pharoah

This mysterious concept (delivering unto Satan) pops up twice in the NT, here and here. Does anyone know what is meant here?

yalla

I suggested once that the I Cor bit was an encouragement or even command to commit murder but was assured that it really only means excommunication from the church, therefore no longer being "with Christ".
Take your pick.

pharoah

I seriously doubt murder was meant here and it also doesn't seem to be something as extreme as excommunication either, because the Corinthians example mentions "that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus".

yalla

OK I'll keep guessing.
The naughty person will be "taken away from among you" 1 cor 5.2. After they are "assembled all together".
Seems to support some sort of separation from something...the church maybe [excom] or ...what? A ritual punishment? Public forced confession type of thing? Being sent to Coventry ie a "shunning"?

Is the object to "purge out the old leaven" ...that is the impurity that has caused this sinner, the spirit of Satan perhaps, to commit the dastardly fornication?
Is the "destruction of the flesh" meant in the sense that ''flesh" means "bodily lust", that the flesh is the source of sin?
So what do we have...an impurity...which is satan...the flesh causing sin..to be purged from the sinner...at an assembly...via some ritual...so that he can be as Christ ie in the spirit of Christ [got that bit from elsewhere] as opposed to a fleshy=sinful=unpurged sinner.

But I can't fit "taken away from you" into that.
Unless...

Passing through a ritual, a stage akin to initiation a la mystery religion...to go somewhere [unspecified, perhaps mystical, state of awareness] and return whole..in spirit?
I dunno...just guessing.
What is your take?

pharoah

The more that I think about it, your murder hypothesis may not be so far-fetched after all. One could argue that Ananias and Sapphira were "delivered unto Satan" by Peter. Another maybe more plausible hypothesis is that it was some sort of hex or curse, such as when God delivered Job to Satan.

yalla

Well when, on a previous occasion, I suggested incitement to murder I was not altogether serious.
And when "excommunication" was suggested to me I thought that was plausible and possible but not entirely convincing.

Does a hex or curse fit into the Pauline context?

Whatever is meant it's clearly pretty durn serious and a sign of the power and authority of Paul in that he expects his order to be obeyed. And the receivers of the letter presumably knew what he meant.

I haven't looked at the Tim example, will do so later, partly because it's not by Paul and that means the author probably didn't know what Paul meant anyway.
And I think the parallel to Acts is not relevant either as, again, I reckon the author of Acts is on a different path there and is not well versed in Paul's thought anyway. Different horse on a different course.

I was hoping someone else would weigh in with considered informed conjecture but thus far this topic doesn't seem to interest people as much as it does me.
I have a few commentaries on Paul but they shed no light on the matter.
Cheers
yalla

Steven Carr

'you are to hand this man over to Satan for his body to be destroyed, so that his spirit may be saved in the Day of the Lord'.

And yet apologists seriously argue that Paul wrote that letter to tell Christians that saved people would have both their spirit *and* their body saved in the Day of the Lord.

How clearly does Paul have to write for them to understand that Paul thinks our current body and our spirit will have different fates?

Of course, the Gospels claim that Jesus body and his spirit did *not* have a different fate - both were resurrected, and apologists really, really need to make Paul also say that.