II CORINTHIANS 12:7
Since the importance of Holy Scripture is to be an interpreter of the divine to mankind, since its claim is to want to teach the believer everything from the beginning, it follows of itself that its language has shaped the discourse of the God-fearing about the divine, that its words and expressions resound again and again in the holy places, in every more solemn discourse about the divine, whether the speaker seeks to interpret the scriptural text by letting the text speak for itself or is using the scriptural expression in all its brevity as the clear and complete interpretation of the much he has said. But also in everyday and secular speech we sometimes hear a scriptural expression that has wandered from the sacred out into the world—wandered, because the way in which it is used indicates adequately that it did not leave home voluntarily and is now circulating among the secular affairs of men in order to win someone, but that it has been carried off. The person using it is not moved by the biblical expression, does not let his thoughts trace it back to its earnest place in the sacred context, is not dismayed by the idea that it is sacrilegious to use the expression in this way, even though people regard it, far from being an effrontery, as merely a piece of innocent light-mindedness.
One such biblical expression frequently encountered where least expected and at times put to a most inappropriate use271 is the phrase just read: the thorn in the flesh. But just as this [V 107] misuse is in itself regrettable (we are thinking not of the presumption of brash mockery but only of the passing use of the phrase as a witticism, the jesting connection that light-mindedness makes with life’s trifles), so in a very special way it can also have the sad consequence, if someone suddenly starts to think of the dangers of the lofty life the text speaks about, that one is overwhelmed with anxiety, just as when someone has held in his hand and played with a deadly weapon without knowing that it was deadly. And appalling, indeed, just as deadly, the expression really is, inasmuch as it testifies to the deep pain that is the contrast and successor to what is more glorious than any earthly happiness, than the most glorious conception of any merely human thought, the contrast to the supreme blessedness, such as this is experienced when it is inexpressible. The expression has the accent of total earnestness when used by the Apostle Paul, a man who did not experience ups and downs such as that because he had given his life over as prey to the passions, since, on the contrary, this deepest experience and the full assurance of insight had given him an assured spirit.
Is this not appalling! A person is looking for peace, but there is change: day and night, summer and winter, life and death; a person is looking for peace, but there is change: fortune and misfortune, joy and sorrow; a person is looking for peace and constancy, but there is change: the ardor of purpose and the disgust of weakness, the greenwood of expectancy and the withered splendor of fulfillment; a person is looking for peace—where did he not look for it—even in the disquietude of distraction—where did he not look for it in vain—even in the grave!
But an apostle—he uses the strongest expression about a thorn in the flesh, about an angel of Satan who strikes him on the mouth and thereby prevents him from declaring that inexpressible blessedness. Is it so, then, that the more zealously one presses forward, the more dangerous everything becomes? Is it so, then, that every zealousness consumes the zealous, and most appallingly when it is zeal for God in the service of the Lord? No, the apostle does not speak like an incited man who is merely a desperate witness to how he himself has been tumbled about and at best knows how to describe his ups and downs. That he is not permitted to remain in the third heaven, indeed, that it is an angel of Satan who fetches him down again and strikes him on the mouth—this he knows. He knows that in a certain sense the joining of earthly life with beatitude is always an unhappy marriage and that the truly beatific union is concluded only in heaven, just as it was concluded there in the beginning; but he also knows that it is beneficial to him, and that this thorn in the flesh is given him so that he will not be arrogant. The mark of the apostle is that [V 108] he does not become unsteady, which may happen even to the most honest person who experienced the blessedness of heaven, but who also, when the thorn began to pain and fester, knew of nothing to do but to moan. Not so the apostle. When the angel of Satan darts out from his darkness, when he comes with the speed of lightning to terrify the apostle, it is indeed an angel of Satan, as the apostle says, but if he nevertheless knows that it is beneficial to him, then that terror is no longer an angel of Satan, because no one has ever heard that an angel of Satan came to benefit a human being. It is not the case, as human flabbiness might wish, that the highest life is without dangerous suffering, but it is the case that an apostle is never without an explanation, never without authority.
