04 Comparative Theology — 2 Corinthians

This analysis compares how the curriculum’s identified doctrines are received, reinterpreted, or rejected across the major world-religious and secular traditions a Myanmar audience will actually encounter, with a dedicated column for the destination language’s dominant tradition — Burmese Theravada Buddhism as practiced alongside pervasive folk nat (spirit) veneration, astrology (ဗေဒင်), and merit-making (ကုသိုလ်) — since this is the tradition the translation must most carefully avoid conflating with biblical doctrine. This document extends, and never contradicts, the baseline Romans comparative-theology commitments embedded in translation_memory.json and bible_term_registry.json.

Columns: Protestant · Catholic · Orthodox · Jewish · Islamic · Hindu · Buddhist (general) · Burmese Theravada Buddhist & Folk/Nat Tradition (destination-dominant) · Secular/Non-religious.

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1. Reconciliation with God (2 Cor 5:11-21)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
God alone initiates; reconciliation received by faith, complete at the cross, expressed forensically (“not counting their trespasses”).	Affirms God’s initiative but integrates ongoing reconciliation through the sacrament of Penance/Confession as the ordinary channel of restored grace after baptism.	Reconciliation as restoration of communion (theosis-oriented); less forensic emphasis, more relational/participatory healing of the God-human breach.	No direct NT category; nearest analog is teshuvah (repentance) and kapparah (atonement) through repentance, prayer, and (historically) sacrifice — always initiated by the human penitent turning back to God, not a mediator’s finished substitutionary act.	Rejects any need for a mediating death; each soul answers directly to Allah and is reconciled through repentance (tawbah) and divine mercy alone — no intermediary “ministry of reconciliation.”	No exact equivalent; closest concept is reunion of atman with Brahman through devotion, knowledge, or right action — a metaphysical realization, not reconciliation between two personal wills after moral offense.	No personal deity to be reconciled to; the category of relational enmity/estrangement from a Creator does not exist. Nearest structural analog is resolving the causes of dukkha through the Eightfold Path — a self-directed process.	HIGH COLLISION RISK: everyday practice frames restored favor as appeasing an offended party — a nat, a spirit, or accumulated bad karma — through ritual offering. Reconciliation in 2 Cor 5 inverts this: God, not the offender, provides and initiates the reconciling act. Must be taught explicitly against nat-propitiation logic.	Reframed as interpersonal conflict-resolution or restorative-justice language; “reconciliation” as a psychological/social process of repairing broken relationships, with no supernatural agent required.

Divergence not to flatten in translation: Protestant tradition (which this Language Package follows) insists reconciliation is a completed, once-for-all legal-and-relational act accomplished by God in Christ and merely announced through ministry (5:19-20), not achieved, negotiated, or ritually enacted by the recipient.

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2. New Creation in Christ (2 Cor 5:17)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
A decisive, instantaneous new spiritual identity/status granted at conversion; the old identity (“according to the flesh”) has passed away.	Affirms new creation but links it closely to baptismal regeneration as the sacramental moment this status is conferred.	Emphasizes new creation as the beginning of theosis — participation in divine life, unfolding progressively.	No parallel category of individual re-creation; closest is the eschatological hope of a renewed creation/new heavens at the Messianic age, corporate rather than personal-immediate.	No individual “new creation” doctrine; moral renewal (tazkiyah, purification of the soul) is real but gradual and self-effortful, not a singular divine re-creative act.	Closest analog is spiritual rebirth (dvija, “twice-born”) or moksha-oriented transformation, but framed within an ongoing cycle of samsara rather than a single decisive break with a prior existence.	STRUCTURAL COLLISION: Buddhist cosmology has no single Creator and no once-for-all re-creation; “becoming new” is more naturally read as a favorable step in an ongoing karmic continuum toward a better rebirth.	HIGH COLLISION RISK: without careful handling, “new creation” could be heard as a description of a fortunate rebirth (ဘဝသစ်) determined by accumulated merit, or as a self-achieved mental transformation through meditation. Must use ဖန်ဆင်း (the Genesis-creative verb) and teach explicitly that this is God’s decisive act, not a karmic outcome or a meditative state.	Reframed as psychological/identity transformation — a “new chapter,” personal reinvention — without any claim to objective, God-effected ontological change.

