6. The Mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:15–16)
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The Mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:15–16)
For [Scripture says,] “Who has known the Lord’s mind and is thus able to advise him?” But we have Christ’s mind.
—1 Corinthians 2:16
In 1 Corinthians 1–2 Paul urges believers to grow mature in true, divine wisdom. He also spells out this wisdom’s content: the message of the cross that inverts the world’s values and invites us to view everything in this age in light of the coming age (2:6–10), when God’s wisdom prevails unchallenged.
Paul further recognizes that people receive divine wisdom only because it is revealed by God’s own Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10–13). Those without the Spirit cannot properly understand or evaluate the decisions of those who follow divine truth, but those who follow the Spirit’s insight have the right vantage point for evaluating the world (2:14–15). Those who have God’s Spirit have the mind of Christ (2:16); Christ’s body may experience this mind in multiple ways through various gifts, though the true message will always be consistent with the message about the crucified Lord (1:17–24; 2:1–5). Those who, based on worldly philosophies, think themselves divine should instead cultivate a true embrace of the divine perspective (3:3–4).
A passage in 2 Corinthians helps to explicate some of what Paul means by sharing the divine mind, although it does not speak explicitly of cognitive processes. Believers can be transformed more into the divine image through focusing on the glory of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18), who is God’s supreme image (4:4). Many ancient thinkers sought transformation through envisioning the divine; Jewish mystics also strove to see what they could of God enthroned, but the fundamental example of transformation through seeing the true divine glory is Moses (3:7–16). What Moses experienced in a partial way, new covenant ministers experience more fully by God’s own Spirit living in them (3:3, 6, 8, 17–18).
True Wisdom (1 Cor. 1:18–2:10)
A biblical proverb may summarize an aspect of Paul’s perspective on wisdom: “Put your trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not depend on your own understanding” (Prov. 3:5). Paul urges believers to embrace true wisdom, wisdom that rests on the fear of the Lord. This means recognizing that the ultimately reliable source of counsel is the all-knowing one, whose ways are very different from what is expected by the limited knowledge of mortals.
As in Romans 12:2, so also in 1 Corinthians 1–2 Paul cultivates a wisdom shaped not by the world’s values but by the perfectly divine values of the coming age. In the clarity on God’s plan afforded by the vantage point of eternity, what the world saw as merely the elites’ execution of Jesus for treason becomes instead the climax of salvation history, the prelude to God’s triumph by the resurrection.
The Wisdom of the Cross (1 Cor. 1:17–2:5)
In 1 Corinthians 2:6–13 Paul develops his contrast between the inadequate wisdom of the world and the true wisdom that comes from God (cf. James 3:13–18). Paul notes that wisdom about divine matters comes only through the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10–11) and hence is available only to people of the Spirit (2:12–16).
Paul shows that the wisdom he preaches, the wisdom by which they have been converted, is the message of the cross (1 Cor. 1:17–18, 21, 24, 30; 2:1–5). This message seems like foolishness to the world (1:18, 21, 23, 27), but those who have experienced its transforming power know better (1:18). The world obviously would have done things differently, Paul recognizes, but recent events in history, especially Jesus’s death and resurrection, reveal God’s greater wisdom. In the light of God’s eternal plan, the world’s version of theological wisdom amounts to nothing (1:19–20; 3:19–20).
Paul addresses here not only wisdom but power—translating from Paul’s setting to our closest equivalent, not only education but the closely connected issue of status and social influence. The cross lays bare human weakness yet reveals God’s power. Signs and wonders may display God’s power (1:22; cf. 2 Cor. 12:12), but the cross reveals it still more deeply (1 Cor. 1:18, 24; 2:4–5; 2 Cor. 13:4). Ignorant of God’s wisdom and power, the elites that appear so powerful in this age executed as a criminal the true and eternal Lord (1 Cor. 2:6–8). Practicing the nonresistance he preached, Jesus entrusted himself wholly to his Father, depending on the Father to raise him up. Paul likewise embraces weakness by following the way of the cross so that God’s power will be honored (2 Cor. 4:7, 10; 12:9; 13:3).
Paul’s approach is counterintuitive to human instincts and was certainly countercultural in his setting. Corinthian society valued learning and status, but the backgrounds of most of the Corinthian believers themselves showed that God did not need the world’s wisdom or power to accomplish his purposes (1 Cor. 1:26–29, echoing Jer. 9:23–24, part of which is quoted in 1 Cor. 1:31). The Corinthian Christians were emulating the values of a world that exalted people whom God had not chosen over themselves, whom God had chosen.
Paul challenges the Corinthians in the very matters in which they are boasting (cf. 1 Cor. 1:29–31; 3:21; 4:7; 5:6; 6:5; 10:15). The world’s philosophies might advocate mental discipline or achieving divine wisdom through depending on innate, natural divinity. For Paul, however, God’s wisdom is revealed in his plan in history (as in Rom. 11:30–34), which climaxes in the cross, the epitome of human brokenness. The heart of divine wisdom, and hence the heart of what it means to share the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16), is the way of the cross. Far from embracing the wisdom of this age, it trusts God’s greater plan, which the world despises as nonsensical. The truly wise should boast in their weakness and depend on God’s power (cf. 1 Cor. 3:18; 2 Cor. 12:9–10); they should give all honor (or, in modern Western terms, all the credit) to God. Such wisdom that depends on God fits Paul’s theology, for example, in what I have called the mind of faith.
Wisdom of the Future Age (1 Cor. 2:6–10)
Even more clearly than in Romans 12:2, God’s wisdom in 1 Corinthians 2 is eschatological wisdom. Although Paul eschews human wisdom when reaching the unconverted (1 Cor. 2:5), refusing to water down the offensive message of the cross, he does not oppose true understanding. Thus, he speaks wisdom among the mature (2:6a)—a maturity the Corinthian Christians have not attained. Their fixation on status and competition has kept them too immature for Paul to teach them the deeper things (3:1–2) of the Spirit—God’s eschatological promises about their future glory (2:7, 9; cf. Rom. 8:16–17; Eph. 1:13–14). Although lacking Paul’s future eschatology, philosophers also valued the eternal far above the temporal.
In connecting wisdom and maturity, Paul might evoke Wisdom 9:6, which also connects the two concepts, although differently: “For even the most mature [τέλειος] among people will be considered as nothing without the wisdom that is from” the Lord. This latter passage emphasizes that no one can learn God’s counsel without God giving wisdom and sending his Spirit (Wis. 9:17). Likewise, Paul was able to give them divine wisdom because God’s Spirit had inspired him (1 Cor. 2:4–5, 13).
Paul specifies that the wisdom he speaks is not human wisdom (1 Cor. 2:5)—not a wisdom that belongs to the present age (2:6). Like the present age itself (7:31), the rulers of this age are ephemeral and are coming to nothing (2:6); because they lacked eternal wisdom, they executed the most honorable and glorious ruler of all, the true king (2:8). Presumably, Paul has in mind here the members of both Jewish and Roman elites involved in Jesus’s execution (cf. Mark 15:1; 1 Cor. 1:23; 1 Thess. 2:14–15).
Yet Paul looks beyond the immediate members of the elite directly responsible and envisions in general those honored and esteemed in this age. That the rulers are “passing away” (καραργουμένων, 1 Cor. 2:6) recalls the esteemed whom God brings to nothing (καταργήσῃ) in 1:28. Paul’s example warns the status-conscious Corinthian Christians: their desire for human power (1:26–28) aligns them with those who are powerful by the standards of this age. Instead of honoring the true king’s cross, they embrace the foolish values of those who executed him. Indeed, they have transferred the world’s values about leaders onto the leaders in the church, boasting in them (3:21) and creating elite Christian celebrities (3:4).
Paul must warn his hearers that he and Apollos are merely servants of God’s purposes (1 Cor. 3:5–9; 4:1–2) and that only the future day of judgment and reward will reveal the value of each person’s work (3:10–15; 4:4–5). The Corinthian Christians had the matter of status precisely backward: not only Christian leaders but in fact everything in the present and future world was for the sake of the church (3:21–23). By following the values of the world’s wisdom, the Corinthian Christians missed a deeper wisdom that promised them something far more glorious than they imagined.
In contrast to the transitory wisdom of this age, Paul communicates divine wisdom planned before the present and even any past ages of the world (1 Cor. 2:7). This wisdom has been “hidden” (2:7), concealed from even the most educated and elite persons of the world (2:6, 8); thus, it was not discerned by sight or sound or human imagination (2:9). The subject of this wisdom is the eternal glory God planned for his people in the future (2:7), “the things God prepared for those who love him” (2:9). (The idea of unfathomable future blessings also appears in Pauline thought in Eph. 2:7.) These are matters that can be revealed neither by the senses nor by human reasoning (1 Cor. 2:9) but only by the experience of the Spirit (2:10). That is, the Spirit provides an experiential foretaste of the life of the coming world, an experience also recognized by some other early Christians (see esp. Heb. 6:4–5).
The Spirit’s Insight (1 Cor. 2:10–13)
Because only God’s Spirit truly knows his mind (1 Cor. 2:11), only God’s Spirit can reveal eschatological truth (2:9–10) and the depths of God’s heart (2:10). Because believers have received God’s Spirit, they can know their promised inheritance (2:12) and communicate it by the Spirit among the spiritually mature (2:13).
Those who have only the spirit of the world (2:12) cannot recognize what spiritual truth is (2:14). They cannot embrace and live by spiritual truth, because that level of understanding comes only to those with the perspective inspired by God’s Spirit. Thus, they cannot understand the choices of people of the Spirit, though people of the Spirit understand why people of the world are the way they are (2:15). Only people of the Spirit have the ultimate interpretive grid for reality, the grid provided by the creator.
The Spirit as Revealer (1 Cor. 2:10–11)
God revealed these eschatological realities to believers by the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10), presumably on a level deeper than human understanding or language by itself could communicate. The Spirit can reveal God’s truths because the Spirit can search even the very depths of God’s heart (2:10). Among Jewish thinkers the unfathomable, “deep things” of God already evoked motifs of secret wisdom, especially concerning God’s heart and his plan for the world (cf. Rom. 11:33). This connection is clear especially in Job 11:6–8, where the “deep things of God” are higher than heaven and deeper than Sheol, secrets of wisdom inaccessible to mortals. Such language can depict God’s inaccessible thoughts. Similarly, in Daniel 2:22 God reveals deep, hidden matters, fitting a Danielic motif concerning the revealing of mysteries, also developed in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Paul thus speaks here of how the Spirit provides believers a deep connection with God and his wisdom. Most fundamentally, this involves experiencing God’s character and his relationship with and heart toward believers; thus, in Paul’s theology the Spirit emphasizes God’s love in the cross (Rom. 5:5–10, esp. 5:5; 8:15–16).
On both ends, so to speak, the Spirit provides the intimate connection between believers and God. Paul notes elsewhere that God, who searches all hearts, knows the mind of the Spirit within believers (Rom. 8:26–27). In Romans 8 the Spirit praying for believers goes beyond their conscious prayers to their needs; just as creation groans by virtue of its condition rather than deliberately (8:22), so the Spirit interprets the inner groans of believers for God (8:23, 26). Here the Spirit searches God’s heart to reveal it to believers (1 Cor. 2:10). To paraphrase some language more dominant in works on Johannine theology, the Spirit is the means of mutual indwelling.
Revealing God’s heart is a role that only God’s Spirit can fulfill. No one else fully knows one’s experience of oneself, or even one’s thoughts, except oneself, and in the same way, only God’s own Spirit fully knows God’s heart (1 Cor. 2:11; cf. 2:16). (The analogy would be familiar to many Diaspora Jewish hearers: Judith warns her hearers that they cannot search the depths even of human hearts, so how can they expect to search and understand God’s mind?) Job complains in a later testament that since his critics do not understand how the body works, they should not claim to understand heavenly matters.
Some thinkers, especially those in the Platonic tradition, considered the highest deity ineffable or at least beyond human grasp, and other writers warned that mortal minds could never grasp the plans of the gods. Given Paul’s marked biblical citations in the context, Jewish sources may be more relevant. Traditional Jewish meditations on wisdom already understood that only God is fully wise, and therefore his wisdom must be “revealed” (Sir. 1:6–9). Paul explains that the world cannot understand God, but God’s own Spirit, who understands him, can reveal him to those who accept his wisdom (1 Cor. 2:12, 16).
Understanding by God’s Spirit versus the World’s Spirit (1 Cor. 2:12–13)
The Spirit that believers have received is not the spirit of the world system (1 Cor. 2:12; cf. 2:6), whose rulers crucified the Lord (2:8). Instead, all believers have received the Spirit from God, the Spirit that knows God’s heart (2:11). This Spirit enables believers to know what God has freely given (2:12), in this context undoubtedly including the prearranged promise of eternal glory (2:7, 9). This knowledge of eschatological reality is available in the present, because believers have already received the Spirit that makes this knowledge available (in Paul’s nomenclature, believers apparently “receive” the Spirit at conversion; Gal. 3:2; cf. 2 Cor. 11:4; Gal. 3:14).
Since people could fully apprehend eschatological hope and an eschatological perspective only through the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:9–11), how could Paul’s preaching communicate it? Paul has already claimed that he speaks not human wisdom but the message of the cross (2:2) and the hidden wisdom (2:7) through the Spirit (2:4–5). Now he reiterates that he communicates not human wisdom but wisdom conveyed by the Spirit (2:13).
There are two possible ways to understand 1 Corinthians 2:13, depending on whether the adjective πνευματικοῖς is taken as neuter or masculine (the dative form can be understood either way). If it is understood as neuter, Paul is saying that one can interpret matters of the Spirit not in the context of a purely natural framework but only in the context of other matters of the Spirit. (Certainly, Paul does believe that his message is “spiritual,” i.e., from the Spirit.) By contrast, the Corinthian Christians have been trying to interpret matters of the Spirit (2:13) within a human framework. By comparing Paul and Apollos by human standards (3:4), the Corinthians fail to evaluate spiritually (2:14–15).
Alternatively, and more likely, Paul communicates eschatological promises, beyond the basic message of the cross, only to those who can receive them. Unbelievers cannot understand spiritually, because such understanding includes embracing the truth (by virtue of which one is no longer an unbeliever), not simply explaining the message’s grammar. Paul communicates not by trying to explain matters of the Spirit (πνευματικά, neuter, 2:13) to those with a purely natural framework, for whom such matters would prove unintelligible (2:14), but by explaining them to those who have received the Spirit (i.e., πνευματικοῖς understood as masculine, as the noun is in 2:15). Precisely because the Corinthian Christians are not yet acting like people of the Spirit themselves (note πνευματικοῖς in 3:1), Paul has refrained from sharing deeper spiritual truth with them.
To some degree, it does not matter which of these two readings one prefers. Because the passage shares the same context, both readings lead to roughly the same application. As in Johannine theology, merely human wisdom cannot grasp the things of the Spirit (John 3:3, 8, 10); John allows the use of earthly analogies, but even these analogies appear as little more than a sage’s riddles to someone unfamiliar with heavenly matters (3:12).
Paul here develops a theme already present in Jesus’s teaching and consistent with earlier biblical ideas. Jesus teaches that God has concealed his truths from the wise and sensible but revealed them to infants (Matt. 11:25//Luke 10:21), presumably implying the disciples (Matt. 12:1–2; 18:3; Luke 10:23–24). In the same tradition, no one can know God except through divine revelation in Christ (Matt. 11:27//Luke 10:22; cf. Matt. 16:17). Earlier biblical sages and prophets also recognized the importance of depending on God’s greater wisdom rather than one’s own (e.g., Deut. 4:6; Prov. 2:1–6; 3:5, 7, 11–13; 26:12; Isa. 5:21; 29:14; Jer. 8:9; 9:23–24). Elsewhere the Spirit inspires wisdom, such as for artistic skill to glorify God (Exod. 28:3; 31:3; 35:31) or for leadership (Deut. 34:9; Isa. 11:2).
Spiritual Competence to Assess Truth (1 Cor. 2:14–15)
Spiritual truth could be communicated only by the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10–11) and only among those receptive to the Spirit (2:12–13). Because the world’s wisdom cannot recognize God’s true wisdom (1:21, 23–25; 2:8, 12–13), humans without the Spirit are in no position to evaluate spiritual matters or people who follow the eternal wisdom of the Spirit (2:14–15). Having received the spirit of the world rather than God’s Spirit (2:12), those without the Spirit cannot receive matters of the Spirit (2:14).
In the same way that Jesus’s identity and cross are unintelligible to the world because of its values (2:8), those acting according to the mind of the Spirit are unintelligible in terms of the world’s wisdom (cf. John 3:8). Spirit-moved behavior and eschatologically motivated choices in the present make little sense to those accustomed to the world’s values.
Yet Corinthian Christians were employing the world’s standards to evaluate the message of Paul (1 Cor. 1:18–2:5) or compare him with his colleagues (1:12; 3:4)! That some were “evaluating” Paul is clear; the same verb that Paul employs here for outsiders unable to understand the wise (ἀνακρίνω, 2:15) appears afterward for the Corinthian Christians’ worldly evaluations of Paul (4:3; 9:3). They are judging his teaching by Greek rhetorical criteria or by popular philosophic beliefs they deem self-evident. Yet by the world’s standards, the cross is the antithesis of power, status, and a sensible message.
A Pervasive Culture of Evaluation
Greco-Roman elite culture valued the ability to evaluate clearly, to appraise both cities and individuals. This behavior carried over into other relationships. Thus, for example, Cicero advises that one “should love your friend after you have appraised him; you should not appraise him after you have begun to love him.” That is, one should choose whom to befriend based on their character. Affection might even be thought to make one more critical, for the other’s benefit.
