1 Corinthians 1:20

“Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?” This exclamatory form has the same triumphant tone as in the words of Isaiah of which our passage seems to be an imitation (Isaiah 19:12; Isaiah 33:18); comp. in Paul himself 1 Corinthians 15:55, and Romans 3:27. At the Divine breath the enemy has disappeared from the scene; he is sought for in vain.

Rückert thinks that we should not seek rigorously to distinguish the meaning of the three substantives, that there is here rather a simple rhetorical accumulation. He refers all three to Greek wisdom, with a slight shade of difference in meaning. The emotional tone of the passage might justify this view in any other writer than Paul. But in this apostle every word is always the presentation of a precise idea. The ancient Greek commentators apply the first term, σοφός, wise, to Gentile philosophers; the second, γραμματεύς, scribe, to Jewish doctors; the third, συνζητητής, disputer, to Greek sophists; but, in this sense, the last would be already embraced in the first term. It would therefore be better, with Meyer, to give to the word σοφός a general meaning: the representatives of human wisdom, and to the two last, the more particular sense of Jewish scribe and Greek philosopher. But the term wisdom, applying throughout this whole passage to human wisdom represented by the Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:22), I think it more in keeping with the apostle's thought to apply the first term to Greek philosophers, the second to Jewish scribes, its ordinary meaning in the New Testament; for that of secretary, Acts 19:35, belongs to an altogether special case, then to unite these two classes in the third term: “those in general who love to dispute,” who seek truth in the way of intellectual discussion, by means either of Greek dialectic or Scripture erudition. The complement, of this world, refers undoubtedly to the three substantives, and not only to the last.

The word αἰών, age, derived either from ἄω, to breathe, or from ἄει, always, denotes a period. The Jews divided history into a period anterior to the Messiah this was what they called ὁ αἰὼν οὗτος, this present age and the period of the Messianic kingdom, which they named ὁ αἰὼν μέλλων, the age to come. But, from the Christian point of view, these two periods are not merely successive; they are partly simultaneous. For the present age still lasts even when the Messiah has appeared, His coming only transforming the actual state of things slowly and gradually. Hence it follows that for believers the two periods are superimposed, as it were, the one above the other, till at length, in consequence of the second and glorious advent of the Messiah, the old gives place entirely to the new.

The second question explains the first. How have the wise of the world thus disappeared? By the way of salvation which God gives to be preached and which has the effect of bringing human wisdom to despair.

The verb ἐμώρανεν is usually taken in a declarative sense: “By putting wisdom aside in the most important affair of human life, God has ipso facto declared it foolish.” But this verb has a more active sense, Romans 1:22; it would require, therefore, at the least to be explained thus: “He has treated it as foolish, by taking no account of its demands.” But should there not be given to it a more effective meaning still? “He has, as it were, befooled wisdom. By presenting to it a wholly irrational salvation, He has put it into the condition of revolting against the means chosen by Him, and by declaring them absurd, becoming itself foolish.” The complement, of the world, is not absolutely synonymous with the preceding term, of this age: the latter referred rather to the time, the wisdom of the epoch anterior to the Messiah; the term world bears rather on the nature of this wisdom, that which proceeds from humanity apart from God.

But it is asked why God chose to treat human wisdom so rudely. Did He wish to extinguish the torch of reason which He had Himself lighted? 1 Corinthians 1:21 answers this question; it explains the ground of the judgment which God visits on human reason, by the irrational nature of the gospel; to wit, that in the period anterior to the coming of Christ, reason had been unfaithful to its mission.