8. For there are many of those wise men of
the world whose wisdom is folly with God, who contradict our
proclamation of God from God, True from True, Perfect from Perfect, One
from One, as though we taught things impossible. They pin their
faith to certain conclusions which they have reached by process of
logic:—Nothing can be born of one, for every birth requires
two parents, and If this Son be born of One He has received a
part of His Begetter: if He be a part, then Neither of the Two is
perfect, for something is missing from Him from Whom the Son issued,
and there cannot be
fulness in One Who consists of a portion of Another. Thus Neither
is perfect, for the Begetter has lost His fulness, and the Begotten has
not acquired it. This is that wisdom of the world which
was foreseen by God even in the prophet’s days, and condemned
through him in the words, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
reject the understanding of the prudent Isaiah xxix. 14.. And the apostle says:
Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the
inquirer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of
this world? For because in the wisdom of God the world through
wisdom knew not God, it pleased God through the foolishness of
preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews seek signs, and
the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews
indeed a stumbling-block and to the Gentiles foolishness, but unto them
that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the
wisdom of God. Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men,
and the weakness of God is stronger than men 1 Cor. i. 20–25..