The Expositor's Bible: The Second Epistle to the Corinthians — Story, Setting & Ideas

Reconciliation as Two-Sided Transaction

Denney devotes sustained attention to 2 Corinthians 5:18–21, which he calls a passage of singular importance in Paul. He argues that the estrangement between God and humanity is not one-sided but involves an obstacle on God's side that must be dealt with before peace can be achieved. This leads him to reject modern interpretations that reduce reconciliation to a change in human attitude alone. Denney insists that Paul presents God as actively overcoming a real barrier within the divine relationship to sinners, and that this divine action is what makes the human response possible. The commentary here is notably polemical, engaging with alternative readings that Denney considers insufficiently attentive to the apostle's own logic.

Suffering as Apostolic Credential

Denney reads Paul's opening catalogue of afflictions not as autobiographical digression but as a deliberate demonstration of apostolic authenticity. He notes how Paul frames his hardships—pressures, perplexities, persecutions—as the very conditions through which divine power is made visible. The commentary draws attention to the paradoxical structure of Paul's claims: the apostle is struck down but not destroyed, sorrowful yet always rejoicing. Denney treats this pattern as a rhetorical strategy that undercuts the Corinthian preference for impressive, triumphalist spirituality. For Denney, Paul's weakness is not a concession but a theological argument about the nature of Christian ministry.

The Social Implications of the New Creation

In his treatment of 2 Corinthians 5:17, Denney extends the concept of new creation beyond individual transformation to its social consequences. He argues that those who have died with Christ to the world's divisive categories—Jew and Greek, bond and free—will recognize one another as one in him. The commentary here moves from exegesis to application, suggesting that Christian union transfigures society itself. Denney is careful to ground this claim in Paul's language of old things passing away and all things becoming new, and he warns against any attempt to produce this unity by merely social or institutional means. The religious reality, he insists, must precede the social one.

Denney's commentary rewards readers who attend to his close reading of Paul's Greek and his willingness to engage theological controversies directly. The volume assumes familiarity with the epistle's overall shape and does not provide introductory background. Those working through 2 Corinthians sequentially will find Denney a demanding but clarifying guide, especially on the passages where Paul's argument becomes most compressed and most personal.

The rain kept time with Denney’s steady prose, his Paul wrestling with reconciliation, frayed and honest. Later, that same ache for how early believers defended their fragile faith surfaced elsewhere. I found myself drifting through Arguments of Celsus, Porphyry, and the Emperor Julian, Against the Christians Also Extracts from Diodorus Siculus, Josephus, and Tacitus, Relating to the Jews — Background and Themes, hearing the other side’s sharp objections—a quieter, stranger conversation.