“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #82
“Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth. And if any man think that he knoweth any thing, he knoweth nothing yet as he ought to know” (1 Cor. 8:1-2).
Paul then moves to the next topic, which had to do with eating things that had been offered up in idol worship. This was a real problem in a place like Corinth, where the meat available in the meat market had been offered up, just a short time before, on the altar of some demon or other. Is it lawful for Christians to eat something like that? And, of course, the answer is yes and no.
This is not a contradiction—it is lawful to eat such meat, unless by eating it you were also devouring your brother. Under such circumstances, you should refrain—not because of the meat, but rather because of your brother. Eating such meat is fine; eating your brother is not fine.
In an earlier situation, the Greeks had been asked to refrain from eating such meat for the sake of table fellowship with Jews (for whom such meat had just been forbidden, but also had become repulsive to them). That had been the decision of the Jerusalem council (Acts 15:29). In this situation, the strong former pagan was asked to refrain (if necessary) for the sake of the weak former pagan. The weakness was this. If a brother who could not disassociate the meat from the idol worship saw a stronger Christian partaking (who could disassociate the two) and imitated him, he would obviously fall back into his former sin of idolatry. Modern examples would be a former pagan who could not yet disassociate drinking and drunkenness or rock music and getting stoned. The law of love is clear—don’t sacrifice your brother on the altar of your liberty.
And so this is how Paul opens up this subject. Everybody has knowledge. Big whoop. Christianity 101 teaches us that an idol is nothing (v. 4). Paul is saying that an idol is nothing, and knowledge that an idol is nothing is also nothing. Idols are a vanity, and super-duper knowledge about the vanity of idols is also vanity. In other words, when knowledge is made into an idol, it doesn’t fare any better than the other idols do. Knowledge, taken the wrong way, is not meat offered to an idol, it is a meat idol. Knowledge, taken that way, is just meatware.
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The point is to build up your brother, and it is not to prove to him how your knowledge of the situation is superior. To undertake such a proof is to demonstrate that your knowledge is not yet the kind of knowledge it ought to be.
So those who take “knowledge puffs up” as a sort of an absolute prohibition of knowledge have to stumble over two things. The first is that they have to claim to know that knowledge puffs up, which means they are puffed up and we shouldn’t listen to them. The second problem is that Paul has clearly put a set of air quotes around the “knowledge” that puffs up. The puffed up man, he goes on to say, is the one who thinks that he knows, but who does not yet know as he ought to. This means he ought to know—he has a moral obligation to know. But that moral obligation to know runs in a different groove than the knowledge that vaunts itself over a brother. The kind of knowledge that puffs up does so because it has little man syndrome, and wants to puff itself—it wants to look bigger, wants to appear stronger, wants to be in platform shoes. If knowledge were hair, this would be an epic comb-over.