NOTES for Co1 14:13-25

The apostle seems to contrast praying “with the spirit” and praying “with the understanding.” What does he mean? By “spirit” Paul means what today, without any theological background, we would simply call breath. This may be the “breath of life” God gave humanity at creation or God's breath, whose presence the prophets feel within themselves during ecstasy. In any case, this is precisely an ecstatic experience, the sensation of a certain power of God that acts upon a person and sometimes not only embraces him from without but also enters within. As a rule, God's power is felt as something impersonal, so a person can only surrender himself to it, assuming that behind it stands God Himself, who abides beside him and leads him after Himself. It often happens that while under the influence of God's power, a person not only lacks control of himself but does not always remember everything that happened to him after the ecstasy ends. Glossolalia may, or may not, be an element of such an ecstatic state.

Such ecstasy, however, is of little benefit to those around the person. It can only become a vivid demonstration of how God's power works and what it can do with a human being. That is why Paul calls such phenomena a sign for unbelievers: by observing such an ecstasy, a person with no idea what God's power and action are can form a more or less clear impression of them. But such an ecstasy brings nothing new to Christians themselves.

Praying “with the understanding” is another matter. By understanding, the apostle means here not the intellect but the spiritual center of the human person that the Bible usually calls the heart. Greek philosophers called it the “mind,” and Paul uses this word in his epistles, which were written in Greek. This is conscious prayer, conscious communion with God, which may also become prophetic if God gives a person such a revelation. Here not only God's power but also His will is revealed, a will the person senses and recognizes as part of his own spiritual space. He can therefore follow this will consciously, commune with God consciously—in short, live a conscious spiritual life. And if God entrusts this to him, he can therefore also instruct others: he does not merely experience certain ecstasies but understands the meaning and significance of what is revealed to him and what is happening to him. This is how an inhabitant of the Kingdom should live.

According to Paul's words, the problems with the adequate understanding of the words of the Savior that can enter the Kingdom only those who liken to the children, already belonged to the Christians of the first and second generation. There was probably, in the Corinthian church people thinking that to be children means refusing to use one’s own reason, that if it is necessary to be like children, then the head does not need it, but it is necessary to live with "the heart". In practice such a position brings either to total incoherence in the spiritual life (and not only in the spiritual), or in the fact that the one, who does not wish to live with his spirit, is obliged to live with the one of another.

The situation strange at first sight, for an adult is simple, however it is explained by the fact that it allows the one who lives like that to shirk responsibility for his own life, shifting it to someone else, for quite “evangelical” basis. And the apostle was obliged to remind in his message to the Corinthian Christians that Jesus, when comparing those who come to the Kingdom with children, meant something completely different.

He spoke about the relation of the children to this evil, which is more than enough in the fallen world. And the problem here is not probably in the fact that the children do not know evil: already Augustine observing attentively the children understood perfectly that children sin less than the adults not because there is less sin in them, but because they do not have enough strength to sin "in an adult way". Probably, the apostle also wanted to say the same thing: generally a Christian must be able to think, as know how to do it adult people, but, when it comes to evil, it will be good that the mind of the Christian refuses to help him in evil deeds.

Such Paul's reasoning, as we see, is considered as ideal for Christians. But there is another aspect here: the relation to evil. In the normal case, the child’s view of the world is an optimistic view, it is necessary to try a lot to make of a child a pessimist, or especially a misanthrope (although there is of course here nothing impossible for the fallen man). But the optimism of the child does not mean that children do not notice this evil, in which lies the world. It is just that this knowledge does not make them pessimists. Evil is not in the vision of the world of the child defining this world at first. And here adult Christians really have what to learn from children.

Apostle Paul explains to us today that infancy and adulthood are two parts of the paradox simultaneously existing in our life. We are called to be at the same time small, powerless, stupid in everything, where we try to make malice, - so that our malice becomes small, powerless and stupid, - and adults, wise men where we follow the Christ. We can see a special example of such a life in the holiness of the God’s fools for Christ sake, so respected in the Church. From the point of view of this world, Christianity can show itself "folly", but, as Paul writes "we have the spirit of Christ ".

Of the two very characteristic miraculous gifts of the ancient Church, the gift of prayer in other tongues and the gift of prophecy, the apostle Paul unhesitatingly chooses the latter as a gift absolutely necessary for the life of the Church and its witness. Today it is important for us to understand that by prophecy the apostle does not mean what we are used to calling by that word. This is not about dreadful predictions that come true to the greater horror of mortals. Once, speaking with the Pharisees, the Lord said, 'Hypocrites! You know how to discern the face of the sky, but you cannot discern the signs of the times' (Matt. 16:3). It is not so hard to predict the consequences of human actions, knowing that pride, greed, and lust for power lead to destruction, while compassion, forgiveness, and mercy lead to life. The apostle Paul speaks of prophecy in another sense: the ability of members of the Church to receive the Truth and bear witness to it. This gift exposes a person, and this same gift makes that person able in the Church to follow the truth. And this gift never ceases in the Church.