Conclusion
Chapter 7: Swallowing Our Pride: An Essay on the Foolishness of Preaching
Duane Litfin
For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.
- 1 Corinthians 1:21
From time to time there appear in every discipline books whose effects echo for decades. C. H. Dodd's The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments, published in 1936, was one of those books. In this seminal work Dodd stressed the New Testament distinction between didache and kerygma, that is, between teaching and preaching, and then attempted to distill from the New Testament documents the core content of that preaching. In doing so Dodd almost single-handedly raised the word kerygma to the status of technical term and prompted a discussion that continues to this day.
The scholarly response to Dodd's work was at first largely positive. With time, however, a reaction set in as researchers began to question whether Dodd's strong distinction between kerygma and didache was warranted by the evidence. More enduring was Dodd's outline of the content of the kerygma, but even that came under fire, with other scholars wading in with this or that addition, deletion, or substitution.
These responses inevitably moved the debate beyond Dodd's handling of the issues. Such is the life of the scholar. But Dodd performed the important service of initiating the discussion. Moreover, much of his work remains relevant today. It is probably fair to say, for example, that while the dichotomy may not be as stark as Dodd would have us believe, there remains in the New Testament a useful distinction to be made between teaching and preaching. And Dodd's distillation of the content of that apostolic preaching continues to serve as the base from which contemporary scholars advance.
What seems to have endured from Dodd's work untouched, however, is the use of the term kerygma as a technical term, or what William G. Doty calls the "theologians' shorthand for merely 'the central message of the New Testament.'"58 Scholars continue to speak as freely of the kerygma today as they did decades ago. We may doubt that the word was ever a technical term during the first century, since, after all, kerygma occurs only eight times in the New Testament, and six of those are from a single source, the apostle Paul. Moreover, as Margaret Mitchell has demonstrated, kerygma is only one of several shorthand terms even Paul used for the gospel.59 Yet there is no reason the term kerygma cannot continue to serve usefully out into the future, provided, that is, that we get it right. And by "get it right" I mean, provided we understand the term accurately, as it is used in the New Testament.
When we coin our own terms we are free to define them however we like, and scholars do this all the time. But when we merely transliterate an ancient term, things are not so simple. By conjuring up the ancient term we are offering the impression that we want to borrow something useful from another time and place. We transliterate their term and then work to define it for our audience, because we think the original users were saying something significant, something our own terms appear to lack. In doing so, we thereby incur an obligation to the term's original users. It is their term, so to speak, and we must let them have the first crack at setting its semantic boundaries.
Which brings us to our subject. It is my rather bold thesis that C. H. Dodd, and a host of others following him, may have gotten this critical term kerygma wrong, or at least, that their grasp of it was partial enough to be seriously deficient. This may be an impertinent claim, but I hope nonetheless to show that it is a claim worth considering.
The Problem
The essential question I wish to raise is this: Does the term kerygma, as it was used in the New Testament, refer to the content or the form of the apostolic preaching? But immediately upon posing this question we face a problem. To answer it we must first refine it. If we are asking of kerygma how it was used in the New Testament, we are for all practical purposes asking, how did the apostle Paul use the term? For, as we have already noted, kerygma is essentially in the New Testament a Pauline term. Matthew and Luke both place the word in the mouth of Jesus, but both writers are citing the same sentence: "The men of Nineveh," Jesus says in both Gospels, "will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the kerygma of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here" (Matt. 12:41; Luke 11:32 NIV). These two references are jot-and-tittle duplicates of one another. So, as it turns out, there is really only one non-Pauline use of kerygma in the New Testament, occurring twice. In the end this single dominical reference will emerge as simply another instance of the fully nuanced meaning we will find in Paul. But first we must pick up our account with C. H. Dodd.
Dodd answered the form versus content question in the very first paragraph of his book. Quoting what is no doubt the locus classicus for determining the meaning of kerygma, 1 Corinthians 1:21, Dodd began his book this way: It pleased God, says Paul, by the foolishness of the Preaching to save them that believe. The word here translated preaching, kerygma, signifies not the action of the preacher, but that which he preaches, his message, as we sometimes say.60
End of paragraph. And more importantly, end of argument. With no discussion whatsoever, much less any evidence, Dodd simply assumes what will form the working definition of kerygma throughout his influential work, namely, that the term kerygma refers only to the content of the preaching.
