For since 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.
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Ambrosiaster
AD 400
The world has not recognized God but has attributed divine majesty to his creatures and to the elemental powers of the universe, thinking that visible things ought to be worshiped. God has therefore chosen a form of preaching which will seem foolish to such people. Those who reject what the apostles preach will be condemned, while believers are being saved. Commentary on Paul’s Epistles.
Given that men had rejected the contemplation of God and were looking for him in nature and in the material world, making gods for themselves out of mortal men and demons, the loving and general Savior of all, the Word of God, took to himself a body and walked about like a man, in order to meet the senses halfway, so that those who think that God is corporeal might perceive the truth by observing what the Lord accomplishes in his body, and through him recognize the Father.
And if you ask the cause of their seeming wisdom, he will say, "because of the blindness of their heart; "since "in the wisdom of God "that is, as proclaimed by the prophets, "the world knew not "in the wisdom "which spake by the prophets ""Him"
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. Mark the phrase, "in the wisdom of God," God shows His wisdom in the marvellous structure and government of the world, as S. Thomas says. In other words, the world in its foolishness knew not God practically in His wisdom stamped on His Creation, as the Author of its salvation, and Leader to a life of bliss; nor yet speculatively, because philosophers regarded God as powerless to create; they thought Him to act under necessity, and to be void of providence, &c.
Hence it is that God has revealed Himself and His salvation to the world in a way which seems to the world foolishness, viz, by the Cross. He has thus stooped to men, and become as or were foolish among them; just as a teacher will sometimes act as a boy, and talk as a boy, amongst boys. So Christ, because He was not understood as God, revealed Himself to men, as a Prayer of Manasseh , a...
For seeing that in the wisdom of God That is, by the works of the divine wisdom, by the visible creatures of this world, and the effects of his providence, the world had not wisdom, or was not wise enough, to know and worship God, as they might, and ought to have done: it pleased God to show his power by the foolishness of preaching, by sending illiterate men to preach a God crucified, which to human wisdom seems a folly, and to save men by this belief. (Witham)
The gospel, which I announce to you, though it appears folly to the vain philosopher, is the wisdom of God; and whilst it exhibits the picture of a crucified God, and teaches us the mortification of our senses, promises a happiness in the next life, not to be found in this. (Vat. Grot. Tir. Just. )
To believe in the one who was crucified and buried and to be fully convinced that he rose again does not need more reasoning but faith alone. The apostles themselves were converted not by wisdom but by faith. Once they had that, they surpassed the heathen wise men in both wisdom and intellectual depth… . Plato was cast out not by another philosopher of more skill but by unlearned fishers.
Since, therefore, human wisdom has no existence (Socrates says in the writings of Plato), let us follow that which is divine, and let us give thanks to God, who has revealed and delivered it to us; and let us congratulate ourselves, that through the divine bounty we possess the truth and wisdom, which, though sought by so many intellects through so many ages, philosophy
Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord: the King against the tyrant; not with omnipotent power and wisdom, but with that which is accounted the foolishness
By the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.".
See whether the heathen have in God the Father the "substance "of origin, and wisdom, and natural power of Godward recognition; by means of which power the apostle withal notes that "in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom knew not God"
