Epictetus's and Paul's Understandings of Grief and Comfort

Paul's understanding of grief and comfort in 2 Corinthians does not arise in a vacuum. Abraham Malherbe and others have done much to trace parallels to Paul's thought in the writings of the Epicureans, Stoics, and other popular philosophers of his day.Footnote ⁴ Epictetus's writings provide a useful comparison to Paul's use of the language of grief and comfort in 2 Cor 7:5–13a. Epictetus (ca. 50–130 C.E.) was a Stoic from Phrygia and a younger contemporary of Paul. Like Paul, Epictetus was deeply concerned with not only attracting people to his message but also exhorting them to hold fast to what he had first taught them. Unlike Paul, the core of Epictetus's message concerns conversion “to the rational life” rather than Paul's gospel of reconciliation.Footnote ⁵ Epictetus's extant works, the Discourses and the Handbook (compiled by his follower Arrian), reveal a philosopher deeply engaged in encouraging his followers to lead the rational life.Footnote ⁶ As W. A. Oldfather points out, Epictetus developed Stoic thought in a deeply religious direction and understood his message of the rational life to be purposed with calling people to “happiness” (ἡδονή) found in fulfilling the role to which God has assigned them.Footnote ⁷

Grief, as a category in Epictetus's thought, is largely subsumed under the category of mourning. Among the many words that are used to describe the human experience of limit and loss in Classical and Koine Greek, λυπέω and πενθέω and their related noun forms are commonly rendered in English as either “to grieve” or “to be sorrowful.” Epictetus uses both λυπέω and πενθέω to describe the phenomenon of grief. Generally, he holds grief in high contempt as an aberrant instance of a person's failure to fulfill their God-assigned role in life. He asks in the Discourses, “[B]ut to have God as our maker, and father, and guardian,—shall this not suffice to deliver us from griefs (λυπῶν) and fears?” (1.9.7–8).Footnote ⁸ For Epictetus the failure to regard God in this manner and the placement of someone else (such as Caesar) in God's place can only lead to unhappiness, grief, and fear (1.9.20). If one too highly regards those things outside their moral purpose, they fall into “envy, yearn[ing], flatter[y], feel[ing] disturbed.” If they regard those things as evil, they “sorrow (λυπείσθω), grieve (πενθείτω), lament, [are] unhappy” (3.11.2). This state of envy, sorrow, and grief befalls “the man who is uninstructed and disobedient to the divine injunctions” (4.4.32). Grief is but one of many realities that mark the life of one who “disobeys the divine governance” (3.24.43) and restrain that person from experiencing ἡδονή, the happiness that charactertizes a life ordered by God.Footnote ⁹

In contrast to Epictetus, Paul uses λυπέω and πενθέω in two distinct ways.Footnote ¹⁰ In the two occurrences of πενθέω in the Pauline corpus (1 Cor 5:2; 2 Cor 12:21), Paul describes his own sadness and the sorrow that he expects of the Corinthians in the face of the sins of others within their congregation.Footnote ¹¹ In contrast to these infrequent and limited uses of πενθέω, λυπέω is a prominent motif in 2 Corinthians and specifically in chapters 1–9 where all sixteen attestations of this root in 2 Corinthians occur. Paul's use of λυπέω in 2 Corinthians suggests he understands the Corinthians’ grief as their regret and mental anxiety for their part in the rift between them and Paul.Footnote ¹² In 2 Cor 7:5–13a, Paul describes the Corinthians’ experiences of λύπη as resulting in “repentance” (ἐλυπήθητξ εἰϛ μετάνοιαν) among them (7:9). In contrast to his attested uses of πενθέω to describe an individual's regret for the actions of another, Paul employs λυπέω to describe an individual's sorrow and mental anxiety for his or her own misdeeds. This state of grief, when properly undertaken by the Corinthians, leads to their repentance and ultimately to their participation in salvation (7:10).

