NT057 - 2 Corinthians and the Shape of Christian Leadership

Questions about the nature and responsibilities of Christian leadership are of perennial importance for the church, and our present cultural moment, within and outside the church, elevates the urgency of our need to critically examine our understandings of leadership.

Paul’s letters to the Corinthian church are a great resource for us to draw on if we want to do that. In 1 Corinthians, especially for the first four chapters, we see Paul engaging with the Corinthian church and exposing the ways in which they have uncritically imposed a set of mainstream, pagan assumptions about leadership onto the way in which they regard and relate to their leaders within the church. That difference of perspective between Paul and the Corinthians doesn’t go away; in fact it escalates and becomes a crisis, in which Paul’s own leadership credentials are brought into question because he doesn’t measure up to those pagan expectations and assumptions. And in 2 Corinthians Paul addresses that crisis head on: he defends his ministry against the accusations of his critics; he critiques the alternative vision that they have been captured by; he appeals for reconciliation with the church; and all the while he continues to exercise his responsibilities toward them as an apostle and a pastor, urging them to live out and live up to their calling in Christ, to be part of the outworking of God’s grace and righteousness in the world.

In this subject we dive deep into 2 Corinthians, reading the letter in the context of that crisis in Paul’s relationship with the Corinthians, drawing out the theology of Christian ministry and leadership that Paul is defending and promoting within the letter, and thinking together about the implications of that vision for our own context and the way in which we lead and raise up leaders within it.

Pre/Co-requisite Units: 

Level 7 and 8 - 24cps NT
Level 9 - 48cps Level 8; 12cps from units in OT or NT with a unit code of OT004 or higher code or NT004 or higher code, or study deemed equivalent by the ACT Registrar to appropriately prepare students for undertaking the unit.

Unit Exclusions: 

Unit exclusions: NT030

Full Course Unit Descriptor:

For the full Course Unit Descriptor, please see the Australian College of Theology website