One way of characterizing this age with its “fake news,” with Russian meddling through social media, with the Press demonized as the enemy, and now the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, is as an age of rhetoric. Rhetoric is not harmless but uses language with the aim of manipulating the appearance of reality (connected even to torture in its classic sense). It is not that some deploy rhetoric and others tell the truth but all, at least in Paul’s depiction, are caught up in the house of human language (rhetoric, law, and philosophy). While the human speech problem may be accentuated at this moment, Paul characterizes the present age (which extends from then to now) in terms of a failure of language. Certainly, in his preaching (as described in I Cor), Paul has not used manipulative language; he has not brow beat people, he has not wheedled, bullied, used special lighting and stirring music.[1] However, it was not just that his preaching was not rhetorical or an entertainment but, in form and content, his “logos of the Cross” exposes this form of speech as a nullity tied to a dying age. Continue reading “Fake News Versus the Word of the Cross”