gentleness of Christ. Thus the Lord’s reply to Paul’s prayer for the removal of the thorn/stake is given in terms of the very gospel of the death and resurrection of Christ that the apostles proclaimed (as, e.g., in 1 Cor 15:1–4). Unlike the earlier and esoteric “revelation” of “fourteen years ago” in which Paul “heard unutterable utterances” that he was “not permitted to speak” (v. 4), the Lord’s oracle to him is clear and communicable. And it is nothing else than the given word of God, the gospel