Dodd was not the first modern scholar to make this assumption. Long before Dodd, for example, J. B. Lightfoot had claimed that in 1 Corinthians 1:21 the foolishness of preaching refers "to the subject, not to the manner of the preaching."61 Similarly, Robertson and Plummer had also limited the term to content, though they acknowledged a slight emphasis upon the presentation.62 But Dodd's work, focusing as it did entirely on delineating the content of the kerygma, solidified the trend, and there has followed ever since a train of commentators who without exploration or argumentation have simply assumed that kerygma in 1 Corinthians 1:21 refers to content. Let us consider a few examples so we can see the dimensions of the problem. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians, Moffatt says, "It is the content rather than the form of utterance that engages [Paul's] . . . attention [in 1 Cor. 1:21]."63 G. G. Findlay, in The Expositor's Greek Testament, put it this way: "The term kerygma "signifies not the act of proclamation . . . , but the message proclaimed by God's herald."64 In 1944 A. M. Hunter, though he acknowledged that kerygma may signify either the act of proclamation or the thing proclaimed - indeed, he even conceded that in 1 Corinthians 2:4 the act of preaching lies in the foreground - nevertheless asserts that for the most part in Paul, and in 1 Corinthians 1:21 in particular, "the emphasis falls on the content of the kerygma."65 F. W. Grosheide later concurred, claiming that "the foolishness of the preaching represents the content of the preaching which God has commanded."66 In 1968 C. K. Barrett added his considerable weight to the discussion, asserting that kerygma "means not the act but the content of preaching."67 The following year, Hans Conzelmann made the point even more emphatically: "The folly," he said, "lies exclusively in the content of the preaching."68 More recently still, Gordon Fee has written, "The word kêrygma . . . here means not the act of preaching itself, but the content of that proclamation."69 And with this Anthony Thistleton agrees. He states flatly that in 1 Corinthians 1:21 kerygma refers to "the substance of the preaching" and has nothing to do with "the mode of communication."70 So well entrenched has this assumption become, that William F. Orr and James A. Walther claim in their commentary on 1 Corinthians that in the old King James translation "preaching" has been "superseded in almost all modern versions to indicate the content of the message."71 And apparently this trend is to continue. In the United Bible Society's Translator's Handbook, Paul Ellingworth and Howard Hatton instruct future translators of 1 Corinthians 1:21 that "the word which Paul uses here for 'preaching' means, not the act of preaching, but its content."72
This is a very impressive lineup. Yet it is my contention that such views, common though they may be, represent a serious truncating of the meaning of the term kerygma. I will argue that, while kerygma certainly does refer to the content of Paul's preaching, it also delineates something important about its form, about its mode of communication. In fact, I will argue that this term was specifically chosen by the apostle to keep both content and form before his readers, stressing not only what Paul proclaims (i.e., his message), but also what he simply proclaims (i.e., its form).
But now, supposing this argument is correct - a conclusion which, of course, remains to be demonstrated - that would mean that this litany of experts who limit kerygma to content alone must be mistaken. How could so many eminent scholars have cut the term kerygma short? And does it really matter?
Importance of the Issue
The latter question is easier to answer than the first. This issue matters a great deal, for several important reasons: First, if the term kerygma has any usefulness at all, it is useful as shorthand for ideas that lie at the core of the Christian faith. If we have left out significant elements of its meaning we are not merely truncating an important term; we are likely truncating our understanding of what that term represents. Second, and more particularly, this term also stands at the center of - and in fact, serves essentially as a distillation of - Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 1:17-2:16, a passage that Gordon Fee describes as nothing less than "the key theological passage to the whole of the Corinthian correspondence, arguably to the whole of the Pauline corpus."73 If we cannot get this term right, it will likely mean that we will not have gotten this passage right either. And those are high stakes indeed.
What's more, this issue also carries some large theoretical implications, implications that have the power to shape our entire understanding of how we do ministry. Paul is working from some theological presuppositions that he here applies to his preaching. But those same presuppositions, once surfaced and understood, may prove to have implications for other forms of ministry as well. It is not too much to say that an entire philosophy of ministry is at stake here. Seeker strategies and church growth theories come into question. Are we to function as persuaders or heralds, and what's the difference? All of these issues and more are involved in this question of form versus content in the term kerygma.
The issue we are raising here is therefore not a minor word game, and missing out on a key dimension of kerygma's meaning is not a minor loss. It is my contention that scholars who stress kerygma as content alone have bypassed a significant aspect of the apostle's thought, and it is my rather ambitious goal to set the record straight. In the end the reader will be the judge of whether the exercise has succeeded.
Reasons for the Problem
As to the question of how so many first-rate scholars could be mistaken regarding this important aspect of Paul's thought, I would offer two related explanations. The first is a grammatical one. I want to suggest that the nature of this primitive verbal substantive, kerygma, may have been misjudged.
Word Formation
Examining the technical details of Greek word formation is a bit like going to the dentist; it's unpleasant but necessary. So we will attempt to keep the procedure as brief and painless as possible.