Evaluating speeches was pervasive, and the ability to do so was valued. Rhetorical critics evaluated even past orators. One might compete rhetorically with written passages, afterward comparing one’s performance with them to improve one’s own skills. Evaluating speech is relevant to this context (1 Cor. 2:1–7, 13) and became an even greater issue for Paul later in the face of rhetorically skilled outside critics (2 Cor. 10:10; 11:5–6). Hearers could also evaluate content; thus, a rhetorician was ready to appraise a philosopher’s philosophic skill. The ideal Stoic sage never expresses a mere opinion but embraces only certain knowledge.
Partly because of the competition for honor that such appraisals of others invited, rivalry and division were rife in ancient urban Mediterranean society. Continuing the deeply ingrained habits characteristic of their culture, even God’s people in Corinth also engaged in rivalry and division. It was their division (1 Cor. 1:10–12; 3:3b–4), probably in part rivalry over different teachers’ wisdom and/or rhetorical skill, that provoked Paul’s lengthy digression about the true, divine wisdom in his message about the cross (1:17–3:3a).
Such division, even about “spiritual” matters or leaders, reflected the character of the surrounding world (and continues in much of today’s church, not least in much of sectarian Protestantism). For Paul, the practice of weighing people’s worth to Christ’s body by status, education, communication skills, or other criteria of the world misses how Christ feels toward his own body.
Evaluation Criteria
Paul may be more interested in ethical and spiritual discernment. Stoic philosophers expended attention on distinguishing and choosing preferable matters over those that were less to be preferred. More important—since preferences often could be indifferent as opposed to right and wrong—some Stoics argued that the heart of philosophy was distinguishing good from evil, and Stoic philosophy regularly addressed this issue. Not unrelated, they insisted on distinguishing what was true from what was false. For Stoics, only good people could distinguish good from evil, and reason was the means of evaluating critically.
The right means were necessary for such evaluation, however. In some traditional Jewish sources, one distinguished good from evil based on wisdom that was God’s gift. Philosophers believed that philosophy was meant to distinguish truth from falsehood, and philosophers regularly emphasized discerning truth from falsehood and good from evil or what is harmful. Reason enables proper discernment, enabling one to choose good and reject evil.
Philosophic schools varied in their views regarding the senses in discernment. For Stoics, reason should rule rather than serve the senses; as Seneca complains, “The senses do not decide upon things good and evil.” Nevertheless, Stoics affirmed that sense organs were beneficial and played an epistemic role. Some others agreed, allowing that the senses can play a role in moral discernment (Heb. 5:14). By contrast, Platonists emphasized reason over the senses more adamantly. Most suspicious regarding the senses were the Skeptics, who also denied any distinction between good and evil.
Paul values faith in eternal things over physical sight of temporal things (2 Cor. 4:18; 5:7; cf. 1 Cor. 2:9–10), but he also recognizes that physical senses are the normal means through which a person with understanding apprehends these matters (Rom. 1:19–20; 10:14; 1 Cor. 9:1; 15:5–8; Phil. 1:30; 4:9; 1 Thess. 2:17; 3:6).
For philosophers, their philosophic grid provided the basis for moral discernment. For Paul, God’s wisdom expressed in the gospel and communicated by the Spirit enables moral discernment. People without the Spirit are not qualified to understand people of the Spirit. Fleshly critical evaluation stands outside dependence on Christ and suspends belief, working from other, often unacknowledged, worldviews; Spirit-filled evaluation starts with the premise of faith and critically evaluates what is not in accordance with God’s trustworthy revelation.
Many protested that others were not qualified to evaluate them because the others lacked the requisite knowledge or ability. Assemblies must depend on majority vote by necessity, Pliny the Younger observes, but unfortunately “the same right to judge” does not confer “the same ability to judge wisely.” When one philosopher opines that one can never find a wise person, another responds, “Naturally . . . for it takes a wise man to recognize a wise man.” One intellectual complains that the court that condemned Socrates could not genuinely evaluate him rightly because it was unskilled in virtue. The impious cannot properly judge the pious, a Cynic observes: “If the blind were to determine what is sight, they would call seeing blindness.” In the Dead Sea Scrolls those who are careless in discernment should not be given authority to judge the pursuers of knowledge.
Paul recognizes the importance of evaluation but insists that believers must depend on true wisdom (1 Cor. 6:2–3; 10:15; 11:31) and the prophetic Spirit (14:24, 29), not worldly criteria. The person of the Spirit (ὁ πνευματικός) is qualified to examine all things, but this person’s values cannot be evaluated by those who understand only natural things (2:15). On this reading, the Corinthians fail to properly discern people of the Spirit because they are trying to compare and evaluate Paul and Apollos by natural means (3:4).
Inability to Understand Spirit Matters (1 Cor. 2:14–15)
In 1 Corinthians 2:14–15 Paul contends that the unspiritual cannot apprehend what is revealed only by the Spirit. Just as in Romans 8:3–11, Paul divides humanity into two groups. As in both Greek philosophy and the Jewish wisdom tradition, a major line of demarcation here is between the wise and unwise. But also as in Romans 8:3–11, Paul divides these groups into “fleshly” (cf. 1 Cor. 3:1, 3)—that is, those dependent on themselves, without God’s empowerment—and “spiritual”—that is, those who have access to God’s Spirit.
Paul explains that a natural person does not receive the matters of God’s Spirit; whether Paul speaks the basic message of the cross (1 Cor. 1:17–21, 23) or God’s future promises (2:9–10), these matters seem foolish to the natural person. They can be embraced only by the Spirit (2:14).
Excursus: “Natural” and “Spiritual” Persons
The person who lacks the Spirit in 1 Corinthians 2:14 is ψυχικός, a term translated variously as, for example, “unspiritual” (RSV, NRSV; cf. NLT), “natural” (KJV, ASV, NASB, NKJV, ESV), “the person without the Spirit” (NIV), “whoever does not have the Spirit” (GNT), or even simply “the unbeliever” (NET). English translations vary considerably because no single English word corresponds well to the Greek term ψυχικός, which I render above as “natural” but which someone might render “soulish” to retain a connection with ψυχή (see appendix A, “The Soul in Ancient Mediterranean Thought”).
Suggested Sources of the Language
The contrast between “natural” and “spiritual” persons appears in some later gnostic sources, but these sources are interpreting Paul or traditions that interpreted him. By contrast, the language has a plausible context in Hellenistic Jewish thought.
Not all sources are equally helpful, though even the less helpful sources often offer at least some help. Josephus speaks of Herod’s “body” and “soul” and of how he flourished both bodily and, one might say, “with regard to soulish matters” (ψυχικοῖς). Nevertheless, Josephus is not thinking of ψυχή in Platonic terms or other frequent nuances of the English term “soul”; Josephus may refer simply to his generous behavior.
Likewise, Paul’s own usage is hardly Platonic. A human can be a ψυχή (e.g., Gen. 2:7, quoted in 1 Cor. 15:45); when Paul uses the term, he often uses it for a person or life (Rom. 11:3; 13:1; 16:4; 2 Cor. 12:15; Phil. 2:30; probably Rom. 2:9; 2 Cor. 1:23). Paul employs it only once clearly for a part or aspect of a person, and there in connection with the entire person (1 Thess. 5:23); whether his distinction there between the terms usually rendered “spirit” and “soul” is rhetorical and random or reflects a deeper theological distinction is debated, but Paul may make distinctions more for addressing particular issues rather than employing a thoroughgoingly consistent vocabulary.
Fourth Maccabees distinguishes “bodily” desires from “soulish” ones (ψυχικαί), expecting reason to dominate them both (4 Macc. 1:32). More important, the adjective appears more than forty times in the Philonic corpus, perhaps suggesting its popularity in Hellenistic Judaism—at least with Philo and those influenced by him. Sometimes Philo contrasts it with what is bodily (σωματικός). Certainly, Philo regularly distinguishes soul and body and sees them as the two primary elements in humans.
Mortals in Adam versus the Spirit of Christ
In his extant correspondence Paul revisits the term ψυχικός in only one other passage, which appears later in the same letter (1 Cor. 15:44, 46). Here the adjective modifies σῶμα, “body”—a correlation that may grab attention no less firmly than his mention of a σῶμα πνευματικόν, a “spiritual body.” Paul presumably does not speak of bodies consisting of “soul” and “spirit,” despite Stoic thought about the essential materiality of spirit. As Anthony Thiselton notes, -ικος suffixes (as opposed to -ινος suffixes) typically involve “modes of existence or of life” rather than “substances.”
Since Paul elsewhere sometimes uses “spiritual” to mean “related to the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:11–15; 12:1–4), and since he associates the Spirit with resurrection (Rom. 1:4; 8:11) and the future (Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 2:9–10), and since resurrection in a Jewish context involved bodies, Paul probably uses “spiritual body” to designate a future body raised by God’s Spirit. “Spiritual bodies” are bodies fitted for the full life of the Spirit, of which the present experience of the Spirit is a foretaste (cf. 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5), “heavenly” bodies of “glory” (1 Cor. 15:43, 49) fitted for the sort of pure existence that was believed to characterize the heavens (cf. 15:40–41). This understanding also fits the context in 1 Corinthians 2, where a “spiritual” person is one receptive to divine revelation, not a person consisting entirely of spirit.
Certainly, in Paul’s immediate context in 1 Corinthians 15, the ψυχικός body corresponds exegetically to the life of the first Adam—Adam is not made out of an immaterial substance but is a “living soul” (1 Cor. 15:45, quoting Gen. 2:7). The Septuagint applies the same phrase to animals (e.g., Gen. 1:20, 24; 2:19); thus, present mortal existence, shared with animals, differs from a new life empowered by the Spirit.
Probably relevant to Paul’s usage in 1 Corinthians 15 is Philo’s exegesis of God breathing the breath (πνοή) of life into Adam so that he became a living ψυχή (Gen. 2:7 LXX). Philo was too distinctive socially to be generally representative of Hellenistic Jewish thought, but given our limited extant sources, his work provides a key source for understanding some of Paul’s context. In Philo, in contrast to 1 Corinthians 15, the “heavenly” man, whom Philo connects with the Logos, comes first (using Gen. 1:26–27), whereas the “earthly” man, the “living soul” (Gen. 2:7), comes afterward. (Paul’s reverse arrangement would make sense, though, especially since everyone who believed in resurrection understood that it would follow rather than precede present bodies.) Paul probably was also familiar with Judean exegesis associating Genesis 2:7 with the future resurrection that Jewish interpreters found in Ezekiel 37. (As noted earlier in the book, Gen. 1–3 was a frequent focus of Jewish discussion in early Jewish thought; the Corinthian Christians certainly knew the story, as attested in 1 Cor. 11:7–9.)
If a Diaspora Jewish exegesis of the passage probably stands behind Paul’s explanation in 1 Corinthians 15:44–46, it is fairly reasonable to assume that Paul’s audience in 2:13–3:3 was familiar with this language.
Paul seems to use “natural” (ψυχικός, 1 Cor. 2:14) and “fleshly” (σάρκινος, 3:1) in closely connected ways, in contrast to “spiritual,” that is, a person of the Spirit. The person of the Spirit has true discernment from the Spirit, the true wisdom from the mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:14–16). Such a person is “mature” (2:6) rather than a spiritual infant (3:1).
By contrast, the Corinthian Christians were like babies with respect to Christ and were like people who were “fleshly” (σάρκινος). (Because they have received the Spirit through conversion, Paul hesitates to call them fully “fleshly,” prefacing the term with ὡς. By contrast, his cognate term in 3:3, σαρκικός, is not quite as harsh, at least if Paul uses it distinctly.)
Although Jesus offered God’s revelation to children (Matt. 11:25//Luke 10:21), Paul’s point here is to reprove the Corinthian Christians’ spiritual childishness (cf. 1 Cor. 14:20). For Philo, the perfect, or mature (τέλειος), ideal person needs no instruction, but the wicked person is like a baby (νήπιος, 3:1) who needs teaching; the former is wise, but the latter requires training. Infants provide a ready image for mental or intellectual immaturity and a contrast with an ideal wise person. Thinkers sometimes chide those content with elementary knowledge.
If the Corinthians want something deeper than the milk that Paul gave them, he suggests, they need to realize that he gave them milk because they were, and remain, like infants. Some writers naturally used milk as an image for elementary studies, suitable for new learners. Similarly, Paul explains that the only reason that he has not given the Corinthian Christians “deeper” wisdom is that they have showed themselves too immature for it. (One may compare how a subsequent Stoic thinker complains about immature people who worry about what they cannot control: “Are you not willing, at this late date, like children, to be weaned and to partake of more solid food, and not to cry for nannies?”)
For Paul, the Corinthian Christians’ present divisions openly demonstrate their immaturity (1 Cor. 3:1–4). Giving milk is a parental or nursing image, sometimes used for teachers. Paul continues the parental image in the following context, where he is their father (4:15; cf. 4:17), they should imitate him (4:16–17), and he may need to discipline them (4:21).
What the Corinthian Christians consider “deeper” teaching clearly differs from what Paul himself has in view, although interpreters disagree regarding exactly what Paul had in view. Some think that for Paul the solid food, like the milk, remains the message of the cross; certainly, it is inseparable from that, even if it develops the implications more fully. The distinction between elementary and advanced teachings is not as explicit here as in Hebrews 5:11–6:8; Paul is more interested here in reminding his hearers that division demonstrates their lack of mature wisdom. Their divisions show that, for all their other gifts, they lack the deepest and truest sign of spiritual maturity: the fundamental Christian virtue of love (1 Cor. 13:1–13).
We Have the Mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16)
Paul’s point is not merely that human wisdom cannot fathom God; he also argues the converse, namely, that by the Spirit believers can understand God. The full knowledge of God is eschatological (1 Cor. 13:12), but believers can experience a foretaste of that knowledge in the present. We might describe this knowledge as quantitatively finite, given the finiteness of the human recipients, but qualitatively perfect (in its pure form), because it comes from the Spirit of the infinite God. (For comments on the range of meaning involved when ancient thinkers spoke of sharing the divine mind, see the discussion in chaps. 4 and 6.)
Paul’s Biblical Basis
In this passage about revealed divine wisdom, Paul quotes two texts from Isaiah, both of which articulate the inability of mortals to fathom God’s infinitely greater ways (Isa. 64:3 LXX [64:4 ET] in 1 Cor. 2:9, and Isa. 40:13 in 1 Cor. 2:16a). Elsewhere Paul quotes the second passage at slightly greater length regarding God’s unexpected plan in history (Isa. 40:13 in Rom. 11:34); he is presumably familiar also with the same theme in the passage’s wider context (Isa. 40:12, 14, 18–26). The inability to know God’s mind or advise him (Isa. 40:13) justifies Paul’s position that those without the Spirit cannot understand or evaluate those whose lives are directed by God (1 Cor. 2:14–15).
Immediately after quoting both passages, however, Paul qualifies them. Although humans cannot understand God’s ways by themselves, they can do so through God’s Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10, 16b). Many Greek philosophers affirmed that humans could have a share in the divine mind because of an innate spark of divinity, identified with reason; for Paul, by contrast, the connection with the Lord’s mind comes through the gift of his Spirit. Paul uses the Septuagint of Isaiah 40:13, which speaks of God’s mind (νοῦς), but the entire course of his argument presupposes dependence on God’s Spirit (1 Cor. 2:10–14). Paul undoubtedly knows, although at least new adherents to the Corinthian Christian community would not, that the Hebrew term translated as “mind” here is ruakh—referring to God’s Spirit.
Paul interprets the mind of God in the Septuagint of Isaiah as Christ’s mind; this seems to fit a pattern of Paul applying Septuagint texts about the divine κύριος to Jesus (e.g., Rom. 10:9–13; 1 Cor. 8:6; Phil. 2:10; 1 Thess. 3:13). Paul’s application here also fits the similar identification of the Spirit of God with the Spirit of Christ in Romans 8:9. It is thus not too surprising that the mind of Christ functions here the way the divine mind does in many ancient sources (again, see the discussion in chaps. 4 and 6). One does not find some philosophic school claiming that the spirit or mind of a particular deified Greek hero lived in them the way that one finds many of them speaking of the more omnipresent divine mind. Christ’s mind here is the divine mind, communicated by the Spirit.
Revealing God’s Mind
Possible hints of sharing elements of the divine mind appear elsewhere in this context. In 1 Corinthians 2:10 Paul notes that the Spirit reveals believers’ future glory because the Spirit searches God’s depths. Paul could mean that the Spirit knows God’s hidden plans because the Spirit knows the depths of God’s heart; yet Paul also could identify the future glory with the depths of God—that the glory itself involves ever-deeper intimacy with the heart of God. Neither grammar nor Paul’s theology decides the matter fully either way; Paul may regard both as true. In any case, the context is clear that believers do experience the Spirit and thereby God’s heart (2:11–12, 16).
Beyond this context, Paul probably understands even the “mind-frame of the Spirit” in Romans 8 as implying the activity of God’s mind on that of his children. Thus, later in the same context of Romans 8, God knows the mind of the Spirit and hears the Spirit’s intercession within believers (Rom. 8:26–27). Although the terminology is the same as in 8:6 (τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος), in 8:27 it must mean more than simply “frame of mind.” This suggests that Paul’s expression of this way of thinking characterizing believers in 8:6 encompasses not only a perspective but also the direct influence of the Spirit on the believer’s mind. That is to say, God’s Spirit influences not only the believer’s spirit, as in 8:16, but also the believer’s mind.
What many Christians call being led by the Spirit or receiving divine insight may be related to the processes described here. Granted, to some extent Paul may refer again to the believer’s new worldview, through which knowledge is understood in its correct theological framework (e.g., creation testifies to God, rather than inert nature itself being divine or meaningless). Thus, a person of the Spirit can evaluate both natural and spiritual matters on the right basis (1 Cor. 2:15), whereas someone who does not have the Spirit cannot fathom spiritual matters or the values of one moved by the Spirit (2:14–15).
