Thirteen weeks on 1 and 2 Corinthians, and we attempt a summary. The thread that keeps returning is Paul's pastoral instinct — not the rigid doctrinearian of some people's Sabbath School memories, but a writer who knows his congregation well and keeps refusing to answer many of the questions they're actually asking. Who's better, Paul or Apollos? Married or single? He sidesteps them, or answers them sideways. What he won't sidestep is what's temporary and what's permanent, what's worth devoting energy to and what isn't. We find ourselves more fond of Paul than we expected — and more aware that the damage done to his reputation says more about how he's been taught than about what he actually wrote.

"False teacher" is an accusation easy to throw around, but who gets to decide? The receiver of a teaching is not always the best judge of whether it was false — or even whether it was worthwhile. Paul's concern in 2 Corinthians 11 is real (charlatans do exist), but surely there are many people earnestly sharing "the gospel" as they believe it to be true, while being labeled "false" by others? Even within Adventism, many cherished theological ideas began as thoughts considered false by the communities the pioneers came out of. The episode ends with a challenge of introspection: usually we look out there for false prophets, but Paul in chapter 13 is willing to consider the possibility that he himself might have failed the test.

Paul tells the Corinthians that since they excel in so many things — faith, knowledge, enthusiasm, love — they should excel also in giving. It's an interesting framing: giving as something you can be genuinely good at. We sit with why generosity can feel uncomfortable to discuss in church, and explore a real tension in the passage between giving proportionally — sustainable, allows you to keep giving — and giving with reckless generosity, which seems more in the spirit of self-sacrificial love. Which kind of giving does Paul actually have in mind?

Paul opens 2 Corinthians 3 with a small piece of wordplay that turns out to carry a large idea: the Corinthian believers themselves are his letter of recommendation — written not in ink but by the Spirit, not on stone but on human hearts. That observation seems almost to launch Paul's thinking toward the old and new covenants, and the contrast between letter and Spirit. We trace that thread through to chapters 4 and 5, where the same contrast keeps returning in a different form: temporary versus permanent, troubles that won't last long versus a glory that lasts forever. We also pause on the word reconciliation — one of Paul's great themes, and a word that carries particular weight in an Australian context — and find that it may be less a once-and-done event than an ongoing commitment, which is perhaps exactly what "forever" implies.

Almost every New Testament epistle opens with "grace and peace" — and it turns out to be a phrase worth pausing on. It captures something essential, and makes an excellent email sign-off. Paul's opening to 2 Corinthians also includes an apology for changed travel plans, which the lesson uses as a springboard for discussing flexibility in ministry. But changing travel plans is a fairly trivial kind of flexibility — we develop some richer models, from play-dough to rubber to non-Newtonian fluid, to explore what flexibility actually looks like in Christian life. Paul's own flexibility goes much deeper than logistics, as his approach in Athens demonstrates. And Jonah reminds us that the hardest flexibility of all is being willing to change your own mind about a people God has changed his mind about.

1 Corinthians 15 centres on the idea of resurrection. We explore what the chapter has to say to Adventists specifically, for whom the state of the dead and the mechanics of resurrection are dear doctrinal territory. But the discussion finds its heart in the mystery of what the resurrection body actually is — and what continuity might exist between who we are now and who we will be. George MacDonald's fairy tale The Day Boy and the Night Girl turns out to be the best companion text we could find: a story about two people for whom the fulfillment of everything they know turns out to be something at once recognisable and incomparably greater.

1 Corinthians 13 is possibly the most well-known chapter in the Bible, and for good reason — it speaks for itself. Love is preeminent. The heart of our discussion is the second half, where Paul's argument is harder to follow: what does it mean that prophecy, tongues, and special knowledge are, in some sense, the milk of infancy? Growing in the Christian life may mean being consumed by fewer things, not more. The overriding principle Paul appeals to is one every child already knows.

1 Corinthians 14 opens in a way that might feel familiar to Adventists — an emphasis on prophecy over tongues. But Paul's description of prophecy diverges quickly from how we typically think of it. His critique of tongues is that it doesn't build up the community; but that same standard has to be applied to prophecy too. And his picture of the congregation is striking — widespread prophetic gifts distributed among many, not concentrated in one important figure. We sit with what that means for us, and land on a question more than an answer: what would it actually mean to take contemporary prophecy seriously today?