Greek primary substantives are nouns comprised of a verbal root in combination with a formative suffix. Actually, there are two such substantives that concern us here. The first is our term kerygma; the second is a related word, keryksis. The root for both of these words is keryk-, which stems from the verb keryssein, which means "to proclaim as a keryx (herald)."
While sharing the same root, kerygma and keryksis obviously sport different suffixes, the one a -ma suffix, the other a -sis suffix. Of these two suffixes Blass and Debrunner say: "Derivatives in [-ma] . . . specify the result of the action for the most part. . . . Abstracts are formed with [the -sis ending]."74 Thus kerygma stresses the "result of the action" of the verb keryssein, while keryksis serves as an abstract of the verb, similar to what in Latin or English we call a gerund. For instance, "running" is a gerund from the verb "to run." Like the Greek nouns ending in -sis, gerunds serve to abstract the verb, as in the sentence, "Running is my favorite exercise." Similarly, keryksis gives us the abstract of keryssein, which is to say, "proclaiming." Thus, for example, Dio Cassius can use the term to speak of Nero crossing over into Greece, where he spent his time (translating very literally) with "playings of the lyre, proclaimings (keryksei), and actings in tragedies."75
Here is how this technical material is sometimes used. Though I know of no example of the evidence being argued at any length, the grammatical case for the "content alone" view, to the extent it is mentioned at all, seems to run like this: The -ma suffix on the word kerygma means that term is referring to the "result" of the verb "to proclaim." This is therefore a reference to the content of the preaching. Had Paul wanted to stress the act of preaching, he would have used the verbal abstract keryksis, or "proclaiming."76
This argument, however, fails at two points. On the one hand, the mention of keryksis is misleading. The word never occurs in the New Testament and is rare even in the nonbiblical literature. We have no way of knowing whether it was even part of Paul's vocabulary. In any case, keryksis would have been unusable to Paul in this context because as a verbal abstract it would have focused too exclusively on the act of preaching. In speaking of the "foolishness of the preaching" Paul required a term that would allow both the content and the form of the preaching to remain in the frame. Thus, the term keryksis, being merely an abstract of the verb keryssein, would not do.
On the other hand, what also will not do is to conclude that the "result" of the verb keryssein is merely "content." As A. T. Robertson long ago warned, when dealing with Greek verbal substantives it is important to keep in mind the influence of both the suffix and the root.77 But this is just what the "content alone" approach fails to do. If we are careful to maintain the balance between the meaning of the verb ("to proclaim as a herald") and the significance of the -ma suffix ("result"), we discover that the "result" of this particular verb is not merely content, but content in a particular form, namely, "proclamation" or "heralding." This is why a lexicographer such as Gustav Friedrich, in his article on kerygma in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), concludes that the word "has a twofold sense . . . , signifying both the result of proclamation (what is proclaimed) and the actual proclaiming. In other words, it denotes both the act and the content. In many cases it is hard to say where the emphasis falls."78
It is mistaken, then, to claim that kerygma inherently refers to content alone. The combination of the root and the -ma suffix provides a balance to the term, so much so that if the apostle wished to keep both the form and the content of his preaching before his readers, kerygma was the only term available to him. It is the context that must determine which of the two emphases, if either, predominates in any given passage. Better yet, it is probably more accurate to say that when kerygma is used neither emphasis ever completely disappears from the picture.
Blind Spot toward Greco-Roman Rhetoric
Most New Testament scholars understand these technicalities, we may presume, and so we must ask why, given these options, so many still come down on the side of "content alone" in 1 Corinthians 1:21. Even Friedrich, after acknowledging the dual possibilities inherent in the term kerygma, along with the difficulty of deciding in any particular case which one predominates, concludes that in 1 Corinthians 2:4 kerygma refers to the act of preaching, while in our passage, just thirteen verses back, the focus is on the content of preaching.79 Why would so many call the issue in this way? To answer this question we must turn to the second and more important reason why, in my view, scholars have left kerygma short.
Elsewhere I have documented the blind spot that has existed within modern New Testament scholarship regarding the subject of classical rhetoric.80 This problem is a modern one because for most of the church's history, students of the Scriptures, steeped as they were in classical studies, were fully aware of the Greco-Roman backgrounds of the New Testament. They were typically trained in classical rhetoric and tended to think within its categories. But over the last century or so, as modern education broke free from its classicism and thus fewer and fewer scholars arrived at the New Testament with classical training, these backgrounds were eclipsed, especially in the exegesis of 1 Corinthians, by more fashionable interests such as gnosticism, the mystery religions, or the syncretistic influences of the Hellenistic synagogue. The result was that for years the subject of Greco-Roman rhetoric not only fell into disuse but was actively avoided by New Testament scholars.