Paul describes the λύπη experienced by the Corinthians as ἡ γὰρ κατὰ θεὸν λύπη, “the grief according to God” (7:9–10). In sharp contrast to this “according to God” grief is the grief that is “of the world” (ἡ δὲ τοῦ κόσμου λύπη). Paul is speaking in terms of what J. Louis Martyn has called “apocalyptic antinomies.” In this case, Paul describes the Corinthians’ “choice between two ways” of grieving—grieving God's way or grieving of the world.Footnote ¹³ The contrast between κατὰ θεὸν and τοῦ κόσμου is sharp and demarcates grief done in concord with God's active work of reconciliation and grief done in conformity to the pattern of a world enslaved by the powers of sin and death. The former leads to “new creation” (καινὴ κτίσιϛ), while the latter becomes mired in anxiety, pain, and regret (5:17). Paul understands the griefFootnote ¹⁴ that results in reconciliation as done with a specific hope in God's eschatological work of “reconciling the world to himself” (5:19). In the end, God's salvific work of reconciliation manifests no regret for either party as they encounter reconciliation in which wrongs are voiced, repentance is made, and relationships marked by mutual zeal are restored (7:10–11).

A crucial aspect of this process of grieving “according to God” is the Corinthians’ reception of God's work of comfort among them. Comfort, παράκλησιϛ, like grief, λύπη, is a predominant theme in the Corinthian correspondence.Footnote ¹⁵ Paul's initial eulogistic prayer to “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Messiah” introduces the theme of God's comfort in the letter by describing God as θεὸϛ πάσηϛ παρακλήσεωϛ, “the God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3). Likewise in 2 Cor 7:6, Paul describes God as the one “who comforts the downhearted.” Comfort comes to console those who are afflicted, either Paul or the Corinthians (1:4). If Paul receives afflictions or consolation, “it is for [the] consolation and salvation” of the Corinthians. The Corinthians experience this same consolation when they “patiently endure the same sufferings which [Paul and his compatriots] are also suffering” (1:6). The repetition of this language suggests that grief and comfort are at the heart of Paul's larger concerns in 2 Corinthians.Footnote ¹⁶

Paul's use of παρακαλέω in 2 Corinthians is shaded towards comfort or consolation instead of its dominant rhetorical usage as exhortation, urging, and encouraging that one finds in Romans and 1 Thessalonians.Footnote ¹⁷ His use of παρακαλέω as meaning comfort entails, however, both God's action to assuage the anxiety of either Paul or the Corinthians and his exhortation to both parties. Rhetorically, Paul's announcement of God's comfort here tells the Corinthians that Paul is joyful at their renewed zeal for him. In the end, the Corinthian community stands “chaste,” “holy,” and “pure” (2 Cor 7:11; ἀγνοὺϛ). Their fidelity to Paul declares their purity to themselves and “before God” (7:12) and says that they are reconciled and ready for the completion of the Jerusalem Collection (the collection of money from the Pauline communities for the poor in Jerusalem; e.g., 2 Cor 9:1–15).Footnote ¹⁸ Mutual suffering and divine consolation unify Paul and his congregations in their shared life and work. This affirmation of consolation and comfort that comes in the midst of such affliction exhorts the Corinthians; they should now hold fast to God's work of reconciliation and remain faithful to the gospel that Paul preaches like a chaste virgin prepared for the Messiah. The exhortation is God's, not Paul's, and it comes through God's work of reconciliation. God's work of reconciliation in Jesus proclaims comfort to both Paul and the Corinthians and calls them to new faithfulness marked by their mutual suffering and God's consolation.

In contrast to Paul's usage, Epictetus's use of the verb παρακαλέω rarely includes notions of consolation or comfort. Otto Schmitz points out that the technical and tentative use of the verb παρακαλέω to describe comfort or consolation (as in 2 Corinthians) is uncommon in Hellenic literature. He writes, “In the rare instances in which the verb and noun mean ‘to comfort’ or ‘comfort’ in ordinary Gk. usage, the consolation is mostly at the level of exhortation or encouragement to those who sorrow.”Footnote ¹⁹ In like manner, Epictetus's use of παρακαλέω runs the gamut of exhortation (1.16.21), summoning (2.7.21; 15.15; 3.33.25), and urging (1.10.10; 2.24.2), but never comfort. Epictetus does not talk about providing comfort to the sick or those mourning but rather entreats them to return from these passions to the state of happiness to which God called them.

Paul and Epictetus both engage in diatribes designed to convert and exhort their followers to a reality ordered by God. The life that Paul proclaims, however, is not one that regards λύπη as aberrant emotionalism and παράκλησιϛ as exhortation to the rational life.Footnote ²⁰ Paul's message focuses on the eschatological reign of God that reorders and transforms reality. The marks of those participating in this new, eschatological community of the Messiah are not rationality but sanctification and reconciliation. Grief, if done “according to God” and assuaged by godly comfort, can be productive and end in reconciliation. It is not, as Epictetus suggests, a state to be escaped, so that one might instead live in the divinely ordered role for one's life. Epictetus understands grief to be an aberrant condition for which there is no need of comfort but rather exhortation to return to one's rightful duties in the world. Paul understands the basic definition of grief in terms similar to those of Epictetus: mental anxiety and sadness marked by regret. Paul's articulation of grief and comfort in the categories of reconciliation and sanctification forces us, however, to look elsewhere for the sources of Paul's understanding of grief and comfort, specifically to the books of Lamentations and Isaiah.