Having traced the phrase back to the Bible passage, the biblical expression back to its source, the Apostle Paul, we come to our text, where we now read it. Here it has been read repeatedly, again and again. Here the scholars have interpreted it. Who would ever finish if he were to mention the ingenuity and the nonsense that have assisted in or wanted to assist in explaining this passage, which, once it had the reputation of being a riddle, seemed to give everyone an unusually propitious opportunity to become an interpreter of the Bible. —Here a futilely troubled sufferer read it until he found comfort, not in the apostolic upbuilding but in the accidental circumstance that he suffered from the very same physical ailment that the apostle, according to his interpretation of the words, has suggested. —Here a depressed young person read it, although in his reading he did not draw comfort for himself from the book but anxiety into his soul so that he did not even have the courage to ask anyone for the explanation. Alas, he perhaps never found any explanation, but this anxiety about an inexplicable terror became for him his thorn in the flesh. —Here a self-appointed apostle found a prooftext for his being a chosen instrument of God, because he indeed had a thorn in the flesh. —Here a cowardly believer read it and thought that such a thing happened only to an apostle, not to him, who in his own eyes was indeed humble enough not to aspire to something great, all the less so since the thought of the suffering connected with it was already enough for his cowardliness. —Here a simple, devout person read it and read it many times but never thought that he had really understood it, since he had a low opinion of himself and his sufferings compared with an apostle’s.272
This has now been said,273 but before anyone looks to an apostle for comfort in his suffering and guidance in his battle, let him search himself thoroughly to see whether his suffering [V 109] might not have to be judged with a smile, to see whether life has tested him so earnestly that his wanting to be helped by an apostle is not a joke, to see whether he is prepared in earnest to find that an apostle does not have many moments to waste on worldly sorrows, that the apostle hastily leads him from the struggle that may already seem hard enough to the sufferer and leads him into the crucial struggle where the suffering of which the apostle speaks belongs.
Oh, let us never take the sacred in vain. How often have we not coddled the flesh by using the highest and strongest comfort to soothe worldly sorrows and refusing to understand that the word of comfort must first of all wound more deeply before it can heal. Has God ever made a covenant with a person regarding the external? Does it perhaps apply to every suffering that one is to thank God because one has not been tried in it? What about the suffering in which the soul battles through to faith or the one in which faith is victorious over the world?274 What about the pain in which hope is born or that in which it becomes unshakable? 275What about the process of being consumed in which self-love breathes its last until love learns to know God, or what about the wretchedness in which the external being fades away until the inner being untangles itself from the corruption?276 But if praying in this way is not to be called wisdom, if a wisdom of that sort is rather to be called by its proper name, if it is to be called foolishness that has lost the sense of the spirit and cannot understand anything spiritually,277 if it is to be called cowardliness that wants to be made happy in a splendid misunderstanding and wants to remain ignorant that it is a misunderstanding, if it is to be called effrontery to God because, tempted by human pitiableness, it wants to remodel him, if it is to be called treachery to mankind because it wants to defraud the sacred of its meaning, the struggling one of the other’s gratitude, the victorious one of his reward—then it certainly would be better to speak in another way of that kind of suffering.
We must warn here against wanting to play the hero, against wanting to be a warrior at one’s own expense,278 against wanting to be one’s own teacher who determines the degree of suffering and calculates the advantages. We must warn that no one is tried in a self-made conflict but is only cultivated in a new vanity so that the last becomes worse than the first.279 But then we are also reminded that suffering is a component and that no one enters the kingdom of heaven without suffering.280 Just to be reminded of it is instructive, lest the distress of spiritual trial come upon one as unexpectedly as a thief in the night,281 as birth pangs to one who had no presentiment of giving birth.282 See, the apostle has done this. He himself was the most severely tried, inasmuch as he experienced sufferings that until then no man had experienced—as surely, that is, as there was a higher life in an apostle [V 110] than in any previous human being, which of course signifies that the sufferings also are more agonizing. He experienced them in such a way that he could not seek anyone else’s guidance or be strengthened by anyone else’s experience. But then he also left behind him a witness, and “the thorn in the flesh” became a warning, a reminder, that wherever a person goes he walks in danger,283 that even the one who grasps at the highest is still only aspiring to it, pursued by that angel of Satan, whose assault, just like everything else, must nevertheless serve the believer for good.284
The discourse, however, does not aspire at this time to apostolic comforting or seek to speak to anyone to reassure but wants, if possible, to speak to terrify. There is a profound and inscrutable meaning in existence, an agreement entered into from eternity regarding the earthly and the moment of the heavenly, a marvelous correlation between what belongs together: sorrow and comfort. Therefore, when a person laments that there is no comfort for him, that his suffering is immeasurable, it is because he does not comprehend deeply enough the terror and the distress and because he still prefers to let everything be confused and to seek distraction in the empty solace that there was no comfort, rather than to judge himself and humble himself under the assurance that there is no suprahuman temptation.285 We shall now, therefore, speak of:
The Thorn in the Flesh.
