c.) Nor did God choose those whom He first called to receive the Gospel from among the wise or those adorned with any other natural gift, lest the cross of Christ be deprived of the glory of its own power (1 Cor 1:26-31).
The Apostle teaches in this passage too that the ways of men are not the ways of God; for God had not chosen the wise of this age to propagate the Gospel, but had rejected worldly wisdom in order to establish the divine wisdom of the cross, which is regarded by men as foolishness and weakness. He acted with the same reasoning in the selection of those whom He first called to receive the Gospel, and thus showed that the foolishness and weakness of God are wiser and stronger than men "not only through the teachers but also through the disciples; for He chose not only unlettered teachers but also such disciples" (Chrysostom). Therefore, confirming the preceding statement (for see) and demonstrating by a new argument that simple preaching befits the Gospel, Paul exhorts the Corinthians to consider themselves, who were the first called to the Gospel:
1 Cor 1:26 For see your calling, brothers, because if you direct your minds to the persons called, not many wise according to the flesh, not many powerful, not many noble are found in your number. With three expressions the Apostle excludes everything that worldly men are accustomed to value highly: merely human wisdom (according to the flesh), power, and nobility, with which wealth is usually joined. And although he concedes that there are some among them who are adorned with those gifts, he suggests that they are so few that they almost disappear in comparison with the rest. Nor is this surprising; for the Lord had already established as a sign by which the divinity of His mission might be recognized: "The poor have the gospel preached to them" (Matt. 11:5), and He had asserted that the prophetic words "He has sent me to preach the gospel to the poor" (Isa. 61:1) were spoken of Himself (Luke 4:17ff.), nor had He called the magnates of His people but the despised and forsaken to Himself. The Apostle explains why God in His wisdom chose this order of things. Pride had cast down our first parents from their original dignity; their descendants, not taught by that example and proceeding along the same path, tried to surpass others by certain external goods, and boasting of those goods which they owed solely to divine kindness as if they were their own, they looked down on others because they lacked them. But all those goods, however highly men value them, do not help toward man's true end and therefore occupy no place in the economy of salvation. To show this more clearly, God chose the first fruits of faith not among those who, equipped with those worldly endowments, could attribute their calling to themselves and their natural goods,
1 Cor 1:27. but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong. Both adjectives (singular and plural) are sometimes used by Greek writers, both secular and sacred, of persons when they wish to speak in a general sense or to designate some whole class without attending to its individual members (cf. John 6:31; Heb. 1:1; Gal. 3:22, etc.); therefore "foolish" means foolish persons, etc. Now the Apostle in this passage does not call "foolish of the world" those who are regarded as foolish by the world though they are not foolish (cf. Thomas, etc.), but in opposition to "wise" those who lack knowledge, i.e., the unlearned and simple. Therefore, choosing these and the weak of the world, who lack authority, God confounded and put to shame the wise and strong, since they saw themselves relegated behind the unlearned and weak. To the third class of the noble, the Apostle opposes not one but three classes, as to the two preceding ones, in order to humble them more:
1 Cor 1:28-29. and the ignoble of the world (those who have no lineage and cannot name a great number of ancestors) and the despised (those who are held as nothing and are abject) God chose, and the things that are not (those who are considered as if they were not and are not counted in number but like the slaves of the ancients are valued not as persons but as things), that He might destroy the things that are (i.e., those who boast that they are something). In this third class Paul uses a stronger word (to render vain, to take away power from someone, cf. Rom. 3:3); the noble are not only to be confounded but to be cast down from their high position (Luke 1:52) and as it were obliterated. Yet God did not confound the wise and strong through the unlearned and weak and destroy the things that are through the things that are not in order to work a miracle and show His power (cf. Chrysostom), but His ultimate purpose is 29. that no flesh might boast in His sight. For by choosing the unlearned and weak and poor first for faith, God clearly taught that those worldly goods which natural man values so highly not only do not help in attaining salvation but rather hinder or delay it; therefore man, whoever he may be (all flesh), has nothing in which he can boast before God, since even the wise and powerful and noble are forced to confess that they do not owe their salvation to their natural goods.