Grief and Comfort in Lamentations 1–2 and Second Isaiah

The theology of comfort articulated during and after the exile in Lamentations 1–2 and Second Isaiah informed Paul's own understanding of comfort in 2 Corinthians more broadly and in 2 Cor 7:5–13a specifically. Paul uses the language of comfort throughout 2 Corinthians to describe God's activity among the Corinthians (see Isa 40:1) and quotes Isa 49:8 in 2 Cor 6:8 to call the Corinthians to respond to the impending reality of God's work of reconciliation. The connection between Isaiah and 2 Corinthians is not limited, however, to explicit citation or thematic similarity but consists in Paul's alluding to and echoing the language of Second Isaiah as well as that of Lamentations 1–2. This relationship has not gone unnoticed in the history of scholarship.Footnote ²¹ In more recent works, Gregory K. BealeFootnote ²² and Paul BarnettFootnote ²³ highlight the prominent role of Isaiah 40–55 (the so-called “Book of Consolation”) in shaping Paul's rhetoric in 2 Corinthians.

Beale's discussion of the Isaianic “backgrounds” of 2 Corinthians presumes an understanding of Pauline theology that sees Isaiah's prophecies as unfulfilled in their own day but ultimately fulfilled in the person and work of Jesus. For Beale, Paul's language of reconciliation is his “way of explaining that Isaiah's promises of ‘restoration’ from the alienation of exile have begun to be fulfilled by the atonement and forgiveness of sins in Christ.”Footnote ²⁴ In placing so much emphasis on the fulfillment of the promise, though, Beale ignores the role that Lamentations plays in Paul's thought. Perhaps this is because Beale's discussion only treats 2 Cor 5:17–7:6 and does not continue into the core of the pericope discussed in this article. As I will argue, Paul appropriates language from both Second Isaiah and Lamentations 1–2 as a paradigm to interpret the Corinthians’ contemporary experience, albeit through a Christological lens, and not as a promise from the Old Testament that is only fulfilled in the life of the Corinthian community.

Barnett's analysis of Paul's use of Second Isaiah is not governed by a rigid promise-fulfillment schema. Unlike Beale, he understands Isaiah's example as a paradigm for Paul's self-understanding of his mission.

Like Beale, Barnett pays scant attention, however, to the role of Lamentations and its intertextual relationship with Second Isaiah in informing his understanding of Paul's thought in 2 Corinthians.Footnote ²⁶ Israel's experience of both loss and comfort during the period of the Babylonian Exile provides language that Paul uses to give theological meaning to the rift and reconciliation that he and the Corinthians have experienced. As I will show, the pained expressions of loss and alienation in Lamentations 1–2 and Second Isaiah's words of comfort and reconciliation become the theological lexicon for Paul's own prophetic announcements among the Corinthians.

Composed in the Judean community after the desolation and destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587/586 B.C.E., Lamentations 1–2 consist of communal laments over the loss of “Daughter Zion,” the city of Jerusalem personified. She is one from whom “all her majesty has departed” (Lam 1:6), whose “downfall was appalling, with none to comfort her” (1:9), and who is afflicted (1:7, 9). The desolation and humiliation that YHWHFootnote ²⁷ has wrought on Daughter Zion radically transforms the social order of the city. There are no longer “festival and Sabbath” because YHWH has abolished them in Zion through the destruction of the Temple (2:6).Footnote ²⁸ Daughter Zion's nakedness is exposed for the entire world as her wall “lay in ruins” and “her gates have sunk into the ground” (2:8–9). Because Jerusalem has “sinned grievously,” the mourners affirm that she has become a “mockery” (1:8). Her “transgression” of adultery with foreign powers has led to her rejection as a suitable spouse for YHWH (1:2, 14, 19). Her elders describe her as a virgin but whose ruin is “vast as the sea” (2:13). All that is within the city and gone from the city is gathered up in “sackcloth” and ashes (2:10) to “mourn” (1:4), to “groan” (1:11), and to “cry out in the night” (2:19). Daughter Zion is caught up in a great pattern of grief and lamentation, and there is no one to comfort her.

