2 Corinthians 12:3Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

After mentioning dangers, temptations, plots, vexations, and shipwrecks, he now passes to another kind of praise, saying: "I know a man ... who fourteen years ago, whether in the body I do not know, or outside the body I do not know; God knows, was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man, whether in the body or outside the body I do not know; God knows, that he was caught up into Paradise and heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for man to utter. Of such a man I will boast; but of myself I will not boast" (vv. 2-5). This revelation is great. Nor was it the only one, but there were many others. Yet he mentions one out of many. That there were many, hear how he himself says it: "lest I be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations" (v. 7).

From the third heaven, he says, he was again caught up into Paradise. He was caught up so that in this respect also he should not be inferior to the other Apostles who lived with Christ. He uses the expression "into Paradise" because the name of this place was commonly known, and the Lord Himself promised it to the thief. He heard ineffable words which cannot be retold to those who think in a human way and have nothing spiritual. From this it is clear that the so-called "Revelation of Paul" is a spurious work. For how could it be otherwise, if the words mentioned were ineffable? Thus, according to the literal sense, the third heaven and Paradise are different places. In the figurative sense, however, these words may have one meaning, or they may not.

"I know a man in Christ, fourteen years ago: whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know; God knows. Such a one was caught up to the third heaven. And I know such a man: whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. He was caught up into Paradise and heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter" (2 Cor 12:2-4).

People usually ask first what the Apostle calls the third heaven in these words. Then they ask whether he wished Paradise to be understood there, or whether, after being caught up to the third heaven, he was also caught up into Paradise, wherever that Paradise may be.

In that case, being caught up to the third heaven would not mean the same thing as being caught up into Paradise. He would first have been caught up to the third heaven, and then into Paradise.

This question is so two-sided that, it seems to me, it can be resolved only if someone finds proof elsewhere. He must use not these present words of the Apostle, but other passages of Holy Scripture or evident facts.

From these he would have to prove whether Paradise is in the third heaven or is not there. For it is unclear what the third heaven itself is, and whether it should be understood with reference to bodily or spiritual things.

One could say, of course, that a man can be caught up bodily only into some bodily place. Yet the Apostle speaks in such a way that he does not know whether he was caught up in the body or out of the body.

Who, then, will dare to say of himself that he knows what the Apostle did not know? Still, if neither spirit without body can be caught up into bodily places, nor body into spiritual ones, then his very uncertainty compels us to understand the place in the same way.

This is so, provided that we allow that the Apostle writes about himself. We must understand the place where he was caught up in such a way that one cannot determine or discern whether it is bodily or spiritual.

Chapter II. The Apostle could have been unaware whether he saw Paradise out of the body, if he saw it in ecstasy.

For when bodily images are presented to us in sleep or in ecstasy, we do not distinguish them at all from bodies themselves. This lasts until, returning to the bodily senses, we become conscious that we were dealing with images perceived apart from bodily senses.

Who, after waking from sleep, does not immediately feel that he has seen dreams? Yet while he saw them in sleep, he could not distinguish them from the bodily sights of those who are awake.

I know, however, that it has happened to me, and therefore I do not doubt that it could or can happen to others. While seeing something in sleep, I have felt that I was seeing it precisely in sleep.

Even while asleep, I felt and firmly believed that the images which usually strike us in sleep by their incongruity were not true bodies. They were appearing to me in sleep.

Yet at times I was also mistaken. For example, seeing my friend in sleep, I tried to persuade him that the bodies we saw were not true bodies, but images of sleeping persons in a dream.

Yet he himself also appeared to me in the same dream, like those images. Even the very fact that we were speaking together was not true. He, while asleep, was now seeing something else, and did not know whether I too was seeing the same thing.

Still, when I tried to persuade him that this was not he himself, I partly inclined to think that it was indeed he. I certainly would not have spoken with him if I had been convinced that it was not he.

Thus the soul of one asleep, though in a wondrous way awake, can be deceived by images of bodies as though they were bodies themselves.

In ecstasy, however, I have had occasion to hear only one man, and he was a simple, uneducated man who could scarcely express his perceptions. Yet he knew that he was awake and was seeing something not with his eyes.

"My soul saw it," he said, as far as I can recall his very words, "and not my eyes." But he did not know whether it was a body or a bodily image.

For he was not such as to be able to distinguish such things. Yet he was at the same time so simple and sincere that I listened to him with as much trust as if I had myself seen what he said he saw.

Therefore, if Paul saw Paradise as Peter saw the vessel descending from heaven (Acts 10:11), or as John saw all that he describes in the Apocalypse (Rev 1:12), then it is clear that he could have been unaware whether he saw in the body or out of the body.

The same applies if he saw it as Ezekiel saw the field with the bones of the dead and their resurrection (Ezek 37:1-10), or as Isaiah saw God sitting, with the seraphim around Him and the altar. From that altar the coal was taken which cleansed the prophet's lips (Isa 6:1-7).

Chapter III. The Apostle, being certain that he saw the third heaven, was not certain how he saw it.

