God’s Weakness Is Stronger than Men

[…] “to see a sign from you” (Matthew 12:38). So, counting the words of the saints as worth almost nothing, words through which they could well have learned that he was the Christ, they kept demanding signs from God. That is why the Savior said to those sent by John, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk,” and so on (Matthew 11:4–5).

The Greeks, for their part, seek brilliance of diction and argument, and they think even the way of the dispensation in the flesh to be foolishness. They say, “Why was it necessary at all for the Word who is from God, being God by nature and able to accomplish whatever he purposes by will and nod, to become man and to endure death? How could a virgin give birth?” they say. “And how will what death has destroyed rise again?” But it is not at all surprising that they say such things: “For the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit, for they are foolishness to him” (1 Corinthians 2:14).

But to us it is the power and wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 1:24). For through him God the Father has saved the whole world under heaven, as through the power that is naturally his and through his own ineffable wisdom. For the Son is the wisdom and power of God the Father, through whom all things were brought into being and, once made, are preserved.

And if anyone, he says, should choose to measure the power that is in God against the powers of men, he will certainly see that whatever among the divine works may seem to have been done as in weakness, and as it were not with the full power of its Maker, is beyond and better than all human strength. You will understand wisdom in exactly the same way: what seems to be foolish is wiser than men. Suppose someone wished to compare the small and least of created things with the size and beauty of the elements, I mean heaven and the sun and the other stars, and fire and water and the rest. The power and wisdom found in the small things would be very slight, and, judged by their inferiority at least, it might seem a [The text is damaged here.] sort of thing. Yet no one among us could become the maker even of things so [The text is damaged here.]. Truly, then, “the weakness of God is stronger than men, and the foolishness of God is wiser than men” (1 Corinthians 1:25). So the dispensation holds all wisdom, for Christ has reigned with understanding, in wisdom, over the whole world under heaven.

“Proclaiming to you the testimony of God” (1 Corinthians 2:1). He calls Christ the testimony of God, for God the Father bore witness to him, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:17).

“And I was with you in weakness and in fear,” and so on (1 Corinthians 2:3). Although I used such modest instruction, he says, I was very much afraid that my words, if they proved too lofty for the understanding you had, would do you no good but rather harm. For those who are infants in mind, a tender and gentle word would suit their learning, “but solid food is for the mature, for those who by practice have their senses trained to distinguish good and evil” (Hebrews 5:14). So my word to you, he says, came as in great weakness, and not with the full power of one who teaches the mysteries. Nor was it “in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Corinthians 2:4–5).

For to their preaching the apostles added signs from God as well. They made the deed itself a clear demonstration that one must believe that God was attested in them, through the Spirit and through the deeds themselves, since they used a certain ineffable and inexpressible power and working and performed their wonders with ease. The little myths of the Greeks would naturally need an eloquence to fight in their defense and, as it were, to cover up their ugliness. But for the divine preaching a plain and gentle word suffices, attested as it is by the power of God.