ABSTRACT
The world's mocking hostility to spiritual truth led Paul to contrast not the wisdom of God and the wisdom of man – that would be too easy – but the madness of God and the wisdom of men. God has made 'foolish the wisdom of this world'. The preaching of the Cross is 'foolishness' to those that perish. God is pleased to save the world by the 'foolishness of preaching'. It is striking that Erasmus and others refer not merely to the 'foolishness' of preaching the Cross but, arrestingly, to the 'foolish Cross of Christ'. Such an expression goes beyond the strict warrant of Scripture; but when Paul writes of the 'foolishness of God' he does not merely mean that God's truth seems foolish to the worldly-wise but that all the wisdom that God reveals to Man is in a sense his own foolishness, his baby-talk.