As everyone knows, the Apostle Paul was a man tried in all kinds of sufferings.286 Therefore, if the person who suffers, instead of seeking guidance in the comfort offered, becomes crafty, as so often happens, and diverts himself instead by considering whether the speaker is actually tried, tried exactly as he himself is, since otherwise, of course, he lacks experience; if the sufferer, prey to the insidious fabrications of this concealed vanity, would reject the usually reliable testimony of many witnesses—he nevertheless surely will not reject the Apostle Paul. So, then, list your sufferings, or if the sophistry of your sorrow has even made you envious of the apostle and of his intrepidity, then invent sufferings—you no doubt will find the apostle tried in them, even if you do not manage to fashion him to your fancy, to stop him in the race, so that with you he becomes prolix in the prolixity of sufferings. Just as the eye cannot really catch hold of someone who runs, because he is running, so also with sufferings; future sufferings have no time to terrify the apostle, and past sufferings have no time to hold him fast, because he is running. But he nevertheless has experienced suffering, and one is not to teach the [V 111] apostle that suffering becomes more terrifying if one sits still, enervated by the past, only anxiously occupied with the future, but one shall instead learn from an apostle to run and finish the race.287
List, then, the hardships, those that destroy a person by pouring all the agony into the brevity of a moment, the protracted ones that slowly torture the soul out of the body; list being derided as mentally disordered, being shunned as an offense; list the mortal danger, nakedness, imprisonment, chains;288 list all the profound indignities of misunderstanding; list finding all asleep289 except misunderstanding; list being hailed as a false god when one is an apostle;290 list being forgotten once one is gone, seeing the good cause abandoned by friends who became cowardly and were supported by enemies who aimed at confusion;291 list being forsaken by the person on whom one is relying, being forsaken by the weakling who wants to help himself,292 being regarded as a seducer when one is a witness to the truth,293 as giving sin a pretext for new sin when one is a teacher of truth,294 being thought of as weak when one is gentle,295 arrogant when one is vigorous, selfish when one has a fatherly concern.296 Continue, if you like—you will find the apostle tried in them. But he still does not call all these sufferings the thorn in the flesh.
The difference is that all these sufferings are only in the external world, even the concern about the congregation, even the profound grief of misunderstanding; however oppressive they are to him, he still has nothing for which to reproach himself. During all this suffering, the assurance that he is in harmony with God is dominant. Even though the course of life witnesses against him, as if God is gone from the world and leaves himself without witness, since the witness that everyone, even an apostle, best understands is that the good for which he works is advancing, that the truth he proclaims is triumphant, that the holy cause for which he battles has its blessing, and the work its reward, and the toil its fruitfulness, and the effort its meaning, and the struggle its decision, and the sleepless days and nights a glorious application—even though the world and everything visible seem to be forsaken by God, he still has the witness of the spirit that he is God’s co-worker.297 What, then, is the distress! Everything can change even in the next moment; even if God has gone away, he is still in heaven, where the apostle sees him and the Son of Man at the right hand of power, not sitting there—ah, how could he sit when the apostle is forsaken like this—no, he has arisen, and the apostle sees him as Stephen298 saw him, standing at the right hand of power, swift to help. Indeed, even if everything is to be rendered futile, is to be blown away like a fantasy, even if nothing, nothing whatever, is to be achieved [V 112] and the suffering is the one and only actuality, even if the unremitting sacrifice of a long life is to become meaningless like shadowboxing299 in the air, the apostle is still assured that neither angels nor devils nor things present nor things past nor things future will be able to separate him from the love300 in which God’s witness testifies in his heart! And then what is all earthly suffering compared with this blessedness! Although the apostle is present in the flesh, is he nevertheless not absent, far away, so that those who think to wound him are only deceived! What an empty fancy a prison is when the prisoner it confines is caught up into the third heaven! What is the sense of ridiculing someone who hears nothing but unutterable speech, of executing someone who is absent!
