“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #8
“For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe” (1 Cor. 1:21).
This does not just say that the world through its wisdom does not know God. It says this inability of the world’s wisdom to know God is itself the wisdom of God. It was the wisdom of God that the world by wisdom could not get anywhere. God excluded philosophy as the way to true wisdom (even though the name philosophy means love of wisdom). And it is love of wisdom after a sort—the kind of wisdom the world has, and which is incapable of achieving the one thing needful, which is knowledge of God.
Not only did God shut up the way for the smartest guys in the room, but He also opened a way of access by means of preaching. This preaching is foolishness as far as the world is concerned, and always has been. This is why calls to make the preaching of the gospel “relevant” are exercises in vanity. If it is gospel preaching at all, there is no way to make it relevant. What we can hope for instead is that the Spirit of God will move on the preacher, making his declarations the right kind of irrelevant. This is important because just as worldly wisdom cannot attain to the knowledge of God neither can worldly folly attain to it. Paul is not saying that any old folly will get us there. No, it has to be the folly of preaching.
There is folly to man that is also folly to God. There is wisdom to man that is folly to God, and folly to man that is wisdom to God. It is this last one that we need.