In fact, the lack of comfort for Daughter Zion stands as a more predominant motif in Lamentations 1–2 than any other language of grief.Footnote ²⁹ λυπέω only appears in the Greek translation of these chapters once as λυπεῖται in 1:22, and there only to say that the heart of Daughter Zion has grown faint under all of her groans in the face of destruction. Despite the lack of use of λυπέω as the broad category under which the Judeans voice their recognition of sin and cry for reconciliation, there are similarities between Lamentations 1–2 and Paul's own description of his relationship with the Corinthians. The elders of Jerusalem are charged as Paul is with keeping Jerusalem (Corinth) as a virgin free from ruin (Lam 2:13; 2 Cor 11:2). In addition all of Jerusalem's inhabitants are engaged in grief and lament that acknowledge their sin (Lam 1:14; 2 Cor 7:9), causes physical and emotional ailment in response to the loss (Lam 1:20–22; 2 Cor 1:7; 2:4–5; 7:5), and cries aloud to God for reconciliation and restoration (Lam 2:18–22; 2 Cor 7:12).

The communal refrain that Jerusalem experiences “no comfort” (Lam 1:2; likewise 1:9, 16, 17, 21; 2:13) is crucial to the discussion of grief and comfort in 2 Corinthians. In Lamentations the lack of /παρακαλῶνFootnote ³⁰ becomes a refrain to Israel's admission of sin and her own tear-filled pleas for YHWH to recognize the pain that has come upon his people because of his judgment (2:18–22). Unlike the perspective on grief in Epictetus's thought, the laments in Lamentations 1–2 do not scorn the realities of pain and suffering as an aberration for humanity but articulate them as a harsh and painful reality of Israel's existence. The distinction between these two perspectives on grief and comfort may stem from the markedly different contexts for lament in Epictetus's writings and in the poems of Lamentations. For Epictetus grief and comfort are the experiences of individuals personally responding to the generic vicissitudes of life in the world overseen by a generic god. In contrast, as Alan Mintz has noted, the context of Israel's suffering and lament is her covenant relationship with YHWH. Certainly, Lamentations 1–2 describes the suffering of an individual, Daughter Zion, but she is a personification of the whole community.Footnote ³¹ Like the Israel whom she personifies, she is supposed to be under the aegis of covenantal protection. Her cries rise to God within the context of this covenant. She does not retreat from the confession of the justice of God's actions (1:18). Rather, she confronts God with the horror of the destruction she has endured (2:19–22). In the final form of Lamentations, this portrayal of suffering becomes the basis for the appeal for God to renew the covenant and ultimately to bring Daughter Zion the comfort for which she has longed (5:17–22).

On the basis of shared phrases and the recurrence of the Daughter Zion motif and the Broken Household metaphor, Norman K. Gottwald and Carol A. Newsom each have rightly argued that the poems of Lamentations are answered by YHWH's pronouncement of comfort, restoration, and reconciliation in Second Isaiah.Footnote ³² The prophecies of Second Isaiah address the socio-political situation of the exilic community following the conquest of the Babylonian Empire by the Achaemenid ruler, Cyrus the Great in 539/538 B.C.E.Footnote ³³ As Kathleen M. O'Connor writes, “The story that Second Isaiah receives interpreted Zion's history only into the thick of exile, into the period of her divorce. Second Isaiah now needs her story to get the people out of exile.”Footnote ³⁴ To accomplish this task, Second Isaiah boldly begins by proclaiming God's imperative call to the exiled leadership of “Jerusalem” to “comfort” the forlorn people (Isa 40:1; LXX παρακαλεῖτε παρακαλεῖτε τὸν λαόν μου; MT). This message of comfort is combined with a message of YHWH's forgiveness of sins (40:2) and an exhortation for her to prepare the way of YHWH that will overturn the political realities that hold Judah in bondage. In response to Zion's doubts about the truthfulness of YHWH's eschatological claims of comfort and social reordering, Second Isaiah evokes the trustworthy word of YHWH (40:8) and describes the present reality of God's redemptive work evidenced in Zion's “builders outdo[ing her] destroyers” (49:17).

