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Knowledge bloats, love builds: Paul on how we are (not) to know things

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2024

Wil Rogan Open the ORCID record for Wil Rogan [Opens in a new window]
Wil Rogan*
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Carey Theological College, Vancouver, BC, Canada
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Email: wrogan@carey-edu.ca
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Abstract

Paul's epistemology was famously mapped onto his eschatology by J. Louis Martyn, but it must be mapped also onto his ecclesiology. For Paul, knowing is bound always and indissolubly to living with others. To understand how Paul would have us know things, then, we must focus not on knowledge as such, but on epistemic practices in ecclesial communities. Whereas the Corinthians’ use of wisdom and knowledge made for fragmentation and dissolution in the body of Christ (1 Cor 1–4; 8–10), Paul would have practices with knowledge instantiate communion and care for one another, as is proper for Christ's body. Integral to theological knowing is a sense of what and whom theology is for, a sense being critically explored in recent evaluations of theological education.

Keywords

1 CorinthiansepistemologyknowledgelovePaul
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , First View , pp. 1 - 11
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

1 McBride, James, Five-Carat Soul (New York: Riverhead, 2018), pp. 8–44Google Scholar. I appeal to this story not as a mere illustration, but as a narrative argument about the ways knowledge is bound to life. My analysis is helped by Newman, Judie, ‘African American History and the Short Story: James McBride's “The Under Graham Railroad Box Car Set”’, Studies in the American Short Story 1/2 (2020), pp. 180–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 In his study of Paul's ‘implicit’ epistemology, Ian Scott finds that Paul has a coherent approach to knowledge even as he stands outside of both ancient and modern epistemological discourses and ‘betrays no interest … in the kind of epistemological debates and self-conscious logic which were a staple of elite philosophical discourse’; see Scott, Ian W., Paul's Way of Knowing: Story, Experience, and the Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), p. 4Google Scholar.

3 On the kind of hermeneutical collapse between theology and history entailed in theological interpretation, see Karl Barth’s essay ‘The Strange New World within the Bible’, which appears in The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (New York: Harper and Row, 1959), pp. 28–50. See further, Green, Joel B., Practicing Theological Interpretation: Engaging Biblical Texts for Faith and Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), 13–70Google Scholar.

4 Martyn, J. Louis, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1997), pp. 89–110Google Scholar. The essay is a slightly revised version of Martyn, J. Louis, ‘Epistemology at the Turn of the Ages: 2 Corinthians 5.16’, in Farmer, William Reuben, Moule, C. F. D. and Niebuhr, Richard R. (eds), Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox (Cambridge: CUP, 1967), pp. 269–87Google Scholar. For a recent, critical evaluation of the two-age apocalyptic schema with which Martyn and others read Paul, see Davies, Jamie, ‘Why Paul Doesn't Mention the “Age to Come”’, Scottish Journal of Theology 74/3 (2021), pp. 199–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Unless otherwise noted, translations of biblical texts are my own.

6 Martyn, Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul, pp. 96–108. N. T. Wright closely follows Martyn, arguing that Paul revises the act of knowing eschatologically and christologically, prompting an ‘epistemological revolution’ by which knowledge is ‘taken up’ into love; see Wright, N. T., Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2013), p. 1355; cf. 1354–83Google Scholar.

7 Though Martyn situates Paul's epistemology within the eschatological and cosmic changes brought on by Christ's death and resurrection, the focus of his essay is on how one regards one's own knowledge with respect to eschatological time and its impact on one's level of epistemic confidence. In the revised edition of the essay, Martyn acknowledges his inadequate connection of Paul's epistemology to daily life in community (Theological Issues in the Letters of Paul, p. 109n56). On the way epistemology ‘brackets other concerns such as practical, moral, and aesthetic ones’, see e.g. Kvanvig, Jonathan L., ‘Theoretical Unity in Epistemology’, in Fitelson, Branden et al. (eds), Themes from Klein: Knowledge, Scepticism, and Justification (Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019), p. 40Google Scholar.

8 Kvanvig, ‘Theoretical Unity in Epistemology’, pp. 52–4.

9 The rendering of συνέχω as ‘constraineth’ (2 Cor 5:14 KJV) is more fitting than ‘urge on’ (NRSV), ‘control’ (ESV) or ‘compel’ (NIV), as the verb was used both literally and figuratively in the sense of keeping things together (Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek [hereafter BrillDAG], s.v. ‘συνέχω’). Although A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (herafter BDAG) includes ‘control’ and ‘compel’ in the semantic range of συνέχω, it adduces no ancient witnesses for such usage (BDAG, s.v. ‘συνέχω’). Christ's love holds humanity together because when Christ died, we all did too.

10 Heidi Wendt situates Paul among a recognisable class of ‘freelance religious experts’, whose loose attachment to institutions made them ‘highly vulnerable to connotations of interest, ambition, and profit, qualities that were readily exploitable for any who would denounce them, including other participants in the same phenomenon’; see At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (New York: OUP, 2016), p. 10.

