1 Corinthians 1:21

“For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”

The γάρ, for, does not signify, as Edwards thinks, that the apostle is proceeding to expound the manner in which God has punished wisdom; it introduces the indication of the ground why He thought good to deal so severely with it. ᾿Επειδή, after that (ἐπεί), as any one can attest (δή). The δή is added to show that Paul is speaking of a patent fact, on which one may in a manner put his finger. This fact is that of the aberrations to which human reason gave itself up during the times of heathenism, during those ages which the apostle calls, Acts 17:30, the times of ignorance.

The first proposition describes the sin of reason, and the second the principal its chastisement. These two ideas are so developed that the exact correspondence between the sin and the punishment appears from each of the terms of the two propositions. The phrase, in the wisdom of God, is not synonymous with the following, by (means of) wisdom. The absence of the complement, of God, in the second, of itself shows that the idea of wisdom is taken in the second instance more generally and indefinitely. The matter in question is not a manifestation of the Divine wisdom, but the mode of action followed by human reason, what we should call the exercise of the understanding, the way of reasoning. Hence, also, in this second expression the apostle uses the prep. διά, by means of, while in the former, where he is speaking of the wisdom of God, he makes use of the prep. ἐν, in, which indicates a domain in which Divine wisdom has been manifested. It is not difficult to understand what the theatre is of which Paul means to speak, on which God had displayed His wisdom in the eyes of men before the coming of Christ. In the passage Romans 1:20, the apostle speaks of God's works “in which are visible, as it were, to the eye, from the creation of the world, His invisible perfections, His eternal power and Godhead.” In his discourse at Lystra (Acts 14:17), he declares that God “has not left Himself without witness before the eyes of men, sending rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and filling the hearts of men with abundance and joy.” In the midst of the Areopagus (Acts 17:27), he declares that the end God had in view in distributing men over the face of the earth, was to make them “seek the Lord that they might touch Him as with the hand, and find Him.” This universe is indeed, as Calvin says, “a brilliant specimen of the Divine wisdom.” In the immense organism of nature, every detail is related to the whole, and the whole to every detail. There we find a perceptible, though unfathomable, system of hidden causes and sensible effects, of efficacious means and beneficent ends, of laws that are constant and yet pliant and capable of modification, which fills the observer with admiration and reveals to his understanding the intelligent thought which has presided over the constitution of this great whole. Man, therefore, only needed to apply to such a work the rational processes, the principles of substance, of causality, and finality, with which his mind is equipped, to rise to the view of the wise, good, and powerful Author from whom the universe proceeds. There was in the work a revelation of the Worker, a revelation constituting what the apostle calls, Romans 1:19, τὸ γνωστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, “that which is naturally knowable of the Divine person.” To welcome the rays of this revelation, and to reconstruct the image of Him from whom it proceeded, such was the noble mission of the reason with which God had endowed man: it should have come by this normal exercise of His gift (by means of wisdom) to know God in His wisdom. But as Paul expounds, Romans 1:21, human reason was unfaithful to this mission; man's heart would neither glorify God as such, nor even give thanks to Him, and reason, thus interrupted in its exercise, instead of rising to the knowledge of the Worker by contemplating the work, deified the work itself. Unable to overlook altogether the traces of the Divine in the universe, and yet unwilling to assert God frankly as God, it resorted to an evasion; it gave birth to heathenism and its chimeras. Some sages, indeed, conceived the idea of a God one and good, but they did not succeed in carrying this vague and abstract notion beyond their schools; the popular deities continued to stand, dominating and falsifying the human conscience. In Israel alone there shone the knowledge of a God, one, living, and holy; but this light was due to a special revelation. We must therefore take care not to include the Jewish revelation, as Meyer and Holsten do, in the meaning of the expression: ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ, in the wisdom of God. Not till afterwards, 1 Corinthians 1:22-24, will the apostle deal with the Jews, and that in a way absolutely subsidiary, and applying to them a quite different term to that of wisdom. As little must we give to the words, in the wisdom of God, as is done by Rückert and Reuss, the meaning of our modern phrase, “ In His unfathomable design, it pleased God....” This interpretation would make the wandering of human wisdom the effect of a Divine decree. Men thus find the doctrine of absolute predestination which they ascribe to the apostle. But how can we fail to see that this would be to exculpate reason at the very moment when the apostle is engaged in condemning it? Finally, it is not in accordance with the thought of the apostle to see in the expression διὰ τῆς σοφίας, by means of wisdom, with Billroth and Holsten, the indication of the obstacle which hindered man from arriving at the knowledge of God: “After that, through an effect of its wisdom, the world knew not God in...” Very far from condemning the exercise of the natural understanding, the apostle on the contrary charges this faculty with turning aside from its legitimate use.