The language here, however, goes beyond exclusively addressing a settled worldview; it also implies a continuing experience. Paul speaks of the Spirit’s inspiration for teaching truth (2:13); he knew that Jewish people associated such inspiration with special insight (particularly in the Dead Sea Scrolls) and especially prophetic enablement. More tellingly, in the Spirit believers experience a foretaste of eschatological glory (2:9–10). Paul speaks of knowing God’s thoughts (2:11); in a Hellenistic context, such language communicated the idea of actively sharing part of the divine mind. Paul speaks here of a continuing experience, one that might be described in terms of illumination or transformation, not exclusively of believers’ initial reception of divine wisdom when they embraced the gospel.
In practice, having the mind of Christ or acting on the basis of Christ living in one (Rom. 8:10; Gal. 2:20) probably includes a range of elements: moral empowerment (as in the context of Gal. 2:20); a theocentric, Christocentric, ecclesiocentric, and missional framework for thinking; periodic personal direction from, or being moved by, the Spirit; periodic experiences of acknowledged divine wisdom; periodic revelatory insights; and so on. One may facilitate such experiences in faith, though diversity of gifts means that some will experience some aspects of this (such as wisdom or revelatory insights) more than others.
For a literary/rhetorical purpose, Paul identifies with and adopts the persona of fallen humanity in Romans 7:7–25, but here he invites believers by faith to identify with Christ. This identification means not being Christ (see discussion below) but depending on Christ and what believers trust his heart to be in and through them. The idea may also include some experiences such as those that Luke, whose dominant interest is in mission, depicts on a narrative level: people filled with God’s Spirit (e.g., Acts 4:8, 31) and acting confidently “in the name of Jesus” (Acts 3:6; 9:34; 16:18). Paul himself may also allude to some concrete examples of such experience, including elsewhere in 1 Corinthians. Sharing God’s heart may be expressed most fully in the fruit of the Spirit, particularly love, but God’s heart is also communicated in cognitive ways.
Ministry Gifts and God’s Mind
Some ministry gifts communicate God’s wisdom (1 Cor. 2:13; 12:8–10). Some scholars have suggested that the revealed wisdom in 1 Corinthians 2:10 comes from revelations in “altered states of consciousness.” Paul himself did experience visions and special revelations (2 Cor. 12:1, 7), the content of which usually remained secret (12:4), but we should not assume that this was the only setting in which Paul and others experienced God revealing himself or giving believers a Spirit-directed perspective (1 Cor. 2:15) or the mind of Christ (2:16).
Although Paul’s language here is individual and not merely communal (1 Cor. 2:14–15), it probably also has a communal dimension. The larger context of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians may also suggest that the mind of the Spirit may be communicated to others open to the Spirit. Thus, Paul expects to communicate the Spirit’s wisdom through teaching (2:13).
Earlier, Paul cited as a reflection of God’s grace among the Corinthian believers (1:4) the fact that they were enriched in every kind of speech and knowledge (1:5); he presumably viewed such speaking and knowledge as among the grace-gifts (χαρίσματα) he envisions in 1:7. Some of the ministry empowerments, or spiritual gifts, that Paul later lists do communicate cognitively. Whereas the Spirit inspires prayer in tongues as affective prayer from one’s spirit, interpreting such affective prayer in the vernacular language communicates cognitive content and also is a gift from the Spirit (12:9–11; 14:13–15).
Likewise, the gift for building up the body of Christ that Paul emphasizes most extensively in 1 Corinthians 14 is prophecy, which also communicates on the level of understanding. One expression of prophecy can include revealing the secrets of people’s hearts (14:25), which presupposes divine revelation (since God is the one who searches hearts, Rom. 8:27). With the exception of tongues, all of the corporately edifying activities in 1 Corinthians 14:26—worship in the vernacular, teaching, and prophetic revelation—communicate cognitively at least in part. Coupled with interpretation, as Paul expects in public assemblies, even prayer in tongues can facilitate communal cognition (14:13, 27–28).
That the Spirit may inspire cognitive communication in a variety of ways—such as wisdom, prophecy, teaching, or worship—would not surprise early Christians. They believed that they were in the age of the outpoured prophetic Spirit (Acts 2:17–18) and shared with their Jewish contemporaries the belief that God’s Spirit had inspired the Scriptures, the genres of which included narrative, law, prophecy, song, and other elements.
What Paul here adds to this belief is the recognition that the Spirit gifts different individuals in different ways; each one knows or prophesies in part (1 Cor. 13:9), and each one may communicate different aspects of God’s heart. Any brief survey of ancient Israelite prophets will demonstrate that even among them, divine revelations came in different ways, for example, through visions, dreams, hearing God’s voice, communications from angels, or the divine message overflowing and compelling one to speak.
God may reveal his wisdom in a variety of complementary ways, and each member of Christ’s body should be respectful toward those members who bring gifts in forms different from their own. Of course, the more abundant the gifts, the greater the need for discernment, which Paul clearly connects with gifts (and especially prophecy; 1 Cor. 12:10; 14:29; 1 Thess. 5:20–21). But as noted earlier, part of true wisdom in Christ’s body is viewing one’s own gifts within the larger context of Christ’s body and not treating one’s own gift as the greatest (or, as some seem tempted to do today, the only legitimate) gift (Rom. 12:3–8, esp. 12:3).
Divine Inspiration and Empowerment, Not Divine Identity (1 Cor. 3:3–4)
The presence of the divine mind within believers contrasts with how Paul specifically and perhaps ironically depicts believers in Corinth. Paul chides the Corinthian Christians for acting like humans (1 Cor. 3:3–4), perhaps in the sense of acting like mortals. In Greek thought the line between human and divine was sometimes thin. Many philosophers believed that by cultivating reason, they liberated the divine spark within them, or that experiencing the divine through reason divinized them. For Paul, by contrast, the greatest sign of God’s character, and thus of his presence in believers, is love (e.g., Rom. 5:5–8; 8:35–39; 13:8–10; 14:15; 15:30; 1 Cor. 13:13; 14:1; 16:14; 2 Cor. 5:14; 13:11; Gal. 2:20; 5:14; 1 Thess. 4:9; see esp. Gal. 5:22).
Excursus: Divinization in Greek and Roman Tradition
In contrast to the Jewish monotheistic tradition, boundaries between exalted humanity and incipient divinity in the Greek and Roman tradition by this period often proved fluid (this fluidity was widespread, against some earlier scholars who connected divinization too narrowly with the mysteries).
For example, popular tradition divinized many heroes, such as Dionysus, Heracles, the Dioscuri, Asclepius, Achilles, Trophonius, Palamedes, and sometimes any memorable protagonist of ancient narratives. Homer regularly describes heroes as “peers of gods” or “godlike.” Heroes constituted an intermediate category between deities and mortals, in other words, demigods; this intermediate class comprised the deified dead invoked by the living. Ancient heroes, especially those supposed to have been literally sprung from divine seed, were also often sons of gods (though most often in a figurative or distant sense, such as the “Zeus-born” son of such-and-such a human father), or “nurtured” by gods.
Even a particularly eloquent orator might be compared to gods or titled “divine.” The same could be done with poets, especially “godlike Homer.” Romans offered sacrifices to spirits of the deceased but deified their founder, Romulus, only after the fourth century BCE, due to Greek influence.
Deification of rulers was a particularly dominant public expression of this pattern. Greeks had divinized Hellenistic rulers; the practice began in earnest under Alexander of Macedon, after his conquests invited influence from Eastern traditions. In the late republic, Cicero caricatured Greeks as viewing benevolent governors as divine; but the language so pervaded the culture of the empire that a late first-century CE Roman could poetically depict the senate as rivaling deities with their virtue. It became common in the imperial cults.
More relevant to discussions of the mind, philosophy was held to divinize people, as was philosophy’s goal, virtue or happiness. Likewise, divinization could stem from proper knowledge of one’s humanity, faithfulness, or, in some views or eulogistic rhetoric, simply death. Philosophers and other sages too were often divinized or said to be divine in some sense, including Democritus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Epicurus, Theophrastus, Theodorus, Apollonius, Indian sages, a divine lawgiver like Lycurgus, and especially “the divine Plato.” Greeks bestowed such honorary language still more freely, and many regarded the human soul or rational mind as divine, or even the cosmos as divine.
For the Jewish Middle Platonist Philo, intelligence represents a divine element in humanity. But although divinization language influenced Judaism, even Philo employs it only “in a highly qualified sense.” Indeed, in more traditional Palestinian Judaism such promises still belonged to the serpent (Gen. 3:5; Jub. 3:19). Fearing the Lord precluded claims of full divinization.
Tellingly, Paul, despite his subject, does not use the Greek language of deification; he appears even more conservative in his monotheistic expression than Philo. Paul never calls the human mind divine, or speaks of an innate divine spark in all humans, or says that believers are or become part of God. We “have” the mind of Christ, but our mind is not said to “be” the mind of Christ. That is, he may be avoiding deliberately some language that some of his contemporaries employed when touching on his topic.
Nevertheless, Paul does recognize that God dwells among his people (1 Cor. 3:16), and part of what it means for Christ and the Spirit to live in God’s people is that Christ’s mind is active in them. The fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22–23), contrasted with works of the flesh (5:19–21), is the fruit, the natural result, of God’s moral nature through the Spirit acting within the believer.
For Paul, restoration to Christ’s image (Rom. 8:29) apparently entails even more than the original creation in God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27). The first humans apparently had periodic communion with God (Gen. 2:16–22; 3:8), but in Christ believers have not only access to God (Rom. 5:2) but even God’s Spirit living inside them (Rom. 8:9). The Spirit influences both their spirits and minds (Rom. 8:5–6, 16; 1 Cor. 14:13–15 with 12:10–11). Ideally, many divine insights directly influence the mind that follows the divine frame of thought.
Transformation through Vision (2 Cor. 3:18)
We may more fully understand Paul’s message to the Corinthians, as well as his message more generally, by examining other examples of his teaching in the Corinthian correspondence. Here I focus briefly on one passage in 2 Corinthians. The climax of Paul’s passage comparing new covenant ministry by the Spirit with Moses’s ministry of the law highlights Paul’s interest in transformation through experiencing Christ’s glory (2 Cor. 3:18).
The passage does not directly address either the form of divine revelation mentioned or the question of deification (most Jewish people did not use deification as a description for Moses’s glorification). Nevertheless, it remains relevant to this chapter’s discussion in that it does address one way that Paul expected believers to experience God, mature, and be transformed. This passage is also relevant in helping us understand Romans 12:2, since 2 Corinthians 3:18 is the only other extant passage where Paul employs the verb μεταμορφόω (“transform”).
Hellenistic Vision of the Divine
Vision was a frequent analogy for knowing and often was used for spiritual sight. Plato emphasized the vision of the mind, which could see ideal forms; the physical senses were deceitful, so the soul should depend only on itself and “see” invisible abstractions perceptible only to the mind. Eventually many writers emphasized the mind’s or soul’s ability to see; Philo spoke repeatedly of the “eyes” of the soul. Stoics such as Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius viewed the ignorant masses as “blind”; likewise, Seneca believed that only the pure mind could comprehend God.
Such views flourished particularly among those most deeply engaged with Platonic tradition, in which the mind was used to envision God. In the mid-second century CE the eclectic Platonist orator Maximus of Tyre stressed vision by the intellect. He noted that at death those who love God will see him, ideal Beauty and pure Truth. In the meantime one could prepare for such perfect vision of the divine by focusing one’s mind on the divine. The soul can recall its prenatal vision of divine beauty only vaguely; while such beauty remains perfect in the unchanging heavens, it grows faint in the lower realms of the senses. For an orator with Middle Platonic affinities, removing layers of sense perception helps one to see God; meditating on true divine beauty frees the soul from the lower realms’ corruption. Although divine beauty was perfect in the heavenly realms, only intellect could penetrate it in the lower, sensory realms.
In a later period the third-century founder of Neoplatonism sought such vision: Plotinus allegedly “experienced in a trance actual visions of the transcendent God.” Developing his views according to the Platonic model, Plotinus declares that the soul’s vision, a sort of inner sight, contemplates the beauty of the Good in the realm of Ideas. His followers, however, retained older popular mythology alongside such views. His disciple Porphyry, by contrast, opines that the wise soul is always beholding God. This is possible, he remarks, because the intellect is like a “mirror” that reflects God’s likeness by its similarity to him.
For Philo, God is transcendent and hence can be encountered through mystical vision, especially ecstatically. In contrast to Gentile Platonists, in Philo this vision depends completely on God’s self-revelation; like other Platonists, however, Philo believed that only the pure soul can see God. The present vision of deity is necessarily incomplete; mortals can only perceive that God is, not what he is; only God can “apprehend God.” The soul’s eye is overwhelmed by God’s glory, yet seeking God remains a blessed endeavor, “just as no one blames the eyes of the body because when unable to see the sun itself they see the emanation of its rays.” One should progress toward clearer vision; the ultimate vision of God was a reward for attaining perfection.
Some believed that by meditating on divine, heavenly matters, the soul—originally from heaven—nourished its heavenly nature and so prepared to ascend to heaven after the body’s death. In Alexandria, where Platonism dominated early enough to impact Jewish intellectual thought there, such thoughts were already influential. Thus, the widely circulated Wisdom of Solomon warns that the body distracts the soul from heavenly concerns. For this Jewish author, people can understand the matters of heaven only by God’s heavenly gift of wisdom and the Spirit.
Jewish Vision of the Divine and God’s Image
Some Jewish sources also spoke of envisioning God. Jewish mystics valued ascending to heaven in visions and sometimes may have encouraged these in ways similar to the attempts of some philosophers to encounter the divine. Such experiences may provide the background for some of the contents in 1 Enoch and other apocalyptic sources. Some authors apparently drew especially on biblical revelations of divine glory (e.g., Isa. 6:1–8; Ezek. 1:4–28) as models for their own mystic ascents to heaven.
Although Paul was not averse to drawing on Platonic imagery in this context (cf. 2 Cor. 4:16–5:1), his explicit appeal is to the biblical experience of Moses (possibly evoked for him also by way of the Jesus tradition; cf. Mark 9:2). Scripture and Jewish tradition reported various theophanies, but the most important model was Moses (especially, as here, in Exod. 33:18–34:7). In some Jewish traditions Moses even ascended all the way to heaven to receive the Torah. Moreover, Moses was explicitly transformed through this revelation (see comment below), although his transformation was temporary, in contrast to the inner transformation that the new covenant has initiated.
Two possible associations for Paul’s reference to the image here are particularly important. God made humanity in his image (Gen. 1:26), as his children (Gen. 5:1–2). Renewal into Christ’s image may thus include an allusion to the restoration of some of what Adam lost (1 Cor. 11:7; 15:49; Col. 3:10), as noted earlier. In that sense, the transformation restores persons to the identity that God originally intended for humankind. Whereas Adam’s sin introduced death to those bearing his image (Rom. 5:12–21), the second Adam has inaugurated a new creation for those bearing his (2 Cor. 5:17). By marring God’s image, Jewish tradition believed, Adam had lost God’s glory; glory’s eschatological restoration (cf. Rom. 8:29) here comes in Christ.
At the same time, Christ appears as God’s image in a unique way, one that could not have been filled by simply any human (2 Cor. 4:4; Col. 1:15). Paul probably thus evokes God’s supreme image, through which God formed or stamped his image on the world (cf. Col. 1:15–16) or humanity, an image identified in Greek-speaking Jewish tradition as God’s wisdom or logos. Diaspora Jews could envision Wisdom as a mirror that reflected God’s character and work (Wis. 7:26).
Glory Revealed to Moses and Jesus’s Agents
Not only here but elsewhere, Paul links “image” and “glory” (2 Cor. 4:4; Rom. 1:23; 1 Cor. 11:7). Beholding God’s glory transformed Moses (2 Cor. 3:7), and in the same way, beholding Jesus, God’s glorious image (4:4–6), transforms believers. This same glory shines through weak vessels (4:7–12), Christ’s agents (such as Paul), whom Paul compares favorably with Moses (3:6–4:4). Christ’s agents mediate a superior glory and a covenant superior to that of Moses (3:6) because their glorious transformation gives life rather than death (3:6–8) and is eternal rather than transitory (3:7, 11, 13; 4:16).
In the context, Paul’s primary point is not a comparison between the revelation to Moses and the revelation to all believers but rather a comparison between the revelation to Moses and the revelation to the servants of the new covenant who bring the message to others. Nevertheless, some of Paul’s arguments about himself draw on wider Christian experience, and that is undoubtedly the case here. The “all” (πάντες) in 2 Corinthians 3:18 seems superfluous if it does not refer to an experience potentially applicable to all believers (cf. also 5:10, 14–15; Rom. 4:16; 8:32).
A key emphasis in this context is that this glorious transformation comes by God’s Spirit (2 Cor. 3:3, 6, 8). Just as the Lord revealed his glory to Moses in Exodus 33–34, so, correspondingly, the Spirit reveals divine glory to servants of the new covenant (2 Cor. 3:17).
This inner glory has come in a way very different from the glory revealed at Sinai, however; this glory was evident in the cross, recognizable only from the vantage point of the resurrection. The brokenness of Paul and his colleagues replicates the glory of the cross (2 Cor. 4:7, 10–11, 17); this glory is concealed from the perishable perspectives of this age but becomes evident to those who receive the good news (2:15–16; 3:15–16; 4:3). From the world’s standpoint, both Jesus’s execution and the suffering of his followers are merely the stench of death; in believers’ worldview, however, they are inseparable from God’s resurrection power (2:14–16). Those who have begun to share in the new creation look at everything, including Christ, in a way different from those whose minds remain captive to the old order of things (5:16–17).
For Paul, the new covenant, unlike the old, expands the experience of the Spirit to all of God’s people (2 Cor. 3:3, evoking Ezek. 36:26–27), as is repeatedly clear in his letters. The extant sources suggest that most Jewish people considered direct experience of God’s Spirit rare in their own time. Yet Paul declares that just as Moses’s veil was removed when he was before the Lord, the veil that shrouds God’s glory from being recognized by nonbelievers (2 Cor. 3:13–15; 4:3–4) is removed when people turn to Christ (3:16). This revelation is expressly accomplished through the Spirit (3:17).
