A Heart in the Door

Christian philosophy must find knowledge of God, like human redemption, in divine grace rather than human earning. In particular, a Christian philosophy must acknowledge that the things of God are taught by God‟s Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, and not by “human wisdom.” Paul states that “we have received the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God” (1 Cor. 2:12). In making Christ preeminent in all things, even in wisdom and philosophy, God does not allow the world to know God by its own wisdom. Paul remarks: “in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through [its] wisdom” (1 Cor. 1:21). Instead, according to Paul, “Christ Jesus … became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30; cf. Col. 2:3).

We see more precisely God’s wisdom in the way that he operates: he saves those who believe, not the wise or the clever, and thus expresses his own determination to knock all human pride. ‘God opposes the proud’ and his set purpose is that no human being might boast in the presence of God (29). Those who prefer to rely on their own wisdom and insights may continue to do so, but not in the presence of God: they thereby excommunicate themselves.

God has made himself unknown and unknowable by human wisdom. He has made himself known in this crucified Messiah. He has decided to save from eternal destruction, not those who have particular wisdom or who do good deeds to the best of their ability, but those who believe (21) in this crucified Christ. In this way God has indeed destroyed the wisdom of the wise (19).

The wisdom - and the foolishness - of God is seen in the word of the cross (18). The parallel phrase in 1:23, we preach Christ crucified, stresses the content of this word. The phrase ‘the cross’ is often used in too vague a way, without spelling out the face of a particular Person being strung up on that Roman gibbet. God’s wisdom is seen in the Messiah hanging on a tree.

In uncovering the empty foolishness of worldly wisdom, Paul in no sense underestimates its significance or its impact. The essential characteristic of worldly wisdom is that it can empty the word of the cross of its power (1:17).

Paul seldom makes direct claims to certain knowledge about God, a point as well known to biblical scholars as it is surprising to most people, who think Paul as the first dogmatist of Christianity. Paul, on the contrary, asks, quoting Isaiah, “Who has known the mind of God?” (Rom 11:34; Isa 40:13), with the implied answer, “No one!” What we do know, according to Paul, we know only “in part” (I Cor 13:9, 12). Elsewhere Paul says, “Anyone claiming to know does not yet know; but whoever loves God is known by him” (I Cor 8:2-3). Paul shifts knowledge into the passive voice. To the Galatians, Paul starts off sounding as if he will make a positive claim about knowledge of God, but then reverses himself from active to passive: “Now that you have come to know God,” he first says, but then corrects himself, “or rather to be known by God” (Gal 4:9). For Paul, epistemology is constrained. Knowledge is partial, limited, through a glass darkly-or translated better into contemporary English: seen only as in a smoky, faulty, obscuring mirror, like trying to put on makeup while looking into a dirty chrome hubcap (I Cor 13:12). Paul’s epistemological reservation-the constraints of knowledge that come with our present, natural existence-limit what we can say about God and truth to little more than repeating the proclamation that in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus we have hope as long as we entrust ourselves to that event.