Main news for 3 September 2022

These words gave some people grounds to think that Paul, and perhaps other apostles as well, had a certain secret, esoteric teaching that they preached to specially initiated people. Later this more than once led to the appearance in the church-adjacent world of various circles and sects whose members claimed to preserve and transmit a special 'secret knowledge' connected with the Kingdom and with spiritual life.

In reality, however, there is no need to speak here of any esotericism. The problem lies in how the word 'wisdom' was understood in different eras. In the Yahwistic, and later also in the Jewish, tradition, wisdom was understood above all as the practice of conscious action, whether a craft skill, the ability to govern a state and one's own household, or the ability to build relationships with God and live a righteous life.

In later centuries, however, wisdom meant either some special knowledge or some secret mystical experience, and this became the source of misunderstandings connected with a supposedly existing apostolic esoteric tradition. But the wisdom of which Paul speaks was connected with the Torah, which in the Gospel era was commonly believed to have existed before the creation of the world. For the apostle himself the Torah was also connected with the person of Jesus Christ, who for him was the only example of the 'living Torah.'

Since for the apostle wisdom was inseparable from righteousness, righteousness from the person of Jesus Christ, and both of them from the poverty of which Isaiah of Jerusalem had spoken and whose embodiment was the earthly path of the Savior, it is not surprising that Paul considers such wisdom, on one hand, perfect, and on the other, absolutely incomprehensible to the fallen world lying in evil. To a person living only a natural life, the life of nature, which Paul calls 'psychic,' even the path of poverty in the sense in which Isaiah speaks of it appears absurd. And the earthly path of the Savior for such a person is complete collapse, and to walk His path is madness.

Only a person for whom the breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom, becomes reality is changed and recognizes the will of God, as well as His providence. This is where the true wisdom of which the apostle speaks begins, inaccessible to the world of fallen nature. By 'the perfect' the apostle means precisely those who are guided not by the laws of this world and its ways, but by the Torah, the path of righteousness, and the breath of the Kingdom. For such people the earthly path of Christ is not defeat but victory, and following Christ is not madness but the only path to salvation.