Part of the problem, of course, lies in what was happening within the field of rhetoric itself during this period. At its best during the ancient period, rhetoric was about both thinking well and communicating effectively. But periodically, political and social developments would shear away its substance and leave rhetoric to deal only with issues of style and ornamentation, thus vindicating many of Plato's otherwise misguided criticisms. Unfortunately it was this diminished version of rhetoric, with its penchant for flowery elocution and its arid obsession with classification, that tended to dominate nineteenth-century teaching. One need only conjure up the name E. W. Bullinger to catch the point. In his 1898 book of endless classifications of figures of speech from the ancient period (actually there are only five hundred or so, but they just seem endless), Bullinger epitomizes the limited definition of rhetoric with which he begins his work: "Rhetoric," he says, "is an adaptation of Figurative Language for the purposes of elocution."81 This is a far cry from the way Isocrates or Cicero or Quintilian defined the art they taught, but it was just this cramped sort of thing against which many moderns were reacting. Hence we may be sympathetic to the demise of interest in rhetoric we have witnessed during modern times.
Today, of course, this problem seems to have turned itself around. For a variety of reasons rhetorical studies have become ubiquitous in New Testament circles, so much so that one can scarcely open a scholarly journal in New Testament studies without stumbling upon another one. Yet ironically, in some ways we do not seem to have risen very far beyond the old stereotypes of rhetoric. A passion for classification worthy of Bullinger himself remains heavy upon the field. Hundreds of rhetorical studies have appeared, but most of them seem bogged down in the task of trying to demonstrate this or that rhetorical pattern in the text. When done carefully these studies can offer insight, but they are in danger of prolonging the stereotype of rhetoric as concerned only with the externals of discourse. Instead of viewing classical rhetoric as ancient persuasion theory and seeking to understand something about its unchanging core, New Testament scholars have too often settled for hauling out its extensive classificatory systems and then foisting them on unsuspecting texts. Relatively few of these studies seem inclined to cut through to the essence of ancient (or modern) rhetorical theory and contend with the deeper and more interesting ideas we discover there.
It is my thesis that this avoidance may have cost us something in our understanding of the verb keryssein, "to proclaim as a herald." A jeweler understands that her customer is much more likely to appreciate the exquisite features of a string of pearls if she sets them against a backdrop of dark velvet rather than laying them on a glass counter. Similarly, we moderns may have missed some of keryssein's underlying nuances - or at least, failed to appreciate their significance - because we have not seen clearly enough what keryssein is semantically designed to stand over against. And if this be so, then we should not be surprised to discover that when we come to keryssein's verbal substantive, the word kerygma, we may have missed some of its nuances as well.
The Remedy
The remedy for this situation lies, I think, not in the discovery of new facts about the role of the herald, but rather in a fuller appreciation of the significance of the facts we already know. For that we require an appropriate background. All are agreed that keryssein means "to proclaim," and none disputes that the verb describes the behavior of the keryx, the herald. But what specifically does this mean? What is peculiar about the role of the herald?
To answer this question, let us begin by examining the essential role of the herald's counterpart: the orator, or the persuader. Then we shall be in a better position to understand (1) the herald himself, (2) Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2 in particular, and finally, (3) the full significance of the term kerygma as Paul uses it in 1:21.
The Orator
Training in Greco-Roman rhetoric formed the crown of a liberal education in the ancient world, and the orators it produced became the celebrities of their day. The people of the first century loved eloquence and lionized those who could produce it. Eloquence was perhaps their primary entertainment, and it was ubiquitous throughout the Roman Empire. Audiences consisted of avid and sophisticated listeners who knew what they liked and what they disliked. But the orators were willing to risk their displeasure for the sake of gaining audience approval and the rewards that accompanied it.
The training of an orator was a marvelously complex thing. (For an indication of just how complex, see first-century Quintilian's twelve-volume Institutes of Oratory on the training of the orator from birth up.) But when all else is pared away and we lay bare the essence of Greco-Roman rhetorical theory, we discover that ancient rhetorical education was designed to train an orator in the art of persuasion. At its best the study of rhetoric was not about how to compose purple prose, much less how to manipulate an audience. It was about the discovery and delivery of ideas and arguments that would engender belief in one's listeners. Given this audience, and this subject matter, how can I achieve the desired result? This was the question the persuader was trained to ask and answer, and the measure of his skill was the degree to which he could do so successfully, in whatever rhetorical situation he might be facing.
