<p>7:4 <i>Great is my confidence in you- </i>The following verses, climaxing at the end of the chapter with his claim to have &quot;perfect confidence in you all&quot;, are all hard to square with what we know about the Paul-Corinth relationship. They were sceptical and critical of him, and throughout the Corinthian correspondence he is directly and indirectly answering their slander of him. But now he appears to launch into a section of ecstatic joy and praise of them, claiming things for them which clearly were not true. And he concludes the letter by threatening judgment upon them, deeply saddened by their rejection of him. The logic of his argument in this section appears faulty, as if they are words uttered on the cusp of emotional experience, not connected with reality, and as if he were just madly 'in love' with them, willing to see them as something which they simply were not in reality. And which reality he continually states and laments, both immediately before and after this section.</p><p>There are various possible explanations. The positive language about them may be pure sarcasm, of the kind he uses in 11:4; but it would be so extensive and never signalled as such to make this unlikely. He may have so counted them as &quot;in Christ&quot;, imputing them as righteous when they were not, that he allows himself to express his emotions about them in writing in this way. Or he may have been 'buttering them up' because he moves straight on to ask them to come up with some money for the Jerusalem Poor Fund. Or perhaps he was so obsessed with his projects of saving them and of the Jerusalem Poor Fund, that the slightest positive news about them was amplified by him into ridiculously positive positions and claims on their behalf. Inspiration in this case would have allowed the letter to be written as is, full of Paul's irrational emotions at this point, just as the bitter rantings of David against his enemies are likewise recorded under inspiration in the Psalms.</p><p>It would be rather like the boy who madly loves a girl who isn't that interested in him. He invites her for countless dates, and she refuses. But then she calls him and asks if she can just drop by his place to pick up her favourite umbrella, which she left there a month ago. The boy of course agrees with glee, and as he waits for her to come, he gets onto social media and tells his friends that the girl has agreed to marry him and is on her initiative coming to visit him. And then afterwards she calls him and says her brother will just drop by and pick up the umbrella, as he is working in that area today, and she's too busy... This kind of irrational 'in love' behaviour can be seen in Hosea, where Hosea's wildly oscillating love and anger with Gomer reflect God's feelings for His faithless Israel.</p><p><i>Great is my boasting on your behalf. I am filled with comfort, in all our affliction I am overflowing with joy</i>- This outbreak of basting, comfort and joy was because of some positive report from Titus, who had just come to Paul after a visit to Corinth. This letter is therefore being written in real time; Titus as it were comes through the door with the news, whilst Paul is up to chapter 7:3 of his letter. And instead of going back and editing what he has written earlier in the light of the coming of Titus, he just leaves it as is and utters this burst of enthusiasm for the Corinthians- to return to reality in chapter 8.</p><p>It should be noted that an alternative is to view 7:4 as picking up from 2:14, with the intervening material as some huge digression. But 2:15 flows right on in context from 2:14. Such a break is unnatural; and all the same, the position Paul held about the Corinthians in chapter 2 remains contradictory with the outburst of confidence he has in them in chapter 7, and that outburst also contradicts the position and lack of confidence he has in them throughout the rest of the letter. So this ingenious idea doesn't really help things.</p>