3. Paul’s preaching was in divine power (2:1–5)
B. The ‘foolishness’ of the gospel (1:18–2:5)
1. The message was ‘foolish’ (1:18–25)
The Corinthians had clearly emphasized the importance of wisdom. In bold and forceful language Paul contrasts the wisdom of God, which seems folly to the sophisticated Corinthians, with the worldly wisdom that they so admired and that was so ineffective. Williams remarks that ‘the world has had enough teachers, it needs a Redeemer’ and it is something like this that Paul is saying. Notice that he is in opposition to all the groups, not any one of them in particular.
18. The message (NEB, ‘the doctrine’) is literally ‘the word’; it contrasts with ‘words of human wisdom’ in v. 17 (where ‘words’ is really singular). It includes both the manner and the matter of the apostolic preaching. The message does not please the perishing, any more than the simplicity with which it is presented. In their ‘wisdom’ they see in it nothing but foolishness (‘nonsense’, Phillips). A well-known graffito in Rome depicts a worshipper standing before a crucified figure with the body of a man and the head of an ass and the inscription ‘Alexamenos worships his god’.1 That was the way the worldly-wise regarded the message of the cross. There is a contrast between those who are perishing and us who are being saved (cf. Luke 13:23; 2 Cor. 2:15). Ultimately all must fall into one of these two classes; there is no other. Those being saved have not yet all the wisdom of heaven, but their newness of life enables them to weigh spiritual things. They perceive the greatness of the gospel, whereas those who are perishing are blind to it. The opposite of foolishness is ‘wisdom’ and we expect Paul to speak of the gospel as ‘the wisdom of God’. Instead he says it is power (cf. Rom. 1:16). It is not simply good advice, telling us what we should do. Nor is it information about God’s power. It is God’s power.
19. Paul clinches his argument with a quotation from Isaiah 29:14 (with a slight variation from LXX). Paul is not saying something new. From of old God’s way had stood in contrast with that suggested by human wisdom (cf. Ps. 33:10). People always think their way is right (cf. Prov. 14:12; 16:25). But God confutes their ‘wisdom’; he reduces their systems to nothing. In this context there is not much difference between wisdom and intelligence. Properly the former denotes mental excellence in general, the latter the intelligent critical understanding of ‘the bearings of things’ (Lightfoot on Col. 1:9). Neither can stand before God.
20. Paul hammers home the point with a series of rhetorical questions (cf. Job 28:12; Isa. 19:12; 33:18). Some have thought that the wise man means the Greek sophist, the scholar the Jewish scribe, while the philosopher of this age means both. Others reverse the significance of the first and the last. But it is unlikely that Paul had such distinctions in mind. His point is that no human wisdom can avail before God, and he uses three typical terms for the learned and acute of this world. There is a glance at the transitory nature of human wisdom in the use of this age (aiōn; cf. NEB, ‘limited, all of them, to this passing age’). This world is but a passing show and its wisdom passes with it. God has not simply disregarded this wisdom or shown it to be foolish; he has made it foolish. Paul leaves not the slightest doubt that God has rejected all that rests on merely human wisdom.
21. It is unlikely that the wisdom of God here refers to the revelation in nature as some hold (cf. Rom. 1:19–20). They think Paul means that when people failed to hear God speaking through the world of nature he spoke to them in another way. But the thrust of the passage is against all such views. Paul is saying that God in his wisdom chose to save people by the way of the cross and by no other way. Pleased fixes attention on God’s free and sovereign choice. It was never his plan that people should come to know him by their exercise of wisdom. He was pleased to reveal himself in quite a different way. Paul brings out the total unexpectedness of this way with the bold assertion that it is foolishness. People never have acclaimed the gospel as a masterpiece of wisdom. To the natural man it does not make sense. Paul was not unaware of what he was up against as he preached the gospel. What was preached (the kērygma) is the content of the proclamation. It is not merely the fact that men preach the gospel that is ‘foolish’; it is the gospel itself, the message that God saves us through a crucified Saviour. People do not receive salvation by exercising wisdom. Salvation comes to those who believe (the present tense points to a continuing faith).
