<- Previous   First   Next ->

Ephesus, the same as that which we ourselves may hope to receive from God.’

( id. ib. pp. 135 ff.)

‘Perhaps the safest description of the gift which is promised to all Christians is that which is contained in the text. It is the “spirit of wisdom.” It is not a blind impulse, resulting in a conviction having no intelligible grounds; it is not an impression having nothing to justify it except the obstinacy with which we hold to it. When the Spirit of God illuminates the mind, we see the meaning of what Christ said and of what Christ did. We simply find what was in the Christian revelation from the beginning.’

( id. ib. p. 142.)

‘If I am asked how we are to distinguish between what is revealed to us by the Spirit of God and what we discover by the energy and penetration of our own thought, I can only reply that the question seems to me to rest on a misconception of the nature of spiritual illumination. The “wisdom” which the Spirit grants us is not a “wisdom” separable from the ordinary activity and discernment of our own minds; it is not something alien to our own higher life; it becomes our own wisdom, just as the vision which Christ miraculously restored to blind men was not something foreign to them, but their own. They saw what before they had only handled, and the nobler sense revealed to them what the inferior sense could not make known; they saw for themselves what they had only heard of from others. The reality of the supernatural work was ascertained by the new discoveries it enabled them to make of the world in which they were living. Analogous effects follow the illumination of the Holy Spirit. When the “ spirit of wisdom and revelation ” is granted to us, “ the eyes ” of our heart, to use Paul's phrase in the next verse, are “enlightened”— our own eyes ,—and we see the glory of God.’

( id. ib. p. 142 f.)

Intellectual claims and gifts of the Gospel.

In 1 Cor. 2—the main Pauline passage—St Paul has spoken of a ‘wisdom—not of this world ( ouj tou' aijw'no" touvtou ) nor of the rulers of this world’ (vs.
6)—a wisdom ‘that hath been hidden’—‘God's wisdom’ which ‘we speak—in a mystery’—wisdom ‘which God preordained before the world unto our glory’ (vs. 7). For ‘unto us God through the Spirit revealed—even the deep things of God’ (vs.
11)—things ‘which eye saw not, and ear heard not (Is. 64:4) and which came not up into man's heart’ (vs. 9)—things which ‘God prepared for them that love Him.’

‘Through the Spirit.’ For ‘the Spirit searcheth ( ejrauna'/ ) all things’: and as none ‘knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of the man which is in him, so none knoweth the things of God save the Spirit of God’ (vs. 10) Now ‘ we , that we may know the things freely given us by God,’ have received—not the spirit of the world
(
tou' kovsmou ), but—the Spirit which is from God ( to; pneu'ma to; ejk tou' qeou' ). Now a
natural man’ ( yuciko;" a[nqrwpo" ) receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God—they are foolishness to him—he cannot know them—because they are judged spiritually. But the spiritual man ( oJ pneumatiko;" ) judgeth all things.’

This ‘wisdom’—God's wisdom—‘we speak (says St Paul in vs. 6) among the full-grown’ ( ejn toi'" teleivoi" ).

In the Epistle to the Ephesians St Paul tells of God's grace abounding (cf. 1:8) ‘in all wisdom and prudence’:—and (v. 1:17) of his prayers to God—‘making mention of you in my prayers’—for ‘a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of


<- Previous   First   Next ->