Paul's rhetoric in 2 Corinthians serves a similar social function among the Corinthian community as Second Isaiah's words to the exiled Judean community. Paul's message of comfort comes to a community whose relationship with their leader has been strained, nearly to the point of breaking (2 Cor 2:1–4; 7:8). His announcement of God's comfort is purposed with provoking renewed fidelity on the part of the Corinthians to the gospel (1:1–7; 7:11–12). Central to his announcement is acknowledgement of God's forgiveness of the Corinthians’ sins and the ongoing participation in God's present redemptive work (7:10–12). A crucial feature of Paul's rhetoric is his own confidence in the trustworthiness of God's word to the Corinthian community (1:20). Like Second Isaiah, Paul's words to the Corinthians carry the urgent imperative of the immanent reality of God's action on the socio-political stage and in the life of this particular community.

Another predominant theme in Second Isaiah and Lamentations 1–2 is the loss and restoration of the children of Daughter Zion. Whereas Zion's cry of forsakenness went unanswered in Lamentations 1–2, YHWH quickly responds in Second Isaiah to Daughter Zion's pleas.

This birthing of children by the childless is not merely a sign of YHWH's capacity to bring life from situations of desolation. YHWH's gift of children to the childless of Daughter Zion ultimately exceeds the children of preexilic Judah.Footnote ³⁵

Second Isaiah's emphasis on the restoration of children whose loss was mourned by Daughter Zion in Lamentations is intimately interconnected with the theme of the abandoned wife restored to marital relationship (e.g., Isa 54:4–8). Paul's description of the restored Corinthian congregation as “chaste,” “holy,” and “pure” (ἀγνοὺϛ) evokes her preparation for a renewed relationship with Israel's God modeled on Isaiah's description of Judah's renewed relationship with YHWH after the Exile (2 Cor 7:11; see also 11:2). Ultimately, the Corinthian congregation's marital purity signifies their reconciliation with God and presages the abundance of grace to which that relationship will give birth.

The experience of exile and restoration vividly disclosed in the language of Lamentations 1–2 and Second Isaiah becomes the paradigm for Paul's words of comfort and exhortation to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians. As J. Ross Wagner has shown in reference to Paul's use of Isaiah in Romans, Paul consistently uses the language and narrative of Second Isaiah in order to describe the work he sees himself embodying.

In 2 Corinthians Paul stands “in concert” with not only Second Isaiah but also Lamentations 1–2. While Paul's use of these texts is not purposed with articulating his experience of Israel's story as in Romans, he does use them as a paradigm for articulating the shape of his relationship with the Corinthians. The use of these scriptures establishes a similar three-act plot line for describing their recent experience: exile, lament, and consolation. Lamentations and its cry of “no-comfort” and vision of desolation gives voice to the first two stages. Second Isaiah and its jubilant shouts of comfort and restoration provide the language for the last stage. The Corinthians, as a predominantly gentile community with limited education in Israel's scriptures, may well have missed Paul's allusions to Second Isaiah and Lamentations 1–2. Nevertheless, Paul uses the paradigm of grief and consolation from these texts because it establishes a plot line for embodying the significance of Jesus' advent in the life and suffering of this and other local communities of his followers.

Like Second Isaiah, Paul speaks words of comfort to the Corinthians in the midst of a world consumed by affliction and suffering, a world groaning for the completion of God's eschatological work of redemption and reconciliation. Paul's words, like those of Isaiah during the Exile, are simultaneously a word of comfort to a people entrapped in the reality of brokenness and a word of exhortation to prepare for the impending coming of their Lord. Because they focus only on Paul's appropriation of the theology of consolation from Isaiah 40–55, Beale and Barnett miss the clear resonance of Lamentations 1–2 (and its vision of Daughter Zion's lack of comfort) in Paul's pattern of care for the Corinthian community. This experience of grief and lack of comfort is not, for Paul, an unnatural state, as it is for Epictetus. Rather, these experiences of suffering and grief are essential facets of reconciliation and paradigms for how the Corinthians should engage in “godly grief.” Ultimately, Paul sees the Corinthians’ participation in this cycle of suffering and comfort as identification with “the sufferings of Messiah” and the “abundant… consolation” made available through the Messiah (2 Cor 1:5). The death and resurrection of Jesus not only answer the grief Paul and the Corinthians face but also enable Paul to embrace this pain (and invite the Corinthians to join him) in the texture of salvation that moves from death to life. For Paul, comfort comes as God's work to assuage this pain and grief. Comfort is part of the process of reconciliation and salvation leading to the renewed participation of the Corinthians in the common work of Paul and the communities he founded.