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3. Substitutionary Atonement (2 Cor 5:14-15, 21) — extends the core reconciliation passage

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
Classic penal substitution: the sinless Christ legally bears sin’s penalty so believers receive his righteousness — 5:21’s sharp exchange is central.	Affirms substitutionary/satisfaction dimensions (following Anselmian tradition) alongside sacrificial and exemplary dimensions; less exclusively forensic than typical Protestant framing.	Emphasizes Christ’s death within a broader victory-over-death/recapitulation frame; substitution present but read through healing/restoration of human nature more than legal transfer.	Rejects vicarious atonement by a divine-human mediator; each person bears responsibility for their own sin (though communal/sacrificial atonement existed in Temple practice, ended with its destruction) and is atoned through repentance and God’s mercy directly.	Explicitly rejects substitutionary death theology; Qur’an 53:38, “each soul bears its own burden” — no one, divine or otherwise, can bear another’s sin.	No comparable concept; suffering and consequence are governed by one’s own karma, not transferable to or from another being.	STRUCTURAL COLLISION: karma is understood as strictly non-transferable — one being’s actions cannot be credited or debited to another’s account. “He was made sin for us” has no functional equivalent.	HIGHEST COLLISION RISK for this sub-doctrine: must not be explained through any karma-transfer logic (which does not exist even hypothetically in Theravada teaching) nor through nat-appeasement sacrifice. Requires theologian-reviewed teaching notes at every occurrence per the doctrine risk registry.	Reframed (if addressed at all) as a moral or literary metaphor for solidarity in suffering, or dismissed as pre-modern penal theology without objective reference.

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4. Suffering and Comfort in Ministry (2 Cor 1, 4, 6, 7, 11)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
Suffering is purposeful, God-permitted, productive of hope and future glory; comfort is God’s personal, relational presence, not the absence of hardship.	Shares this view, often integrating suffering with redemptive/meritorious value modeled on Christ’s passion (offering up suffering).	Suffering has ascetic and purifying value within the pursuit of theosis; comfort flows from communion with the suffering and risen Christ.	Suffering addressed through lament, covenant faithfulness, and hope in God’s justice (cf. Job, Psalms); comfort (nechama) is God’s compassionate presence, relationally similar to Paul’s frame.	Suffering (bala) is a test (Qur’an 2:155-157) met with patience (sabr); reward is with Allah — some functional overlap with purposeful suffering, without the specific “comfort of God” as indwelling presence.	Suffering is largely explained through karma from past actions; endurance and detachment (vairagya) are the primary responses rather than relational comfort from a personal deity.	STRUCTURAL COLLISION: suffering (dukkha) is not merely difficult circumstance but the diagnosed condition of all conditioned existence — the First Noble Truth — resolved by extinguishing craving via the Eightfold Path, not by relational comfort from a personal God.	HIGHEST-FREQUENCY COLLISION TERM in this curriculum: ဒုက္ခ is the exact technical term for the First Noble Truth. Every occurrence requires a translator note distinguishing Paul’s temporary, purposeful, relationally-comforted affliction from the existential condition Buddhism seeks to escape through detachment.	Suffering is reframed through resilience psychology, trauma-informed care, or existentialist meaning-making; “comfort” as social support or therapeutic coping, without necessary reference to a personal, comforting God.

