Foolishness Wiser Than Men: Renaissance Thought in Light of St. Paul
Since the time of Socrates and before, great minds have probed the nature of wisdom and its converse, folly. Viewed through the lens of 1 Corinthians 1:18-29, the works of Machiavelli, Erasmus, Cervantes, and St. Teresa of Avila form a stark image of wisdom and folly as transformed by the Gospel. Paul asks, "Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?"[1] He presents the inversion that occurred over the course of salvation history, fully in line with the clashing paradoxes of the Gospel message. Machiavelli articulates the wisdom of the world, a cold, shrewd, self-interested calculus. Through witty satire, Erasmus upsets this reasoning; in praising folly, he reveals the common hypocrisy of those considered wise. None exemplify folly better than Cervantes' knight Don Quixote, the adventurer perhaps saner than his critics. However, amongst these thinkers, the saint and mystic Teresa of Avila grasps Paul's point best, as she drew closest to the Crucified during her earthly life. Strength becomes weakness and wisdom becomes folly through the death of the Author of Life, because He did not stay dead.
Niccolò Machiavelli demonstrates exactly the "wisdom of the wise" in his discussion regarding prudence. The idealized humanism so common amongst Renaissance thinkers is notably absent in The Prince; Machiavelli sees keenly the weaknesses of human nature and knows how to take advantage of them. He first describes prudence as a "knowing afar off," or a strategic competence, the ability to capitalize on every situation in order to gain or retain power. [2]Prudence allows a prince to be opportunistic. Leaders such as Moses and Cyrus "owed nothing to fortune but the opportunity which gave them matter to be shaped into what form they thought fit; and without that opportunity their powers would have been wasted, and without their powers the opportunity would have come in vain."[3] Machiavelli later says that fortune rules half of men's actions, while the rest is left to free will. [4] Fortune and prudence form two cornerstones, as prudence empowers the prince to walk the razor's edge of fortune and come out on top.
Throughout The Prince, Machiavelli is eminently practical and realistic. He notes, "how we live is so far removed from how we ought to live, that he who abandons what is done for what ought to be done, will rather learn to bring about his own ruin than his preservation. . . . it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it, according to the necessity of the case."[5] Rather than holding to an objective standard of goodness, the prince acts as circumstances dictate. This leads to the opinion as old, at least, as Thrasymachus, that might makes right, allowing for considerable latitude on the part of the prince.[6] In Machiavelli's words, "a prince . . . cannot observe all those things which are considered good in men, being often obligated, in order to maintain the state, to act against faith, against charity, against humanity, and against religion."[7] Actions the classical and medieval political thinkers would deem evil are perfectly acceptable in this vision of princely prudence. The only remaining concern is that the citizenry be fed a positive image of their leader.
To that end, Machiavelli lays out a dichotomy between appearances and reality: "Everybody sees what you appear to be, few feel what you are, and those few will not dare to oppose themselves to the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them; and in the actions of men, and especially of princes, from which there is no appeal, the end justifies the means."[8] The maintenance of a good image masks the terrifying relativism at the heart of Machiavelli's conception of prudence. In his worldly wisdom, he might deem it prudent that one man should die for the people.[9] However, to return to the words of St. Paul, "since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe."[10] Machiavelli's wisdom becomes folly because it becomes fruitless. The prince can build larger barns and make merry, blind to the reality that before long, his soul will be required of him and earthly things will come to nothing.[11]
As St. Paul makes clear in no uncertain terms, the wisdom of the world has been shattered, as ultimately "the thoughts of men . . . are but a breath."[12] In the words of Abraham, Israel had Moses and the prophets, but to no avail.[13] Erasmus highlights this truth through humor, drawing close to Divine wisdom by inverting what seems sensible. As Folly declares,
Anybody would prefer someone from the ordinary run of fools, someone who can manage fools or obey them as a fool himself, and can please those like himself, that is, most men. And he would be pleasant to his wife and agreeable to his friends, a congenial guest for a meal and good company for a drink, a man in fact who thinks every human interest is his concern. The wise man's a bore. I had enough of him long ago; and so my speech will move on to more profitable themes.[14]
Christ seems to think as highly of the foolish, or as little of the wise, in saying, "I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to infants; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will."[15] Folly, much like the children she praises, does not hide behind a mask: "I've no use for cosmetics, my face doesn't pretend to be anything different from my innermost feelings. I am myself wherever I am, and no one can pretend I'm not¾especially those who lay special claim to be called the personification of wisdom."[16]Unlike the wise man, scribe, or debater of the age, Folly is no whitewashed tomb.[17] The hypocritical image Machiavelli considers good and necessary for the maintenance of a prince's power is absent in Folly.
