The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Corinthians — Section 48

Ver. 21.- Wisdom and foolishness. "Seeing that in the wisdom," etc. ., I. 'l'HE CONTRAST AT CORINTH. The Greeks could no longer boast of great soldiers or statesmen, for military and political power had deserted them and centred at Rome; but they had among them rhetoricians and philosophers, and slill considered themselves il.!tcllectual leaders of the world. In this spirit they sat in judgment on the gospel. As to its treatment of the problems of sin and righteousness, they were not deeply concerned; but 'they were ready to weigh and measure it as a new philosophy, and thought it deficient in intellectual flavour, and quite inferior to the speculations of Greek teachers on the nature of God and of man, the order of the world, the beautiful and the good. St. Paul knew this feeling well, and felt the sting of such imputations, for he was an educated man; but with his usual frankness and manliness he faced this allegation of the supercilious Greeks, and with a sharp spear pricked the bubble of their self-conscious wisdom. Nay, he boldly maintained that what they thought wise was foolish, and what they thought foolish was wise. At the same time, he was too wary and too kind-hearted to irritate his readers by pointing the statement at Corinth, or e,•en at Greece by name. He spoke of the wisdom of the world. Let all the wisdom to- which the whole world had attained by human investigation into the things of God be gathered into a heap, and displayed in all the light that the world's best minds could cast upon it, and he would maintain that it was weak, dim, and futile as compared with that wisdom which he and other preachers of Christ could inculcate by the gospel. It was a large claim; but those who know " the wisdom of the ancients" best, and are most accurately acquainted with the ideas and usages of that old heathen world, will be the most ready to say that St. Paul had good ground for his assertion-that his claim was absolutely lrue. II. 'JaE CONTRAST TO-DAY. Contemptuous thoughts about the evangelical faith ~how themselves in many quarters. Men seem to forget that the intellectual advance- ment of modern society, of which they boast, and which they put forward as superseding ol<l-fashione,l Christianity, is itself mainly due to Christianity; that the great schools and universities of Europe all had their roots in religion; and that the very ideas which give tone and breadth to our civilization, the appreciation of the force of truth, and the sense of human brotherhood as something far above mere enthusiasm for one race and antipathy to all others, all have been eagendered and fostered by our holy faith. Un"'ratefully overlookiag this, men stand to-day on an eminence which Christianit)I bas° cast up, and thence decry Christianity. Religion is pronouaced weak and quita unprovable. It is not good enough for these very knowing people and hard thinkers t Yet nothing is more certain than that men have urgent need of God, and of those· moral helps and profound consolations which arc bound up with a knowledge of God  cu. 1. 1-31.] 'l'HE FIRST EPISTLE TO 'l'HE CORINTHIANS. 49