Friday, October 6, 2023

D. Charles Pyle on 1 Corinthians 6:2-3

We are also told at 1 Corinthians 6:2-3 that “the saints would judge the world,” and that the saints also would “judge angels”! There are scholars who hold that the Greek word for judge indicates ruling rather than merely judicial powers or privileges (in consonance with that Hebrew equivalent, מָשַׁל), and that the word rendered “world,” in our Greek text of this passage, also could be rendered cosmos, or, universe. If correct, this text would seem to say that the saints would rule over the angels, and the universe, making judicial decisions, indicating a power or authority that only God has at present, which one day will be given to his people. Who now judges/rules over angels and why? Yet this very authority was promised to the saints!

 

D. Charles Pyle, I Have Said Ye Are Gods: Concepts Conducive to the Early Christian Doctrine of Deification in Patristic Literature and the Underlying Strata of the Greek New Testament (Revised and Supplemented) (North Charleston, S.C.: CreateSpace, 2018), 45