“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

1 Corinthians 1:18-19

In verse 17 Paul began to take a turn into a discussion of the contrast between human wisdom, and the wisdom of God. Keeping context in mind, this comes as Paul’s explanation for why the division was taking place in the Corinthian church community. In this subsection, Paul appears to be making the case that wisdom in this world brings about a great social divide between the wise and the unwise; the strong and the weak. This may seem like a rather strange line of reasoning for many of us today, but let’s pause a moment and consider…

In our time in the West for instance, we live in societies heavily influenced by Progressive thinking relating to public policy. That thinking says that we must have a society that is regulated by educated and highly trained professionals who will make important decisions for the benefit of the masses. The masses of people, it is reasoned, are not capable of making their own decisions in key areas of life, areas that professionals would be likely to make much better decisions than regular people.  So, this professional class begins to make laws, laws that regulate behaviors that require this or forbid that.

The result is that the professionals seldom hang out with the laborers with whom they have little or nothing in common, and society begins to fragment. Where that happens in society, and parts of society find themselves together in the congregation, they tend to mix poorly. In Paul’s day, there seem to have been groups in the Corinthian church who didn’t mix well together and sought to be identified with leaders. Consequently, the church began to frag,en