<p>2:1- see on Jn. 1:14.</p><p><i>I brothers, when I came to you, I came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God</i>- Paul has just argued in chapter 1 that the wisdom of God is in the crucified Christ, and those who are humanly wise will not respond to it. So Paul reasons that we should likewise present the Gospel with no attempt to make the cross of Christ somehow intellectually respectable, or acceptable in a secular sense. I have previously failed in this and so has so much Gospel outreach. Paul of course as a Rabbi and an intellectual could indeed have presented the Gospel with the trappings of secular wisdom. But he writes here as if he consciously stripped his message of anything like that. His message was after all, that of God in Christ- &quot;the testimony of God&quot;. The Greek here seems to specifically mean 'evidence'. Faith is not built upon evidence that is visible (Heb. 11:1,2)- and that includes arguments from science, archaeology etc. The evidence / testimony of God is &quot;the cross of Christ&quot;; and the addition of human wisdom to it makes it of none effect (1:17). This is God's evidence which He provides to us in order for us to have a basis for faith. In encountering the Lord Jesus there, we are challenged to believe in God, as faith in God really is. All the energy expended upon apologetics to provide a supposed basis for faith is therefore in my view misguided. It is psychological encounter with the crucified Christ which elicits faith.</p>