1 Corinthians 2:6

“Howbeit we speak wisdom among them that are perfect, yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought.”

The δέ is rather restrictive than adversative. It is intended to limit the idea previously developed, that the cross is not a wisdom. In the case of him who has once experienced the salvation it brings to man, it does not fail to become a light which illumines his understanding and directs his whole life. It is obvious in this sense why the term σοφία, wisdom, heads the sentence in the original: it is the essential word, and in a manner the summary, of the passage.

This first proposition has been understood in two very different ways. Some (Chrysostom, Luther, Calvin, Beza, Grotius, Olshausen, Heinrici, etc.) think that Paul, when speaking of οἱ τέλειοι, the perfect, means all believers, and that σοφία, wisdom, denotes the gospel in the ordinary sense of the word. “But,” the apostle says, it is held, “this preaching of the cross, which seems folly to unbelievers, is wisdom in the eyes of believers.” This meaning seems to us inadmissible. The term οἱ τέλειοι, the perfect, is too special to be taken as the simple equivalent of οἱ πιστοί, believers. In chap. 1 Corinthians 3:1 the word τέλειος is replaced by πνευματικός, spiritual, and the latter is opposed to νήπιος, the infant, which cannot speak yet. The same contrast reappears in τέλειος γίνεσθαι and νηπίαζειν, 1 Corinthians 14:20; comp. also Ephesians 4:13-14; Hebrews 5:13-14. Now in all these passages νήπιος denotes, not the unconverted, but believers, believers, however, who are only at the first steps of the new life, and whose conversion needs yet to be confirmed. “Ye are yet carnal,” says the apostle to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 3:3, to explain this state of infancy. The word perfect has therefore a meaning much narrower than believer. It denotes the state of the mature man, in opposition to that of the infant. Paul thereby denotes believers who have reached, not absolute perfection (comp. Php 3:12-17), but the full maturity of Christian faith and life. Heinrici objects that in Christianity there is no aristocracy, and Holsten that according to Paul every believer has received the Spirit, and that the Spirit cannot make progress. To the first objection Rückert has already made answer, that every believer being called to that state of maturity, all aristocratic distinctions are ipso facto banished. And as to the second, if the Spirit is not open to progress, the believer's life may be gradually penetrated by this perfect principle. Does not the apostle say to the Galatians (1 Corinthians 4:19): “My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you.” The perfect are therefore in his eyes the most confirmed Christians in whom the new life has attained the normal stature of Christ (Ephesians 4:13-14).

The form λαλεῖν ἐν is equally incompatible with the interpretation before us. The ἐν, in, would in that case mean: in the eyes of, in the judgment of. This preposition may sometimes have this meaning with verbs containing the idea of being or appearing; comp. 1 Corinthians 14:11. But with the verb λαλεῖν this sense is inadmissible. The in cannot be taken otherwise than in the local sense: among, in the midst of. Paul means that when he is in the midst of confirmed believers, mature Christians, he feels himself free to set forth the treasures of wisdom contained in the gospel; comp. Colossians 2:3: “Christ, in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.” For then the question is no longer one of conversion to be wrought or confirmed. He can therefore, as he says, 1 Corinthians 3:1, present the gospel, not as the milk of babes, but as the meat of the strong. This is the meaning which has been recognised by Erasmus, Bengel, de Wette, Rückert, Reuss (“as to philosophy, I preach it to mature men”), Osiander, Neander, Hofmann, Edwards, etc. It is mistaken or obscured in Oltramare's version: “Nevertheless it is wisdom which we teach among the perfect.”

To the wisdom which Paul reserved for exposition to full-grown men in Christ there doubtless belonged what he expounds in passages such as Romans 9-11 (God's plan in regard to the salvation of Jews and Gentiles), in the Epistles to the Ephesians and to the Colossians (the cross as the centre of the history of the universe, as the bond of union between the first and the second creation, as the means of first uniting Jews and Gentiles, and then men and angels, under the sovereignty of Christ, their common head); finally, also in chap. 15 of our Epistle (the Christian eschatology). These admirable designs of God, which have guided and still guide all His dispensations toward men, and whose gradual realization is being effected by the Christian economy, were things which Paul expounded as a teacher, not as a missionary. For they can indeed promote the growth of believers in knowledge and love; but they are not what is needed to convert sinners. It is not the light which rays from the cross which changes the heart, it is the cross itself.

The subject of the verb λαλοῦμεν might be: “I and the other apostles;” but the first verses of chap. 3 show that it is of himself including, perhaps, his fellow-labourers that Paul is thinking. His object, indeed, is not to set forth a theory regarding the preaching of the gospel in general, but to justify the manner in which he himself exercised this ministry at Corinth.

The term λαλεῖν is purposely chosen; it denotes communications which are not, like the καταγγέλλειν or the κηρύσσειν, preachings properly so called.

It has been asked whether the apostle meant by the term τέλειος to allude to the position of those initiated into the Greek mysteries (τελεταί), and there has been alleged in favour of this supposition the word μυστήριον, mystery, which he uses in 1 Corinthians 2:7. But in the Epistle to the Hebrews the term τέλειος is used in the same sense as here, and yet nothing is less probable than an allusion to the Greek mysteries in that letter. And as to the word μυστήριον, it refers, in the language of St. Paul, not to a fact into which one man initiates another, but to a plan hidden in God, and which He alone unveils. The word, besides, frequently drops from the pen of the apostle, and that where all allusion to the mysteries would be out of place (Romans 11:25; Romans 16:25; Ephesians 3:4; Colossians 1:27, etc.).

In the following passage the apostle successively develops the three terms embraced in the theme which is stated, 1 Corinthians 2:6 a:

Σοφίαν, wisdom, 1 Corinthians 2:6-9.

Λαλοῦμεν, we speak, 1 Corinthians 2:10-13.

᾿Εν τοῖς τελείοις, among the perfect, 1 Corinthians 2:14-16.

Thereafter he concludes by applying all he has just said to his own teaching, 1 Corinthians 3:1-4.