When Paul says that knowledge puffs up, he doesn’t add any words to that statement. It isn’t, “Certain knowledge” puffs up; not “religious knowledge” puffs up; not “this level of knowledge” puffs up; not “dead academic” knowledge puffs up.
Knowledge puffs up.
Period.
I assume we all know there’s another statement attached immediately after this to give context. This blog is not about that. Instead, why would Paul say that knowledge puffs up, and no caveat?
The Scripture has an underlying presupposition in the way it seems to speak of itself.
You don’t read the Bible to understand it.
You read the Bible to inhabit it.
With that will be revealed an entire world. You’ll notice patterns through the history recorded in Scripture. You’ll see parallels in stories. You’ll see the prophets repeatedly referencing things from Genesis 1-3 and the rest of Torah. You’ll find these threads that trace from the very beginning of Genesis all the way through Revelation. You’ll find constants – things that are so repetitive in Scripture that it must be seen as something likened to how physics runs off of constants and laws. A whole way of perceiving reality begins to emerge, and that perception is not Greek, Western, or Christian (in the modern sense).
There are exactly seven threads that you can trace from Genesis 1-4 through unto Revelation 18-22. That is, threads that the first mention of are as late as Genesis 4, and their last mention and consummation is at earliest seen in Revelation 18 (I would argue Revelation 19, but one thread can be argued as ending in Revelation 18). There are exactly three “planes” that the Bible talks about – the third being Paul’s “third heaven”. There are axioms – presupposed truths that we must already hold to be reality – that the Scripture speaks from.
The thing is: no verse says this.
Scripture isn’t a manual.
It’s a world.
It has its own worldview and cosmology.
There is a metaphysics that it lives by – almost entirely ignored because of modern Christianity’s loathing of anything “mystical”.
You can’t perceive any of that from merely studying the Bible. It won’t come to you simply because you’ve read it enough times. Putting pieces together won’t solve it. Exegesis is a secondary discipline.
The deepest layer, even deeper than finding those patterns through narrative perception, is participation, abiding, inhabitation, union.
Exegesis without mysticism is dangerous.
Proof texting assumes truth is discrete, meaning is local, and understanding is transferable via citation.
Mystical perception assumes truth is structural, meaning is distributed, and understanding is formed.
This is why Jesus tells Nicodemus that “unless one is born from above, he cannot see the Kingdom.”
Not enter.
Not explain.
See.
This is epistemology, not theology.
Paul says the same thing, just less poetically:
“The natural person does not receive the things of the Spirit of God… they are spiritually discerned.”
That is not elitism.
That’s mode-of-perception language.
You don’t “learn” the Kingdom. You acclimate to it.
This is why the constant language in Scripture is “taste and see,” “abide in me,” “walk before me,” “meditate day and night,” “write it on your heart…” Those are epistemic instructions, not moral ones. They tell you how to know.
This is why knowledge puffs up.
The irony is how many people quote that verse while submitting to the same knowledge described as “puffing up”.
This is why Paul goes on with love. Love is begotten from abiding, walking, tasting, dwelling, putting on, and being clothed.
We have inverted Christian theology entirely by putting “knowledge” as the foremost thing – systematic theology in seminaries is King. We bless those with deep insights. We praise the prophet who stands on the pulpit and spiritualizes a verse fancifully. We applaud the man on the stand who can impress us.
Knowledge puffs up.
But by which kingdom do you desire to live by?
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