A third error in Carl Sagan’s view of the universe is to suppose that somehow in that kind of a closed, materialistic system which excludes God, moral purpose and moral obligation can come about. If I am the accident of the universe, why do I owe anybody anything? I do not. I am not answerable to anything. How am I answerable to an impersonal universe? And yet, Sagan cannot live with that kind of a universe, so he projects moral values into it, apparently not realizing that the impersonal cosmos is not able to account for morality.
As we mentioned earlier, God will destroy the wisdom of the wise. Let me say that if there were no other reason for believing what Paul says, we have the great fact of the cross of Jesus Christ. When Jesus appeared on the stage of history he was God come in human flesh. And yet, what was the response of human beings to Him? They killed Him. Where is the folly of the so-called wisdom of the world more clearly seen than at the crucifixion?
The second section of Paul’s treatment of wisdom and folly here is the power of what the world would call the “foolishness of God.” Later on, Paul is going to show that it is not at all foolish. As a matter of fact, it is a deep wisdom—wisdom even beyond the apostle Paul because there are things about it that he does not fully understand. Nevertheless, this Gospel, this cross, which is the burden of his message and which is the burden of 1 Corinthians, is in the eyes of the world utterly foolish. Oh, you can talk about philosophy and learn a great deal about it. You can begin to talk about how men and women think and react, and all of those things. And the world will say, “Ah, my, what a wise man that person is, or what a wise woman to be talking that way.” The world can talk about sociology, evolution, and various aspects of today’s modern science. People listen to what all these specialists have to say and conclude, “Oh, what a brilliant person we’re dealing with.”
But then you talk about God who so loved the world that He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to die in order that whoever believes on Him might not perish but have everlasting life. And what does the world say? The world says, “I never heard anything so foolish in my life.” Yet, that is the Gospel. That is the power of God. That is what changes lives. And because that is true, that is reality. Oh, the theories will come and go. One reason, of course, is that the old theories do not work, which is why you need a new theory to replace them. But you know perfectly well how passing all of that is. Yet there is the Gospel which endures, which is based on the very nature of God, who is reality itself and who changes not.
The world says that all this is foolishness, but Paul has a wonderful way of focusing this foolishness of the Gospel in the cross because, as he says quite clearly, it is the cross that is the offense. You can talk in a general way about God loving us, and people are not offended by that because after all, why not? They say they are a nice person and so why should God not love them? But then start to talk about the cross, where God in the person of His Son was made man for our salvation, and was ridiculed, and eventually crucified. People do not want that.
In Paul’s day, the cross was a symbol of utter shame. We do not have anything quite like it. Not even the gallows or the gas chamber is quite like that. Cicero (106-43 B.C) said, “The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen, but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears.”1 It is hard to find a parallel to that today because we talk about everything, no matter how bad it is. Yet, Cicero says that is what the cross was like. Nobody wanted to think about it. You certainly did not want to talk about it. And yet, what does Paul say? “I glory in the cross.” Why? Because, he says, “It is the power of God.” That is where the answers are found. That is where the wisdom lies.
[1]Cicero, In Defense of Rabirius, in The Speeches of Cicero, trans. H. G. Hodge (London: Heinemann, 1927), 5.16, 467. Quoted in John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2006), 30. Original edition, 1986.