22. In setting the Jews’ demand for miraculous signs over against the Greeks’ quest for wisdom Paul brings out the characteristics of two nations. The matter-of-fact Jews showed little interest in speculative thought. Their demand was for evidence and their interest was in the practical. They thought of God as active in performing mighty wonders, and in this vein they had demanded a sign from Jesus (Matt. 12:38; 16:1, 4; Mark 8:11–12; John 6:30). They thought the Messiah would be attested by striking manifestations of power and majesty. A crucified Messiah was a contradiction in terms.
The Greeks were absorbed in speculative philosophy. No names were more honoured among them than the names of their outstanding thinkers. From the lofty heights of their culture they looked down on and despised as barbarians all who failed to appreciate their wisdom. They took no notice of the fact that this wisdom often degenerated into meaningless sophistries (cf. Acts 17:21). They were proud of their intellectual acuteness and found no place for the gospel. Proctor refers to ‘the high intellectual perception of the Greek philosophers’ and to ‘the nobility of much of their writing’. But he adds, ‘Yet all this has no saving power for mankind.’
23. In contrast with this (but, de, is adversative, and we, hēmeis, is emphatic), Paul sets the preaching of Christ crucified. The verb preach (kēryssō) is that appropriate to the action of a herald. The message came from God, not the preacher. In this sense it is a peculiarly Christian term. It is used little, if at all, in this way in the classics, in LXX, or in current religious systems like the mystery religions (see TDNT, iii, pp. 697–700). Crucified is a perfect participle; not only was Christ once crucified, but he continues in the character of the crucified one. The crucifixion is permanent in its efficacy.
But the Jews will have none of it. To them a crucified Messiah was a complete impossibility, a stumbling block (Lenski thinks this too weak for skandalon and translates ‘deathtrap’). It was an occasion of offence (those hanged bore the curse of God, Deut. 21:23). It was no better with the Gentiles who saw it as foolishness, sheer unmitigated folly. God would never act like that! The crucifixion is the heart of the Christian faith, but it was acceptable neither to Jew nor to Gentile. Paul includes all mankind in the rejection of the crucified Messiah.
24. But the rejection is not the whole story. Those who are called, Jew or Greek, welcome the message. There is emphasis on ‘the called themselves’ (RV mg.); ‘themselves’ is in an emphatic position. The important thing is the divine initiative, the call of God. Here, as usually in Paul’s writings, called implies that the call has been heeded; it is an effectual call. Those called know that the crucified Christ means power. Before the call they were defeated by sin; now there is a new power at work in them, the power of God.
Christ is also the wisdom of God. The idea of wisdom runs through this passage; clearly the Corinthians had emphasized it. But to Greek intellectuals the cross was utter folly; it made no sense; there was no wisdom in it. Paul’s conjunction of power and wisdom is important. Had the way to God been through ‘wisdom’, Christianity would have opened the way to salvation only to the intellectually gifted. The power in the cross opens the way for the humblest to know God and to overcome evil, and that is a wisdom superior by far to anything the philosophers could produce. On the level of the search for wisdom the ‘foolishness’ of God proved to be the true wisdom.
25. So Paul rounds off this section with the conclusion that what in God proud man is wont to dub foolishness is wiser than man’s wisdom. Paul does not use the word ‘foolishness’ (mōria) as in vv. 18, 21, 23, but says ‘the foolish thing’ (mōron), i.e. the cross. So with the weakness; the cross is ‘the weak thing’ of God that is stronger than anything man can produce.
The sign-seeking Jews were blind to the significance of the greatest sign of all when it was before them. The wisdom-loving Greeks could not discern the most profound wisdom of all when they were confronted with it.
2. The believers are insignificant (1:26–31)
The contradiction God’s method offers to worldly wisdom is illustrated by the kind of people he has called. He might have concentrated on the intelligentsia or other outstanding people, but in fact he has chosen people with little to commend them from the worldly standpoint. His power works miracles in the most hopeless material and thus his wisdom excels the best that men can produce. Paul works this out, incidentally, in a way that has called forth tributes to his style (BDF 490 has comments on his ‘artistry’).