11 Ignatius of Antioch would follow Paul's rhetorical example by pointing to his own sufferings to make credible his epistemic claims about the bodily sufferings of Jesus (Smyrnaeans 2.1–4.2; Trallians 9.1–10.1). See Stoops, Robert F., ‘If I Suffer: Epistolary Authority in Ignatius of Antioch’, Harvard Theological Review 80/2 (1987), pp. 161–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Roberts, Robert C. and Wood, W. Jay, Intellectual Virtues: An Essay in Regulative Epistemology (Oxford: OUP, 2007), pp. 113–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar. From them I have learned to speak of knowledge as an ‘epistemic good’ (pp. 32–58) that is not only acquired but also ‘maintained, transmitted, and applied’ (p. 149), a habit of speech that helpfully gestures toward how knowledge involves social exchange. The unfortunate limitation of this metaphor in the scope of this essay, as Jason Moraff observed to me, is that it conceptualises knowledge as a commodity.

13 Ibid., p. 61. Approaching Paul's understanding of knowledge within the frame of epistemic practice comports with Ian Scott's argument that for Paul the way the Spirit helps bring people to the knowledge of God is through the restoration of human moral constitution, freeing us from the idolatry and ingratitude through which we first lost the knowledge of God; see Paul's Way of Knowing, pp. 15–48; cf. Rom 1:18–32; 1 Cor 1:17–2.16.

14 Swinton, John, ‘Empirical Research, Theological Limits, and Possibilities’, in Ward, Pete and Tveitereid, Knut (eds), The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Theology and Qualitative Research (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2022), p. 88Google Scholar.

15 I have chastened some of my language about the church in this essay in light of the incisive questions David Congdon has raised about the way ‘theological interpretation makes the church a norm of biblical exegesis’, even as he recognises that theological interpretation arises from within ecclesial and social contexts; see Congdon, David W., ‘The Nature of the Church in Theological Interpretation: Culture, Volk, and Mission’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 11/1 (2017), pp. 115CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. 104, 116–7.

16 Horrell, David G., Solidarity and Difference: A Contemporary Reading of Paul's Ethics, 2nd edn (London: T&T Clark, 2016), p. 302Google Scholar.

17 Ibid., pp. 109–45.

18 Ibid., pp. 183–270.

19 Paul contrasts bloating and building, two kinds of growth possible in Christ's body (cf. Eph 4:12–16). The term φυσιόω is related to φῦσα, which in some medical literature was used either of the bladder or intestinal bloating from gas (BrillDAG, s.v. ‘φῦσα’). Following the KJV, most modern English translations render the phrase ‘knowledge puffs up’ (1 Cor 8:1), which is accurate, but, one might say, trite. Is it not now better to speak of bloating, swelling or distension?

20 Anthony Thiselton argues that ἐξουσία is a kind of ‘right to choose’ that is analogous to the Corinthians’ earlier insistence about what is lawful (ἔξεστιν) for them (1 Cor 6:12; 10:23); see Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 566–7.

21 Paul does once call the knowledge-havers ‘strong’, but only later in the discourse when he asks ‘Or are we provoking the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he?’ (1 Cor 10:22 NRSV; cf. 1:25). In referring to ‘knowledge-havers’, I play on Beverly Gaventa's term ‘faith-havers’ for those who come under Paul's critique in Romans 14–15; see Gaventa, Beverly Roberts, ‘Reading for the Subject: The Paradox of Power in Romans 14:1–15:6’, Journal of Theological Interpretation 5/1 (2011), pp. 5–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 On which, see Bauckham, Richard, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 210–8Google Scholar.

23 For Paul, eating food sacrificed to idols is a moral risk and not a morally indifferent matter of conscience (contra Horrell, Solidarity and Difference, pp. 183–224). For a reading to this effect, see Moses, Robert E., ‘Love Overflowing in Complete Knowledge at Corinth: Paul's Message Concerning Idol Food’, Interpretation 72/1 (2018), pp. 17–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I would add that in ancient Jewish thinking, idolatry was one of few sins that caused moral defilement (alongside bloodshed and sexual misdeeds), on which see Klawans, Jonathan, Impurity and Sin in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: OUP, 2000), pp. 21–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf. 1 Cor 8:7. That Paul considered idolatry a grave sin is suggested by Albert Schweitzer, who identified participation in idolatrous practice along with Gentile circumcision for obedience to the law and sexual misdeeds as the only three actions that Paul thinks can ‘annul … being-in-Christ’; see Albert Schweitzer, The Mysticism of Paul the Apostle (New York: Henry Holt, 1931), p. 200.

24 For deliberation about the extent to which this sentence represents the Corinthians’ voice or Paul's, see Brookins, Timothy A., Corinthian Wisdom, Stoic Philosophy, and the Ancient Economy (Cambridge: CUP, 2014), pp. 82–3, 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

25 On the way Paul understands the practice of love to generate moral understanding (αἰσθήσει), see Fowl, Stephen E., Philippians (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2005), pp. 32–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 As observed also by Susan Eastman, who advances an argument quite similar to that put forth in this essay, that ‘Paul is teaching the Corinthians a new relational mode of cognition and communication that issues forth in concern for one another’, see Eastman, Susan Grove, ‘Love's Folly: Love and Knowledge in 1 Corinthians’, Interpretation 72/1 (2018), p. 14Google Scholar. However, I take for granted that for Paul knowing involves social relations and then attempt to put the matter the other way around. For Paul a form of communal life constrained by Christ's love gives rise to epistemic practices that maintain communion and cultivate love.

