Paul asks the Corinthians to look around for the experts of the world and see what they have accomplished in knowing God. His first three questions call the roll: the wise, the scribe, the disputer. The last question gives the verdict: God has made their wisdom foolish. Barnes says Paul speaks of the boasted wisdom of the world in reference to salvation, which is all baffled and shown to be of no value. The Corinthians were dividing over teachers (1 Corinthians 1:12), and Paul had just said he preached "not with wisdom of words" (1 Corinthians 1:17). Paul's questions pull the rug out from under any pride in human wisdom.

Paul answers the final question himself: "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" (1 Corinthians 1:21). He continues: "we preach Christ crucified... Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (1 Corinthians 1:23-24), and "the foolishness of God is wiser than men" (1 Corinthians 1:25). The implied answer to "Where is the wise?" is that, for all his wisdom, the world "knew not God" (1 Corinthians 1:21).

Paul's wording echoes Isaiah 33:18, "Where is the scribe? where is the receiver?" Barnes notes the similar language there, and Gill says these are "the apostle's own words," though he "may allude to" Isaiah 33:18, "where there are some phrases much like these, but the meaning is very different." The "scribe" (grammateus) was a learned man among the Jews, but Barnes notes that some take Paul to mean Jewish men of learning here and thinks he "probably had reference to the Greeks." The "disputer" (suzētētēs) is a debater. Barnes takes him as the subtle Greek sophist, while Gill reads "this world" as the Jewish world, a man "who pretends to the knowledge of the more abstruse and secret senses of Scripture." Either way, the point stands: the most learned Jew and the sharpest Greek arrive at the same place.

This question reveals how God works. He did not save the world by out-arguing its philosophers. He saved it through a message the world calls foolish: a crucified Christ (1 Corinthians 1:23). That way, "no flesh should glory in his presence" (1 Corinthians 1:29). God's method protects His glory, and it reaches people the world overlooks: "not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called" (1 Corinthians 1:26).

Paul is not saying learning is evil. He is saying human wisdom cannot find God by its own power. Barnes says God, by His plan of salvation, "poured contempt on all the schemes of philosophers, and evinced their folly." The cross does what all the wise, the scribes, and the debaters together could not.