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5. The New Covenant versus the Old (2 Cor 3)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
The Mosaic covenant is fulfilled, not abolished, in Christ; the Spirit now writes on hearts rather than tablets of stone — a decisive redemptive-historical shift.	Shares this fulfillment framework; also emphasizes continuity through the Church as the New Israel and the sacramental economy.	Strong continuity emphasis; the “veil” removed in Christ as the unveiling of divine glory already anticipated in the old covenant’s types.	Affirms the ongoing validity of the Mosaic covenant (Torah) as unbroken and not superseded; would reject the “fading glory” framing of 3:7-11 as a Jewish self-understanding.	No covenant category corresponding to Sinai in this sense; the Qur’an is understood as the final, complete, uncorrupted revelation superseding prior scriptures including the Torah and Gospel.	No conceptual parallel; dharma is understood as eternal (sanatana), not historically superseded by a later covenant.	No covenant concept in Buddhist teaching; the Dhamma is understood as timelessly true, discovered rather than covenantally given or superseded.	Requires substantial OT background teaching for hearers with low OT narrative literacy; no functional analog to “covenant” exists in folk religious practice, though the structure of merit-transaction with spirits/deities can be mistakenly imported if not carefully guarded against.	Read historically/literarily as an internal Christian theological development regarding the relationship between two textual traditions, without normative claims.

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6. Sincerity and Apostolic Authority (2 Cor 1, 2, 4, 5, 10)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
True ministerial legitimacy rests on God’s own evaluation and a conscience answerable to him, not self-promotion or human commendation (10:18).	Apostolic authority is closely tied to institutional/sacramental succession from the apostles; sincerity remains a personal virtue within that structure.	Similar emphasis on legitimate succession (apostolic continuity) alongside personal integrity before God.	Legitimacy of a teacher/rabbi rests on Torah knowledge, communal recognition, and lineage of transmission (semikhah in some traditions) rather than direct personal commissioning by a risen Messiah.	Legitimacy of religious authority (scholars, imams) rests on knowledge of Qur’an/Hadith and communal recognition; sincerity (ikhlas) is a core virtue closely resonant with Paul’s language.	Spiritual authority (guru) often validated through lineage (parampara), personal charisma, or demonstrated attainment/siddhis.	Legitimacy is often validated by monastic ordination lineage, observable discipline (sila), and public reputation for attainment.	HIGH COLLISION RISK: legitimacy-seeking in Burmese religious culture is often demonstrated through public endorsement from a senior monk/teacher or through visible ascetic achievement — a honor/shame-inflected social validation. Paul explicitly rejects self-commendation and grounds legitimacy in the Lord’s private evaluation of the conscience; this contrast must be preserved, not softened into “showing proper respect for religious hierarchy.”	Reframed as questions of institutional credibility, transparency, and authenticity in leadership, assessed by observable ethics and consistency rather than by a transcendent conscience before God.

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7. Generosity and Grace in Giving (2 Cor 8-9)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
Giving flows from gratitude for grace already received; evaluated by cheerful disposition and sacrificial willingness, not amount or merit.	Shares this grace-response framework; also connects almsgiving to works of mercy that cooperate with grace (not earning it, but expressing it).	Similar grace-response emphasis; almsgiving as an expression of love flowing from communion with Christ.	Tzedakah (righteous giving) is a religious obligation rooted in justice, not optional generosity; strongly resonant structurally with Paul’s equality/sufficiency language, though motivated by covenantal duty rather than gratitude for a finished atoning work.	Zakat (obligatory almsgiving) is one of the Five Pillars, a fixed proportional duty; Sadaqah (voluntary charity) parallels cheerful giving, but the underlying motivation is submission to a divine command and reward in the afterlife.	Dana (giving) generates punya (merit) that improves one’s karmic standing and future rebirth; giving to holy persons/causes is especially meritorious.	Dana is a primary devotional practice generating merit (kutho/punya) for a better rebirth or present-life benefit; giving to monks/the sangha is especially prized.	HIGHEST-STAKES COLLISION in this curriculum: လှူဒါန်း is the everyday verb for Buddhist dana, performed principally to accumulate ကုသိုလ် toward a better rebirth or favorable present circumstances. Christian giving in 2 Cor 8-9 is a grateful response to grace already fully given, evaluated by cheerful heart-disposition rather than gift size or the recipient’s spiritual merit-value, directed to material need rather than karmic favor. Mandatory theologian review every occurrence per the doctrine risk registry.	Reframed as prosocial behavior, reciprocity/altruism, or effective-giving ethics assessed by measurable impact, without reference to grace or spiritual reward.

