Ponderings on 1 Corinthians Chapters 1 – 4: (5)

“For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not in cleverness of speech, so that the cross of Christ would not be made void. For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 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? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not come to know God, God was well-pleased through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.” (1 Cor. 1:17 – 25).”

I embarked on the present reflections (chapters 1 – 4 of 1 Corinthians) because I was pondering 1 Corinthians Chapter 2, and as I meditated on Chapter 2 I considered its immediate context and saw the unity of the first four chapters of Paul’s letter. Even when we remind ourselves that chapters and verses were not in the original manuscripts, it can be awfully hard to move beyond the visual starts and stops of chapters and verses – it can be difficult to capture the flow and context of what we read; or better yet, to be captured by it.

Consider the connectivity of 1:17 with 2:4 - 5: “not in cleverness (wisdom) of speech, so that the Cross of Christ would not be made void” (1:17); “not in persuasive words of wisdom…so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God” (2:4 – 5).

There is division in the Corinthian church, and this division is the result of the Corinthians living as “mere men” (1 Cor. 3:3), they are “mere men” because they are living not in the Spirit, but as “men of flesh” (1 Cor. 3:1). The Gospel which Paul brought was not preached according to the wisdom of man, lest the Cross and its transforming power be nullified.

I think there is a tension here that we fail to confront. It is a tension that was not acknowledged in my seminary experience. Furthermore, I have never read about this tension in any preaching books or articles – I do not mean that no one has ever addressed the tension, I only mean that I have never read anything about the tension. This is the tension between effective communication and “the foolishness of the message” (of preaching). Christ crucified is “a stumbling block” and “foolishness” (1:23). Yet, effective communication means presenting the Gospel in such a way that our audience can understand it…at least understand enough to respond to it. Beyond that, this tension applies not only to the initial preaching of the Gospel, but to the life of the Church (2:6). Perhaps, with respect to Church-life, we have the same principle as found in Galatians 3:1-3, having begun in the Spirit do we now seek maturity in the flesh, in the natural? What is true of justification is also true of sanctification and glorification – we are either people of the Spirit or people of the “natural”.

We can be such well-trained communicators that we do not need the Holy Spirit – this is the tension. In fact, I don’t think we really need the Holy Spirit to do much of what we do, and perhaps we don’t need Him to do anything that we do because we can do what we do well. We have become pretty good sociologists and marketers and advertisers and…sad to say…at times entertainers. If we have a problem in the church we can hire a consultant or change leadership.

I wonder if our failure to share the Gospel is due in part to our buying into the wisdom of this age? After all, in marketing you certainly don’t want to turn the prospective customer off, you don’t want to offend the marketplace. Yet, the Gospel of the Christ of the Cross is foolishness, a stumbling block, and an offense. When we mitigate the Cross we deny the Christ of the Cross. Consider 1:27, the Gospel will “shame the wise…the strong”.

A counterweight to this is 1 Cor. 9:19 – 23 in which Paul writes that “I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.” So we are to use wisdom in communicating, and yet…it is not the wisdom of this world…for when we use the wisdom of this world the Cross of Christ is made of no effect (1:17). But do we really believe this?

Early on in my pastoral ministry I realized something that frightened me; I could prepare and deliver a pretty good sermon all on my own without God’s help. Why didn’t we discuss this in seminary? I am thankful for my training, but I also know that unless my training is transformed by the Cross that it is dangerous.

As I ponder 1 Corinthians chapters 1 – 4 I also wonder if I really believe what Paul is writing. I wonder if we really believe what Paul is saying…saying, I might add, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

During the past year or so I’ve been spending time in the Patristics, or Church Fathers; these are the orthodox writings of Christians who lived in the early centuries of Christianity. I have been excited about their sacramental and Christocentric encounter with Scripture – they looked for Jesus everywhere in the Bible, and in doing this they were being faithful to Jesus Himself – for Jesus revealed Himself through the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms (see Luke 24). To the Church Fathers Jesus Christ was everything, and in this they mirrored the Apostles – consider 1 Cor. 1:30 – 31. They ate from a rich table while we eat frozen dinners. (As an example; Augustine’s vision of Christ and His Body in the Psalms is expansive, he “sees” the fulfillment of Christ’s prayer in John 17 – we are truly called to live in koinonia with the Trinity).

