For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will set aside.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?
I Corinthians 1: 19,20
In our humble opinion, the opening two chapters of the first letter to the Church at Corinth should be written on the forehead of every Christian in the West. This should be so because the “wise” of our age, taking their cue from the post-Christian Enlightenment, have succeeded for a time in reviving the intellectual traditions of the classical world. In these first two chapters of I Corinthians, Paul confronts the vanity and emptiness of those classical traditions—and so, indirectly, confronts the dominant spirit of our age.
If Jerusalem is to avoid the idolatry of our age, on the one hand, and increase its influence and power over it, on the other, it is essential that the truths of this portion of God's Word be deeply inscribed into our hearts and minds. Without it we will simply join with t the wise men, the scribes, and the debaters of this age—we will become like them and subject to them.
The intellectual traditions of the classical world were marked by a deeply rooted rationalism—by which we mean, that the ground of truth, its vindication, and its precepts were understood to be finally dependant upon the mind of man. Human reason was ultimate. It was Man who established the truth. Man was the measure of all things. Man's mind and reasoning gave meaning to the world. Autonomous human reason was sovereign over all things. It was on this common ground of the autonomy of human reason that all the religions and the philosophical schools of the ancient world stood as they debated and argued amongst themselves.
Collectively they represented what Paul calls the “wisdom of the wise, the cleverness of the clever,” and the debates of the debaters.
Paul declares that the Gospel can only proceed to go forward into our culture if it attacks and destroys the fundamental rationalism of our age. Why? Well the answer is obvious: God has declared that such wisdom is not wisdom at all: it must be torn down and destroyed. God has declared the wisdom of this age to be utter foolishness. The bottom line is that Man is not the measure of all things: Man does not give meaning to the world. God alone does. God establishes man, not the reverse.
In this vortex of who establishes whom there is no neutral or middle ground. Note that Paul does not proceed by arguing that in his confrontation with the wise of his age there was a lot they all had in common, and that there was much agreement between them. He was not merely seeking to correct things at the margin. Rather, the entire edifice of Unbelief, of the wisdom of his age, was rotten, awaiting its dissolution. God had declared it all to be utter foolishness. Every thought and intention of man's heart was evil. It had to go.
As long as an individual soul clings to the notion that he will determine and establish whether God is or not, by means of rationalistic tools and techniques, he remains in darkness and sin. His rationalism is his sin. It is the seat of his rebellion against the Living God. What the Unbelieving Mind confirms, verifies, establishes and ratifies, it need not accede to nor submit to. If Man proves, or establishes or confirms or rejects a god with his “wisdom”, it is the god who must bow to Man, not the reverse.
The neo-classical ideology of the West—the “wisdom” of the age—asserts the rational is the real, and what is real is rational. But this is actually a misdirection: what the debater of this age really means to say, if he were more accurate and a little less disingenuous, is “the rationalistic is the real, and the real is what is rationalistic”. This is a very different proposition, and one more tawdry and decrepit in the cool light of day.
Paul goes on to state that Jerusalem is not opposed to reason or wisdom, properly so-called. “We do speak wisdom among those who are mature; a wisdom however, not of this age, nor of the rulers of this age, who are passing away.” (I Corinthians 2: 6) The faculty of reason and the quality of wisdom were created by God: but they only function properly when they are from the outset subject to Him.
Therefore, true faith rests not on men, nor on the wisdom of this age. It can only rest on the power of God and on His Spirit. When men are regenerated by God's Spirit, only then can they sit, clothed, and in their right mind. Only then are they able to receive and believe the proclamation of Christ crucified for their sins. Only then can they start to reason and think properly and truthfully. Only then can they become wise, but not according to the wisdom of this age. In that powerful regenerating work of God's Spirit the roots and tentacles of the wisdom of the wise of this age, and the cleverness of the clever of this age are ripped up and torn out of the human soul. Only then can the idolatry of rationalism be crushed.
So Paul concludes:
Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things freely given to us by God, which things we speak, not in worlds taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to spiritual men. But a natural man does not accept things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised.
I Corinthians 2: 12—14
The wisdom of the world is passing away. It re-emergence in the West in the post-Enlightenment world is a throwback, soon to pass. It is like the final death throes of a smitten dragon. Christ alone is Lord. The rulers of this age are fading.
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