I think Paul is caught between knowing if he finally made a mistake in talking about his ‘third heaven’ experience. (All that follows is the result of some personal reflections and wrestling – maybe writing out loud.)
It is necessary to boast; nothing is to be gained by it, but I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows— was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat (2 Cor. 12: 1-4).
He suggests that the immaturity of the Corinthians forced him to become a ‘fool’ by sharing (in a not very well disguised way) that he had visited the third heaven. As I read the text I don’t think he is fully reconciled as to the wisdom of what he has shared. ‘If I must become a fool’, and maybe he thought after the manuscript had left that he was simply that.
Scripture has many crazy encounters, trances, visits, visitations and so on. Gnosticism (that sort of elusive term) had many crazy claims and it seemed so many are rooted in their inability to be at home with here, that which God had created.
Why do crazy experiences happen? For the sake of someone else. Not for the sake of a story. A visit to the third heaven is in order to be different for someone else, to have a resource that somehow one did not have before. Time to dial down the spectacular, the ‘I had this experience’ or even ‘I know someone who…’ No, no dialling down of expectation or the experience… just the mouth! A few maybe need to know, but the epistle to the Corinthians? Maybe, only maybe if they are really immature, but then I am not sure Paul made the right call.
I’ve always been fascinated by this passage… “Heard things that are ILLEGAL for a MORTAL to repeat” (pixley version)…
I’ve often wondered what those things were and why anything spoken where truth is supreme would be forbidden anywhere else…what does the truth have to hide?
“You’ve been here before Paul you just cannot remember”
“Everyone gets in”
“Your mortality was never meant to harm you”
“This is the eleventy-first time we’ve done this with humanity”
Who knows?…of course its none of our business, and in this case boasting about it was pretty close to breaking the conditions of the revelation…
Its weird to me that heaven apparently has Non-disclosure agreements that folks have signed onto.
Did Paul mess up? It kind of tweaks the text a bit to suggest so…Like God telling Jobs friends that they’ve said wrong things about Him but then not saying what those things were.