The Patristics had an intertextual experience with Scripture (that is, they incorporated the entire Bible into their thinking, their teaching, their writing – seeing it as an integrated whole displaying Christ) that is foreign to our experience. While they generally had due regard for history and linguistics, they wanted to see Christ above all, and in this desire they sought to be transposed from the earthly to the heavenly so that they might behold Jesus Christ and draw others to Him.  At the same time they could hold a thought, a line of exegesis, an argument, and work with it, explore it, and search it out – to a degree that causes our modern minds with their short attention spans to implode.

Many of them also suffered for Christ, both within and without the professing church – for heresy has always been with us and I suppose it will continue until our Lord Jesus returns. Theirs was a faith forged in pressure, often pain, and sometimes death.

Yet again, just as I became aware that I could preach a pretty good sermon without the Holy Spirit, I also became aware that I could do some decent “Bible study” without the Holy Spirit – I could read the Bible without seeing Christ, without being touched by Christ, without being transformed into the image of Christ. And again, I wondered why we didn’t discuss this in seminary. Have our seminaries become captives of the world’s academia? Well, I don’t know the answer to that; maybe it is an issue of degree…maybe it depends on the school…maybe it is (and always has been) a lurking danger.

I have on my shelf commentaries on the Bible written by folks I respect, and yet when I read them it is not unusual to see a writer – scholar move from the Bible to the world’s thinking, then back to the Bible and then back to the world – paying homage to the Word of God one moment, and then paying homage to this present age in the next. I don’t think we can serve both God and worldly academia – the evidences that this present age demand before it shows respect are not always (seldom?) compatible with the Cross of Christ. Well, it’s complicated and I may be rambling. Perhaps we should confess that, “If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a bond servant of Christ,” Galatians 1:10b. Perhaps Galatians 1:10 ought to be in front of every author, every preacher, every pastor, every seminary professor…and every Christian.

Do we need the Holy Spirit? Are we encountering Jesus Christ as we read the Bible? Are we seeing the Face of God? Is the Word of God active in our lives (Hebrews 4:12, 1 Peter 1:22 – 25)?

Jesus Christ, the Bible, and Seminary

In my reading of Bonhoeffer over the past few months I have appreciated his emphasis on the Bible, both in the life of the congregation and in the seminary education of pastors. My sense is that the Bible, in Jesus Christ, was the gyroscope and center of gravity in Bonhoeffer’s education of seminarians. It was not a spoke in a wheel, it was the hub. All was measured by the Word of God, the Word of God was the standard by which all was measured.

There is an inherent danger when seminaries use the world’s academic standards and culture and seek the world’s academic acceptance, allowing the world to displace the Bible as the center of gravity and to become just a spoke in the wheel – the danger is that the seminary becomes neither hot nor cold, neither Biblical nor worldly – it flies without instrumentation, and exists without purpose, without form, without certainty – and sadly it ceases to be Christocentric.

It is one thing to engage in rigorous scholarship that is unashamedly Biblical and Christocentric, it is another to become just another academic institution. Within the Roman Catholic Church there is a minority voice that laments the loss of distinctive Catholicism within its university system – in some Catholic settings it is as if the schools are ashamed of their once Catholic identity. Within Protestant traditions there are seminaries which have long disassociated themselves from the authority of the Bible and the deity of Christ; and then there are those which, while considering themselves Evangelical, appear to increasingly embrace the sociological and academic trends of the world – thus eroding Biblical and Christocentric foundations. If we can believe Paul, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump.” If we can believe Paul, if we seek to please men we will not be the servants of Christ.

This does not mean that we are not intellectually vigorous, it does not mean that we do not rigorously engage in scholarship; but it does mean that our vigorous scholarship and intellectual rigor are not only Biblically informed, it means they are under the lordship of Jesus Christ and in harmony with His Word. If our scholastic and exegetical work is grounded in Biblical integrity then we need not be ashamed.

Could it be that when we engage in academic pursuits in conformity with the world that we seek to shield ourselves from the reproach of Christ? Could it be that we allow monetary interests, instead of Christ and the Bible, to arbitrate our institutional decisions? Are there seminaries, and other professing-Christian institutions, willing to suffer loss for the sake of a Biblical and Christocentric witness?

If there is a Biblical warrant for seminaries, and I take that to be open to debate, then surely the Biblical warrant for a particular seminary expires when that seminary jettisons the Bible as its intellectual arbiter and Jesus Christ as its reason for existence.

In a time when all things are being shaken the church desperately needs the Bible – and yet much of the church treats the Bible as a wall decoration. A trendy seminary is an irrelevant seminary and has lost its prophetic voice; a seminary that remains faithful to Jesus Christ and His Word is one that will produce fruit, some thirty, some sixty, and some one hundredfold.