26. Paul directs his readers to reflect on the kind of person whom God has in fact called (the word points us to the divine initiative). The large number of unimportant people in the church did not come about because the only people who would become Christians were from the depressed classes. It came about because God chose to work his marvels through people who were, from the human point of view, the most unpromising. It is probably for the same reason that Paul begins with Not many of you were wise by human standards. Wisdom has been prominent in the discussion and clearly the Corinthians revered it in the typical Greek fashion. But Paul decisively rejects this as God’s criterion for calling people. That is not to say that there were none from the classes Paul mentions. Not many implies that there were some, though not a large number (cf. Introduction, p. 24; as Deluz remarks, God a priori ‘excludes no one from his Church’). That there were no wise people among the Christians is an accusation as old as Celsus and refuted by Origen (Contra Celsum III. 48; Celsus’s attack on Christianity is dated c. AD 180, while Origen lived c. 185–254). The influential and those of noble birth are the leading figures in the community. But ‘the things which elevate man in the world, knowledge, influence, rank, are not the things which lead to God and salvation’ (Hodge).
27. The repetition of chose underlines the purpose of God. The change from the masculine (wise, influential and of noble birth are all masculine in the Greek) to the neuter, the foolish things, may concentrate on the quality of foolishness seen in these people, but it is probably also intended to include a reference to salvation by the cross (cf. v. 23). There is another change of gender to the masculine wise, i.e. ‘wise men’; such men are shamed by the contrast between their estimate of themselves and what God’s choice reveals. The Greek construction (hina) indicates purpose (‘in order to shame’); Paul makes sure we do not overlook God’s plan in all this. Some commentators take of the world to mean ‘in the world’s opinion’, but this is to miss the sting in Paul’s words. God has not chosen only those whom the world counts foolish and weak: he has chosen those who really are foolish and weak in this world.
28. Lowly means ‘of lowly birth’, though often with the added notion of morally worthless (cf. 6:11). It is the direct opposite of ‘of noble birth’ in v. 26. The despised is a strong word, meaning ‘treated as of no account’ (Knox, ‘contemptible’). But the following expression is even stronger, the things that are not, ‘the “nothings” ’ (Orr and Walther), ‘those who in the eyes of the world did not exist’ (Erdman). God’s activity is creative. He makes out of what does not exist what is in accordance with his will. The verb rendered to nullify (katargeō) is not easy to translate. It occurs twenty-seven times in the New Testament and is translated in seventeen different ways in AV. RV does away with seven of these, but brings in another three, and the process is repeated in subsequent translations (I have a list of eighty renderings from reputable translations). Basically it means something like ‘to render idle’ or ‘inoperative’. Here the meaning is that God has chosen the things that are not to render completely ineffective the things that are.
29. God does all this with a view to (hopōs indicates purpose) taking away from everyone every occasion of boasting. Whatever we may do before one another, we have nothing to boast of before God.
30. From the negative Paul turns to the positive. The saved are ‘of him’ (ex autou), where the preposition gives the idea of source. Their new life derives from God (cf. Rom. 9:11; 2 Cor. 5:17–18; Eph. 2:8). They are in Christ Jesus. Whole books have been written about this enigmatic phrase which Paul habitually uses to indicate the relationship between believers and Christ. Briefly, it shows that the believer is connected to his Lord in the closest possible fashion. Christ is the very atmosphere in which he lives. But we must not interpret this mechanically. Christ is a person. The phrase describes personal attachment to a personal Saviour. E. Best has shown that the expression has a corporate aspect. To be ‘in Christ’ is to be closely related to all those others who are also ‘in Christ’.2 It is to be part of the body of Christ. The adversative conjunction ‘but’ (de; see AV; NIV omits) and the emphatic you set believers in strong contrast to the worldly-wise of the preceding verses. The contrast with worldly wisdom comes out in another way when Christ is said to have become for us wisdom. Paul has already argued forcibly that the apparent ‘foolishness’ of the gospel is the true wisdom, and this is his thought here, too. The wisdom of God is embodied in Christ (cf. Col. 2:3), who offered himself that people might be saved. This is real wisdom, let the philosophers argue as they will.
Some see righteousness and the rest as co-ordinate with wisdom (e.g. AV), but NIV seems correct in taking them as explaining wisdom. Righteousness (there is no our in the Greek) in this context means the right standing Christ makes available for his own, ‘the state of having been justified’ (Edwards). Christ is our righteousness (cf. 2 Cor. 5:21). We know no other. We could never attain holiness in our own strength, but Christ is holiness, too (cf. Rom. 6:19; 1 Thess. 4:3–7). And he is redemption (last with a certain emphasis, perhaps as pointing to the last great day, the consummation of redemption). He has paid the ransom price (cf. Mark 10:45) in his own body on Calvary.
