Why does Paul constantly mention wisdom in the early chapters of 1 Corinthians?
Paul constantly mentions wisdom to contrast man's wisdom with God's wisdom. He had just come from Athens, the seat of philosophical thinking, where philosophers dismissed him as a babbler. Entering idolatrous, immoral Corinth, he stressed that human thinkers and their speculations are babble compared with Scripture, which already knew the truth.
Les explains that throughout the early part of 1 Corinthians, Paul is constantly bringing up the word wisdom, usually in a comparison of man's wisdom with God's wisdom. Paul was probably more aware of the emphasis on man's wisdom than we can imagine, because shortly before he came to Corinth he was at Athens, the very seat of philosophical thinking. There the Athenian philosophers subscribed to him the term "babbler," asking what this babbler would say. But compared to the philosophers of his day, it was really the other way around: Paul had the heavy stuff, while the philosophers had the babble. Les says it is not much different today; the world's heavy thinkers and think tanks, compared to the word of God, are nothing but babble. They try to envision what will happen and how things are happening, but the writers of Scripture knew it thousands of years ago. So as Paul comes to Corinth, a city beset with idolatry, steeped in mythological worship of gods and goddesses, and gross immorality, he comes into the very midst of all that with God's wisdom.