Corinthians A.3.1 - Aw, Grow Up!

Chapter 3.1

Paul opens a new comparison in verse 1: the difference between spiritual Christians and carnal Christians. My Bible notes on verses 1-4 state "Although the Corinthians were Christians, they were not fully spiritual (v. 1); they did not live in full obedience to the Spirit." I do not believe that is the sense in which Paul is using pneumatikois ("spiritual people"). Just as in 2:14 where he used psuchikos to describe the person who is motivated primarily by their intellect or some other facet of their soul, i.e. the soul-driven person, so now he uses pneumatikois to describe the person who is motivated primarily by their spirit, i.e. the spirit-driven or spirit-ruled person. And yet, here in v. 1, Paul tells the Corinthians he could not speak to them as spirit-driven or spirit-ruled people, but as carnal (sarkikois), i.e. body-driven or body-ruled. It was not even their intellect that was driving them but rather their desire for physical experience. I can't even say "pleasures," because the physical experience is not always pleasant: it sometimes involves pain, anger, envy, jealousy, discord, and strife. And yet these are as much a part of the physical experience as the pleasurable sensations. True, they are transmitted to and processed by the soul, but they are centered in the body.

Because of this tendency on their part to focus in this area, Paul calls them "babes" (nepiois) or infants in Christ. Now, Paul had spent considerable time among them (about 18 months) and then had gone on to other endeavors, and yet, in his absence, things had not progressed but rather had gone downhill, as he proceeds to detail. Thus, he says, he was not able to and still is not able to give them solid food (spiritually) but must feed them milk; nutritious, nonetheless, but lacking substance. He is still having to address issues that are usually in the arena of dealing with brand-new Christians, those who don't know any better, those who are striving to overcome old habits of their heathen ways and become more mature in Christ, able to crawl, some to walk, not an infant who must be carried everywhere by an adult. And the symptoms of their infancy? Personality cults (vs. 4).

Within the body at Corinth, they had splintered into clubs or cliques built around different teachings and teachers. Some aligned themselves with Paul, the original source of their introduction to the Gospel. Others had found new ideas and fresh "fire" in the teachings of Apollos, the fireball preacher from Alexandria. When he first came to Corinth, he really stirred the people up, but Aquilla and Priscilla had to take him under their tutelage to straighten out some of his theology. Still, a following developed around him. Others had taken their allegiance even further back and decided they wanted to associate with the original apostle, Peter.

Does this sound like anything today? What about the different denominations? Weren't they built around some person and their personality? True, it often coincided with their reception of revelation; for example, Martin Luther's revelation of salvation by grace; the Wesley's rescission of Anglican abuses; Calvin's concepts of predestination. Even more contemporaneously, what are the megachurches except personality cults around an individual, e.g. Jakes, Hinn, et al? True, they afford the opportunity to accomplish much more on a much larger scale, but having been part of such an effort, I can attest that there is lots of baggage that goes along with that kind of effort, and not much of it is positive. It becomes difficult to discern, after a while, what is gold, silver, and precious stones as opposed to wood, hay, and straw (v. 12).

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).