Caught up into the third heaven! On the whole, Paul was not unfamiliar with what is gratifying in life:301 he dared to hope that he might even reach Spain302 with the proclamation of the Word, that upon his departure from a congregation he would leave behind some who had been won, some strengthened, some rewon, that he would leave this congregation in order to journey to another, that some would still remain true to him, that occasionally his fatherly concern would also win him a son’s devotion. How moved Paul is in speaking of this, how thankful he is! When his desire was fulfilled, when he longed no more to see the loved ones, when he was present with them, when he shared the gifts of the spirit with them and he himself was strengthened by strengthening and enriching others—how glorious his joy must have been, like his words for it! But this expression—to be caught up into the third heaven, to be made a participant in sublime revelations, to sense an inexpressible beatitude—this he cannot use and has not used to describe that beautiful joy he shared with others. But that inexpressible beatitude he could not express—alas, and to prevent it, he was given a thorn in the flesh.
Consequently, that suffering and this beatitude correspond to each other. If that beatitude is reserved only for an apostle, then let no one fear the suffering. But if that is the case, then there is nothing to speak about, and it is not even worth speaking about, and it is inexplicable that the apostle has written about it in the first place. To be sure, he is brief about it, and his description thereby turns out to be vastly different from the fiction and nonsense that are embellished with sacred names, but an apostle is certainly the last person to write riddles that no one can solve, but that at best delay anyone who wants to solve them. An apostle who is trying to be all things [V 113] to all people303 is surely the last one to want to be something so singular that with respect to this he would become absolutely nothing to anyone. So banish all curiosity, which is doomed without even knowing it, since its doom is either that it is unable to understand it or that it will be able to understand it, and its sin is either that it neglects lesser matters in order to drop off into reverie about riddles or that it craftily applies its talents to making them ununderstandable and hypocritically pretends that this is a desire for understanding.
Let everyone test himself. With regard to what he has experienced, let him be true to himself, but let no one forget that blessedness of the spirit and suffering of the spirit are not something external of which one can honestly and truly say: The circumstances of my life did not provide me the opportunity to experience this. In the world of the spirit, there is neither sport nor spook; there luck and chance do not make one person a king, another a beggar, one person as beautiful as an Oriental queen, another more wretched than Lazarus.304 In the world of the spirit, the only one who is shut out is the one who shuts himself out; in the world of the spirit, all are invited, and therefore what is said about it can be said safely and undauntedly; if it pertains to one single person it pertains to all. Why, then, this curiosity in guessing about what God has given every human being the opportunity to experience, indeed, has been made so available that it even may be said: He must have understood it.
If a person died without having understood what it must be to be rich, or to be beautiful, or to be a king, or how it must be to be unappreciated, inferior, poor, blind from birth, rejected by his generation, if he died without understanding that venerable wise man’s puzzling words about the most beautiful meaning of earthly life, that whether one marries or does not marry, one will regret both305—do you suppose that he could therefore be legitimately charged with not having made good use of life? But if a person died and had never experienced what it is to struggle with God, is this a sign that the person being buried had been uncommonly great in the fear of God? Or if he had never experienced what it is to be forsaken by God,306 would this be a sign that the person being buried had in a special sense been a favorite of the Lord? Or if he had never experienced the Lord’s wrath and its consuming fire, [V 114] indeed, never dreamed that there was any such thing, would this be assumed to be his comfort in death, his righteousness at the judgment, a sign to him that more than anyone else he had been God’s friend, or would it be assumed to be adequate for him to answer: I have not had the opportunity to experience anything like this? Alas, suppose such a person nevertheless wanted to explain that expression, suppose that it developed that he had also understood the meaning of a thorn in the flesh, namely, that it was the spirit that had become a thorn in the flesh to him and only when it was gone would he have overcome his pain, cast out his anxiety, which not even love will cast out completely,307 which faith was not capable of casting out completely, not even in an apostle.
