Beggarly Skills

1 Corinthians 2:8 KJV

Which none of the princes of this world knew: for had they known it, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

This is a hugely exclusive statement. Paul says that none of the princes of this world knew the "hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world".  None of them

• Not Pilate
• Not Herod
• Not the High Priest
• Not the Roman soldiers
• Not the Sanhedrin (as a body, we know that two of them as individuals had come to see Christ as Lord.)

None of them knew the mystery concerning Christ and our glory (salvation through faith in Him).

The academic world of our day has fits over these types of statements of exclusivity. They believe that all real truth is held in the hands of the educated. It is the same argument Catholicism used to prevent the Bible from being in the hands of those they had not pre-conformed to think as they wanted through their seminaries. Those, they contest, who haven't their training are incapable of handling the truth responsibly. They might argue Paul's statement here as proof of their position; they would believe it is impossible for the uneducated (such as were the majority of the Apostles) to know something that none of the princes of this world accept as truth. It most not be true, they would say, if none of the educated and privileged have acknowledged it as truth.

I believe that Christians would be well served to learn the skills of research and investigation. I believe it would be grand if we learned to employee disciplined journalism in our reporting of truth. But much of what is Christian can't be confined to the beggarly skills of worldly education and science. God is bigger than that. And those who refuse to step outside the fences of man made academia will never see the wisdom God has hidden in Jesus Christ.