1 Cor. i. 21. “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.” This rendering has been a fertile source of error, as if preaching was in itself, or as viewed by the Corinthians, an inappropriate means for the diffusion of the Gospel, a thought altogether at variance with the tone of the context, and with the facts of history. The Greeks were, of all the peoples of antiquity, the least disposed to think lightly of oratory, and the whole tenor of the passage shows that their tendency was to overrate, not underrate, the power of speech. What was foolishness to them was not the act of preaching, but the doctrine preached--salvation through a crucified Christ. The Rheims here clearly enough gives the true sense, “it pleased God by the folishnes of the preaching to saue them that beleeue.”
1 Cor. ix. 5. “Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles?” This mode of speech implies that some only of the other apostles were married. What the Greek states is that all or most of them were. Here again the Rheims correctly renders, “as also the rest of the Apostles.”
2 Cor. v. 14. “Because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead,” thus seeming to imply that the death of Christ upon the cross is a proof that all men were in a state of spiritual death; whereas the conclusion which the Apostle draws from the death of Christ is, that all who truly believe in Him die to their old fleshly sinful life, “because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died.”
Eph. iii 10. “To the intent that now unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the church the manifold wisdom of God.” It would only be after much careful consideration that the reader of these words would discover that they cannot mean that the manifold wisdom of God is to be known _by_ the Church. What the Apostle really states is, that it was in the Divine purpose that through the Church the manifold wisdom of God was to be made known to the angelic powers. Of all the ancient versions the Rheims, though here, as usual, disfigured by its offensive Latinisms, most clearly expresses the sense of the verse; its rendering is, “that the manifold wisdom of God may be notified to the Princes and Potentates in the celestials by the Church.”