The persuader was always working with what I will call the Grand Equation of Rhetoric. This equation encompassed three primary parts: the audience, the desired results, and the speaker's efforts.82 It can be laid out as follows:
Figure 7.1: Grand Equation of Rhetoric
The Audience + The Speaker's Efforts = The Results
The audience for the orator was a given. Usually the orator could do little to choose his auditors. The point, instead, was to adapt to what he was given in order to achieve his goals, which sends us to the opposite end of the equation: the results. These constituted the independent variable, i.e., that which once set determines the remainder of the equation. What was it the persuader wanted to accomplish with his audience? It was the answer to this question, the desired results, that determined the dependent variable, the speaker's efforts. The persuader had to be able to adapt his efforts in whatever way possible to accomplish this result with this audience, and all of his rhetorical education was designed to train him in how to do so. It was his skill in successfully adapting himself and his efforts to this particular situation and this particular audience that made the rhetorical equation work.
So, for the persuader the Grand Equation looked like this:
Figure 7.2: Persuader's Grand Equation
The Audience
+
The Speaker's Efforts
The Results
The Persuader
A Given
Dependent Variable
Independent Variable
We should note that the persuader's role was both audience- and results-driven. Once set, the desired results govern the equation. That is why so much attention is paid in the ancient rhetorical literature to the psychology of the audience, to their belief systems, to their likes and dislikes, and to what is required to win specific responses from them. To be successful in achieving his intended result the persuader was required to adapt himself and his message to his audience in every possible way: content, organization, wording, and delivery. In fact, the ability to do so constituted the genius of classical rhetoric. Without this ability one could not design an effective strategy for achieving the desired goal. With this ability, however, the persuader could strategize effectively to achieve what he was after - or to credit Aristotle's famous qualification, to come as close as was humanly possible.83 Since he was not methodologically obligated or constricted, the persuader was free - within the bounds of honesty, generally - to choose from his full repertory of technique whatever would most likely achieve his purposes. The message was the persuader's to design, and he it was who would be given credit or blame for whether or not it achieved its intended effect.
It is unfortunate that today we can scarcely use the term "rhetoric" without the word "mere" attached to it. We tend to think of "rhetoric" as empty verbiage at best or shameful tricksterism at worst. Often the word is used as a virtual synonym for bombast or the proverbial purple prose. But in the classical world this was not so. For the ancients rhetoric was something powerful, and at its best, even noble. It was that art which replaced violence and coercion in free societies, the art of persuasion through discourse. And at its core lay the kaleidoscopic ability of the persuader to mold all of his efforts, form, and content, to the demands of the given situation, with a view to winning a particular result from a particular audience. This was what classical rhetoric was designed to teach.
The Herald
With this backdrop in mind, let us now turn to the ancient figure of the herald. We can do this more quickly because, as I have said, the role of the herald in the classical world is widely understood, and we need only cite some standard observations to make our point. In fact, though we could turn to any number of sources, let us settle for the summary by Gustav Friedrich in his widely cited TDNT article on the keryx. It was demanded of heralds, says Friedrich, that they:
deliver their message as it is given to them. The essential point about the report which they give is that it does not originate with them. Behind it stands a higher power. The herald does not express his own views. He is the spokesman for his master. . . . Heralds adopt the mind of those who commission them, and act with the plenipotentiary authority of their masters. . . . Yet there is a distinction between the herald and the envoy. In general one may say that the latter acts more independently and that he is furnished with greater authority. It is unusual for a herald to act on his own initiative and without explicit instructions. In the main the herald simply gives short messages, puts questions, and brings answers. . . . He is bound by the precise instructions of the one who commissions him. . . . The good herald does not become involved in lengthy negotations [sic] but returns at once when he has delivered his message. . . . [I]n general he is simply an executive instrument. Being only the mouth of his master, he must not falsify the message entrusted to him by additions of his own. He must deliver it exactly as given to him. . . . [H]e must keep strictly to the words and orders of his master.84
If we return to what I have called the Grand Equation of Rhetoric, now with the herald in mind, we discover a striking contrast. For the herald the audience was also a given. He could not dictate who would make up his audience; like the persuader he had to work with what he received. But beyond that the equation is a study in contrasts. Far from being an ever-malleable dependent variable, the herald's message was set for him by another. It was required to be not a variable at all, but rather a constant - he had been given a message by the one he represented and it was his assignment to deliver it accurately and clearly to the designated audiences. And the results? Instead of an independent variable, set by the herald, the results turn out to be the equation's dependent variable. The herald could not maneuver rhetorically to achieve some particular effect. It was his fate to deliver his message and then watch the chips fall where they may. Upon completion of his assignment the herald might discover a variety of responses from or within his audience, but these were not his affair. Whatever the herald might desire for the audience, he had to remain mindful that the responses of the audience were not in the end responses to himself but to the one he represented. It was not the herald's task to modulate his efforts so as to win this response or that, to negotiate the message with his audience, so to speak, in order to construct a word they might find maximally palatable, or better yet, wonderfully convincing, or best of all, simply irresistible. Unlike the orator, the herald was not results-driven; he was obedience-driven. He was a man under assignment, methodologically obligated, so to speak, restricted to the task of announcing. Instead of offering impressive arguments, he was an announcer. His role was to declare, to notify, to report. This is what it meant to be a keryx. For the herald the Grand Equation, therefore, looked like this:
Figure 7.3: Herald's Grand Equation
The Audience
+
The Speaker's Efforts
The Results
The Persuader:
A Given
Dependent Variable
Independent Variable
The Herald:
A Given
Constant
Dependent Variable
The Apostle Paul
With this contrast in mind, we are now in a position to appreciate more fully the dilemma Paul faced in Corinth, along with his response to it in 1 Corinthians 1 and 2. And this in turn will lead us to the fuller significance of our term kerygma.
