Philosopy, knowledge, and the message of the cross

I Corinthians.  May, 2015

Well, so far I have only read the Introductions to I Corinthians in various translations and references books.

The Message. Wow!  Here is what Eugene Peterson has written in his Introduction:

When people become Christians, they don’t at the same moment become nice.  This always comes as something of a surprise.  Conversion to Christ and his ways doesn’t automatically furnish a person with impeccable manners and suitable morals.

The people of Corinth had a reputation in the ancient world as an unruly, hard-drinking, sexually promiscuous bunch of people.  When Paul arrived with the Message and many of them became believers in Jesus, they brought their reputation with them right into the church.

Paul spent a year and a half with them as their pastor, going over the Message of the “good news” in detail, showing them how to live out this new life of salvation and holiness as a community of believers.  Then he went on his way to other towns and churches.

Sometime later Paul received a report from one of the Corinthian families that in his absence things had more or less fallen apart.  He also received a letter from Corinth asking for help.  Factions had developed, morals were in disrepair, worship had degenerated into selfish grabbing for the supernatural.  It was the kind of thing that might have been expected from Corinthians!

Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians is a classic of pastoral response: affectionate, firm, clear, and unswerving in the conviction that God among them, revealed in Jesus and present in his Holy Spirit, continued to be the central issue in their lives, regardless of how much of a mess they had made of things.  Paul doesn’t disown them as brother and sister Christians, doesn’t throw them out because of their bad behaviour, and doesn’t fly into a tirade over their irresponsible ways.  He takes it all more or less in stride, but also takes them by the hand and goes over all the old ground again, directing them in how to work all the glorious details of God’s saving love into their love for one another.

I guess that the much loved I Corinthians Chapter 13 gives us the state of mind which Paul brought to the situation.

But I must start with Chapter 1.

Chapter 1, I Corinthians.

In the introduction to the Bible book, Paul sets the scene by proclaiming the absolute truth about the  community he is writing to (Verses 1 to 9).  These verses have been given the sub-heading (there is a name for these sub-headings; I do not recall what it is.): “Introduction” in my A New New Testament and “Salutation” in the New Revised Standard Version.  These headings and sub-headings are not supplied by the author; rather by the publisher, I gather.  For, as we have seen, they vary from one translation to another.

I was interested to find the word “philosopher/s/y,”  in verses 19 to 21 in A New New Testament and one other translation.  I would like to quote here –

18. The message of the cross is indeed mere folly to those who are in the path of ruin, but to us who are in the path of salvation it is the power of God. 

 

19. For scripture says: “I will bring the philosophy of the philosophers to naught, and the shrewdness of the shrewd I will bring to nothing.”

20. Where is the philosopher?  Where is the teacher of the Law?  Where the disputant of to-day?  Has God not shown the world’s philosophy to be folly? 

21.  For since the world, in God’s wisdom, did not by its philosophy learn to know God, God saw fit, by the “folly” of our proclamation, to save those who believe in the Anointed One? 

22.  While Judeans ask for miraculous signs, and Greeks study philosophy, 

23. we are proclaiming Christ crucified – to the Judeans an obstacle, to the gentiles mere folly, 

24 but to those who have received the call, whether Judeans or Greeks, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God? 

25. For God’s “folly” is wiser than people, and God’s “weakness” is stronger than people.

Noah Webster has: Philosophy – literally, the love of wisdom.  But in modern acceptation, philosophy is a general term denoting an explanation of the reasons of things; or an investigation of all phenomena, both of mind and of matter.  When applied to any particular department of knowledge, it denotes the collection of general laws or principles…Thus, that branch of philosophy which treats of God, etc. is called theology; that which treats of nature is called physics…..

I am reminded of Mrs. Eddy’s definition of “knowledge” in Science and Health p. 590: “Evidence obtained from the five corporeal senses; mortality; beliefs and opinions; human theories, doctrines, hypotheses; that which is not divine and is the origin of sin, sickness, and death; the opposite of spiritual Truth and understanding.”

Now doesn’t that explain it as Paul meant it to be understood?  Wonderful!

 

Joyce Voysey