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8. Power in Weakness (2 Cor 4, 10, 12, 13)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
God’s power is displayed through, not despite, acknowledged human insufficiency, wholly dependent on unearned grace (12:9); weakness is not itself virtuous, but the occasion for grace.	Resonant with a “littleness”/spiritual-childhood spirituality (cf. St. Thérèse) though sometimes read through a merit-of-suffering lens.	Resonant with kenotic and ascetic traditions emphasizing humility as the path to divine power, sometimes closer to a cultivated virtue than Paul’s emphasis on unsought insufficiency.	Some resonance with prophetic figures whose weakness/lowliness magnifies God’s action (e.g., Gideon), though without Paul’s grace-alone framing.	Reliance on Allah’s power amid human weakness (tawakkul, trusting reliance) has real resonance, though within a framework of submission and reward rather than grace freely given apart from merit.	Some bhakti traditions praise the humble, self-emptied devotee as especially favored by a deity — partial resonance, but not tied to a doctrine of unmerited grace.	No structural resonance; the Buddhist path is one of self-effort (though grace-like ideas exist in some Pure Land Mahayana schools, not the Theravada tradition dominant in Myanmar).	HIGH COLLISION RISK: weakness could be misread as an ascetic virtue to cultivate (resembling self-mortification for merit) rather than an acknowledged insufficiency through which unearned grace operates; must not be presented as a discipline that itself earns divine favor.	Reframed (if at all) as a psychological insight about vulnerability, authenticity, or “growth through adversity,” without reference to a personal God’s power.

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9. Genuine versus False Apostleship (2 Cor 11-13)

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
False apostles are deliberate impostors, deceived and deceiving, empowered by Satan disguised as an angel of light (11:14-15) — a spiritual-warfare category, not mere doctrinal disagreement.	Shares the spiritual-deception framing; also links discernment of true apostolic authority to communion with the Church’s teaching office.	Similar emphasis on discernment of spirits and guarding against deception within the tradition of spiritual elders.	No equivalent category of “false apostle” tied to demonic impersonation; false-prophet warnings exist (Deuteronomy 13, 18) but framed as violations of Torah fidelity, not satanic disguise.	Warnings against false teachers exist, but the specific “angel of light” disguise-motif and its Satan-authored deception is distinctive to this passage; Islamic theology attributes deception to Iblis/Shaytan working on the heart, a partial resonance.	No parallel category of demonically-empowered false teachers within a single true tradition; competing gurus are typically assessed by lineage and attainment, not spiritual warfare categories.	No parallel; false teaching is assessed by conformity to the Dhamma and monastic discipline, not attributed to a personal evil being’s deliberate counterfeiting.	HIGH COLLISION RISK: Burmese religious pluralism (multiple monks, teachers, weizza practitioners, spirit-mediums all competing for legitimacy) could flatten this into ordinary sectarian rivalry. Must be taught as deliberate, demonically-linked counterfeit, distinct from a merely inferior or differently-trained teacher.	Reframed as institutional gatekeeping, credentialing disputes, or cult-recognition criteria, with no supernatural agent behind the deception.

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10. Spiritual Warfare and Satanic Deception (2 Cor 2:11; 11:3, 14-15; 12:7) — cross-cutting extension

