the problem of suffering in the present is the promise of a compensating reward in the future. When he wrote 1 Corinthians, therefore, Paul still shared the general supposition of his contemporaries that suffering is a purely negative experience. It may be a necessary discipline or chastisement imposed by God; it may be a school or contest in which the sage may cultivate a philosophical detachment; it may be just a more or less inexplicable deprivation of normal well-being that a Christian may believe
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