Paul’s visions and revelations of the Lord undoubtedly facilitated his own experience of beholding the Lord’s glory (2 Cor. 12:1, 7). At the same time, Paul does not present his visionary experience as a normative model that all believers should seek (12:5; cf. 5:13). The experience that all believers share is Christ’s divine glory in their hearts (4:6). Paul’s other writings suggest that thinking conformed to God’s values (Rom. 12:2, also mentioning transformation) and focused on the matters of Christ (Col. 3:1–11) can bring transformation without assuming visions. Given the diversity of gifts (Rom. 12:4–8; 1 Cor. 12:4–11, 29–30), believers may have appropriated this experience in different ways; some may have done so in more mystical ways (similar to Paul’s visions), others by meditating on Christ’s character as displayed in his acts and passion, and many, perhaps most commonly, by worship focused on God in Christ. In light of Old Testament depictions of life before the fall (Gen. 2:16–22; cf. 3:8–11), the biblical God as personal and relational, and the promised knowledge of God at the time of restoration (Jer. 31:32–34; Hosea 2:20; 1 Cor. 13:12), the heart of the experience was undoubtedly relational.
In whatever ways this beholding of God’s glory is experienced, Paul depicts an ongoing, present experience that brings transformation, just as the same verb for transformation suggests in Romans 12:2. “From glory to glory” probably depicts the increasing experience of God’s glory. Paul does recognize that the experience of glory, while not technically veiled, remains limited, as in a mirror, until Christ’s return (1 Cor. 13:10–12); the full experience of glory awaits glorified bodies (1 Cor. 15:49; Phil. 3:21; cf. Rom. 8:29–30). Nevertheless, believers in the present are increasingly conformed to God’s glorious image in Christ as they continue to know what Christ is like.
Whereas Platonists sought to envision a deity of pure reason, and Jewish mystics God’s throne chariot, Paul’s focus is on Christ himself (2 Cor. 4:4; 12:1, 8–9; Col. 3:1–2, 10), presumably including his suffering (cf. 1 Cor. 2:2). In particular, those who embrace Christ’s sufferings share his resurrection power and glory (2 Cor. 4:6, 10–12, 16). This is “not the passionless deity of Platonism, but the God of the cross who embraced human brokenness and mortality.”
For Paul, true wisdom is found in the cross, the antithesis of status-conscious worldly wisdom. True wisdom can be understood only from the vantage point of the age to come, when truth will be impossible to evade (cf. 2 Cor. 3:13–15; 4:5). God’s Spirit reveals this perspective on reality to believers, qualifying them to understand dimensions of the divine perspective. God’s Spirit may communicate this to believers in various ways.
By contrast, Paul argues, the world that honors the very expressions of power that crucified Christ lacks the competence for spiritual and moral evaluation. Unfortunately, the Corinthian Christians had imbibed more of the world’s spirit than of Christ’s and were therefore evaluating matters wrongly. The mind of Christ was available to them, but it was for mature believers, who walk in Christ’s love, not for childish believers, who harshly judge one another and divide from one another in envy and strife. An increasingly fuller understanding of the character of Christ crucified could increasingly transform their character, conforming them to Christ’s glorious image.
. See Job 28:28; Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7; 9:10; 15:33; Sir. 1:18, 27; 19:20; 21:11; cf. 1 Clem. 57.5.
. Some scholars understand the rulers here as heavenly or spiritual rulers (e.g., Dibelius, “Initiation,” 94; MacGregor, “Principalities,” 22–23; Cullmann, State, 63; Héring, First Epistle, 16–17; Berkhof, Powers, 14; Manson, Paul and John, 61; Whiteley, Theology, 26; Lee, “Powers,” 63; Conzelmann, Corinthians, 61; Adeyemi, “Rulers”; cf. Ambrosiaster Comm. [CSEL 81:24; Bray, Corinthians, 22]), as probably in Rom. 8:38; certainly in Col. 1:16; 2:15; Eph. 3:10; 6:12; cf. Dan. 10:13, 20; Jub. 15:31–32; 35:17; 1 En. 61:10; 75:1. Some did believe that angels could not understand all of God’s work (cf. 4Q402 frg. 4.14–15 [reconstructed]; Eph. 3:10; 1 Pet. 1:12; Daniélou, Theology, 206–14), or that God kept some things secret to circumvent Satan (b. Sanh. 26b). Given the present context, the reference here more likely is simply to earthly rulers (with Miller, “ΑΡΧΟΝΤΩΝ,” 528; Carr, Angels, 120; Fee, Exegesis, 87–91; Fee, Corinthians, 104; Thiselton, Corinthians, 233–39; Allison, Constructing Jesus, 396; cf. Oecumenius, catena on 1 Cor. 2:12 [PGK 15:432; Bray, Corinthians, 23]), as in Rom. 13:1–3; Titus 3:1; and possibly 1 Cor. 15:24—though not because the angelic use is post-Pauline (pace Carr, “Rulers,” 30).
. Note the preaching of the kingdom early in Mark’s Gospel and its climax in Mark’s passion narrative; although this narrative still envisions a future kingdom (14:25; 15:43), its focus on Jesus’s kingship is Jesus being mocked as king by those who are killing him (15:2, 9, 12, 18, 26, 32).
. Corinth was known for its wealth and trade (e.g., Mart. Epig. 5.35.3; Favorinus in Dio Chrys. Or. 37.8, 36; Thiselton, Corinthians, 6–12; Engels, Roman Corinth, 33–52) but also for its stratification (Alciph. Paras. 24 [Chascobuces to Hypnotrapezus], 3.60, ¶1). For status issues in the urban empire, cf. Meeks, Moral World, 32.
. Although few Christians there belonged to the upper class (e.g., Gager, “Class,” 99; Gager, “Review,” 180; Judge, Pattern, 52), some apparently were of high status; a numerical minority within the congregation, they nevertheless exerted disproportionate influence (e.g., Theissen, “Schichtung”; Judge, Rank, 9–10; Malherbe, Social Aspects, 29–30, 118–19). Corinth may have been idiosyncratic in its proportion of higher-status believers (see Friesen, “Prospects,” 353–58).
. From a postcolonial political perspective, we might say that they had internalized the false narrative of the elites.
. Scholars rightly notice the emphasis on speaking—and thus concerns regarding rhetoric among the congregation’s more elite members—in 1 Cor. 1:17–18, 20; 2:1, 4, 13; 4:19–20 (including the “wisdom” of skilled speech in 1:5, 17; 2:4); see, e.g., Pogoloff, Logos, 109–12; Litfin, Theology, 119–24, 245–46. Some, however, have neglected the likely influence also of the other advanced discipline of Greco-Roman antiquity—namely, philosophy—when Paul speaks of wisdom or knowledge (1:5, 19–22, 26–27; 2:1, 4–6, 13; 3:18–20; cf. Clem. Alex. Strom. 1.90.1; Ambrosiaster Comm., proem [CSEL 81:3–4]; Chrys. Hom. Cor. 4.4, 6; 5.5; Bray, Corinthians, 14, 16–17). Paul’s contrast between divine wisdom and human philosophy is still more explicit in Col. 2:3, 8.
. See discussion below on pp. 204–5.
. See esp. pp. 44–45.
. The wisdom of the coming age, then to be publicly vindicated (with Ambrosiaster Comm. [CSEL 81:23; Bray, Corinthians, 21]); but probably also eschatological in content (see below, pp. 178–79).
. Paul’s repetition of “wisdom” twice in 1 Cor. 2:6 is rhetorically suitable (on such repetition, see, e.g., Cic. Or. Brut. 39.135; cf. Anderson, Glossary, 18, 37).
. For the sense “mature” here, as often in Paul, see, e.g., Allo, Première Épitre, 91; Garland, 1 Corinthians, 93.
. Cf. probably also “depths” in 1 Cor. 2:10.
. E.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 66.31; Epict. Diatr. 2.12.21–22; Marc. Aur. 11.1.2; in 4 Maccabees, cf. Fuhrmann, “Mother.” Those with apocalyptic sympathies would understand still more clearly (Mark 8:36–37; 2 Bar. 51:15–16; cf. b. Tamid 32a).
. Probably also the source for Philo QG 4.191. Paul might omit a citation formula (1 Cor. 1:19, 31; 2:9; 3:19) out of knowledge of the different Judean canon; perhaps Apollos had used such wisdom texts as part of his Alexandrian canon, or they were in use in Corinth’s synagogue before Paul’s arrival.
. Paul’s wisdom language reflects especially Hellenistic Jewish wisdom tradition; see, e.g., Conzelmann, Corinthians, 8; Scroggs, “ΣΟΦΟΣ,” 37, 54 (“apocalyptic wisdom teaching”). For Wis. 9 here, see also Scroggs, “ΣΟΦΟΣ,” 51; deSilva, “Wisdom,” 1274.
. “Lord of glory,” or “glorious Lord” (1 Cor. 2:8), probably contrasts with worldly honor and may evoke believers’ future “glory” in 2:7. Similar language appears as a divine title in 1 Enoch (22:14; 25:3; 27:3, 5; 36:4; 40:3; 63:2; 75:3; 83:8), as Grant (Gnosticism, 158) notes; cf. also Ps. 24:7–10 (23:7–10 LXX). Pace some (e.g., Pearson, Terminology, 34), there is no reason to attribute the phrase to Paul’s “opponents” (although “the Lord of glory” is also “Lord of wisdom” in 1 En. 63:2, with deep secrets in 63:3).
. Against the idea (articulated in, e.g., Setzer, Responses, 16–19; Schmidt, “Linguistic Evidence”) that 1 Thess. 2:14–16 is a post-Pauline interpolation, see Das, Paul and Jews, 129–36; Schlueter, Measure; Donfried, “Test Case”; Donfried, Thessalonica, 198–99; Collins, “Integrity.”
. Cf. the downfall of the world’s rulers who valued power over God’s wisdom in Bar. 3:14–19; cf. LXX Ps. 104:22 (105:22 ET); Isa. 19:11; Ezek. 27:8; Dan. 1:20; 2:48; 4:18; Pss. Sol. 8:20.
. On a theological level, one might compare God’s creation of humanity as vizier over his creation (Gen. 1:26–28) and the abandonment of this almost-supreme status for an empty promise of being “like God” (Gen. 3:5–6). Many thinkers rejected the wisdom of the majority, but whereas Paul’s approach defies the values of the social elite, intellectuals disdained the views of the uninformed masses (e.g., Eurip. Hipp. 988–89; Aristoph. Acharn. 371–73; Frogs 419, 1085–86; among philosophers, see, e.g., Arist. Pol. 3.6.4–13, 1281a–1282b; 4.4.4–7, 1292a; 5.4.1–5, 1304b–1305b; 6.2.10–12, 1319b; Rhet. 2.20.5, 1393b; Epict. Diatr. 1.2.18; 1.3.4; 1.18.4, 10; 2.1.22; 4.8.27; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 66.31; 108.7; Marc. Aur. 11.23; Mus. Ruf. 41, p. 136.22–26; Iambl. Pyth. Life 31.200, 213; Porph. Marc. 17.291–92; 30.475; Diogenes the Cynic in Diog. Laert. 6 passim; among rabbis, e.g., m. Git. 5:9; Hag. 2:7; t. Demai 2:5, 14–15, 19; 3:6–7; 6:8; Maas. 2:5).
. For Wisdom’s preexistence, see Prov. 8:22–23; Sir. 24:9; Wis. 7:22; 9:1–3; L.A.B. 32:7; t. Sanh. 8:9; Sipre Deut. 37.1.3; 2 En. 30:8; 33:3. On preexistent wisdom in 1 Cor. 2:6–9, see esp. Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, 116–17; discussion in Keener, John, 352–55, 367–68, 379–80.
. The idea of hidden or esoteric wisdom was common (e.g., Val. Max. 8.7.ext.2; 1QS 11.6), though sometimes open to challenge (e.g., Isoc. Antid. 84). Against some older commentators who viewed μυστήριον here as related to the mystery cults (as it is in Wis. 14:15, 23; Philo Spec. Laws 1.319; 3.40; Jos. Ant. 19.30, 71, 104; Ag. Ap. 2.189, 266), the language had already acquired a strong home in Jewish wisdom (Wis. 2:22; 6:22; cf. ordinary usage in Sir. 22:22; 27:16–17, 21) and revelatory passages (Dan. 2:19, 27–30, 47). Philo often borrows language of the mysteries figuratively for divine mysteries (Alleg. Interp. 3.3, 27, 71, 100; Cher. 48–49; Sacr. 60; Unchangeable 61; Contempl. 25). The comparable Hebrew term is pervasive in the Dead Sea Scrolls (more than 150 times); cf. also secrets of wisdom in 1 En. 51:3 (negatively, 69:8). See discussion in Brown, “Mysterion”; Brown, Mystery; Caragounis, Mysterion; in this context, Casciaro Ramírez, “Misterio”; Jódar-Estrella, “Misterio”; Horsley, Corinthians, 58–59.
. Cf. Origen’s comment on 1 Cor. 2:9: “How great the splendor, the beauty and the brightness of a spiritual body” (Princ. 3.6.4; trans. Bray, Corinthians, 23). It was widely applied to future blessings (e.g., 1 Clem. 34.7–8; Mart. Pol. 2.3; Tert. Spec. 30).
. For future blessings prepared for the righteous, cf. also, e.g., Matt. 25:34; 1 En. 25:7; 103:3; 4 Ezra 8:52.
. Paul adapts here Isa. 64:3 LXX (64:4 ET), which also became a popular eschatological text among later rabbis (e.g., b. Ber. 34b; Sanh. 99a; Shab. 63a; Exod. Rab. 45:6); cf. the phrasing close to Paul’s in L.A.B. 26:13. Some early interpreters recognized that Paul paraphrases Isa. 64 (cf. the blended wording in 1 Clem. 34.8; Bray [Corinthians, 23] cites Ambrosiaster Comm. [CSEL 81:26]); some others suggest a source no longer extant (Chrys. Hom. Cor. 7.6).
. Cf. Arrington, Aeon Theology, 132–33.
. “Revealed wisdom” also appears occasionally in apocalyptic texts, such as 1 En. 48:7.
. The language of “deep things” was appropriate not only to physical depths but also to the hidden or humanly unsearchable regions of the heart or mind; see LXX Ps. 63:7 (64:6 ET); Prov. 20:5; 25:3; Jer. 17:9. Especially relevant is Jdt. 8:14, which compares the unfathomable depths of the human heart with the even greater impossibility of searching out God.
. See, further, Prov. 18:4; Sir. 1:3; Philo Drunkenness 112; depths of knowledge in Dreams 1.6; 2.271 (by analogy); Posterity 130; cf. Flight 200; 3 En. 11:1; derivatively, God’s love in Eph. 3:18; for the suggestion of wisdom language here, see Scroggs, “ΣΟΦΟΣ,” 51. Some used “deep” to mean “profound” (e.g., βάθος in Longin. Subl. 2.1) or “unknown” (Eccles. 7:24 LXX), or applied “depths” to special mysteries (1 En. 63:3; Rev. 2:24; cf. the contrast with the true searcher of hearts in Rev. 2:23).
. Cf. similar language in 2 Bar. 54:12, addressing God: “Who understands your deep thoughts of life?” (trans. A. F. J. Klijn, OTP 1:640; Charles’s older translation reads, “Who comprehendeth Thy deep thought of life?” [APOT 2:511]). Cf. also, similarly, Sir. 1:2–3, praising the unsearchable greatness of wisdom.
. For mysteries in Daniel and early Judaism, esp. in the Dead Sea Scrolls, see more fully, e.g., Brown, “Mysterion”; Brown, Mystery; Caragounis, Mysterion; and most recently, Beale and Gladd, Hidden, 29–55.
. Further exposition would explain backgrounds in the exodus (Exod. 2:23) and eschatological birth pangs (Rom. 8:22), as well as the connection with the intercession of Jesus the justifier (8:34; see, further, Keener, Romans, 106–8). I have briefly argued against identifying this with tongues (107–8n37), but Fee makes a noteworthy and perhaps compelling case for their identification (Listening, 105–20). At the least, they reflect analogous functions in Paul’s theology. The groans are not cognitive and may be Spirit-inspired prayer that occurs by virtue of the Spirit within believers, rather than believers’ deliberate, and perhaps often conscious, work (cf. similarly the Abba prayer of Rom. 8:15).
. The idea was common enough (e.g., Dio Chrys. Or. 3.18; Prov. 14:10; perhaps also relevant here is Prov. 20:27, though understood quite differently in 1 Clem. 21.2; Pesiq. Rab. 8:2). In other contexts one might claim that no one knows man (Ahiq. 116, saying 33), or one might claim to know the mind of a friend, because a friend was a “second self” (Papyrus Merton 12 in Stowers, Letter Writing, 61; more generally for a friend as a “second self,” see Diod. Sic. 17.37.6; Cic. Fam. 7.5.1; 13.1.5; cf. P.Oxy. 32.5–6; Cic. Fin. 1.20.70; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 95.63). Hellenistic Jewish writers employed πνεῦμα, as here, for the human element that Koine more often depicted as ψυχή (Isaacs, Spirit, 35–36; cf. Allo, Première Épitre, 104); Philo associates it with human reason and conscience (Isaacs, Spirit, 38–41).
. Cf. Bar. 3:31–32: no one except God knows Wisdom’s way.
. Jdt. 8:14, using a cognate form of the verb ἐραυνάω that Paul employs in 1 Cor. 2:10. Cf., later, Diogenes in Dio Chrys. Or. 10.22 (cf. 10.27): in violation of the Delphic inscription “Know yourself,” most people do not know themselves; how then can they know the gods? (Why, he is arguing, should they consult the oracle?)
. T. Job 38:5 (OTP 1:858). One of his critics responds, “We are not investigating the things beyond us” (38:9, trans. Kraft; 38:6 in OTP 1:858, trans. Spittler).
