Corinthians A.2.1 - And in this corner...

Chapter 2.1

The Gospel (i.e., "The testimony (marturion) of God," vs. 1) is not designed to convince people with its logic. In fact, Paul says, it is of all things the most illogical. Rather, it demonstrates the power (vs. 5, dunamei) of God. And yet, the Gospel holds a mysterious Godly wisdom (vs. 7, sophian theou en mysterio). In order to begin to understand how this works, we must dissect ourselves. We know we are constructed of three components: spirit (pneuma), soul (psuche), and body (sarx). The Bible states we were created in this image of God. This happens on at least two different levels: first, God is spirit (John 4:24); second, just as God is a tri-unity (three in one), so we are three parts in one person. Our bodies are easily recognizable. They are the corporeal evidence of our existence; yet, they bind us within the space-time continuum and limit our existence to the finiteness of our sensory perception. The soul combines the mind, will, and emotions into personality and gives us sentience. Animals possess bodies and souls. It is our spirit, however, which makes us unique in creation. Ministers often speak of humans in their natural state as having a "hole inside us only God can fill." It is not a hole; it's our spirit. And it's not dead; if that were true, we'd be like the animals. Instead, it is cut off from God, which is ironic, since the spirit was created by God to communicate with Him in a way that transcends mere intellect. Our spirit is constantly striving to bring the soul and body in obedience to God's will. It is a struggle that will continue daily throughout our Earthly lives that will require us to constantly discern what God's will is and then use our volition to subjugate our wills to His.

Paul continues his dissection of the human composition by quoting Isaiah 64:4, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love him" (vs. 9). The inference is clear: the human eye can perceive only a narrow band of wavelengths call (appropriately) the "visible light spectrum." Correspondingly, the ear can perceive only a narrow band of frequencies that are within the boundaries of "audible" tones. Yet, our technologies have revealed to us that there are other wavelengths of light (e.g., infrared) and sound (e.g., a dog's hearing capacity) that we are not capable of naturally perceiving. In the same way, there is a spiritual plane of existence, which is God's domain, that only our spirits can perceive and appreciate. C.S. Lewis, in his The Great Divorce (which is not about marriage at all but rather about the divide in experience between life and death), attempts to express this through natural metaphors, such as grass so real it hurts to walk on it, colors so bright they hurt the eyes, etc. In the same way that the sense receptors we use to perceive our physical world are ineffective (i.e., incapable) of perceiving spiritual phenomena, so our intellectual abilities are incapable of making sense (i.e., rationalizing) spiritual truth or even its component truths. Which is why Paul compares natural (psuchikos) man (vs. 14) to spiritual (pneumatikos) man (vs. 15). Just as the natural physical sensory receptors cannot perceive spiritual reality, so natural psychological faculties cannot understand spiritual truth. Which is why we must trust our spirits in faith, because through our spirit, we have access to and through faith we possess the mind (nous, from ginosko) of Christ (vs. 16).