After the ground of the punishment, the punishment itself. The term εὐδόκησεν indicates an act, not of arbitrariness, but of freewill: “He judged good,” evidently because it was good in fact. Reason had used its light so ill that the time was come for God to appeal to a quite different faculty.

He therefore presents Himself to man with a means of salvation which has no longer, like creation, the character of wisdom, and which is no more to be apprehended by the understanding, but which seems to it, on the contrary, stamped with folly: a Crucified One! The gen. τοῦ κηρύγματος, of the preaching, designates the apostolic testimony as a known fact (art. τοῦ, the).

This term includes the notion of authority: God lays down His salvation; He offers it such as it has pleased Him to realize it. There is nothing in it to be modified. It is to be accepted or rejected as it is. It need not be thought with Hofmann and others, because of the prep. διά, by means of, that this regimen is the counterpart of διὰ τῆς σοφίας, by means of wisdom, in the preceding proposition. It corresponds rather to the regimen ἐν τῇ σοφίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ, in the wisdom of God, in His original revelation which had the character of wisdom. Man not having recognised God in this form by the healthy use of his understanding, God manifests Himself to him in another revelation which has the appearance of folly. The reason why Paul here uses the prep. by, to correspond to the in of the first proposition, is easily understood. In His revelation in the heart of nature, God waits for man; He would see if man, by the exercise of his understanding, will be able to discover Him: “to see whether they will put their hand on Him,” as it runs, Acts 17:27. It is this expectant attitude which is expressed by the ἐν, in. Not having been found thus, God now takes the initiative; He Himself seeks man by the proclamation of salvation. Hence Paul in this case employs the διά, by means of, which denotes the prevenient activity.

The term which in the second proposition is the true counterpart of the phrase διὰ τῆς σοφίας, by means of wisdom (in the first), is found at the end of the sentence; it is the word τοὺς πιστεύοντας, them that believe. The faculty to which God appeals in this new revelation is no longer reason, which had so badly performed its task in reference to the former; it is faith. To an advance of love like that which forms the essence of this supreme manifestation, the answer is to be given, no longer by an act of intelligence, but by a movement of confidence. What God asks is no longer that man should investigate, but that he should give himself up with a broken conscience and a believing heart.

Finally, to the two contrasts: in the wisdom of God and by the foolishness of preaching; by wisdom, and, them that believe, the apostle adds a third: that of the two verbs know and save. Man ought originally to have known God, and by this knowledge have been united to Him; it was for this end that God revealed Himself to his understanding in an intelligible way. Man not having done so, God now comes to save him, and that by means absolutely irrational. Man, first of all, will have to let himself be snatched from perdition and reconciled to God by a fact which passes beyond his understanding. Thereafter he will be able to think of knowing. It would seem to follow from these words of the apostle, that if reason had performed its task of knowing God, it would not have been necessary for God to save man; a sound philosophy would have raised him up to God. The apostle gives no explanation on this head; but his thought was probably this: if man had risen by his wisdom to the true knowledge and worship of God, this legitimate use of his reason would have been crowned by a mode of salvation appropriate to the laws of this faculty. In the second revelation the Divine wisdom would have rayed forth with more brilliance still than in the first. Thus the character, so offensive to reason, under which the salvation offered to man presents itself in the preaching of the cross, is the consequence of the abuse which reason made of its faculty of knowing. If it had developed itself as an organ of light, the mode and revelation of salvation would have been adapted to its wants. Obviously we cannot know what salvation and the preaching of salvation would have been in such different conditions.

The verse which we have just explained contains in three lines a whole philosophy of history, the substance of entire volumes. As from the standpoint of Judaism the apostle divides history into two principal periods, that of law and that of grace, so from the standpoint of Hellenism he also distinguishes two great phases, that of the revelation of God in wisdom, and that of His revelation in the form of foolishness. In the first, God lets Himself be sought by man; in the second, He seeks man Himself. Such is the masterly survey which the apostle casts over the course of universal history. There was singular adroitness on his part in throwing such a morsel as this development to those Corinthians, connoisseurs in wisdom as they affected to be, and apt to overlook the apostle's superiority. Paul says to them, as it were, “You will have speculation, and you think me incapable of it; here is a specimen, and true also! It is the judgment of God on your past.” But at the same time, with what marvellous subtlety of style does he succeed in putting and cramming, as it were, into the two propositions of this verse, all that wealth of antitheses which presented themselves at once to his mind! To construct such a period there needed to be joined to the thought of Paul the language of Plato.

Vers. 22-25 state the historical fact which demonstrates the judgment enunciated in 1 Corinthians 1:21: The salvation of all, Gentiles and Jews, has really been accomplished by that which is folly in the eyes of the one, and which scandalizes the other.