Yet again, it was the poor who accepted the gospel. God, Paul told the Corinthians, had “chosen things without rank or standing in the world, mere nothings, to overthrow the existing order.”54 By executing the Messiah, the powers that be had condemned themselves to destruction. The Messiah was now enthroned at the right hand of God, preparing to depose “every sovereignty, authority, and power.”55 In Corinth, the cross was central to Paul’s message. When he had raised Jesus, the disgraced criminal, from the dead, God had displayed his pistis to the despised of this world. Where the emperor cult
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