§ 4. THE TRUE PoWER OF THE Gos- PEL, i. 176-25. To “preach the gospel” meant, above all, to proclaim the cross of Christ (17>). In Cor. ‘the wisdom of the world”’ scouted this message as sheer folly (18). To use ‘wisdom of word”’ in meeting such antagonism would have been for Ῥ. to fight the world with its own weapons and to betray his cause, the strength of which lay in the Divine power and wisdom embodied in Christ, a force destined, because it was God’s, to bring to shame the world’s vaunting wisdom (19-25).
Ver. 17>, οὐκ ἐν σοφίᾳ λόγου is grammatical adjunct to ἀλλὰ (ἀπέστ. µε Χρ.) εὐαγγελίζεσθαι; but the phrase opens a new vein of thought, and sup- plies the theme of the subsequent argu- ment up to # 6. In wv. 14, 17a Paul
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17a—19. ΠΡΟΣ ΚΟΡΙΝΘΙΟΥΣ A 767 Χριστοῦ. 18. 6 "λόγος γὰρ ὁ τοῦ * σταύρου ” τοῖς μὲν ” ἀπολλυμένοις 3 Pals a e Ce Oe Say pre. Lo κ.α. 7 d ear ti µωρία ἐστί, ᾿ τοῖς δὲ " σωζοµένοις, ἡμῖν, “Sdvapis "Θεοῦ ἐστί: 10. ου. / , ‘660? ~ oN / - 2 Nat Sea ας πο P.; Heb, γέγραπται γάρ, Απολῶ τὴν σοφίαν τῶν copay καὶ τὴν ' σύνεσιν ΙΑ 1.18: Acts
xiii. 26, xiv. 3, Xx. 32 only. Vili. 10, e Isa. xxix. 14. asserted that Christ sent him ποί to baptise, but to preach; further, what he has to preach is not a philosophy to be discussed, but a message of God to be believed: “ L’évangile n’est pas une sagesse, c’est un salut” (Gd.). In this transition the Ap. silently directs his reproof from the Pauline to the Apol- lonian party.—In σοφία λόγου (see ii. I-4, 13; ¢f. the opp. combination in xii. 8) the stress lies on wisdom (called in vv. το f. “the wisdom of the world’’)— sc. “wisdom” in the common accepta- tion, as the world understood it and as the Cor. expected it from public teachers : “in wisdom of word” = in philosophical style. ‘To tell good news in wisdom of word” is an implicit contradiction ; ‘‘news”’ only needs and admits of plain, straightforward telling. To dress out the story of Calvary in specious rhetoric, or wrap it up in fine-spun theorems, would have been to “empty (κενώθῃ) the cross of Christ,” to eviscerate the Gospel. The “power of God” lies in the facts and not in any man’s present- ment of them: “to substitute a system of notions, however true and ennobling, for the fact of Christ’s death, is like con- founding the theory of gravitation with gravitation itself’ (Ed.).—For κενόω, lactitive of κενός (cf. xv. 54), see parls. ; the commoner syn., καταργέω (28, etc.), means to deprive of activity, make im- potent (in effect), κενόω to deprive of content, make unreal (in fact). Ver. 18. What P. asserted in ver. 17 as intrinsically true, he supports by ex- perience (18) and by Scripture (19), com- bining their testimony in ver. 20.— λόγος γάρ, 6 τοῦ σταύρον, “For the word, namely that of the cross”. 6 λόγος (distinguish from the anarthrous λόγος above) takes its sense from evay- γελίζεσθαι (17); it is “the tale” rather than ‘‘ the doctrine of the cross,” synony- mous with μαρτύριον (6) and κήρυγμα (21).---τοῖς μὲν ἀπολλυμένοις . . . τοῖς «δὲ σωζοµένοις, the two classes into which P. sees his hearers divide themselves (see parls.). The ptps. are strictly pr.—not expressing certain expectation (Mr.), nor fixed predestination (Bz.); the rejectors -and receivers of ‘the word” are in course
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b 2 Cor. ii. 15, iv. 3; Acts ii. 47; Lk. xiii. 23. d Ver. 24, ii. 5; 2 Cor. vi. 7, xiii. 4; Rom i. 16; 2 Tim. i8; 1 Ρεῖ. 1. 5; Mt. xxii. 29; Acts f Eph. iii 4; Col. i. 9, ii 2; 2 Tim. ii 7; Mk. xii 33; Lk ii. 47 only.
ο Vv. 21, 23, ii. 14, ili. 19
of perishing and being saved respectively (cf. xv. 2; contrast the aor. of σώζω in Rom, viii. 24, and the pf. in Eph. ii. 5). “In the language of the N.T. salvation is a thing of the past, a thing of the present, and a thing of the future... . The divorce of morality and religion is fostered by failing to note this, and so laying the whole stress either on the past or on the future—on the first call or on the final change” (Lt.). Paul paints the situation before his eyes: one set of men deride the story of the cross—these are manifestly perishing; to another set the same story is ‘“‘God’s power unto salvation”. The appended pers. pron. (τ. σωζοµένοις) ἡμῖν, ‘to the saved, viz., ourselves,” speaks from and to ex- perience: “You and I know that the cross is God’s saving power”. Cf. with the whole expression Rom. i. 16, also John iii. 14-17.—The antithesis to pwpia is not, in the first instance, σοφία, but δύναµις Θεοῦ--α practical vindication against false theory ; saved men are the Gospel’s apology. Yet because it is δύναµις, the word of the cross is, after all, the truest σοφία (see 30, ii. 6 ff.). The double ἐστὶν emphasises the actu- ality of the contrasted results.