. E.g., Plato Tim. 28C; Ep. 2.312E; Max. Tyre Or. 2.10; 11.9; 21.7–8; Apul. Apol. 64; De deo Socr. 123–24. Cf. also Philo Names 15; Shibata, “Ineffable.”
. God’s realm was beyond that of mortals (Sen. Y. Dial. 12.8.5); Pythagoreans invoked divine aid in understanding their divine philosophy, for “it cannot be comprehended without the gods’ aid” (Iambl. Pyth. Life 1.1; trans. Dillon and Hershbell, 31).
. Pindar Paean. 21, frg. 61, in Stob. Anth. 2.1.8 (using in line 4 a cognate form of ἐραυνάω, as here). Cf. also Hesiod Melamp. 9 (in Clem. Alex. Strom. 5. p. 259): “There is no seer among mortal men such as would know the mind of Zeus” (trans. Evelyn-White, LCL, 271).
. Sir. 1:6–9 is the only LXX passage that includes both “wisdom” and “reveal”; cf. Bar. 3:31–32. For true wisdom as only a gift from God in Sirach, see, further, Boccaccini, Judaism, 82–83. Paul’s use of “those who love him” in 1 Cor. 2:9 could allude to this passage, since Sir. 1:10 so describes those who receive the gift of wisdom and Paul uses these words to midrashically adapt the language of Isa. 64:3 LXX (64:4 ET). Admittedly, the phrase “those who love” God was familiar in Scripture (cf. Exod. 20:6; Deut. 5:10; 7:9; Neh. 1:5; Pss. 91:14; 119:132; 122:6; 145:20; Dan. 9:4) and beyond it (e.g., 1 Macc. 4:33; Pss. Sol. 4:25; 6:6; 14:1; 4Q176 frg. 16.4; 4Q525 frg. 5.13; T. Ab. 3:3 A), including in Sirach (Sir. 2:15–16; 34:19). Others suggest theological reasons for the change (Bauer, “AΓAΠΩΣIN”).
. In Rom. 8:15, as well as here, Paul contrasts the spirit believers have not received with the Spirit they have received. For Paul, “receiving” the Spirit probably coincides with conversion (Gal. 3:2, 14), at least in principle.
. Some suggest that “spirit of the world” here refers to Satan (cf. Isaacs, Spirit, 105; Eph. 2:2), or plausibly compare the spirit of error that opposes the spirit of truth in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Levison, Filled, 281–82, citing 1QS 4.3–6, 9–11; noting also differences, Flusser, Judaism, 68) or the related contrast in Jub. 1:20–21. At the same time, Jewish writers in Greek use πνεῦμα even for psychological dispositions or inclinations (Chevallier, Ancien Testament, 39; Isaacs, Spirit, 71); cf. the parallel Pauline construction in Rom. 8:15.
. Although they would have differed with Paul over criteria distinguishing true and false wisdom (though usually the criteria were their own school’s doctrine, as here), many thinkers made such distinctions; see, e.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 88.44; Nat. Q. 1.pref.14–15; Aul. Gel. 10.22; Lucian Carousal 30, 34; Dial. D. 329 (1/1, Diogenes 1); 332 (1/1, Diogenes 2); Fronto Ad M. Caes. 4.3.1; Porph. Marc. 25.394–95; 27.425–31; cf. Prov. 3:5–7; 1 Tim. 6:20; Sib. Or. 5.86–87; Diogn. 12.4–7. Likewise, the community that produced the Dead Sea Scrolls believed that they alone possessed the Spirit of truth (Flusser, Judaism, 54) that would give them true insight (1QS 4.21–23).
. With Chrys. Hom. Cor. 7.8 (in Bray, Corinthians, 25).
. A “spiritual” word might mean “allegorical,” as some suggest for Rev. 11:8 (Beale, Revelation, 592), though probably wrongly in that case (see Bruce, “Spirit in Apocalypse,” 339; Roloff, Revelation, 133; Bauckham, Climax, 168–69)—though it could mean “figuratively,” a communicative form in Revelation common in the preexilic prophets, who prophesied in poetry. But Paul elsewhere normally associates “spiritual” with the Spirit (with, e.g., Fee, Presence, 28–31; Fee, Listening, 5). The message of the cross itself is “spiritual” and remains God’s word revealed by the Spirit (1 Cor. 9:11; 2 Cor. 2:17; 4:2; 5:19; 1 Thess. 2:13); perhaps broken dependence on the Spirit also facilitates its communication through its messengers (cf. 2 Cor. 4:7–10).
. Paul’s term for interpreting or understanding in 1 Cor. 2:13 (συγκρίνω) applies especially to comparing (objects or persons). Relevant to the issue in 3:4–7, the term and its cognates applied frequently to comparisons used in evaluation, including in rhetoric; see Philo Virt. 85 (cf. also Martin, “Philo’s Use”); Jos. War 1.13; Plut. Comparison of Alcibiades and Coriolanus (and his other parallel lives); Hermog. Inv. 4.14.212; Progymn. 8, “On Syncrisis,” 18–20; Men. Rhet. 2.3, 381.31–32; 2.10, 416.2–4; 2.14, 427.1–3; 2.10, 417.5–9; Libanius Comp. passim; Nicolaus Progymn. 9, “On Syncrisis,” 59–62; Gärtner, “Synkrisis”; Aune, Dictionary of Rhetoric, 110. In Paul, see 2 Cor. 10:12.
. Comparison did not necessarily denigrate one person to exalt another (Men. Rhet. 2.6, 402.26–29; 403.26–32; 404.5–8; 2.10, 417.5–17; e.g., Plut. Comparison of Aristides and Marcus Cato; Comparison of Lucullus and Cimon), but sometimes it did (e.g., Cic. Ag. Caec. 12.37; Brut. 93.321–22; Pis. 22.51; in rhetoric, cf. Demosth. Embassy 174; see comment in Keener, John, 916–17, 1183–84), and the partisan divisions probably suggest that some denigration happened in this case.
. Cf. Witherington, Corinthians, 128: “We . . . interpret spiritual matters to spiritual people,” construing the verb as “interpret,” as in Gen. 40:8, 22; 41:12; Dan. 5:12. This approach does not rule out the nuance of comparison noted above; Paul’s only other use of the term συγκρίνω is in 2 Cor. 10:12, although only the latter is a clearly rhetorical use (Forbes, “Comparison,” 152).
. These levels of understanding are different. By way of analogy, there is a difference between explaining the chemical properties of ink on a page and reading the message.
. Paul probably challenges their self-perception here; cf. 1 Cor. 14:37. Some tie the situation especially to prophetic figures (Wire, Prophets, 39–71); others demur (Hill, Prophecy, 130, against Dautzenberg, “Botschaft”). Some suggest that the self-perceived πνευματικοί may belong to the “of Christ” faction in 1 Cor. 1:12 (Snyder, Corinthians, 36). Paul probably employs the term positively in Gal. 6:1 (cf. 5:16–18, 22–23, 25; 6:8).
. The gospel that he has shared, however, can also be described as “spiritual things” or “matters of the Spirit,” as is clear from 1 Cor. 2:4–5 and 9:11. Both Paul’s “milk” and solid “food” (3:2) are matters of the Spirit, but some require a deeper level of openness to the Spirit than others do. Later in the letter the expression “things of the Spirit” also seems to apply to ministry empowerments from the Spirit (12:1; esp. 14:1; cf. Rom. 1:11).
. Proverbs does include much wisdom shared with Egyptian sages; intelligence and some kinds of wisdom are a common gift for all humanity (cf. Diogn. 10.2). But the fear of the Lord is the starting point for wisdom about divine and moral matters, on which God has provided instruction (Ps. 111:10; Prov. 1:7, 29; 9:10; 15:33). Human wisdom as a worldview or interpretive grid for reality is corrupted by human rebellion especially to the degree that it addresses divine matters and is shaped by personal or corporate sin.
. With also Horsley, Corinthians, 61. For the situation, see also the discussion in Keener, “Corinthian Believers.”
. See, e.g., Witherington, Corinthians, 47; Grindheim, “Wisdom.”
. See Savage, Power, 19–53 passim; also, e.g., Pliny Ep. 1.21.1.
. Slaveholders were interested in evaluating slaves (Pliny Ep. 1.21.2).
. Cic. Amic. 22.85 (trans. Falconer, LCL, 20:190–93).
. Pliny Ep. 6.26.2. Pliny seemed ready to both offer criticism to (Pliny Ep. 3.15.1–2; 7.20.1) and welcome criticism from (3.13.5; 5.3.8; 5.12.1; 7.17.1–3; 7.20.2; 8.19.2) friends and peers, especially to catch lapses before publication. This setting, of course, differs from hostile public exchanges.
. E.g., Fronto Ad M. Caes. 1.8; Apul. False Preface 1.104–5.
. Dio Chrys. Or. 18.11. Lucian ridicules the masses, who cannot evaluate speakers wisely (Lucian Prof. P.S. 20, 22).
. Pliny Ep. 7.9.3.
. Symm. Ep. 1.29 (in this case, favorably), opining that “a man may judge skills he does not himself possess” (trans. Salzman and Roberts, 68).
. Arius Did. 2.7.11m, p. 94.5–18.
. Among cities, e.g., Heracl. Ep. 9; Babr. 15.5–9; Hdn. 3.2.7–8; in partisan politics, e.g., Corn. Nep. 7 (Alcibiades), 4.1; 25 (Atticus), 7.1–11.6; Sall. Jug. 73.5; Plut. Sulla 4.4; 7.1; Aul. Gel. 6.19.6; in rhetoric, e.g., Dio Chrys. Or. 24.3; Lucian Prof. P.S. 22; Eunapius Lives 493–94; in literary competition, e.g., Plut. Cim. 8.7; Aul. Gel. 17.4.3–6; and so forth. See, further, Keener, Acts, 3:2287–88.
. Students of different schools often viewed themselves as rivals (Suet. Tib. 11.3; Philost. Vit. soph. 1.8.490; Pogoloff, Logos, 175; Winter, Philo and Paul, 170–76; Winter, Left Corinth, 38–39), including in Corinth (Dio Chrys. Or. 8.9; Winter, Left Corinth, 37, 39–40); this pattern continued even in medieval schools (Shelley, Church History, 198). This could be the case even when the teachers themselves were friends, as Paul and Apollos apparently were (cf. 1 Cor. 16:12; Mihaila, “Relationship”), and as was the case later with Whitefield and the Wesleys (Cragg, Church, 145).
. See, e.g., Arius Did. 2.7.7f, p. 48.19–22; 2.7.7g, p. 50.11–16.
. E.g., Arius Did. 2.7.7g, p. 50.23–26.
. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 71.7; Mus. Ruf. 8, p. 60.16–17. Distinguishing good from evil is “the function of wisdom” (Cic. Off. 3.17.71; trans. Miller, LCL, 21:341), and a philosopher should be a proper judge of the things that are just and fitting (Mus. Ruf. 8, p. 66.7–8).
. E.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 45.6; Mus. Ruf. 8, p. 60.10–12; Epict. Diatr. 2.3.1 and passim; Marc. Aur. 6.41 (regarding what is in our power to control). Only humans, not the animals, need the ability to differentiate between various external expressions (Epict. Diatr. 1.6.18).
. Epict. Diatr. 1.7.8.
. Diog. Laert. 7.1.122.
. Mus. Ruf. frg. 36, p. 134.11–12. Differentiation was a distinctively human gift (Epict. Diatr. 1.6.18).
. E.g., 1 Kings 3:9–12; 4Q417 frg. 1, col. 1.6–9; cf. 1QS 4.22–5.2; based on God’s laws in Ezek. 44:23–24. Contrast inability to distinguish good from evil among young children (Deut. 1:39; Isa. 7:15–16) and among the wicked (Isa. 5:20).
. Mus. Ruf. 8, p. 60.16–17; 8, p. 62.39–40; Iambl. Letter 13, frg. 2 (Stob. Anth. 2.2.7); cf. the definition of wisdom in Cic. Inv. 2.53.160. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 71.7 opines that Socrates brought philosophy back from wordplay to distinguishing good from evil.
. E.g., Epict. Diatr. 1.7.8; Marc. Aur. 9.1.2. The elite complained that the masses lacked this capacity (Tac. Hist. 2.90).
. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 45.6; Mus. Ruf. 8, p. 60.10–12; Epict. Diatr. 1.4.1; 2.3.1–3; 2.24.19; Marc. Aur. 2.1, 13. This distinction was limited to what one could control (Marc. Aur. 6.41).
. Mus. Ruf. frg. 36, p. 134.11.
. Cic. Leg. 1.23.60.
. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 66.32; Dial. 7.8.4.
. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 66.35 (trans. Gummere, LCL, 2:23). For discussion of the “senses” in Stoicism, see Rubarth, “Meaning”; Diog. Laert. 7.1.110, 157. The soul itself was a sensory faculty (Hierocles Ethics 4.23–24; Arius Did. 2.7.5b7, p. 20.32–33; cf. Plut. Pleas. L. 14).
. Mus. Ruf. 3, p. 38.30–31; Sen. Y. Dial. 5.36.1; 7.8.4; Stoics in Diog. Laert. 7.1.52; see, further, Murray, Philosophy, 26; Long, Philosophy, 123–31. Health of the senses, like other physical health, was indifferent but preferred, as what is normal in nature (Arius Did. 2.7.7a, p. 42.34; 2.7.7b, p. 44.30). Sensory knowledge was key to Epicurean epistemology; see Long, Philosophy, 21; on the senses, cf. also Arist. Soul 3.1, 424b.
. See, e.g., the view in Max. Tyre Or. 10.8. For the senses as a good divine gift, see Xen. Mem. 4.3.11. See also the value of senses for turning people toward God in Let. Aris. 156.
. Plato Phaedo 83A; cf. Max. Tyre Or. 11.7, 10–11; Porph. Marc. 8.147–50 (though cf. also 10.185–86); for Pythagoreans, Iambl. Pyth. Life 32.228. For reality transcending the senses, see Plato in Diog. Laert. 6.2.53. For the senses’ real but lesser role, cf. also Philo in, e.g., Baer, Categories, 65–66; Mattila, “Wisdom”; the senses were meant to guard the soul and mind (Alleg. Interp. 3.15; Worse 33, 85; Drunkenness 201; Conf. 19–20; Dreams 1.27, 32; Spec. Laws 3.111; 4.92, 123). Others recognized that pleasure could exploit the senses (Dio Chrys. Or. 8.23; T. Reub. 3:3).
. Murray, Philosophy, 26.
. Diog. Laert. 9.11.101.
. E.g., Corn. Nep. pref.2–3; Pliny E. N.H. pref.29–30. Reitzenstein (Mystery-Religions, 33; cf. 74), who offers no primary source at this point, appeals narrowly to the mysteries; the idea, however, was much more common.
. Pliny Ep. 2.12.5.
. Pliny Ep. 2.12.6 (trans. Radice, LCL, 1:121).
. Diog. Laert. 9.2.20 (trans. Hicks, LCL, 2:427), recounting Xenophanes’s reported reply to Empedocles. Cf., similarly, Lucian Dem. 13: one cannot discern who is a true philosopher unless one is a true philosopher oneself.
. Max. Tyre Or. 3.1, 5.
. Heracl. Ep. 4 (trans. Worley, 190–91).
. 4Q424 frg. 3.2, in the context of frg. 3.1–7.
. Cf. John 3:8.
. Two groups rather than three; with, e.g., Héring, First Epistle, 22; Ridderbos, Paul: Outline, 120.
. “Spiritual” usually relates to the Spirit of God (see Fee, Presence, 28–31).
. See, e.g., Thiselton, Corinthians, 268, citing Iren. Her. 1.8.1, 3. According to Irenaeus, many gnostics viewed only themselves as spiritual, with ordinary Christians having just two natures (Iren. Her. 1.6.2). Some commentators have appealed to gnostic background for the early Christian vocabulary (e.g., Bultmann, Christianity, 166; Dibelius, James, 211–12, while differentiating the concepts), but this is highly unlikely (see Pearson, Terminology, 9–11).
. Pagels, Paul, 59, 163–64; Sheldon, Mystery Religions, 82; Wilson, Gnostic Problem, 211; Thiselton, Corinthians, 268. Although some terminology may appear in the mysteries, the contrast between “natural” and “spiritual,” using these terms, is not attested before Paul (Sheldon, Mystery Religions, 82; Moffatt, Corinthians, 35).
. Pearson (Terminology) recognizes this context, but Paul’s exact terminological distinctions are more difficult to attest (see Horsley, “Pneumatikos,” 270–73, although he also values the Hellenistic Jewish context).
. Jos. War. 1.429–30, including Josephus’s only use of the term ψυχικός.
. Note the context in Jos. War 1.426–28.
. The adjective ψυχικός functions negatively in Porph. Marc. 9.157, but only because it modifies πάθη, “passions”; Porphyry views the soul favorably (e.g., Marc. 32.494–95; 33.506–7).
. Philo Creation 66; Names 33; Abr. 219.
. E.g., Philo Creation 119, 134–36, 139–41, 145, 164; Alleg. Interp. 1.105–8; and passim.
. Elsewhere in early Christianity, see the uses, both negative, in James 3:15; Jude 19.
. In antiquity as today, a shocking statement could command attention (see Anderson, Glossary, 88). Although this is a phrase rather than a term, speakers sometimes used word coinage (cf. Anderson, Glossary, 75, 83; Fronto Ad M. Caes. 3.13.1), although critics might complain (cf. Rowe, “Style,” 123–24; Fronto Eloq. 1.4). Paul may sometimes coin some terms, although our limited data from antiquity leaves this uncertain (Anderson, Rhetorical Theory, 228–29, 239n105). Paul’s adaptation might be closer to what some thinkers called catachresis (cf. Anderson, Glossary, 66).
. See Thiselton, Corinthians, 1276–77. Thiselton’s fuller argument (1275–81) is also followed by Wright, Faithfulness, 1401–2. Cf. also Fee, Corinthians, 124; Witherington, Corinthians, 132.
