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2Co_2:5-11. Digression regarding the pardon to be granted to the incestuous person.
That the incestuous person is meant, as even Klöpper maintains in spite of his assumption of a lost intermediate letter, is denied by Tertullian (de Pudicitiâ, 13) simply for dogmatic-ascetic reasons. The exclusion, which Paul demanded in the first Epistle, 2Co_5:13, left open the possibility of a return to the communion of the church by the path of suitable penitence and expiation; as may be gathered also from 1Co_5:5, where the apostle’s threat of the higher excommunication, of the giving over to Satan, contemplates in this punishment the conversion and saving of the offender, and consequently shows clearly that in the apostle’s eyes the penal procedure of the church, even in the case of so grave a sin, was of a paedagogic nature in reference to the person of the evil-doer. The penance of the latter, however, as well as that of the whole church on his account (2Co_7:7 ff.), may have really been so deeply and keenly manifested, that Paul, in accordance with the now changed state of things, might express himself in such a mild, conciliatory way as he does here. And there is no sufficient ground in the passage for the assumption of an intermediate letter, or that there is here meant, not the unchaste person, but a slanderer rebuked by Paul in this intermediate letter (see Introd. § 1). Besides, the mild, soft tone of the present passage, if it referred to such a personal opponent, would not be in keeping with the quite different way in which, from chap. 10 onwards, he pours forth his apostolic zeal against his personal opponents and slanderers.