§PT31–36. Implied here is that Paul’s preaching does not depend on speculative thinking or on rhetorical artifice. It is certainly more than “a ministry of public speaking,” pace Litfin (St. Paul’s Theology of Proclamation, 152). There is in this passage, however, not the slightest hint that Paul’s reluctance to baptize had anything to do with his reaction to people claiming to speak in tongues, as Ford would have us believe: “ ‘induced tongues’ associated with baptism may have led him to refrain
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