. Most people considered the fiery stars to be celestial beings; see, e.g., Sen. Y. Ben. 4.23.4; 1 En. 80:6–8. For stars and fire, the lightest and thus highest element, see, e.g., Cic. Nat. d. 2.36.92; Pliny E. N.H. 2.4.1; Apul. De deo Socr. 138; Philost. Vit. soph. 2.8.580; 2.20.602; Heracl. Hom. Prob. 36.3; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 1:3; views in Hippol. Ref. 1.5, 7.
. Concurring with the interpretation of 1 Cor. 2 in Iren. Her. 5.6.1, drawn to my attention by Palma (“Glossolalia,” 42). Cf. one open to God’s Spirit and God’s revelation in Robinson, “Spiritual Man.”
. Although the LXX does not use πνεῦμα here, in 1 Cor. 15:45 Paul might identify Jesus with the life-giving spirit or breath of Gen. 2:7. Others have argued that Paul identifies Jesus with the Spirit on the level of Christian experience, as some have argued for 2 Cor. 3:17.
. See Pearson, Terminology, 18–20, for the relevance of Gen. 2:7 to some Hellenistic Jewish concepts of immortality; Pearson argues (17) that Paul’s “opponents” in Corinth affirmed immortality but not resurrection. More recent scholarship concludes that reconstructing opponents can be quite difficult (Longenecker, Introducing Romans, 78; see esp. Sumney, Opponents, esp. 85–86, 142), and 1 Corinthians addresses especially parties rather than explicit opponents (Mitchell, Rhetoric of Reconciliation, 302; Pogoloff, Logos, 102). Still, Paul may well respond here to the Philonic-like views of his critics in the church; see, e.g., Davies, Paul, 52; Isaacs, Spirit, 78; cf. Wedderburn, “Heavenly Man.”
. By the time Philo was old, few if any, even among the elite of Alexandrian Jews, would have rivaled his intellectual and social status (Jos. Ant. 18.259).
. The present material could represent a tradition to which Philo bears witness, or possibly a tradition stemming from Philo’s own exegesis, given his recent influential place in Alexandrian Judaism (Jos. Ant. 18.259) and the connection between Alexandrian Jewish-Christian teaching and the Corinthian church (Acts 18:24–28). In any case, Philo attests traditions that do appear relevant to 1 Cor. 2 (see Sterling, “Wisdom”; Nordgaard, “Appropriation”).
. Philo Conf. 41, 146. The heavenly man bears God’s image and is imperishable (Creation 134; Plant. 44). Others concurred that part of being made in God’s image was immortality (Wis. 2:23) but thought this immortality ruined by sin (2:24; but cf. 6:18–19).
. Philo Alleg. Interp. 1.31–32; 2.4–5.
. See Gen. Rab. 14:8, although the tradition could be later; Grassi, “Ezekiel xxxvii,” esp. 164. Pharisees preferred to prove the resurrection from pentateuchal texts, since Sadducees often demanded these; for rabbinic ingenuity in finding relevant passages, see, e.g., Sipre Deut. 306.28.3; 329.2.1. Paul also supports his argument with clearer prophetic texts in 1 Cor. 15:54–55.
. See, e.g., sources on p. 211.
. Paul may vary terms rhetorically rather than depicting three types of people, as postulated later by Valentinian gnostic interpreters. For appreciation for such variation, see, e.g., Lee, “Translations: Greek,” 776–77, on μεταβολή.
. Fee, Corinthians, 124. Paul’s rhetoric here is thus less harsh than in 2 Cor. 5:20–6:2, where he invites the Corinthian Christians to be converted (cf. Gal. 4:19; 5:4).
. Philo Alleg. Interp. 1.94. Cf. the comparison for idolaters’ foolishness in Wis. 12:24; cf. also 15:14. On Hellenistic Jewish language as the context for Paul’s language here, see esp. Pearson, Terminology, 28–30. Earlier scholarship wrongly associated the common term τέλειος narrowly with the mysteries (e.g., Lightfoot, Colossians, 170; Héring, First Epistle, 16; Conzelmann, Corinthians, 60; Bruce, Corinthians, 38; see criticism in Sheldon, Mystery Religions, 77–78).
. Philo Migr. 46. One in this state could learn and thus move away from fixation with the body (Heir 73).
. E.g., Philo Cher. 63, 73; Embassy 1; cf. Plant. 168; Sober 10; Mos. 1.20; children in Aristoph. Clouds 821; Max. Tyre Or. 36.5; emotional immaturity in Hom. Il. 16.7–8. For infants not yet embracing either virtue or vice, see Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.53, 64; not yet sharing the capacity for reason, Alleg. Interp. 3.210. People often warned against acting like infants, e.g., Hom. Od. 1.296–97.
. Philo Sober 9.
. E.g., Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 48.11; Heb. 5:12.
. A second-century bishop in Crete echoes Paul’s words here in a letter to the bishop of Corinth, subsequently cited in Euseb. H.E. 5.23; earlier, see Ign. Trall. 5.1.
. Quint. Inst. 2.4.5–6; Philo Good Person 160; Agr. 9; Prelim. St. 19; Migr. 29; Dreams 2.10; for a child image in connection with elementary education, cf. also Studies 154; for even an infant understanding the basic truth that the creator is greater than his creation, see Decal. 69. More positively, cf. Torah as milk in Sipre Deut. 321.8.5; God’s message in 1 Pet. 2:2; Scripture in Caesarius Serm. 4.4 (in Bray, Corinthians, 27); God’s word in Barn. 6.17; see Keener, “Milk,” 708.
. Epict. Diatr. 2.16.39 (trans. Oldfather, LCL, 1:333).
. Many believed that mothers should nurse their own children (Mus. Ruf. 3, p. 42.7; Plut. Educ. 5, Mor. 3CD; Tac. Germ. 20; Dial. 28–29; Aul. Gel. 12.1; Osiek and MacDonald, Place, 64; Garnsey and Saller, Empire, 139; Dixon, Roman Mother, 3, 105), but nurses were common (for their influence, see, e.g., Quint. Inst. 1.1.4–5; Plut. Educ. 5, Mor. 3DE; Soranus Gynec. 1.1.3; 2.12.19 [32.88]; Bradley, “Wet-Nursing”; Treggiari, “Jobs,” 87; Ilan, Women, 119–21).
. For comparisons of teachers with fathers, see, e.g., Epict. Diatr. 3.22.82; Philost. Vit. soph. 1.490; 1.25.536, 537; Eunapius Lives 486, 493; Iambl. Pyth. Life 35.250; Porph. Marc. 1.6–8; t. B. Qam. 9:11; Sanh. 7:9; Sipre Deut. 34.3.1–3, 5; 305.3.4; for the nursing image, cf. Malherbe, “Gentle as Nurse,” 212; 11Q5 21.14; Fronto Ad Ant. imp. 1.5.2. Because they understood the limits of comparisons, ancients were sometimes ready to employ feminine images for males (cf., e.g., Hom. Il. 8.271–72; Od. 20.14–16).
. Severian of Gabala (catena on 1 Cor. 3:2, PGK 15:236; trans. Bray, Corinthians, 27–28) construes the elementary teachings as “moral teaching and miracles,” as opposed to “the proclamation of the doctrines of God.”
. Hooker, “Hard Sayings”; cf. Litfin, Theology, 215, 218; Willis, “Mind.” In any case, it does not likely refer to hidden teachings that Paul communicated to a spiritual elite (pace Baird, “Mature”); he is demeaning the Corinthians, not exalting a secret group. Degrees of initiation do appear in many societies (Eliade, Rites, 37–40, 44–47; Mbiti, Religions, 164).
. Although some other sages ranked love highly (Jub. 36:4, 8; m. Ab. 1:12; for R. Akiba, love of neighbor was the greatest commandment; Sipra Qed. pq. 4.200.3.7; Gen. Rab. 24:7), the only ancient movement that unanimously ranked it the chief virtue (Rom. 13:8–10; Gal. 5:13–14; James 2:8; Did. 1.2; Poly. Phil. 3.3; cf. John 13:34–35; 1 Pet. 1:22; 4:8; 1 John 2:7–11; 1 Clem. 49.1–50.5; Ign. Magn. 1.2) also stemmed from one teacher who expressly made love of God and neighbor the chief commandments (Mark 12:29–31; cf. Luke 10:27–28).
. Cf. Chrys. Hom. Cor. 7.12 (trans. Bray, Corinthians, 26): “This does not mean that we know everything which Christ knows but rather that everything which we know comes from him and is spiritual.”
. See pp. 128–30, 201–6.
. Paul might midrashically blend “not enter their heart” from the new-creation context in Isa. 65:16 LXX; see discussion in Robertson and Plummer, Corinthians, 42; Thiselton, Corinthians, 250–52; differently, Soards, Corinthians, 59–60; for extrabiblical sources, cf., e.g., Berger, “Diskussion”; an apocryphal quotation from Paul’s opponents, Pearson, Terminology, 34–35 (noting L.A.B. 26:13; alternatively, it could be a Christian scribal expansion).
. Indeed, the theme appears often in this section of Isaiah (e.g., Isa. 55:8–9). Cf. Sir. 1:2–3.
. Especially in view of Paul’s use of the passage elsewhere (Rom. 11:34), it is not improbable that he had expounded this passage at some point during his eighteen months (Acts 18:11) in Corinth. The founding core of the congregation began in a synagogue (Acts 18:4–8).
. With Collins, Corinthians, 137. Cf. also 1 Cor. 1:8; 5:5 (in some MSS); 2 Cor. 3:18 with 4:4; Phil. 1:6.
. Cf. Turner, “Spirit of Christ,” esp. 436; Fee, “Christology and Pneumatology,” esp. 331; Hamilton, Spirit and Eschatology, 28–29. This is more, and more pervasive in Paul, than a simple overlap as in the later Gen. Rab. 2:4 (based on Isa. 11:2); the divine Spirit is characteristically God’s (e.g., CD 2.12), and there is no thought in early Judaism of the divine Spirit that is on the Messiah subsequently dwelling in his followers through him.
. See pp. 128–30, 201–6.
. See chap. 4, above.
. For inspired learning or teaching, see, e.g., Abraham in Gen. Rab. 61:1; 95:3. Philo “preferred the speech which was prompted by God” (Litfin, Theology, 232). Paul may be preparing his audience for the discussion of inspired speech in 1 Cor. 14; cf. Boring, Sayings, 66. Early Christians could employ Paul’s verb ἐραυνάω, found in 1 Cor. 2:10, not only for God’s activity (Rom. 8:27; Rev. 2:23; cf. the cognate form in 1 Clem. 21.2, apparently cited from memory or depending on a version of Prov. 20:27) but also for prophetic activity by the Spirit (1 Pet. 1:10–11).
. E.g., Sir. 39:6; John 14:26. Some sources identify wisdom and the Spirit (Wis. 1:5–7; 7:22; 9:17; Keener, “Pneumatology,” 256–57; in the Dead Sea Scrolls, cf. Menzies, Development, 84–87; Isaacs, Spirit, 136–37; cf. 1QS 4.3). Later interpreters also could identify the biblical “Spirit of wisdom” with the Holy Spirit; see, e.g., Tg. Neof. 1 on Exod. 35:31.
. E.g., 1QS 4.3; 9.3–4; 1QHa 6.24; 20.15–16; 4Q213a frg. 1.14; 4Q444 frgs. 1–4i + 5i; 4Q504 frg. 4.4–5; for comparison with early Christians, see, e.g., Flusser, Judaism, 67–68; Wooden, “Guided.” For the Dead Sea Scrolls, this revelation certainly included revelation to the founder and to the community as a whole.
. Num. 11:25–26, 29; 1 Sam. 10:6, 10; 19:20, 23; Neh. 9:30; Joel 2:28; Zech. 7:12; CD 2.12; 1QS 8.16; 4Q266 frg. 2, col. 2.12; 4Q270 frg. 2, col. 2.14; 4Q381 frg. 69.4 (perhaps also 1Q34bis frg. 3, col. 2.7); 1 En. 91:1; Jub. 25:14; 31:12; Sir. 48:24; L.A.B. 28:6; 4 Ezra 14:22; Philo Flight 186; Heir 265; Mos. 1.175, 277; 2.265; Decal. 175; Spec. Laws 4.49; Jos. Ant. 6.166 (cf. Ant. 6.56, 222–23; 8.408); T. Job 48:3; t. Pisha 2:15; Sipre Deut. 22.1.2; Chevallier, Ancien Testament, 27–29; Best, “Pneuma,” 222–25; Bruce, “Spirit in Qumran Texts,” 51; Johnston, “Spirit,” 33–35, 39–40; Isaacs, Spirit, 47–48; Ma, Spirit, 30–32, 202–3, 206–7; Menzies, Empowered, 49–101; Menzies, Development, 53–112; Turner, Power, 86–104; Keener, “Spirit,” 486–87; Keener, Spirit, 10–13, 31–33. In early Christian sources, see, e.g., Luke 1:67; Acts 19:6; Eph. 3:5; 2 Pet. 1:21; Did. 11.7–9; Ign. Magn. 9.2; Herm. 43.2, 7, 12; Justin Dial. 32–34; 1 Apol. 31, 44, 47, 63; Athenag. Plea 7; Theoph. 2.33.
. See pp. 201–2, 205–6.
. Malina and Pilch, Letters, 71. For studies on altered states of consciousness, see discussion in, e.g., Pilch, Visions, passim; Keener, Miracles, 789–94 passim, 821–22, 871.
. The primary contextual example of the “person of the Spirit” here is Paul himself, who is being wrongly evaluated (1 Cor. 2:13–15); but clearly it is Paul’s ideal that the Corinthians should also act as people of the Spirit, not like people of the flesh (3:1).
. A culture that valued rhetoric (including the knowledge to lecture extemporaneously on random topics) and knowledge (including through education and sometimes philosophic principles) naturally would place a premium on cultivating such gifts.
. Irenaeus (Her. 5.6.1) describes those who prophesy, reveal mysteries, speak all languages, and the like as positive examples of those who are “spiritual” in 1 Cor. 2 and his own day.
. In contrast to beliefs about Greek ecstatic prophecy, Paul also believed that Christian prophets could control themselves and limit even the expressions of their inspiration for the greater good of the body (1 Cor. 14:27–32).
. Cf. also Ps. 7:9; Jer. 17:10; Wis. 1:6; Philo Spec. Laws 3.52; m. Ab. 2:1; later, often in the Qur’an (e.g., 5.7); for “searcher of hearts” as a divine designation, see t. Sanh. 8:3; Marmorstein, Names, 73, 79, 86; see, further, Keener, Acts, 1:771–72.
. With many scholars, including many Pentecostal and charismatic scholars (e.g., Horton, Spirit, 272–73; Williams, Renewal Theology, 2:355–57; Lim, “Gifts,” 464–65; less certainly, Storms, Guide, cf. 42–44), I understand the “message of knowledge” in 1 Cor. 12:8 as the gift of communicating knowledge about God, i.e., teaching (which also appears in 12:28; 14:6, 26; cf. also Carson, Spirit, 38; Bultmann, Theology, 1:154; Cullmann, Worship, 20). This fits the sense of “knowledge” in 1 Cor. 1:5; 13:2, 8–9 (γνῶσις; cf. also, e.g., 8:1, 7, 10–11; 14:6) and of “speech” (λόγος; e.g., 1:5, 17–18; 2:1, 4, 13) elsewhere in the letter. In my understanding, what is often popularly called “word of knowledge,” when genuine, may function as a particular form of the prophetic gift (cf., e.g., 1 Sam. 10:2–7; 2 Kings 4:27; 5:26; 6:12).
. E.g., 1QS 8.16; Jos. Ag. Ap. 1.37; 4 Ezra 14:22; Sipra VDDen. par. 1.1.3.3; 5.10.1.1; Sh. M. d. 94.5.12; Behuq. pq. 6.267.2.1; Sipre Deut. 355.17.1–3; 356.4.1 (repeating 355.17.2); 1 Clem. 47.3; Barn. 9.2; 14.2, 9; Herm. 43.9; Justin Dial. 25. See, further, e.g., Isaacs, Spirit, 51; Foerster, “Geist,” 117; Büchsel, Geist, 57–58.
. As in 1 Kings 22:19–23 and 2 Kings 6:16, the true perspective was the one informed by heavenly reality, fully available only to those with revelatory insight. Most biblical prophets, however, do not recount experiencing this particular dimension of revelation. Presumably, others who know the revelation that there is a heavenly dimension can accept it by faith without experiencing, e.g., a vision.
. Cf., e.g., Epict. Diatr. 2.19.26–28; Ovid Metam. 8.723–24; cf. Jos. Ag. Ap. 1.232.
. Although divinization is alleged to occur in some other groups’ initiations (Eliade, Rites, 71), the common view that it occurred in mystery cults in the NT period (Reitzenstein, Mystery-Religions, 70, 200; Angus, Mystery-Religions, 108; Dibelius, “Initiation,” 81; cf. Tarn, Civilisation, 354–55; Avi-Yonah, Hellenism, 42) has come under challenge in recent years (see Ferguson, Backgrounds, 239). Given the frequency in Greek culture in general, however, claims for some cults (e.g., Tinh, “Sarapis and Isis,” 113) are possible. Certainly, divinization is clear in the later Hermetica (Reitzenstein, Mystery-Religions, 70–71; Conzelmann, Theology, 11; Wikenhauser, Mysticism, 179) and other gnosticizing (Ménard, “Self-Definition,” 149; Jonas, Religion, 44–45) and later Christian sources (Tatian Or. Gks. 7; Taylor, Atonement, 206, cites Iren. Her. pref.; Athanas. Inc. 54.3). In magic, see PGM 1.178–81; Frankfurter, Religion in Egypt, 229.
