Face to Face¶

The text. "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known." (1 Corinthians 13:12, ESV)

The sentence¶

This is one of the most compressed sentences in Paul, and every clause is doing work. There are three contrasts, and they are the same contrast:

Now	Then
a mirror	face to face
dimly, in a riddle	—
I know in part	I shall know fully, as I have been fully known

The "then" (tote) is the "when" (hotan) of verse 10: "when the perfect comes." Paul is not describing two stages of church history. He is describing two modes of knowledge — the mode of the present age and the mode of the age to come — and he puts the whole church, himself included, in the first.

The mirror¶

Esoptron is a mirror. In the first century that meant polished bronze or silver, not glass backed with mercury. Corinth was famous for its bronze, and a Corinthian mirror gave a true but imperfect image: you saw the shape, the colour, the movement, but not the fine detail, and the surface itself intervened between your eye and the face.

Paul uses the same image in 2 Corinthians 3:18: "we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image." There the mirror is the present means of transformation; here it is the present limit of knowledge. James uses esoptron for the word of God as a mirror that shows a man his own face (James 1:23-25). The image is flexible, but its point is constant: a mirror is a mediated view. It is not the thing itself.

The contrast in 1 Corinthians 13:12 is therefore not between a little Bible and a big Bible. It is between mediated and immediate. A book, however complete, is still a mirror: it shows the face truly, but it is not the face.

The riddle¶

The phrase translated "dimly" is en ainigmati — literally "in a riddle," "in an enigma." It is not the ordinary word for obscurity. It is the word used in the Greek Old Testament for the kind of speech God did not use with Moses.

Numbers 12:6-8 is the key text. Miriam and Aaron claim equal prophetic standing with Moses, and God answers:

"If there is a prophet among you, I the LORD make myself known to him in a vision; I speak with him in a dream. Not so with my servant Moses... With him I speak mouth to mouth, clearly, and not in riddles, and he beholds the form of the LORD." (Numbers 12:6-8, ESV)

The Greek of "not in riddles" is ou di' ainigmatōn, and "mouth to mouth" is stoma kata stoma. The only place in the Old Testament where "riddle" and "face to face" language occur together is this passage about Moses — the man whom God knew "face to face" (Exodus 33:11; Deuteronomy 34:10).

Paul's combination of ainigma and "face to face" is therefore almost certainly an echo of Numbers 12. He is saying that the whole church is currently in the position of the ordinary prophet, not the position of Moses: we receive true knowledge in a mediated form. And he is saying that the church's future is the position of Moses — mouth to mouth, not in riddles, beholding the form of the Lord. That future is not a canon. It is the presence of God.

Face to face¶

Prosōpon pros prosōpon — "face to face" — occurs in the Greek Bible for direct personal encounter:

"Thus the LORD used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend" (Exodus 33:11).
"With him I speak mouth to mouth... and he beholds the form of the LORD" (Numbers 12:8).
"There has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face" (Deuteronomy 34:10).
"Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the LORD. And Gideon said, 'Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.'" (Judges 6:22)

The idiom is not about clarity of information. It is about presence, and usually about the presence of God, which is dangerous and life-giving at once.

Now consider how the New Testament uses the same idiom when it is not about God. John writes to a congregation:

"Though I have much to write to you, I would rather not use paper and ink. Instead I hope to come to you and talk face to face, so that our joy may be complete." (2 John 12)

And again: "I hope to see you soon, and we will talk face to face" (3 John 14). Here "face to face" is explicitly contrasted with paper and ink. It means personal presence rather than a written communication.

That is the parallel that undoes the canon reading. In the New Testament, "face to face" is what you have instead of writing. If Paul meant that the completed writings would be the church's "face to face," he would be using the idiom backwards. He is not. He is saying that the present age of writing, preaching, mirrors, and partial knowledge gives way to the age of presence.

Knowing as known¶

"Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."

The verb is epignōskō, "to know fully, to recognise, to know thoroughly." Its passive here — "I have been fully known" — has God as its agent. The standard for Paul's future knowledge is not the completeness of a text but the completeness of God's knowledge of him.

This is the grammar of relationship, not research. Paul had already written, "if anyone loves God, he is known by God" (1 Corinthians 8:3), and "now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God" (Galatians 4:9). To be known by God is the deepest category Paul has for salvation. "Then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known" means that the one who has been known by God will at last know God as God knows him — not exhaustively, for the creature cannot comprehend the Creator, but immediately, without the mirror, without the riddle.

Job says the same thing in the older covenant: "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (Job 42:5). The movement is from report to sight. A canon is a report. It is a true and God-given report, but it is hearing, not sight.

The "then"¶

Everything turns on the identity of "then." Paul's "then" is the day when:

the perfect comes (v.10),
we see face to face (v.12),
we know as we are known (v.12),
and faith and hope give way to sight and possession (v.13; 2 Corinthians 5:7; Romans 8:24-25).

The New Testament has a name for that day. It is the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 1:7; 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10; 1 Peter 1:7, 13; 1 John 3:2). John puts the same hope in the same terms: "Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). And the consummation of the Bible is a vision of presence: "They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads" (Revelation 22:4).

Paul's "then" is that "then." Not AD 70, not 96, not 397, not 1546. The day when the mirror is put away.

What this means for the gifts¶

If "face to face" is the eschaton, then the partial gifts belong to the interval between Pentecost and the parousia. That is precisely the interval in which the church now lives. The chapter does not say the gifts are obsolete; it says they are provisional — and provisional for a future that has not arrived.

This is why the chapter ends the way it does. "So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three." Now — in the age of the mirror. The gifts are the equipment of that now: they build up the body (1 Corinthians 14:12, 26), they confirm the word (Hebrews 2:3-4), and they will be abolished when the partial gives way to the complete. Until then, "earnestly desire the spiritual gifts" (14:1).

What this does and does not prove¶

It proves: that "face to face" and "know as I am known" are the language of eschatological presence, not of a completed canon; that the New Testament uses "face to face" for a visit rather than a letter; and that the passage places the end of the partial at the return of Christ.

It does not prove: that every claimed word of knowledge or prophecy today is genuine; that we should prize experiences over Scripture; or that the church's knowledge now is worthless. It is real knowledge, mediated knowledge, mirror knowledge — and it is enough for the interval.