27 Timothy Brookins offers compelling arguments that some of the Corinthians embraced Roman Stoic philosophy and aspired to the self-sufficiency and inviolability of the sage. In so doing, he sets forward a plausible social and philosophical context in which the acquisition of wisdom empowered one to pursue one's own interests. His work comports with and has informed my reading of the Corinthians' problems with knowledge. See Timothy A. Brookins, Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Corinthians: Paul, Stoicism, and Spiritual Hierarchy (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2024), pp. 41–3, 179–90; Brookins, Corinthian Wisdom, pp. 62–103, 153–200.

28 If it is true that Paul's moral reasoning in 1 Corinthians 8–9 tells us a great deal about his metanorm of other-regard in his ethics (so Horrell, Solidarity and Difference, pp. 186–200), all the more so that it is a norm in how he thinks we are to know things.

29 The exact relation between wisdom and schism at Corinth remains a matter of debate and speculation due to limited historical evidence. On political allegiances, see Welborn, Laurence L., ‘On the Discord in Corinth: 1 Corinthians 1–4 and Ancient Politics’, Journal of Biblical Literature 106/1 (1987), pp. 85–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On rhetorical practice, see Pogoloff, Stephen M., Logos and Sophia: The Rhetorical Situation of 1 Corinthians (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Winter, Bruce W., Philo and Paul among the Sophists: Alexandrian and Corinthian Responses to a Julio-Claudian Movement, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2002)Google Scholar. On elite social values, see Clarke, Andrew D., Secular and Christian Leadership in Corinth: A Socio-Historical and Exegetical Study of 1 Corinthians 1–6 (Leiden: Brill, 1993)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On rivalries between philosophical schools, see Brookins, Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Corinthians.

30 For a helpful account of theological knowledge as ecclesial participation in ‘triune communion’, see Thacker, Justin, Postmodernism and the Ethics of Theological Knowledge (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 37–64Google Scholar. On the way knowledge is personal, transformative and embodied in Paul, see Healy, Mary, ‘Knowledge of the Mystery: A Study of Pauline Epistemology’, in Parry, Robin and Healy, Mary (eds), The Bible and Epistemology: Biblical Soundings on the Knowledge of God (Colorado Springs, CO: Paternoster, 2007), pp. 134–58Google Scholar.

31 On how the difficult verb μετασχηματίζω (1 Cor 4.6) allows Paul to address schisms in the church under his and Apollos' names while setting forward their communion with each other as a model for the Corinthians, see Brookins, Corinthian Wisdom, pp. 202–4.

32 Notwithstanding that Paul boasts in 2 Corinthians 10–13 because of judgments made about him, an appeal to the Corinthians made necessary by his marginal ethnic and social location, on which see the fascinating treatment in Schellenberg, Ryan S., ‘Paul, Samson Occom, and the Constraints of Boasting: A Comparative Rereading of 2 Corinthians 10–13’, Harvard Theological Review 109/4 (2016), pp. 512–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

33 On reading, debating, teaching, and learning as epistemic practices, see Roberts and Wood, Intellectual Virtues, pp. 120–42.

34 Smith, Ted A., The End of Theological Education (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2023), pp. 94–114Google Scholar; cf. pp. 115–37, where Smith also enumerates some of the twenty-first century's ‘affordances’ for theological education.

35 Conde-Frazier, Elizabeth, Atando Cabos: Latinx Contributions to Theological Education (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2021), pp. 12–27Google Scholar; cf. pp. 29–38, 60–74, where Conde-Frazier goes on to describe how Latin American theologians’ understanding of theology as misíon integral has subsequently shaped theological education, in light of which she offers a vision for a ‘collaborative educational ecology’.

36 Jennings, Willie James, After Whiteness: An Education in Belonging (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2020), p. 63Google Scholar. Whiteness for Jennings is neither a reference to European descent nor to an identifiable group of people. Rather, whiteness is ‘a way of being in the world and seeing the world that forms cognitive and affective structures’ aimed at self-sufficiency, mastery and control (Ibid., p. 9). Jennings imagines theological institutions that form people who work with fragments of faith, colonial(ised) cultures and commodity to cultivate belonging, for which his focal image is Jesus teaching the crowds – though it may just as well have been Christ's body inhering in communion and love (Ibid., pp. 23–46).

37 See e.g. the stories to this effect in Jennings, After Whiteness, pp. 145–8; Conde-Frazier, Atando Cabos, pp. 52–6, 80.

38 The phrase ‘where church happens' plays on a phrase from Rowan Williams, Where God Happens: Discovering Christ in One Another (Boston: New Seeds, 2005), p. 24.

39 McBride, Five-Carat Soul, p. 71.

40 Ibid., pp. 72–4.

41 Ibid. I am thankful to David W. Congdon, Jason F. Moraff and Cory B. Willson for their constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.