3. The term ' fool ' (S.(ppuv), signifying mental stupidity, is applied to the imaginary controver- sialist of 1 Co 15^, who finds unnecessary difli- culties in the Resurrection (cf. the ' foolish con- troversies ' of 1 Ti 6\ 2 Ti 2'^, Tit S^).
i. The 'foolish Galatians' [dvoTp-oi) appear to be rebuked for bad judgment, rather than for moral perverseness. They must be ' bewitched' to have so readily accepted another teaching (Gal 3'"^).
5. Instances of moral folly are provided by those who live without regard to the chief end of life. These are a(70(poL and &<ppoP€s (Eph 5^*'^''). Foolish
are the lusts of the rich (1 Ti 6^), and the unre- generate life is one of foolishness (Tit 3^).
6. Heathenism supplied a conspicuous and illuminating case of moral and intellectual foUy (Ro 118'-; cf. 2=''). To St. Paul, the worship of wood and stone indicated an underlying moral defect of liking for the unreal rather than for the real — for make-belief rather than for belief (v.^), which found expression in morality as well as in worship (v. 2^-). This moral folly led to intellectual foolishness, which 'learned disputa- tions' disguised and fostered. There must be a moral element in sane intellectual judgment (cf. 2 Th 2^°-^^, and Carlyle's comment upon Napoleon : ' He did not know true from false now when he looked at them, — the fearfulest penalty a man pays for yielding to untruth of heart ' [Heroes and Hcro-ivorship, 1872, 'The Hero as King,' p. 221]).
7. In the judgment of the critical Greek in- tellectualists, the preaching of ' Christ crucified ' was folly (1 Co !"*• ^'- -^- ^'). A gospel centred in the person of an ignominiously executed criminal, and finding indeed a mystic value in that death, was likely to provoke the contempt of a highly philo- sophical community. In contrast, St. Paul pre- sents, as the true norm whereby wisdom and folly are to be judged, a mystic 'yvQiai.s : to the un- spiritual, foolishness (2'^), but to the initiated, the power and wisdom of God (2®* '" 1^- ^) — a presenta- tion which invites comparison with the vvtScrts of the Mysteries. Probably the distinction here suggested is that between the intuitional, mystic experience of God and His power, and the in- tellectual theorizing about God and His dealings with the world. Religious 'wisdom' must be judged primarily in terms of spiritual experience rather than of theology. At the same time, St. Paul had no love for obscurantism (1 Co 14).
8. The evil of the intellectualisra within the Church, indicated in 1 Cor., was not that it challenged the distinctive forms of Christian faith, but that it gave rise to the bitterness of religious controversy — sacrificed the love which never failed in value for the sake of the mere forms of knowledge, which at the best necessarily passed awaj' in the coming of greater light (1 Co 13"). Let these childishly (1 Co 3'-^) 'wise' become ' fools ' that they may gain the wisdom of the childlike (vv.'8--2).
9. ' Fools for Christ's sake ' — so St. Paul de- scribes himself and his fellow-evangelists in 1 Co 4^". The epithet maj' have been applied on account of the ' foolishness ' of the preaching (7) ; the contrast, however, with the (f)p6vLfj.ot. iv Xpiarw, pncdeiites in Christo, suggests that the reference is to the worldly-wiseman's view of the sanctified 'abandon' of St. Paul and his kindred spirits, their flinging aside of policy and cunning, their counting as nought the things which the world deems precious. The Apostle is actually regarded by Festus as out of his mind (Ac 26^).
H. BULCOCK.
FORBEARANCE.— See Loxgsufferixg.
FOREIGNER.— See Stranger.
FOREKNOWLEDGE.— 'Foreknowledge' is the rendering of a Greek word [irpoyvusLs, Ac 2-'^, 1 P 1^, the cognate verb being -KpoyLvilxTKeiv, Ac 26'', Ro 8^ IP, 1 P V^, 2 P 3") which occurs nowhere in the LXX and not very often in the NT. In the apocryphal book of Wis. it occurs three times (G^^S* IS*), always in the plain sense of ' knowing beforehand.' In this sense St. Paul uses the verb in his speech be- fore Agrippa, when he tells him how his manner of life was known to all the Jews, ' having knowledge of me from the first, if they be willing to testify ' (Ac 26') ; and in this sense also St. Peter uses it in
4U
FOREKNOWLEDGE
FORGIVENESS
the concluding warning of his Second Epistle when he reminds his readers of their ' knowing these things beforeliand ' (3").
In tlie remainder of the references given above it is the Divine foreknowledge which is in the mind of the Apostle, the object or objects being not facts or things but persons — these persons being objects of favourable regard — and the theme under considera- tion being some aspect of the Divine purpose of grace towards men. When St. Peter, in addressing the Jewish multitudes on the day of Pentecost, describes them as having by the hand of lawless men crucified and slain Jesus of Nazareth, he speaks of Him as ' delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God' (Ac 2-^). That death had been designed and planned in the counsels of eternal love, and the ' foreknowledge of God ' had rested with satisfaction upon the Divine sufferer who had undertaken, by the sacrifice of Himself, to win redemption for men. Of the same purport is the expression used by St. Peter when in his First Epistle he speaks of the blood of Christ, a Lamb without blemish and without spot, ' who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake' (1-°). Mere prescience in the sense of pi'evious knowledge does not exhaust the mean- ing in either of the foregoing passages. Hort {The First Epistle of Peter, 1898, ad loc.) sees in the latter reference ' previous designation to a position or function.' And he notes the pregnant sense of ' know ' in such passages as Jer P, ' Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee' ; Is 49S 'The Lord hath called me from the womb ; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name' ; and Ex 33^" (spoken of Moses), ' I know thee by name, and thou hast found grace in my sight ' (cf. 2 Ti 2^^). The pregnant sense belonging to ' know- ledge' may well belong also to 'foreknowledge' (1 P 1^, Kara, irpoyvwcnv deov irarpos).