2 Corinthians 11:6 Commentary and Bible Study

What Paul says here disturbs people sometimes. The apostle has to present his credentials and he does in this way: ‘But though I be rude in speech, yet not in knowledge.’ Whatever does he mean, ‘though I be rude in speech’? The translators use the word in the sense of ignorant or unlearned. We could say, though I be like a layman in speech, or an untrained person, somebody who is simply, yes, not properly trained in rhetoric and the finer points or grammar and so on. Does he mean it? Well, not literally. We can see from the epistles of Paul that while they are the inspired word of God and God is at work, yet his own style is very learned, very beautiful, very precise; it is not at all coarse. The apostle Paul had had a most sophisticated university education. He was not a simpleton and he was not ignorant. He presented things in a most excellent manner, but of course he did speak Greek like a Jew and not a Greek, and deliberately he refrained from the great flights of fancy practiced by the Greek orators, which the false teachers were evidently imitating. He refrained from histrionics and from manipulation of language for beauty’s sake and he kept his messages simple and straight forward, so that anybody could understand them. But the false teachers viewed him with contempt. ‘Oh, he doesn’t engage in the great finesse and skill of the professional Greek orator. Those are the people we imitate.’So the apostle Paul says in effect, ‘Alright, let them say that I am simple in speech. Let them accuse me of that. What matters is knowledge, not the style of speech.’ He wasn’t as bad as he seems to allow here, but for the sake of argument he says, ‘So what? Let’s suppose what they say is true and fair. What matters is not the style but the knowledge’, and of course he had revealed knowledge, inspired knowledge, God’s given doctrines, that’s what matters. The second part of verse 6 picks up verse 5. ‘I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles … we have been throughly made manifest among you in all things.’ ‘In great works, in speech, in teaching, in healing, it has been evident that we are one with the other apostles.’