The language Paul uses to describe the form that his rhetoric did not take makes it clear that he does not have in mind a wholesale rejection of all efforts to achieve clarity in communication or to use words as instruments of persuasion. What he is rejecting is “eloquent wisdom”; “lofty words or wisdom”; “plausible words of wisdom”—in other words, self-consciously elaborate rhetoric that seeks to win admiration for its own artistry, fancy rhetoric that flaunts the speaker’s superior social status,