Let us consider the latter possibility first. St. Paul abandoned his direct visit (i.«. the Complicated Plan) ' in order to spare ' the Corinthians. This excludes at once from consideration the period between the painful letter and 2 Co. Let us suppose then that St. Paul, on receiving from Corinth unfavourable news (probably connected with the offender of 2^ 712), after he had dispatched 1 Co, proceeded thither in person. If so, St. Paul, unsuccessful (12^) at Corinth, returns to Ephesus (still i* Xi^>i) ; receives better news ; announces another immediate visit (i.e. the Complicated Plan) 'i» irnrgtdr.ini' {l^*); another estrange- ment, connected again with the offender of 2^ 712, breaks out ; St. Paul writes again i» KCrv^ and this time with more per- manent success, which he at last learns from Titus in Mace- donia. The improbability of this duplication of events condemns the entire hypothesis,, and drives us back on the other alterna- tive, that St. Paul's visit i» Xv^ti must have preceded 1 Co. But here we are encountered by the total ignorance of such a visit which that Epistle betrays. Not only is there * not a single trace ' of it (Weizsacker, pp. 277, 300) ; we are compelled to asK, and ask in vain, to what, on this assumption, was the Xuw; due ? Not to the rx'^f'^Tx, of which St. Paul knew only from Chloe's people. Not to the Tepuiet nor to the disorders in their ' assem- bling together,' of which he knew only by report (61 lli»). Not to the litigiousness (1 Co 6) nor to the denial of the Resurrec- tion, of both of which he speaks with indignant surprise. If the distressing second visit preceded 1 Co, the xiiTri which occasioned it was dead and buried when I Co was written, it had nothing to do with any of the subjects touched upon in 1 Co, and St. Paul's references to it in 2 Co are inexplicable.
In fact, the main ground on which Weizsiicker, Clemen, and others place it after 1 Co is the inadmissibility of placing it earlier ; while Schmiedel follows Neander, Olshausen, Reuss, Wiiseler, Meyer, Klopper, and many others in placing it earlier, because the attempt to find room for it later breaks down. He justly obsen'es that in a complicated h\-pothesis we cannot expect to harmonize all details satisfactorily, but must be con- tent with certainty where possible. But this may justify us in questioning the finality of the inferences drawn at first sight from 2 Co 21 12" 131.
Against the probability of either of the two hypotheses just discussed, we must weigh that of the interpretation of those verses ailopted by Paley (Horae Paul.), Baur, de Wette, Renan, Hilgenfeld, Davidson, Farrar, and others, that by rplroy tovto IpXofmi St. Paul means ' this is the third time I am coming' (i.e. meaning to come), while 2' simply states his resolve that his new visit (iriXiF iXSeiy) shall not be iv Xi'irj). This interpretation is at first sight of inferior probability to the more obvious sense of the words, but it harmonizes well with 13' (RVm) and with the ouKin of 1=^ (RV ; AV is against the idiom).
(t) Summary. — Timotliy's visit, then, hardly enters into our problem ; Titus visits Corinth three times, first (possibly as bearer of 1 Co) to organize the Xo7ia, the second time to cope with the troubles there, thirdly as bearer of 2 Co, and to complete the Xo^ia. The troubles at Corinth were mainly due to events subsequent to the situa- tion of 1 Co, and the offender of 2 Co 2. 7 was more probably an offender against St. Paul, connected with the Judaizing party, than the incestuou? person of 1 Co 5. The troubles, however, had taken root and hold in Corinth to a degree fai beyond what is traceable in I Co. It is not alto- getlier easy to combine the situation presupposed in 2 Co 1C^13"> with that in 2 Co 1-9 ; it is quite impossible to identify it with the situation of 1 Co. St. Paul, then, dispatched Titus to cope with new troubles at Corintli, the news of whicli had reached him after the dispatch of 1 Co, and had induced him to abandon an intended visit to Corinth, and to write a painful letter instead. To insert a visit of St. Paul to Corinth in connexion with this crisis ia impossible, while the painful letter, and the aban- donment of the Sevripa x^-P^t ^^e so closely bound up with the visit iv \inrji, that the three must rest on a single basis of/act. If so, the visit {y Xi/irjr was a visit abandoned, not one actually paid. Still less can we find a probable place for a second visit anterior to 1 C^o and connected with a painful crisis not dealt with in that Epistle. Accordingly, as the language of 2 Co is susceptible of a difierent though perhaps less prepossessing explanation, we
IL CORINTHIANS
XL CORINTIIIAXS
495
remove the intermediate visit from the horizon of either Epistle.
6. (a) A too timple scheme impossible. — We are now in a position to reconetruct tne order of events from the etidence. The simpler such an order, the fewer the events assumed, the better ; but we must not be tempted by this consideration to force the phenomena to combine where they do not naturally do so.