1 Corinthians 13:11

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child; when I became a man, I put away childish things.”

Man's natural growth is a figure of that of the Church; both follow the same law, that of development and transformation. In proportion as the faculties, in course of development, acquire a higher mode of activity, the previous mode ceases of itself.

It seems evident to me, as to most commentators, that by the three terms, λαλεῖν, to speak, φρονεῖν, to feel, aspire (this term expresses the unity of feeling, thought, and will), and λογίζεσθαι, to think, the apostle alludes to the three gifts mentioned, 1 Corinthians 13:9-11; speaking corresponds to tongues, aspiration to prophecy, and thinking to knowledge. The gift of tongues corresponds in the Divine domain to the babbling of the child in its first joyous experience of life. Prophecy, whose glance penetrates to the perfection yet to come, corresponds to the ardent aspiration of the childish heart, which goes out eagerly into the future, expecting from it joy and happiness; and knowledge, which seeks to penetrate Divine truth, corresponds to the simple thoughts whereby the infant mind seeks to find an explanation of things. It is therefore a groundless objection which Holsten makes to this triple and obvious correlation when he alleges the absence of all relation between the φρονεῖν, aspire after, and prophecy.

The active verb κατήργηκα, I put away, I put an end to, denotes the spontaneity of this surrender. As it is with pride that the young man shakes off the puerilities of childhood, so it is with profound satisfaction that the mature man substitutes the manly activity of the profession which he has embraced for the passionate dreams of childhood and youth. Such is the image of what will be experienced by the faithful when the perfect state for which they are preparing shall be unveiled to them, at Christ's coming. Then they will willingly let fall all those rudiments of the spiritual life with which they were delighted, inflated perhaps, as was the case at Corinth. It is from this point that we can perfectly understand the delicate allusion, 1 Corinthians 1:7.

M. Sabatier (l'Apôtre Paul, p. 7), failing to understand the comparison which the apostle makes, thinks that he is here speaking of himself, that he wishes to describe his spiritual state immediately after his conversion, and that in the same sense in which he applied the image of the child to the spiritual state of the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 3:1 seq. He thus finds in our 1 Corinthians 13:11 a proof of the considerable changes which took place in the apostle's convictions from the time of his conversion up to the date when he wrote this letter.

Such a misunderstanding is without parallel.

The following verse contains the explanation of this comparison.