This article is a follow up to the series on The Immortal Soul. In that series we examined the biblical concept of the soul and worked through the passages most commonly cited in support of the idea that the soul consciously survives the death of the body. One passage we did not address is 2 Corinthians 12:2-3, where Paul writes that he does not know whether his extraordinary experience occurred “in the body or out of the body.”
Most readers assume he is describing the soul’s ability to exist apart from the body. But this reading imports a meaning into the passage that Paul himself refused to assert, twice, and that contradicts his own established usage of the identical Greek phrase in his previous letter to the Corinthians. Read in its proper context, 2 Corinthians 12:2-3 does not support the Platonic view of an immortal separable soul. It actually undermines it.
What the text says
Here is the passage in full:
I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago—whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know, God knows—such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows—how he was caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter. (2 Cor. 12:2-4 NKJV)
Most interpreters agree that Paul is referring to himself and using the third person out of reluctance to appear boastful.1 So Paul is describing his own experience. He was caught up to the third heaven, which he also calls paradise. And he does not know whether this happened in the body or out of the body.
Before examining what “out of the body” means, we need to notice something the traditional reading consistently overlooks. The traditional view defines death as the separation of the soul from the body. If that definition is correct, then “out of the body” means Paul’s soul departed his body. And if Paul’s soul departed his body, Paul died.
Nobody believes that. I am not aware of anyone who has argued that Paul died on this occasion, visited heaven, and returned to his body. Yet that is exactly where the traditional reading leads if you follow it to its logical conclusion. The traditional view uses “out of the body” to mean one thing when discussing the afterlife and something different when discussing this passage. That inconsistency is worth keeping in mind as we work through the text.
Context is everything
Before we examine the phrase “out of the body” we need to ask a more basic question. What is Paul really trying to communicate in this passage? The answer determines everything.
Paul is not teaching his readers about the nature of the soul or what happens between death and resurrection. To understand why he mentions this experience at all we need to back up.
Beginning in chapter 10 Paul launches into an extended and passionate defense of his apostolic authority. Something had gone seriously wrong in Corinth. A group of traveling teachers had arrived and were undermining Paul’s credibility with the Corinthian believers. Paul calls them sarcastically “super apostles” (2 Cor. 11:5; 12:11). These opponents apparently boasted about visions and spiritual experiences as proof of their superior ministry.2 They presented letters of recommendation (2 Cor. 10:12; 3:1), used polished rhetoric (2 Cor. 11:6), and argued that Paul was spiritually inferior. He was unimpressive in person (2 Cor. 10:10), his speech was contemptible (2 Cor. 10:10), he refused to accept financial support which they took as evidence he knew his ministry was illegitimate (2 Cor. 11:7-9), and he lacked the signs of a truly superior apostle (2 Cor. 12:11-12).
A reluctant rhetorical weapon
Paul spends four chapters responding to these charges. His strategy is deliberately ironic. He matches his opponents credential for credential, but only to expose the absurdity of the entire competition. He calls what he is doing “foolish boasting” (2 Cor. 11:1, 16-17) and makes clear he considers the whole exercise beneath him. If his opponents want to compare pedigrees he has a better one. If they want to compare sufferings his list dwarfs theirs. And if they want to compare visionary experiences, he has one that surpasses anything they could claim.
That is the only reason this experience from 2 Corinthians 12 appears in the letter at all. Paul is not offering it as teaching that the soul can separate from the body. He is wielding it as a reluctant rhetorical weapon in a debate he never wanted to have. And the moment he finishes describing it he immediately distances himself from it:
“I will boast about a man like that, but I will not boast about myself, except in my weaknesses.” (2 Cor. 12:5)
He then pivots to the thorn in the flesh, given specifically to prevent him from becoming conceited about the surpassing greatness of the revelations (2 Cor. 12:7). The thorn is his real credential. Weakness, not visionary experience, authenticates genuine apostolic ministry.