But if he saw out of the body, and did not see bodies, one may ask whether these were bodily images, or a substance which bears no likeness of a body.

Such are God, the mind, understanding, or human reason. Such also are the virtues: prudence, justice, purity, love, piety, and everything that we enumerate, distinguish, and define mentally.

We do not see their outline, their color, how they sound, what they smell like, what taste they have in the mouth, or what they are to the touch in warmth or cold, softness or hardness, smoothness or roughness.

Rather, we contemplate them by a sight, light, and representation of another kind, and one far more excellent and more certain than the rest.

Let us return again to the Apostle's words and examine them more carefully. First we must accept as certain that the Apostle knew far more, and incomparably more fully than we, what we are trying somehow to know about incorporeal nature.

Therefore, if he knew that spiritual things can in no way be seen through the body, nor bodily things apart from the body, why did he not discern, from what he saw, how he could see it?

For if he was certain that these were spiritual things, why was he not at the same time certain that he saw them out of the body? But if he knew that they were bodily things, why did he not know that he could see them only through the body?

Whence, then, does uncertainty arise in him as to whether he saw them in the body or out of the body? Was he perhaps also uncertain whether they were bodies or bodily images?

Let us first see what, in the composition of his words, he is not uncertain about. Then, if something remains in them about which he is uncertain, perhaps what is not uncertain will solve how he is uncertain about this also.

"I know," he says, "a man in Christ, fourteen years ago: whether in the body I do not know, or whether out of the body I do not know; God knows. Such a one was caught up to the third heaven."

Therefore he knows a man in Christ who was caught up to the third heaven fourteen years earlier. He has no uncertainty at all about this. We, then, also ought not to doubt it.

But whether that man was caught up in the body or out of the body, he is uncertain. Since he is uncertain, who among us will dare to be certain of it?

Will it not be consistent for us, in this case, also to be uncertain about the third heaven, to which he says that man was caught up?

For if something real is indicated in the Apostle's words, then the third heaven is also indicated in them. But if only some image of bodily things is given in them, then there was no third heaven.

The reference to it would then have been made in this sense. The Apostle, as it seemed to him, reached the first heaven, above which he again saw a heaven.

Having reached that, he saw another heaven. Having then reached the last, he could say that he had been caught up to the third heaven.

But he is not uncertain that there existed a third heaven to which he was caught up. Nor does he want us to be uncertain. For he says at the beginning, "I know," and then continues his discourse.

Thus only someone who does not believe the Apostle can consider untrue what the Apostle says he knows.

Chapter IV. The heaven to which the Apostle was caught up was truly the third heaven. The difficulty of how the Apostle was certain about the heaven he saw and not certain about how he saw it.

Therefore the Apostle knows a man caught up to the third heaven. Consequently, the heaven to which that man was caught up was truly the third heaven.

It was not some bodily sign, which Moses distinguished both from the very substance of God and from the visible creature in which God appeared to human and bodily senses. Moses distinguished them so clearly that he said, "Show me Yourself" (Exod 33:13).

Nor was it some image of a bodily thing, which John, seeing in spirit, asked what it meant. He received the answer that it was either a city, or peoples, or something else, when he saw a beast, or a woman, or waters, or something similar (Rev 13:1; 17:3).

Rather, he says, "I know a man caught up to the third heaven."

But if he wished to call heaven a spiritual image resembling the bodily heaven, then his body also was only an image of a body, in which he was caught up there.

Consequently, he called an image of a body his body, just as he called an image of heaven heaven. In that case, he would not have tried to distinguish what he knows from what he does not know.

He would not say that he knows a man caught up to the third heaven, yet does not know whether he was caught up in the body or out of the body. He would simply be recounting a vision, calling what he saw by the names of the things he saw.

When we recount our dreams, or certain revelations in them, we say, "I saw a mountain, I saw a river, I saw three men," and so on. We give those images the names of the things themselves whose likeness we saw.

But the Apostle says, "This I know, and this I do not know."

If both things appeared to him figuratively, then he either knew or did not know both equally. But if the heaven appeared to him in its own form, and therefore he knew about it, how could that man's body appear to him figuratively?

Indeed, if a bodily heaven appeared to him, why did he conceal whether it appeared to him by bodily eyes? If he was not certain whether it appeared to him by bodily eyes or in spirit, then for this reason he said, "In the body or out of the body I do not know."

Yet how was he not also uncertain whether a real bodily heaven appeared to him, or whether it appeared to him figuratively?

On the other hand, if an incorporeal substance appeared to him, not in the image of some body, but as justice, wisdom, and the like are contemplated by us, and if the heaven too was such, then clearly nothing like this can be seen by bodily eyes.

Therefore, if he knew that he had seen something of this kind, he could not doubt that he had seen it apart from the body. "I know," he says, "a man ... out of the body I do not know; God knows."

Chapter V. The same difficulty is resolved.

What, then, do you know, and what do you distinguish from what you do not know, for fear of leading believers astray? "A man," he says, "caught up to the third heaven."