31. There is nothing to justify boasting before God (v. 29), but we may boast in what Christ has done (cf. Gal. 6:14). Characteristically Paul proves his point from Scripture (Jer. 9:23–24). In the Old Testament the words refer to Yahweh; no higher view could be taken of the Person of Christ.
3. Paul’s preaching was in divine power (2:1–5)
Paul reminds his hearers that when he was in their city his own preaching had conformed to what he has been saying about the ‘foolishness’ of the gospel. It had been a plain, unvarnished setting forth of the simple gospel. There had been nothing attractive about it. But precisely because it was so simple and unpretentious its results convincingly demonstrated the power of God.
1. The emphatic kagō, ‘and I’, stresses that Paul was not making an exception of himself. His preaching in Corinth had conformed to what he has just said. There seems no reason for NIV’s taking superior with wisdom only; in the Greek it seems to apply to eloquence as well (cf. RSV). Paul is making no claims of superiority either for his speech, the way he presented his facts, or his wisdom, the way his mind marshalled his facts (Héring sees a reference to ‘the arts of the rhetorician and philosopher’). As I proclaimed means ‘in order to proclaim’ (Conzelmann; cf. BDF 339 (2) (c)). There is the thought of purpose. Some MSS read ‘the mystery of God’ (the word occurs again in v. 7, there translated ‘secret’), but we should accept testimony (as in 1:6). Preaching the gospel is not delivering edifying discourses, beautifully put together. It is bearing witness to what God has done in Christ for our salvation.
2. As was his custom (cf. Gal. 3:1), Paul excluded not only from his preaching, but even from his knowledge, everything but that great central truth. He resolved to know among them nothing … except Jesus Christ (the power and the wisdom of God, 1:24) and him crucified. The crucifixion is at the heart of the gospel (for the force of the perfect participle crucified see on 1:23). On that Paul concentrated.
3. From the message Paul turns to the manner of the preaching. He had had much to discourage him just before he came to Corinth (see Introduction, pp. 22f.). He must have been somewhat down-hearted, and this was reflected in his general manner. In any case the Corinthians were not very impressed by his personal presence (2 Cor. 10:10; in the second-century Acts of Paul and Thecla Paul is said to be ‘a man small of stature, with a bald head and crooked legs, in a good state of body, with eyebrows meeting and nose somewhat hooked’3). Paul says that he had been without strength and afraid, even to the point of trembling (Phillips, ‘I was feeling far from strong, I was nervous and rather shaky’). He did not, of course, fear men; he feared God in the light of the task committed to him—it was what Kay calls ‘anxious desire to fulfil his duty’.
4. It is not easy to see the difference between my message and my preaching. Message is literally ‘word’ and probably includes both the manner and the matter of the preaching (as in 1:18). Preaching means the content of the message (as in 1:21). Probably Paul is not differentiating between the two with any exactness (Conzelmann speaks of ‘rhetorical duplication’), but simply uses two terms to bring out both the way he preached and the content of his sermons. Persuasive translates a very unusual word (not found anywhere before this passage). Paul is denying that he used the methods of human wisdom when he preached. Rather, his preaching had been a clear demonstration of the power of the Spirit. The word translated demonstration (apodeixis) means the most rigorous proof. Some proofs indicate no more than that the conclusion follows from the premises, but with apodeixis ‘the premises are known to be true, and therefore the conclusion is not only logical, but certainly true’ (Robertson and Plummer). Paul’s very defects had afforded the most convincing demonstration of the power of the Spirit. Though there was nothing impressive about his preaching from a human standpoint, it had carried conviction: It was not human excellence that accomplished this, but the Spirit’s power (cf. 2 Cor. 12:9; for the linking of power with the Spirit, cf. Rom. 15:13; 1 Thess. 1:5; with the gospel, Rom. 1:16).
5. So that (hina) indicates purpose. Paul’s intention had been to ground his converts in the divine power and to make them independent of human wisdom. Wilson points out that ‘a faith that depends upon clever reasoning may be demolished by a more acute argument, but the faith which is produced by the power of God can never be overthrown’. So Paul had refused to employ rhetorical arts and had concentrated on the message that was so unpalatable to natural men, the message of the cross.