Piecemeal Revelation

“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)

The Basket Case Chronicles #160

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity” (1 Cor. 13:11–13).

In the previous verses, we were considering whether knowing in part or prophesying in part referred to the time of the older covenant or to the time prior to the eschaton. Is the arrival of the “perfect” to be understood as the completion of the canon, or as the resurrection of the dead. We now come to the place where I come down on the question—albeit gingerly.

When images are used in Scripture, one of our first questions should concern how that image is used in other places of Scriptures—and not what associations with that image might arise in our minds, for whatever reason.

The time prior to the “perfect” is described as the time of speaking and understanding in childish ways. This is not an image the Bible uses for our mortal lives, but it an image used for the time of God’s children under the old covenant. “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Gal. 3:24–25).

And Paul describes the process of “becoming a man” as one, which if it is not quite completed, is at least started. When I became a man . . . While “face to face” has an eschatological feel to it, the whole idea of knowing in part appears to apply to the time of the old covenant, as contrasted with the fullness of knowledge in the time of the New Testament.

“Of which salvation the prophets have inquired and searched diligently, who prophesied of the grace that should come unto you: Searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow. Unto whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves, but unto us they did minister the things, which are now reported unto you by them that have preached the gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven; which things the angels desire to look into” (1 Pet. 1:10–12).

The knowledge of the older covenant was certainly a piecemeal affair, but when the Scriptures speak of the coming of the Christ, the note of completion is struck. “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds” (Heb. 1:1–2).

Taking all this together, I take “the perfect” as God’s gift of the canon of Scripture, and all that this gift entails throughout all of church history, up to the culmination of all things. But this will require further explanation.