That the Apostle in this passage is speaking of the faithful who were called (not of the callers, the Apostles) is almost the universal opinion of the patristic interpreters (cf. Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Damascene, Oecumenius, Theophylact, Pelagius, Primasius, Sedulius, etc.), which almost all rightly hold today as well. However, the authority of the Ordinary and Interlinear Glosses, which perhaps was derived from Augustine (cf. Commentary on Psalm 65:4, which he holds to in Confessions VIII.4), caused medieval interpreters (Hervaeus, Hugh of St. Cher, Thomas, Lyra, Dionysius, etc.) to explain the passage concerning the Apostles doing the calling, while many more recent ones (Estius, Lapide, Tirinus, Cornelius, Natalis, also Menochius) combined both expositions. Therefore Thomas establishes this connection between 1 Cor 1:26 and the preceding pericope: "Above, the Apostle showed that the mode of teaching which consists in wisdom of speech does not befit Christian doctrine by reason of its subject matter, which is the very cross of Christ; here he shows that the aforesaid mode does not befit Christian doctrine by reason of the teachers, because the first teachers of the faith were not wise with carnal wisdom, so it was not fitting for them to teach in wisdom of speech." Then by the words "See your calling" he judges that the Corinthians are led "to consider the manner of their calling as regards those through whom they were called," "among whom not many (namely, only Paul and Apollos) were instructed with worldly wisdom"; finally in almost every verse he supplies certain things:
1 Cor 1:27. "God chose what is foolish in the world for the office of preaching," etc. But I don't know whether these supplements are not entirely arbitrary; moreover, this argument would have been poorly adapted to the Corinthians, who had had only Paul and Apollos as teachers; also the connection indicated by Thomas does not seem appropriate, since in the preceding passage (1 Cor 1:20-21) the Apostle had always spoken of teachers; for it is by no means permissible to understand 1 Cor 1:20 with Thomas as concerning those called, if attention is paid to its connection with 1 Cor 1:17, 19. Therefore we judge that this passage should be understood with the Fathers as concerning only those called.
Nevertheless, man can boast, though not before God in himself, as it were comparing himself with God and attributing his goods to himself, but in God, referring all things to Him from whom alone he has received everything. Therefore the Apostle, after showing the Corinthians that they owe their salvation neither to their own wisdom, which was nothing, nor to power or nobility, which they lacked, and therefore have nothing in which to boast before God, recalls to their memory the true and only source of salvation and teaches them the genuine manner of boasting:
1 Cor 1:30. But from Him you are in Christ Jesus, who has been made for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption. There are three principal expositions of these opening words: for the Greeks, connecting the words "you are from God" more closely, see indicated the divine adoption which Christians obtain in Jesus Christ (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Damascene, Oecumenius, Theophylact, also apparently Pelagius, Primasius, Rabanus, Estius). This explanation seems hardly appropriate, because John indeed (1 John 3:10; 4:2ff., etc.), but not Paul, is accustomed to designate our adoption by the words "to be from God," and also all the emphasis with which the Apostle placed that "from Him" at the beginning, in order to show that we owe everything to God alone, is entirely lost if it is joined so closely with the verb "you are." Much less pleasing is another explanation, which is found among recent interpreters with only a few (Estius, Bisping—among non-Catholics Hofmann, Schnedermann, etc.); for they judge that by the verb "are" the Apostle expresses that new existence which we have received from God as Christians; but nowhere in Scripture, I think, is the verb "to be" used in such a definite and significant sense. It remains, therefore, that with by far most interpreters (Aquinas, Lyra, Dionysius, Cajetan, Estius, Lapide, Calmet, Natalis, Menochius, etc.; most non-Catholics) we join the words "you are in Christ" more closely; for "to be in Christ" is a solemn formula by which Paul designates the intimate relation between Christ and the faithful, insofar as the baptized are inserted into the mystical body of the Lord as members. As His members, Christ now shares with us all that He possesses, having been made for us wisdom from God and righteousness and sanctification and redemption.
