NOTES for Co1 1:20-21
Interesting: why God did not allow the world to know Him through the wisdom that He Himself had given to the world? Why witnesses have to resort to what the apostle calls " the foolishness of preaching"? And does human wisdom degenerate always and inevitably into empty discussions, in which prevails the desire of the self-assertion?
So is really very bad the knowledge, which always leads to a so sad result? Probably, if this wisdom, about which speaks the apostle was only the knowledge, we could not answer this question. But in the Jewish tradition, wisdom was never only the knowledge for the knowledge. The Jewish corresponding word (and Paul although writing in Greek, remains in every case a Jew, thinking within their cultural and religious traditions) originally meant not so much knowledge as ability or skill. At first it was the skill of the practical work, the works of craftsman or painter, then - the ability to build relationships with people, skill of judgment and management, that is the management of own house or the management of the government. And in the period after captivity, begin to associate with wisdom, first of all, the art of righteousness, the skill of a righteous life.
It would seem, here a lot does not depend on man, because righteousness is of God, and not man. Nevertheless the way of righteousness is the way of God-Human, it depends in a sense not less on man, than on God. And man, in order to go this way, needs in particular experience and the skill connected to the practice of the observation of the commandments. And all the intellectual tools, which has for example "the scribe" (professor of the Torah), in the final account are necessary in particular to help the one who goes on the way of righteousness not to get lost on this way. But the fallen nature of man transforms quite often the useful tool into obstacle and a burden on the way of righteousness.
Instead of making an unambiguous choice for the benefit of the observation of the commandments, man begins to look for means to escape it, or observing absolutely nothing, or by looking for easy ways, which would, so to speak, allow to fulfill the Torah, not fulfilling it. And here the intelligence becomes a tool serving not the observation of the Torah, but its violation, and the wisdom becomes not so much the art to observe the Torah, as the art of the imitation of such an observation.
In such a situation the preaching of the Kingdom cannot already no more rely on the human traditional experience of a righteous life, not because it is forgotten, but because it is in reality depreciated. Well then there is only the same "foolishness of preaching", about which speaks the apostle. The preaching is contrary to the common opinions, against any obvious fact, the preaching, which will really turn out to any "normal" man a complete foolishness. The preaching of the Kingdom, which really, according to the words of the Savior, "is not of this world".