P. Vernant’s, Cunning Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) concerning the topos of the ambidextrous or "double" warrior (pp. 98-99). The complete warrior or athlete uses both arms, and every weapon or skill available. The final paragraph contains much that I find suggestive for understanding Paul’s modus operandi: "Georges Dumézil . . . was well aware of these aspects of warrior magic which confers upon warrior gods all the weapons of maya, ranging from cunning to a plurality of forms and the gift of transformation over and above their bodily strength. He writes: 'The warrior must be able to be beyond laws, not only moral but even cosmic and physical ones; to defend order he must be in a position to pass beyond it, to step outside it--at the risk sometimes of yielding to the temptation of attacking it'" (p. 99). Building on previous readings of Paul in my book, Paul’s True Rhetoric: Ambiguity, Cunning, and Deception in Greece and Rome (Harrisburg: Trinity, 2001), this paper will offer a more fully apocalyptic and rhetorical interpretation of the connection already established by V. C. Pfitzner between the agon motif and Paul’s concept of his mission (Paul and the Agon Motif [NovTSup 16; Leiden: Brill, 1967]). I will argue that this close association of agon motifs, paradoxical mission profiles, and polymorphic identities in 2 Cor 6:4-10 and 1 Cor 9:19-27 describes the undercover ethos of God’s double agent as he infiltrates and destroys the strongholds of the god of this world (2 Cor 10:4).
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