Yesterday Paul described how he preached — no sublimity of words, weakness and trembling, nothing but Messiah crucified. Today he explains why that method is not a handicap: there is a kind of knowing that persuasion cannot produce.
What happens
"The Breath scrutinizes everything, even the depths of Theos. Among human beings, who knows what pertains to a person except the spirit of the person that is within? Similarly, no one knows what pertains to Theos except the Breath of Theos… Now the natural person does not accept what pertains to the Breath of Theos, for to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually. The spiritual person, however, can judge everything but is not subject to judgment by anyone. For who has known the mind of Yahweh, so as to instruct him? But we have the mind of Messiah."
What to notice
The last verse is a quotation, and a recent one. "Who has known the mind of Yahweh, or who has been his counselor?" is Isaiah 40:13, and Paul used the same verse at Romans 11:34 — read here on August 23 — to close an argument with a doxology, an admission that the ways of Theos cannot be tracked. Today he quotes the identical verse and then says something breathtaking: but we have the mind of Messiah. Same text, opposite move. In Romans the quotation shuts the door; here he cites it and walks through. The other word to hold is anakrinō, used three times in this reading — "judged spiritually," "judges everything," "not subject to judgment." It is a courtroom verb: to examine a witness, to conduct a preliminary hearing. It does not mean condemn; it means assess evidence. Watch for it Friday, when Paul says "I do not even examine myself… it is the master who examines me" (1 Corinthians 4:3-4). He is building one argument across the week about who is competent to hold the hearing.
The acrostic tehillah again — its third appearance in eight days, and this time we get the middle. It has supplied the responsorial for the feast of an apostle, for Monica's memorial, and now for a day about knowing the mind of Theos.
The selected verses
Psalm 145:8–9."Gracious and merciful is Yahweh, slow to anger and great in hesed. Yahweh is good to all, and his compassion is over all his works." Psalm 145:10–11."All your works give you thanks, Yahweh, and your faithful ones bless you. They speak of the glory of your reign and tell of your might." Psalm 145:12–13ab."Making known to the sons of men your mighty deeds and the glorioussplendor of your reign. Your reign is a reign for all ages." Psalm 145:13cd–14."Yahweh is faithful in all his words and holy in all his works. Yahweh lifts up all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down."
What to notice
Psalm 145:8 is a quotation the way 1 Corinthians 2:16 is a quotation. Hannun ve-rahum Yahweh, erekh appayim u-gedol hased — gracious and compassionate, long of nostrils, great in hesed. That is Exodus 34:6, the self-description Yahweh gives Moses on Sinai after the golden calf, and it is the single most reused sentence in the Hebrew Bible: Numbers 14:18, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2, Nehemiah 9:17, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8. When the psalmist wants to say who Theos is, he does not innovate. He quotes the one place where Theos said it himself. And Psalm 145:13cd — "Yahweh is faithful in all his words" — is the missing nun verse, restored from the Septuagint and the Qumran scroll. The lectionary quietly sings the gap closed.
Directly after yesterday's Nazareth scene. He has been driven to the brow of a hill by the people who watched him grow up; he now goes down to Capernaum, and the contrast is Luke's whole point in the arrangement. Nazareth heard the sermon and reached for the cliff. Capernaum will be astonished and ask him to stay.
What happens
"He went down to Capernaum, a town of Galilee, and was teaching them on the sabbath. They were astonished at his teaching, because he spoke with authority." In the synagogue there is a man with the spirit of an unclean demon, who cries out: "Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of Theos!" Jesus rebukes it: "Be quiet! Come out of him!" The demon throws the man down in front of everyone and comes out without harming him. The crowd asks each other, "What is there about his word? He commands the unclean spirits with authority and power, and they come out."
What to notice
Ti hēmin kai soi — "what to us and to you?" — is a Semitic idiom (2 Samuel 16:10, 1 Kings 17:18) meaning roughly leave us alone. The demon opens by trying to establish jurisdiction. Then the striking part: the first fully accurate statement about Jesus's identity in Luke's gospel is made by an unclean spirit. Nazareth said is this not the son of Joseph? The demon says the Holy One of Theos. It is correct, it is public, and it is immediately shut down — phimōthēti, be muzzled, the word for muzzling an animal. Right knowledge, in Luke, is not the same as being on the right side. And the verb for what Jesus does is epetimēsen, he rebuked — which Luke uses in the next paragraph for a fever (Luke 4:39) and again for a squall on the lake (Luke 8:24). Luke is not being careless; he is describing one authority applied to whatever is holding a person down.
A demon, correctly and first — and it is told to be quiet
Set the first reading beside the Gospel and something uncomfortable emerges. Paul says the natural person cannot receive what belongs to the Breath of Theos, because it has to be assessed pneumatikōs. The unclean spirit in Capernaum has no such difficulty. It identifies him instantly, accurately, and by title — the Holy One of Theos — while a synagogue full of religious people are still working out what to make of his teaching.
So knowledge is not the dividing line. The demon has the information and is on the wrong side of it. What Paul describes is therefore not a superior grade of data but a relation: "we have not received the spirit of the world but the Breath that is from Theos." The difference between the demon's confession and the church's is not accuracy. It is which spirit is doing the speaking. Which is also why Jesus muzzles it — Luke has a standing policy here, made explicit at Luke 4:41: "he rebuked them and did not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah."A true sentence about him, said by the wrong voice, is a problem rather than an asset.
Psalm 145 then keeps the day from curdling into an argument about who is in and who is out. Its central claim is the widest available: Yahweh is good to all, and his compassion is over all his works. Whatever the first reading means about spiritual discernment, it cannot mean less than the sentence the psalm quotes from Sinai.
A Question to Sit With
The demon got the words exactly right. Holy One of Theos — a better answer than anyone else in the room could have given that morning, and it changed nothing about where it stood. I have quietly assumed for most of my life that if I could just get the understanding right, the rest would follow; today says the two are not connected in the way I want them to be. What do I already know accurately about Theos, and about myself, that has so far cost me no change at all?