Voiceless Idols, Speaking People: 1 Corinthians 12–14 and the Accessibility of Divine Presence
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT There is a broad consensus in New Testament scholarship that 1 Cor 12–14 is Paul’s attempt to reign in an abusing use of glossolalia among the Corinthian Christ followers. While a concern about such abuse is evident in the passage, the extent of Paul’s discussion, particularly in its theologically reflective character, is rather more complex than typical treatments of this passage recognize. This article sets forth a fresh reading of 1 Cor 12–14 that takes as its starting point the framing statements of 1 Cor 12:1–3 as an essentially Jewish theological formulation. I argue that Paul’s entire discussion in 1 Cor 12–14 hangs on an Old Testament theological framework that specifically addresses the problem of access to divine presence in terms that are culturally relevant to the ancient world. A coherent description of what Paul is actually saying about a proper understanding and use of spiritual “gifts” is then developed from this framework. The resulting thrust of the passage is that universal and equal access to the presence of God is the hallmark of the redeemed community, which thereby has the responsibility of making God’s presence available, accessible, and efficacious to others.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.013 | 0.030 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".