As Folly mentions later in her speech, the ultimate folly came with the Incarnation. By taking the form of a servant and being born in human likeness, Christ became foolish so as to upset worldly wisdom.[18] The paradoxes found in the person of Christ show the way to true wisdom, open to the fools humble enough to search for it. "The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing," says Paul, "but to us who are being saved, it is the power of God."[19] He continues, "Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called . . . Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."[20] This paradox undoes the Machiavellian hypocrisy. The prince's perfectly curated image masks a vicious striving for power that admits of no standard of goodness beyond the self. Christ "had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him," but an unveiling of this mystery reveals a deeper and more beautiful truth. Through the apparently foolish death of a Galilean carpenter, God has chosen "to save those who believe."[21] Through folly comes faith, and faith transforms folly to wisdom.
St. Paul continues in 1 Corinthians 1, instructing his listeners to see their place in this grand inversion of folly and wisdom: "For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise . . . so that no human being might boast in the presence of God."[22] Few characters embody the archetypal Fool quite like Don Quixote. He loses his wits by immersing himself in chivalric literature, and "conceived the strangest notion any madman had ever conceived, namely, he deemed it necessary and proper, not only for the increase of his own honor but as a service to his country, to become a knight-errant and travel throughout the world, armed and on horseback, in quest of adventures, performing all those deeds he had seen knights in his books perform."[23] His is the world of imagination, wonder, romance, and delight, and so he shames the wise and brings to nothing things that are.[24] Despite the mockery he receives, he is at least as close to sanity as his scoffers. As G. K. Chesterton pointed out, the insane are not merely those who have lost their reason; they can be those who have lost everything except their reason.[25] They are the Men Without Chests identified by C. S. Lewis, or the Hollow Men grieved by T. S. Eliot.[26] Much can be said about the character of Don Quixote, but it must at least be said that he has a chest.
On his deathbed, Don Quixote repents of his knight-errantry and falls into a despondent disillusionment.[27] This conclusion reveals that, while his life had formed a kind of praise of folly, he did not model the concluding point of Folly's speech. He did not live out the foolishness of Christianity. Don Quixote is a knight, but not Christ's knight. He is a fisherman, but not a fisher of men.[28] Despite this shortcoming, he still serves to cast the mighty from their thrones and exalt the lowly, disrupting the established social norms with the bracing wind of idyllic imagination.[29]
While Don Quixote models some of what St. Paul describes in 1 Corinthians, it is Cervantes' fellow Spaniard St. Teresa of Avila who grasps Paul's point most fully. Her life was characterized by deep mystical encounters with Christ, and through this supernatural union, she points the way to wisdom through folly and paradox. Her image of the soul as a diamond castle with Christ in the center strikes the balance of romantic, almost Quixotic imagination without the extreme of absurdity. Teresa is also entirely unconcerned with appearing the fool in order to give testament to His Majesty. She exclaims, "O secrets of God! I would never tire of trying to explain them if I thought I could in some way manage to do so; thus I will say a thousand foolish things in order that I might at times succeed and that we might give great praise to the Lord."[30] In the progression through the castle, catalyzed by self-knowledge, humility, surrender, and perseverance in prayer, God "[makes] this soul a fool with regard to all so as better to impress upon it true wisdom."[31] This foolishness culminates in what Teresa describes as a "blessed madness" through spiritual betrothal.[32]