The Corinthian Situation
The difficulties Paul faced in Corinth were multifaceted, but beneath them all lay the problem of his preaching. When the apostle originally proclaimed the gospel in the city of Corinth, a sizeable group of Corinthians responded in faith. To be sure, they responded not because they found Paul to be such a persuasive preacher - at least, not by the standards of eloquence to which they were accustomed - but because they recognized, through the inner confirmation of the Spirit, that the gospel Paul preached was true. So they embraced this gospel, became followers of Jesus, and eventfully under the tutelage of Paul formed a church.
With the subsequent departure of the apostle and the advent of Apollos, however, the attitude toward Paul of some within the congregation began not so much to change as to solidify. The reservations they had harbored about Paul from the beginning - reservations about him personally, despite the fact that they found the gospel he preached worthy of acceptance - became in Paul's absence more pronounced. What had been before merely nagging embarrassments, perhaps kept to oneself, now crept to the surface and became the object of more or less open discussion.
These embarrassments centered upon Paul's public speaking. The apostle had sustained a relatively visible profile during this stay in Corinth, but it was scarcely an impressive profile. Both his physical appearance and his speaking itself were deficient, even contemptible, by the sophisticated standards of Greek rhetoric (2 Cor. 10:10). Paul was simply out of his league. These people were accustomed to the euglottia ("beautiful speech") of orators of the caliber of Favorinus, that paragon of Greek culture whose eloquence was both sophos ("wise") and potimos ("sweet, pleasant").85 According to Philostratus, "Even those in [Favorinus's] audience who did not understand the Greek language shared in the pleasure that he gave; for he fascinated even them by the tones of his voice, by his expressive glance and the rhythm of his speech."86 Such a one as this could impress the Corinthians. But by this standard the apostle was an embarrassing figure. Whatever else one could say for him, he was woefully short by the stringent criteria of genuine Greek eloquence. He was simply a layman (idiotes, 2 Cor. 11:6) as a speaker. He appeared to lack the high-octane ability to discover convincing arguments and then sculpt them at will into irresistible phrases. He came far short of the polish and sophistication in word choice, in diction, in voice, in physical charm and self-possession that was indispensable to impress and move a Greco-Roman crowd. By contrast, Apollos proved to be an eloquent man (aner logias, Acts 18:24) and through this something of a champion in Corinth; he was no embarrassment. But Paul was a different story.
Yet the difficulty was that these Corinthian Christians were inevitably associated with Paul, stuck with him, so to speak. In fact, he was, in a sense, perceived as their leader, their teacher. Hence their embarrassment. Like so many of their Greco-Roman neighbors, connoisseurs of eloquence and wisdom and acutely conscious of related matters of status and esteem, some of the Corinthians found Paul's all-too-public deficiencies a painful liability. After all, they supposed, and with ample justification, it was difficult enough to attain distinction in Corinth without being burdened with someone so culturally lacking as Paul.
These status-conscious Corinthians apparently harbored few reservations about rendering a negative judgment of Paul's abilities as a speaker. They perceived the wandering Jewish apostle in this respect in much the same light as they perceived other itinerant speakers - as fair game for their evaluations. How could they embrace the gospel Paul preached while yet remaining critical of Paul's lack of eloquence? The inconsistency seems in retrospect odd, and so it was. In fact it is precisely this inconsistency and the misplaced values that allowed it to exist that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians 1 to 4.
Paul's Response
Upon coming to understand these Corinthian complaints, the apostle faced a dilemma. The Corinthians were critical of Paul because he did not look or sound or behave like the orators they so revered. But Paul considered himself to be commissioned by Christ as a herald, not a persuader, and he understood enough about Greco-Roman rhetorical eloquence to know the difference. Thus, he wrote the early chapters of 1 Corinthians to explain to the Corinthians why their criticisms were misplaced, and why, for theological reasons, the more limited role of the herald was his only methodological option.
