XLI. Knowledge and Love
Paul in the “Hymn of Heavenly Love” (1 Corinthians 13) draws a pointed contrast between partial or present knowledge and perfect (absolute) or future knowledge. As the mind and character of the Christian develops, his partial knowledge is put aside, and done away: that partial knowledge sees only obscurely, for it sees only the reflection of the reality (as in a mirror), and cannot gaze directly on the reality. I cannot but feel, however, that His Excellency Dr. A. Harnack, in his striking article in the Expositor, June, 1912, p. 493 f., over-emphasises the irreconcilability of the one kind of knowledge with the other, just as he also seems to over-emphasise the separation between knowledge and love. (His words are, “in this hymn love and knowledge have nothing to do with one another. Neither does love lead to knowledge, nor knowledge to love.” There is a sense in which this is true; but it needs to be guarded against too wide application.) These two topics — what is partial knowledge as compared with complete knowledge, and what connexion exists between knowledge and love — are in reality closely correlated, and must be considered together. As I should venture to put the relation between love and knowledge, love acts as the force which leads man on from knowledge to knowledge. A driving power is needed. Not merely the intellect, but also the will, has to come into play in the process of knowledge. As experience with college students for many years showed, and as I often impressed on class after class, the moral quality is at least as important as the intellectual in the making of the true scholar. He must struggle from stage to stage: the old knowledge gives place to the new, which is in its turn taken up into a higher stage. The power to go on continually, to stop never, to rest never, comes from the moral quality of the man; this gives the impulse and maintains it. Similarly, in Section XXX it is pointed out that “the maternal instinct” is the great force that moves through the nature of woman, and that through this force she shall gain salvation, “if she continue in faith and love and sanctification with sobriety “.
According to the exposition of Dr. Harnack (p. 494), the perfect knowledge, the absolutely best, for which Paul’s soul longs, has nothing to do with love, though love is the best thing in the world and the best in this temporal life. But if the perfect knowledge has nothing to do with love, why is so much stress laid on it in this “Hymn of Love,” whose object is to emphasise the power and value of love? Dr. Harnack acknowledges that “it is a point of some importance that Paul is led to this knowledge when he is thinking of love; and in another passage of the same letter (1 Corinthians 8:3) he goes yet a step further: ‘If any man love God, he is known of Him’. Here, also, he does not indeed say ‘he knoweth God,’ but still it is the preparatory step to that combination.”
According to our view, “to be known of God” is in Paul’s thought a correlative expression to the other, “to know God”. He that is known of God knows God: the two acts are different sides of one process: the Divine within man reaches forth to the Divine outside of man, striving to be united to it, in proportion as the Divine outside of and above man lays hold of him and takes possession. God knows man by taking man for His own. And so the Apostle says in the same passage, “I shall know even as I am known”. Dr. Harnack himself interprets this to mean, “as God knows me, so I shall know Him (and His ways)”; and he goes on to say, “How much Paul lives in the problem that is presented by the relation of our knowledge of God to God’s knowledge of us is shown by several places in his letters”. In illustration he quotes Galatians 4:8 : “Now knowing God, or rather being known by Him”. To know God is here practically synonymous with being known by Him.
Now compare this verse with 1 Corinthians 8:1-2 : “We know that we all have knowledge. (Probably the words “we know that we all have knowledge” are a quotation from the letter sent to Paul by the Corinthian Church.) Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth. If any man thinketh that he knoweth anything, he knoweth not yet as he ought to know; but, if any man loveth God, the same is known of Him.” The line of progress is here through love: as a man grows in love of God, he becomes better known of God. The natural inference towards which a points is that this progress is towards increase in knowledge of God; but forthwith in 1 Corinthians 8:2 b Paul turns the statement to the other side, and says that the issue of this progress is that the man is known of God. Then we may compare this Corinthian statement with Galatians 4:8 (as just quoted) and Ephesians 3:17 f , “that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be strong to apprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ . . . that ye may be filled unto all the fulness of God”. It has been doubted what it is that the Ephesians are to be strong to apprehend, whether “the mystery” (Ephesians 3:4) or the love of Christ (Ephesians 3:18). For our purpose this is immaterial. He who knows the love of God, or the love of Christ, knows God, for goodness is the essence of God and His love is the expression of His goodness. The passage implies beyond all doubt that through increase in love comes increase in the knowledge of God. Therefore in the “Hymn of Love” which glorifies the power and Divine character of love, the stress in the latter part is laid on knowledge, because through growth in love comes growth also in knowledge, the best thing in the world. Such is the teaching of Paul: love is the quality through which man most nearly approaches the nature of God, and to grow in love is to grow towards God. “I shall see face to face” shows that the perception will be mutual, i.e. that to be known will imply to know.
