Plus Ultra

Kent Hughes in his commentary of 2 Corinthians 5 introduces the chapter with these words:

When Spain had extended her conquests to the ends of the then-known world and controlled both sides of the Mediterranean at the Straits of Gibraltar (the fabled Pillars of Hercules), her coins proudly pictured the Pillars framing a scroll inscribed with the Latin words Ne Plus Ultra—“No More Beyond.” The Pillars gated the end of the earth. But “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue” and discovered the New World. The proud nation then admitted her ignorance and struck the negative Ne from her coinage, leaving the words Plus Ultra—“More Beyond.” The change from the myopic “No More Beyond” to the expansive “More Beyond” effected a revolution in world culture, global economy, and geopolitics. The change also serves as a handy example of what is needed in the spiritual geography of modern men and women, because so many live in the stifling delusion that there is no more beyond. Most, including many Christians, live as if “this is it”—as in the Looney Tunes finis, “That’s all, folks!” At the same time, Plus Ultra perfectly describes the Apostle Paul and the ultimate focus of the whole of Scripture and the intensive focus of this section of 2 Corinthians.