It is important to observe that whenever Paul spoke of his own ministry, he consistently used the language of the herald. But only here, in 1 Corinthians 1 to 4, does Paul explain this modus operandi and spell out its theological rationale. Thus, these early chapters of 1 Corinthians become a uniquely important passage in understanding why Paul attempted to function as he did.
As with both the orator and the herald, the audience was, for Paul, a given; he had to work with whatever he received. But beyond this the remainder of the equation directly parallels the herald. Instead of an ever-changing dependent variable, Paul viewed his proclamation as a never-changing constant: "I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2)." And the results? Instead of an independent variable, set by Paul, they turn out to be Paul's dependent variable. To his announcing of the gospel Paul discovers a variety of responses: to the Jew his message appears as a scandal; to the Greek his message is ridiculous; but to those "who are being saved" (oi sozomenoi, 1 Cor. 1:18), that is, to "the called ones" (oi kletoi, 1 Cor. 1:24) whether Jew or Greek, this same message turns out to be the wisdom and power of God (1 Cor. 1:24). What did Paul believe determined the difference? Not the rhetorical skills of the speaker, but something outside the equation altogether - the work of the Spirit. And this, of course, was just as Paul would have it. He was determined to depend on the Spirit's working through the simple heralding of the "word of the cross," rather than on the human psychological dynamic of the persuader. While this might mean that his preaching would remain unimpressive to the world, this was a consequence Paul was willing to accept, for he considered his approach to be required by a fundamental insight into how God operates in the world: "God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Cor. 1:27-29).
Paul may have at times been tempted to lapse into the persuader's role (especially, some have argued, during his unhappy experience in Athens), but if so he resisted the impulse because he was concerned about the possibility of emptying the cross of its power by preempting it with false human-centered results (1 Cor. 1:17). As elsewhere, Paul focused his preaching in Corinth on the straightforward proclamation of a herald, so that the Corinthians' faith "might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power" (1 Cor. 2:5 NIV).87
We may note, then, how the language of 1 Corinthians 1-2 radically challenges the orator's stance. In contrast to the persuader, Paul enters the equation by asking, not, What do I want to accomplish?, but, What is it God has called me to be and to do? Then he sets out to be that and do that (1 Cor. 1:13-17). As a herald, his efforts are neither results-driven nor audience-driven; they are assignment-driven, obedience-driven (1 Cor. 4:2). And Paul is radically willing to let the results fall where they may.88 If this meant that those who measured his efforts by the world's standards remained unimpressed, so be it; it is God's way to use what the world considers unimpressive to accomplish his purposes, so that no mortal may boast. If it meant that Paul would not achieve the response he would like to see, then he would have to accept that; his part was to fulfill his calling and leave the results to God. Paul was determined to limit himself to his assigned role in the transaction, lest by stepping in and applying his own strategies he engender false results. His role was simply to "placard"89 the gospel of Christ crucified, a message which he considered to be "the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes" (Rom. 1:16). It is the Spirit of God who must be responsible for the results.
Implications for Kerygma
With this in mind, then, let us focus on our central passage, 1 Corinthians 1:21. Paul's assumption throughout this passage - indeed, throughout all of his writings - is that the human race is lost in its sin, and that it desperately needs to be saved from the condemnation of the Creator against whom it has mutinied. But human pride is the great barrier. Humans are convinced that if only they apply themselves, they can solve this dilemma. But this was just the notion Paul sought to put to rest. "Where is the wise man," he asks, "Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age" (v. 20, NIV) when it comes to solving this most pressing of all human problems? Whatever else their vaunted wisdom might accomplish, has not God made foolish all of their feeble attempts to solve this problem on their own? The world may be impressed by the prideful efforts of its best and brightest to scale the heights and achieve for themselves eternal life - indeed, to come to know God. But God himself will have none of it. In his divine wisdom he has cut off this approach. Humans simply cannot and will not solve this dilemma in their own strength. If they are to come to God at all, says Paul, they must do so on God's terms.
And his terms are these: God will provide the race with an avenue of salvation, but it will be available only through a means which runs profoundly contrary to human pride. To discover this salvation men and women will need to renounce their pretensions to self-sufficiency, acknowledge their helplessness, and give up striving to save themselves. Instead, they must humble themselves before God by acknowledging a crucified Jewish peasant to be Lord of the universe and his death on a Roman cross as their only hope of salvation. They must trust him, and him alone, as their only means of salvation.
