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§4 God’s Peculiar, Powerful Way (1 Cor. 1:18–25)

This paragraph is crucial, both in the context of this particular letter and for the overall understanding of Paul’s theology. Here he delivers the heart and essence of the gospel he believed and proclaimed. Paul’s lines reveal that God works in a most peculiar way—first, God works in defiance of the standards of this world as they are understood or construed by humanity, and second, God’s work is powerful so that it incapacitates, reverses, even turns upside down the values of this world as they are objectively established and understood by humans. Paul declares this way of God’s working as a fact—it is God’s saving activity that amounts to the soteriological reality of the cross of Jesus Christ.

1:18 / Paul sets up a rhetorical contrast scheme that captures the heart of the gospel as he understands it. He begins the sentence with the word For, showing that it is an extension of his statement in verse 17. Now Paul explains that declaration more precisely in relation to the theme of “the word of the cross,” or the message of the cross. In speaking of the proclamation of the saving death of Jesus Christ, Paul refers to humanity in two groups. The division he envisions is eschatological, for it supersedes older divisions that were real, but humanly constructed—e.g., Jew and Gentile, Greco-Roman and barbarian, slave and free, male and female—and this eschatological division occurs as an act of God. Thus, on the one hand, there are those who regard the word of the cross as foolishness; Paul says they are perishing. The word typically translated foolishness (Gk. mōria) refers to something stronger or more problematic than that which is merely silliness or simplistic. The English word “moron” comes from the Greek root of this word, so perhaps it should be translated “moronity” to ensure that we see the degree of disdain that those who are perishing have for the message of the cross. On the other hand, there are those who are being saved. Paul includes himself and most likely those to whom he is writing in this group. The passive voice of the verb “being saved” acknowledges that God is the actor, the one who is saving. Moreover, in the scheme of this contrast, perishing versus being saved, one finds foolishness contrasted with the power of God. The natural opposite of foolishness in this context would be “wisdom,” so if the Corinthians are paying careful attention they will be surprised at this.

Paul’s rhetoric trips the logic of his readers. Remarkably, Paul says that it is what God does, not what humans know, that saves. God acted in the cross of Christ, and that action produces a division among humanity that itself reveals God’s unexpected power. Paul is not decrying the value of sensible reflection; rather, he is insisting that humans cannot discern the reality of God through their reason based only upon their own experience. God’s self-revelation in the cross is the key to comprehending God, it is the necessary starting point for valid comprehension of the divine, and without the cross we are bound to misunderstand God. The apostle himself employs reason, but always in reflection on the significance of God’s revelation in and through the cross. Paul’s point was not popular among many in the first-century church—witness the attraction to law-observance in Galatia and the fascination with power in 2 Corinthians. Often today people still do not like this message.

1:19 / To underscore the authenticity and authority of his argument, Paul quotes Isaiah 29:14—which is a declaration that records God’s judgment of human wisdom. In the original context in Isaiah the saying is a warning for Israel because of its indifference and arrogance toward God. The saying fits Paul’s argument well, although he changes the original verb “shall be hidden” to read will frustrate, so as to fit the citation more precisely to the situation in Corinth. This reference by Paul to Scripture as the evidence or precedent for the way God works through the cross of Christ is not a simple prooftext; it is an eschatological interpretation of the way God is working in the message of the cross. The divine overthrow of human wisdom that God promised is now real through the cross of Jesus Christ. Paul is pointing out that the Corinthians are witnessing—perhaps even experiencing—God’s baffling work.

1:20 / In turn, Paul calls for three groups of persons, Where is the wise man?… the scholar?… the philosopher of this age? In doing this he may be using synonyms to refer to a collective class of persons, or he may be drawing together different sets that mutually experience the God-created frustration of the message of the cross. Perhaps, given the references to Jews and Greeks in the following verses, one should choose the latter option and understand “the wise [one]” to refer to Greco-Roman philosophers, the “scribe” (NIV = scholar) to designate Jewish experts in the law, and the “debater of this age” (NIV = philosopher of this age) to refer collectively to all those who live and evaluate life by the wisdom of the world.

