On Theological Knowledge

The beginning of a semester at a seminary provides a natural opportunity to reflect on the acquisition of theological knowledge. Perhaps not so expected is the context of one of Scripture’s key texts on this topic: Paul’s treatise on food offered to idols (1 Cor 8:1–11:1). The first item in that lengthy discussion is this: “We know that ‘all of us possess knowledge’” (1 Cor 8:1).

The ESV translators have put quotation marks around the statement, “all of us possess knowledge.” That’s because scholars commonly hold that this statement is a slogan that the Corinthian Christians said or that at least represented the way they thought.

What is the knowledge they possessed? Verse 4 answers: “Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one.’” More quotation marks have been added here. The Corinthians were apparently using the quoted statements to defend their ongoing participation in idolatrous feasts.

Before Paul responds to their specific arguments, in verses 1–3 he makes some general remarks about the knowledge of the Corinthians and the attitude they ought to have toward that knowledge. This passage sets forth a brief but searching Christian perspective on knowledge. It’s not exactly an epistemology, but it does teach three principles that ought to guide how we approach whatever knowledge we may acquire of God and his ways.

Lovingly use your knowledge to edify others.

This ‘knowledge’ puffs up, but love builds up. (1 Cor 8:1b)

Conservative Christianity has sometimes had an anti-intellectual bent. Certain dangers often accompany the acquisition of theological knowledge, and Paul will deal with some of them in this chapter. But some believers have reacted to these dangers by discouraging study and scholarship. They have pitted “doing” against “knowing.”

This attitude has led to criticism of seminaries in particular. The idea is that deep study of Scripture will kill one’s love for Jesus and for souls. In fact, seminaries are jokingly called cemeteries.

Yet in 1 Cor 8:1 Paul is not promoting anti-intellectualism. That becomes clear in the very next verse but think about any of his epistles. Are they not rich in the knowledge of theology? Can they not be difficult to follow because of their grammatical complexity and logical nuances? Do they not require a lot of time and mental sweat to figure out? Paul was a biblical scholar even while he was a devout believer and a fervent evangelist. So somehow it’s possible to pursue the life of the mind without losing one’s affection for God and for people. In fact, that’s the whole drift of this passage.

What verse 1 does is to warn the Corinthians not against knowledge but against the pride that human beings easily develop when our knowledge expands. We become puffed up, inflated with a sense of our own greatness and importance.

This was a problem that had become all too common among the Corinthians. Several times already Paul had challenged them about being puffed up (Greek phusioō). He brings it up in chapter 4 in rebuking their divisiveness over their favorite preachers (vv. 6, 18, 19). It comes up again in 5:2, as the Corinthians prided themselves on their tolerance of the immoral man in their congregation. Now the same attitude is plaguing them as it relates to their knowledge about the true God over against false gods. That seems like the worst kind of pride because it’s connected with something true.

I’m reminded of Aesop’s fable about the frog and the ox. In trying to prove her superiority over an ox, an old frog puffed herself out until she burst. The moral? “Men are ruined by attempting a greatness to which they have no claim.”

What is the solution to this problem of being puffed up? It’s love, making sure that’s my motivation in pursuing and using truth. Instead of using my knowledge to pump up my own self-worth and my own reputation, I must use it to build up other people.

Paul comes back to this when dealing with spiritual gifts later in 1 Corinthians. In chapter 13, the famous chapter on agape, verse 2 says: “And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” And here’s how verse 4 describes love: it “does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant (phusioō).”

So the problem isn’t gaining knowledge. The problem is my motive for gaining knowledge and then what I do with that knowledge. Am I aiming to make myself look great or to help others grow in Christ?

Humbly recognize that your knowledge needs to grow.

If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. (1 Cor 8:2)

So far from being anti-intellectual, Paul tells the Corinthians that their problem isn’t that they know too much but that they don’t know enough!

What did they not know? They were rock solid on a truth that was foundational to the discussion of idolatry—monotheism. But what did they not know sufficiently, or what theological dots had they not yet connected to what they knew?