What's more, the medicine becomes more bitter still. God will not tolerate any lingering pride. Humans must be willing to place their faith in Christ solely on the basis of hearing and accepting God's announced word90 on the subject, the gospel. He will not satisfy their pride in other ways. If in order to respond positively they demand miraculous signs to authenticate the announcement, God will not provide them. If they insist on something more along the lines of what the Greeks required to be impressed - that is, "wisdom" in the form of convincing arguments designed to satisfy self-sufficient minds, all dressed in winsomely impressive language - he will not provide this either. All they will receive is the simple declaration of the gospel by God's designated herald proclaiming, "Jesus Christ and him crucified." As Jesus himself often put it, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
No doubt Paul understood that many in his audience, to the extent they were unwilling to renounce their pride, would find this announcement absurdly unsatisfying. The typical Jew, he says, will be scandalized by it, while the typical Greek will merely disdain it as ridiculous. In their vanity neither will be willing to identify themselves with such a low-status salvation because neither will be willing to accept the premise that they should be reduced to such a humble estate. But God knew from the beginning what he was doing. He could have come to the race through their own striving, but he knew that in the end they would as a result pridefully claim credit for their own salvation. Instead, God intentionally chose to make himself available through means the proud would find unacceptable - that is, through a means that put aside all human pretensions and allowed only the humble acceptance of a simply-announced, crucified Christ - so that in the end it would be clear that God alone was responsible for their salvation. No mortal could boast.
This is the argument that forms the context for Paul's use of kerygma in our central passage, 1 Corinthians 1:21. It should not be difficult, therefore, to see that when Paul speaks of "the foolishness of the kerygma" he intends his reader to understand more than "content alone." To be sure, the term kerygma refers here to the content of Paul's preaching. By the standards of the world, the gospel of "Christ crucified" is indeed a supremely foolish message. But it is important to see that this content is not the only thing that lacks standing in the eyes of the world. When an audience wants and expects to hear the persuasive argumentation and formal eloquence of the orator - in fact, demands them if they are expected to be impressed - the simple heralding of a declarative message will be greeted by derision. Along with the content, this form too will appear paltry and foolish by comparison, so much so that it will insult them. It will offend the worldling's pride and seem demeaning to him that he should be expected simply to accept the message as announced, on the mere say-so of its source.
It is just this point that we may find most difficult to appreciate. As today, first-century audiences expected to be gratified by taking part in a transaction in which they held the upper hand. It was a buyer's market, so to speak, and they were in the happy position of being the buyers. Their role was to sit in judgment on the speakers who came before them and to decide whether they should be convinced. The occasion of listening to a speaker thus provided audiences not only amusement and entertainment but also immense ego satisfaction. Paul Corcoran captures this dimension of the ancient rhetorical transaction as follows:
To be addressed by a speaker who wins you over, persuading you clearly of the good and the true position, is in itself gratifying. Doubt, hesitation, ignorance or ill-confidence are happily laid to rest. To fall under the sway of a learned and convincing orator is gratifying simply because of the coincidence of interest between oneself and the speaker, who manifestly desires what you have to give: your attention and applause. The distance between oneself and the enlightened orator is no cause for pain, because in the very act of listening this gap is narrowed, and a community of interest expanded. It is gratifying, moreover, just to be the object of concern for the superior intellect, especially when one stands only to gain by it. Finally, it is highly rewarding to be, as an audience, with the strength of numbers and in a position to judge and evaluate the man of learning. It is not humiliating to fall under the sway of the orator, precisely because of the element of choice. If he were unconvincing, he could be ignored.91
This prideful stance, Paul argues, is what makes not only the content of the kerygma unpalatable but also its form. In hearing the message of God's herald, the audience is dethroned from its proud role as judge. Indeed, far from gratifying their pride, the audience is being called simply to accept "the word of the cross" as proffered. But this the prideful will be unwilling to do. If the content of the gospel, Christ crucified, will be considered scandalous or foolish by the world's standards, so will be its mere heralding. But this is very much by God's design. It pleased God, says Paul, through the foolishness of both the content and the form of the heralding to save (tous pisteuontous) those who simply believe. This humble response is all God asks - indeed, all he will accept. But any such kneeling in repentance and submission is a tall order for the proud.
Conclusion
When the apostle referred to his own preaching as the kerygma he was identifying his ministry explicitly with the figure of the keryx, the herald, with all that term implies. The verb keryssein was not merely a generic term for public speaking; it carried a distinctive meaning, a meaning that can only be fully appreciated against the backdrop of the splendidly felicitous eloquence of the persuader.
It was Paul's argument that God is not in the business of gratifying prideful hearts and minds with convincing content and irresistible forms. "Faith," if we are thinking in biblical terms, means taking God at his word, and when it comes to the gospel, that word is all he is inclined to give us. It is in this sense that the "foolishness" of the kerygma applies to both its content and its form.