NOTES for Co1 1:18

The image of the two ways of which the apostle speaks, the way of salvation and the way of destruction, has roots that go deep into the Yahwist and then Jewish tradition. The way of righteousness, both in the Torah and in other biblical books, is regarded as the way of salvation, and the way of sin as the way of ruin. And yet the picture turns out not to be so simple.

Already in the pre-Christian and even pre-biblical period, many wondered why the righteous person suffers from the evil in which the world lies, and why his righteousness is not rewarded according to its merits. This theme sounds especially sharply in the biblical books, which is not surprising: the God of the Bible is a good God, who gave His people the Torah and calls them to the path of righteousness. Why then does He so often leave His people at the mercy of the evil with which the world is full?

The Savior's death on the Cross is the answer to this question. Of course, for fallen man with the best intentions it would be simpler to imagine an ideal world where righteousness would be immediately rewarded and evil just as immediately punished. But in such a world no one would have any chance of salvation, for there are no sinless people on earth. Jesus could have entered the world as a triumphant victor, but then He would have had to remain alone in the Kingdom. And His Father's will was not for this. Such a triumph of the Kingdom would not have left the slightest chance to any human being. The will of the Father, expressed through one of the prophets several centuries before Christ's coming into the world, is that the sinner should not die, but turn and remain alive.

That is precisely why the Kingdom enters the world as if unnoticed, not imposing itself on anyone by force and not hanging over anyone as a threat of immediate punishment for the slightest sin. That is why all attempts to create on earth a kingdom of universal justice, whether on a religious or anti-religious basis, have always ended in grand bloodshed having nothing to do with any justice. And Paul points to the way of the Kingdom as the only way on which the triumph of righteousness is possible. A triumph leading not to destruction, but to salvation.

Apostle Paul leans on widespread in antiquity and now anthropomorphic representation of God. It is impossible to say that we can find nothing useful on this way: some healthy judgments are always possible here. So, by leaning on our small strength, we think of God's omnipotence, comparing with our reason, we imagine His wisdom and omniscience.

The comparison with our boundedness helps us to touch the truth about His infinity and transcendency. But this method of thinking of God hides in itself an essential danger: we think that God is like us and we bring him to mind as a man, but very "big". It seems to us instinctively that, where nothing worked out for a weak man, everything will succeed for God. Where we suffer and die, God will come out victorious.

That’s really what takes place in reality, but in no way as we imagine. It would have been, in a common logic, natural if the Christ "mobilized" in the Garden of Gethsemane those same twelve legions of angels, of which He spoke to Peter, and the angels would have dispersed the guards and would have put chief priests "in broad daylight". But occurs something completely different, absurd, according to the word of Apostle Paul ("foolishness" from the translations of King James Version and The New American Standard Bible - is moria in the Greek text meaning "stupidity, absurdity, madness"). Either God's power doesn’t consist of what we think, either His triumph is in a broader scale without strength, as says the prophet Zechariah. And the accepts Death on the Cross.

Hellenes and Jews, listeners of Apostle Paul, as soon as they heard that God suffered on the Cross, turned away from Him. God cannot suffer - such is the common conviction of all the antiquity, where come all these theological reasonings on God's impassiveness.

The absurdity from this point of view of evangelic events engendered a variety of conflicts and heresies at the time of the New Testament: Christians didn’t succeed to unite the hellenico-Jewish assuredness in God's impassiveness with faith in the Crucified Jesus. Not years, as we could have expected, but centuries and centuries depart on it... Because behind the word about the Cross, stands the greatest secret of God's love, which is the inscrutable bases of the biblical Revelation.

"We venerate Your Cross, O Christ..." What do these words mean for us? Boundless compassion for the innocent, beaten, naked righteous one hanging on this wood. Love for Him, limitless gratitude. And also the understanding of how infinitely lighter our own cross is. All the problems that seem impossible to carry are nothing compared with the measure of suffering He took upon Himself for our sake. "You, who so loved Your world..."

And there are other words: "Then He says to the disciple, 'Behold your mother.'" On these words the Church is built, the strongest of strongholds. We have all been made sons and daughters, and therefore we can never be orphans. Orphanhood is a word from some other life. We often enter prayerfully into the Passion of Christ, but it is much harder to enter into the passion of Mary. His inconceivable physical pain and her inconceivable pain of soul. The whole world is embraced by this pain.

Continuing the conversation about disputes and about what causes them, Paul, of course not by accident, turns to the theme of human wisdom and its limits. For him it is obvious that this wisdom is unable to understand the mystery of the Savior's earthly ministry and His death on the cross (vv. 18-21). Here the apostle remains faithful to the tradition of the "poor," which had taken shape already in the time of the pre-exilic prophets. Judging by the Book of Psalms, even then it had become clear to those seeking full spiritual life and deep relationship with God that human effort alone was not enough to attain righteousness, and that a person who wanted to follow God had to give up the thought of relying only on himself. The seeker could reach what he desired only by surrendering himself completely to God's will. It is no accident that these people began to call themselves "the poor": they understood that before God they were like beggars even when, by the standards of this world, they could be considered wise and rich. They were the ones who awaited the coming of the Messiah and the arrival of the messianic Kingdom more than others; it is precisely such people whom Jesus calls blessed when proclaiming its arrival. But both in the time of the ancient prophets and in the time of Jesus there were people who preferred their own wisdom to the Kingdom. And Paul says directly that trying to understand the mysteries of the Kingdom by human effort alone is useless.

It would seem that there is no need for this, since Jesus Himself revealed them to everyone who wanted to see and hear, to everyone ready to trust Him and follow Him. But only the one who had experienced what the "poor" experienced could do this: the understanding, despite all his wisdom and knowledge, of his complete helplessness in everything concerning the Kingdom, which no one can understand and into which no one can enter unless he is brought in by the One who brought the Kingdom into the world. It is precisely human wisdom that demands signs and proofs even where everything is obvious (vv. 21-24), for such signs and proofs are needed not in order to be convinced of the authenticity of the reality that has opened, but in order to "fit" it into the framework of human logic, coordinating and connecting it with earthly wisdom, which is powerless here. And only to those who have given up such attempts is the path into the Kingdom opened (vv. 26-31). And together with this, the complete meaninglessness of the disputes that divide people in this world becomes clear to them.

Thus the crucified Christ is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks”... Could the Almighty Lord really not have found some option that would neither cause offense nor seem foolish? He could have. But He did not look for one. For He did not and never does set Himself the goal of being convenient and comfortable... Yes, He loves humankind, but that does not mean that He ceases to be Himself. He acts within His own laws. And even if it seems that He “is not behaving like God,” in reality He is simply not trying to conform to our notions of what God should be like.