In describing such a union, St. Teresa frequently references the Song of Songs, the mystical love song of the Old Testament.[33] As an Old Testament book, it points towards the New Testament. The encounter of bride and bridegroom in the Song of Songs is fulfilled in Mary Magdalene's encounter with the Risen Christ, recorded in John 20. The centrality of the Resurrection to Christianity cannot be overstated, and thus the Resurrection also serves as the foundation for Paul's paradoxical claims in 1 Corinthians. By all earthly calculations, Christ's shameful death was the utmost folly, and if His tomb had remained sealed, this calculation would have been vindicated. However, His Majesty "broke the prison-bars of death and rose victorious from the underworld."[34] In Christ's own words, "wisdom is justified by her deeds," and no deed has been more definitive.[35] The Cross is "a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles," but the Resurrection reveals "Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God."[36]
In the words of St. Paul, strength becomes weakness and wisdom becomes folly through the death of the Author of Life, because He did not stay dead. Machiavelli effectively expresses the wisdom of the world, consisting in self-interested, strategic cunning that capitalizes on the weaknesses of others. Erasmus' humorous presentation of Folly personified reveals the prince's hypocrisy, and begins to shed light on the true wisdom found in the paradox of the Gospel. The romantic and imaginative adventurer Don Quixote also challenges worldly wisdom, but he does not go far enough, as his is a madness not yet divine. Teresa's mystical outline of the spiritual life points the way to divine madness through union with the Risen Christ. For St. Paul, faith sparks the conversion of folly and wisdom; for the Evangelist, faith is the prerequisite to becoming children of God.[37]Faith's transforming of folly to wisdom, then, is also the path to Divine sonship. To His children, once fools now become wise and once dead now restored to life, the Father is pleased to grant the Kingdom.
[1] 1 Corinthians 1:20 (RSVCE).
[2] Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, in The Prince and the Discourses, trans. Luigi Ricci (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), 11.
[3] Ibid., 20-21.
[4] Ibid., 91.
[5] Ibid., 56.
[6] Plato, Republic, in The Dialogues of Plato, Vol. 1, trans. B. Jowett (New York: Random House, 1937), I.338c.
[7] Machiavelli, 65.
[8] Ibid., 66.
[9] John 18:14.
[10] 1 Corinthians 1:21.
[11] Luke 12:18-20.
[12] Psalm 94:11.
[13] Luke 16:29.
[14] Desiderius Erasmus, Praise of Folly, in Praise of Folly and Letter to Maarten Van Dorp, trans. Betty Radice (London: Penguin Books, 1993), 47.
[15] Matthew 11:25-26.
[16] Erasmus, 23, 13.
[17] 1 Corinthians 1:20, Matthew 23:27.
[18] Philippians 2:7.
[19] 1 Corinthians 1:18.
[20] 1 Corinthians 1:22-24.
[21] 1 Corinthians 1:21.
[22] 1 Corinthians 1:26-27, 29.
[23] Miguel Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. James H. Montgomery (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2009), 19.
[24] 1 Corinthians 1:27-28.
[25] G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1908), 24.
[26] Cf. C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: HarperCollins, 2001); T. S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men," in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, 5th ed., (New York: Norton & Company, 1970), 879.
[27] Cervantes, 822.
[28] Luke 5:10.
[29] Luke 1:52.
[30] Teresa of Avila, The Interior Castle, Study Edition, 2nd ed., trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (Washington, D. C.: ICS Publications, 2020), 134.
[31] Ibid., 137.
[32] Ibid., 274.
[33] Ibid., 87, 138, 243, 393, 406.
[34] "The Easter Proclamation" in The Roman Missal, 3rd ed. (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2011), PDF, https://archive.org/details/Roman-Missal-Third-Edition/page/n1/mode/1up, 350.
[35] Matthew 11:19.
[36] 1 Corinthians 1:23-24.
[37] John 1:12.
