A Different Kind of Strength

Second Corinthians is one of the strangest letters in the New Testament: a leader defending himself, a community in open doubt, and in the middle of it, some of Paul's clearest writing on power in weakness. Dr. Lois Malcolm, professor of systematic theology at Luther Seminary and author of a forthcoming commentary on the letter, joins Dwight Zscheile and Alicia Granholm to explore what that friction opens up for church leaders navigating a culture that no longer grants pastors automatic authority.

Lois traces why Paul turned down money from the Corinthians and accepted it from the far poorer Macedonians, unpacks the image of treasure carried in clay jars, and tells the story of her mother's imprisonment in a concentration camp and what it taught her about freedom. The conversation moves through baptismal identity, the ministry of reconciliation, and why Christian community has always asked hard things of the people inside it, without that difficulty ever being the point.