The thorn in the flesh, then, is the contrast to the spirit’s inexpressible beatitude, and the contrast cannot be in the external, as if sufferings, chains, the scourges of misunderstanding, and the terrors of death could take it away from him, or as if all the progress of learning and all the victories of faith in the wide world could fully compensate him for the deprivation. As soon as the suffering is perceived and the thorn festers, the apostle has only himself to deal with. The beatitude has vanished, vanishes more and more—alas, it was inexpressible to have it; the pain is inexpressible since it cannot even express the loss, and recollection is unable to do anything but languish in powerlessness! 308To have been caught up into the third heaven, to have been hidden in the bosom of beatitude, to have been expanded in God, and now to be tethered by the thorn in the flesh to the thralldom of temporality! To have been made rich in God,309 inexpressibly so, and now to be broken down to flesh and blood, to dust and corruption! To have been himself present before God and now to be forsaken by God, forsaken by himself, comforted only by a poor, demented recollection! It is hard enough for a person to experience the faithlessness of men, but to experience that there is a change in God, a shadow of variation,310 that there is an angel of Satan that has the power to tear a person out of this beatitude! Where, then, is there security for a human being if it is not even in the third heaven!
But let us not go astray; this is how a worldling would talk who certainly knew what he was talking about and witnessed only to what he had experienced but did not know how to speak as humbly as an apostle, resigned to the will of God in whatever happens. The apostle declares that he knows that this variation is beneficial for him. How simple, how straightforward, how quiet these words! After having spoken of the most beatific and the most oppressive in the strongest terms, after having won and lost, and then to be so composed! My [V 115] listener, if you are familiar with what others say who have experienced something similar, then you presumably have heard instead a scream of anxiety that now everything was lost forever, a cry of despair that never again would they taste this beatitude.311 —But woe to the person who wants to be excused from suffering!
That apostolic expression, however, certainly does not indicate only the forsakenness, the suffering of separation, which is even more terrible than the separation of death, since death only separates a person from the temporal and therefore is a release, whereas this separation shuts him out from the eternal and therefore is an imprisonment that again leaves the spirit sighing in the fragile earthen vessel, in the cramped space, in the status of an alien,312 because the home of the spirit is in the eternal and the infinite. In that very moment, everything begins, as it were, from the beginning. The person who has been outside himself returns to himself, but this condition, to be by oneself in this way, is not the condition of freedom and of the liberated. So the inexpressible beatitude is gone, and the harvest song of joy is silenced; again there will be sowing in tears,313 and the spirit will again sit oppressed, will sigh once again, and only God knows what the sigh does not comprehend, to what extent the harp of joy will be tuned again in the secret soul.314 He has returned to himself; he is no longer beatific by being rescued from himself to himself and to being transfigured in God—so that the past must let go of him and is powerless to condemn him because the self-accusation is mitigated, forgotten in the understanding with Governance’s inscrutable wisdom, in the blessed instruction of a reconciliation; so that the eternal fears no future, indeed, hopes for no future, but love possesses everything without ceasing, and there is no shadow of variation. As soon as he returns to himself, he understands this no more. 315He understands, however, what bitter experiences have only all too unforgettably inculcated, the self-accusation, if the past has the kind of claim upon his soul that no repentance can entirely redeem, no trusting in God can entirely wipe out, but only God himself in the inexpressible silence of beatitude.
The more of the past a person’s soul can still keep when he is left to himself, the more profound he is! The brutish comfort that time wipes out everything is even more terrible than the most terrible recollection; and thoughtlessness, which jokes with time and flirts with eternity, helps, as is natural, only the one who “drowsily goes his giddy way”;316 and [V 116] proud poverty, the glittering squalor of perdition, which lets time go its way, indeed, does not even desire the “boredom” of eternity (although it could be that heaven has contemplated new diversions with which their superior requirements could manage to make shift)—all this is simply anathema, whatever the world wants to call it.