Again the Apostle emphasizes that these too are benefits from God which are connected with our insertion into Christ, nor do some rightly (Maldonatus) explain the words "from God" as an apposition to "wisdom," as if divine wisdom were opposed to human; for the genuine order of words already opposes this explanation (wisdom for us from God). To those inserted in Christ, in whom are all the treasures of knowledge and wisdom (Col. 2:3), His very wisdom has been made ours; for as Chrysostom notes, it is not said that Christ made us wise but that He was made wisdom for us, so that the abundance of the gift might be shown. As to His members, He has also been made for us righteousness and sanctification, sharing His righteousness and holiness with us, so that in us, as His members, nothing is found that displeases God, but all things are found that please God; and finally He has been made for us redemption, insofar as, inserted into Him, we are no longer slaves of sin and the devil. "See," says Chrysostom, "how he proceeds; for first he made us wise by freeing us from error, then righteous and holy by bestowing the Spirit, and thus he redeemed us from all evils, so that we are His own." It is evident that the Apostle is not speaking of imputed righteousness in the Protestant sense; for in the same way that Christ's wisdom is not imputed to us but truly shared with us, so also His righteousness and holiness are not imputed to us but truly shared with us, so that we are truly righteous and holy. Furthermore, note that the Apostle has joined these two members, righteousness and sanctification, more closely together, so that they constitute as it were one thing; for man is not first justified and then sanctified, but these two things are done in one and the same act by the infusion of sanctifying grace; wherefore elsewhere also in inverse order he places sanctification before justification (6:11). Now we have received all these things from God and therefore have nothing in which to boast before God, but it is required 31. that (it be done) as it is written: "Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord."
These words are not read explicitly in Scripture, but are a necessary consequence from Jer. 9:23-24: "Thus says the Lord: Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the strong man boast in his strength, let not the rich man boast in his riches: but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord." Therefore according to the prophet "all pride of men is removed, when their wisdom and strength and riches are reckoned as nothing, and this is the only boasting, that one should know and understand that He Himself is the Lord, who has shown mercy and judgment and righteousness upon the earth" (Jerome). Therefore man has nothing from himself by which he can please God and therefore truly boast; he can boast only in this, that he knows the Lord, who has manifested mercy and righteousness in a supernatural way; but this knowledge he did not and could not draw from his natural wisdom, but received it from God alone. Whence it follows that he can boast only in God alone.—As to the construction, you should note that the subjunctive "let him boast" does not depend on the preceding conjunction "that" but stands for the imperative.
The four gifts which Christ shares with His members Thomas distributes thus: to foolishness (God chose what is foolish in the world) is opposed wisdom, to weakness righteousness which is compared to a breastplate (Wis. 5:19), to ignobility holiness by which we are joined with God, and redemption by which we are freed from the slavery of sin. Bernard (Sermon on Canticles 22:10ff.) adapts those four to the cardinal virtues: "He was made for us wisdom teaching prudence, righteousness forgiving sins, sanctification as an example of temperance living continently, redemption as an example of patience dying bravely." Cajetan explains thus: "Christ was made for us wisdom perfecting the intellect, and righteousness in the will, and sanctification in work, and redemption in state." These and other similar things seem to have been thought out more subtly than truly, as also those which are brought forward by modern Catholics (e.g., Bisping: wisdom corresponds to faith, righteousness and sanctification to charity, redemption to hope) and non-Catholics (e.g., Godet: the words "power of God and wisdom of God" are in a certain way explained, since the last three gifts expound the power of God).
CONTINUE
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