But this heaven was either body or spirit. If it was body and was visible to bodily eyes, why does he know that it exists, but not know that it was seen by him in the body?

If it was spirit, then either it represented a bodily image. In that case it is equally unknown whether it was body and whether it was seen by him in the body.

Or else it was seen as wisdom is contemplated by the mind, that is, without any bodily images. In that case it is known that it could not have been seen through the body.

Consequently, either both things are known, or both are unknown, or what was seen is known while the means by which it was seen is unknown.

For incorporeal nature clearly could not be seen through the body. Bodies, however, though they can be seen apart from the body, are certainly not seen as they are through the body, but by a wholly different manner, if such a manner exists.

“I know a man,” that is, my very self, “in Christ, fourteen years ago. Whether he was then in the body, I do not know; or whether outside the body, I do not know. God alone knows this.”

And this man was caught up to the third heaven, that is, to paradise, while still living here on earth.

If Paul had been able to express what the third heaven and the journey to it contained, whether ascent or being caught up, perhaps we would have learned something more about God, if this was the mystery of the rapture. But since it was ineffable, we too shall honor it with silence. We have heard Paul himself, who says that "we know in part and prophesy in part" (1 Cor 13:9). In this and similar matters this is confessed by one who is not ignorant in knowledge (2 Cor 11:6), who threatens to present proof that Christ speaks in him (2 Cor 13:3), the great champion and teacher of truth.

Although many revelations were granted to him, he chose to speak of the one given to him on the road to Damascus. He spoke of it as something known to all and described not in his own name. "I know a man in Christ," he says, "fourteen years ago, whether he was in the body or outside the body, I do not know." That is, at the time when he was caught up. After the revelation he knew that his mind had been caught up, while his companions said that his body had not been moved anywhere. He was caught up to the third heaven, or to the "third of the heavens," as the Greeks also say. For that is the Kingdom of Heaven, not heaven itself. Or this may refer to the two heavens which Moses enumerates for us (Gen 1:6), or to the heavens created together with the earth (Gen 1:1).

The Apostle saw many revelations, as he himself says: "I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord." Yet, being compelled, he related only one, and even this he ascribed to another person. For he says, "I know a man," not, "I myself." He also defines the time, thereby showing that he was compelled to speak of this for their sake. For during fourteen years he had not spoken of what he was counted worthy to see. As for "to the third heaven," some have maintained that the Apostle spoke of the third part of the distance between earth and heaven, to which he was caught up. There he heard ineffable words, which "it is not lawful for man," the Apostle did not say "to hear," but "to utter." For if it were impossible for man to hear them, how could he have heard them?

He had said the same thing just before. He repeated it only to confirm the truth of these words. When you hear, "he was caught up into Paradise," do not think that he is speaking of the earthly Paradise where God placed "the man whom He had formed." For "God planted Paradise" not in heaven, but on earth, "in Eden, in the east" (Gen 2:8). Since Paul said above that "he was caught up to the third heaven," his statement would have no coherence if we understood him thus. It would mean that from there, that is, from heaven, he was again caught up to earth, where Paradise is. There, and not in heaven, he would have heard ineffable words. What, then, did Paul mean when he said, "he was caught up into Paradise"? He meant the place where God dwells and especially manifests His glory.

"And I know such a man ... that he was caught up into Paradise." How is this to be understood? It means that he was brought into a blessed state like that in which the heavenly spirits and righteous souls abide. Such a state is ordinarily signified in Scripture by the name Paradise (Lk 23:43). It is, of course, what the Apostle above depicts metaphorically under the image of the third heaven. According to Theodoret's interpretation, the third heaven is precisely Paradise. In our consciousness and imagination, heaven is usually pictured as the opposite of earth, with its sorrows and burdens of life. "And he heard ineffable words, which it is not lawful for man to utter." That is, I received a revelation of mysteries for whose expression ordinary human language is insufficient (cf.

St. John Chrysostom, giving special attention to the Apostle's humility, which he shows further when reporting so great a wonder, says: "Why did the Apostle neither say plainly that he was speaking about himself, nor keep silent? In order to show by this also how reluctantly he approaches the matter. He also defined the time, fourteen years. He did not mention this without reason, but wished to show that, having kept silent for so long, he would not have spoken even now unless there had been great necessity. He said that he was caught up. But whether in the body or outside the body, he says, I do not know. If Paul himself does not know, much less can we know. That he was in Paradise he knows. That he was in the third heaven is also not unknown to him.

He confirms that he was truly caught up, that he clearly knew this, and that he knows it was reality, not some phantom imagination. He can only not say whether he was caught up in the body or outside the body.

This, he says, God alone knows. Evidently we do not need to know it. Surely it does not belong to the substance of the matter. There is no need to inquire.

He speaks as though saying: this vision is marvelous not only in its object, but also in the very manner of seeing. “When announcing a most wondrous and supernatural event, he insistently confirms that he does not know the manner in which it occurred” (Oecumenius).