No, time as such will not help a person to forget the past, even though it mitigates the impression; but even if a person—far from self-tormentingly damning himself again and again to consuming its bitterness—allows time, the experienced one, to advise, the past is still not therefore completely forgotten, to say nothing of being entirely annihilated. Only the blessedness of eternity is capable of this, because the soul is entirely filled with it. The reason distraction can help the light-minded forget and a kind of busy activity can help the more thoughtless blot out the past is that distraction and worldly busyness entirely fill their souls. But the more profound a person is, the less this succeeds, and only the blessedness of heaven is adequate to this difficulty, the difficulty of which still requires earnestness for comprehension in the first place. To human understanding, if it is awake at all, to human thought, if it has become at all sober, is it not the most improbable thing of all that anything can be forgotten—indeed, that God can forget anything? In other words, it is not so very difficult to grasp that human thoughtlessness is capable of forgetting even the most important matter. In the moment of blessedness, it is forgotten or it is coexistent with the blessedness, but when a person returns to himself, this is the most improbable of all. And yet this improbability, as is always the case with the improbable, is the beginning of the highest life and is the inscrutable secret. This highest life never attains its perfect form in time, above all not in any meaningless way, as if little by little, perhaps by way of custom and reduction, this improbability would become probable in the understanding of thoughtlessness and according to the conception of spiritlessness. Opposed by probability, to which he must continually die, he can aspire to it only in faith. If faith acquired a probability, then everything would be destroyed and faith would be confused, since this would show that it had not performed the preliminary task and therefore had allowed itself to be confounded with thoughtlessness, which comes most easily to the animal. On the other hand, in an earlier age the meaning of life was assumed to be that one first understood the difficulty before jubilating over the explanation or finding it impossible to stop with the ordinary explanation, that one was first seized with terror before singing victory hymns.
We do not know the life of Paul in great detail, but we do, [V 117] however, know Paul, which is the main consideration. That is to say, just as the sensate man is distinguishable by his seeing the speck in his brother’s eye but not seeing the log in his own,317 by his rigorously condemning the same fault in others that he lightly forgives in himself, so the mark of a more profound and concerned person is that he judges himself most rigorously, uses all his ingenuity to excuse another person but is unable to excuse or forgive himself, indeed, is convinced that the other one is more excusable, because there is always still a possibility, since the only one in relation to whom a person is deprived of this possibility is he himself. Bold confidence is a difficult matter, because it is not exactly synonymous with mental weakness. One may very well stop with it and need not go further by even wishing to judge God, that is, if in other respects bold confidence is bold confidence in the judgment,318 which certainly requires that God’s judgment penetrate the thought and heart, that is, if it is bold confidence in God’s mercy and these words are not a feigned pious expression of one’s own thoughtlessness, which does not trust in God but is consoled by having ceased to sorrow long ago. If no human being is capable of acquitting himself, he is capable of one thing—of indicting himself so terribly that he cannot acquit himself but learns to need mercy. With regard to this, it is difficult for one person to understand another, 319because the earnest person always lays the stress on himself.
Paul’s life had been very dramatic, and just as the apostle’s restless activity harvested many, many happy recollections for him, so also his earlier turmoil, when he kicked against the goads with all his might,320 wounded him for the rest of his life with a recollection that festers in the flesh like a thorn, which like an angel of Satan silences him. Leave it to a worldly admiration to think that Paul was always great, that even in his error there was something extraordinary. Anyone who seeks comfort or instruction from an apostle quickly sees that an apostle aspires not to the lofty and to the extraordinary but to the humble—why, then, has Paul not earnestly conceived the past? True, in a unique sense he had become another man, a new creature;321 he had not just changed his name, but in [V 118] another sense he was still the same man. True, the past was shoved back; it could not acquire the power to seize him with its terror when he was running toward the perfect. True, he was not sitting still, spellbound in a ring of memories of the past, since wherever he went he made everything new.322 True, he had experienced the beatitude of heaven and had kept the pledge of the spirit, but there was nevertheless a memory. And a memory is difficult to manage. At one time it is far away, and then, presto, it is right there as if it had never been forgotten.
When he preached Christ and him crucified323—crucified—that was indeed what the Jews shouted. Where was Paul when this happened? We do not know, but when Stephen was stoned he sat there and guarded the garments of the executioners.324 What if he had paused for a moment in the race, what if the recollection had misled him so that he did not hear the preaching but the scream, did not himself preach but threatened! When he preached Christ as the Way, as the Way he himself had trodden and to which he had directed many, this Way had indeed existed before Paul trod it. It had also existed when Saul received permission from the Sanhedrin to imprison those “who were of that Way”;325 consequently, he trod it also at the time when he raved against the Christians with murder and threats.
