Chapter two of Corinthians is a total self-own, for those of us looking at Christianity from the outside with the benefit of rationality. Essentially, Paul instructs Christians not to think for themselves, not to be rational, and not to be wise. In order to believe, you need to be stupid and irrational. I agree with that 100%.
2 And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God.[a] 2 For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. 3 I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. 4 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, 5 so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.
God’s Wisdom Revealed by the Spirit
6 We do, however, speak a message of wisdom among the mature, but not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are coming to nothing. 7 No, we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. 8 None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. 9 However, as it is written:
“What no eye has seen,
what no ear has heard,
and what no human mind has conceived”[b]—
the things God has prepared for those who love him—10 these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit.
The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. 11 For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. 12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.[c] 14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 16 for,
“Who has known the mind of the Lord
so as to instruct him?”[d]But we have the mind of Christ.
- 1 Corinthians 2:1 Some manuscripts proclaimed to you God’s mystery
- 1 Corinthians 2:9 Isaiah 64:4
- 1 Corinthians 2:13 Or Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual
- 1 Corinthians 2:16 Isaiah 40:13
3 comments:
We learn a lot about the Spirit of god, and how god chooses to give the Spirit to some people but not to everyone. Is Paul a reliable source for this information, (which presumably originated with Jesus)?
Judging from his reference to Isaiah in verse 9, Paul shows himself to be a charlatan: his quotation is partial, and he utterly distorts its meaning by adding a line of “explanation” of his own - “the things God has prepared for those who love him”. The three lines quoted do not refer to things god has prepared for believers, but to the fact that the god of the Jews is the only god that they have seen. St Paul’s distortion is gross and dishonest, showing how he is prepared to just make things up. And so, not a reliable source.
(Apology, for commenting as Anon recently. By all means delete these last two sentences of this Comment.)
Yes, Paul often misquotes or misconstrues passages in the Tanakh. I usually don't bother to point it out, it's pretty pervasive.
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