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
Satan is a single, personal, defeated-but-still-active spiritual adversary opposing the one true God; capable of deceptive disguise.	Shares this personal-Satan doctrine, integrated with a developed angelology/demonology.	Shares this doctrine; strong tradition of discernment of spirits and spiritual warfare in ascetic literature.	Ha-Satan (the Accuser) is a subordinate court-functionary/adversarial figure under God’s sovereignty in the Hebrew Bible, without the fully personified cosmic-adversary role Paul assumes; later rabbinic and mystical traditions develop this further.	Iblis/Shaytan is a real, personal, rebellious spiritual being who tempts humanity — closely resonant with the biblical Satan, though within a different soteriological framework.	No single personal adversary of a single true God; malevolent beings (asuras, rakshasas) exist within a much larger, non-exclusive cosmology of many deities and spirits.	STRUCTURAL COLLISION RISK: Mara is the tempter-deity who specifically opposed the Buddha’s enlightenment under the Bodhi tree — a role-specific, narrative-bound figure, not the singular cosmic adversary of a Creator God across all of history.	CRITICAL COLLISION: စာတန် must never be rendered with မာရ်နတ် (Mara) nor absorbed into the graded, morally ambivalent nat-spirit hierarchy (many nats are considered capable of both help and harm depending on propitiation). Satan is uniquely, wholly hostile and personal, opposed to the one true God specifically, not one spiritual force among a negotiable pantheon.	Reframed (if addressed) as a mythological personification of evil, psychological projection, or narrative device, without objective personal reality.

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11. Trinitarian Benediction (2 Cor 13:14) — cross-cutting extension anchoring Trinity teaching

Protestant	Catholic	Orthodox	Jewish	Islamic	Hindu	Buddhist (general)	Burmese Theravada & Folk Tradition (dominant)	Secular
One of the clearest NT Trinitarian formulas: grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, love of God, fellowship of the Holy Spirit — three distinct, co-equal, co-eternal Persons, one God.	Fully shares this doctrine, foundational to Catholic Trinitarian theology and liturgy.	Fully shares this doctrine; the Trinity (Triadology) is central to Orthodox worship and theology, often with emphasis on the Father as source.	Rejects the Trinity as incompatible with strict monotheism (Shema, “the Lord is One”); would read “grace/love/fellowship” as poetic, not indicating three divine Persons.	Explicitly rejects the Trinity (Tawhid, absolute divine oneness, is Islam’s central doctrine; associating partners with Allah — shirk — is the gravest sin).	Some superficial surface-resonance with the concept of divine multiplicity (e.g., Trimurti — Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva) but structurally very different: those are three distinct deities/functions within a vast pantheon, not one God in three co-equal Persons.	No parallel; Buddhism has no creator-deity concept at all, Trinitarian or otherwise.	HIGH RISK OF MISREADING: without care, hearers could assume a Trimurti-like structure of three separate gods, or, in the other direction, reduce the three named realities (grace/love/fellowship) to three impersonal blessings rather than three divine Persons. Each Person’s baseline rendering (God, Lord Jesus Christ, Holy Spirit) must be used exactly and taught together as one God.	Read (if addressed at all) as poetic liturgical language or historical doctrinal formula without ontological claims.

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Agreement and Divergence Summary

Areas of broad agreement across religious traditions (though not secular):

• Some concept of moral accountability before a higher reality/law exists in nearly every tradition (Jewish teshuvah, Islamic tawbah, Hindu/Buddhist karma, Buddhist Eightfold Path).
• Generosity/almsgiving as a valued virtue is nearly universal (tzedakah, zakat/sadaqah, dana) — this shared valuation is precisely what makes the Christian grace-giving doctrine both accessible in form and easily misread in substance.
• Suffering as meaningful rather than meaningless is affirmed by Jewish, Islamic, Hindu, and Buddhist traditions alike, though the mechanism (covenant faithfulness, submission/test, karma, dukkha-resolution) differs sharply from Paul’s grace-and-comfort framework.

Areas of sharp, doctrine-defining divergence:

• Only Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox Christianity affirm a Triune God, substitutionary atonement by a divine-human mediator, and a singular personal Satan opposed to that one God. Judaism and Islam explicitly reject the Trinity and substitutionary atonement; Hinduism and Buddhism operate outside a covenantal-personal-God framework altogether.
• Only biblical faith frames giving as a grace-response rather than a merit-generating act — every other tradition surveyed here, including the destination culture’s dominant tradition, treats generosity as (at least partly) meritorious or obligatory-transactional.
• “Power in weakness” and “new creation” both depend on a decisive, once-for-all divine act (grace, re-creation) foreign to karma-based continuum thinking; this is the single most important structural gap for Burmese audiences to bridge.

