then to the twelve ; then he appeared to above five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain until now, but some are fallen asleep ; then he appeared to James ; then to all the apostles ; and last of all, as unto one born out of due time, he ajipcared to me also ' (1 Co lo^"). 'That was absolutely the whole gospel. ... It was the doc- trine with which he began' (Weizsacker, i. 314).
* Christ I I am Christ's 1 and let the name sutQce you. Ay, for me too He greatly hath sutlUx-tl : Lo U'itk no u-inniiiij wards I would entice you, Paul has no honour and no friend but Clirist*
(F. \V. H. Myers, St Paiil).
From the vehemence with which the Apostle reiterates the staple of his message, one can infer the distaste with w liich ' the foolishness of the preaching ' was received. The cultured and ruling classes rejected it with something of the energy of contemptuous loathing with which cultured Athenians spoke of the ol ^avaviroi ; it was good enough only for the vulgar, the illiterate, and the base. They, on the other hand, were to be saved by the wisdom of the schools.
To this St. Paul's answer was two-fold : (a) the gospel was not a philosoi>hy to be discussed, but a message of God to be believed (cf. EGT ii. 774) ; (b) in point of fact, aoipla. had not brought them the knowledge of God. The verdict of history had shown that 'the world by wisdom knew not God ' (1 Co 1-'). It has not been saved by dialectic; God ' will not be apprehended by intellectual speculation, by "dry light"' (EGT ii. 769). The wisdom of the world ( /c 6<r|U.os = the material world) in its very nature could not but fail to interpret the .spiritual world (1 Co 2"-'=). As a matter of historical fact, reason, apart from a special revela- tion, has never been able to attain any practical knowledge of God, nor has it been able ' to show to the soul a fountain of cleansing, healing, and life.' These things ' are beyond the limits of man's intellectual tether ' (cf . 1 Co 2").
The Apostle's exiJerience in Athens (Ac 17'8-»<) had not encouraged him to meet philosophers on their own ground, and, when he came to Corinth, it was with the deliberate purpose of not commend- ing his message by the devices of rhetorical display, or the arguments of philosophy — ' I came not with any striking rhetorical or philosophical display, for I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ, and him crucified' (1 Co 2''-). 'When [therefore] eccentric teachers inculcated views which threatened to transform Christianity, to alter, as it were, its' centre of gravity, or to pivot it on some new axis, resistance was instinct- ive' (K. Rainy, The Ancient Catholic Church, p. 95).
This resistance ruled St. Paul's presentation of his message : ovk iv <To<plg. \6you, Iva /ztj koiuO^ 6 aravpdi tou Xpt<rToO (1 Co 1"). 'The term KevoOf denotes an act which does violence to the object itself, and deprives it of its essence and virtue. Salvation by the cross is a Divine act which the conscience must apiiropriate as such. If one begins with presenting it to the understanding in the form of a series of well-linked ideas, as the result of a theory concerning man and God, it may happen that the mind will be nourished by it, but as by a system of wisdom, and not a way of salvation. . . . The fact evaporates in ideas, and no longer acts on the conscience with the powerful reality which determines conversion' (F. Godet, Com. on St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, Edinburgh, 1893, i. 89).
Denney in illustration of this point instances a Hindu Society w hich had for its object to appro- priate all that was good in Christianity without burdening itself with the rest. 'Among other things which it appropriated, with the omission of
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WISDOM
only two words, was the answer given in the West- minster Shorter Catechism to the question, What is repentance unto life? Here is tlie answer. " Repentance unto life is a saving grace, whereby a sinner, out of a true sense of his sin, and appre- hension of the mercy of God in Christ, doth with grief and hatred of his sin turn from it unto God, with full purjiose of, and endeavour after, new obedience. The words the Hindus left out were in Christ ; instead of "apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ" they read simply, " apprehension of the mercy of God." But they knew that this waf! not compromising. They were acute enough to see that in the words they left out the whole Chrittianity of the dehnition lay ' [Studies in Theology, London, 18114, p. 130). St. Paul per- ceived that by the abstractions of Greek philosophy the gospel would be emptied (Kevom) of its signi- ficance and power, and his answer to this was : ' We preach Christ ' — not a system, but a Person — and Christ as crucified.
His method was justified by his experience of the Corinthian Church. Even though ' by the enticing words of man's wisdom' a number of intellectually disposed Greeks had been attracted to the Church, in the absence of what has been called ' profound conscience-work,' the results were not lasting. ' The wants of the understanding and imagination had, in many cases, more to do with their adherence than those of the heart and con- science' (F. Godet, 1 Corinthians, i. 18). From the Corinthian letter we can see tliat there was an outcrop of old pagan habits and a reversion to type among men wlio had never really been evangelized. This was another evidence of the failure of wisdom as a substitute for ' the word of the cross.'