The Wisdom and Foolishness of God

First Corinthians 1-2 in Theological Exploration

Christophe Chalamet, Hans-Christoph Askani, Christophe Chalamet, Hans-Christoph Askani

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781451490206
• eBook ISBN:
  9781506401515
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The first two chapters of Pauls first epistle to the Christians of Corinth, written in the fifth decade of the first century, have played a significant role in the history of Christian theology. Interpreting the central event in Christianity, namely the crucifixion of Jesus, Paul reflects on the wisdom and foolishness of God, which he opposes to the worlds wisdom. According to Paul, the word of the cross, which is foolishness to some and scandal to others, leads to an upheaval in ones way of thinking. For two millennia, theology has often turned to these passages in order to sustain its reflection.

Many central questions emerge from Pauls text on the meaning of a crucified Messiah, on Gods omnipotence, weakness, and suffering. This volume hopes to achieve two things by seeking to place exegetes, historians, philosophers, and theologians in conversation: to better understand Pauls text and its reception, and also to examine the ways in which it can nourish our theological reflection today.

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Paul’s Refusal of Wisdom in Aquinas’s Commentary on 1 Corinthians: Notes on Philosophy in the Summa of Theology

Adam Eitel

Thomas Aquinas wrote on conventional topics in conventional genres in medieval faculties of theology. Well over half of his corpus comprises commentaries on Scripture, a commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences, and two pedagogically motivated revisions of its topics known as the Summa Against the Gentiles and the Summa of Theology (hereafter Summa).^[1] Much else in his corpus consists in disputed questions on theological topics, sermons and liturgical works, and commentaries on books by Boethius and Dionysius.^[2] Thomas also exposited many of the Aristotelian texts that were available in the thirteenth-century Latin West.^[3] Can he for that reason be called a “philosopher”?^[4] Modern answers to this question too often forget that philosophus was a pejorative term in thirteenth-century Parisian schools.^[5] Its connotation can be surmised, if only in part, from Thomas himself. Take the case of the Commentary on the Gospel of John, where Thomas adverts to the danger of philosophical teaching: “the wisdom of no philosopher has been so great that it could keep human beings from error; the philosophers have rather led many into error.”^[6] And again, in the Commentary on 1 Corinthians, he identifies “philosophers” with the “the rulers of this world, insofar as they fancy themselves as rulers of men in teaching. Of these,” he continues, “it says in Isaiah 19, ‘The princes of Zoan are utterly foolish; the wise counselors of Pharaoh give stupid counsel.’ From these rulers all human philosophy has come.”^[7] It should not surprise that Thomas refused to call himself or any other Christian a “philosopher.”^[8] Why, then, are contemporary readers so tempted by the prospect of finding a philosophy “in” the Summa?

One reason follows from the originating circumstances of modern Thomism. At least since Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Aeterni Patris, the Summa has been looked to as a tool for re-securing authority. Leo traced the church’s loss of political and social power to a congeries of sixteenth-century philosophical errors. He contended that those errors could only be undone by a new philosophy—one that could be separated, albeit subordinated, to ecclesial teaching. Here lies the aegis of “Thomistic philosophy.”^[9]

Of course, there is a more obvious reason that Thomas’s readers ask about the place of philosophy in the Summa: Thomas alludes to, appropriates, and explicitly cites ancient philosophic authorities. Chief among them are Aristotelian authorities, but there are others, too: Plato, Cicero, ancient philosophical schools, and many others besides figure prominently in Thomas’s dialectical exegesis. But precisely how does he use philosophic authorities? The question cannot be answered until we have relearned to ask it well. In what follows, then, I am not so much looking for an answer but the proper form of a question. To this end I will explore Thomas’s conception of philosophy in the forms of Christian teaching he inherits. First, I turn to Thomas’s interpretation of just one of the Pauline epistles in which he finds “nearly the whole of theological teaching.”^[10] Specifically, I take up the epitome of Christian pedagogy that Thomas finds in Paul’s refusals of wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1–2. Then, second, I ask to what extent Thomas finds the same pedagogical principles at work in his ancient Christian authorities. In closing, I begin to show how his efforts to trace this Pauline pattern might illuminate his use of philosophy in the Summa.