Paul’s purpose in asking after these people is not self-evident. Perhaps he is summoning them to a challenge, but from the flow of his argument it seems more likely that Paul is indicating that God’s destruction and frustration of the wisdom of the world has dismissed their standards and made their logic irrelevant: Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? God has acted in such a way that worldly wisdom becomes moronic, or completely incapable of properly evaluating the significance of God’s work through the cross. Paul’s argument here locates where the wisdom of the merely human wise [one], scholar, and philosopher originate—namely in this age, and therefore not with God.

1:21 / As Paul explains here, God’s wisdom exposes the shallowness and inaccuracy of mere human wisdom: even the loftiest theology is foolishness if it is disengaged from the primary revelation of God in Jesus Christ. Humans simply cannot reason their way to God. If salvation depended on human reason, then the gospel would depend upon human intelligence and perception, and the message would be for an elite. But God saves humanity (and the world) by the cross of Christ and the message of God’s work done there, which is, by this world’s standards, foolishness. Christ, preached as crucified, brings a crisis of separation. Those who deny the saving significance of the cross are in bondage to the world, whereas those who believe (1:21) are called by God (1:2), grasped by the power of God—a demonstration that Christ is God’s wisdom. At this juncture in the letter Paul is declaring the significance of the cross and the preaching of Christ crucified, but he constructs rhetorical schemes that proclaim as well as explain. In other words, Paul gives a kerygmatic explanation. In chapter 2 Paul will attempt to explicate God’s work and humanity’s experience of God’s revelation.

1:22–24 / These lines create an evolving rhetorical scheme that contrasts the concerns and experiences of those who judge the message of the cross to be foolishness and do not believe, with the concerns and experiences of those who are called by God and do believe the message of the cross. The first group Paul names comprises both Jews and Greeks. While the description of these two subgroups draws distinctions between them, they are alike in that the priorities of both cause them to seek evidence of God and authentication of his work in something other than the revelation of God delivered in the message of the cross. Paul says the Jews demand miraculous signs on the order of those done by Moses and the prophets. The OT records such works, and the gospels recall that Jesus’ Jewish contemporaries insisted that he give them a sign (Matt. 12:38–39; 16:1–4; Mark 8:11–13; Luke 11:15–20; John 6:26–29, 30–34). The Greeks look for wisdom. This is a characteristic in Corinth, but the concern with wisdom has been a characteristic of Greek culture and life throughout the self-conscious memory of Greece. Already in Herodotus (ca. 484–420 BC) there are reports of Greek concern with wisdom (1.30, 60, 68), learning (4.77), and foolishness (1.146). Similarly, in Acts one reads, “Now all the Athenians and the foreigners living there would spend their time in nothing but telling or hearing something new” (17:21). Thus, Paul implies that power and reason are the worldly standards that precluded certain Jews and Greeks from hearing and believing the message of the cross.

The second group named, we who preach Christ crucified, includes Paul and other early Christians. To the demand for power, they present a message of weakness that is offensive, for it tells of a crucified Messiah—an unthinkable paradox for the Jewish mind. To the longing for reason, they present an outright absurdity. In this way, God has defied humanly established criteria for discerning the divine. For Paul, in this rejection of human norms, God truly shows himself to be God precisely because he refuses to let humans dictate terms; and so he acts in sheer defiance of their expectations so that God’s own way of working is presented as a saving reality that humans can experience only on God’s terms. Humans are forced to shelve their standards and to swallow their pride; they either accept or reject God for who he shows himself to be. But, Paul declares, Jews and Gentiles who hear God’s call, who believe in God’s saving work in the cross of Christ, receive a revelation of God’s true power and wisdom.

1:25 / Finally, Paul summarizes his argument in this whole section by making a theological pronouncement in this verse. He declares that God’s wisdom or power expressed in the cross of Christ renders worldly wisdom into foolishness as a demonstration of the reality of the power of God. God shows himself to be both wiser and stronger than humans, who cannot predict or control God!