Many Christians understand Paul’s declaration in 2 Corinthians 10:5, “We are destroying speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ”, as a reference to the personal fight with thoughts of the flesh and find it a helpful strategy to combat such thoughts in their Christian walk. Such a strategy is biblical and expressed in principle and command form throughout Paul’s other epistles (Romans 6:11; Ephesians 6:10-22; cf. 1 Corinthians 9:22-25), but it is at best only a secondary application of this powerful verse. What Paul addresses here belongs to a larger context that is not about the Christian’s battle for pure thinking, but for the minds of unsaved men and women.

This passage is primarily evangelistic for at least two good reasons. For one, Paul is talking to Christians—the Corinthians—about unbelievers, specifically those that made up a small minority within churches there and were criticizing Paul’s ministry. For another, the terminology that Paul uses in verses 3 to 5 is suited more for evangelistic warfare than for the Christian’s inner battle with his or her fleshly thoughts. Paul introduces this spiritual battle in verse 3, explaining that while we all are flesh and blood (“walk in the flesh”), we do not wage war in the same way that those who fight a physical battle do. He elaborates in verse 4, “for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.” In other words, bows and arrows are useless in a spiritual war. Christians fight a spiritual battle and must use spiritual weapons. Before we identify this spiritual weapon and the strategy of doing battle, let’s be sure of which battle Paul is calling us to fight. His reference in verse 5 would seem to eliminate the Christian’s inner battle with fleshly thoughts, since “speculations and every lofty thing raised up against the knowledge of God” is a strange way to talk about it. Rather, the phrase in verse 5 points to philosophies, ideologies, and humanist worldviews which belong to the realm of the lost. Christians already have a biblical worldview, but the lost has barricaded themselves in all kinds of false, erroneous worldviews, belief systems, and philosophies. Paul explains that such time-honored traditions, worldly wisdom, and religious and philosophical beliefs are “set up against the Word of God”, and therefore are not simply misleading, but deadly, for they keep unbelievers far from the truth. In fact, Paul chose the word “speculations” deliberately, because it has a double meaning. On the one hand, it means “fortress”, “stronghold”, and that fits nicely here, since the unsaved look to their worldviews for security, meaning, identity, comfort, and justification for all they do and say. On the other hand, the word also means “tomb”, which lends a prophetic element to what Paul says here: the very worldviews in which the lost take their refuge will wind up being their tombs if the lost are not delivered from them. Any belief system that is contrary to the Word of Life will keep people in their sin and in their state of condemnation. The lost need to be delivered from such satanic worldviews.

But what does one use to fight such supernatural “fortresses”? As Paul says, only a supernatural weapon will do. In this case, that weapon is Scripture (v. 4). Okay, but how do we wage war? We are called to “destroy” the speculations. The word “destroy” translates a Greek word that has a rich heritage in the whole area of classical Greek debate and rhetoric that Paul no doubt would have known, as would his readers. The idea basically that Paul has in mind when it comes to battling for unsaved minds is literally to poke holes in their belief systems. Evangelism is effective when Christians play the critic by asking pointed questions of their unbelieving audience, with a view to showing the unsaved the futility of their worldview. As the walls of these fortresses start to weaken and crumble, Christians work hard at supplanting the particular satanic thinking of the lost with a Christian worldview, thereby taking every thought (those that give false hope to the lost and will eventually become their tombs) captive for Christ.