Paul Considered the Exact Nature of His Experience Irrelevant
This context is not background noise. It is the interpretive key to the entire passage. Any theological conclusion we draw about the soul from this passage reads something into the text that Paul never put there.
That tells you something important. Paul did not consider this experience his strongest argument. He considered it beside the point. Weakness and suffering authenticate ministry. Extraordinary spiritual experiences do not.
As Martin notes, Paul “will soon depreciate the value of this experience,”3 which is not what you would expect from someone using it as evidence for the soul’s ability to transcend the body.
The double disclaimer
Now we return to the phrase that has generated so much theological discussion. Paul says twice, once in verse 2 and again in verse 3, that he does not know whether the experience occurred in the body or out of the body. He adds “God knows” both times.
Why does he repeat himself? Margaret Thrall, commenting on this passage, suggests Paul “may be emphasizing his total lack of comprehension about how the event occurred. It was a wonderful happening whose mode of operation was known only to God.”4 As Angel Manuel Rodríguez states, “Paul is simply stating that he does not have a clear understanding of the nature of his supernatural experience.”5 Victor Paul Furnish adds a pointed observation about why Paul expresses this uncertainty twice: “He not only acknowledges but actually emphasizes his own complete ignorance.” Furnish goes further, noting that on the basis of Paul’s Jewish anthropology, “a bodiless journey would have been inconceivable to Paul.”6 Paul is describing an experience that defied every biblical category available to him.
Furnish continues: “By emphasizing the uncertainty of the mode of his rapture, Paul seems to be saying that he does not really care; and this suggests that there are some in Corinth who really do.”7
Paul Refuses to Play by Their Rules
These observations make the picture clear. Paul is not making a theological claim about body-soul separation. He is refusing to validate a framework his opponents depended on. They prized visions and spiritual experiences as the ultimate credential. Paul responds by claiming a superior experience while simultaneously refusing to confirm whether it was out of the body, because that distinction is not what validates authentic ministry.
The double disclaimer is not theological ambiguity. It is a deliberate polemical refusal to play by his opponents’ rules. As Furnish notes, given Paul’s Jewish anthropology a bodiless journey would have been inconceivable to him. The Old Testament that Paul knew taught nothing about a distinction between the soul and body. A man for whom disembodied existence was literally inconceivable is not affirming that his soul left his body.
“Surpassingly great revelations”
What Paul experienced was real. It was extraordinary. It was, in his own words, surpassingly great (v. 7), great enough that God found it necessary to give him a thorn in the flesh to prevent dangerous conceit. But it was also beyond categorization. Paul could not determine whether he had been physically transported to paradise or had experienced it through an overwhelming vision. That genuine bewilderment is not what you would expect from a man whose soul had consciously departed his body and stood in the presence of God. It is what you would expect from a man who encountered something so far outside normal human experience that the categories available to him simply broke down.
In part 2 we will see that Paul’s own usage of the identical Greek phrase in his previous letter to the Corinthians makes the “soul leaving the body” reading impossible to sustain.
References
- Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians, vol. 40 of Word Biblical Commentary, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 590.
- Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians, vol. 40 of Word Biblical Commentary, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 597-598.
- Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians, vol. 40 of Word Biblical Commentary, 2d ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 595.
- Margaret Thrall, “Paul’s Journey to Paradise,” 356, quoted in David E. Garland, 2 Corinthians, vol. 29, The New American Commentary (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 1999), 514.
- Angel Manuel Rodríguez, “2 Corinthians 12:2, 3,” Biblical Research Institute, Seventh-day Adventist Church. https://adventistbiblicalresearch.org/articles/2-corinthians-12-2-3.
- Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians, The Anchor Bible, vol. 32A (Garden City: Doubleday, 1984), 545.
- Victor Paul Furnish, II Corinthians, The Anchor Bible, vol. 32A (Garden City: Doubleday, 1984), 545.