WHAT IS "THE PERFECT?" (I CORINTHIANS 13:10)

Paul makes a rather cryptic statement in this passage: “For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end.” (NRSV) The Greek word translated here as “the complete” can also be rendered as “perfect.” Similarly, “the partial” can be translated as “imperfect.” Hillyer clarifies these terms by explaining that it is “not perfection in quality so much as totality; i.e. full knowledge about God. The imperfect, the partial (cf. Jer 31:34), that which is characteristic of our present experience.”

The problem is, as Orr and Walther point out, “Paul does not explain this.” Thus, “What Paul meant when he referred to the coming of perfection is the subject of considerable debate.” (Lowery) Let me start with what is most likely the intended meaning of Paul's words.

The End of this Present Dispensation

Although this is the most probable meaning to be ascribed to “the perfect,” we must admit that the nature of that new time period is defined quite differently by different people depending on their eschatological beliefs. Thus, Lowery writes, “A few have suggested that this state of perfection will not be reached until the new heavens and new earth are established. Another point of view understands perfection to describe the state of the church when God's program for it is consummated at the coming of Christ. There is much to commend this view, including the illustration of growth and maturity which Paul used in the following verses.”

A premillennial viewpoint thus treats the coming of Christ as different from the time when the new heavens and new earth are established while an amillennial perspective treats these two events as occurring right after one another. But both agree that we are talking about a time future to our present epoch in which God (and our Christ's) presence will be in our midst. Thus, Marsh can say, “In God's immediate presence, prophets, ecstatic speech and limited understanding are all alike rendered redundant.”

And Schippers makes the general statement that “'the perfect' means the future world, in which everything imperfect (v. 9) which distinguishes our present world, is overcome.”

Orr and Walther also feel that “it could refer to life after death, to some future stage of human life, or to the new appearance of Christ...At any rate, this completion will displace that which is partial.”

Grosheide also subscribes to this general view: “The world does not stand still or does time, all things hasten toward the end as Paul has declared more than once...Once the acme has been reached and this dispensation comes to an end, then all that belonged to this dispensation, including the charismata, will terminate.”

And Brauch, after critiquing alternative views (see below) also concludes that Paul's language implies the contrast between the present age and the coming time when we shall see God face to face.”

Carson appends a necessary caution to this general understanding by saying, “Even after the parousia this gap will never be closed, for to close it would mean we have become God. First Corinthians 13:10-12 does not promise that we shall know exhaustively and absolutely with the knowledge of omniscience, but that we shall then know in an unmediated way, 'face to face.'

A Maturing of the Church in Love

Brauch presents this possibility with the words: The Corinthians' valuing of charismatic gifts (especially the gift of tongues), and their quest to attain those fits, is identified as immature, as that which will come to an end when the perfection or completion of love has been attained.”

But Brauch feels that this explanation fails to take in account the context of I Corinthians 13:10:

“First Corinthians 13 is bracketed by the exhortations to (1) 'strive for the greater gifts' (I Cor 12:31) and (2) 'strive for the spiritual gifts, and especially that you may prophesy' (I Cor 14:1). But even this quest for the gifts that build up the church must be undergirded and accompanied by 'a still more excellent way (I Cor 12:31, the way of the pursuit of love (I Cor 14:1).”

Fee also critiques this possibility by stating that some have argued “that the more extraordinary phenomena were relatively limited in the early church – they belong to 'immature' believers like the Corinthians – but are not needed in our more 'mature' congregations! But this argument not only misunderstands the childhood/adulthood imagery in I Corinthians 13:10-12, it is also by the very nature of Paul's letters a totally invalid argument from silence.”

The Completion of the New Testament Canon

This final interpretation is the one I was taught in a various congregations over the years. But Lowery dismisses it with one short sentence: “But verse 12 makes that interpretation unlikely.” Marsh has a little more to say along this line: “To suggest that perfection refers to the completion of the Canon of Scripture fails to find any support in the biblical usage of 'perfect', or any of its cognate forms. Such an interpretation exists only by virtue of the need to explain the absence of certain charismata in many churches today.”

I would add to that some additional reasons why such an explanation is very attractive to conservative Protestant churches. It can be used at the same time to negatively critique the Roman Catholic Church, liturgical Protestant churches, heretical groups such as the Mormons, and Pentecostal denomination