. E.g., Eurip. Andr. 1253–58; Cic. Nat. d. 2.24.62; 3.15.39; Virg. Aen. 7.210–11; Ovid Metam. 9.16–17; Lucan C.W. 9.15–18, 564; Paus. 8.9.6–8; 9.22.7; Philost. Hrk. 2.11. On the deification of heroes, cf. Nock, Paul, 96; Hadas and Smith, Heroes; Edson and Price, “Ruler-Cult”; Graf, “Hero Cult.” Greek veneration of departed heroes may have begun in the eighth century BCE (Antonaccio, “Hero Cult”), though the cults may have flourished especially in the third and late second century CE. Lucian mocks the notion of heroes compounded of human and divine elements in Dial. D. 340 (10/3, Menippus, Amphilocus, and Trophonius 2) (revealing some of the sort of conceptions that subsequent Eastern Christian Christologies sought to address; for the compounding idea elsewhere, see, e.g., Max. Tyre Or. 6.4).
. E.g., Apollod. Bibl. 3.5.3.
. Apollod. Bibl. 2.7.7; 2.8.1; Cic. Tusc. 1.12.28; 2.7.17; Sen. E. Suas. 1.1; Men. Rhet. 2.9, 414.23–24. See, further, Graf, “Heracles: Cult.”
. See, e.g., Cic. Sest. 15.34; 37.79; 38.83; 39.85; Hor. Ode 3.3.9–10; 4.5.35–36; Epode 17.40–44; Ovid Fast. 5.715–20; Val. Max. 1.8.1; Suet. Tib. 20; Calig. 22.2; Quint. Curt. 8.5.8; Arrian Alex. 4.8.2–3; Paus. 1.18.2; 3.13.6; 5.15.5; Parker, “Dioscuri”; Purcell, “Castor”; Keener, Acts, 4:3695–99.
. E.g., Paus. 6 (Elis 2).11.9.
. E.g., Philost. Hrk. 53.8. The ghost of Patroclus also attends the sacrificial feast (Hrk. 53.12–13).
. Max. Tyre Or. 8.2; Philost. Vit. Apoll. 8.19; contrast Lucian Dial. D. 340 (10/3, Menippus, Amphilocus, and Trophonius 2).
. Philost. Vit. Apoll. 4.13; 33.48; cf. Hrk. 20.4–21.8.
. E.g., all of Odysseus’s family in Telegony Bk. 4; cf. invocations of deceased Ajax in Philost. Hrk. 31.7. But Diomedes disqualifies himself by needless brutality (Thebaid frg. 9, from scholiast D on Hom. Il. 5.126).
. E.g., Hom. Il. 2.407; 7.47; 13.295, 802; Od. 3.110; 17.3, 54, 391; 19.456; 20.369; 21.244; cf. also Soph. Oed. tyr. 298; Philost. Hrk. 21.9; 26.11; 48.15, 19; “godlike Telamon” (while he is killing someone) in Alcmeonis frg. 1 (in scholiast on Eurip. Andr. 687).
. E.g., Philost. Hrk. 16.4.
. E.g., Philost. Hrk. 23.2 (ἡμιθέοις); cf. Eunapius Lives 454.
. Kearns, “Hero-Cult.”
. E.g., Hom. Il. 2.512; see esp. Heracles (Epict. Diatr. 3.26.31; Grant, Gods, 68–69).
. E.g., Hom. Il. 4.489; 16.49, 126, 707; Od. 10.456 (MSS), 488, 504; 11.60, 92, 405, 473, 617; 13.375; 14.486; 16.167; 18.312; 22.164; 23.305; 24.542. For divinity in this figurative sense, Aeschylus Suppl. 980–82.
. E.g., Hom. Il. 4.358.
. Hom. Il. 17.34, 238, 685, 702; 21.75; 23.581; 24.553, 635, 803; Od. 4.26, 44, 63, 138, 156, 235, 291, 316, 391, 561; 5.378; 10.266, 419; 15.64, 87, 155, 167, 199; 24.122. The title was often bestowed cheaply (Od. 22.136) but sometimes applied to a deity (Il. 21.223).
. E.g., Cic. De or. 1.10.40; 1.38.172; Pliny E. N.H. pref.29.
. E.g., Contest of Homer and Hesiod 316, 325; Men. Rhet. 2.15, 430.13; 2.16, 434.11; together with Hesiod in Contest of Homer and Hesiod 313.
. Hammond and Price, “Ruler-Cult,” 1338.
. Perhaps as early as Philip of Macedon (Diod. Sic. 16.95.1); but philosophers such as Diogenes the Cynic could mock this practice (Diog. Laert. 6.2.63; cf. 6.9.104). On ruler and emperor cults, see in detail Klauck, Context, 250–330; Thomas, Revelation 19, 45–55; for Hellenistic rulers, Klauck, Context, 252–60; cf. Lucian Cock 24.
. For Alexander as a divine son, see Arrian Alex. 7.29.3; Diod. Sic. 17.51.1–2; Dio Chrys. Or. 32.95; Plut. S. Kings, Alexander 15, Mor. 180D; Alex. 2.2–3.2; 27.5–11; 28.1; also known by Egyptian Jewry in the centuries immediately surrounding the birth of Christianity (Sib. Or. 5.7; 11.197–98; 12.7). Some believe that Alexander used the notion only as political propaganda (Plut. Alex. 28.3; Lucian Dial. D. 395 [12/14, Philip and Alexander 1]). Lucian denies his divinity in Dial. D. 397–98 (12/14, Philip and Alexander 5); 390 (13/13, Diogenes and Alexander 1).
. So Cic. Quint. fratr. 1.1.2.7; Romans in his day drew the line between deity and mortal more strictly. In Latin, at least by the beginning of the empire, one could distinguish between an immortal god who had never been mortal (deus) and a mortal who had been posthumously deified (divus).
. Sil. It. 1.611.
. For comments on ruler cults, including the emperor cult, see Keener, Acts, 2:1784–86.
. This paragraph is adapted from Keener, Acts, 2:1784; see also 1782–86.
. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 48.11; Marc. Aur. 4.16; Iambl. Pyth. Life 16.70; Porph. Marc. 17.286–88; cf. Epicurus Let. Men. 135; Cic. Tusc. 5.25.70; Crates Ep. 11; some claimed that “divine” was applicable to every good person (Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 73.12–16; 124.14, 23; Max. Tyre Or. 35.2; 38.1; Philost. Vit. Apoll. 8.5). In Neoplatonism, see Klauck, Context, 214, 424; for the ideal in Stoicism, see Engberg-Pedersen, Paul and Stoics, 62.
. Sen. Y. Dial. 1.1.5; Epict. Diatr. 2.19.26–28; Philost. Vit. Apoll. 3.18, 29; 8.5; Plot. Enn. 1.2.7 (“On Virtue”); cf. also Koester, Introduction, 1:353; divine virtue within, in Arius Did. 2.7.11m, p. 92.15–16.
. Εὐδαιμονία, “blessedness”; cf. Arius Did. 2.7.11g, p. 70.36; Max. Tyre Or. 26.9.
. Plut. Pomp. 27.3.
. Sent. Sext. 7ab, a Hellenistic Christian source.
. E.g., (Ps.-)Dion. Epideictic 6.283; Cic. Leg. 2.9.22; 2.22.55; Att. 12.36; 37a; Men. Rhet. 2.9, 414.23, 25–27; 2.11, 421.16–17; cf. PGM 1.178–81; later in Poimandres, see Wikenhauser, Mysticism, 179.
. E.g., Longin. Subl. 4.5; Diog. Laert. 6.2.63 (Diogenes’s claim); 6.9.104.
. Diog. Laert. 9.7.39.
. Diog. Laert. 8.1.11; Philost. Ep. Apoll. 50; Iambl. Pyth. Life 2.9–10; 5.10; 10.53; 28.143–44; 35.255 (cf. the intermediate category in Iambl. Pyth. Life 6.31; his golden thigh in 19.92; 28.135, 140). Cf. Abaris in Iambl. Pyth. Life 19.91. See also Thom, “Akousmata,” 103.
. E.g., Philost. Vit. Apoll. 1.1; Diog. Laert. 8.2.68.
. Cic. Pis. 25.59 (ironically also noting Epicurus’s skepticism about gods’ concern for the world).
. Cic. Or. Brut. 19.62.
. Diog. Laert. 2.100.
. Philost. Vit. Apoll. 8.5, 15; Ep. Apoll. 44; 48; Eunapius Lives 454; also a probably third- or fourth-century inscription; see Jones, “Epigram”; a demigod in Eunapius Lives 454. Apollonius looks “godlike” in Philost. Vit. Apoll. 7.31 but denies his divinity in 7.32.
. Philost. Vit. Apoll. 3.29; 7.32. Also, to a lesser extent, the magi in Philost. Ep. Apoll. 16–17.
. Hdt. 1.65–66; Val. Max. 5.3.ext.2; Plut. Lyc. 5.3. Lawgivers are “godlike” in Mus. Ruf. 15, p. 96.24.
. Cic. Opt. gen. 6.17; Leg. 3.1.1; Nat. d. 2.12.32; Plut. Profit by Enemies 8, Mor. 90C; Apoll. 36, Mor. 120D; Philost. Ep. 73 (13); Porph. Marc. 10.185–86; Athen. Deipn. 15.679A. Cf. patristic sources in Grant, Gods, 63–64.
. Cf. Plato Rep. 10, 611DE; Cic. Parad. 14; Resp. 6.24.26 (Scipio’s dream); Tusc. 1.24.56–26.65; Leg. 1.22.58–59; Div. 1.37.80 (citing a Stoic); Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 32.11; 78.10; Nat. Q. 1.pref.14; Mus. Ruf. 18A, p. 112.24–25; Epict. Diatr. 1.1; 1.9.6–11, 22; 1.14.6; 1.12; 1.17.27; 2.8.10–11, 14; (Ps.?)-Plut. Face M. 28, Mor. 943A; Ael. Arist. Def. Or. 409–10, §139D; Max. Tyre Or. 2.3; 6.4; 33.7; 41.5; Marc. Aur. 2.13, 17; 3.5, 6, 12; 3.16.2; 5.10.2; 5.27; 12.26; Men. Rhet. 2.9, 414.21–23; Iambl. Pyth. Life 33.240; cf. Rhet. Alex. pref. 1420b.20–21. For a historical survey of divinization of humans, cf. Koester, “Being.”
. In Stoic pantheism (e.g., Cic. Nat. d. 2.7.19–20), a view ridiculed by Epicureans (e.g., Cic. Nat. d. 1.10.24).
. E.g., Philo Alleg. Interp. 2.10, 23; Unchangeable 46–48.
. Philo Mos. 1.279; Jos. War 3.372 (Urbach, Sages, 1:222); cf. Tabor, “Divinity”; postmortem deification in T. Adam 3:2–3 (possibly Christian material); at the resurrection in Ps.-Phoc. 104; cf. immortality or divine character in Jos. Asen. 16:16; L.A.E. 14:2–3; Pr. Jos. 19; y. Suk. 4:3, §5; perhaps 4Q181 frg. 1.3–4.
. Holladay, Theios Aner, 236; see Philo Virt. 172; Creation 135. Cf. Lycomedes’s use of the term for benefactors like an apostle, while acknowledging only the true God (Acts John 27).
. See also Apoc. Mos. 18:3; cf. Gen. 11:4; Exod. 20:3–5; Isa. 14:14; Jub. 10:20; Exod. Rab. 8:2.
. Litwa (Transformed, as noted in Costa, “Review”) does argue for deification language in Paul, but he is arguing for sharing limited elements of the divine character such as immortality, not elements limited to the one God and not full absorption into God. To this extent, the difference between deification and nondeification may be semantic, since Greek thinkers did sometimes describe such participation in terms of divinization. Nevertheless, I question whether Paul, who is more conservative in most respects than Philo, would have gone as far as such Greek thinkers in describing such sharing in divine nature as deification, since he specifically avoids describing believers in exclusively divine language, never calling them θεοί (note Costa, “Review”) or even using the more malleable θεῖος (though cf. its fuller use in 2 Pet. 1:4). Others have developed the language more freely, as in the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Although avoiding the term “divinization,” Jonathan Edwards embraced participation, union, and mutual indwelling with God (McClymond and McDermott, Theology of Edwards, 422–23; for Neoplatonic connections, see 413–16; see also Hastings, Edwards and Life of God). For the idea in Bonhoeffer, see Gorman, Inhabiting, 168–70.
. That is, although I believe that Paul avoids deification language, I am not denying the heart of what the Eastern Christian tradition has called theosis (on theosis and holiness in the Fathers, see Blackwell, Christosis), insofar as we define theosis in terms of the genuine Pauline emphasis on “transformative participation in the kenotic, cruciform character and life of God through Spirit-enabled conformity to the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected/glorified Christ, who is the image of God” (Gorman, Inhabiting, 7, 125; cf. Wright, Faithfulness, 781, 1021–22).
. Other passages in the Corinthian correspondence, such as 2 Cor. 5:13, 16–17, are also relevant, but I can focus only on limited passages in this book. I treated 2 Cor. 5:16–17 briefly above on p. 43. Others have also elaborated the theme of transformation and conformity to the divine here; see esp. now Litwa, “Implications”; Litwa, Transformed.
. E.g., Max. Tyre Or. 6.1.
. I adapt most of the material on spiritual vision here from Keener, Acts, 4:3519–22; see at somewhat greater length Keener, John, 247–50; more briefly, Keener, “Beheld.” For vision mysticism in antiquity, see, further, DeConick, Voices, 34–67.
. E.g., Plato Phaedo 65E; 66A; noted also by subsequent writers, e.g., Diog. Laert. 6.2.53; Justin Dial. 2; 4.1. On Plato and the vision of God, see Kirk, Vision, 16–18.
. Plato Phaedo 83A. Cf. also Iambl. Pyth. Life 6.31; 16.70; 32.228. Later writers continued to find in Plato’s Socrates an appeal for intellectual vision into the invisible world (Lucian Phil. Sale 18).
. E.g., Cic. Tusc. 1.19.44; Marc. Aur. 11.1.1 (cf. 10.26).
. For the opening of the soul’s eyes, O’Toole, Climax, 72, cites Philo QG 1.39. Philo also speaks of the soul’s eyes in Spec. Laws 1.37; 3.4, 6; Unchangeable 181; Sacr. 36, 69, 78; Posterity 8, 118; Worse 22; Plant. 22; Drunkenness 44; Sober 3; Conf. 92; Migr. 39, 48, 165, 191; Heir 89; Prelim. St. 135; Names 3, 203; Abr. 58, 70; Dreams 1.117; 2.160; Mos. 1.185, 289; Rewards 37; elsewhere, e.g., Rhet. Alex. pref. 1421a.22–23.
. Epict. Diatr. 1.18.4, 6; 2.20.37; 2.24.19; cf. 4.6.18.
. Marc. Aur. 4.29.
. Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 87.21, cited in Cary and Haarhoff, Life, 335. Seneca the Younger (Ep. Lucil. 115.6) uses physical vision as an analogy for the mind seeing virtue. Even a mythographer could speak of Numa seeing the heavenly deities through his mind (Ovid Metam. 15.62–64). Association with the mysteries (e.g., Apul. Metam. 11.15, 23–24, 30; Reitzenstein, Mystery-Religions, 454–56; Dibelius, “Initiation,” 81; Strachan, Corinthians, 90) is thus far too narrow.
. E.g., Plut. Isis 78, Mor. 382F; Iambl. Letter 4.5 (Stob. Anth. 3.3.26); Soul 8.53, §458. Middle Platonism includes much Stoic influence but was more transcendental in the early empire than in much of the first century BCE (Dillon, “Plato,” 806); it became still more transcendental in Neoplatonism (below).
. Max. Tyre Or. 11.9; 38.3. He allegorized Odysseus’s travels as a visionary tour of the cosmos (similar to what one finds in apocalyptic texts) by his soul (Or. 26.1).
. Max. Tyre Or. 9.6; 10.3; 11.11. Cf. Philost. Hrk. 7.3; 4 Ezra 7:98; eschatologically, 1 Cor. 13:12; cf. 1 En. 90:35. For the Platonic God’s pure goodness, see Barclay, Gift, 71, 84.
. Max. Tyre Or. 21.7.
. Max. Tyre Or. 21.7–8. Philo also affirms that the mind, turning from pleasure, cleaves to virtue by apprehending virtue’s beauty (Sacr. 45).
. Max. Tyre Or. 11.11. Those unable to see God himself could be satisfied with worshiping his offspring (stars, daimones, etc.), below him in the cosmic hierarchy (11.12).
. Max. Tyre Or. 11.10.
. Max. Tyre Or. 21.7–8.
. Case, Origins, 93–94; cf. also Osborn, Justin, 72. Josephus expects his readers to understand (and perhaps react negatively) when he declares that an Egyptian ruler wished to “see the gods” (Ag. Ap. 1.232–34).
. Plot. Enn. 1.6 (“On Beauty,” esp. chap. 9). For Plotinus, this was a matter of reason, not of imagination (note comments by Iambl. Soul 2.13, §369). For contemplation of the divine, cf. also Cic. Tusc. 5.25.70; Max. Tyre Or. 16.2–6; Philo Spec. Laws 3.1. Less clearly, Panayotakis (“Vision”) finds it even in the tale of Psyche and Cupid (others read differently, as in Parker and Murgatroyd, “Poetry”).
. Case, Origins, 94.
. Porph. Marc. 16.274. Perceiving God purifies a person (Marc. 11.204).
. Porph. Marc. 13.233–34 (ἐνοπτριζόμενος).
. See Isaacs, Spirit, 50; Dillon, “Transcendence in Philo”; Hagner, “Vision,” 89–90; on mediation of this vision, see Mackie, “Seeing”; on seeing God and overcoming passions, see Hayward, “Israel” (citing esp. Philo Names 44–46, 81–88; Drunkenness 80–83; Dreams 1.79, 129–31, 171). As it did with contemporary Stoics, meditation on heavenly things seemed to allow Philo a heavenly perspective (Spec. Laws 3.1–2).
. Philo Abr. 80.
. Philo Conf. 92. For biblical examples, see Names 3–6; QG 4.138; Conf. 92, 146; Dreams 1.171; Abr. 57.