True, Paul had captured free men since that time, far more and far, far more securely than when he had led them captive to Jerusalem, but those unfortunates—where were they now? 326What if he had stood still, what if recollection had overtaken him so that he had sunk into apprehensive ruminating about ever being able to find those unfortunates again! What if doubt had become dominant—whether all his activity, whether proclaiming the Word to all people, was what he was supposed to do! Surely Saul thought that his zeal was an ardor pleasing to God—oh, but precisely this, this having to catch himself or be caught in a self-deception such as that, and consequently having to repent of what he regarded as pleasing to God 327(what an upheaval in thought and mind, what a sign of terror, what a difficulty for repentance to grasp its object and to hold it: to have to repent of the best that one has done, indeed, what one even regarded as pleasing to God), and consequently in that connection to have to repent of the screams of the persecuted, the misery of the prisoners (what a labor for repentance, since it certainly was not Saul’s desire to do this but zeal, as he [V 119] thought, for the good cause), and then as reward for his zeal to have to harvest not only the ingratitude of men but the bitterness of repentance because he had raved! Paul was brought to Agrippa in chains, and the king said to him: You are raving, Paul.328 What if these words—you are raving—had halted him, 329had given an opportunity for the confounding of recollection; what if that holy fieriness that burned in him, a well-pleasing offering to God, had again become raving; what if he had become a self-torturer in order to praise God, because that also requires a great soul!
But Paul knew that it was an angel of Satan—alas, therefore he does not turn aside—but he knew that it was beneficial for him that it happened and therefore also knew that this angel of Satan was nevertheless an emissary of God. Is this not a marvel—to change an angel of Satan into an emissary of God—would not Satan himself grow weary! When an angel of darkness arrays himself in all his terror, convinced that if he just makes Paul look at him he will petrify him, when at the outset he jeers at Paul for not having the courage to do it, then the apostle looks at him, does not quickly shrink back in anxiety, does not strike him down in terror, does not reconnoiter with hesitant glances, but looks at him fixedly and steadfastly. The longer he looks, the more clearly he perceives that it is an emissary of God who is visiting him, a friendly spirit who wishes him well. One almost sympathizes with the poor devil, who wants to be so terrifying and then stands there unmasked, changed into the opposite, and thinking only of making his escape.330
Then the past was behind; repentance held it captive, cut away the connection with it, resisted it, whether it wanted to launch a joint offensive, or a single renegade tried to make a surprise attack. Faith kept the rebellious thoughts in obedience under the grace of God, which comforted the apostle beyond all measure, since he knew that he was indeed an unprofitable servant, the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle because he had persecuted the Church of God (I Corinthians 15:9). If Paul had wanted to gauge his apostolic work and let it try to compensate for the past, the rebellion would have erupted, and not even Paul would have been able to stop it;331 whereas now it became for him a thorn in the flesh, not in [V 120] itself, but because the inexpressible beatitude had departed from him.
But this rebellion continually ponders the past; it will come again as the future with new terror. There is no security in time so that a person can say with worldly composure, “peace and security,”332 unless he finds comfort in thoughtlessness. The thing to do, then, is to run—alas, one would so like to run faster and faster, but as long as one is running in time one does not run past time.
333You who know what the discourse is about—334call it an escape by which you already had almost slipped behind the curtain that separates you from all the world’s terror and distress, rescued from the snare of relapse you left behind long ago—but there was still a little something lacking. Call it a struggle in which you already had been almost victorious, and, 335although exhausted, you felt all your power in the last lap, in which you were going to grasp the treasure336 for all eternity—but there was still a little something lacking. Call it a glorious ending of the arduous wandering in the fog of unintelligibility, when the explanation illuminated [lyste ind] it and explained the suffering and the loss and the danger and the difficulty and the meaning of the anxiety and pronounced [lyste] the blessed peace of understanding upon it—but there was still one little word lacking.
You who know what the discourse is about, suppose it happened to you in the beginning, when the blessing of fulfillment offered the good intention its dependable arm—but there still remained one difficulty. Suppose it happened to you in the course of time, when fulfillment faithfully accompanied the confident traveler step by step, did not hurry ahead like a morning shadow, did not drop behind like recollection’s evening shadow—but there still remained one deviation that escaped everyone, but not the sophistry of anxiety.
You who know what the discourse is about, what shall I say to you? But you who do not know what the discourse is about, let it be said to you that it is about how impatience suddenly awakened as strong as a giant and with its anxiety changed the little into much, the little period of time into an eternity, the little distance into a chasmic abyss, that one difficulty into a decision of the totality, that one deviation into the loss of the totality; that the discourse is about how strength collapsed in weakness, distrust scared away all help, despondency desponded of every hope, how the past, from which the soul thought it had ransomed itself, again stood there with [V 121] its demand, not as a recollection, but more terrifying than ever by having conspired with the future; that the discourse is about—the thorn in the flesh.