Human Wisdom in the Commentary on 1 Corinthians

In his Commentary on 1 Corinthians, Thomas specifies Paul’s teaching with respect to its (1) author, (2) its “subject matter” (materia), and (3) its “manner of teaching” (modus docendi). Paul’s wisdom is “from God in a special way—viz., by revelation.”^[11] Then, too, it is chiefly about God, since the principium of Paul’s subject matter is nothing but Christ—the very wisdom of God who died: “the chief element in the teaching of the Christian faith is salvation effected by the cross of Christ; hence in 1 Cor. 2:2 Paul says, ‘For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.’”^[12] Finally, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to hold fast to the manner of teaching that comports with this cruciform teaching. Paul’s own “manner of explanation” (modum enarrandi) makes use of only those things that serve “the demonstration of Christ’s power.”^[13]

Thomas is especially struck by Paul’s pedagogy—his manner of teaching—not least because he takes it to be the same pedagogy proposed by “the first teachers of the faith.”^[14] Paul’s is an apostolic pedagogy. So it is not just one among several pedagogies available to the teacher of Christian wisdom. For Thomas, it is, rather, the pedagogy of Christian teaching.^[15] The limits and procedures of this apostolic pedagogy, Thomas thinks, can be inferred from Paul’s several refusals of wisdom.^[16] Paul refuses to teach “in eloquent wisdom” (in sapientia verbi) and “in loftiness of speech or wisdom” (in sublimitate sermonis aut sapientiae); he purges his teaching of “persuasive words of human wisdom” (verbis persuasibilibus humanae sapientiae) and of every sort of “wisdom of this age” (sapientia huius saeculi).^[17] So says Paul. But precisely what does he mean? What do his refusals exclude?

First, Paul refuses “elegant philosophical teachings” (ornatu philosophiae doctrinis) and the “teachings of philosophers” (doctrinis philosophorum)—and not just the teachings of some philosophers, but rather of “all human philosophy.”^[18] Then, second, he rejects philosophic pedagogies or manners of teaching. Here we must be more specific. Philosophers’ “manner of argument” (modum ratiocinandi) proceeds through “certain subtle paths”; they moreover urge assent by “ordering speech in order to persuade.”^[19] Paul, on the other hand, refuses all efforts to “prove” (probare) his claims with “words drawn from human wisdom.”^[20] Nor does he employ “rhetorical persuasions” (rhetoricis persuasionibus)—say, “obscure discourses” (alti sermones) and “empty arguments” (vanis rationibus) that produce useless speech.^[21]

But what grounds Paul’s refusals? On what basis does he forswear philosophic manners of teaching? Thomas notes that Christ first chose men who lacked “carnal and earthly wisdom” (carnali sapientia et terrena)—ignorant fisherman and peasants who could not have made use of philosophical teaching or rhetorical persuasion. Not so Paul. Here is a man of noble birth who was educated in “worldly wisdom” (sapientia mundana).^[22] Here is a “golden vessel” spilling over with “brilliant wisdom” (fulgorem sapientiae).^[23] Thomas thus contends that Paul’s refusals cannot be motivated by uncritical adherence to custom.^[24] Rather, they must follow from Paul’s own considered judgment—a judgment that Thomas finds expressed in nuce in Paul’s contention that to preach in eloquent wisdom would be to empty the cross of its power (1 Cor. 1:17). For Thomas, the point...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table Of Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Crucifixion as Wisdom: Exploring the Ideology of a Disreputable Social Movement
• The Weakness of God: A Radical Theology of the Cross
• On a Road Not Taken: Iterations of an Alexandrian Paul
• Maximus the Confessor on the Foolishness of God and the Play of the Word
• Paul’s Refusal of Wisdom in Aquinas’s Commentary on 1 Corinthians: Notes on Philosophy in the Summa of Theology
• Election and Providence in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas: Reading the Summa in Light of His Commentary of 1 Corinthians 1–2
• Luther’s Theologica Paradoxa in Erasmus and Cusanus
• The Cross of Wisdom: Ambiguities in Turning Down Apologetics (Paul, Anselm, Barth)
• The Wisdom in God’s Foolishness: Karl Barth’s Exegesis of 1 Corinthians 1–2
• The Word of the Cross in the Conflict of Interpretive Power: On the Genealogy of Theology Deriving from the Spirit of Pauline Rhetoric
• On Justification and Beyond—An Attempt
• The Foolishness and Wisdom of All God’s Ways: The Case of Creation Ex Nihilo
• Witnessing to the Cross, Forgetting Human Sin: A Systematic-Theological Inquiry in the “Word of the Cross” (1 Cor. 1:18)
• The Cross of Christ and God’s Power
• God’s Weakness and Power
• The Paradox of Faith
• “To Know Nothing Except Jesus Christ, and Him Crucified”: Supralapsarian Christology and a Theology of the Cross
• Contributors
• Index of Names