Misunderstandings a translation must not invite:

1. That reconciliation with God is something the believer achieves or negotiates (nat-propitiation logic), rather than something God has already accomplished and now announces (5:18-20).
2. That “new creation” describes a favorable rebirth or a self-achieved meditative state rather than God’s decisive creative act.
3. That Christ’s suffering “for sin” (5:21) is a karma-transfer transaction rather than a unique, non-repeatable legal substitution.
4. That affliction (ဒုက္ခ) in ministry is the same diagnosed condition Buddhism seeks to escape through detachment, rather than a temporary, purposeful, relationally-comforted experience within a doctrine of hope.
5. That cheerful giving is fundamentally about merit accumulation (ကုသိုလ်) for a better rebirth or present fortune, rather than a grateful response to grace already fully received.
6. That power in weakness commends weakness itself as a cultivated ascetic virtue, rather than describing unearned grace operating through acknowledged insufficiency.
7. That false apostles are simply rival teachers with a different opinion, rather than deliberate, demonically-linked counterfeits.
8. That Satan (စာတန်) is interchangeable with Mara (မာရ်နတ်) or with the morally ambivalent nat-spirit hierarchy.
9. That the Trinitarian benediction describes three separate deities (Trimurti-style) or three impersonal blessings rather than one God in three co-equal, co-eternal Persons.
10. That “Christ in you” (13:5) describes a temporary trance-possession state analogous to nat-spirit mediumship.

Sensitive terminology requiring extra care in this curriculum (in addition to all baseline forbidden substitutions, which remain in force):

Term	Correct Burmese Rendering	Never Render As	Reason
affliction/suffering	ဆင်းရဲဒုက္ခ (with mandatory translator note)	(term retained but requires note)	Direct overlap with First Noble Truth (ဒုက္ခ)
cheerful giver / giving	လှူဒါန်း (retained, flagged)	framing as merit-generating ဒါန for rebirth benefit	Direct overlap with Buddhist dana-merit practice
Satan	စာတန်	မာရ်နတ် (Mara); generic nat vocabulary	Distinct personal adversary of the one true God
new creation	ဖန်ဆင်းခြင်းအသစ်	ကောင်းသောကံရလာဒ်ဖြစ်ခြင်း (favorable karmic outcome); စိတ်ပြောင်းလဲခြင်း alone	Decisive divine creative act, not karmic outcome
reconciliation	သင့်မြတ်ခြင်း	ချော့မော့ငြိမ်းချောင်းခြင်း (spirit-appeasement)	God-initiated, not human-negotiated
judgment seat of Christ	ခရစ်တော်၏ တရားစီရင်ပလ္လင်တော်	ကံစာရင်းရှင်းရာ (karmic ledger-settling)	Personal evaluation by Christ, not impersonal karmic tally
thorn in the flesh	ဇာတိကိုယ်၌ ဆူးချောင်းတစ်ခု	ယခင်ဘဝကံဆိုးကြောင့် ခံစားရသောဒဏ် (past-life karmic retribution)	Purposive divine discipline, not karmic punishment
paradise / third heaven	ပရဒိသု / ဘုရားသခင်၏ကောင်းကင်ဘုံ	နတ်ပြည်/ဒေဝလောက (impermanent deva-realm heavens)	Eternal divine presence, not a rebirth-station within samsara
Christ in you	ခရစ်တော်သည် သင်တို့၌ ရှိတော်မူ၏	နတ်ဝင်ခြင်း (spirit possession)	Permanent personal indwelling, not trance-possession
power in weakness	တန်ခိုးတော်သည် အားနည်းချက်၌ စုံလင်တော်မူ၏	weakness framed as cultivated ascetic merit-virtue	Grace operating through, not because of, weakness

This document extends, and does not contradict, the baseline Romans comparative-theology commitments already embedded in the approved translation memory and term registry. All baseline Critical forbidden substitutions remain in force throughout 2 Corinthians.