An old, time-honored, and trustworthy devotional book337 declares that God deals with a human being as the hunter deals with game: he chases it weary, then he gives it a little time to catch its breath and gather new strength, and then the chase begins again. 338Is it not acting like a hunter for a devotional book to shock in this way: by its name to invite people to the composure of the upbuilding and then to startle them? And yet this is quite in order, and we shall receive the upbuilding. Woe to the person who wants to build up without knowing the terror; indeed, he does not know what he himself wants! But the person who knows that the terror is there also knows that the relapse is a sign that anxiety’s chase begins again, or if there is no relapse, then there nevertheless is anxiety about it when anxiety borrows the strength of the future. When the past is allowed to remain what it is, the past, when a person leaves it by stepping onto the good path and does not look back too often, he himself is changed little by little, and the past is imperceptibly changed at the same time, and eventually they do not, so to speak, suit each other. The past fades away into a less definite form, becomes a recollection, and the recollection becomes less and less terrifying. It becomes quieter, it becomes gentle, it becomes sad, and in each of these attributes it is becoming more and more distanced. Finally the past becomes almost alien to him; he does not comprehend how he could possibly have gone astray in that way, and he hears recollection’s account of it just as the traveler hears a legend in a distant land. But the relapse teaches one to understand how it was possible; indeed, anxiety about the relapse, when it awakens suddenly, even though there is only a moment left, knows how to use it to make everything very present, not as a recollection but as something future. Yet an apostle understands that this is beneficial for him, that every temporal anxiety that only desires must be consumed, every self-confidence that wants to be finished must be burned out in the purgatory of the future, every cowardliness that wants to sneak past the danger must perish in the desert of expectancy.
A person learns to know himself only with much difficulty; his aspiring to the eternal may be in all honesty, and yet there may be a danger from which he would very much like to be exempted, which he would very much like to evade, if it is left up to him, and consequently in all humility he still retains a concealed vanity, since he did not learn to know himself radically, because he had not been alarmed radically, unto death and annihilation. Let no one be judged, or let everyone judge [V 122] only himself. Alas, everything would seem so secure if only this danger were not there; heaven’s beatitude was so inexpressible, and now this possibility! Then the thorn in the flesh festers, because if a person has not experienced the beatitude of heaven, he will not suffer as much, either. Oh, that it might happen soon, that it finally might be said: At last! But time goes slowly for the anxious, 339and for the very anxious even one moment is deadly slow, and for someone anxious unto death time finally stands still. 340To want to run faster than ever and then not be able to move a foot; to want to buy the moment by sacrificing everything and then to learn that it is not for sale, because “it depends not upon him who wills or upon him who runs but upon God, who shows mercy” (Romans 9:16)! That this is beneficial for a person—who understands that? Here thoughtlessness does not venture to help with its extensive explanations about what is beneficial in life.
We have been speaking about the thorn in the flesh; we have tried to explain the expression in a general sense, that is, in the general sense in which, by pertaining to one single person, it pertains to all. We have not been particularly concerned about ferreting out what Paul may have particularly had in mind with this expression, and we have desired least of all to ask about it in the same sense that someone might ask whether Paul was tall or short, handsome, and the like. We are especially unwilling to suggest the possible accidental something, the possible insignificant something, that may be the single individual’s thorn in the flesh. Perhaps a description of this would fascinate a reader, perhaps would even lead a reader to admire the speaker, but it would, of course, be despicable if the speaker wanted to interfere in this way with the upbuilding. The general explanation, on the other hand, is this: that the highest life also has its suffering, has the hardest suffering; that no one is to desire light-mindedly anything from which he mendaciously omits the danger; that no one is to become discouraged by being placed in the danger of which he may have been ignorant; that no one is spiritlessly to prize the cozy and easygoing days of his life. If only a person is really aware of the dangerousness, he is already on the way to begin the good fight.341 The comfort will surely come, and one must not grasp it too early. The one who has spoken here is just a young person; he is not going to prevent anyone from being terrified, since he will not be able to comfort with the ambiguous experience that a long life has taught him, that the [V 123] danger was not as an apostle depicts it and as every more profound person at one time in his youth has suspected until the paths are separated—one person fights the good fight of danger and terror; the other becomes sagacious and spiritlessly rejoices over the security of life.