the meaning of to teleion in 1 corinthians 13:10

From: Gary S. Shogren (gshogren@sol.racsa.co.cr)
Date: Wed Jan 13 1999 - 22:25:23 EST


This is about interpretation, and thus a bit off-topic, but you pushed my
button with this one! I'm publishing an article in Journal of Pentecostal
Studies (Sheffield) this year on patristic exegesis of 1 Cor 13:8-12. I
cover 500 years of exegesis by the fathers. The cessationist approach in
fact sparked my interest originally.

My conclusion: with the exception of Tertullian (sort of a quasi-Montanist
view), the Manicheans, the Montanists, maybe some Gnostics, maybe the
Marcionites...to a man they all took the passage to be referring to
eschatological perfection: either the Parousia, death and the soul's entry
into heaven, the beatific vision, whatever, but not in this life.

There was a strong tension between the catholic church and the groups
mentioned above. It was a common theme in the catholics that heretics,
claiming new revelation or special knowledge, would appeal to "to teleion"
as a reference to the new light brought by their founder (Mani, Montanus,
etc) or their reception of gnosis. The church consistently argued back that
the catholic church follows the full revelation brought by Christ, that
it's univerally available to all comers, that no Mani or Montanus knows
more than Paul knew, that we need to practice humility in light of the
partial knowledge in this age.

Chrysostom was a cessationist, but he split off verse 8: tongues have
ceased, but the perfect has not yet come. He's the only one that I know of
who did that in antiquity.

_To teleion_ was always eschatological "perfection". No-one in antiquity,
BTW, is on record as thinking its referent is the canon.

I used the standard indices, but also played around with TLG and tried out
some new forms for searching the Greek fathers. I assumed that they might
not be quoting precisely or fully; thus, I ran searches on (I think) five
pairs of words; that is, looking for PROFH AND GLWSSA, TELEION AND AGAPH,
etc. This yielded lots of false leads, but many heretofore undocumented
allusions to that passage. Fun, but tedious! I found hundreds of
references, and analyzed a couple hundred in detail.

Copies available on request (many footnotes, I'm afraid, and you'll have to
take it as an attachment; mail from Costa Rica goes by "tortuga").

Be Greek,
Gary Shogren

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