NOTES for Co1 1:20-21

It is interesting: why did God not allow the world to know Him through the wisdom that He Himself had given to the world? Why must the witnesses resort to what the apostle calls "foolish preaching" or, in the language of the Synodal translation, "the foolishness of preaching"? And does human wisdom always and inevitably degenerate into empty disputes in which the desire for self-assertion prevails? What is so bad about knowledge that it always leads to such a sad result?

If the wisdom of which the apostle speaks were only knowledge, we would not be able to answer this question. But in the Jewish tradition wisdom was never only knowledge for the sake of knowledge. The corresponding Hebrew word, and Paul, even when writing in Greek, still remains a Jew thinking within the framework of his own cultural and religious tradition, originally denoted not so much knowledge as ability or skill. At first this was skill in practical work, the work of a craftsman or artist; then it was the ability to build relationships with people, the skill of judgment and governance, whether governing one's own household or governing a state. And in the post-exilic period, wisdom came to be associated first of all with the art of righteousness, the skill of righteous living.

It would seem that not very much depends on the human being here, since righteousness comes from God, not from man. And yet the path of righteousness is a divine-human path; in a certain sense it depends on the human being no less than on God. And in order to walk this path, a person needs precisely experience and skill connected with the practice of keeping the commandments. And all the intellectual tools possessed, for example, by a "scribe" or teacher of the Torah are ultimately needed precisely to help the one walking the path of righteousness not to stray from that path. But fallen human nature often turns a useful tool into an obstacle and a burden on the path of righteousness. Instead of making an unambiguous choice in favor of following the commandments, a person begins to look for ways to evade this, either by observing nothing at all or by seeking easy paths that would allow him, so to speak, to fulfill the Torah without fulfilling it. And then the intellect becomes a tool serving not the observance of the Torah, but its violation, and wisdom becomes not so much the art of following the Torah as the art of imitating such following.

In such a situation, the preaching of the Kingdom can no longer rest on the traditional human experience of righteous life, not because it is forgotten, but because it has in fact been devalued. Then there remains only that very "foolish preaching" of which the apostle speaks. Preaching against commonly accepted opinions, contrary to the obvious, preaching that will indeed seem complete madness to any "normal" person. The preaching of the Kingdom that truly, according to the Savior's word, is "not of this world."