In chapter 10 Paul reveals one of the truths they were missing: the nature of idolatry. True, idols aren’t divine beings. Demons stand behind idolatry, however, and to engage in idolatrous feasts is to engage with and show honor to demons.

We may not struggle with that particular problem, but we can fall into other problems because of ignorance. We might be confident in our theological knowledge, but that knowledge may be missing biblical elements or emphases that would moderate how we’re interpreting or how we’re framing the truths we do know. It’s so easy to latch onto one biblical truth while ignoring another biblical truth that keeps us from misconstruing the first truth.

More to the point in chapter 8, Paul is concerned about the Corinthians’ ignorance of the practical effects of their actions. That is, what could be the impact on new believers if more knowledgeable believers participate in idolatrous feasts (vv. 7–13)?

Here’s a kind of knowledge seminary students need to grow in: practical knowledge, the implications of both what I know and how I live, including how my behavior affects other people. A head full of information doesn’t compensate for personal immaturity or selfishness.

C. S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity (124),

A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

Lewis is talking to unbelievers about their unwillingness to recognize God. But something like this can happen to believers as well. We arrive at a certain amount of knowledge, and from that vantage point we look down on other people. All the while, we don’t realize that there’s so much above us that we don’t know and that would transform the way we interact with others.

Gratefully connect your knowledge to God’s grace.

But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. (1 Cor 8:3)

The way this verse begins is surprising. Coming out of verse 2, I would expect the next statement to be, “But if anyone knows God.” Yet it says, “But if anyone loves God.” Why? Because the theological knowledge God desires is a relational knowledge.

The OT had taught, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge” (Prov 1:7). First Corinthians 8:3 gives a NT counterpart: “The love of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” Yes, we need to use our knowledge to love people, but what lies behind Christian love for people is love for God himself.

Again, what is my motive as I pursue and dispense theological knowledge? Is it that I would get praise for being really smart or really profound, or that the Lord would get all the glory for being infinitely wise and good?

The ending of verse 3 surprises me even more. I would have anticipated something like, “But if anyone loves God, he will use his knowledge in the right way.” What it says is this: “But if anyone loves God, he is known by God.”

Here’s yet another way Paul takes the attention off of us and puts it on God. Whatever love for God we have and whatever knowledge of God we have, ultimately they are owing to his initiating knowledge of us. That’s a way of talking about God’s gracious election of his people. Remember what the Lord said to Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer 1:5), meaning “I chose to enter into a personal relationship with you.”

Sometimes an understanding of election prompts students to become proud. That goes against the whole point, doesn’t it? As a Calvinist, years ago Pastor Albert Martin grew concerned about budding Calvinists who displayed a superiority complex. In the pamphlet The Practical Implications of Calvinism, he wrote (9–10),

The expression, a proud Calvinist, is a misnomer. If a Calvinist is a man who has seen God as He is high and lifted up, enthroned, then he is a man who has been brought to brokenness before that throne as was Isaiah [in Isa 6]…. I submit that a man has no right to speak of being a Calvinist because he can repeat like a parrot phrases brought to him in the great heritage of Reformed literature. He must ask himself, Has the Holy Spirit brought me to this profound sense of God that has worked in me at least in some measure the grace of humility?

Whether or not one agrees with every detail of Calvinism, Martin’s point is well taken. In fact, it parallels Paul’s point in our text. When you realize that your love for God and your resulting theological convictions arise from God first knowing you, your heart is humbled and filled with awe and gratitude. With that attitude, you’re then ready to make a right use of your knowledge.

But there is more. David Garland puts it this way: “That intimate relationship [being known by God] draws a sharp boundary that sets [the Corinthians] apart from the worshipers of false gods and delimits what they may and may not do” (1 Corinthians, 2nd ed., Kindle, 346). In other words, the undeserved relationship we have with God moves us to use our knowledge of him in ways that are consistent with the God who has first chosen to know us.

Conclusion

Lovingly use your knowledge to edify others. Humbly recognize that your knowledge needs to grow. Gratefully connect your knowledge to God’s grace. What challenging insights from such a short passage! The truths of 1 Corinthians 8:1–3 instruct student and professor alike as we renew our study of the depths of the Word of God.