. Philo Rewards 39; Hagner, “Vision,” 89, cites both this and Names 62.
. Philo Rewards 40 (trans. Colson, LCL, 8:335).
. Philo Spec. Laws 1.37.
. Philo Spec. Laws 1.40 (trans. Colson, LCL, 7:121).
. Philo Rewards 36; cf. Dreams 72. Conzelmann (Corinthians, 228) contrasts the eschatological vision in 1 Cor. 13:12 with Philo’s usual mystical, ecstatic vision; Hagner (“Vision,” 86) contrasts John’s and Philo’s sōma-sēma conception.
. Porph. Marc. 6.103–8; 7.131–34; 10.180–83; 16.267–68; 26.415–16; cf. chap. 8, below, on Col. 3:1–2.
. For the ascent, see, e.g., Max. Tyre Or. 41.5; Men. Rhet. 2.9, 414.21–23; some viewed this as divinization (2.9, 414.25–27), an expression Paul avoids.
. Wis. 9:15–16. Among Gentiles, cf., e.g., Mus. Ruf. 18A, p. 112.20, 27–28 (a first-century Stoic); Max. Tyre Or. 1.5.
. Wis. 9:17. This context influences the language also of John 3:11–12 (see Keener, John, 560).
. E.g., 1QS 11.5–6.
. In addition to apocalypses (e.g., 1 En. 14:18–20; 2 En. 20:3 A; 22:1–3; 3 En. 1) and other pseudepigraphic sources (e.g., L.A.E. 25:3–4; Odes Sol. 36:1–2), see, e.g., t. Hag. 2:3–4; b. Hag. 14b, bar.; y. Hag. 2:1, §§7–8; Song Rab. 1:4, §1; Kirk, Vision, 11–13; Chernus, “Visions”; Himmelfarb, “Ascent”; Scholem, Trends, 44; for Moses, see Meeks, Prophet-King, 122–25, 156–58, 205–9, 241–44. For Philo’s mysticism (e.g., Spec. Laws 3.1), see, e.g., Goodenough, Introduction, 134–60; Winston, “Mysticism”; Sterling, Ancestral Philosophy, 151–70, esp. 169–70. In Hellenistic sources, cf., e.g., Max. Tyre Or. 11.10; 26.1; 38.3.
. For mystics seeking transformation to the divine image, see Morray-Jones, “Mysticism”; Arbel, “Understanding.”
. These may also include eschatological transformation (1 En. 62:15; 108:11–13; 4 Ezra 7:97; 2 Bar. 51:3, 10; with, e.g., Furnish, Corinthians, 240–41; Belleville, Glory, 286–87) or even a mystic’s transformation in the present (1 En. 39:14; 71:10–11).
. Besides apocalyptic sources, cf. 4Q385 frg. 6.5–14; b. Hag. 13a, bar.; Dimant and Strugnell, “Vision”; Segal, “Ascent,” 39–40; Scholem, Trends, 42. Halperin, “Midrash,” argues that merkabah mysticism appears already in the LXX.
. For Paul using midrash on Exod. 34 alongside the Hellenistic ideal of transformation, see also Fitzmyer, “Glory.” For a survey of proposed backgrounds supporting the Exodus background, see Thrall, Corinthians, 294–95; most recognize this background here (see, e.g., Belleville, Glory, 178–91, 273; Hays, Echoes, 144).
. For Moses-Sinai and transfiguration themes in Philo (e.g., Mos. 1.57), see Moses, Transfiguration Story, 50–57; in Josephus, 57–61; in the Dead Sea Scrolls, 61–66; in other sources, 66–83. The majority of scholars see Moses’s transfiguration as the primary background for that of Jesus (see, e.g., Glasson, Moses, 70; Davies and Allison, Matthew, 2:695; esp. Moses, Transfiguration Story, 84–85).
. E.g., for early Jewish discussion of patriarchal visions of the future era, see 4 Ezra 3:14; 2 Bar. 4:3–4; L.A.B. 23:6; 4Q544 lines 10–12; 4Q547 line 7; Sipre Deut. 357.5.11; b. B. Bat. 16b–17a, bar.; Abot R. Nat. 31 A; 42, §116 B; further in Keener, John, 767–68. Smelik (“Transformation”) finds echoes of Hellenistic apotheosis in later sources (Tg. Jon. on Judg. 5:31; 2 Sam. 23:4; Isa. 30:26; 60:5).
. For Moses’s transformation, see Exod. 34:29–35; cf. L.A.B. 12:1; 19:16; Abot R. Nat. 13, §32 B; b. B. Bat. 75a; Tg. Onq. on Exod. 34:29, 30, 35.
. See, e.g., Aristob. frg. 4 (Euseb. P.E. 13.13.5); Philo QE 2.46; Sipre Deut. 49.2.1; b. Shab. 88b; Exod. Rab. 28:1; 41:5; 47:5; Lev. Rab. 1:15; Pesiq. Rab. 20:4; 47:4; 3 En. 15B:2; cf. L.A.B. 12:1.
. See pp. 212–14; Keener, Matthew, 437; in Jewish tradition, Moses, Transfiguration Story, 50–83.
. See also 2 Bar. 23:4; 48:42–43; 54:14; 4 Ezra 7:118. On Adam and God’s image (Gen. 1:26–27; 5:1; 9:6), see 4Q504 frg. 8 (recto).4; Jub. 6:8; Sir. 17:3; Wis. 2:23; 1 Cor. 11:7; James 3:9; Philo Creation 69, 139; Alleg. Interp. 1.90, 92; Conf. 169; Mos. 2.65; Spec. Laws 1.171; 3.83, 207; Sib. Or. 1.23; 3.8; 4 Ezra 8:44; L.A.E. 13:3; 14:1–2; 15:2; Apoc. Mos. 33:5; 2 En. 30:10 J; 44:1–2; 65:2; m. Ab. 3:13/14; t. Yebam. 8:7; Mek. Bah. 11.111–14; b. B. Bat. 58a; Gen. Rab. 8:10; Midr. Pss. on Ps. 17:8; cf. Ps.-Phoc. 106; L.A.E. 37:3; 39:3 (Seth; also Apoc. Mos. 10:3; 12:2); T. Naph. 2:5; b. Sanh. 38a, bar.; Bunta, “Metamorphosis.” For Gentile analogies, cf. Sen. Y. Dial. 1.1.5; Mus. Ruf. 17, p. 108.15–22; Marc. Aur. 10.8.2; Diog. Laert. 6.2.51; Iambl. Letter 4.7–9, 13–16 (Stob. Anth. 3.3.26); Myst. 7.4; Porph. Marc. 13.233–34; 16.267; 32.496–97; reading likeness to God in Plato in light of Stoic usage, Russell, “Virtue.” A child bears the image of parents, which is relevant to Gen. 5:1–3 and thus 1:26–27.
. E.g., Apoc. Mos. 21:6 (cf. 18:5–6); 3 Bar. 4:16; y. Shab. 2:6, §2; Gen. Rab. 12:6; Num. Rab. 13:12; Pesiq. Rab. 14:10; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 2:25; cf. Pesiq. Rab Kah. 1:1. For Adam’s glory, see Sir. 49:16; 4Q504 frg. 8 (recto).4; 4Q511 frgs. 52 + 54–55 + 57–59.2; Abot R. Nat. 1 A; Pesiq. Rab Kah. 4:4; 26:3; b. B. Bat. 58a; Lev. Rab. 20:2; Eccl. Rab. 8:1, §2; cf. Sib. Or. 1.24; b. B. Metsia 84a; Num. Rab. 13:2; Noffke, “Glory”; perhaps Goshen Gottstein, “Body”; but still after the fall, cf. Tg. Onq. on Gen. 3:21; Tg. Neof. 1 on Gen. 3:21; Tg. Ps.-Jon. on Gen. 3:21. God’s “image” is “glorious”—thus, being transformed to his image involves glorification (2 Cor. 3:18; ultimately, Rom. 8:29–30); originally being in God’s image also includes glory (1 Cor. 11:7). Paul links image and glory in 2 Cor. 4:4 and probably Rom. 1:23; cf. 4Q504 frg. 8 (recto).4.
. Cf. CD 3.20; 1QS 4.23; 1QHa 4.27; Apoc. Mos. 39:2–3 (missing in the parallel L.A.E. 47:3); Scroggs, Adam, 23–31; also, one late tradition links it with Moses’s glory (Furnish, Corinthians, 215, citing Memar Marqah 5.4).
. Wisdom language is especially emphatic in Colossians; see, e.g., Lohse, Colossians, 48; Bruce, “Myth,” 94; cf. May, “Logos,” 446; Glasson, “Colossians and Sirach.”
. See Wis. 7:22–27; Philo Creation 16, 25, 36; Spec. Laws 3.207; Plant. 18; Flight 12; Dreams 2.45. For the logos as God’s image more generally, see Wis. 7:26 (Wisdom); Philo Conf. 97, 147; Dreams 1.239; 2.45; Drunkenness 133; Eternity 15; Flight 101; Heir 230; Plant. 18; Spec. Laws 1.81; Creation 146; cf. Col. 1:15; Heb. 1:3. This image could be linked with the first, ideal person (of Gen. 1, distinguished from the earthly Adam), as in Philo Alleg. Interp. 1.43, 92. For the first man’s image stamped on others, see also m. Sanh. 4:5; b. Sanh. 38a.
. Glass mirrors were known (Pliny E. N.H. 36.66.193), but metal mirrors predominated by far (cf., e.g., Sir. 12:11; Pliny E. N.H. 33.45.128; Hurschmann, “Mirror,” 57; Forbes, Technology, 5:184–85; for clear water or polished stone, see also Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 1.17.5). Some associate the mention of mirrors in 1 Cor. 13:12 and here with Corinth, since bronze mirrors were common and Corinthian bronze was famous (e.g., Cic. Verr. 2.4.44.97–98; Fin. 2.8.23; Strabo 8.6.23; Petron. Sat. 31, 50; Pliny E. N.H. 34.1.1; 37.12.49; Jos. Life 68; War 5.201, 204; Mart. Epig. 9.59.11; 14.172, 177; Paus. 2.3.3). Just as French fries and Swiss cheese need not be imported from France or Switzerland, however, not all “Corinthian bronze” originated in Corinth (Pliny E. N.H. 34.3.6–7; Jacobson and Weitzman, “Bronze”); though Corinth may have produced some bronze (Engels, Roman Corinth, 36–37), it was very limited in this period (Mattusch, “Bronze,” 219–22, 228–30), and Paul omits it in his list in 1 Cor. 3:12.
. Some also associate the mirror with God’s glory shining in the heart; see 2 Cor. 3:3, 6; 4:6; cf. 13:3–5. Although believers could be the mirror here, reflecting Christ’s image (and some see it as a mirror reflecting Christ in the gospel: Lambrecht, “Glorie”; Lambrecht, “Transformation”; or even the OT: Lebourlier, “Miroir”), it more likely refers here to Christ as wisdom reflecting God’s image (Witherington, Corinthians, 379). Nevertheless, the association of self-knowledge and “divinity” (e.g., Plato Alcib. 1.132E–133C; Cic. Tusc. 1.22.52; Leg. 1.22.58–59; self-knowledge in Epict. Diatr. 2.14.21) is less relevant here than Hellenistic Jewish wisdom ideas (despite the later blending of the two; see Sent. Sext. 445–50; Odes Sol. 13:1–4). Some also used mirrors to advocate self-improvement (Sen. Y. Nat. Q. 1.17.4; Diog. Laert. 2.33; 7.1.19; Sorabji, Emotion, 214), again not the idea here. Mirror analogies did not always imply the viewer’s own reflection (e.g., Polyb. 15.20.4).
. See discussion in Keener, Corinthians, 169–71.
. Just as John later compared those who were eyewitnesses of Jesus with Moses, who was an eyewitness of God’s glory (John 1:14–18); see discussion of John 1:14–18 in Keener, John, 405–26, esp. 405, 412, 421–22; Boismard, Prologue, 135–45, esp. 136–39; Enz, “Exodus,” 212; Borgen, Bread, 150–51; Hanson, “Exodus” (including rabbinic material); Harrison, “Study,” 29; Mowvley, “Exodus.” Christians in John’s circle viewed divine vision as transformative for the present, past, and future (1 John 3:2–3, 6); like Paul, they looked to biblical examples for this pattern (John 1:14–18, echoing Exod. 33–34; cf. John 8:56; 12:40).
. It is also internal as opposed to external (2 Cor. 3:2–3), but public in a different and more transformative way (3:2); other early Christian sources may also challenge detractors’ complaints that the alleged new covenant glory was less immediately spectacular than that revealed to Moses (cf. Mark 9:2–7; John 1:14; 2 Pet. 1:16–18). Paul can appeal to what is invisible as eternal (2 Cor. 4:18) without further explanation, because Platonic tradition made this idea widespread; see, e.g., Plato Rep. 6.484BD; Philo Drunkenness 136; Sen. Y. Ep. Lucil. 36.9–10 (cf. reason in 66.32); cf. Diod. Sic. 10.7.3; Porph. Marc. 8.147–50; 4 Ezra 7:26; 2 Bar. 51:8.
. Cf. Thrall, Corinthians, 282. Cf. also Eph. 2:3; John 1:16; Philo Jos. 6; 1 Clem. 21.1; 2 Clem. 7.2; Ign. Phld. 3.3; Mart. Pol. 20.2; Diogn. 3.4; though in a minority of texts one can argue for a more exclusive sense, e.g., the Twelve in Acts 2:32; 10:33.
. For this interpretation of 2 Cor. 3:17, see Bruce, Apostle, 120–21; Belleville, Glory, 256–72; Thrall, Corinthians, 278–81; Hays, Echoes, 143; Matera, Corinthians, 96; cf. also Theodoret Comm. 2 Cor. 305–6.
. I understand the apostolic ministers led in triumph in 2 Cor. 2:14 as captives being led to death, fitting the normal image of Roman triumphs; thus they share Jesus’s dying (cf. 1:5, 9; 4:10; Keener, Corinthians, 164).
. Cf. 2 Cor. 13:13 (13:14 in some translations); Rom. 5:5; 7:6; 8:2–16, 23, 26–27; 14:17; 15:13; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6:11; 12:3–13; Gal. 3:3, 5, 14; 4:6; 5:16–18, 22, 25; 6:8; Phil. 3:3; Col. 1:8; 1 Thess. 4:8; 5:19.
. T. Sot. 12:5; 13:3; 14:3 (for exceptions, cf. Sipre Deut. 173.1.3); b. Suk. 28a, bar.; y. Abod. Zar. 3:1, §2; Hor. 3:5, §3; Sot. 9:16, §2; cf. prophets in 1 Macc. 9:27; 2 Bar. 85:3; Davies, Paul, 208–15; Isaacs, Spirit, 49, 51; Bamberger, “Prophet,” 306; Leivestad, “Dogma”; Hill, Prophecy, 33–35; Aune, “Προφήτης”; for Josephus, see Isaacs, Spirit, 49; Best, “Pneuma,” 222–25; Aune, “Προφήτης” (regarding prophetic usage). This approach excepts the Dead Sea Scrolls community (e.g., 1QS 3.7; 4.21; 1QSb 2.22, 24), who may have connected their possession of the Spirit with eschatology (Chevallier, “Souffle,” 38–41; Aune, Prophecy, 81, 104; Aune, Cultic Setting, 29–44).
. Paul does not address how common visions are. In Luke’s ideal, articulated in Acts 2:17–18 regarding new covenant experience that democratizes the Spirit, visions and dreams may not be unusual. Neither, however, does that text specify that everyone experiences prophetic empowerment by the Spirit in the same way (the “word” in Acts most often designates the gospel message, though Luke often enough also mentions prophets and visions). Paul might believe that prophecy is potentially available to all believers (1 Cor. 14:1, 5, 24–25, 31, 39; cf. 12:31), but he accepts the Spirit’s sovereignty (12:7–11) and does not relegate to a lower spiritual level those who do not experience this (12:29).
. The shining presumably occurred when the person became part of the new creation at conversion, but the imparted light of Christ presumably continues there (cf. Rom. 8:9; Gal. 2:20).
. Cf. also Eph. 4:11–13; 1 Pet. 4:10–11. Most relevant, however, are 1 Cor. 12:8–10 and 14:26, because they provide several examples of different ways to learn from the Spirit (wisdom, knowledge or teaching, and prophecy and/or revelations).
. Related to a philosophic approach noted above, but not incompatible with the mystical approach; the visionary approach appears not only among Judean apocalyptists but also with the Middle Platonist Philo, as noted above. Influenced by the Platonic tradition, later Christian interpreters such as Augustine and Eastern Orthodox teachers valued contemplating, not simply commenting on, God’s character.
. For the early worship of Jesus, see Hurtado, One God; Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ; Hurtado, Become God; Bauckham, Crucified.
. Note the present passive indicative verb (μεταμορφούμεθα, 2 Cor. 3:18) and the daily renewal of Paul and his colleagues in 2 Cor. 4:16.
. Similar expressions (Ps. 84:7 [83:8 LXX]) can communicate rhetorical or other accumulation (e.g., Hom. Il. 16.111; Men. Rhet. 2.3, 378.29–30; John 1:16; Rom. 1:17; 2 Cor. 2:16) or increasing measure (Jer. 9:3); cf. the grammatical element of the argument in Taylor, “Faith,” 341–43 (also cited in Das, Debate, 64). Cf. the idea of progression in envisioning the divine in Max. Tyre Or. 1.10 (cf. 21.7–8). If the accumulation is primarily rhetorical, it may imply “from start to finish” (cf. Moo, Romans, 76; Benware, “Grammar”).
. In that passage, by contrast with this one, Paul evokes the usual prophetic experience that was less intense than that of Moses (Num. 12:6–8, esp. 8, echoed by Paul in “face to face” and, in the LXX, αἴνιγμα, which appears in the LXX at most nine times).
. Keener, Corinthians, 170.